knit one bake too

Coffee time

2010-05-04T13:26:00.003+01:00

I've long admired the many knitted cafetiere and mug cosies on the web, and thought about having a go at one. Inspiration struck the other day while I was sipping on my tepid coffee, and here's the result...

Mine is knit in Debbie Bliss Luxury Tweed Chunky (it's a sample skein that has been lurking about the shop calling to me for quite some time!), but it would also work in Donegal Tweed Chunky. I decided to use smaller needles than suggested on the ball band to give a stiffer texture and a nice dense fabric for keeping the heat in.

Chunky Cafetiere Cosy

1 hank Debbie Bliss Luxury Tweed Chunky or 1 hank Debbie Bliss Donegal Tweed Chunky
6mm needles, 3 large buttons

Fits a standard size cafetiere, finished measurements 14cm x 30cm plus loops. Cast on more stitches for extra width or knit rows to add length.

Cast on 20St and knit 6 rows garter st (knit every row).
Starting with a knit row, knit 6 rows stockinette st (knitting the first and last 3st on eery row), then knit 6 rows garter st.
Repeat the last 12 rows 4 more times.
Knit 2 more rows garter stitch then cast off.

For the button loops (make 3): cast on 16 st then cast them off again.
Hold the ends of the button loop together and sew to the cast off edge of the cosy, spacing them to avoid the handles of your cafetiere.
Sew the buttons in the corresponding places on the oppposite end of the cosy.
Sew in the ends and put the kettle on!

Cinnamon rolls and birthday socks

2010-03-14T14:21:00.004Z

It was knitting group at Twist this weekend so I decided to bake some cinnamon rolls. Not wanting to get up at crazy o'clock to start them, I made the dough the night before (using Richard Bertinet's sweet dough recipe). After an hour to rise I flattened the dough into a rectangle, sprinkled liberally with cinnamon and sugar and rolled it up into a log for slicing.

I left the cut slices proving in the fridge overnight, then all there was to do on Saturday morning was let them warm up for an hour then slap them straight into the oven. Very tasty...

I also had a very productive week to get these done in time for my mum's birthday on Friday:

Spring Chickens

2010-03-02T09:45:00.002Z

I've been getting into needle felting recently - here are my spring chicks making themselves at home on the counter in the shop...

(yes blood was shed, but I still had fun making them!)

All things orange

2010-02-23T19:09:00.003Z

I've been busy knitting Elan's Voyager Stole - I used the excuse that I needed it to go with my bridesmaid dress (in the tropical heat of Costa Rica, of course it was essential!), and I've been wearing it pretty much non stop ever since....

Knitted with 2.5 balls of kidsilk haze on 4.5mm needles. Lovely.

I've also been rather busy with the sewing machine this week, here are two of my three new aprons. I'm totally adicted to making aprons. Resisting the urge to go to ikea and buy up heaps of fabric.

And hurrah, it's rhubarb season again! I had my first bunch this week, roasted with a bit of ginger, orange zest and brown sugar, lovely on muesli. And the cake of the week is Nigel Slater's apple and marmalade cake - very good timing since I've just produced about 10 jars of marmalade from a frozen stash of seville oranges!

New Year Gloves

2010-01-11T20:07:00.003Z

I knitted some gloves over the holidays, not before time! Here they are getting put to the test in snowy Newburgh last weekend...

Thanks to Laurence for the pictures, more of the amazing frozen Tay here and here.

Happy holidays

2009-12-18T22:22:00.002Z

Have a sticky toffee Christmas and a caramel saucy New Year!

Getting festive

2009-12-01T11:52:00.004Z

Here's a (slightly rubbish) picture of my christmas tree advent calendar, made from Laura's lovely hand dyed prefelt, and inspired by the trees she made for the Makers Market last month.

The tree itself has a wool prefelt backing with hand dyed leaves laid over the top, and I added a pocket in the form of a plant pot which can store all the baubles until the day for them to be hung. To save the tree looking a bit bare you could hang them the other way round and just turn them over to reveal the number as the days tick by. All that sewing, what was I thinking?

Happy 1st December!

If you're in London next weekend, pop along to the gloriously decadent Taste of Christmas for a whole heap of foody festive fun...

Ninja mittens

2009-11-26T15:50:00.006Z

I have always fancied a pair of ninja mittens, I don't know why, but there you go....

Knit on 5mm needles with the lovely Colinette Art (bamboo/wool), from Twist of course. Maybe they're more like gecko mittens than ninja mittens in that colour. Pattern to follow at some point soonish.

In other knitting news, here's a baby kimono (hmm, Japanese theme emerging here, but Swedish colours) that I made for Olga's baby, very neatly due on Christmas day - I wouldn't expect anything else from the queen of schedules and timetables, congratulations Olga and Bjarne!

High fibre cupcakes

2009-11-15T14:01:00.006Z

Remember these? Well there's been a few additions to the collection to fill my lovely new cupcake stand that I bought earlier in the week.

After a couple of silly late nights to finish my items for yesterday's makers market at Twist Fibre Craft Studio, I'm very happy to report that my cupcake pincushions sold out! I was starting to feel quite negative about them at 2am the night before when I was struggling to sew on the 'cherries' but they have redeemed themselves now.

Big thanks to Laura and Peter for organising the event and bringing together some lovely exhibitors, and big thanks to Diane and Andrea for doing such a fantastic sales job behind the counter on the day. Well done ladies. They both made some very beautiful christmas decorations and gifts - I couldn't resist boosting their earnings by spending some of mine.

I think Andrea's sheep enjoyed the biscotti tasters...

And now it's back down to the 'real work' - Taste of Christmas is just around the corner!

Italian Eating

2009-09-24T20:41:00.018+01:00

Well it's been a busy couple of weeks with work - gadding around with the Hairy Bikers, and then cooking up some disgusting mystery delights for the Big Food Fight which is currently showing on Channel 4. I've got into the rather pleasing habit of treating myself to a new bit of kit to celebrate each job, and this time I went for a pair of serious looking tool boxes to keep everything safe whilst on the road. I love them!

On my way back home I had time to raid my mum's garden for a bag full of fresh veg. She even let me swipe one of these babies...

I stuffed it with soft goats cheese and herbs then deep fried in tempura batter, mmmmm...

Very simple, but very tasty. It was the perfect dish to get me in the mood for a lovely trip to Milan for Fabrizio and Silvia's wedding. A big ex-Dundee crowd descended on Milan from all corners of the globe, and we did our best to consume everything that was on offer.

I had pizza 3 times in as many days (including a slice for breakfast!), and filled my bag with a nice selection of Italian cheeses to take home. It goes without saying that the bride and groom both looked stunning, and it was an honour to celebrate their marriage with them. Grazie Fabri e Silvia for such a lovely time, and for all your wonderful hospitality.

We tucked into beautiful antipasti in the garden of the villa after the wedding ceremony - the deep fried caperberries were great, and look at that parmesan! (can you spot the zucchini flowers too?) The hollowed out parmesan was later to become a cheesy bowl from which the radicchio risotto was served. Genius.

I seriously overdid it on the nibbles though, not realising that we were only at the tip of a formidable gastronomic iceberg:

Yes, that's a two-page meal folks. A feast indeed. I could barely breathe by the time we were done!

The next day we went for a stroll and stumbled upon a French-themed donkey racing festival with ju-jitsui demos on the side (even the Italians in our group seemed somewhat bemused!), and concurrent fungi festival. I particularly liked the posters warning us about what the more toxic species are capable of.

And no matter how much food has gone before, when it Italy there's always room for gelati at every possible opportunity.

Stripes still on the menu

2009-08-29T12:42:00.006+01:00

I have to confess that I've got way too many projects on the go at the moment, nothing is really getting finished. Time to concentrate on a bit of WIP-busting I think.

In that spirit, I cracked on with a simple scarf project that has been on the needles for month. It's a 1x1 rib using two colourways of Noro Silk Garden a la Brooklyn Tweed. I've been creeping along with a few rows each week at knitting group, but picked up the pace when I got past the half way point and the end seemed in sight. Just in time for the rubbish cold weather we've been having recently. Bring it on, I'm ready!

Totally unrelatedly, here's a pic of the crochet scarlet macaw hand puppet that I made for William's second birthday last month. Pattern from Inner Child Crochet. My animals never turn out as cute as the ones in the pictures but hopefully he'll be fun to play with. I like the nice long tail feathers that swoosh around as he flies.

Again totally unrelatedly, I spent an entire weekend grappling with my ancient sewing machine recently. After spending a day cutting gorgeous fat quarters ready for a patchwork class at Twist Fibre Craft Studio, I couldn't resist taking a selection of them home and having a go myself. I'm not a good sewer (can't even cut fabric in a straight line, let alone sew it!) but I was surprised how easy it was, even for a novice like me. Three days of faffing later, and I've got 6 lovely new cushions to brighten up my sofas. Very pleased :)

Zigzag City

2009-07-21T18:01:00.009+01:00

I've recently finished two patterns using the same combination of increases and decreases to create zigzags in the knitting. First, the previously alluded to jaywalkers (pattern by Grumperina), in a greeny bluey shade of Trekking XXL. I like how the colour changes show off the zigzags, and I am especially pleased that the patterning on each sock is pretty darn close to an exact match even though I wasn't trying - honest! I'd have no problem with completely different stripes on one compared to the other, but I don't think I could ignore it if they were a centimeter or two out from each other so I'm really glad this one turned out so well.

Second zigzag project is the chaton minet felted basket pattern from sock pixie. I used three colours of lopi roving from Twist Fibre Craft Studio, and added a few pattern repeats to make the basket bigger. Dilly seemed to go for it even before it was dry, so I'm counting it as a success for now. It remains to be seen how long before she returns to her penchant for piles of clean washing instead...

Chocolate and Cheese

2009-07-13T21:30:00.010+01:00

This weekend marked the end of the Taste Festival season, with a trip to Birmingham's Cannon Hill Park. True to form for Taste of Birmingham the wellies were put to good use, but thankfully we didn't see a repeat of the previous two year's Glasto-Taste mudbath!

...umm, there might be a spot of rain on the way.....

Still, a good time was had by all despite the weather, and it was even fun to have my mum on board as the unofficial kitchen porter for the chef's theatre - she definitely earned her share of the demo dishes!

After the madness of Taste of London, it was luxuriously laid back in Birmingham. So much so that I had time to nip around the producers market and pick up a few bits. Few producers inspired me to part with my cash, but I did very much like the hand made chocolates from Gorvett & Stone.

Absolutely beautiful to look at (not too perfect... in a good way), and delicious. They had a lovely range of flavours - different enough to be interesting but not odd for the sake of it - and spot on with the texture. The milk chocolate truffles with sea salt were mouthwatering yet creamy, and the dark chocolate with chilli was perfectly balanced to give rich fruity cocoa followed by an addictive chilli tingle. My favourite was the strawberry with black pepper: a good hit of dark chocolate and strong strawberry with just enough pepper to make the strawberry sing. Yum. I'm still struggling slightly with the white chocolate with green tea however. I love both of those things, but remain to be convinced that they can be successfully combined in truffle form.

Gorvett & Stone's flavour name of strawberry with black pepper was correct in that it was strong on strawberry with the pepper playing a supporting role. On the other hand Berry Scrumptious, who were at Taste of Edinburgh, need to swap around their name to black pepper with strawberry!

Bitter dark chocolate, very hot full on black pepper at the back of the throat, and tiny flecks of freeze dried strawberry. I'm not at all questioning the classsic combination of strawberry and pepper, but when you've got that much of a cocoa and black pepper slap in the face, the strawberry gets a bit lost. This one would be just as delicious, and slightly less confused, if the strawberries didn't make it into the chocolate at all. I love the hot spicy kick of the pepper in their dark chocolate, good on them for not being afraid to use a decent amount of it. It reminds me of an unexpectedly fantastic meal I had in Sicily a few years ago with some very good friends.

On the long drive home from Birmingham, I made my usual pit stop at Tebay services on the M6 in Cumbria to visit Westmoorland farm shop. Tebay is the only small locally owned motorway service station in the country and it is a crime that there are not more like it. No KFC, no Costa Coffee, no minging burgers and soggy sarnies. They serve honest home-cooked food using local produce including beef and lamb from their adjoining farm (they do a mean curry by the way), and always have an irresistable selection of cakes. The farm-shop is also excellent although increasingly they seem to be stocking gourmet products from all over Europe, which is no bad thing, but somewhat detracts from the local angle that they are keen to push.

The things that keep me going on the long journey to Tebay are this...

1) A first-rate cheese counter in the farm shop. I always get a good hunk of Swaledale, and whatever else looks nice. I could easily spend 20 quid on cheese!

2) The cakes. Home made, interesting selection, huge portions, reasonable prices. What's not to like?? The coffee cake is exceptional, and pretty much a meal in its own right. Today I tried their baked cheesecake and found it rather good - high praise indeed from someone who is usually very disappointed by commercial cheesecake encounters.

3) The coffee. I don't know what beans they use but they make a mean macchiato. Just the job to keep me going for the final three and a half hours of the drive.

4) The views. And the ducks!

And so another foody trip comes to an end. I'm not sure what's next on the horizon, but in the mean time I've got no small amount of leftovers to eat! And my Westmoorland cheese, yum...

Summer Skirt

2009-07-05T20:47:00.010+01:00

Here's the latest creation to come off the needles... or should I say the hook, for it is indeed a crochet project this time. I have made the 'walking after midnight' skirt from Doris Chan's Amazing Crochet Lace. Ravelry users check it out here.

I used the lovely Hempathy by Elsbeth Lavold, with 34% hemp and 41% cotton it's great for the hot weather, and has a nice soft but weighty feel which is ideal for this kind of project. Unfortunately it's not that readily available here in the UK, so it was made in Italy, shipped to a yarn shop in the states, then shipped back across the ocean to me. Let's not think about the air miles on that one.

I started this project way back in November when I went on a trip to Argentina to take part in Total Wipeout, thinking that it would be a good one for a long plane journey. I then let it sit for ages until I went on a trip to Spain in February. Another long hibernation period followed, before the final push which saw me finish just in time to wear it to Woolfest (thanks to Laurence for taking some pics!). Here I am just getting started in the dust and heat of Buenos Aires:

For most of the time I was working on it I had a feeling that it would be slightly disappointing when finished, hence the lack of pace. But as soon as I'd woven in the ends and given it a good steaming I was very happy. The underskirt is not attached by the way, and I quite like that, because it means that I can change it for a brightly coloured one to match whatever pair of silly high heels I feel like wearing...

Pesto Power

2009-06-30T20:47:00.004+01:00

All this hot and wet weather has made the garden go bonkers. Time to max out on the glut of yummy fresh herbs...

Classic Pesto: Shed loads of basil, toasted pine nuts, finely grated parmesan, and as much garlic as you like (roasted first if you want a milder flavour). Whizz it up with with enough XV olive oil to make a saucy consistency and then pig out! Great on pasta of course, but also in sarnies, on grilled portobello mushrooms with mozzarella, and layered with cheese and spinach in a quick veggie lasagne. I also like to add a few good spoonfulls into basic tomato sauce to give it a bit more depth.

There are endless possibilities for adapting the pesto concept, depending on your particular herb glut (Italians look away now!...) try coriander pesto to add to dishes with an eastern flavour, for example. My current favourite is parsley pesto - a truly English pesto if you team it with roasted pumpkin seeds, swaledale ewe's milk cheese and roasted pumpkin seeds... and you must call it 'parsleh pestoe' in your finest Yorkshire accent!

Feasts and festivals

2009-06-27T20:29:00.008+01:00

Well it's been a very busy couple of months working on and at the Taste Festivals. With two down and one still to go (Birmingham coming up soon), things are crazy as always but going very well. Head on over to Meemalee's Kitchen for two lovely write ups of her experiences as a visitor and a worker.

Today I went to Cockermouth in Cumbria with Andrea, Diane and Laurence, to enjoy a festival of another kind. We had a very early start and were there waiting excitedly in the queue before the show opened, ready to do some serious yarny shopping at Woolfest 2009. There was certainly no shortage of beautiful yarn and fibre to spend our cash on, as well as a generous selection of interesting breeds... and some alpacas leading the way in summer hairstyling whether they liked it or not!

The Twist Fibre Craft Studio stand looked absolutely stunning, especially with all the hand dyed pre-felt that Laura has been working hard to create over recent weeks.

So now I guess it's confession time. I don't think I was the first of our merry little group to crack open my wallet, but I certainly didn't hold back once I got started. Ok, I'm going to just do this quickly so it doesn't hurt! Here it is...

Here's my recipe for oaty date bars - serious sustenance for serious yarn hunters:

225g chopped dates
3 tbsp water, 2 tbsp lemon juice

125g butter
160g golden caster sugar
1 egg
1tbsp golden syrup
1tsp vanilla essence
145g wholemeal flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
105g rolled oats
100g dessicated coconut

Gently heat the dates with the water and lemon juice until all the liquid has been absorbed and the dates have softened. Set aside to cool.

Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the egg and golden syrup. Add the other ingredients and combine.

