Quick post - Birthday present and WiP

A very quick post today. Not because I haven't been crafting, but things are taking a bit longer at the moment, what with the slow roll in to school for my son, and I have a slightly more complex project on the go. But I shall share later.

The picture above in the the scarf I made for a friend for her birthday that she celebrated yesterday. She has fabulous pink and purple hair and it should match a treat. Very funky!

Also on the go, just what is this?

No clue? How about now:

Still no idea? What about now?

Yes, that's right, you in the back. Its the beginnings of some kind of toy made from flower motifs. Top marks. In fact it will be a hippopotamus that looks like it belongs in the sixties. Bright and colourful to stimulate the missy's eyes and brain. Currently working on it for her first birthday next month. How she got to be a year old I don't know. But in the last two days she finally cut her first tooth and moved beyond rolling by figuring out crawling forward.

I also have a cardigan on the go for her and some spinning, but haven't had chance to photograph. And experimenting with a gluten free red velvet cupcake recipe, trying to perfect it. So rest assured, I am juggling many balls at the moment. So watch this space for more crafty goodness.

Till next time

Kat
xxx

Tomatoes, tomatoes, everywhere!

As the title suggests, I have a lot of tomatoes at the moment. The hubby likes growing fresh cherry sized tomatoes to have on pizza's in various pasta dishes he cooks and the like, but in previous years has had real trouble dealing with leggy plants. Some of it has been planting too early, some of it the mystery that is the British weather, but its been driving him barmy. So early this year I found him seeds for a bush variety of tomato. Red Alert if anyone is actually interested. The picture on the packet showed bushy plants with a lot of fruit. I never expected them to be so prolific for us. But... boy was I wrong.

So here I am with a lot of tomatoes, about the size of small plum tomatoes, much bigger than cherry sized, and what am I going to do with them? Given how much pasta my husband eats and the amount of Dolmio stir ins he goes through there was only one answer to that. Pasta sauce. I have a sauce that freezes and have been making in batches and freezing in portions. We aren't going to be buying pasta sauce for quite some time, but its lovely sauce with nothing I an leery of, so I feel happy making baby food out of it. Yes I make baby food. A lot. My almost 11 month old has yet to have a jar of baby food. Keeping up with that does keep me busy but I am happy doing it.

Back to the pasta sauce, what is my recipe then?

1-1.5 kg of fresh tomatoes. if you are growing like we are, slightly green is fine as they are going to cook out.
large handful of basil, about 30g or so
1 onion, red or white doesn't matter
garlic - 5 or six fat cloves
olive oil, about two tablespoons
1 tablespoon italian dried herbs - or any other herbs of your choice
a few drops of tabasco sauce  - completely optional, but I am not putting in anywhere enough to give this much sauce heat. its just giving it a little something.

* Warm the oil in a large pan while you chop the tomatoes, garlic and onion. I will note here that we put the whole tomato in, seeds and all. If you wish to deseed, its up to you, but you will need extra tomatoes to make the quantity of sauce.

* Fry with the dried herbs until the tomatoes start to stew while you take the basil leaves off the stalks and chop.

* Once its starting to look like a rough sauce, add the basil and the tabasco if using.

* Stew until you have a sauce you like the consistency of. A couple of hours is fine to develop the flavours if you want! But you don't have to wait an age either!

* Blend with a hand blender, split into portions and freeze.

And that's it, a simple sauce that can be used as a based for others if you like, or used as is. Nice, tasty and fresh! And looking at the tomato plants... its about time I did another batch this weekend!

Till next time

Kat xxx

Fondant Fibre Rolags

Yep, more handspun. I needed a break from what I had been knitting and crocheting lately, so I gave myself a couple of days off. A while ago I got interested in different fibre preparations and came across Fondant Fibre. She has been making the most amazing blended rolags with a blending board and her prices are really great too. If you keep an eye out for her updates on Ravelry she often has money off codes as well making her lovely fibres even more of a bargain. I chose this lovely set of rolags.

Well... I confess that's not all of the rolags, some of them were already spun into singles when I remembered to take a picture! These were made from BFL, Shetland, Merino, Bamboo and silver sparkle. Lots and lots and lots of sparkle! I am so annoyed my yarn pictures don't show how sparkly it is. But you can see it has lashings here!

So I spun just how they seemed to want to be spun, then chain plied with a high twist, nearly over twist but the yarn balanced in the soak and set stage thankfully. Just. So I have 366m and 100g of three ply high twist yarn. I am thinking hand wash socks. Shiny, hand wash socks...

They really were a delight and a pleasure to spin. Drafting so beautifully, jam packed with fibre and made a wonderful interesting yarn with no effort from me as a spinner at all. I had such great fun. So why don;t you hop on over and pick up some of these beauties to spin for yourself? Spindle or wheel, I guarantee you will have fun!

Till next time...

Kat xxx

Golden Dreams...

I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:
Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.
Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the Sea,
And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden Tree.

'Farewell to Lorien' - Lord of the Rings

 

Its done! Its finally done! This is my In Dreams Shawl by Susan Pandorf. I originally started this as part of the knit along in November 2011 when it was released. I picked out some lovely blue yarn from my stash... then hated it, ripped out out, and went yarn hunting. Then I found Eden Cottage Yarns, and Victoria's Theseus Lace in Harvest Gold and it felt right. The design is based on Galadriel's crown from the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films, and they had inspiration from the Mallorn leaves, which turned gold in the autumn but did not fall till spring when the new growth came through. So I bought two skeins and off I went.

