Yet more holiday

I've had a few days off during the February half term holiday and been able to spend some time just doing stuff; some baking, some chilling, some walking.......and I've had some new binoculars. Admittedly, these are for my birthday, even though it's not my birthday for ages, but well, I needed them now whilst I was on holiday. Anyway, this is how we spent our holiday at home:-

Eating

I've been trying to eat more greens and have been experimenting with adding spinach to, well, almost everything. A very colourful breakfast ensued with green sourdough pancakes (with spinach) and purple smoothies with blackberries, banana, avacado, yoghurt and coconut water. It was quite a substantial breakfast and so needed a walk to work it off. I should probably say that the pancakes did taste much nicer than they looked.

Walking 

A spell of nice weather (and a huge breakfast) meant that we needed to be out and about so we went to Crich for a short but glorious walk. We parked near the purple dot below and set off along The Tors which is a ridge with a great view over Crich and Amber Valley to one side and views over the hills towards Matlock and Crich memorial on the other side. The main objective of the walk was to investigate some building works at Ambergate reservoir (marked 'Resr' on the map). The underground reservoir was built 100 years ago and was in need of rebuilding and extending, although we didn't know all this until we reached it. We skirted around the reservoir,  and up through Bilberry wood, climbing up the steepest bit of hill to get back onto The Tors and into Crich. It wasn't a long walk, but it certainly gave the lungs some exercise.

Bird Watching

We are not very good at bird watching, in fact binoculars are usually called 'bird scarers' in our house. This does not put us off from watching the birds if we can find any. In our quest to try out the new binoculars, we made a visit to a nearby reservoir at Ogston. Disappointingly, there doesn't seem to be much access to the reservoir unless you are a member of the bird club, so we zoomed up to Carsington reservoir which is a much bigger (blooming huge) reservoir near Wirksworth with a visitor centre and loads of public bird hides.

Ogston Reservoir

Carsington Reservoir

Carsington Reservoir

Baking

A final baking extravaganza for Sunday family tea included a mixed seed sourdough loaf and a marzipan and mincemeat tea loaf. Plus of course, I've been waffling for Britain as described on a previous post.

Holiday in Kent

It seems such a long time ago, but here are few photo's of our holly jollidays in Kent at New Year. We stayed in a lovely Grade II listed Elizabethan dower house which had huge fireplaces which were fantastic with roaring log fires burning. It also had some interesting topiary which included a row of dancing ladies (with big bosoms). We visited the beach at Botany Bay to see the chalk stacks and had a bracing walk along the beach and cliff top. We were near to Canterbury so spent a day wandering the shops after visiting the cathedral. Whilst at the cathedral we had an unexpected (and beautiful) choir recital from a young American choir.

Knowlton Court dancing ladies

Chillenden mill

Botany Bay Chalk Stacks

Broadstairs beach at sunset

Canterbury Cathedral

Canterbury Cathedral

Canterbury Cathedral

Knowlton Court Dower House

One very wet day we went to Margate and visited the shell grotto. This is a small underground passageway covered in ornate shell mosaics. It's origin is unknown and the shells have lost their lustre but it is strangely quite beautiful. We also went to the Turner Contemporary gallery which is on the site where the painter JMW Turner stayed in a guest house. It was of course quite compulsory to have tea and cake.  I created my own contemporary art work from a photo taken of the sea from within the gallery. 

On New Year's day we went to Deal for a walk along the pier and a breath of fresh air. We also visited the Deal Time Ball Tower Museum which was quite fascinating and we all had a New Year's day free mulled wine to warm the cockles (which really did need warming by then).

African quilt

At last I have finished the African style quilt I started almost 2 years ago at a Quiltessential workshop, run by the lovely Ann Maynor. The pattern is very much a freeform log cabin style, so there is absolutely no measuring, which surprisingly can be a bit of a challenge when the emphasis is usually on perfect precision and repeating blocks. You just start with a wonky square or oblong, add wonky strips and just build up the blocks to suit the fabrics. The hardest part was joining the different blocks together as this involved a lot of thinking and moving and squaring up the blocks. For the border I used one of my favourite methods of using up bits of fabric by doing a piano key style. I hate ending up with loads of bits as it all seems such a waste.The quilting was also a bit of a challenge as I used my little sewing machine and only quilted at Sewing Sundays (arranged by Nottingham Patchwork Group).  

Having such funky fabrics meant that I didn't need to do any fancy quilting, it was pretty much stitch in the ditch around all the blocks. I had to try and keep the quilting quite tidy because the quilt backing was a thrifty option of a plain black cotton sheet which had been rejected  for being too small (for my son's bed). The finished quilt is now brightening up our bed in our poky little flat. Here is the quilt turned around so that you can see the blocks on the other end (the bedroom is a bit small to show both sides of the bed). 

Waffling on

Yep, I have a new gadget for the kitchen and as you can probably guess it's a waffle maker. A Belgian waffle maker to be precise. And it's absolutely fab. So far I've made a batch of sourdough spelt waffles which were deliciously crisp on the outside and wonderfully fluffy on the inside, and tasted heavenly with maple syrup slurped all over them. The second batch were oat, cheese and spinach waffles, which apparently were delicious with a poached egg. I managed to miss this culinary delight due to a washing machine crisis at my mum and dads. The next batch were oat waffles with some 'Aroma Veneziana - Orange & Citrus Essential Oil' and oh my goodness, the aroma waffling out of the kitchen was absolutely out of this world. I bought this oil on a whim from Bakery Bits and just hadn't got around to using any, but I think I've found a really good use for it now. This last batch of waffles is pictured above and has been distributed around the family so I'm just going to have to make some more. I have to say, the family love it when I have a new culinary obsession!

