Tag: Growing our own

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Oh my Gourd!

I have *a lot* to tell you about today – looking back over the week it hardly seems possible so much has happened in fact.

Can you believe that tomorrow will be the 1st birthday of my website going live?! I’m quite amazed at what has been achieved in that time, but also that it’s only been a year. I started writing this blog a week later and I have only missed one Tuesday (between Christmas and New Year).

Speaking of the website, I have revamped the home page and updated the Knitting Tuition pages. It may not seem like much, but I think it’s better and I’m pleased that the tuition pages are now laid out in the same way as patterns etc.

After last week’s post I started looking at what cross-stitch software is available these days. I tried out a couple of free online ones, but the result of the uploaded photo was really pixelated, even at the best resolution offered. So, I decided to spend a little money. Only a little – £30 – got me MacStitch which had some great reviews (this review also includes a discount code!) and I’ve been able to get a detailed chart from the photo I’ve chosen, along with choosing the brand and type of embroidery threads I wanted to use. Not only did this provide me with the codes for the different colours required, but having put in the thread count of the fabric I’m going to use it even gave the yardage used for each colour! To two decimal places!! I will be using far than stated less of course as I intend to work in tent stitch again, so the two embroideries make a pair. The threads are due to arrived tomorrow (and I have plenty of even-weave fabric squirrelled away in my old college ‘tuck box’). I let you know how I get on.

The photo I chose to use is of Mum when she was in her twenties. I know she had started teaching as she’s wearing the jacket that she spent half of each of her first two month’s salary on!

New coaster designs have been uploaded to my website and to Payhip. All based on the same image, but with different phrases to accompany them. The company I bought this and a couple of other rubber stamps from is an ‘angel’ company, which means you can sell items made using them with no worries over copyright. Once stamped, I carefully burn over the image with my pyrography pen, add any text and then wax the coaster, buffing it up to a sheen. It takes a steady hand!

I’ve also blocked the large version of Into the Vortex, had the finished pattern checked over by other eyes than mine, and uploaded the new pattern file to Lovecrafts, Ravelry and Payhip. This now contains both sizes of the shawl, as well as helpful tips on how to adapt the pattern towards the end if you are running low on yarn. Here you can see the original and large versions side by side to more easily compare them.

Sue has been photographing flying shawls as well – she loves doing this and the results are always amazing.

The garden continues to produce edibles – yesterday I picked another colander full of raspberries, four green courgettes and one enormous yellow one that I can’t call a courgette any longer, but it doesn’t look much like a marrow either, so it will have to just be a gourd. Oh my gourd, indeed! It’s huge and very heavy. The large marrows harvested a little while ago are keeping well. We are having another one tonight: roasted and then stuffed with last night’s bolognaise sauce, topped with breadcrumbs from my sourdough disaster loaf and baked til golden.

Yet to harvest are some blueberries, more raspberries, a few more courgettes, three apples (that’s all I can see on the tree) and, if I can get them to ripen, some tomatoes! They were hidden amongst the borage and courgette leaves, but I think if I support the plant so they get some sun, there might be a chance.

There has even been some more spinning and plying happening and the Tour de Fleece 21 BFL fibre I bought from Hilltop Cloud is now yarn! I’m very pleased with it, but it’s still damp, so photos next week. On the theme of spinning, I have mentioned on my socials that I visited Fibrehut in person last Wednesday for the first time. This was significant for me as they are the company I bought my wheel from nearly a year ago. I did buy more fibre – of course.

I have other exciting news to share with you as well – but I have to wait a little longer. All I can say for now is that October will be a celebration!

Take care everyone, and stay safe. Do what you love as much as you can. K x

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Going Out

We did it. For the first time in over 18 months we went away for the night to meet up with friends (as opposed to family) and WE ATE OUT! At a restaurant. It felt very odd to start with being out in a big room with lots of other people, but the staff all wore masks and so did we for the two metres we had to travel from the door to our table. And when we visited the loos. The food was lovely, with a good vegan menu as well as ‘regular’ ones.

One thing I had completely forgotten about eating out is how loud it is. There was music playing (quite loudly) and although we were nearest to the door and not directly near a speaker it was difficult at times to hear and be heard. So what happens? You talk louder and move nearer, both things that you’re not meant to do really in terms of minimising spread, but everyone in our little group had had negative tests recently, and fingers crossed we’re all ok still so far!

This meet up had been postponed from last summer and we hadn’t seen these friends for two years, but the lovely thing about really good friends is the ability to pick up as though that gap of time had never been.