Press half of the dough into a greased 20x30cm, spread the dates on top, and then cover them with the remaining dough mixture. Bake at 180 for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.

This one is also great with other dried fruit fillings like apricot or cranberry.

Socks, books and hogs

2009-05-16T20:36:00.012+01:00

Two posts in one week? Gosh, that hasn't happened for a long time.

I thought I'd give you a bit of an update on what I've been knitting since being in London. Mostly socks actually. Inspired to take more steps into the world of sock making after my first pair, I cast on with another ball of Regia Kaffe Fassett yarn as my travelling project whilst going backwards and forwards from the Ideal Home Show on the tube. I'm not shy about knitting in public normally, but for some reason I found it a bit strange knitting on the tube in such close proximity to other travellers. I certainly felt conspicuous amongst everyone else with their books and newspapers, especially when (on my first sock-knitting tube journey) someone decided that the sight of me doing it was worthy of taking a photo!!

The sock progress is a good illustration of how tired I actually was, because it took me an entire month of tube journeys to do about 2/3 of the first sock. Since coming back to London and doing my office work for Taste, I've completely finished the pair in no time at all even though my train journey is much shorter. Annoyingly, one seems to be somehow a bit shorter than the other, so I may have to go back and re-do the toe decreases once I've added in a few more rows. But here they are for now, let's call them 'finished'.

Also during my last London trip, I made a start on some fairisle fish socks. They are not with me this time however, so progress is currently halted at around 70% done. I've knitted both cuffs, and have just started the toe decreases on the first foot. I'm using Twist Fibre Craft Studio's basic sock pattern, plus a simple fish design:

Never one to concentrate properly on a sensible number of projects, I have cast on for another fairisle pair of socks. Lizards this time: on ravelry here and on the net here. The lizards have been named Gary and Dave by their future owner. I've knitted Gary's head and one of his legs so far, although I may have to go back and make them smaller, these are looking like the biggest socks the world has ever seen.

(sssh, whisper this bit.... I'm knitting a pair of the ubiquitous Grumpernia jaywalkers as well. There are literally thousands of them out there on ravelry. Any self respecting sock knitter should have some. This is my train travel project, although the double decreases have led to a few near-stabbing incidents on crowded trains due to the tricky angles!)

And while we're whispering about furtive knitting exploits, I'll show you the two pieces of my bodge-job make-it-up-as-you-go noro cardigan. A flared bottom bit knit sideways so the stripes are vertical, and a raglan top-down top bit. Quite how the two will ever meet is currently a mystery to me. More news to follow on that one.

In other news, I've recently acquired some birthday books: Jun Tanaka's Simple to Sensational, and John Wright's River Cottage Handbook on Mushrooms. Lovely stuff! I've admired the River Cottage Guide series since John kicked them off with his very informative guide to Britain's mushrooms. There are now a further 4 books covering preserves, bread, veg and the edible seashore (the latter being another of John's masterpieces), all of which are worth a look.

I've been waiting for the release of Simple to Sensational for a good while, and wasn't disappointed with the result. Jun takes a collection of straightforward delicious dishes and offers a 'sensational' transformation by introducing a few more techniques or twists. I've seen this concept labelled as a gimmick in one review, but I actually think it's rather clever, and a fascinating insight into the kinds of things that might happen in a resaurant kitchen to take simple dishes to another level. I'm getting very interested in how to present food in a more professional looking way lately, so this book comes at a perfect time. The photography is stunning, worthwhile purchase for that alone, but I can't wait to get my teeth into some of the recipes too.

Completely unrelatedly, I went on a lovely outing to London Zoo today. Of course there were loads of exciting beasts to see, but I was quite taken with a couple of types of pig that I've never seen before: the bearded pig and the red river hog. Look at these fabulous beasts!

Despite never having been a fan of pork in any of its forms, I couldn't help wondering how these guys taste compared to their more every day brothers...

MiMi - thankyou for the fabulous meemalee's kitchen virtual birthday baking. I love that photo, yum.

Tasting London

2009-05-10T14:55:00.012+01:00

Yes I am useless. Yes it has been ages since the last post AGAIN. Insert all the usual excuses. Ok now let's move on.

That previous post about my Noro skirt seems like a hundred years ago. Since then, I have spent a very hectic and surreal month in the demonstration theatre at the Ideal Home Show. So much fun, very hard work, and lots of lovely people. Here is my Ideal Home family (thanks for the pic Laura).

In some ways the time flew by, but in other ways it was nice to be a bit more moved in and settled compared to the shorter shows. I got to know the suppliers really well, and very much enjoyed my early morning trips to Turnham Green to visit the wonderful guys at Andreas Veg, Covent Garden Fishmonger and Macken's the Butcher. I think it will be quite some time before I feel like making another smoked mussel tart (I'm estimating that we did about 20 in total), but there were plenty of other tasty things to experience every day. mmm chocolate mousse...

I briefly went home for about a week and a half, during which time I slept a great deal, then it was back on the train and down to London again for a month's work on preparations for the Taste Festivals 2009. I'm starting to get very excited about it all, and can't wait to be back in Edinburgh for the first show opening at the end of May. Truly the best way to celebrate the start of Summer, hopefully without the wellies this year. (PS can you spot me in one of the promo shots for the London show??)

So I'm trying to make an effort to explore London a little while I'm here with time to spare. I'm warming to the place I think, but it's so easy to spend loads of money... must try harder to stick to the parks and avoid the shops! Yesterday I went to the Real Food Festival with MiMi and Simon, snacking my way round all the stalls and looking at lots of delicious produce. Plenty of cakes, plenty of chocolate, plenty of chilli sauces. Oh, and some rather rude-looking lime daiquiri sorbets, hmm.

...and a spaghetti tree!

I'm a big fan of London's markets, so this morning I was up early to go to Spittalfields. It was somewhat different to what I had imagined, but not at all in a bad way. Lots of beautiful clothes and accessories, and some very tempting food stalls too. I had a hot and spicy west indian wrap stuffed full with colourful salads and sprouting shoots, but somehow managed to resist the baked goods on the stall next door.

I treated myself to an early birthday present too - a bright orange felt jacket from Italy. I think I'll have to wait a litle while before it gets cold enough to wear it but it's fab. And yes, I am still a bit too in love with my over the top shades I also bought this week. I really must make some effort to remedy that I've-just-spent-a-month-indoors complexion. I'm off to the park for a spot of alfresco knitting...

A knitted skirt

2009-03-14T16:55:00.007Z

I'm going to be working at the Ideal Home Show in the Chef's Kitchen Theatre for the next month, so I thought I'd leave you with some pics (thanks to Laurence) of my new Noro skirt before I depart. I'm hoping the weather stays cold for a little while longer so that I can wear it some more before spring really arrives!

It's based on the 'snapping turtle skirt' from Norah Gaughan's Knitting Nature. I used 9 balls Noro Kureyon (from Twist Fibre Craft of course!), 4.5mm needles, and knitted the smallest size. I added an extra row of hexagons to make the skirt longer and knitted a waistband in 1x1 rib decreasing at the point of each hexagon in the row below. Once knitted, I threaded a few strands of elasticated nylon through the waistband to stop it stretching out too much. I'm glad to say that this did the trick, because there was no plan B! Very happy with the way it turned out, and amazed at how much better it looked after a good blast of steam from the iron. The modular construction (one hexagon at a time, picked up from the edges of the existing ones) means that each chunk is very manageable, and there's no sewing up at the ends. The original has the purl side on the outer face, but I decided to have the knits on the outside because the picked up seams looked a bit messy when using variegated yarn.

So I have a huge bag full of knitting to take to London with me, even though there will probably be very little time for knitting. I just don't like the thought of being stuck without any though so my case is half full with yarn! Here's a sneaky peak of things to come...

Sock it!

2009-03-10T21:49:00.006Z

I've never knitted socks before but I decided to give it a go after we got some yummy new sock yarn in stock at Twist. I wanted to try out their basic sock pattern so that I can help out when customers ask about it, and was very pleasantly surprised. I had visions of endless tiny tiny rows on tiny tiny needles, but they actually grew reasonably quickly, and the appearence of a new colour to form a stripe as you knit is strangely compelling! I'm very happy that the stripes match up so nicely on each sock, but that's more of a fluke than anything that the balls both started in the same place.

Hand knitted socks always look a bit weird to me when they're not on the foot. I was worried about the bulky looking square heel and didn't think it would be very comfortable, but I take it all back, they're really comfortable and cosy. I want more! I'm all fired up to knit more socks after this initial success so I have gathered a good sized stash of sock yarn to take down to London with me next week. Watch this space...

Big Orange Bag

2009-03-04T21:39:00.005Z

I took a trip to St Andrews last week (mostly in order to visit the cheese shop!) and happened upon a basket of big fat bright orange acrylic yarn in a charity shop. Everything about it means I shouldn't like it but I do. It's a bit to garish to wear, but it just screamed BIG ORANGE BAG at me.

I bought some bamboo bag handles from Twist Fibre Craft Studio and set to work knitting a monster cabled knitting bag. Here it is...

Yarn: Cygnet Seriously Chunky

Needles: 10mm

Pattern: improvised... CO60st, 4 rounds reverse stockinette, increase to 100st, then p4k6 rib with a cable every 7th row. I decreased back down to 60st for the garter st border at the top, and made buttonholes on the front side. I knitted big blobs and sewed them to the inner back for buttons. Crochet cast off incorporating the handles so I didn't have to sew them to the bag afterwards.

Hurrah for quick knits!

Fat free cakes!

2009-03-01T19:00:00.004Z

To make up for all the calories in the previous post, have a look at these... fat free, high fibre cupcake pincushions! Hurrah! They are made with rolled up pieces of felted charity-shop-sweater, using the cuff or edge ribbing for the casing. It's really not that easy to find decent feltable sweaters for such a purpose, but there are one or two out there if you keep your eyes peeled.

Sadly, the much-loved and much-derided Masterchef is over for another year (yay for champion Mat, my favourite contestant), but wander on over to meemalee's kitchen to ease the withdrawal symptoms with an absolutely hilarious analysis of the final. Love it.

Extreme Sugar High

2009-02-27T20:07:00.003Z

It's cold, it's dark, it's windy and wet. Time for some comfort baking! Here's my super-calorific sticky toffee pudding recipe for you, mmm....

Sticky Toffee Pudding (serves 9-12, small portions are sufficient!)

225g chopped dates

300ml hot black tea

110g butter

170g caster sugar

3 eggs

225g self raising flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp coffee granules

Preheat the oven to 180oC, grease and base line a 20cm square cake tin.

Soak the dates in the tea for 15 minutes or so. Meanwhile cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy then gradually beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour and then all the other ingredients. Turn into the tin and bake for 1h15 or so (until a skewer comes out clean).

Toffee Sauce

110g butter

175g dark brown soft sugar

110g granulated sugar

275g golden syrup

225ml double cream

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Melt together the butter and sugars with the golden syrup, bring slowly to the boil then simmer for about 5 minutes to fully dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat, carefully add the cream and vanilla, then return to the heat for a couple more minutes.

Serve sponge and sauce together warm, with a good dollop of cream or ice cream if it's not quite unhealthy enough for you!

Daffodils

2009-02-25T20:05:00.006Z

As promised, here's the pattern for my daffodils. I'm going to give a bunch to my Mum for Mothers' Day. It's not the most elegantly written pattern but hopefully it makes sense. I'd be really interested to hear of any additions or modifications that could improve it if anyone feels like trying to knit them!

For the darker flowers I did the petals using two strands of yellow, and the trumpet with one yellow and one red strand. The lighter ones have one strand of yellow and one of white on the petals, and two strands of yellow for the trumpet.

The amount of felting required will depend on the yarn used and the type of washing machine, but my flowers went through two 40 degree cycles.

Materials:

Lopi roving - yellow (plus bits of red and white if you wish) for the petals, green for the stems. 100g yellow should be plenty to knit a whole bunch of flowers, maybe 8 or 9. Knit with two strand held together for the petals, trumpet and stem.

2-3mm diameter modelling wire to thread through the flower stems once felted.

8mm double pointed needles, and 8mm crochet hook.

Directions:

Petals

CO 12 st, leaving enough of a tail to thread through the stitches later.

row 1: Knit.

row 2: K1, M1, K1. TURN WORK.

row 3: K1, M1, K1, M1, K1. TURN WORK

row 4: K1, M1, K3, M1, K1 (7st). TURN WORK

Work backwards and forwards on these seven stitches to complete the first petal:

rows 5-10: Knit.

row 11: K2tog tbl, K3, K2tog

row 12: K

row 13: K2togtbl, K1, K2tog

row 14: K

row 15: sl1, K2tog, PSSO.

Break yarn and thread tail through remaining stitch. Rejoin yarn to next live stitch and repeat rows 2-15 for the remaining 5 petals. Join the first petal to the last to form a ring, then use the loose ends to sew a few stitches between adjacent petals at their bases (so that they will be less separate around the centre of the flower once felted). Thread the cast on tail through all stitches at the cast on edge and pull tight until the opening is 0.5-1cm in diameter.

Trumpet

Pick up 12st around the centre of the ring of petals, and spread them between 3 double pointed needles. Join to knit in the round and knit 7 rounds garter stitch (knit one round, purl one round etc).

Next row: Knit into the front and back of each stitch - 24st. Bind off all stitches.

Stamens
With a single strand of lopi, crochet a chain of 3 st, break yarn and thread through the final stitch to bind off. Repeat twice more. Tie the three short crochet chains together.

Stem

With the green yarn, cast on 5st and knit an i-cord approx 40cm in length. Bind off stitches. Attach stamens to the top of the stem, and poke them through the back of the flower head through the gap in the centre so that they are inside the trumpet. Sew the stem to the back of the flower.

Finishing
Thread a length of non-feltable string through the centre of the stem, leaving a few inches hanging out at each end (this helps to leave an opening through the centre of the stem that the wire can be threaded through). Place the flowers in the washing machine together with an old pair of jeans and felt. Pull the petals and trumpets into shape whilst still damp. Once the flowers are dry, remove the string from inside the stem and push a length of wire through in its place. Bend the sharp edges of the wire in, and sew closed at both ends of the stem to prevent it from slipping out.

The real daffs on Magdalen Green have only just started to poke up through the ground but if a few weeks there will be a scene like this to enjoy...

Spain, Shawls and Spring

2009-02-21T12:41:00.008Z

Right, it's catch up time. The blog has been suffering a little not because of the lack of subject matter but quite the opposite. So much knitting that there's not much time left for recording it! Anyway, here goes...

I recently took a trip to Spain with my Dad to visit my Grandad who lives in the countryside more or less half way between Alicante and Valencia. We had a very nice week relaxing in the sunshine and enjoying heaps of fresh fruit and veg from the area, particularly the oranges which were literally falling off the trees onto the floor in abundance. Here you can see me enjoying the view on top of the cathedral bell tower in Valencia (the enormous 11 ton bell struck midday while we were up there!). We also explored the little village of Guadalest perched on top of a rocky peak, and climed to the top of the Penon de Ifach - a steep rocky lump sticking out into the sea in Calpe.

All the almond trees around Jalon are in blossom at this time of year, which makes the hillside look very pretty. The trees reached up to the balcony so we spent a few sunny mornings sitting out and watching honey bees moving around from branch to branch. Satch the cat enjoys climbing up to hunt for birds!

I have been trying to concentrate on finishing off some WIPs, so half my suitcase was filled with knitting for the holiday. I finished off a couple of things, including my lovely purple shawl. Here it is before and after blocking - what a transformation! The pattern is a free one called 'Gail' and I used Artesano 4 ply alpaca to knit it. I did a couple of extra pattern repeats and used abut 3.5 balls. Very pleased with it, and definitely inspired to knit more lace.

At the moment I'm working on coming up with a pattern for felted daffodils. I'd like to make a bunch in time for mothers day. Pattern to follow at some point. I had a hunt through my stash cupboard and discovered quite a good amount of lopi. No lopi crisis here! I'm pleased to say that the lopi supply chain is now flowing freely again and it's back in stock at Twist Fibre Craft Studio. Hurrah!

New year teatime

2009-01-11T14:24:00.007Z

Happy new year! First post of the year is still slightly festive in a way, because it's cranberry-related. I always seem to have cranberries lurking around the place after Christmas because they come in quite big bags and last forever. Once you're fed up of cranberry sauce on verything try this for a teatime treat. I reckon it would be equally tasty with mincemeat too, perhaps with a bit of grated apple mixed in. I have some left over mincemeat so I'll give it a go and report back soon...

Crunchy cranberry tart

For the cranberry sauce:

350g fresh cranberries

125g caster sugar

zest and juice of an orange

For the pastry:

250g butter, softened

50g caster sugar

2tbsp sunflower oil

1tsp vanilla extract

1 egg, beaten

250g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

pinch salt

2tsp cinnamon

Place the cranberry sauce ingredients in a small pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes until all the cranberries have burst, stirring frequently. Transfer to a bowl and allow to cool completely. Alternatively, you could use up some ready-made cranberry sauce from a jar.

