Project: Checkmate Blanket

 It feels a bit weird sitting here writing for something that isn’t my portfolio, and I feel a bit guilty because if I’m typing this then maybe I should be writing about non-verbal communication or starting my HIV presentation, but I don’t feel like it today, I feel like listening to Taylor Swift and writing a post for my blog that I’ve not felt like for a few months. So that's what I’m doing. 

Drinking makes everything better

Spring is kicking off here, the forsythia has been in flower for a while, the daffs on their way out and the tulips are in flower. And the blackbirds have either started nesting in the hedge or are just marking out their territory, either way they’re noisy little bastards that wake me up now the clocks have changed. The corner of my house is clearly a great spot to sing from, it just also happens to be the corner of my bedroom. I’ve been feeding the birds, I want to get a flat table so that I can feed the blackbirds and robins, but as I went out to top up the feeders this morning and have a nose at the flower border to see if my anemones had come up yet, I saw that the apple tree has blossoms! Last year it didn’t flower and had a growth spurt instead and I was worried that it wouldn’t flower this year either. I pruned it in the autumn, which was a bit daunting but I don’t think it had ever had one before and would probably explain it’s really weird shape. Obviously the Wassailing we held for it helped as well, because who doesn't feel better for mulled cider? I also gave the cherry a trim when I did the apple and I don’t think that has worked as well because I’m still getting pom-pom style bunches of blossoms and no new growth, yet any way. Maybe it was jealous and I need to Wassail it as well next year (hmm, cherry brandy in warm cider? Could be a winner).

Checkmate Baby Blanket

I saw this blanket on LetesKnits instagram when she designed it for her own baby. My cousin is due to give birth in a few weeks and I’d been trying to decide what to make her when I saw this. It looked simple but with just the right amount of something to make it stand out. 

Try and spot the mistake.

Yarn:

Paintbox yarns, wool mix aran in Marine. I couldn’t find anything I liked at my YLS (online, because they’re still closed for lockdown), so I bought this from Lovecrafts.com. I wanted something that had a lot of wool in it for all its benefits, but for a baby blanket I wanted to make sure it could be machine washed because babies are grubby and hand washing a blanket every time it gets dirty will get very old very quickly. This was really nice to work with, soft but didn’t seem to be felting on my horrible dry hands, and coped well with quite a bit on tinking. 

Needles/Gauge:

The pattern gauge is 12.5cm wide by 12cm high for one pattern repeat on 5.5mm needles post blocking. Mine is 11x10cm on 5.5mm needles but pre-block. I know it’ll grow a bit with a bath, but even if it doesn’t I’m happy with the material and size I’ve ended up with. 

Modifications:

I only made one mod for this, I slipped the first stitch of every row knitwise. I just like the edge this gives the garter ridge border.

Difficulty:

Can you knit and purl? Then you can do this. The cable-like stitches are simple and well explained and the pattern was easy enough to remember after a while, especially if you find it easy to read your knitting (I can read my knitting as well as I can read my handwriting, which is why I have a couple of ‘unique features’ in some of my squares where I’ve got a stitch twisting the wrong way). I did find it helpful to have a whole load of stitch markers separating the squares though.

Worth repeating:

I would definitely make this again, because it was in aran it knits pretty quick. It fits in that nice ‘simple enough to knit while watching tv’ but not ‘so simple it’s boring’ sweet spot too.

Books

I had a week off in February to use up the last of this years annual leave and I read a lot of books. It was really nice. I treated myself to some more of the Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman, waiting to collect outside my local bookshop seemed a bit weird - there was a queue of us outside going just inside the door one at a time, like picking up books was illicit (which might be apt given the books I was buying). I read each of the first four books in the series over about five days, I haven’t done anything like that for ages. I read the next two in the series over Easter weekend. I really like these books, I think they’re well paced and funny. And I’m kind of annoyed that I’m nearly caught up and soon I’ll have to wait for the next one to be written. 

Food

Ten finally!

I was given ‘Sweet’ by Yotam Ottenlengi and Helen Goh ages ago hadn’t attempted anything from it (but it is a lovely book  just to flick through it), so for Hubs’s second lockdown birthday I made him a surprise birthday cake - Coconut, Almond and Blueberry Cake from it. I didn’t have any lemon zest, I missed it in the ingredients list when I went shopping, but it still tasted pretty good. Nothing complicated in this recipe, and it lasted quite well for a couple of days.

January blues

 January is a pretty depressing month in a normal year, the lights of Christmas have to be taken down, the weather is shit and its still mostly dark. And I think we can all agree this year is even worse being in lockdown number three, post a Christmas that had to be changed at very short notice. Going through last years diary to transfer dates over to my new one and seeing all the things that had been cancelled last year, I'm not exactly the most social person anyway, but it was still sad to see how my little world got smaller. And as things I was looking forward to in the summer are already being cancelled its getting harder to find hope and things to look forward to.