And where did this momentous occasion take place? In Lichfield. None of us had ever been there, but it is more or less halfway from both our homes. It is a lovely little town (city). We looked around the cathedral and it is stunning. The main image on this post is part of the frontage, chronological sculptures of the kings and queens of England, each holding something that represents their reign. For example, King John (not in shot) is holding a green (copper) quill and scroll to represent the Magna Carta. Here’s most of the frontage:

The frontage of Lichfield Cathedral with a cloudy grey sky behind. The building is covered in sculptures of kings, queens, angles and saints with lots of geometric details.

While inside I failed to photograph the historically important things such as the shrine to St Chad or the Angel of Lichfield (a carving from the EIGHTH century!). Instead, I photographed things that took my eye as potential knitting inspiration. My old City & Guilds tutor would be proud of me (she was – I already put these pics on Twitter!). So, I give you the *back* of the high altar (inlaid and carved marble) and two rather beautiful floor grates which have a definite theme of diamonds and circles:

Four colours of mosaic marble form diamond hatching. In the centre of each diamond is a flower carved in relief within a circle. Each line of the diamond hatching has a different mosaic pattern and each flower is different as well.
A close up of a cast iron floor grating. Each piece is two circles wide and three high with diamonds running through the circles and decorative points like the tops of church windows all through the design.
A square cast iron floor grating with a large circle surrounded with a border of diamonds. The circle has 'spokes' spreading from the centre, with the detail near the edge of the circle taking the form almost of fleurs de lyes, similar to the tops of church windows.

Quite when I will turn these into knitting ideas I’m not sure, but there are a few possibilities kicking around in my head already.

Remember the terrible frisbee I made that was supposed to be a loaf? I tried some of the helpful suggestions from the sourdough Facebook group, reducing the water, reducing the proving time and the time in between pulls and folds and my next loaf was very much better! It tasted fabulous too.

A seeded sourdough loaf with a cross scored across the floured top sits on a metal cooling rack.

The drive to and from Lichfield enabled some further progress on the Brioche + Mystery shawl. Please note – I was the passenger!

A close up of part of a brioche knitted shawl in four colours. There are two colour brioche stripes surrounded on two sides by textural stripes, then triangle shapes in two-colour brioche, followed by garter stitch stripes in three colours with bobbles in the centre stripe.

I’m now about to start the next lot of bobbles. Knitting backwards to avoid turning your work every five stitches is an optional technique during the bobbles and I *can* do it, but my tension isn’t quite as consistent as turning it round and purling, so I’m undecided about which approach to take this time around. Thinking about it, when I’m teaching I tell other people that the only way they can improve a skill is to practise it, so I’d best take my own advice and do some knitting backwards. I’ll take some pics while I’m doing it so you can see!

There are only two more parts of Into the Vortex to be revealed and I’ll share some more of people’s progress with you next week 😊

Harvesting continues in the garden and everything seemed to grow massively over the weekend while we were away – the courgette plants that had looked so puny only a little while back gave us these beauties this morning. For reference, the shortest green courgette is nine and a half inches long.

Three large green courgettes lie on a green tablecloth with three round yellow courgettes of various sizes. In the top left corner is a woven placemat with the base of a silver candlestick just showing.

I haven’t mentioned my Craftucation courses lately, have I? I had been hoping to finish ‘An Introduction to Lace Knitting’ a few months ago, but my hands have been too dry and cracked to record anything – no-one wants to see lengthy close-ups these paws at the moment. It’s not fallen off my radar, though, and I am making great efforts to get my hands fit to be seen. Hopefully I’ll be able to return to recording in September, when it should also be cool enough to wear the same clothes as when I started recording the course! Watch this space!

I hope your week has gone well. Stay safe, do what makes you happy. K x

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What you got cooking?

How is this the last blog post of July already? Time really has been flying past. This morning saw some much needed rain along with a fanfare from the thunder. The rain has also brought with it some cooler temperatures which I have been taking full advantage of.

Yesterday morning was harvesting: the rest of the gooseberries got turned into the crumble shown in the post picture. It was gorgeous and there’s some left for tonight. It goes really well with vanilla soya yoghurt.

All of the blackcurrants which were washed, picked over and frozen in two bags (I didn’t remember to photograph these) and the redcurrants… Those redcurrants have been worrying me if you remember. The wood pigeons have been eating as many as they could get their beaks on and attempting to sit on the stems of the bush despite the fact that the stems were breaking under them. I was beginning to think there wouldn’t be any left for us.