For the pastry, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the oil and vanilla extract, then gradually beat in the egg. Sift the flour, baking bowder, salt and cinnamon into a separate bowl then gradually stir it into the butter mixture. Bring the dough together with your hands and knead lightly into a ball. Wrap in clingfilm and chill until very firm (at least 2 hours, or put it in the freezer for a while if you're short on time).

Grease and line a 25cm tart tin. Grate 2/3 of the chilled dough into the tin, and spread it evenly without packing it down. Spread the cold cranberry sauce on top leaving a 1.5cm gap around the edges. Grate the rest of the dough on top, sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake at 150oC for 75-90 minutes until pale but firm. Cool in the tin then dust with icing sugar and cut into slices. Make yourself a cup of tea and put your feet up, enjoy!

Knitted Christmas Fare

2008-12-24T19:00:00.005Z

Hold on to your hats, I'm doing a new post! I don't have any decent excuses for the 2 month silence - a combination of being very busy (first month) and then operating at a couple of gears slower than normal (second month). Sorry guys. Anyway, I'm back, and have got quite a lot of stuff saved up to share with you. I am now no longer involved in the lab which is great, and even better is that I have a part time job at Twist Fibre Craft Studio - hurrah! I'm really enjoying my job, especially when I get to make samples from the shop. It's very tempting to spend all my wages there and more, I think I'll end up working to pay off my debt to them rather than to earn money!

Bearing in mind the time of year, here are some pics of the knitted Christmas baubles that I made for the shop windows. Pattern is available if you contact us via the shop website here!

Also, here's a pic of the festive jumper I've been knitting for William that I alluded to in a previous post. I also made a matching hat and cowl, although the colourwork is not so good on the hat. It was a kind of practice run so that I knew what to do with the jumper. The jumper is passed on the knitty pattern called norgi, but since I wasn't using wool I chickened out of doing the steeks. Instead I moved the colourwork to the bottom of the jumper knitted in the round, then split at the armholes to knit the front and back top separately. I had to jig the arrangement of the trees and reindeer around a bit to make them fit in with the number of stitches I had.

Lots of festive wishes and Happy New Year to everyone :)

Look what I won!

2008-10-25T18:05:00.005+01:00

Hey guess what? I won this...

...for this (see previous post also)....

Hurrah! Big thanks to Laura and Peter at Twist Fibre Craft Studio for a fun day and a great exhibition, and congratulations also to Andrea and Diane who cleaned up the top prizes with their fantastic creations. Well done all round!

Silly season for knitters

2008-10-19T17:54:00.008+01:00

Today I went with Diane and Andrea to Newburgh where Twist Fibre Craft Studio were hosting a very spectacular Rowan exhibition to celebrate the 30th birthday of the company, and national knitting week. Pretty impressive stuff, very inspirational... I was 'inspired' to add to my stash by buying some felted tweed, some alpaca and some kimono angora (the last two were in the sale box, hurrah), and also the Rowan 41 book which had quite a few nice things from the exhibition in it.

We spent most of the day there, and got stuck in to make a some hats for the Innocent Smoothie big knit 2008. Every year they hold a campaign to sell smoothies with hats, thereby raising money towards providing hot meals, blankets and advice to older people on how to keep their houses warm in winter.

I kicked off by making a snowboarding smoothie hats with jester horns and earflaps, and then went on to make a pineapple. Andrea brought along a fabulous creation named 'brain explosion' and also knitted a cactus in a pot, whilst Diane did a cheeky chicken with brilliant dangly legs. Apologies for the rubbish pics, Diane will defo have much better ones so check that out, but here they are...

And while we are on the subject of silly knitting, what do you reckon to my hideously bright legs-are-on-fire legwarmers?? I took these along to work on when we had a knitting group excursion to Di Gilpin in St Andrews, and I think my fellow knitters thought I'd lost the plot. They were very polite about my shocking acrylic creation, but eyebrows were raised! I don't have the full details yet so will save the story for another time, but it looks like they did their job and got me through selection for a very fun trip that will be coming up in November. Watch this space :)

Malt loaf?

2008-10-16T12:46:00.004+01:00

I had a big sort-out of my kitchen cupboards at the weekend, and was rather shocked at the mountain of dry food I have managed to stock pile. I've made a new resolution to use up store cupboard items rather keep buying stuff and putting it away never to be seen again.

A happy side effect of all this sensible behaviour is that I've been baking quite a lot. I used up my coconut in some coconut and lime muffins the other day, and then I was able to transform some rather soft branflakes into malt loaf. It's a recipe that my mum used to make a lot, and we always called it malt loaf. I have since decided that it doesn't actually contain any malt, although it does have that characteristic chewy texture and I bet the addition of a bit of malt extract would work well.

It's a great recipe for store cupboard stash busting, and takes about 5 minutes to put together. It's dairy free (unless you use milky tea) and fat free, so apart from the sugar it's almost healthy!I used a 500ml yoghurt pot as my measure, and had enough for 2 loaves.

Mrs C's 'Malt Loaf'

1 cup bran flakes

1 cup dried fruit/nuts

1 cup tea

1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar (cut down from 1 cup in the original)

1 cup self raising flour

Mix everything together except the flour and leave to soak for a few hours or overnight. Stir in the flour, turn into a greased and lined loaf tin then bake at 190oC for 1h or slightly longer, until a skewer comes out clean.

That's essentially it, but here are a few extra thoughts...

It would work with other bran-based cereals such as all bran, or a mixture of whatever you've got in the cupboard. I think my mum has even used cornflakes too. The finished loaf varies quite a lot by adding different fruit and nut mixtures, and I would suggest altering the sugar content accordingly - a fruity loaf won't need as much sugar as one with more nuts. Normal tea (with anything from 0 to 50% milk) adds a nice flavour, but using fruit tea instead is a nice way to complement the dried fruit you have chosen to add to the mix. You can also vary the flour - white or wholemeal would both work, or a mixture of the two. I was able to finish up a packet of white then top it up with wholemeal for the loaf in the pic.

So I'll put the kettle on shall I?

Slouchy beret

2008-10-14T10:50:00.005+01:00

I used to not like this time of year at all - things dying off everywhere, worsening weather, darkness drawing in etc etc - but now I am quite the opposite. I'm loving all the autumnal produce (have been eating squash more or less non stop recently), and I have a sense of excitement and anticipation at the arrival of true knitting weather.

Out come the hand knits: shawls, jumpers, hats and scarfs abound. Hurrah! And of course there's all the Christmas knitting to get started on. I had a minor diversion over the last couple of days though, and decided to do a quick hat. I have only ever made beanie style hats before but have often admired berets and slouchy hats on ravelry. Jared at Brooklyn Tweed recently published his take on the style (ravelers go here), and I was inspiret to give it a try.

I used some yarn that I got in a stash from the charity shop, it's acrylic but super soft and a bit fuzzy, I really like it. No pattern mods required, I followed it to the letter. Not difficult but not boring, and finished in 2 sittings. I'm happy with the end result and will be knitting more slouchy hats soon!

Pattern: Porom, by Jared Flood

Yarn: Patons Chantal (discontinued) used less than 1.5 balls

Space invaders and reindeer

2008-10-12T19:31:00.006+01:00

A few months back, I decided to have a go at two-colour knitting after watching some tutorials on the web. It's a bit tricky to get the tension right when one colour is carried behind the work, because the carried colour tends to pull too tightly on the knitted stitches. Anyway, I took the chart for the fabulous space invaders socks on knitty called bmp, and turned it into a tank top for William.

A lot of sewing of ends later, the final result was ok for a first attempt, but I think I'm going to partly blame the cheap acrylic yarn for some of the uneven tension.

The Christmas knitting frenzy has begun over the last week, and although I'm going to wait for the full reveal, here's a peak at my most recent two-colour project which is looking much neater...

Borough Market

2008-10-09T20:24:00.007+01:00

After a very interesting and fun week of work experience at Notting Grill last month, I decided to set my alarm early on Saturday morning and head down to Borough Market for some shopping and breakfast.

I had a very lovely morning wandering around smelling and tasting as much stuff as possible, and struggled to carry home all the stuff that I bought. The range of fruit and veg on display was stunning, and there were plenty of not so healthy things to enjoy too...

As the crowds started to arrive I fulfilled another food ambition and went upstairs to Roast... for my third breakfast of the day! I munched through tomatoes on toast and a big pot of tea whilst looking down on the shoppers in the market, and would certainly go back there again for a full meal.

London knitting, Cambridge dining

2008-09-29T19:56:00.007+01:00

It's been a bit quiet on the blogging front because for the last three weeks I've been in London on work experience placements. More on that later, but first it's time to catch up on knitting news. I was delighted to discover that my good friend Tom's swanky pad was 2 minutes walk from iknit London. Hurrah! I went along to knitting group when I was able to, and also added to my stash with some very very soft malabrigo laceweight, and a new yarn from Lang called West which might be turned into a Christmas pressie depending on how the colour variations work out when it's knitted up...

In terms of actual knitting I've been working on a Stefanie Japel pattern called Orangina, a lace patterned sleeveless top knitted in the round. Here it is stretched over Tom's ironing board to get an idea of the pattern. I took the lace pattern but reduced the number of repeats to make it the right width across my shoulders.

I also made a shrug which I wanted to wear at the end of my trip for a reunion dinner at Fitzwilliam College to celebrate 10 years since matriculating (I feel so old!). I used Paton's Smoothie and a knitty pattern 'I do'. It is knitted in the round from sleeve to centre back, then the two halves grafted together. The first half was no problem but I got a bit confused flipping the increases over for the second half and had to knit it again. I finished it on time however, and was quite happy with the final product. I modified the lace pattern to make all the knit stitches on one side rather than alternating chunks of knit and purl. There are no decent photos of me wearing it yet, but you can get an idea at least.

I had a lovely end to my trip by travelling over to Cambridge to stay with Ange and Rich for the reunion celebrations. A classic case of baby logic - cakey jammy face and hands, plus freshly changed lady in a clean dres = time for a hug! Dinner in college is always a great occasion, even if the food leaves a lot to be desired. Just goes to show that sometimes a good meal is about so much more than what's on the plate, especially when we had the chance to fill up on Ange's teacakes when we got home ;)

PS I have to say a big thankyou to Smariek for giving me a blog award - my first one! She's the creator of the famous utopia hat and loads of other lovely knitting designs... a genius :)

Teatime

2008-09-04T09:49:00.004+01:00

I am a big fan of afternoon tea. I think it needs to be reinstated as a regular ritual - a good chance to pause for half an hour during the day, top up on tea and snacks and catch up with a few friends. Oh and knock out a couple more rows of knitting while you're there too of course!

Here's what I've been baking this week...

And today I'm hoping to go blackberry picking over the river in Fife, they are finally starting to get ripe even up here in Scotland.

Bread for cheats

2008-08-30T17:54:00.005+01:00

It's been a little while since I've done a foody post, mostly because I've been baking rather boring (though tasty) things like scones and muffins recently. One new discovery is worth a mention however: no knead bread. I had read about it some time ago but was very suspicious and not really interested to have a go. Loads of people in the ravelry bread and yarn group have been raving about it though so curiosity got the better of me and I jumped on the band wagon.

The idea is that you can mix up a big batch of dough and keep it in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, ready to pull off a lump and bake on demand fresh every time. There is a book describing the technique and a whole series of variations upon the theme, and the authors have a blog on the subject here.

I tried their basic recipe for master dough, but found it quite salty so second time round I reduced the yeast and salt content. My master mix now contains 6.5 cups bread flour, 3 cups water, 1 rounded dsp dried yeast and 1 dsp salt. All that is needed is to mix these ingredients together to form quite a wet paste and that's it. You can see my tub of dough in the picture after an overnight rest in the fridge - it's quite bubbly and stretchy already. Because the dough is very wet and sticky it's quite difficult to handle, and this is the bit that requires some practice, but no kneading is required, just shape some dough into a round, prove for one hour and then bake. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the loaf, and it really only took a couple of minutes.

This morning I used some of the dough to make mini cinnamon whirls as suggested on the blog - I rolled out a piece of dough into a rectangle, sprinkled it with cinnamon and brown sugar then rolled it up into a long tube. I used kitchen scissors to cut the tube into whirls and baked them in a cupcake tray. umm, they've all gone already! I'd better make some more for the people coming over tomorrow.

And just to show you I haven't stopped knitting after all the ravelympics exciement, here's a preview of my latest project. Details to follow in a later post, but most of blogland seems to be knitting this one so maybe someone recognises the pattern? Yes I admit that I have been wearing it with one sleeve while I'm knitting the other one, it's cold in Dundee!

Ravelympic finish line

2008-08-19T12:46:00.006+01:00

Today I finished my second project for the ravelympics, this time competing for team GB in the scarf stroke. As I dealt with the hundreds of ends that this kind of project creates, I was cheering on the real team GB as they got a good haul of gold medals in the sailing and cycling.

My scarf is made up from two types of 5 pointed crochet flower, with the two long strips of flowers joined together down the middle. The yarn is Gedifra chandra and I used a 12mm hook.

This weekend I also finished a felting project that I've been planning to do for ages. The pattern is here, and I followed it without making any modifications for a change. You can never have too many bags!

Here's a pic of the lopi roving at Twist Fibre Craft Studio, just about to be split up into 100g cakes...

Is it Autumn??

2008-08-11T12:23:00.007+01:00

It's been a knitting-heavy couple of weeks what with the start of the ravelympics and everything, so I'm proud to present my two most recent finished objects to you. It seems like I'm very into leaf motifs at the moment, must be thinking of Autumn already. First of all, we have 'Iceland' from the Rowan 42 book in Cocoon (the shade is called tundra). It's been finished for a week or so, but I didn't get the buttons until we went to Twist Fibre Craft on Saturday. I modified it to make it a bit smaller than the smallest size. Follow the link to check out their updated website by the way - they've had a reshuffle in the shop and got in a selction of gorgeous fabric. More things to tempt my wallet!

The second FO is one of my ravelympic projects, the Kevat Shawl (kevat means spring in Finnish). I knitted it with the Utiku possum merino yarn that Jane sent for my birthday on 6.5mm needles. It's a nice easy lace pattern, easy to memorise and 'read' the pattern from the previous row of knitting, and it went especially quickly because I was using such big needles. Cast on at 1pm on Friday during the opening ceremony, cast off at 11.35pm on Saturday and blocked on Sunday! I'm wearing it right now to protect myself from this decidedly cold Scottish August.

Somebody on Ravelry tells me that the reason possum fur is so warm is that it has hollow fibres, which rings a bell now that I think of it. And apparently polar bear fleece is the warmest fibre of all for exactly the same reason.

Yesterday I made a start on my second ravelympics project, this time for team GB. I'm crocheting a scarf with large flower motifs. I've done about 30% so far, it's looking ok, but a bit skinny, I might decide to double up and do two flowers side by side if it's looking long enough by the time I get half way through the yarn.

ready, set, ...and they're off!

2008-08-08T20:55:00.007+01:00

The ravelympics have started, hurrah! The ravelympic fever has even made it onto youtube here. As tensions mounted for the Olympic opening in Beijing, we ravelympic athletes gathered at Laurence's house for a casting on ceremony while we watched proceedings in the Bird's Nest stadium. Tasty snacks, tasty yarn, lots of excitement. We all knitted like mad to get going on our entries for team scots can do it too - see the before and after shots in the lower picture...

Follow the links to read more about Laurence's shawl for the shawl relay, and Diane's jacket for baby dressage.

I had a go at making some bread rolls from my new book to take along to the olympic gathering, using the recipe for scottish morning rolls. I made an overnight 'sponge' with a small amount of yeast, flour and water, then left it to grow for about 14 hours. In that time the yeast begins to grow, metabolising the nutrients in the flour as it goes and turning it into a bubbly sticky goo. In the morning, fresh flour and more water is kneaded into the sponge, and it is shaped into rolls after a relatively short rise.

Pittenweem Arts Festival

2008-08-08T20:01:00.009+01:00

This week, the residents of Pittenweem in Fife have been flinging open their doors to welcome visitors to the Pittenweem arts festival. The whole village is taken over by resident and invited artists and every possible space, becomes a mini gallery for their work.

It was lovely to stroll around the pretty cottages and gardens looking at the work of some talented local artists along the way, and some of the gardens were almost like galleries in there own right with a whole load of summer flowers.

Every year, there is an installation in the harbour itself, and this year it was designed by Yoshihito Kawabata. He collected 1000 stones, labelling each one with a number, a Japanese character, and details of where and when it was found. The stones were then laid out in a huge circle, spanning across the pier, down onto the beach and into the sea. Over the course of the festival nature and human activity will take their effects and move around the stones to change their order and meaning.

As we made our way across the Tay towards Pittenweem I was amazed at how low the tide was and how much sand was exposed, so the following day I took a walk down the road to take a few pics. The tide was higher than the previous day and rapidly coming in, but still there was so much sand around. You can't see from these pics because they were too far away, but there were a couple of seals on one of the more distant sandbanks. When the tide isn't so low, only the bank nearer the wall is exposed so they sit much more closely in view.