And I don't mean to make this all super depressing, but when my worklife is covidcovidcovid, then my social media is also covidcovidcovid, and there's nothing else going on because covidcovidcovid its hard to see the light.

So I'm trying to celebrate the little holidays. Kind of inspired by The Everyday LoreProject  that I sadly found at the end of last year when the project was into it's final month. For the last few years I've had an Almanac , I funded the first one on Unbounders and find it so interesting I buy one every year. It covers things like celestial events, planting times, seasonal recipes, and each year has had a theme like what goes on in bee hives or hedgerows. This years theme is travelling and has history and events related to the Traveller communities in the UK. This year I also have a Food Almanac which is a great collection of essays and recipes.

Hopefully between these two, and any other high day celebrations I can find, I can fill my diary a little bit. So here's what I managed in January.

Lemon Pig

He's got a very shiny coin

So technically this one isn't for January, but as a New Year tradition its a good way to start the year. Started on twitter a few years ago thanks to @70s_dinnerparty (an account that shares the very worst recipe ideas from 70s cookbooks), this was meant to be a good luck charm for the year. All you need is a lemon, some cocktail sticks, cloves, a bit of silver foil and a shiny coin. The cocktail sticks were a nightmare to find but I did manage it and a month later I still have my lemon pig, although slightly shrivelled and it no longer holds it's shiny 5p.

Quadrantids

This is a meteor shower that is visible at the beginning of January but it's peak is only a couple of hours, much shorter than some of the showers in the year. They were meant to be visible about 5pm so we went out for a night stroll (because 5pm is dark then) to try and see them. I really miss night time walking, it normally means we've been out to the cinema or pub, but at least you don't see many people out after dark. Unfortunately there was a lot of cloud cover so no meteors for us, but at least we tried.

Wassail

Drink weil!

This is celebrated on Old Twelfth night, which was either the 15^th or 17^th Jan, depending on which calendar you use. We opted for 17^th, the date from the Gregorian calendar. Wassailing happens a lot more in the parts of the country that have strong apple connections, like in Kent or the south west in the cider making regions. Not so much in the fens as they don't have a lot of apple orchards. The Wassail is to scare the bad spirits from the trees and give thanks, and hope for a good harvest. My poor lone apple tree has had a rough time in the past, when we moved in it was hidden by weeds and brambles and only produced a single apple. Last year, after managing to keep it bramble free for a few years it decided to have a massive growth spurt and didn't even produce blossom. I was assured this is perfectly normal, but it ended up a really weird shape, and so this winter I had to give it a trim. As a bit of extra encouragement to produce fruit it got it's own wassail. I made a mulled cider for which I had to get cider brandy which was a bit difficult, but really delicious and even my cider adverse husband enjoyed it. We took a shot full for the tree, and a piece of toast (one of the many origin stories of 'toasting') and cheered the tree. I didn't bang any pots, I think we were loud enough to discourage any bad spirits from the tree. I was planning to make these apple and pear muffins to have at the time but didn't check the recipe fully and so made them later in the week. They were still nice, even without the mulled cider to drink with them.

Burns Night

The Food Almanac has an essay by the lovely Signe Johansen about whisky, and drinking whisky. I feel whisky is something I would like to drink, on an aesthetic level. So with this essay, and Burns night, I thought this would be a really good chance to try whisky and learn to appreciate/love it. We went to Edinburgh a few years ago and we didn't get around to doing a whisky tasting, but I found a tasting set which contained a dram from each whisky producing area. If I could learn to like beer and red wine I was sure I could do the same with whisky.

Turns out I couldn't. I didn't get past the first bottle, like not even finishing my half dram. It was very sad. I have the other bottles so maybe this was just a style I don't like and my perfect one is still sitting in the box on the kitchen table waiting for me.

I did cook the traditional haggis though, that was something I did have in Edinburgh and did enjoy. We'd had it stuffed inside chicken breasts at a tiny restaurant so I did something similar but with pork tenderloin. I followed it with some Cranachan, which we'd had in the same place. I misremembered us having some big brand whisky in the house, so ours was a virgin Cranachan, but given how the tasting session went that was probably for the best.

#WinterWatchList

Teeny Tiny Flowers

I love Springwatch, and all the others they host, and I'm so glad they've managed to make the show work, even if everyone is in separate locations. For this show they set a challenge for people to keep an eye out for specific winter migrants and plants. I did try, but as I'm still working I didn't get to see all the items. I did find a medium difficulty item though, the flowers of hazel. I'll be honest, they practically poked me in the eye as I walked into work one morning. I did find some snowdrops as well, but it's the worst photo.