Sourdough lesson

I've been spreading the sourdough word and teaching one of my sisters how to make sourdough bread. We started on Friday with some of my Derbyshire/San Francisco starter, and mixed the loaf and shaped it ready for baking on Saturday. Well, what a success it was. It came out of the banneton with out any problems and into to the preheated oven with a tray of boiling water at the bottom for plenty of steam. We then sat in front of the oven window watching it rise whilst chatting and drinking coffee. We were so excited when it grew and grew - it's the simple things in life :D

Faux taxidermy

Finally, some pictures of knitting related taxidermy. Having made a Christmas deer head, I decided that I would like a bigger all year round one. I mean, why have one when you can have two?  Here is the Christmas deer, although it hasn't been packed away with the Xmas decorations, so I guess this is an all round deer as well.

Here is the every day deer head. Obviously, since this is in normal colours it looks so much more realistic. I did find that it was more difficult to mount onto the board because it is much heavier. In fact I had to take it down to redo the fixings because it was beginning to sag and peel away from the board when fastened with velcro, but I think that I've sussed it now with some screwed in eyelet hooks and picture wire.

Poncho Progress

You make something nice for one child, and it's like a fever going round, because you get a request for another. In this case it started with a pattern for a poncho from Simply Crochet magazine. It seems to take me about a year to get on trend, so you could argue that I'm decidedly untrendy. Anyway, the poncho thing started last year, maybe even the year before? but last year I thought it would be nice for our budding crochet beginner (a daughter) to have a go and she really liked the idea but was making all the usual excuses..... "too slow" and "hadn't got enough time" and "it would be quicker if you made it", and in truth I really thought it would suit her and would solve that perennial problem of the birthday present, so made use of all the spare time during the Christmas holiday and quickly made one up. I digress, however, and back to today's story, I inevitably was requested to make one for another daughter, it being another birthday present opportunity. As is the case amongst sisters, they have their own style and this poncho is as different to the other as night is to day. The first is an explosion of rainbow colour, and this is more 'grey is the new black'. It's coming along nicely, and should hopefully only take another week if I crack on with it. Just a quick note, for both poncho's I have used Drops 'Nepal' yarn which is a wool and alpaca blend. I didn't want to make so much effort with cheap acrylic and the Drops yarn is so reasonably priced, especially so if you can get it in the sale :)

After a day (yesterday) of the most appalling diet choices which included a bevy of biscuits and crisps and wine, today has been atonement day. Starting with a deliciously decadent smoothie of banana, avocado, blackberries, almond milk and apple, it was followed up with a fabulously fishy lunch which was surprisingly quick to do and was really, really tasty. It starred stuffed and baked rainbow trout with stir fry spiralised vegetables. The stuffing was a zesty sourdough and buckwheat concoction, whizzed in the blender with lemon zest, seasoning and lemon thyme, coated in olive oil to stick it together a bit. This was stuffed into the trout, placed on a foil lined baking tin and baked at 200C for 20 mins. Whilst this was cooking, the spiralised courgette, carrot and sweet potato was stir fried with some garlic and chilli. Super quick and surprisingly hearty (and I can wear my healthy diet halo with pride).

As an aside to all the making and baking, my Christmas cactus has again surpassed itself by flowering for a second time this winter, adding a bright splash of colour against the grey backdrop of the window.

Home made Christmas presents

At last the big Ta Dah for all the Christmas home made presents. This year's theme has been hats for the boys and headbands for the girls. All the headbands were crocheted from a great pattern by Rosedew from Etsy and have the appearance of aran knitting, but are actually crochet but  perhaps at an intermediate standard. It probably took a couple of evenings to suss out the pattern, but once I'd worked it out each headband only took two or three evenings including the flower. The especially speedy aspect was that the yarn used was a chunky weight and so the headbands grew very quickly despite the complexity of the pattern. I found another slightly easier pattern for headbands and with the chunkier yarn they were very quick so I made a number of these - see the cream headband below

The boys hats were two different styles. The quick and easy one was a Drops pattern for a slouchy beany in a 'Boshi' style. 'Boshi' hats were devised by couple of snowboarders and you can buy 'MyBoshi' designer style labels to attach to the hat's, which of course I did. The labels hopefully add a designer look rather than homemade or mumsy.  I think I made 6 hats in this style.

The second style of hat was also a slouchy beany but made with a Drops aran weight yarn and it was much more densely crocheted and consequently took a long longer. This is why I only made 2 of these!

I'd like to report that all the headbands and hat's were an unqualified success, but I had to make a few adjustments to suit their recipients - the headbands were a bit big but fortunately, they are fastened at the back and so I just needed to move the buttons at the back, although I stitched a couple of them closed so that the button is just for show. The beanies above also needed adjustment - the slouchy one needed to be more slouchy so I added some more rows and the not so slouchy one needs a fleece lining around the forehead as apparently it's a bit itchy! Here's a pic of my homemades on holiday in Scotland.

A Christmas tree decoration was also part of the Christmas homemade bounty. Here are a couple of them, although it should be noted that the tree is a very, very small one and the heart shaped one is for a Hull City fan. The little bird is the Attic 24 bower bird pattern from a Simply Crochet kit.

Everyone also had a little pottery penguin from the penguin flock I made during the 2014 New Year holiday.