Clare's Rebel Badge Blog

Craft Part 2 has begun! Having discovered a small hole in my favourite grotty cardigan I decided to make it bigger, edged it using eyelet hole stitching and added petals and leaves with fishbone stitch. I am quite pleased with it! I am also rather startled by the amount of positive comments I have received for it, my favourite being 'Miss, you've got a flower on your bum!', as well as by the number of people who said they would have no idea how to do it. I guess I still naively think that everybody learns to sew in childhood - I should know better! I have completed Detective Badge so have made a slideshow full of information about my favourite detective, Albert Campion, whom I have loved since a teenager after seeing Peter Davison portray him in a BBC series. I have since read all the original books by Margery Allingham many times. I made a slideshow rather than a scrapbook as I am trying to declutter the house and am not fond of scrapbooks really. I have discov...

I believe that private gardens and public spaces should be havens for wildlife, as well as being pleasant for humans, with imperfect lawns containing patches of long grass and wildflowers, weeds in the borders and between the cracks in the patio. So many gardens are sterile and clean, perhaps for convenience; I understand this - people are busy and don't want their kids or pets getting muddy and making a mess, don't necessarily have the skills to maintain a garden or think that these skills are not for them or something they could not learn. I realise that this is a gross generalisation! I trained as a horticulturalist and landscaper many years ago, so have the confidence and skills to grow my garden and know why some things work and others don't. I have been fascinated by nature for most of my life, and still get excited when I see spiders or slow worms, or snakes, or frogs or eagles! I'm rather fond of ants and woodlice too, but slugs are my horticultural nemesis. How...

As you may have guessed from my subtle title, I gained Ultimate Rebel status this week by finishing some Wild Rebel badges; I finished Palaeontologist a few weeks ago, and this week finished Nature Lover and Observer. Neither were too much of a stretch as they encompassed many things I already do. I highly recommend sitting in the window of a coffee shop for an hour and actively watch the world go by; it's fascinating what and who you see. I went for a slow nature walk as it was too cold to sit in the squirrel hide for long, and saw several bird species, a horse being taken for a stroll (I got to pat it and I am usually scared of horses, so yay to me!), lots of lichen and fungi and a glorious variety of ivy leaves. There were lots of early spring flowers emerging, and to top everything off I saw a red squirrel scampering up and down a tree and along a path. We only have red squirrels here and I always get excited when I see one. I feel I have lost my Rebel mojo a bit in...