BigGardenBirdwatch

This is the annual bird count run by the RSPB over the last weekend in January. I've not taken part before but now is always a good time to start. I started putting food out for the birds a few weeks ago, mostly to try and stop the bluetits from eating my forsythia buds, but also to encourage the birds in so I'd have something to see. I set myself up with tea, binoculars and reference books in the kitchen, unfortunately I had to stand as the windows are too high to see out of if sat on a chair. There weren't as many birds as the day before, I'm sure they knew I was trying to watch, but I had bluetits, shouty blackbirds, and what may have been some dunnocks but I thought were sparrows. One of the local cats appeared about 20 minutes in and looked like it was going to settle down to eat grass but luckily it didn't stay long and the birds carried on.

Pikelets

This isn't really holiday related but one of the January recipes in the Food Almanac was for Pikelets, a type of welsh cake, and came with the writers memories of them being made, and it bought up my own memories of going to see Aunty Meg (my uncles aunty, not actually related to me) in her little house up the Rhondda and her making these for us on her range which took up a good chunk of the tiny kitchen, and given the age of the house was probably responsible for the heating. Aunty Meg died last year so I can't go and sit in her kitchen any more, but I'll think of her every time I have the tiny round cakes. So I think that is the last thing I'll do for this month; eat cake, drink tea and toast Meg.

Project: Starflanket

 Starflanket by Stephen West

This week I've been feeling really cold and I find it really hard to get to sleep when I'm cold so I've pulled out the bed socks and dug out this blanket I made last year. It's huge, even without knitting the full set of repeats, and in double knit (or 4ply held double) so it's a bit like a weighted blanket too. It wasn't the most fun to knit over the summer, it got a bit toasty, but then I didn't get around to blocking it until just before Christmas. It was big when I was knitting, it's huge now it's blocked, it took over my whole bedroom floor (honest, it's like 5 foot across). 

Yarn:

I used this as a scrappy project to use up bits of stash, unfortunately I'm not the most organised so I don't know what all the yarns I used were, but I've named what I can. I've also given how much yarn I used in case it's of help to anyone else.

Excuse the mess.

Centre Star:

Yorkshire Spinners Bo Peep Pure Dandelion (53-37)=16g used

orange (32-15)= 17g

Malbrigio Persimmon (52-33)= 19g

red (43-24)= 19g

Easyknits Fidget singles Orion (49-39) = 10g

Little Bit Sheepish Apollo (77-61) = 16g

Knit Picks DK Heather green (50-35) =15g

l green (31-9)=22g (long tail need to graft together).

Garter ridge:

Third Vault Yarn Glow Dk Kelpie (98-76)= 22g used

Easy Knits Deeply Wicked Prismatic Reef (107-75)=32g

green and purple (41-7)=34gYorkshire Spinners Bo Peep Pure Dandelion (37-10)=27g

Knit Picks Grey (54-12)=42g

Easy Knits Deeply Wicked DK Life in Plastic (47-44)=3g

Easy Knits Deeply Wicked Prismatic Reef (75-39)= 36g

Easyknits Fidget singles Orion (39-4)=35g

Third Vault Yarn Glow Dk Kelpie (76-39)=37g

Malbrigio Slik Blend (35-10)= 25g

brioche:

Knit Picks DK Grey (42+100+40)=182g

Gamercrafting Sock Magic and Mutants=100g

Countess Ablaze Lady Persephone Sock Ministry of Truth Twisting=41g

accents:

llama 99-77=22g used

garter rounds:

Hello Yarn Fibre hand spun Crivens! 120g

Countess Ablaze Lady Persephone The Village Idiot OOAK (97-5)= 92g

i-cord:

jawoll magic autumn 33g

Needles/Gauge:

16 sts & 34 rows = 4” / 10cm in garter stitch after blocking. 4.5mm needles. By the end I had 3 100cm cables attached to each other using some connectors I got from my LYS which was really helpful. I didn't actually check my gauge, I was happy with the fabric I made, and as it didn't have to fit I wasn't too worried.

Difficulty:

For the most part is is really straight forward. Lots of i-cord to practice and picking up stitches. There is a brioche section with brioche increases and decreases, but there are instructions for doing garter ridges in this section instead. I like how the brioche looks though, and doing it in two colour and in the round seems, to me, to be easier than doing it in one colour or flat. I think this was the first time I'd done a i-cord bind off but it was a looooong one.

Worth Repeating:

I'm definitely making another one of these at some point, but probably a nice, colour coordinated one rather than another amazing paint box version.

Other Knits

Handmade socks on
handmade cushion

So I got one of those memory things on Facebook from a couple of years ago where I'd just finished knitting a Fox Wedding shawl by Sylvia McFadden. The shawl was still sat in my spare room, not quite finished and I felt guilted into doing the last few steps. It is now blocked at least, even if I haven't sewn in the ends. I should. It's knit from some chunky baby alpaca so it's really soft and thick, which would be perfect for the weather right now.