On my way home across Magdalen Green, I got very excited when I discovered how many cherries there were in the trees lining the path. They look fab, and it seems like there are a few varieties because the fruit looked quite different in each tree. Some of it was ready for picking, so now I'm trying to pluck up the courage to go down there (maybe at night!) with a step ladder to pick some. Unfortunately they are all too high to reach without having someone's shoulders to sit on!

Summer's in the bag

2008-08-04T08:53:00.006+01:00

It's amazing how many things become so urgent and important when there's the small matter of having to write a thesis on my mind. After a frantic few days of knitting (the results of which you'll see shortly once I've put the buttons on), I suddenly got the urge to dig out the sewing machine last night. I'm not normally good at sewing by any stretch of the imagination, but I came across a straight forward pattern for a shoulder bag here at tiny happy so I thought I'd give it a go.

The flowery fabric was originally a summer shirt that I persuaded Barry to buy last year, forgot to take a pic before starting, sorry. He's only ever worn it a couple of times and I suspect he didn't actually like it that much, especially since he decided to leave it behind here in Scotland. I decided to give it a new lease of life and convert it into something that I could use and enjoy, hope he doesn't mind hehe...

I need to sew on the central band (should have thought of that before I sewed the outer and the lining together!) and then find a toggle or button for the front. I cut out the existing shirt pocket and sewed it to the lining inside. All in all, I'm happy with the result, especially given my lack of coordination when it comes to cutting and sewing fabric. I've got loads of the lining material left so I'm thinking of making a slightly larger one with the beige fabric as the outer, then sewing on some flowers cut out from the leftover shirt material. My next challenge might be to work out how to incorporate a zip for that one.

I had some lovely boiling hot weather in Cambridge last week, and although it's definitely less warm and summery here in Dundee, I have sprung into summer eating patterns. For me, this is summer on a plate, yum yum! And ooh, look at those lovely yellow tomatoes! I would urge you to spend as much as you reasonably can on balsamic vinegar for uses such as this, you're looking for the thick and sweet stuff rather than runny and overly acidic. I'd say aim for the 4 leaves mark (balsamic is graded from 1 leaf up to 4 for quality/maturity etc), aged for over 10 years and priced at upwards of £10 to £12 a bottle. A little goes a long way and it's so worth it :)

Ravelympics 2008

2008-07-31T16:53:00.005+01:00

Next week brings the start of the Beijing Olympics, but for knitters it also means it's nearly time to kick off with projects for the Ravelympics! Ravelry has a rapidly growing olympic village which is hosting a version of the games for fibrecraft athletes. There are a whole host of events to participate in including the Afghan Marathon, Designers Discus, and the Laceweight Longjump, and loads of different teams to compete for.

The idea is that knitters cast on their ravelympics projects during the opening ceremony on Friday 8th August, and must finish by the time the flame goes out at the end of the games. I have been a little over-ambitious and have chosen two projects to enter, although I might not be able to finish both in the time. My main ravelympics project will be a shawl called Kevat, by Ziina. I'll be knitting it with Utiku merino possum yarn that Jane sent for my birthday. It's really really warm, my hands were feeling nice and toasty even after knitting a small swatch, and then I went to the website and discovered that it's the second warmest fibre on the planet apparently. Does anyone know what fibre wins the title of warmest?? Here's my 'training' for the project (which is permitted to be done before the opening ceremony), and an aftershot just to show you that I'm not cheating and I unwound it all!

Project: Kevat shawl
Yarn: Utiku merino possum (70% merino, 30% possum)
Event: Shawl Relay
Team: Scots can do it too

As a bit of a side project, I'm hoping to have a go at a crochet scarf with Gedifra Chandra yarn - the same stuff that I made the hemlock ring blanket with. It's quite a bulky yarn, and I'm planning to make a scarf by crocheting 2 alternating types of flower joined together at the petals to form a chain. With a bit of luck the colour changes in the yarn will make each of the flowers look different.

Project: Garden scarf
Yarn: Gedifra chandra (greens and purples)
Event: Scarf Stroke
Team: TeamGB

Endings

2008-07-17T18:50:00.007+01:00

The last month has disappeared into a haze of cheese, steak and strawberries - I can't quite believe that Taste is all over so soon, but in other ways it seems like a hundred years since we started out in Edinburgh. I've been doing a fair bit of cooking, but have been totally useless at taking any pics so the blog has suffered. Sorry!

I did however bring home some lovely looking chillies that were left over, so I think it's time to make some more chilli jam. I'm also working my way through a new book: 'bread matters' by Andrew Whitley, so there will be lots of bread-related posts coming soon. My task for this week is to find somewhere in Dundee that sells fresh yeast. 24h bakery perhaps? hmm, they don't even sell bread...

One good thing on the knitting front is that I've FINALLY finished Oranjeanie (Keri Williams' Jeanie, from knitty winter 07/08). It's been a 6 month on and off kind of love/hate thing, and this project really suffered by me getting bored and starting lots of other things along the way, but here she is...

I never thought it would be such a slog when I embarked on this one, but I'm pleased with the final article. The slog is my fault for not being dedicated enough, the actual knitting time was not so great. I had an internet splurge on materials for a new project whilst separated from my stash in Birmingham - I'm making 'Iceland' from Rowan 42. Love the yarn (let's gloss over the price tag for now), v soft and hairy, love the leafy sideways pattern. It's going nice and quickly, I'm up to the split for the neck already.

Taste 08 is underway, and I've made a load of baby stuff

2008-06-16T20:40:00.009+01:00

It's been a while since my last post, because I've been gadding about all over the place like a headless chicken .... Taste 2008 is well underway! We've done Edinburgh and Leeds so far, both of which were very tiring but a lot of fun. Tomorrow I'm off to London for the big one, so looking forward to that. Just in case you all thought the world of events was a non stop party, here's the kitchen area of my lovely studio apartment in Leeds - every night someone has to take home all the teatowels and make sure they're washed and dried ready to go again the following day!

A Taste colleague of mine is expecting a baby at the beginning of September, so I've been busy turning that Trekking sock yarn from Twist on Tour into a little cardi. I didn't know whether it's a boy or girl, so I thought the reds/greens/browns would be a good mix of colours for either and I'm really pleased with the way it has come out, especially with the fact that I managed to match the pattern of stripes on the two sides. I used a pattern from knitty called Devan, and 2mm needles. The original is in stockinette stitch but I decided to do garter instead, partly for speed and partly because it feels springier and thicker.

An unexpected train trip from Birmingham to Dundee and back meant that I had time to make a pair of matching booties as well, I hope they both fit at the same time! I had to buy a second ball of yarn to finish the cardi, so there's loads left over for other little projects. For the booties, I used an adaptation of the very popular Saartje's booties, and some 3mm needles. This version, by bockstark, is knit in the round to avoid a seam down the middle of the sole. Very clever.

Since my last post, I have also made a turtle from Laurence's book World of Knitted Toys by Kath Dalmeny. He will also go to the same baby, I'll be sad to send him on his way though because he's very cute! Putting him together reminded me how rubbish I am at sewing.

Twist on Tour

2008-05-19T10:58:00.014+01:00

Yesterday we had a bbq with the borders knitting group people - lots and lots and lots of cakes and a few sausages! I didn't get a good pic of them all together but check out Laurence's post to get an idea of things. I sort of had an idea that doing 3 desserts myself would end up being too much but I was in the mood to cook so never mind. I made a rhubarb trifle (thanks again to Dave for the excellent rhubarb), some lemon tarts, and choux. Being English, I call anything made out of choux pastry and in a small blob shape a profiterole, but I know they should actually have ice cream inside to be proper ones. Mine had a lightly coffee flavoured pastry cream inside (made with cornflour, sugar, eggs and milk), then chocolate on top. Laurence arrived at just the right time to give some much needed French input on the state of the pastry dough, and then she did a great job of stuffing them too.

At the same time, Diane got busy with an old fork to tackle the weeds on the patio - look, no weeds or moss! Andrea also joined in later on and between them they've made such a huge difference to it, it looks miles better, thanks guys. I also have a fab new patio pot which was a pressie from Sheila, and in the team colour of the knitting group too, everyone's very into nice springy green things. Thankyou!

Lots of people went to great efforts in the kitchen - we didn't put much on the bbq but instead enjoyed a huge selection of lovely bread, cakes and hand made chocolates. A big thankyou to all for the contributions. Next time we'll drop the bbq and go straight to dessert maybe :)

The highlight of the afternoon was having Laura and Peter's van parked on my drive full of lovely stuff from Twist Fibre Craft Studio. My own personal knitting shop right outside the house, very exciting! They had a test run at setting up a mini shop in the van, and we all very much enjoyed looking at what they brought.

My stash has grown quite a bit this weekend. I bought some nice soft dk (I'm not sure what for yet) and also some sock yarn. All of it's very colourful, I must have been in a bright mood. I think maybe I'll have a go at making some socks while I'm travelling about this summer...

PS the recipe I used for soda bread a few posts ago can be found here. It's an oaty one, so the texture is quite interesting.

Hey, it' asparagus season!

2008-05-17T18:56:00.006+01:00

yum yum, tasty tart with british asparagus and goats cheese :)

I had some chargrilled on the griddle today too which is one of my favourite ways of eating it. And the first batch of jersey new potatoes went into my shopping basket.

I've also been enjoying kilos of rhubarb from Dave at work. I'm filling up the freezer with stewed rhubarb and apple for breakfasts, I made a rhubarb tart at the same time as the asparagus one, and tomorrow we're having rhubarb and orange trifle. Such a great time of year!

Buttons and beads

2008-05-17T18:03:00.001+01:00

I've had a bit of a jewellery making phase recently, sparked off by discovering a basket full of lovely bright buttons at Twist. Mum and I bought 3 packs each and spent an evening turning them into necklaces.

I suppose there are only so many button necklaces a girl needs, so I then moved onto my box of beads and jewellery bits and pieces and made a few other things as well. I like anything requiring a pair of pliers!

End of an era

2008-05-04T22:32:00.005+01:00

Just a quick post to record the end of an era in foody terms. We had built up a great tradition of pizza nights in a particular flat that once was home to Fabrizio and Silvia, and was then passed on to Elton. He decided to take on the mantle of pizza chef from Fabrizio and after a good aprenticeship, he was suitably qualified to carry on the tradition when Fabrizio left for Milan.

Recently we had the last ever pizza night there, since Elton will be moving out in a couple of weeks, very sad! Anyway, he did a fine job of feeding everyone as usual, and the boys made a day of it to produce enough pizza bases to cover every surface in the flat (it's a strictly men only ritual!!). We decided to bring forward the start of Summer by enjoying the first jug of pimms and lemonade of the season, yum. Here's hoping that the pizza tradition will evolve into a new form, and we won't loose the chance to enjoy the pizzas in a new home sometime soon :)

Distractions

2008-04-24T12:43:00.007+01:00

I've got a few things in the queue to be blogged about, but work is pretty mad at the moment, so apologies if the blogging slows down. There's been way too much of all 3 of these things in my life recently...

I confess, Laurence was right, I broke my own rule about not starting another scarfy project until Jeanie was finished. I'm blaming the work for that one too! My brain has been too frazzled to comprehend reversible cables and dropped stitches so I've been spending some quality zoned-out time with my new project from Twist. I finished it yesterday and an quite pleased with the result. It was all squashed up on normal straight needles so I didn't realise just how long it actually was until I bound off and released it from the squeeze.

Being at home writing for the last week or so, I've been getting a new insight into the life of a cat. Dilly is very noisy and keen to get the humans out of bed in the morning so she can have breakfast, but then at around 9am she takes on the pose in the pic and remains absolutely still, fully unconscious for a full 6 hours. It can be quite hard to tell which end is which when she turns her head upside down and puts her tail over her face. She wakes at 3, and begins the food acquisition routine - galloping up and down the stairs, walking all over my desk/keyboard, biting my pen and trying to knock my work onto the floor. She also miows very loudly from the lounge to try to get me to come downstairs and see what's going on, hoping that I might just feed her while I'm down there. It's a tough life being a cat!

The daffs are still out at the bottom of the road by the way...

Food and flowers (and knitting of course)

2008-04-13T18:42:00.012+01:00

Life rarely seems to fit into neat categories to make a themed post about, so here's another mixture of bits and pieces that have been going on lately. Jeanie is coming along well, I'm nearly ready to start the third and final ball. It's long enough for Dilly to sit on one end while I'm working on the other end now.

We had a lovely trip to Twist yesterday for knitting group. There weren't many of us so we sat upstairs around the table in the shop. I started off well, and only bought some felting needles and the new Vogue Knitting. Then I went for another fatal wander and tripped over a box full of lovely colourful skeins of hand dyed yarn from a local Wensleydale flock. They were packaged up with a little instruction card for a shawl, and a nice pin. Local produce and yarn all in one? Yes please!

The two skeins are a little different, so after the first few rows I decided to alternate 2 rows of one then 2 rows of the other to mix them in. Going well (and quickly) so far, although it's a bit squashed because I'm trying to keep 187 st on a normal needle.

The green at the bottom of my road is looking spectacular at the moment, as is a lot of Dundee, because all the daffodils are out in force. They're looking the wrong way to see their faces and the view of the Tay all in the same shot, but who can blame them for wanting to face south?

Here's some Soad Bread I've just made, using the Town Bakery recipe. Super quick.

And finally for today, look what we've got in the office! It's great! Bea was missing proper coffee so she bought an electric moka...

Jeanie progress

2008-03-31T14:15:00.006+01:00

You may remember right back at the beginning of the year that I showed a picture of Jeanie - a wrap from knitty with reversible cables and dropped stitches in between. I bought some trekking sock yarn from Twist and made a start on in when travelling over Christmas.

Since then it's been somewhat neglected while I worked on other things, but I've picked up the pace again recently, and am just about to finish the first ball of 3. I've got a lot of other scarfs/shawls/wraps in my mind that I'd like to try, but I've made a rule that I have to finish this one before casting on a project that fills the same niche!

This weekend I had a go at putting the edging around the bottom of the wrap. It was cast on with waste yarn while the main part of the wrap is knitted. I started off by unpicking the waste yarn (which took AGES) and placing the live stitches back onto a needle. The next stage involves taking the 8 st that form the cable edge up the sides of the wrap, bending it around the corner and knitting it across the bottom, incorporating the cast on stitches where appropriate.

The whole process took quite a bit longer than I'd expected, and a few tries to get started, but it worked out ok in the end. A bit of a challenge anyway, and it has motivated me to get on with the rest of the project because I've got a better feel for how it will look when finished.

Two FOs

2008-03-24T11:11:00.009Z

I haven't been very good at keeping up to date with the knitting posts recently. Last week I said I was on the verge of finishing Ophelia. She then sat for a week waiting to have hooks and eyes sewn on. I finally got around to taking some pictures yesterday, but before I did the sewing. I'm rubbish at sewing, I don't know why. I turn into a bumbling fool when I pick up a needle and thread. It wasn't so bad as I was thinking though, and it didn't take long at all to sew 5 pairs of hooks and eyes down the front. I'm wearing it today and quite pleased with the results.

Pattern: Ophelia (free)

Yarn: 2.5 skeins Blue Sky Alpacas dyed cotton (LOVE IT)

Needles: 5mm

Mods: I bound off some st at the armholes and made the shoulder sections narrower.

The second FO for Easter weekend is Stardust, from Winter knitty. I love this, and it was really quick and easy to make. I think there's a bit of a problem though. When I started sewing the pieces together on Friday my nose began to run. And then stream. And then the sneezing and coughing started. It seems that angora and I do not get along! I finished it off on Sunday and wore it for a few hours, during which time I got through about one and a half rolls of kitchen paper. I felt like it got better when I took off the cardi, but maybe it's psychological or a coincidence or something. Plan is to give it a rest for a few days, and I'll try wearing it to knitting group on Wednesday to see if the nose starts up again. I'll be really sad if I can't wear it because it's great, I really like the pattern and I'm quite proud of my seaming job - look out for future posts, I may be trying to find a new home for it!

Pattern: Stardust (free from Knitty)
Yarn: Just over 4.5 balls Louisa Harding Kimono Angora

Needles: 4.5mm
Mods: 3 needle bind off on the shoulders. Ties are 16st wide instead of 20. I picked up and knitted the collar into the back neck as I went along rather than sewing it down later.

28th March: I've worn the cardi twice this week, and have survived. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be so looks like the project is safe. Phew!

SHF41: Colomba Pasquale with Candied Peel

2008-03-23T14:56:00.009Z

Happy Easter!

So here is the Columba Pasquale at last. I have some nice memories of eating this when we went to visit friends in Milan at Easter a couple of years ago, so this year I decided to have a go at making some at home. It's my entry for Sugar High Friday number 41, which is hosted by Habeas Brulee this month with the theme of sweet gifts.

Columba Pasquale (Easter Dove) is a lesser known relative of the Italian classic Panettone that is eaten around Christmas and New Year. It is said to have been made by the bakers of Milan since the twelfth centuary. Traditionally shaped like a dove, Colomba is a rich and soft bread packed with candied peel and topped with crunchy sugar and almonds. It's a typical dessert for Easter lunch, but makes a great gift as well.

