Crochet and knitting gifts

I've been a bit lax about recording finished gifts. This is usually because I do most of my crochet and knitting in the evenings and like to take photo's in daylight. However, with the nights starting earlier and the weather at the weekends becoming more autumnal (or wet, windy, foggy, with the occasional beautiful sunshine...... well, what can you expect, this is England), I have decided to just take some photo's indoors and have done with it. So, the following are my recently completed crochet and knitting escapades. From the top are my fish and chip baby jumper and hat, a gift for the new owners of our house and a selection of shower scrubby mits (ssshhhh these are for Santa).

Bakewell Wool Gathering

Bakewell 'Wool Gathering'  was a woolly temptation too far. This is a festival in it's second year - see here for details. I only heard about it recently and didn't want to miss the chance to go, despite the house  move ramping up. I sneaked off to Bakewell on Sunday morning. The weather was glorious, and the countryside was just unbelievably beautiful with the autumnul colours exploding around every corner and over each hill. I kept seeing photo opportunities as I was driving along, but was so conscious of limiting my time out that I didn't stop to take photo's, so I'm afraid I can't share any of the views. It's a small show but I can forsee it getting bigger as it becomes established in the festival calendar. There were a lot of different exhibitors with every colour and texture imaginable, from fleece to finished garment with everything else inbetween. There were quite a few workshop's but I just didn't have time to book into any.  I really would like to try spinning. The idea of being able to create my own yarn and make something from it is very appealing. It must be the primeval mother earthiness of it all. I know you can buy ANYTHING on the internet, but it's so rewarding to make something beautiful from scratch. Spinning also looks so rythmically relaxing, which might only be because the people demonstrating had spent years honing their spinning skills. I choose to believe that it is something that would come naturally to me. Hah, in my dreams. Next year I'll give it a go...maybe....
Of course I didn't get away without buying something. I really want to crochet a giant doily rug and Texere Yarns of Bradford had the very yarn for me. It's an Axminster rug wool on 250g cones and was exactly what I was looking for. I bought a selection of colours to brighten up our new temporary home and started experimenting the same evening. I started with 4 strands of the denim/purple colour and a 6mm hook. Then I plied it up to 6 strands with a 7.5mm hook. The jade colour only needed 4 strands to match the purple, and the pink was the same. .After several restarts to try out different ply's of yarn and hook size I haven't got much further. It is like the incredible shrinking rug. I did get to 3 rounds of colour last night, which makes it a whopping 12 or more inches, but I wasn't at all happy with the centre loop so I ripped it all back and started again, but this time with a magic loop. I'll let you know how I get on!

Moroccan meatballs with harissa

I know that it's acceptable and positively encouraged to eat copious amounts of takeaway meals when you are moving house, and I was fully on board with this concept for girls night in. I'm just not very good at maintaining this. I crave home made healthy meals which don't rely on salt, fat and sugar to make them "tasty". I haven't had time to make bread and I couldn't face a quick eggs on toast for lunch with cheapo crappo sliced bread so decided to make some pancakes. Being a bit of a 'knit your own yoghurt' kitchen nerdy person, I have a flour mill so can quickly grind some fresh 'farine de ble noir' or buckwheat flour, which is perfect for savoury pancakes and has the added advantage of being gluten free if wheat or gluten is a problem. Think Breton crêpes if you have been lucky enough to have been to Brittany. Well, so much for quick, we had run out of eggs so dashed out to the local butchers and bought eggs and bacon for lunch and lamb mince for dinner. The pancakes were made in double quick time while the bacon cooked, and then I assembled it with a super speedy cheese sauce, again made with buckwheat flour. It's amazing how fast you can go when your tummy is rumbling and you are on a mission! Sadly, the rush to consume this creperie delight meant that there are no photo's of the pancakes, although my appreciative family were most definitely happy with my mission accomplished.

Onto to the harissa and meatballs. Again, fed up with the takeaway/restaurant meals, I decided to make some lamb spicy meatballs. Why? Who know's what goes on in my head. So, with my googled bbc good food recipe I set to with the meatballs. Ok, so the first thing to do was to measure out the spices and grind them in with the pestle and mortar. What! It's packed? Ok....time for improvisation. I found my rolling pin and converted it into a pestle (or is that the mortar?) and bashed the spices. Now for the breadcrumbs. Hmmmm, we have a wholesome bread shortage, so decided upon oatmeal freshly ground from oat groats using the flour mill. Having made the meatballs I started cooking them. Half way through I was wondering why on earth I had thought that meatballs was a good idea. They had to be cooked in batches, it was taking ages and I was trying to make the harissa paste at the same time. Stressy or what. I persevered and got to the end. My harissa didn't look as red as the photo on the web pages, but then I had to use some green chilli's as well as red ones as that's it all I could find in the greenhouse. Anyway, it tasted lovely and we really enjoyed it at the end of another busy Saturday.

Improv pestle and mortar

Speedy oatmeal

Add mint and  an egg to the spices, minced lamb and oatmeal

Shape the meatballs

Sizzle sizzle

Harissa time - Chop the chilli's, red onion  and pepper with herbs and ground spices

Fry the chopped veg gently until soft

Serve the meatballs and harissa with couscous and corn chips and say Cheers with a glass of real ale. 

Garden tea

After picking the garden produce it was time to make it into tea. I decided upon roast vegetables with cheese and chilli lentil loaf followed by stewed apples and custard. I couldn't find the recipe book for the lentil loaf so had to do it from memory. It turned out surprisingly well. I think I might put some cheese on the top for it to brown in the oven next time for pureley aesthetic reasons as it actually tasted really nice. I'd like to say that the custard was made with free range eggs, fair trade sugar  and organic cream, but it's good old Bird's powdered custard. I love real egg custard but I just didn't have the time (or energy) to make it, and I like Bird's custard.