I also knit up some Christmas socks using Dragon Hill Studio self striping yarn. Self striping yarn is magical, and knitting a tube is the easiest thing when you don't want to think to much given the state of everything. I've knit a pair of socks for Christmas the last couple of years which is a nice way to build up to Christmas (not that it normally needs the extra build up!) with something just for me, from me.

Baking

I love baking, which you've probably guessed, but I've always been of the “tastes better than it looks” class of bakers. Not much into the fancy decorations. For our anniversary my husband bought me Kimjoy's Christmas baking book, and everything in it is super cute, and felt fairly achievable. I didn't get to make as much as I might have liked, but I did make and decorate some gingery biscuits. The glass bellied robins didn't work out, small error in reading the wrong side of the thermometer, but I was happy with the rest. When we finally get to have Christmas with my family I'm going to try and do these again.

Mixed results on the biscuits.

Knitting Along

 

Sunday morning and I'm sat at my kitchen table with a lovely cup of tea from Bird and Blend. I have a bit of a collection so today is Earls Paradise, a riff on Earl Grey but with exotic fruit. Usually I use this little bit of time to read an Almanac, do some drawing or Netflix and knit. Work is still super busy, no suprise as there's a pandemic on, but this morning there's breaking news that my organisation may go through a restructuring, seemingly out of the blue. I know I've not been super into news recently trying to stop feeling overwhelmed, but if there had been any inkling of this it would have been mentioned at work. And as a civil servant I should probably stop talking before I get myself in trouble.

Anyway.

Since I wrote last, which wasn't years ago but a mere 2 weeks, I've taken the final step to delete my Ravelry page. Anyone that knows me would probably tell you I'm pretty indecisive, I don't like doing things that can't be undone (or pick where I want to shop, or what to have for dinner, or what time to meet for drinks...) but given the continued ambivalence towards accessibility, I want to call it violence and aggression which I know some of the activists who have been very vocal about this have been experiencing, but it's the indifference that TPTB show that is just as bad. But then that is just another type of aggression, and something I'm sure disabled people are unfortunately used to dealing with. Anyway, it's big and scary and very disappointing, but that sums up this entire year.

FFFS flat lay, how very insta.

In an effort to build a bit of knitterly community away from there, I've been really enjoying the Everyday Knitter group on Mighty Networks. Louise Tilbrook set up the group on Facebook a few years back and I joined but it was a bit much to keep up with. The new format is really nice, ad free and it shows all the things that have happened since you last visited, which is nicer than the Facebook algorithm. Currently we've got a knit-a-long (KAL) to celebrate the move, we're mostly knitting one of Louise's patterns which she kindly made free to the group, the Fuss Free Festival Shawl, or FFFS. I'm using some yarn I bought from a local knitters destash, it's from the Witch Fibre Co, who are a new to me dyer, and it's called Dream Country inspired by The BFG. Normally when I buy yarn it's in a skein and you can see all the colours and have a bit of an idea of how it's going to look knitted, but I've only seen this as a cake so it's a bit of a surprise. I'm loving it though, and although I did intend for it to be a Christmas present, it might be a bit hard to part with. What was fun though was having an official cast on party Monday night, Might Networks has a chat feature, although knitting and typing aren't things you can do together easily and there was talk of maybe using Zoom for the next online event. 

Gnicki the Gnome to be.

I'm also trying to keep up with the Imagined Landscapes Gnome-along. Where the EK KAL is a pattern is just a normal pattern we all make together, and you can see the finished object (FO) before starting, this one is a mystery or MKAL. I know it's a Gnome called Gnicki, I know the designers style, and that I needed 4 colours of fingering weight yarn but that's all I had to go on before buying the pattern. The colours I've picked for my Gnome was inspired by the summer moutain meadows seen in the Sound of Music, the designer said they'd chosen some of their colours to keep the idea of the Gnome being a mountain creature of ice and snow, but sometimes mountains are covered in wildflowers. I've used some miniskeins from Mothy and the Squid, specifically “Squeaking Silk Moth” (yellow), and “Springtime” (purple/blue), and some yarn from stash, the white is from Belinda Harris and the green is the last of my very precious SparkleDuck “And The Forest Began To Sing”.

Some people really don't like the idea of not knowing what you're making before starting, but I quite enjoy it. Maybe it's to do with the indecisiveness, when I feel like making a hat there are so many hats out there how to I pick one? Also it's fun seeing a project some together with lots of other people. So far I'm up to clue 4, I think clue 6 was released today so best get the needles out.