The origins of Colomba are linked with an old story. When King Alboino of the Longobards conquered the city of Pavia on the eve of Easter Sunday, he requested that all the gold and treasures of the city should be given to him together with 12 virgins. The poor girls were sent to the castle to await their fate and they were all crying in despair. All, except for one, who asked to be given some honey, flour and dried fruits as she wanted to bake a cake. She prepared a dough and gave it the shape of a dove and asked her guardians to have it baked. When she was called to see Alboino, she carried the cake on a tray. The king was surprised and he asked her to taste the cake first in case she was trying to poison him. The girl ate a piece and Alboino, seeing that she looked so confident, did the same. He found the cake delicious, so as a reward he ordered his guards to free the baking girl.

Moral of the story? When in danger, bake! The colomba recipe I used is here. It's quite simple, but takes a long time becuase of the different rising stages, including one overnight.

The candied peel is a crucial part of this recipe, so I decided to start off my bake-fest last weekend by making my own. I described what I did in this post last week, but basically involved successive rounds of boiling the peel in fresh water, then for several hours in sugar syrup. As manoute pointed out, candied peel makes a lovely gift, and is especially delicious dipped in dark chocolate. I was really pleased with the home mande peel, it's got so much flavour compared to the bough stuff. It's a taste that really lingers for a long long time (possibly because it gets stuck in your teeth so much!), and is very refreshing. I'm surprised we had any left to make the Colomba with because we've been nibbling at it all week. Here's a picture of the peel as it was being candied, and then as it was drying before being tossed in sugar...

Last week I challenged everyone to make something foody for Easter. Manoute has just sent me some lovely pics of her Easter Pate that she made last year, and also a sweet version of the French flat bread fougasse. Yum! More pics of Easter baking to follow hopefully...

baking challenge for easter

2008-03-17T08:48:00.000Z

It's Easter next weekend. Can you believe it?? The daffodils aren't even properly out yet, well not in Scotland at least. I heard somewhere that Easter hasn't been this early since the 1930s and won't be again for another 150 years or so.

I've been hatching a plan to make traditional bread from northern Italy called Colomba Pasquale (Easter Dove), and I thought why not throw an invite out there and try to get a bake-along going. It's similar to the more well known Panettone which is eaten at Christmas - quite rich and sweet bread with candied peel and almonds. The main difference as far as I can tell is the lack of raisins, and also the shape: colomba is dove shaped, although all the pictures look more like a cross to me.

The recipe I'll be using is here. It's a bit daunting at first becuase there are a lot of steps for rising (including an overnight one!!) but the actual amount of attention you need to give it is not so huge. Is anyone up for the challenge? Andy K - I know you can do it, cookies were good but time to take it to the next level :) Jane, yours would be more the size of an eagle than a dove thanks to the superhot incubation temperatures down there. Let's see it! What about our Italians? Anyone else?? It makes a great gift, which is a handy thing because that is the theme for this month's Sugar High Friday.

Send me pics of your easter baking before Tues 25th and I'll put them up next week. I'll also accept Easter-related baking from other nations if you don't fancy the colomba, I'm rather partial to a hot cross bun too!

If you want to do some home made candied peel, you'll need to get going this week so it has a few days to dry out before baking with it. Yesterday I juiced 6 oranges and 4 or 5 lemons, then put the skins in large pans of cold water and boiled for 10 mins. (I froze the juice and will probably use it to make sorbet next weekend with the spare eggwhites the colomba will create). They were drained, refilled with cold water then the process repeated 6 times in total. I then scooped out the mushy membranes from inside, sliced the peel and simmered it in a 2:1 water:sugar mixture for 2 - 2.5 hours until kind of translucent. The remaining liquid at this point is very thick and sticky, and there isn't much left. Allow to rest for a minute or two then quickly spread the peel onto cooling racks before the syrup gets too cool and gloopy. Air dry overnight, then toss in sugar and leave to try for several more days, turning occasionally. Store in an airtight jar in the fridge, lasts for months and months if you can resist eating it all.

Chippy tea

2008-03-14T18:58:00.003Z

I heard a song called 'Chippy tea' by the Lancashire Hotpots being played on the radio this afternoon and it really made me laugh. It's the exact same conversation that goes on in this household at least 3 times a week, right down to the Lancashire accent!

I often have a hard time convincing Barry to overlook the takeaway options at the top of the road in favour of stuff that's come from a recipe book, especially if it's vegetarian or (horror of horrors) healthy. He could have written this song himself. Just as I was googling it to find the lyrics, the phone went... Barry was calling to say that he'd finished at work and would I like anything from the chippy on the way home. And no, he wasn't swayed by the penne with leeks and smoked cheese that were here. I rest my case. In his defense, he did in fact eat some couscous last time I made a chargrilled veg salad with it, hehe. :)

Check out this video of them doing a slot on rock fm, it's genius.

Chippy Tea

Well it's the end of the working week

and I'm rushing back home quick

I'm starvingI'm fair klempt tha knows

I could eat a butter brick

I need stodgy food without the fuss

Then wife gives me a plate of cous cous

I said I'm sorry love but I want's a chippy tea

Chippy tea, chippy tea

I want's a chippy tea

But you keep givin posh nosh

it don't agree with me

I don't want lobster thermadore

Or your rasberry coulie

I'm a working man from Lancashire

and I wants a chippy tea

Plenty salt and vinegar on that love

Leave it open will ya darling

It's dark when I sets off to work

It's dark when I come home

And all I want is simple food

Not Din Sum from Ken Hom

Her inspiration's ready steady cook

Am I eating it?Am I f...

it's friday nightand i want a chippy tea

Chippy tea, chippy tea

I want's a chippy tea

But you keep givin posh nosh

it don't agree with me

I don't want lobster thermadore

With your rasberry coolie

It's Friday nightI'm within my rights

I wants a chippy tea

"And in the red kitchen

William is preparing griddled squid

With coconut pesto

Chilli jam and an ice cointreau custard"

"And in the Lancashire kitchen

Bernards brought back from the chippy

Chips, peas, pudding, gravy wrapped

a carton of curry, a barmcake and a can of vimto

Now"

Chippy tea, chippy tea

I want's a chippy tea

But you keep givin posh nosh

it don't agree with me

I don't want lobster thermadore

Or your rasberry coulie

I'm a working man from Lancashire

and I wants a chippy tea

Got any of your satchets of tomato sauce

Throw us a chicken in there will you love

Wigan chippys they have baby's heads

In St Helen's they serve splits

But tha's giving nouvel cuisine

And all I want is chips

I don't care if it's one of Nigela's

I think that's a funny name for a fella

I'm not eating it

I wants a chippy tea

One last time

Chippy tea, chippy tea

I want's a chippy tea

But you keep givin posh nosh

it don't agree with me

You can keep your Jamie Olivers

Or your Gordon Ramsey's

I'm a working man from Lancashire

and I wants a chippy tea

RightThrow a sausage in that batter love

Pass us one of those 2p forks

**************************

Here are the Lancashire hotpots on myspace.

Peacock on display

2008-03-12T09:02:00.000Z

It's been a little quiet on the knitting posts since Christmas, especially over the last 6 weeks, because I've been working more or less solidly (and at a frantic pace) on one thing. It's Jae Koscierzynski's Pretty as a Peacock Shawl from Some Knitting Required. Today is my mum's birthday, and I'm really pleased with myself for finishing, blocking and posting it not only on time, but a day early! Smug! I'm fairly sure she'll like it, this is her favourite colour and she's also quite a fan of peacocks - this pattern was the obvious choice really.

Ravellers can follow the link to see the details in my notebook here. For the rest of you, bear with me while I bombard you with a gratuitous amount of knitting photos. Yes I am proud :) Did you know that a group of peacocks is called an ostentation by the way?

Who can spot the mistake in the next photo??

Should have at least brushed my hair before the photoshoot!

Blocking such a large item was an interesting challenge, especially since it needed a severe stretching to open up the lace pattern and make the shawl grow as much as possible. I initially marked out a semicircle at what I thought was the right size and then tried to fit the shawl to it, but everytime I pulled one side, the pins on the other side popped out. In the end I went for several successive rounds of further stretching after an initial pinning to a medium size. I gave up with the tape measure and just stretched to maximum distance all over. If I'd had more time I might have incorporated another row of peacock eyes to make the shawl a little bit bigger, but it reaches bum length, so I think it's fit for purpose. Here's a series of shots before/during/after blocking...

For those interested in the technicalites of all things lace, Eunny Jang has a fascinating series of tutorials called Majoring in Lace. So much work went into that set of articles!

Return of the pies

2008-03-10T16:54:00.003Z

So after the success of the recent pie evening, I decided to have a go at making some of my own for tea yesterday. I used Simon Rimmer's Leek and Smoked Cheese Pie recipe, and was very happy with the pastry especially - the fat was 50/50 butter and veg suet and it worked extremely well. It was really stong and easy to handle, and didn't go soggy with the addition of the filling.

The pies were quite large, probably could have made 5 instead of 4 from the recipe quantities, but they'd be good as an all in one packed lunch. I liked the unsupported construction - one large circle for the base/sides and a smaller one for the lid. You put a ball of filling on the larger circle, brush both of them with egg wash then fold up the base and pinch it together with the lid to form a seal. Barry made a pastry snail with the leftovers...

Saturday stuff

2008-03-09T12:45:00.008Z

This is a bit of a random post of a couple of things, not much to do with anything really! First of all I wanted to show you a picture of Jane's orchid which is in my office at work. We inherited it when Jane left, and since then it's been working very hard at producing a flower stalk. A couple of weeks ago it reached full height and started to open, and we've been enjoying these beautiful flowers ever since...

I had a very nice Saturday yesterday, doing lots of fun Saturday things. First it was a trip to Newburgh for a good old knitting session. Last week I finished the peacock shawl I've been frantically knitting for the last month (post to follow next week once it's been sent, but ravellers can see it here), so I started something quite quick and easy a few days ago with some Blue Sky Alpacas organic cotton. It's nice and thick and chunky and very soft. Nearly finished that one already, so I'll save the pics for when it's fully done in a few days time. The knitters then headed back towards the rain in Dundee and went for lunch - the parlour was full so we tried out a new place that has opened near the Rep theatre. Pretty decent for lunch, and reasonably priced I'm glad to say.

After lunch I met up with Barry and we continued round the corner to Tonic where I had a bit of dessert and a coffee while continuing with the knitting and watching the England/Scotland 6 nations match. I like sitting at the window watching people coming and going, and was quite amused by the poster on the other side of the road which seemed to be saying that the daily record comes with free kids this weekend.

In the evening I met up with Diane and Fiona again to go and see Jung Chang give a lecture on her new book about Mao which was extremely interesting. It's part of the Dundee Saturday evening lecture series and was also tied in with international women's day celebrations.

Poor old Dilly went to the vet on Friday to have most of her few remaining teeth removed (she just has 2 very tiny ones at the front on top and bottom now). She was a bit subdued afterwards but by the time we got home on Saturday night she was fully recovered and ready to fight again. She's totally weaponless however because they also trimmed her claws right down while she was under anaesthetic, so had to resort to slobbering Barry into submission...

Pieday

2008-03-03T17:32:00.006Z

You may remember a post last year when I mentioned some pies we'd had on a trip to the west coast with Kirsty, Anna and Peter. Since then we've been waiting for a good opportunity to make the most of the pies by post service that they provide at the Lochinver Larder. In the end, we decided that the pies make the occasion and we don't need any other reason! Last week we rallied the troops and put in an enormous order for 34 pies amid great excitement and anticipation.

They arrived on Friday afternoon in the lab and blended in rather well, becuase they were packaged in three quite large polystyrene boxes very similar to the ones we get when ordering reagents that need to be kept cold or frozen. But this package contained far more exciting contents! Their pies are hand made in Lochinver using fresh local ingredients, and they've won a couple of awards for their efforts.

I made a huge pile of mash to go with the savoury ones, and we divided each of the pies into quarters so that everyone could try a good selection of the flavours on offer. We then moved on to a selection of fruit pies which were equally delicious. Eris went to the length of making some beautiful custard, I still feel sheepish about the fact I didn't watch it carefully enough as it was heating up. It was so lovely and smooth until it fell into my hands and I butchered it! Still tasted great, and the effort was very much appreciated. Here are the pies as we unwrapped them, and then a batch just as they were being served:

Oat and Peanut Butter Cookies

2008-02-18T14:37:00.007Z

Here's what I made for the lab meeting last week, after a pilot run the weekend before which went to the knitting group in Newburgh. You can see my new multi-storey cooling rack in action, it's perfect for batch baking!

Peanut butter and oat cookies (makes about 40-45)

3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup caster sugar
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups wholemeal plain flour
3 cups rolled oats
1 to 1 1/2 cups choc chips or choc covered peanuts roughly chopped

Beat the peanut butter and vegetable oil together, then beat in the sugars, baking soda and baking powder, then the eggs and vanilla extract. Stir in the flour and then the oats. Add the choc chips/peanuts if using, and a little more flour if the mixture seems too greasy (it was fine for my first batch, but I added a couple of handfulls of extra flour for the second batch).

Shape the mixture into cookies and bake at 180 for 12-15 minute. Transfer to wire racks to cool.

Peacock Progress

2008-02-11T17:04:00.000Z

The peacock shawl is coming along reasonably well, I'm almost half way through the fourth chart due to a monster knitting session on Saturday. I probably should have stopped a row or two earlier than I did because on Sunday I had to rewind a few rows and start chart D again. All is ok again now though, here are a few pics that I took after removing the needle to do the rewinding...

Shrove Tuesday

2008-02-10T10:28:00.000Z

I couldn't let pancake day come and go without a quick post on the matter. There was some debate over whether we should have traditional thin or Canadian-style thick pancakes last Tuesday. I'm definitely on the side of the thin pancake for pancake day - it wouldn't be the same without the tossing and the lemon and sugar! I had to strike a deal in order to have thin ones however, it was only on the condition that we also had thick ones at the weekend. Here are the thin ones...

I managed to eat 5 of them. Is that something to be proud of? I'm not sure! How did everyone else do??

'Thin' Batter (makes about 15)

250g plain flour

2 eggs

500ml milk

pinch salt

Sift the flour and salt, make a well in the center and gradually whisk in the eggs and milk until the batter is smooth. Allow to rest for half an hour or so before pouring.

For the thick Canadian-style pancakes we ate this morning, I used a very special and very detailed recipe that is in the form of an email to Rebecca from her mum. I don't think I should publish the Schuler family secret pancake recipe here or I might be in trouble (!) but it's a thicker mixture than the one above, with the addition of sugar and baking powder.

They ooze out into a smaller circle than the thin ones as they hit the pan, and although they still look almost liquid on the top you know it's time to flip when lots of bubbles rise to the surface. You can actually see the entire thing rising and getting thicker once the second side hits the pan. They're ready as soon as they come away from the bottom of the pan. Very yummy with the maple syrup Pete and Candi brought over for us, bacon optional.

Jean's Chicabean

2008-02-08T10:40:00.001Z

I've had another quick diversion away from all the mainstream WIPs - this time to make a thankyou present for Jean after she gave us a lot of lovely pyrex cookware. It's been hiding until now, but they've been handed over to their new owner so I can show you the pics.

I used 4 balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran in cream and 5mm needles to make the Chicabean hat and scarf by Kelly-Green Rogue. The yarn is really lovely, and I'm pleased with the results. So much so, I think I'm actually going to get back on ebay and buy some more to make a set for myself while it's still on sale!

Hat mods: an extra row of the 1x1rib, and one less pattern repeat before starting the decreases. Glad I did this because it's a good size as it is, I think it would have been too big with another repeat. I used just over 1 ball for the hat, and the rest went on the scarf.

Scarf mods: I did 2 lace sections rather than 3, and put the cables right on the edges rather than having a flat edge. I wanted to make the scarf look ok from the back too (who can wear a scarf and only show the 'front'??), so I made the cables reversible by doing them over 8st in a 1x1rib. So all in all I cast on 8+5+8+5+8=34st. I was a bit worried that it would be too thin, but the blocking sorted that out and it was a fairly standard scarf width in the end.

Oh, and here's ANOTHER WIP. This one's a bit of an emergency, because it's for my mum's birthday which is on 12th March. I've finished the first two charts and am just about to make a start on the section with the peacock eyes. Argh! All those little stitches and lace patterns! I bought some Addi circular needles especially designed for lace knitting (sharp and pointy!), and they're really making a big difference. It's so much easier to get in and manipulate the stitches. Hopefully I'll be able to show you some nice pics of completed peacock eyes by the end of the weekend...

Hurrah for Hugh!

2008-01-31T22:37:00.000Z

I went to Tesco tonight, and it's not normally an area that I frequent but there were happy scenes to behold in the chicken aisle. It seems like the River Cottage Chicken Out campaign is having an effect because there were only 3 whole free range chickens and a few thighs left. The rest of the area was empty, whilst the non-freerange birds were left untouched.

