Project: Fuss Free Festival Shawl

 

Fuss Free Festival Shawl

I've been a fan of Louise Tilbrook's for quite a while, she's actually pretty local to me, was until quite recently a scientist like me, and her designs are simple and beautiful. I was a member of her Everyday Knitter group on facebook, although it soon became a bit too big to keep up with (and FB algorithms never help) but when she said she was setting the group up on Mighty Networks I was happy to join up there too. The Mighty Networks layout is really clean and easy to follow (no ads!) and it shows you stuff in chronological order, which is nice. To celebrate the new group we held a Knit-A-Long, although this time it was no mystery, it was Louise's Fuss Free Festival Shawl (FFFS).

Not a sponsored post.

This is a nice, asymmetrical triangular shawl. Really good for one skein of fancy hand dyed yarn your not sure what to do with. There is also an option to have stripes. You could probably work it in any weight yarn to make it really big and squishy if you wanted.

Yarn:

Witch fibre co. - Dream Country (75% merino, 25% nylon) Fingering weight (400m). I brought this from a fellow knitters destash, I would share the link to the shop but I can't find it.

Needle/Gauge:

4mm. There's no gauge given, just instructions to make a fabric you're happy with. As it's a shawl you don't want anything too tight, like you would have for a sock, but also doesn't want massive holes in like lace (unless that's what you want!)

Difficulty:

Very easy. This is all garter stitch, knit every row. You need to know how to increase and decrease, but once you've got the hang of the pattern repeat then the tricky bit is remembering which side is the right side (and I stick a stitch marker on the right side so I remember). The cast off is a picot cast off which can be a bit fiddly, but some people in the group did an I-cord bind off instead or even just a regular bind off.

Worth Repeating:

Definitely. I've made this one as a Christmas gift and it's so easy to make I'll probably make more at some point. It took something like 3 weeks to make, but I was also working on something else at the time.

Kitchen

Its not a pan, its a cauldron.

After finding that massive marrow in the garden, I found a chutney recipe for it. I don't know what sort of courgette this should have been, but the skin was really tough, it's not the sort I usually grow. I haven't tried eating this yet, but when I made it I expected it to break down more and it hasn't, so some of my jars have a lot of stuff but not much fluid in. The jars were properly sterilised before filling so I'm hoping that they won't spoil, I've had them on the side to keep an eye on and they're ok so far.

I did find a slightly smaller marrow in the garden the other day, so I'll have to find something to do with that.

Art

Since Covid and lockdown started a million months ago, the Natural History Museum (London) started a weekly #NatureDrawingClub. I've really enjoyed joining in when I can, but this morning I just felt like doing a quick drawing of my little carnivorous plant Errol the Engulfer. It's a small sundew, which has really flourished since I moved it to the front room window where it gets a lot of light. It's sent up loads of flower spikes recently and they're just so pretty and delicate. I wanted to try doing an ink and watercolour (although mine are watercolour pencils) and apart from the pen bleeding slightly I'm really pleased with it. Someone suggested using a dip pen and ink, so maybe I need to add one of those to my wish list as well as proper watercolours.

Errol was very impressed with his portrait.

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!