Food:

No bread from me recently, and I really should feed Doughsophine the starter, but I made some cake with greengages that were left at work for people to help themselves to. Greengages aren't usually commercially available, I don't think I've had any since Hubs and I found some growing in a Shropshire lane many summers ago, and before that in my Little Nan's garden. Some people at work hadn't heard of them before. This is probably why it was really difficult for me to find a recipe for greengages in my bookcase, but the River Cottage Fruit Handbook had a really nice ones for Plum and Hazelnut cake, which became Greengage and Walnuts because I didn't have any Hazelnuts either. I love using whole (or half fruit in this case) in cake because it just explodes in your mouth when you bite into it. 

While looking for recipes I had a flick through Ruby Tandoh's “Flavour”, and I'd forgotten how many good sounding things there were in there. So now I have Coconut and (homegrown) raspberry ripple ice cream in the freezer. I started it yesterday and it took a bit longer to freeze than I was expecting so I added the raspberry ripple earlier than was recommended but I had to go to bed and thought doing it this morning would be too late. Update: just checked and it's frozen solid so this was the right move.

Books:

I visited my local and lovely bookshop Toppings the other week and purchased a whole bunch of books. The first I read was “The Masked City” by Genevieve Cogman. I accidentally bought the sixth book in the Invisible Library series first, so I'm slowly getting them in order so I can read that one. Luckily I really enjoy them, this is the second book of the series and I just didn't want to put it down. They're fantasy books, the Invisible Library is set in a pocket universe/dimension that connects to lots of other world of varying degrees of chaos (under the influence of fae) or order (influence of dragons). The Library is there to collect unusual works of fiction from across all these worlds by sending out Librarians, and the novels follow one Librarian, Irene, and her apprentice Kai. Magic, fae and dragons, how could I not enjoy it.

I followed this by reading the Witcher Book “Sword of Destiny”. I'm not a gamer so only came to the Witcher because of the Netflix show. I enjoy Sci fi and fantasy, but it's much easier to find sci fi TV and movies than it is to find fantasy ones (like, proper fantasty a la LotR, not GoT). I would have thought it easier to make fantasy than sci fi, but I guess more people like space. I really enjoyed the TV show and decided to read the books, and I'll be honest they are not exactly what I was expecting. The Witcher on tv doesn't say much, there's lots of fighting/killing monsters and sex, the sort of things you would expect from adult fantasy, and a game series I imagine largely aimed at men. But through the books (the two I have read anyway), where Geralt the Witcher is a bit more talkative anyway, there is a long running thread where he loves one woman, Yennefer, and is constantly longing for her, but knowing that because of their individual issues/occupations (witcher=mutant, Yennefer=sorceress) that they can't be together. I thought it was nice/weird to see in what I expected to be a more fighty/killy/sexy book.

Still reading the Philosophy Queens book too, and I might even read a proper philosophy book or two at some point to enjoy the full work of some of the women I've learnt about.

Garden:

Not gonna lie, it's still out there, and has slightly fewer brambles but that's about it. Apart from the odd courgette that I find, normally once they're huge. There's been a heat wave, it should be lucky I watered it. 

How did I miss this?

Rebooting

Ok, so anyone wondering how the Eat The World Cup (last post over 2 years ago), it didn't. Life, as always, got in the way. I did watch more football, we went to Oxford for a few days because it was my 33^rd birthday and there was a Tolkien exhibition on (10 points for getting the significance). Visited lots of pubs, most of which claimed to be the oldest, but were all very pleasant. So pleasant in fact that we took the FIL last year because he briefly lived there when he was 18 and hadn't been back since.

So why after 2 years am I back? Well, if you're a knitter you probably know about the changes at Ravelry and I want to move away from the platform, and if you're not a knitter its drama that would take too long to explain, I'm probably not the person to explain as I'm not personally affected and there are people out there who could do a better job I would anyway. Just it turns out our inclusive knitting platform is not very inclusive after all. So I hope this will be the place I share what I've been making and that my project notes and pictures will be of use to anyone that needs them.

I was in a really good place on Friday, everything I needed to do at work slotted together like clockwork with out me turning into a stress head and I even managed to come up with a post-Rav plan.

1. New email so I can sign up to all my favourite designers newsletters and have them all go to one tidy place. - Check.

2. Revive blog. - Check. Even managed to change the default email to match the new one I created.

3. Create database on Airtable to replace Rav. - This is work in progress. Lots of data entry luckily just the sort of mindless task I'm quite good at, helped enormously by the template from here. Still getting used to the set up, and the order patterns/projects/library need to be loaded but I'll get there.

4. Download Library from Rav. - this one feels a bit daunting but someone posted a video of how do to it with Downthemall. Also the bonus of creating a new email is that I have more cloud space so I can try and fit all the files in one place and not the three I think I have them at the minute.

So there we go, I have a plan, what could possibly go wrong.

So what am I working on at the minute?