I opted not to bead it after trying with the blue yarn. It was gorgeous, but the time investment... I wasn't up for that. I was slow enough already. I was a little slower than the clues release, but even though it was ambitious, I plugged away at it, and once, when I made a serious mistake in one of the lattices I did some major surgery to fix it. Then in February 2012, I found out I was pregnant with the princess. I had two options. Either plug on when I had zero ability to concentrate on something complex and not get any baby knitting done, or put it into hibernation and do the baby knitting. The latter won. 

Then last month I finally dared to pick it back up, find where I was, and tried to carry on. And carry on I did. A little here, a little there, until this week, I finally cast off. There was even a moment as I was on the last twenty rows when my husband looked up from his reading one evening and finally took in what I was knitting with a shocked 'bloody hell'. I could tell he was impressed when he started asking whether I would be too frightened to wear it for ruining all that work (and said he would be in my shoes). And could I repair it if it snagged. Bless him, he finally noticed just how much I have learned! But back to the shawl.

The yarn had been a joy to knit with, and I even learned the braided join for joining the two skeins together, because the merino content in the Theseus lace yarn is superwash (a little peace of mind when handwashing that you aren't going to ruin all that hard work!). 1114m of yarn and 4 months of work (when you take out the hibernation) and I was done. It was finally time to wash and block this monster. 

Oh my gawd the pins! The number of pins! My fingers and thumbs were numb from it, but I finally got there.

Not the best colour contrast to get an idea of the pattern but there it is, all pinned out. And to give an idea of size, those six mats almost entirely cover my king sized spare bed. Its wider than my entire arm span finger tip to finger tip. I am 5' 3 and a bit inches and it covers my rear in length from the back of my neck. It is not small! It also super soft. The merino and silk yarn really does feel luxurious and is lovely to knit with.

Finally it was dry, and let me tell you, finding a good spot to take a decent picture hasn't been easy but darn it I was going to find a way. So here you are, the best two shots I came up with. I still don't think they do it justice though.

I am very proud, and can't wait for an excuse to wear it!

For now, I am back onto small projects for the winter and the missy's birthday, christmas presents, then I have something special to work on. But more on that nearer the time!

Till next time

Kat xxx

Sample knitting

So recently I got the opportunity to do some sample knitting, to be photographed to go into a book of patterns by Jon Dunn-Ballam of Easyknits.co.uk. So I volunteered myself. In return all the knitters were offered a skein of his yarn. So I sat and awaited delivery of my knitting kit, and here is what arrived:

The smaller skein was what the pattern was to be knitted in, and is from their Deeply Wicked 4-ply range, this colour being call Aquillian. The skein of yarn top right is my payment skein from their Twinkle range of yarns, a lovely 4-ply with stellina for a fine silver sparkle my camera just would not pick up. this is one of their heavy weight skeins at 150g so lots and lots of yardage, in a beautiful sage, destined to be something for the princess.

The pattern in question is Thin Ice. A lovely pattern which is left open to interpretation, leaving you to make design decisions to suit you. Finished with a lovely feather and fan edge. I say lovely but.... despite being a simple lace pattern I have knit before... this just decided to kick me in the butt, over and over just because it could. It was a quick knit at ten days, but t could have been quicker if I wasn't ripping out mistakes constantly. Because I wanted it to be perfect. I got there in the end with less than 2m of yarn left at the end. And a job well done.

The yarn is a lovely yarn base to work with, a real pleasure to knit with, and  wonderfully frog resistant since I had to frog back a lot.

Here is a not so fab picture of it to give you an idea of the unusual shaping, the 'shards' at the sides giving you a way to tie it round the shoulders so it stays on:

And out in the daylight. The colour is so hard to take a picture of! Teals are murder on a camera!

Its now on its way to Easyknits HQ and likely arrived and I hope its everything Jon was hoping for.

Till next time

Kat xxx

Gluten free Chocolate Brownies

So who doesn't like a lovely, soft, decadent chocolate brownie? Anyone? I thought not. I know that when I came across this recipe I was very excited. Simple, a few ingredients, and seemed to produce great results. So I just had to give it a try. Once again I am using Doves Farm gluten free flour and it works a treat.

3 eggs
200g sugar
100g self raising flour.
150g chocolate
100g butter

Thats it, five ingredients. To make lush cake goodness.  So how do we do it?

Beat the eggs and sugar together till light and fluffy.

Beat in flour and set aside.

Gently melt butter and chocolate together in a separate bowl. Gently fold into the egg and sugar mixture till you end up with a batter like this

Pour into an oiled and lined backing tin.

Bake for 35-40 minutes at 160 degrees in a fan oven, 180 degrees in a conventional oven.

I will say that it creates this film like skin that has a life of its own in the oven but that is perfectly alright!

Wait till cold and cut into pieces as suits you.

I have to say, they are far from the prettiest brownies I have ever made. However, they taste wonderful! And they do remain soft and perfect and the texture remains even a few days later as you are slowly making your way through the batch. Well worth a try!

Till next time

Kat xxx

Courgette soup

So our courgette plants have decided to go mad with their fruiting. I don't think it helps that the man of the house insisted on growing more plants than ever either. When the good weather hit it kicked them into overdrive and I currently have five in the fridge. And that's after making a concerted effort to use them as fast as possible! The four you see above are all home grown.

So looking for ways to use them it occurred to me that I have never had a courgette soup. As I hunted for recipes I soon found why. Finding a recipe I liked proved impossible. So I decided to pull out the one pot cooker, experiment, and came up with this soup.

800g courgettes sliced
700 ml of stock (chicken or vegetable, whatever you prefer/have to hand)
1 medium onion sliced
5 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaves
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste

Fry courgettes, onion, garlic and oregano in a large pan till vegetables are soft and brown.

Add the hot stock and bay leaves and simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Blend till smooth, season to taste and serve any way that suits you.

Why not try adding some grated cheese, or a swirl of cream?

Till next time

Kat xxx