There was almost cheering and jumping up and down. And then I realised it wasn't a good idea to make too much a spectacle of ourselves whilst I'd asked Olga to take a few pics on her phone! The little notice said that they're working hard with suppliers to meet the demand. And long may it continue :) If you have't done so already, I urge you to follow the link above to read all about the commercial chicken trade and sign up to the Chicken Out campaign if you can.

A quick PS... that tesco notice is actually a bit cheeky because it suggests 'Willow Farm' as an alternative to standard birds but this is in fact still indoor-raised meat and is therefore not free range and doesn't comply with RSPCA freedom food standards. For sure it'll be slightly better in terms of welfare than the standard stuff, but there are still big concerns. Beware of misleading packaging - if it doesn't actually say FREE RANGE then it won't be!

Farewell feasting

2008-01-28T16:07:00.001Z

Last weekend was Jane's final one in Dundee before she heads off to warmer climes, so we had lots of people over for Sunday lunch. We'd been over to see Jean earlier in the week to admire the HUGE amount of pyrex cookware she won by entering a competition on tv. She very kindly gave me a lot of really useful dishes, many of which were called into service on Sunday. It was quite an interesting logistical challenge to get enough food for 20 people cooked and into suitable dishes! I didn't get as much time as I would have liked to chat to people as they arrived, but the event went very smoothly and we managed to get the food out at a reasonable time.

Before we get on to the serious business of the food, I also wanted to show off my DIY skills, and my new favourite corner of the kitchen. Thanks to Jean's very professional looking spirit level, I was able to put up a couple of shelves which have become home to my cookbooks.

They are now safe from the previous threat of getting wet because they were living on the worksurface right next to the draining board. A nice little space underneath has been liberated for the whisky collection and the glass jars.

You can also see in the picture a few shiny new utensils that Jane bought recently. The potato ricer is fantastic! I never realised what a difference it made, but it makes perfect mash. I feel a gnocci-making session coming on.

The greenery in the vase that you can see is a bit of a clue for the food. We took a covert trip down the road under the cover of darkness, scissors at the ready, and acquired large amounts of rosemary to go with the roast shoulder of lamb. 2 shoulders in fact, both of them weighing 4 kilos. Jamie Oliver did a programme about lamb the other day, and Jane got given the book of the series as a leaving present so we thought it would be a good time to give it a try. Here they are being prepared for the roasting...

The things in the other photo are polenta canapes that I made to nibble on in case we got behind schedule with the lunch. Diane also made some yummy crostini with broadbeans, pear and pecorino cheese. For dessert we had lemon mousse from Jean, crumble from Laura, pancakes from Iva and a tasty French dessert from Laurence with pears in a kind of custard batter. I'm really looking forward to finishing it off for my tea tonight. Sorry Laurence, I'm not sure how to write the name so I'll leave it to you!

Polenta squares with red onion marmalade and goat's cheese

Once again apologies for the slightly cowboy measurements, I was going freestyle!

Finely slice 3 red onions, cover and cook gently with a little oil until completely soft. Remove the lid, increase the heat a bit and add a tablespoon or two of brown sugar. Cook until most of the juices have evaporated and the sugar is starting to caramelise. Add a few tablespoons of balsamic vinegar to taste, and maybe some thyme. Allow to cool.

Bring 1L of salted water to the boil, and add 250g quick cook polenta, beating vigorously. Cook for about 5 minutes until it's quite firm, stir in 2-3 handfulls of grated parmesan, season, then spread out to a thickness of about 0.5 - 1cm on an oiled baking sheet. Allow to cool and set firm, then cut into squares.

Place a teaspoon of the onion marmalade onto each polenta square and top with some crumbled goats cheese.

Setting off on a marathon WIP

2008-01-23T17:21:00.000Z

I have a new WIP. A HUGE WIP. A VERY VERY LONG TERM WIP. I bought a magazine containing the pattern for a lovely big blanket called 'Leafy Heirloom' by Kim Hargreaves a long time ago, and have been gazing at it ever since. Ravellers go here for the knit along. January sales fever got the better of me and I scoured the internet to find the required (vast) amounts of Rowan All Seasons Cot ton for a good price.

With some kind of wonky logic I have decided that the best way to stop myself casting on more and more projects is to add this blanket to my list of WIPS. I like the excitement of casting on a new thing too much, and start to crave it way before I've finished the previous thing. The more I do it, the more WIPs I have, and the slower they all seem to progress, which makes me bored and itching to go for yet another something new. Vicious circle.

But here comes leafy heirloom to the rescue! To complete the blanket I need to knit 48 squares corner to corner then sew them together. I've done 4 so far, pictured above after I blocked them and sewed them together. Every time I feel a bit of mid-WIP itch on the other projects, I'll bang out another heirloom square to give me a bit of a change but not a whole-new-project-sized break.

Does that make sense, or am I just trying to justify a big splurge on a LOT of NICE yarn?!? It was more or less half price at Cucumber Patch and a very good deal (although 36 balls of anything is never going to be cheap!), so I've almost got myself convinced it's justifiable :)

Badia

2008-01-20T13:32:00.000Z

I've finished the tank top I have been making with some of my Christmas yarn, hurrah! it's called Badia, and was a free pattern from Berrocco. The pattern called for 8 skeins, but I managed it without cracking into the 8th, so I've got enough leftovers for a skinny scarf hopefully.

The yarn is a bamboo tape called Bonsai. It took a bit of getting used to because it's quite shiny and slippery, and I went down from 5mm to 4mm needles to get the gauge. Picking up the stitches for the neck and shoulder edging was a little tricky too. It took ages to squeeze in the amount of stitches I was supposed to pick up, and the resulting rib looked to bunched up and almost frilly, so I undid it and started again by picking up only where it looked like there was an obvious place to do so. Seems ok I think. I feel the start of a tank top phase coming on!

Mushroom soup

2008-01-20T13:12:00.000Z

When I get the chance, I bring out my huge cauldron-style cooking pot and cook up a load of stuff that can be frozen in portions for lunch. It doesn't take much more effort to make plenty, and it's so nice jut grabbing something that's ready to go rather than having to think about what to make for a packed lunch every day.

Yesterday I made some mushroom soup because I'm getting a bit fed with the hundreds and hundreds of pots of broccoli and stilton soup I have to work my way through. Mushroom soup always looks a bit brown and boring, but it's very tasty. The beauty of soup is that you can pretty much just chuck in whatever's available then add an amount of liquid to give it the right thickness once cooked. I've tried to note down a kind of recipe below though, with very rough quantities!

Mushroom Soup

Soak a handfull of dried mushrooms in some stock until soft, remove them and chop finely.
Heat 600ml milk with around 1.5 - 2L stock until nearly to the boil.
In a separate pan, fry 2 onions in a large knob of butter until completely soft. Add 2 packs of finely chopped chestnut mushrooms and the rehydrated dried mushrooms and cook for a few more minutes.
Stir in a handfull of plain flour and cook for 2 more minutes before adding the milk and stock to the mushroom mixture. Season well and simmer for 10 minutes.
Blend in a food processor until smooth, then stir in a few tablespoons of finely chopped parsely and a glug of sherry.

Scottish Snow

2008-01-14T12:59:00.000Z

After a week or so of cold wet weather, the snow conditions were looking promising so Marios, Barry, Jane, Alban, Stephan, Juanma and I set off very early on Saturday morning for Glenshee. It really was quite amazing, I had to keep reminding myself that we were in Scotland and not somewhere else because the snow was surprisingly good and the weather was perfect - not a cloud in the sky and no wind.

As you would expect lots of other people had the same plan, and the rather antiquated system of drag lifts were struggling to get everyone to the tops of the runs, but as a result the runs themselves weren't too crowded at all once we finally got through the queue to reach them. Jane made a batch of everything-tasty-in-the-cupboard flapjacks to keep us going and we had a great day enjoying the snow and the scenery with some nice leisurely paced skiing and boarding.

A few others joined us when we got back to Dundee, and we rewarded ourselves for a very successful trip with mulled wine, masses of chilli, and some yummy French cheese from Alban. Diane brought a long a lovely little felted gingerbread man who has taken up residence on the mantlepiece, pics to follow, thanyou Diane! Thanks to Barry, Alban and Stephan for the photos published here - I've mislaid my camera charger, hopefuly it's not in Birmingham from Christmas. Fingers crossed for more snowy weather so we can do it all again soon.

spicy sort out

2008-01-08T19:21:00.000Z

When I came home from the Christmas hols, Jane and I spent an afternoon sorting through and amalgamating our herbs and spices, together with those we inherited when Abdallah and Rebecca left Dundee. Oh my goodness, I don't think we need to buy any herbs or spices for at least 5 years! A good amount was thrown away (longevity award going to a 12 1/2 year old vintage of garam masala), and many things were combined.

Barry also did rather well from the session because we were able to put together a fairly comprehensive herbs and spices box containing some of everything we had in duplicate or more (which was most things!). The winner of the multiple pots award goes to mustard - FIFTEEN types of mustard were all open and in various states of completion.

Also there were 12 packets of cinnamon if you count both ground and sticks together...

I managed to bodge and extra shelf in two of the kitchen cupboards, so now our newly sorted and labelled collection had a new home too. It's only taken me 3 years to get around to it ;)

Tentsmuir stroll

2008-01-06T21:15:00.000Z

This afternoon Diane, Andrea, Jane and I went over the river to Tentsmuir for a bit of a walk on the beach. After a week of horrible grey and wet weather it was lovely to get out in the fresh air and enjoy some winter sunshine.

I really like the way that the shells end up on little stalks of sand as the wind blows away all of the stuff in between, and we were there at a good time of day to see them with nice shadows.

We walked from Tayport round the edge of the estuary mouth and a little way onto the beach. The tide was high so there weren't any seals sat on sandbanks but I was very determined to see one and managed to convince myself that a variety of birds and posts were seals in the water. After a while on the beach we actually nearly tripped over this little guy before we noticed him huddled up near the grass. Unfortunately I think he was probably sick or abandoned because he was all alone, but we did see an adult seal in the water as we walked further so hopefully it was the mother and she eventually made her way back to the baby once all the annoying noisy people had gone home.

New year, new WIPS

2008-01-02T15:29:00.000Z

Here's a quick update on what I've been up to with the knitting over the holidays - I had lots of time on trains going down to Birmingham, and then over to Cambridge, so I got plenty done which was great. All 3 of these major WIPS are with cables, my favourite thing at the moment.

I'm nearly ready to start the shaping at the top of my first CPH sleeve, which I knitted in the round to avoid having to sew up a seam. I may come to regret it when I'm struggling to attach the sleeve to the body when it's not flat but we'll see. No pics today.

For Christmas I got some lovely shiny Berroco Bonsai yarn, which I'm knitting a tank top from. The pattern is called Badia and is free from Berroco. They have quite a lot of good free patterns on there by the way.

I've also made a reasonable start on Jeanie, which is a wrap made from sock yarn on the latest edition of knitty. It's got reversible cables, with dropped stitches in between. The chart took a bit of getting used to but I'm definitely well into the swing of it now and it's not as complicated as it first seems. Slow going though, because the yarn's so fine. The brighter orangey bit you can just see at the bottom of the photo is a provisional cast on in waste yarn. When I've finished the top end, I need to put these stitches back on the needles and work them in to a cable border that runs around all 4 sides when finished. Scary stuff.

Happy Hogmanay!

2008-01-02T14:48:00.000Z

Pete and Candi are here at the moment visiting from Canada, so on New Years Eve we braved the weather and made our way through the fog to Stonehaven for the hogmanay fireball ceremony. Every year at midnight there's a procession of people swinging enormous wire cages filled with burning rags through the streets down to the harbour where they get chucked into the sea. It's a tradition that has quite ancient roots, and has been revived in recent years. There are a number of theories about the origins but the general idea is to ward off evil spirits and that kind of thing. The spectacle was a little short-lived, with not much sign of the build up timetabled in the programme, but it was very exciting when a line of people eventually formed down the middle of the road with each one pulling a huge ball of fire behind them. You could really feel the heat from them, and they looked very heavy to swing around.

After the procession we walked down to the harbour and had a glass of champagne on the sand whilst watching the fireworks. I didn't get many good pics but here are a couple especially for Dan who nearly came with us, and also check out Jane's blog, I think she'll be posting some of her pics there soon. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

More felted bags

2007-12-24T12:07:00.000Z

November and December definitely was definitely a felting phase. As well as the flowery bag you’ve already seen, I also made 2 smaller clutch bags. They are based on a free Knitting Daily pattern by Amanda Berka, which she calls the Squatty Sidekick. I followed the modifications that someone else on Ravelry had made, and added in extra rows between each of the shaping rows to make it slightly taller and rounder. I also made more of the handle in I-cord than the pattern said, because I thought it would be stronger and less stretchy than a flat strip.

The pattern calls for a 15st x 60 row rectangle which forms the base of the bag. You then pick up stitches all the way around the 4 sides of the rectangle and knit the rest of the bag in the round, binding off and separating stitches as necessary to form the top edge, the flap and the handles. The transformation items undergo in the washing machine never ceases to amaze me. It’s a scary moment handing over your latest project to the mercy of the wash and an agonizing 2h20min wait for the 60o programme to finish, but it’s always exciting to pull out the results!

I first did a striped bag which actually became much more colourful than I first intended because I got carried away with changing colours all the time, and then a plain red one. They’re really quick and easy and just took a few days each. The green one has a felted button which I made by casting on 15-20st (I’m not sure!) and then casting them off again and rolling the strip into a ball. It was purely a matter of luck that the button and the button hole turned out to be appropriate sizes to make it work ok, phew! For the red bag I added a magnetic closure instead (after felting), then put a couple of extra circles of felt over the top of the stud to cover it.

One was intended as a birthday pressie for Ange, but once number two was completed I decided it was a bit more sophisticated and that she might prefer the red one instead. Ange, if you like the stripey one let me know and we can swap!!

Murphy's Monster

2007-12-20T12:17:00.001Z

Here’s another project that has been hiding for a while...

It’s based on an old doily pattern ‘hemlock ring’ that was very cleverly adapted and expanded by Jared at BrooklynTweed to make a blanket/throw kind of thing. His is very lovely and earthy and neutral – with beautiful photos as ever - whereas this one turned into a bit of a crazy 70s style beast that was photographed in the dark at the last minute before wrapping!

I still haven’t quite got the hang of making the mental transition between what yarn looks like in a ball and what it will look like when knitted up. I really like the variation of colours in the balls of multicoloured yarns when you see the strands all wound up next to each other, but I’m often not so keen on the way the colours separate out into stripes as you knit back and forth with them. This particular yarn is Gedifra Chandra shade 7607 – a kind of woven chunky cord. I probably should have knit it on needles bigger than 6.5mm but was too impatient to get started as usual :) There are 4 more balls (7613 purples/greens) in the stash which I’m thinking of making a loosely knitted scarf or something with.

I had interesting experiences trying to get the beast into shape once it was finished. Fresh off the needles, it was very bunched up and curly because of all the increases and decreases in stitches. The whole notion of blocking knitting to set it into the required shape is a bit of a mystery to me, and I came up with a sort of cheaty way of doing it by pinning the throw to the carpet with drawing pins and blasting it with shots of steam from the iron. It must have been quite a sight because I got myself into all sorts of positions that wouldn’t have been out of place in a game of twister whilst trying to hold down and stretch out parts of the throw. Couple that with simultaneously trying to control the iron and avoid the drawing pins which were pinging up out of the carpet and flying all over the place, and you’ve got an extreme knitting situation!

Here’s a pic of the shaping in progress. I’ve already been over the whole thing so it’s less curled than it was originally, but you can see the near end is quite flat and nice, whereas the bit further away still needs a lot more pulling and steam blasting. It’s all done for now, but I think it could probably do with a more severe blocking at some point in the future.

Anyway, I’m describing this object as a throw for sitting on the grass in the sunshine with. It’s a Christmas/leaving present for Jane – who is probably going to be making the most of the Australian summer very soon! It is made by starting off with just 8 stitches in the center of the blanket, and knitting round and round increasing a few stitches every now and then. By the end I had well over 300 stitches on the needles and used more or less all of the final ball just to do a round of decorative bind-off!

Biscotti for all

2007-12-18T10:06:00.000Z

As promised here's the biscotti - a virtual festive nibble for all you blog readers, enjoy! (meanwhile, the support staff at work will be munching on the real thing with their coffee this morning!....) HAPPY CHRISTMAS to everyone.

Recipe is in the post below - I doubled the quantity of dough and added cranberries to half, and figs/sliced almonds to the other half. This made about 55 or 60 biscuits - enough for 10 parcels and a few leftovers and rejects for us to eat at home. Thanks to Michale and the man from the Italian Deli in St Andrews for the bags!