Knitting:

Starflanket  by Stephen West. If you don't know Stephen West then he is a designer who loves shape, colour and texture and designs things in ways you probably wouldn't think of. And his favourite colour is probably neon. I've made one of this designs before, Spectre which is a spiral shaped scarf, but have plenty more in my queue. This is a DK weight blanket and I've tried to use lots of scraps to make mine, in either left over DK or fingering held double. I'm currently on a brioche section which I can't decide if it's working or if I'm doing something wrong. I put in a life line before I started so if it is wrong I can safely, and sadly, rip it back. It's over 3m in circumference now so each row takes a long time to do. I've been recording how much yarn I use for each section which I'll put in a blog post when I'm finally finished.

Reading:

I'm on GoodReads if anyone wanted to see what I want to read or have read.

I've just finished reading Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages by Tom Holt. Not a recent release, just something I found on my bookshelf, but I needed something silly and comforting last weekend and I didn't have time to read all of Discworld. I always enjoy Tom Holt's books, they're all silly and funny modern fantasy.

Also reading The PhilosophyQueens which is a book I funded on Unbound. If you don't know about Unbound it's kind of publishing via crowdfunding, the funding target covers the first print run and costs of setting up a book. The premise of the book is to highlight the overlooked women in the field of philosophy, from Ancient Greeks to modern day. I've never had much to do with philosophy other than what Chidi from The Good Place managed to impart, but this has been an interesting book, if a little heavy going for bed time reading some days.

Hubs also had a book published this year, also by Unbounders, so in case you need 100 mostly helpful robots, Small Robots might be of interest to you. He's also on Twitter @smolrobots.

Garden:

Oh my Gourd!

So it turns out I'm a very lazy gardener. If you look back at posts on here you'll see past me being very hopeful and enthusiastic with plans. This year I can't even get at the veg beds because the brambles have taken over. The border I put in last year is a bit more successful, it looks very chaotic, and I did set some veg in when I realised the raised beds would not be ready so I've had some courgettes, which have done better in the border than they did in the proper beds. I've also got some Uchiki Kuri squash, which I did not realise were climbers and at this point are trying to take over.                

Food:

 Just adding this quickly at the bottom because I've just had the most amazing sandwich from my home-made bread. I know with lock-down everyone started getting into sour dough but, and I'm going totally millennial hipster here, I started November last year after a really enjoyable talk by James Morton of GBBO fame. The local book shop, Toppings, organises a lot of talks, I've seen the Hairy Bikers, Brian Blessed, Neil Gaiman and others, and was excited to listen to James. Fantastic bit of marketing as he bought sour dough starter with him so you could get started almost immediately. I really enjoy the book (Super Sour Dough) and have made quite a few bits from it, banana pancakes are made quite regularly, the spelt batons I made a few weeks ago were delicious and this weekends seeded sandwich loaf is stunning. The only real failure I had was the epic buns, more or less chelsea buns, but I think that was my fault rather than the recipe and now I've a bit more experience should give it another bash. 

Got papped by OH meeting a famous.

Eating the World Cup!

Unless you've been living under a rock, you are probably aware that the Fifa World Cup is on. And even if you were living under a rock then someone with football fever has probably kicked your rock as a ball subsitute and you're still aware it's going on.

Growing up football wasn't a thing in our house, it was rugby rugby rugby, not that I'm particularly devoted to that either. There was sport on in our house, rugby, tennis, cricket, athletics, horse racing, bowls, and for a short period of time even 10 pin bowling. But never football. I've never been one for organised sport (gods I hated PE), so these were background noise (apart from the 10 pin bowling which was kind of fun).

So the feeling of being forced to enjoy a sport I have no relationship with by my peers at school when major tournaments rolled around was always annoying, especially as voicing support for any team other than England, or pointing out their poor track record was met with verbal abuse. We are a nation of nostalgia lovers, and love nothing better than remembering that one time 50 years ago when we were good. But there we are, I hated football and after leaving school I could just let it wash past me.

But now, over 10 years later the World cup is not the massive pain that it used to be. It's actually sort of fun to discuss it at work, I have co-workers from all over the world who want to support their own team, it would be weird to be cocky about England being great when you work with people from better footballing nations like Brazil (although her kids are weird because they'd pick England over Brazil, but then kids are stupid), Germany, Spain and Portugal. And of course there's the office sweepstake that means people are supporting teams because they were pulled out of a hat. I'm sure as the teams are whittled down the energy will change, but at the moment I'm almost enjoying it.

And it's office sweepstakes that have lead me down a bit of a foodie rabbit hole. I haven't taken part, but my husband drew Japan in his, so I thought it might be fun if we had some Japanese food to eat while watching their first game. Bit of a mis-calculation on my part as it turns out it was on during the day, but it didn't stop us having supermarket katsu curry and dim sum that night. And some where along the line I've decided to try and eat something from every country in the world cup.