Late autumn garden

Late Saturday afternoon I needed a break from the relentless packing and slipped out to the garden with a cup of tea to my favourite bench. The weather was perfect with the sun still warm and casting long shadows. I love this time of year with the autumn colours and the garden still full of flower and fruit, but beginning to close down for winter. I know that soon I'll have more time for snuggling in a cosy room and doing some sewing/crochet/knitting (and everything else) when the garden has been put to bed. My favourite spot is here....

I realised that this might be the last time EVER for quiet enjoyment in this garden so grabbed my camera and snapped away, at the same time trying to pick some fruit and veg for tea. So much for quiet contemplation! Follow me for a quick tour of the vegetable and herb gardens.....

Nana's knitting

After writing my last post I've been thinking about my Nana. She is no longer with us but rummaging through her knitting needles brought to mind the last item I can remember her knitting......the essential tea time favourite, the tea cosy. I'm not sure if it should be 'Cosy' or 'Cozy'. I'm going to go with 'Cosy'. 

Now, Nana only made one sort of tea cosy and made it so many times she didn't need to use a pattern. I can only remember her making it in the same colour as well. It was always a willow green and lemon to match the kitchen. In her memory, I decided to make one too. I found the pattern in a brilliant tea cosy book "Tea Cozies" by Virginia Brehaut. As you can see from the cover picture, I was drawn to this book! I've actually made a couple of the patterns from the book, but the one below is my rather feeble (but well used) homage to Nana. I had to rescue it from a packed box to take it's photo, and then I couldn't find a teapot to model it on. Sigh.....packing is not at all fun. I'm quite determined to make a new one, but it won't be for a while because the book is packed as well. Doh.

I had to close this post with this fabulous retro teapot cosy found at Grandma Dorothy's. It was made for a gi-normous tea pot which is has been redistributed within the family ready to come out for the appropriate (large) family gathering and has now been reunited with it's own very special cosy. I would love to make this. 

Fish and Chip Babies

Most days I find the necessary 9-5 gets in the way of the fun things in life. At the moment though we are spending an inordinate amount of time discussing casting on and 2x2 rib. It's marvelous. The reason for this is one of the work fund raising/community initiatives this year is to knit jumpers and hats for babies in Africa for the  "Fish and Chip Babies" scheme. You can find more about it and the pattern here, but is essentially knitting clothes for new born babies in Africa who's mothers are so poor that the babies come out of hospital wrapped in newspaper, hence fish and chip babies. When this was announced, my first thought was how we all take for granted that our newborn babies have everything they need and a lot of things they don't, and that it seems inconceivable that there are babies being born in the world that don't even have anything to keep them warm. My second thought was a much more banal "Oh no, I've packed all my knitting needles". I had intended that crochet would keep me sane over the next few months until I could unpack my sewing room, so I was knitting needle-less. Then, I had a light bulb moment. I was pretty sure I hadn't packed my Nana's needles and after a bit of rummaging in a partially packed box I found them. Hoorah! They are not really my cup of tea because they are mostly plastic needles - they were the new invention 30-40 odd years ago, and my Nana loved them. I much prefer bamboo needles both for crochet and knitting. Anyway, I was able to find 7 and half (!) pairs of 4mm needles (or old size 8), and a few balls of colourful acrylic yarn - of course there is never a shortage of left over yarn at my house even in these desperate packing times. So, I printed off a several patterns and persuaded 5 colleagues to have a go. Most had not knitted since being at school, but I cast on and gave a few quick reminder session and they were off.......this is how far we got last week, except for Maria who hadn't brought her's in. Mine is the bumble bee effort - it will make my son smile because he is a Hull City supporter and they are the Tigers, which is pretty much the reason for me having these colours in my knitting wool box.

The funny thing about my knitting wool box is that it is actually a leather foot stool. It's huge and it went this weekend to our temporary accommodation which is a little flat above some shops. Anyway, the footstool is really quite heavy and awkward to carry and I was saying "It's only got a bit of wool in it, and a couple of magazines........." until it was dropped after a bit of a struggle at the bottom of the stairs and I was rumbled. It's got lot's of wool in it, about 10 magazines and a few books. Oops.

Scrubby shower mitt.......or the rough with the smooth

Another xmas present. This time it's for one of the lads. I figured that tea light holders would not necessarily be their thing. So plan B is for some shower accoutrements (I had to check how to spell that one because the spell checker doesn't think it is spelled properly - anyway, I meant accessories). I decided to try and make a sort of bath mitt with different textures on each side so that one side would give a good scrubbing, ok.....exfoliation, and the other side would polish or smooth their cares away....... See what you think.

Please understand that we dont' normally (or ever) shower outside at any time of year, it was just better light for photo's! To make the scrubby, I adapted the facecloth pattern from the Crochet Home magazine, making the facecloth with a slightly textured 2dc miss a dc (repeated). Then I made a second facecloth with a twisted treble pattern. This makes a bumpy raised pattern ideal for exfoliating. I then joined the two pieces together with a double crochet seam and then made a rib along the bottom. The final step was to join the side and end seams. The yarn used is a cotton/acrylic blend, but it's lovely and soft and as you can see has it's Sirdar 'Simply Recycled' aran weight. I've yet to see how it performs when wet!

This is how it looked before finishing the seams.