Christmas Poinsettia Wreath

2007-12-16T22:01:00.000Z

Yesterday we had our monthly trip over to Newburgh for the knitting group at Twist. There were lots of yummy treats because it was the Christmas meeting, and I made some biscotti - one batch with cranberries and lemon zest, one plain, and the other with figs and flaked almonds. Pics to follow once I've made another batch in the next few days but the basic dough was 150g flour (some recipes say plain, some say self raising), with 50g sugar and 2 eggs. It's a bit sticky so I added enough extra flour to handle it easily, then shaped it into a long sausage shape. Bake at 200oC for 15 mins, cool for 10 mins then slice into thin slices and put back into the oven for 5-7 mins each side until golden and crisp.

Here are a few pics of the wreath in various stages of construction, including me having extreme difficulties with a needle and thread!

In other knitting news, I bought way too much yummy sock yarn this week, for knitting wraps/shawls rather than socks though. I didn't knit a stitch while we were in Newburgh, but spent a lot of time winding this Stroud Supersock yarn into balls with the help of Peter's handy skein holding gadget. And then I got over excited in the shop and bought some trekking xxl as well, oh dear!

More Christmas FOs

2007-12-09T21:46:00.000Z

I've been very busy knitting Jennifer Thurston's Xtreme Knitting dinosaurs as a Christmas present for William. I managed to get both of them from 1 ball of sirdar snowflake dk, adding in some dark green charity shop dk to knit the horns and spikes so that they were a bit more interesting and also stiffer. I'm really pleased with these guys, especially stegs. They're soft and friendly looking, and they even more or less stand up on their own. It's amazing how hard it is to put limbs in the right place!

PS I've also put the beads on the bag for my mum... another crimbo FO, hurrah!

Christmas decs

2007-12-06T11:43:00.000Z

The lab is ready for Christmas, and we celebrated the lighting of the fairy lights with a pilot experiment of some VERY alcohol gluhwein from Stephan....

Cheese and bread

2007-12-04T17:14:00.000Z

On Saturday, Diane and Laurence came round to sew up the felted poinsettia bits and wire the stems so they are ready to twist into a wreath. I put on a spectacularly bad display of my sewing skills and managed one flower in more time than it took Diane to do 3 but that's another story. I'll do a post about the wreath once we've added the yellow bits to the centre of the flowers, and for now they remain in a vase on my dining table looking very pretty.

Jane made soup so I decided to get my hands sticky and make some bread to go with it. The larger loaf is olive bread made with spelt flour, and the rolls are malted wholegrain - I think they were my favourites, I'm still unconvinced about the shorter texture you get with spelt. Both very easy recipes from the back of the flour packet. The flours were excellent, and it was a textbook demonstration that good flour makes good bread. Check out Doves Farm website, lots of info about flours and grains etc and plenty of recipes.

Unfortunately there wasn't time for a trip to Mellis cheesemonger in St Andrews, but I went a bit mad at the cheese counter in Tesco instead. This is the start of cheeseboard season, and we were nibbling away for the rest of the evening even though we weren't hungry! Diane brought along some yummy home made oatcakes which went beautifully with the cheese, and also some tasty smoked mackerel pate. For me, the top cheese award went to the Strathdon Blue (top R). It's quite soft and squidy but very tangy and blue at the same time, not a million miles away from gorgonzola. The stinky unpasteurised brie de maux was good too, oozing all over the place.

A Christmas FO

2007-12-04T17:09:00.000Z

Knitting has really moved up into top gear as we hit T minus 3 weeks to Christmas. Some stuff I can't show you yet because their future owners will see, but here is the felted bag that I'm making for my mum. Before felting...

...and after...

It's a beast. I'm calling it a FO because all the knitting/sewing up is done, but to finish it off I have to find some beads to put on threads hanging down from inside the flowers. I'm guessing I'll be doing that on Christmas eve probably!

I have another felted project that I'm very excited about which will go into the washing machine tonight. At the weekend I also made a little hat for Anna's model mouse as part of our lab christmas decorating effort. Dilly liked it too...

SHF 37: the beta-carotene harvest

2007-11-24T16:26:00.000Z

I was really excited at the idea of the theme for Sugar High Friday #37 from Leslie at Definitely Not Martha. With Thanksgiving in mind, she chose ‘the beta-carotene harvest’ which encompasses a whole range of nutritious and interesting items. Despite my initial strong urge to avoid ‘boring’ carrot cake and pumpkin pie, time constraints and a more recent interest in going back to basics led me to Delia Smith’s Ultimate Carrot Cake. If it's good enough for Delia then it's certainly good enough for me.

I usually make carrot cake as a traybake for feeding people at meetings/parties etc, but this is a bit more special, and hopefully the syrup, toasted pecans, and yummy mascarpone/fromage frais topping lifts it into a new category. Much more of a dessert rather than a teatime cake. And dessert it shall be! No pics of a nice slice I’m afraid because we’re off to Eris and Ian’s for dinner tonight and this baby will be desert :)

Delia's Ultimate Carrot Cake

200g wholemeal self raising flour
1tbsp mixed spice
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
175g dark brown soft sugar
2 large eggs
150ml sunflower oil
grated zest of 1 orange
200g coarsely grated carrots
110g sultanas
50g dessicated coconut
50g pecan nuts, plus another 50g to finish

Syrup glaze:
Juice of 1 small orange
1tbsp lemon juice
75g dark brown soft sugar

Topping:
250g mascarpone
200g fromage frais
1 rounded tbsp golden caster sugar
1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon

Toast the nuts on a baking sheet at 200C for a few minutes (KEEP AN EYE ON THEM...my first batch got burnt and went straight in the bin!). Chop half roughly for the cake mixture and the other more finely, for the topping. Turn the oven down to 170C for the cake.

Whisk the sugar, eggs and oil together in a bowl with an electric hand whisk for 2-3 minutes, then check that there is no sugar left undissolved..Sift the flour, mixed spice and bicarbonate of soda into the bowl, tipping in the bits of bran left in the sieve, then stir all this in gently followed by the remaining cake ingredients.

Divide the batter evenly between two 8in greased and base lined tins and bake the cakes on the centre shelf of the oven for about 30 minutes until nicely risen, firm and springy to the touch when lightly pressed in the centre, and showing signs of shrinking away from the sides of the tin.
For the topping, whisk all the ingredients together until light and fluffy. Then cover with clingfilm and chill for 1-2 hours, until you are ready to ice the cakes. To make the syrup glaze, whisk together the fruit juices and sugar in another bowl and then, when the cakes come out of the oven, stab them all over with a skewer and quickly spoon the syrup evenly over the hot cakes.

Leave them to one side to cool in their tins, during which time the syrup will be absorbed. When the cakes are completely cold, remove them from the tins, spread one-third of the filling over one of the cakes, place the other on top, then cover the top and sides with the remaining icing.. Scatter the remaining toasted pecan nuts over the top.

For knitting nerds

2007-11-24T15:25:00.000Z

Haven't really shown you much knitting to speak of for a little while, so here's a quick update. I'm slightly reluctantly pausing on the CPH at the moment in order to get the things with deadlines done, but I have digressed from my schedule because I had a nerdy idea. I'd seen a cable pattern for a DNA helix a while ago, originally used on a scarf, and decided I could put it on a jumper or teeshirt. Then I decided I might be able to get it finished in time for our lab christmas outing in a couple of weeks if I knit like mad at the expense of other things. The original tee pattern is the picovoli by Grumpernia, which seems nice, although I'm a bit concerned that the top edge is rolling up. It's Louisa Harding Grace silk/wool btw, and v nice too.

In other knitting news, I bought a lot of 4 vogue knitting magazines on ebay last week. 3 are fine, but one is Winter 85/86 and it's incredible. The pictures are hillarious, so I've taken some photos to share them - I especially liked the technical article on knitting the right shoulder pad for your garment, and also the ad for a singer knitting machine. Look at these, ha ha!!!

Crowd pleasers

2007-11-20T20:51:00.000Z

I had to give a lab meeting talk last Friday, which is never fun, but my usual strategy to help me get a smooth ride is to bake a lot of cake and hope that my audience is too busy choosing what to eat next to think up tricky questions for me or spot mistakes in my figures. No pics this time I’m afraid but here are the recipes for my top two easily-feed-lots-of-people-at-a-gathering.

The first is a traybake. Something miraculous happens when you use a roasting tin instead of the traditional round tins, you are suddenly able to feed an awful lot of people using the same amount of cake mixture one would normally make an 8in sandwich with. It’s the only choice when numbers of mouths are high and time is short, and there are endless variations to the basic sponge recipe. It’s also amazing how changing the shape of the slices you cut from it can give an entirely different feel to the end product. I like to do lemon cakes and marble cakes by slicing the traybake in half lengthways and then into 1/2in thick fingers – of which you can squeeze 24 out of a single traybake. For coffee and walnut or carrot cakes I tend to cut them into squares instead. I don’t know why, that’s just what seems right!

Aside from a plain sponge, lemon cake is just about the quickest traybake of all: I made this one on Thursday morning whilst having my breakfast, and it was out of the oven in time for me to head off to work.

Crunchy top lemon traybake

225g self raising flour
225g margarine
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
2tsp baking powder
4tbsp milk
grated rind of 2 lemons

for the topping:
juice of 1 lemon
100g granulated sugar

Beat all the cake ingredients together and pour into a greased and base lined 30cm (I think!) tray. Bake at 180C for 35-40min.
Whilst the cake is cooking, mix the topping ingredients together. When the cake comes out of the oven, pierce all over with a skewer and pour over the topping. Allow to cool in the tray.

My second recipe is another good one for feeding lots of people, but also good if you need the baked goods on a day when you’re too busy to bake because these cookies keep really well. I might even go as far as saying that they are actually better a day or two after being made, because I like them when they’re a bit soft and chewy. Makes 27-30 large cookies…

Double choc monster cookies

200g plain flour
55g cocoa
1tsp baking powder
1tsp salt
200g milk chocolate, 140g dark chocolate
340g light brown sugar
150g unsalted butter
3 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
Milk and/or white choc chips

Melt the chocolate over simmering water and set aside to cool slightly. With an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well. Beat in the vanilla and melted chocolate, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Sift in the flour, cocoa, salt and baking powder (and some choc chips if you like). Beat until well combined.
Dollop 2 heaped tbsp lumps of the mixture onto baking sheets leaving space for them to spread out, and cook at 180C for around 18mins. Allow to cool for 5-6 mins before transferring to a rack to cool (they’ll be soft when they come out the oven and will harden up as they cool).

Felted Flowers

2007-11-14T13:22:00.000Z

A quick post just to update you and let you know that knitting is still going on despite all the post-SKB celebrations! The Central Park Hoodie (CPH henceforth) is still rattling along at good speed, although I've only got a couple of inches left on the body before I get to the scary armhole shaping so things will be slowing up for sure. I'm going to attempt short row shaping, and 3 needle bind offs which will hopefully make the arm and shoulder seams much neater and less bulky. I don't fully understand how it's all going to work but I'm hoping it's one of those things that becomes obvious when you get to it. We'll see.

I've also been working on a few very girly projects to be felted. Here are some flowers and leaves that will become part of the fuscias bag by Nicky Epstein. I'm working on the boring main body of the bag at the moment, and then I'll need to do the handles and 2 more flowers before the fun part of throwing it all in the washing machine with fingers double crossed. Before/after shots to follow so that you can get a sense for how much it shrinks, it's really amazing.

Some of us from the Newburgh knitting group have begun work on a felted poinsettia wreath which will hopefully be done in time to take to the next meeting in December. We're each doing one or two flowers so there will be seven in total, then the stems get wired together after felting. Here's the first one ready to go in the wash...

Simple Knitted Bodice is done!!

2007-11-12T21:50:00.000Z

I finally finished it, hurrah! The last few ends were woven in just in time to take to Newburgh for knitting group on Saturday, good timing. There are a couple of things I might do differently next time but I'm very pleased with it for a first completed jumper.

Pattern: Stitch Diva Simple Knitted Bodice

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk DK

Needles: 5mm/2.25mm

Mods: fewer increases on the sleeves and lower body, and did the ridges with 4mm needles to tighten them slightly.

I'm now storming ahead with KnitScene's Central Park Hoodie in Rowan Scottish Tweed (wild plum), which is well served by an online knit along, and loads of people are making it on Ravelry. I urge all knitters to go and get on the waiting list for an invite to the beta version of ravelry - mine came through today after a few weeks in the queue and it is BRILLIANT! I've spent some time today adding all my projects and pictures to my notebook, archiving my stash and queueing up other stuff that I've seen and liked. You can take a tour to get an idea of what it's like before signing up, but it's way better than I ever imagined. Do it now, it's a revelation for the web-savvy knitter!!

Pumpkins

2007-10-26T23:45:00.000+01:00

I'm not the biggest fan of the whole hallowe'en thing, but one thing I do love is pumpkins. Lantern carving is a lot of fun, and there's so much potential to embrace the River Cottage nose to tail ethic so to speak, although I'm still trying to come up with a veggie alternative phrase. From seed to stalk maybe, or something like that. We've got at least 4, maybe 5 items out of this one - and first of all is the lantern of course...

Chop off the top of the pumpkin to form the lid. Once you're in, set aside the seeds for later. Scoop out at least half to two thirds of the thickness of the flesh and set this aside for later too, then carefully score and cut out the pieces. Be careful not to scrape the walls too much as I did though - the face is already going soft and starting to implode, I'm a little worried it's not going to stay intact until Wednesday!

Place a tealight or two inside and enjoy. I also like the slightly burnt smell it gives off as the heat from the candles starts to char the lid. I'd go for that over a sickly scented candle any day!

I made a couple of knitted pumpkins too, based on Curly Purly's pattern. They were really quick and easy, both of them completed in one day. Perfect prop for customising a hallowe'en cat.

So all that scraping wasn't ideal for the lantern itself, but here's what I've been up to with the results...

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Rinse and resudual fibres and slime off the seeds and allow to dry. Coat in a little olive oil and season with smoked paprika, cayenne, cumin and salt. Roast at 180 for 10 mins or so.

With the reserved flesh you could make pumpkin soup or add it to stock, but there's also the American classic:

Pumpkin Pie Filling

1.5 lb pumpkin flesh
2 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
1.5tbsp treacle
4.5oz soft dark brown sugar
1 heaped tsp cinnamon
1/2 heaped tsp each of ground cloves, allspice, nutmeg and ginger
15fl oz double cream

Cook the pumpkin flesh over a gentle heat until soft, blend until smooth. Whisk the eggs and yolks in a large bowl until combined. Heat the other ingredients until they reach simmering point, pour onto the eggs and whisk, then whisk in the pumpkin flesh.

This is enough to fill 3 ready made pastry cases - place the empty cases on the oven shelf before filling so that you can pour in as much as possible. Bake at 180C for 35-40min.

I still had some extra flesh left over, which Rebecca is going to use for pumpkin scones - looking forward to those! Finally, I reckon it'll still be possible to roast the remaining pumpkin flesh still on the lantern once we've enjoyed it on the mantlepiece for a few days. Et voila, nothing wasted!

Here's a pair hallowe'en snaps... the two-headed cat/girl with a freaky borg eye, and the four-eyed ghost cat...

Jam hot

2007-10-26T22:36:00.000+01:00

I had a lovely package delivered through the internal mail the other day - a selection of chillies that Jean had been growing in her glasshouse. I wanted to make something that would preserve them so that we can keep on enjoying them for as long as possible.

Two other happy events coincided to lead me to make chilli and tomato jam this evening. The first happy event, was the 'christening' of my newest and current favourite book: Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course (for the scientists...Darina's book is to cooking as Stryer is to biochemistry, or Alberts to cell biology).

The second event, is the bountiful harvest of chillies from the lab of Dr Kate Storey. I'm not sure she intended it, but she has two very green fingered post-docs in the form of Marios and Barry who have been growing chilies on their office window sill. The two plants love it in there and have been producing heaps of fruit continuously for several months now and still continue to produce yet more flowers. Every time I go in there, Marios is franticly triyng to give them away. I particularly like this curly one I picked tonight, and the cute tiny little (HOT) ones from Jean...

I had some yummy langoustines with chilli jam at the Lochinver Larder when we went to the NW coast with Kirsty and I've been wanting to have a go at something similar since then. Thanks to Darina for an inspirational chapter on jams and preserves, and even more thanks to Jean for the most exciting thing I've had through the internal mail system!!!

Tomato and Chilli Jam

500g very ripe tomatoes

2-4 red chillies...I used 6 :)

4 garlic cloves

2.5cm ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

2tbsp nam pla

275g golden caster sugar

100ml red wine vinegar

Puree the chillies, garlic, ginger and nam pla in a blender. Peel the tomaties and cut to a 1cm dice. Add all the ingredients to a pan, gently bring to the boil and cook gently for 40mins, stirring occasionally. Pour into sterilised jars, allow to cool and then refrigerate.

It's cheeky!!

ooh, Heston Blumenthal has just come onto Jonathan Ross, excellent :)

Sugar High Friday #35: apples and alcohol

2007-10-20T19:45:00.000+01:00

I've been a lurker of the Sugar High Friday event for a little while now, so this month I thought I'd give it a go and join in. SHF#35 is hosted by Spittoon Extra and the theme is alcohol and apples. We must have been on the same autumnal wavelength, it was a perfect theme for me because I'm disappearing under a heap of apples at the moment, especially after last weekend's trip to the Newburgh Orchard Group sale. I love cider, and I love nice sharp British apples like cox - here's a cake with both.