This is ridiculous I know. I have a spread sheet with ideas on, but I know I can't be too strict with this. I don't have all the time and money to be making completely authentic dishes from scratch, so some countries just have things like “coffee” or “waffles” (yes Belgium, that's you) next to them. But it's going to be fun.

Japan

I've never had Sushi, the closest I've come to eating Japanese food was a katsu curry sandwich from Waitrose and I wasn't sure how close to the original dish it was. I always worry about food being too spicy, especially if I'm not making it. I'd had a look at Katsu recipes in my Hairy Biker Asian Adventure book, and although it seemed to have a lot of ingredients nothing stood out as “spicy”, except the mustard. Sainsburys have been expanding their ready meal selection and Chicken Katsu curry was one. They also had some DimSum in the range which I thought might be fun.

The curry was nice, actually kind of sweet because of the coconut in the sauce. I know “curry” is such an umbrella term and wasn't expecting it to be anything like an indian curry, but it wasn't really like Thai curries I'd had either. Now I've had the curry I'll probably try and make it my self at some point knowing it's something I like.

The Dim Sum was ok, I think it's more an issue of being pre-made and then steamed in the microwave, they came out a bit rubbery. They were fun but I think proper, freshly made ones would be much nicer.

And maybe I'll try Sushi one day.

Peru

Unusual and delicious.

Again, this one was another bit of a cheat. There was a new range of cooking sauces in the “exotic” food aisle. The sauce was Peruvian Chilli and lemon, cooking instructions on the back was to fry pepper and chicken strips, mix in sauce and serve in wraps. Very quick, simple and really tasty, and although we mostly eat veggie during the week this might make a return, although with rice rather than wraps. Also served with tortilla chips with salsa and guacamole because they're also from South America (and just in case the chilli was too much).

Iran, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Egypt

I know these are very different countries with different cultures and back grounds and stuff, but their foods are quite similar. While doing research a few things kept coming up for each of these countries, sweet and sour tagines involving fruit, fancy rice dishes and similar spices.

For Morocco I had a lamb tagine that I had made previously and put half in the freezer. Made with lamb, lots of fruit like cranberries (not many barberries around here), and apricots, it definitely had the sweet and sour thing going on.

Tagine and fancy rice will never make a sexy photo.

Iran was Jewelled rice. I recently saw a tweet that said something like “the reason restaurant food tastes so good is all the butter that goes in it”, and for this I think it really helped. I'm not all that confident with rice, I'm normally a boil lots of water and chuck it in sort of rice cooker, but this recipe needed the spices cooked in a chunk of butter before simmering the rice. I did worry it was all burnt to the bottom at one point, but it was just my rubbish pan and was a really nice consistency. The fried onions for the top didn't come out very crispy but that was probably just me.

For Egypt I wanted something a bit different, already having the rice and stew. A carroty side that was so nice I've kept the left overs for lunch during the week. It was also really easy to make and who doesn't love bashing things in a pestle and mortar?

Saudi Arabia was represented by hummus and pittas, because who doesn't love hummus?

Now to go plan where we're eating from next week!

New year, old me

New year, when there are loads of articles about how to make a shiny new you for the next 12 months. But I don't want a shiny new me, I want the old me back. This time last year I was in hospital, after a serious belly ache and a trip to A&E I was eventually diagnosed with appendicitis. "You'll be out tomorrow, we do these all the time" the surgical consult said. Little did she know that the offending vestigial organ was totally gross and going to perforate. This ended up with a nearly week long hospital stay, two weeks signed off sick at home and a year I feel didn't go to plan. We'd bought a house autumn 2015 and I was looking forward to finally have a garden where stuff didn't just blow away, that could actually be sat in, and where plants might survive. The problem with appendicitis is that to get it out you have to go through a lot of muscle which is also in a really difficult place to heal, so although I tried to do garden stuff, it was very tiring and/or painful.

So for a whole year I didn't eat anything I'd grown (except a couple of berries from the blackberry hedge I never got around to cutting back). My poor garden was more or less ignored, after having cleared loads of weeds I didn’t have the energy to keep on top of it. Luckily I’d put black sheeting down on the worst part, but bindweed finds away.  I didn’t brew anything, had no fruit bobbing around in jars of alcohol, bake, or even looked after my little house plants that well.

These are the saddest chillis.

This was really brought home to me when I was cleaning the kitchen after Christmas. I'd brought some flour to make mince pies with (but never got around to it) so was going to put it in the storage container when I discovered some of my flours had flour mites in them! I had to bin four different flours. I’d been thinking about making a summer berry wine using frozen fruits after finding them in the shop, luckily I checked what brewing stuff I had before starting because all my yeasts, nutrients and other stuff was out of date. It took a really long time to find my hydrometer as well before start because it was still in a random box in the shed. For over a year.

Lots of tiny yeast farts.

 So that's why this year I want to go back to the me before. The brewer, the baker, yes, even the candlestick maker. I know I need to be better at getting off my arse and actually do things. I’ve got a self imposed knitting ban for the weekends, it’s so easy to sit and knit and do nothing else, so now it’s an evening only activity. I’m hoping that’ll allow me to do some of the hobbies I’ve put to one side. Already I’ve tried to do more this year, I did start my wine eventually, and started growing some mushrooms a friend gave me for Christmas. I even got one of my spindles out again which felt good (but trying to spin and watch a tv show that has subtitles really doesn’t work).

Mushroom. Mushroom.

And I’m hoping to keep up with this again, share progress on the garden and other projects.

Jamjamjam

"Over the centuries, wizards and alchemists have used all the power and magic they could muster to try and catch rainbows, spin straw into gold, and even bring the dead back to life. They've failed of course. Yet all the while, humble peasants and ordinary housewives have go on with the simple business of bottling sunshine, so that it may spread a little joy in the leaner seasons...They call it jam."  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Ok, so yesterday I had a go at making jam. It's always seemed a bit daunting for some reason, the boiling, the sugar, making sure everything is sterile. It always seems to need a lot of stuff like special pans, muslin and stuff. But it turns out you don't really need all that.

At the end of my drive is a massive plum bush. It doesn't really belong to anyone, both me and my neighbour rent and I can't imagine the landlords caring who picks what fruit. Normally the fruit is left to the birds and just falls off but that's just a waste and I wanted to do more.

I was given the River Cottage handbook "Preserves", by Pam 'the Jam' Corbin, last year, and it made me want to give it a go. It's a really good book, written by someone who knows her stuff and wants you to know it too, from jams and chutneys to pickles, leathers and alcohol. It covers the basics 'how to', has some standard, and not so standard, recipes and gives you the rules so that you can move yourself beyond the included recipes. I've really enjoyed just reading this book, and have lined up a 'to-do' list of recipes I want to try other than jam.

Now, not owning a 9 litre muslin pan (and at the cost of them I probably won't anytime soon) I wasn't going to make the full recipe. I also don't need 8 jars of jam lurking in the cupboard. So using the plum jam recipe I divided everything by 3 to fit in my smaller saucepan.

But, first things first, you must clean. I feel like I spent my entire weekend cleaning the kitchen (cleaned, made pasta, cleaned, made jam, cleaned, made curry...) but it's essential. Bacteria and fungi that lurk in kitchens could so easily spoil a batch of jam and that would a waste of time, sugar and fruit.

 

Plum jam

1.5 kg plums
1.25 kg granulated sugar

Plums. I used the wild ones by my house, but any plums can be used. Give 'em a rinse and cut them in half. The problem with wild plums is that they can be a bit...wild. from my 500g I had about 5 plums with maggots in. Totally gross. Luckily I had a few I'd picked but were going to go spare that I could make up the weight with. The original recipe says the to get the kernels out of the stones, boil and scrub them and add to the jam because they give it an almondy hint, but I didn't want to piss about with that.

Sterilise jam jars. Easy to do, wash in hot water then put in a low oven to dry off. I did it right right before I started so that they'd be dry by the time I needed them, but not sitting about so long they'd contaminated.

So into the saucepan goes the halved plums and 400ml water (or in my case a third of that) and let it simmer to soften the skin. I gave mine 25 minutes before deciding they were soft enough, this varies between varieties of plum. I also added in 1/2ish tsp of vanilla paste to make up for the lack of almond flavour. As the plums boil they smell amazing. I was taken back to when I was little, having been sent up some rickety old ladder by my nan to pick the ripe plums and green gages that grew in her massive, but mostly overgrown, garden. I never saw her make jam, but she used to stew the plums and we'd have it for pudding. She'd also put some in an ice cube tray so we could have them as a cold desert another time.

Add the sugar and give it a good stir to dissolve the sugar. This is when I put the thermometer in. I know there are other ways of checking if jam has reached setting point, but when something has "jam" written on it, it seems overly complicated to do anything else.

Once setting point has been reached, check the fruit isn't floating, apparently the sugar stays towards the bottom of the pan and needs to cook into the fruit for it to set.  Once the fruit is no longer floating, fill the jam jars while still hot.

And in theory that's it! My jams are in the cupboard, I'll give them a few weeks before breaking into one. Still seems a bit gloopy so I don't know if they'll set more or if my plums didn't have enough pectin and I should buy some proper jam sugar if I try again. As it is though I'd love to make some blackberry jam, there's so many hedges full of berries waiting to ripen, hopefully they'll be ready before I go on holiday!