There's no doubt about the 'sugar high' factor in this one, and it definitely has a strong alcoholic taste with all that cider and bourbon in it. The main taste in the cake itself was definitely the bourbon actually, but I think my favourite thing was the sauce. Reducing down all that cider and sugar from well over a liter down to just 1 cup made it VERY apple-y, and with a kind of sticky caramel feel. I'll definitely be making the pumpkin seed brittle again - it was quite fun watching them jumping all over the place as they toasted, and the final article went down very well with the visitors as we watched the rugby last night.

Apple Cider Cake with Cider Sauce and Pumpkin Seed Brittle

Pumpkin Seeed Brittle

1/3 cup sugar

2tbsp light corn syrup

2tbsp water

heaped 1/4 cup toasted pumpkin seeds

Pinch baking soda dissolved in 1tsp water

Line a baking sheet with well buttered paper. Combine sugar, syrup and water, and bring to the boil over a high heat. Boil undisturbed until a deep caramel colour develops. Remove from the heat and add the seeds and baking soda. Quickly mix to combine, spread to a thin layer on the baking sheet, and leave until cold and hard.

Cider Sauce

4 cups cider

1/3 cup bourbon

1/3 cup dark brown sugar

1/4 cup golden syrup

2tbsp cider vinegar

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 vanilla pod, split and scraped

1 cup double cream

Place cider, bourbon, sugar, golden syrup, vinegar, cinnamon and vanilla in a wide shallow pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes, add the double cream then boil over a medium high heat until reduced to about 1 cup.

Cider and apple cake

1 3/4 cups and 1tbsp plain flour

1tsp each salt

1tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup and 2tsp cider

3tbsp vegetable oil

1/4 cup bourbon

7tbsp softened unsalted butter

seeds of 1/2 vanilla pod

2 large eggs

2 sharp apples such as Cox

Preheat oven to 180C. Butter and flour a base lined 9 inch tin. Combine flour, salt, baking powder and soda. In a separate bowl combine cider, vegetable oil and bourbon. In a large bowl beat the butter until fluffy, then beat in the sugar and vanilla. Beat in the eggs a little at a time, then beat in the other dry ingredients and liquid alternately a little at a time.

Spread 2/3 of the mixture in the tin, drizzle 1/2 cup cider sauce over it, and then spread over the rest of the cake mixture carefully. Peel apples and cut into segments. Score the segments and lay cut side down on the top of the cake. Bake in the center of the oven for 40 minutes.

Serve warm, with the rest of the re-warmed sauce and shards of pumpkin seed brittle.

One less WIP

2007-10-20T19:33:00.000+01:00

...and one more FO! Yay for me! Utopia hat from Smariek Knits... done. DB Rialto Aran, less purple and more maroon than the pics, but lovely and springy and thick. A v quick knit, and I used just over one ball. I'd like to use the rest of the second to make a scarf although I think I'll be buying a third to make it long enough next time we go to Newburgh.

Chicken out!

2007-10-19T17:17:00.000+01:00

Another food post I know, the knitting is suffering because I've gone WIP mad and can't stop casting on new things. Next post will be knitting, I promise!

I wanted to draw your attention to the River Cottage 'Chicken Out!' campaign. At the risk of being dismissed for biased vegetarian propaganda there's a few facts below for you to think on, but I really urge you to visit the Chicken Out website to sign and register your support. These guys are total grass roots carnivores so take it from them if not me!

The average Brit eats almost 25 kilos of chicken a year, and of these hundreds of millions of chickens, most of them - more than 95% - are reared inside, produced in industrial conditions in vast, enclosed sheds. In fact, this intensive poultry production is so slick and efficient that chicken is actually cheaper now than it was 20 years ago.

Standard chickens are now grown from newly hatched chick to oven-ready bird in an astonishing 39 days, which is half the time it took 40 years ago under less intensive conditions. Regardless of whether you're interested in animal welfare, how can that meat be good quality?? You get what you pays for! The aim of the Chicken Out campaign is to ask people to vote with their shopping baskets so to speak and go free range.

Birds commonly develop severe problems associated with unnaturally fast weight gain and restricted movement, and many die prematurely: 45 million factory-farmed birds are thrown away each year before they even reach slaughter-weight. If nothing else, that's just a shocking waste of food!

CHECK OUT http://www.chickenout.tv/ AND GET INVOLVED!!

Food and Yarn in Newburgh

2007-10-15T10:16:00.000+01:00

Last weekend saw the monthly trip to knitting group at Twist Fibre Craft Studio in Newburgh. It proved to yield a bountiful harvest, both woolly and foody. I was rather good and only spent a couple of quid over the £10 bonus I had on my twist card – I bought some lovely springy and stretchy DB Rialto Aran in a dark burgundy colour, a nice long circular needle for an upcoming project (MUST finish SKB first!), and some lopi for Diane.

I had visions of making gloves/mittens with the rialto by modifying a pattern for fingerless gloves from knitty. The cables came out beautifully, but things started going off the rails once I’d completed the part the pattern covers and started freestyling instead. I think this yarn is just a bit too thick and chunky for doing individual fingers, and even mittens would end up more like oven gloves. I like the fingerless ones, but I don’t think I’d really wear them all that much so I pulled it all out again. Maybe a nice cabled hat instead? I’ve got my eye on this from Brooklyn Tweed (probs better in tweed tho) and this from Smariek Knits.

When we arrived, we found that Newburgh Orchard Group were having their last sale of the year on a little stall near where we parked. It’s really nice to see a bunch of people getting together and selling stuff that they’ve been growing, and that you just can’t get in the supermarket. I bought some Newton’s Wonder apples, some Concorde pears, and some cooking apples which I can’t remember the name of. They are a variety that goes soft and fluffy when cooked, unlike Bramleys. I also bought a jar of beetroot chutney, and some sloes.

Last night I used one of the apples together with some blackberries that I picked at the top of my road, and made a sponge pudding with the fruit at the bottom and loads of custard on top. Yum yum. I just had salad for tea so that I could have an extra large helping of dessert!
I felt a bit of a cheat buying the sloes rather than picking them, but they were complete with leaves and bits of twig, and I’m sure they came from a Newburgh hedgerow, and it’s good to support the orchard group so I think it’s ok ☺ Just about the only good use for sloes is making them into sloe gin, hurrah! My mum makes sloe gin but she’s very protective of it and won’t let me take any home with me, so I’m excited to have a go at making my own…

Sloe Gin

1L Gin
around 450-500g Sloes (best picked after first frost, or can be frozen first!)
100g sugar

Clean the sloes and remove any bad ones. Gently dry, then prick all over and put into a sterile bottle or jar with the sugar and the gin. Shake every day for a few weeks, then every week after that for another 2 or 3 months.

The bottle must be stored in the dark to encourage good colour development.

Different sources have different suggestions about when to strain the mixture and decant the liquid, but it seems like anything from 3 months to a year. I guess the trick is to keep tasting it until it seems good, and adding more sugar if necessary. Many recipes have much more sugar than this, but I want to keep it to a minimum to avoid the finished product being to sickly sweet.

My first publication (sort of!)

2007-10-09T10:16:00.000+01:00

...and it's not in a scientific journal!! HaHa. I was very excited on Saturday morning to open up the Guardian magazine and see a full page photo of the biscuits I made at River Cottage staring back at me. Lots of out of proportion pride and joy! I kept having a little peek to check they were still there all weekend. At risk of my head getting too big I took it to work yesterday as well. Judith very kindly got quite excited too, and photocopied the article. Bless her.

There isn't a pic in the online article, but the recipes are there.

There's got to be a mushroom around here somewhere!

2007-10-08T15:32:00.000+01:00

It seems that there's a genetic component to successful mushroom hunting: a good amount of Italian DNA is a distinct advantage for sure. Last weekend however, Barry and I took our pale English selves off to Tentsmuir with a nice basket (thanks Nikki!) and our fingers crossed. No luck however. There were a few fungi dotted around here and there, but we certainly weren't tripping over them and there were absolutely no porcini to be seen. I think it was too dry. Oh well, next time perhaps. Here's Barry strolling along as I scrabbled about underneath the trees and occasionally popped out to straighten up and remove the twigs from my hair. As well as no mushrooms, I also came home with no tics this time, so it's not all bad!!

There's been a distinct dropoff in both the knitting and the baking this weekend due to an awful lot of rugby world cup excitement (and rugby-related hangovers on Sunday). But I did make some rocky road chocolate bars and some honeycomb for match snacks on Saturady afternoon. The Coopers Australian ale was just a bit too tasty...

Honeycomb

100g caster sugar

4tbsp golden syrup

1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Heat the sugar and syrup until dissolved and turning golden (don't stir too much). Remove from the heat and quickly whisk in the bicarb, then pour out onto a greased surface. Break into chunks once cool and hardened.

Secret knitting, and new techniques

2007-09-28T10:50:00.000+01:00

This week it has really started to to get cold and dark, and my urge to knit lots of nice winter things has definitely kicked in. It's also the time of year to get going on knitted Christmas pressies too. Can't post the pics or the recipients might see (I'm bursting to tell already, this is going to be hard!). That's my excuse for a few months of sparse knitting posts anyway.

I came across an interesting technique while I was getting ready to start new projects - something I think Andy will particularly like ;) It's all about how to knit in the round without double pointed needles. Circular needles are good if you're doing a round project with a larger diameter (like the body of the SKB), but for smaller stuff like hats and sleeves and beginning at the center of a flat circle, you'd usually start on several double pointed needles. Well I have discovered some funky alternative methods with circular needles that allow you to do small diameter projects without having to buy a set of matching double pointeds. I don't think I'd like to do a whole sleeve or hat like this, but it's an excellent way of getting started on something that starts small later progresses to circular needles.
It's one of those things that would sound very complicated written down, but it's actually not too bad. Have a look at these v handy vids to get the idea, I'm having a go at 'magic loop knitting' right now!...

Extreme sugar art

2007-09-26T13:00:00.000+01:00

Oh my goodness, look at this dessert from Habeas Brulee! Amazing! Bubbles of caramel actually blown like glass, then yummy cardamom/lemon custard piped inside through a tiny hole. Looks very tricky indeed, but definitely one to impress. I sense an impending weekend of burnt fingers and sticky sugar strands all over the kitchen and all over me. Now where can I get my hands on a good metal tube...

Profiteroles recipe

2007-09-25T20:14:00.000+01:00

Choux pastry is fairly quick and easy, and leaves you with lovely puffed up hollow shapes for filling with tasty stuff. A quick poll of my French colleagues at work taught me that the traditional filling for profiteroles is ice cream (with hot choc sauce on top). I’d heard of this before but didn’t realise it was the ‘proper’ filling. Not wishing to disappear off into the kitchen to do last minute ice cream filling after the main course when Eris and Iain were here, I decided to opt for a crème patissiere filling instead which can be made in advance. It’s a good carrier for other flavours too, and this time I made this batch with 2tbsp strong coffee.

Crème patissiere:
5 egg yolks
140g sugar
450ml milk
80g sifted plain flour
knob of butter

Extra flavourings can be included once cooked for example vanilla, coffee essence, liqueurs, lemon, orange etc etc

Bring the milk to the boil in a pan. Beat the sugar and yolks for 2-3mins until pale and slightly thickened. Beat in the flour, and then pour on the milk gradually to incorporate it. Return to a clean pan and bring to the boil, whisking constantly for a few minutes until thickened. Remove from heat, beat in the butter and transfer to a clean bowl. Allow to cool with the surface in contact with a sheet of cling film to prevent a skin forming.

This mixture will keep in the fridge for a few days.

Choux pastry (serves 5-6 generously):
200ml Water
75g butter
pinch salt
100g Plain flour
3 eggs

Chocolate sauce:
200g dark chocolate
250ml double cream

Heat the water, salt and butter in a pan until butter is melted. Bring to the boil and remove from the heat. Immediately beat in the flour until the mixture is smooth and comes away from the sides of the pan. Allow to cool for a few minutes then gradually beat in the eggs bit by bit. The mixture should remain stiff enough to hold its shape when piped onto a baking sheet so you might not need absolutely all the egg.
Run the greased baking trays briefly under the tap so that they have small drips of water on them – the steam helps the pastry to crisp up in the oven. Spoon the dough into a piping bag and pipe into blobs for profiteroles (about the size of a walnut), or sausage shapes for éclairs. Leave plenty of space between them for expansion. Bake at 200 for 10 minutes and then turn up the temperature to 220 for another 15 minutes or so, until the profiteroles are crisp and golden brown. Slit them open whilst still hot in order to let the steam out otherwise they’ll go soggy as they cool.
Just before serving fill the profiteroles with crème patissiere and make the chocolate sauce: Heat the cream until it reaches boiling point and pour it over the chocolate broken into small pieces in a bowl. Allow to sit for 5 minutes while the profiteroles are being filled. Whisk the chocolate and cream vigorously until smooth and glossy. Arrange the filled profiteroles on a serving dish and cover with warm chocolate sauce. Serve immediately!

Profiterole revival

2007-09-24T13:05:00.001+01:00

I went all retro at the weekend and made profiteroles when we had Eris and Iain over for dinner. We started with an enormous bowl of mussels, then had beef and stout casserole with dumplings (good work Jane!), and then these babies.....

Drool. I finished off the leftovers for breakfast on Sunday I'm not ashamed to say! I've once again failed to have pics, laptop and recipes all in the same place at the same time so recipe to follow, but I thought you might like the squidgy messy chocolatey picture to look at until then :)

SKB latest

2007-09-24T12:48:00.000+01:00

The SKB has come on leaps and bounds this weekend - the 'B' of the SKB is finished. It took me more or less 3 weeks to get through the patterened section with beads in it, which was becoming a bit of a slog. 2.25mm bamboo needles are more or less cocktail sticks so it was pretty fiddly, and not at all helped by the fact that I snapped both needles at one point or another so they were a lot shorter and rougher than they could have been!

Anyway, I finished that section by the end of Friday night thankfully, and moved back up to nice 5mm metal needles to storm through the rest. The entire remainder of the body was finished by Sunday night, although I might re-do the bottom ridges on the smaller needles to make them a bit less bulging. Time for the sleeves now, then all that will remain is to knit a few rows around the neckline. Hurrah!

Friday night...

Sunday night...

Tayside Blueberries

2007-09-19T13:03:00.000+01:00

Although blueberries are native to North America, they grow extremely well in the cool and wet conditions here in Scotland. At the Scottish Crop Research Institute just down the road in Invergowrie they grow lots of soft fruit crop plants for various studies, a happy consequence of which is that there is a bountiful harvest of unwanted fruit! The raspberries are great of course, being what Tayside is famous for, but so are the blueberries - and a bargain at £5 for an entire kilo. According to wikipedia blueberries are one of only a few human foods that are naturally colored blue. I can’t think of any others (unless you count blue cheese). Any suggestions??
And of course they’re super healthy – full of antioxidants, vitamin C etc etc, so even in cheesecake form you can convince yourself it’s all good :)

I realise this is the second cheesecake recipe in a row, I need to improve on getting recipes into blog form, but it’s a good one so bear with me. Takes a while, but the advantage is that it’s made the day before so all you need to do is whip it out of the fridge when people arrive and leave it somewhere conspicuous to be admired!

Lemon and Blueberry Cheesecake

300g shortbread biscuits

675g cream cheese, softened
400g caster sugar
2tsp finely grated lemon zest
35g plain flour
2tbsp cornflour
1tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp salt
6 large eggs
125ml lemon juice
lots of blueberries

Crush the shortbread biscuits and mix with enough melted butter to lightly coat the crumbs (I didn’t weigh what I used, but maybe something like 50-75g). Press into the base and sides of a greased 9in tin and freeze until required.

Beat together the cream cheese, sugar and lemon zest until smooth, then add the flour, cornflour, vanilla extract and salt, beating until well combined.

Add the eggs one by one, then the lemon juice, beating well between additions.
Put the prepared tin on a baking tray and pour in the filling. Sprinkle a few handfuls of blueberries over the filling using varying amounts of force so that they sink to different depths within the mixture.

Bake on the centre shelf at 130 for 1 hour, then at 120 for another hour, then at 100 for a further 1.5h – book says until internal temperature of filling reaches 79oC although I don’t have a temperature probe.

If there’s time, allow the cheesecake to cool to room temperature then refrigerate overnight. Due to the ridiculous length of cooking time and my own lack of planning/time, I usually end up having to stay up late waiting for the cheesecake to finish cooking. Not wanting to stay up a further hour or two waiting for it to cool, I just turn the oven off without opening the door and leave it in there overnight ready to fridge in the morning.

Once cool the top of the cheesecake will look a bit ugly – higher at the edges than in the middle and probably with some cracks and splits in it. To tart it up and make it look more presentable even off the surface by trimming the edges away, then coat with a thin layer of double or sour cream followed by lots of blueberries.