However! Once I got down into the ‘underskirts’ of the redcurrant bush there was lots of fruit still there waiting to be picked. So I picked them all.

Once all the fruit was washed and picked over, the crumble made and the blackcurrants frozen I realised there wasn’t really any space in the freezer for the redcurrants. So, I stripped them all off their little ‘strings’ and got ready to make jelly.

A jam pan half filled with very ripe redcurrants.

This is a two day process as I like to leave the bag overnight. The tea-towels and clothes pegs are to keep out any curious insects!

This morning I was stiff as a board when I got up (that’s what an hour and a half in the garden mostly bent double will do for you when you’re me), but I was keen to see how much juice there was. With this recipe you don’t know how much sugar you’ll need until this stage (and so, of course, I had bought far too much), as it’s proportional to the juice volume.

The juice and sugar boiled up nicely and the jars were washed once again in the dishwasher and then sterilised in the oven. 12 jars. I realised this was too many, but needed to put the dishwasher on before I’d measured the juice.

I got 3 1/2 jars. Not a lot, but considering I had wondered whether we would get any at all, this is good. And it’s such a beautiful colour – and smells and tastes AMAZING! I’m so glad we have homemade redcurrant jelly in the house again.

3 1/2 jars of redcurrant jelly cooling on the breadboard in front of the jam pan.

But then I had 8 sterilised jars unused and the cooking apples from mum were just starting to look past their best. What to do? Naturally, I made the chutney.

Apples, onions and malt vinegar cooking in the jam pan as the chutney begins.

Following Mum’s additional notes (she adds onion which I’d forgotten about until the apples had been simmering for 30 minutes) I cooked it and stirred and jumped out of the way when it spat at me. Thank goodness my lovely wife suggested I wear my ‘hair-dyeing top’ today. I only got a few boiling hot specks on my arms (and toe). It did indeed take ‘a while’ to become the ‘required consistency’ – well over an hour once all the ingredients were finally in, but we now have 5 jars of homemade apple chutney with onion, garlic, brown sugar, sultanas, ground ginger, mixed spice, cayenne pepper and chilli flakes. It smelt glorious (and tasted good when I tried a bit that had dropped on the side).

The deep irony of the redcurrants is that we spent six hours sorting out the garage on Saturday and I discovered that I actually have some fruit netting. All of those redcurrants could have been ours!

Not all of my kitchen endeavours have been successful this week. At the weekend I made the worst loaf of my life…

A very flat sourdough loaf cooling on the rack.

The sourdough group I’m in on Facebook gave me lots of very helpful tips to avoid this happening in the future, so I’m not giving up!

And what of the knitting news I promised you?

I have been having lots of fun with the Brioche + Mystery shawl by Suzanne Sommer and will start the bobbles this evening. I do love a clear well-written pattern and this one is a delight. I’ve always been fussy about patterns, and I’m not sure whether this has increased since I started writing my own!

Into the Vortex continues apace – we are past the half-way point now with four parts being out in the world and there are three parts left to be released. Here is what Parts One-Three look like:

Parts One-Three of Into the Vortex MKAL in dark blue Nene 4-ply and pale multicoloured Chimera both by Riverknits lying on a light gold carpet.

When I showed you the very beginnings of the two I had cast on to knit in ‘real-time’ with the MKAL I didn’t tell you about the third. I’m experimenting with something with this one, using 100g of John Arbon Knit by Numbers 4-ply in one colour and 5 (or maybe 6) mini-skeins in all the shades of another. The experiment part is that this MKAL was initially designed for only 50g of each of two 4-ply yarns. I’m trying to see if I can successfully build off the MKAL to create a bigger version, using twice as much yarn. If it works out, this bigger version will be added to the pattern, so if you’ve joined the MKAL you’ll get this version as well (it might just take a little while, so don’t expect it the week after Part Seven is released!). I’m not going to show you any pics of this one yet – you’ll have to wait!

The other piece of knitting news is to do with pattern pricing. Always a fun topic. Into the Vortex and Angel of the North have both been priced at £5. My other patterns are currently £4, with a few at £3.60. My July Newsletter let my subscribers know that my whole pattern portfolio will be going up in price at the end of August. Those currently at £4 will become £5. Those at £3.60 will become £4.20. Subscribers will get an ongoing discount code to use along with a multi-purchase code. If you have your eye on any of my patterns at the moment and you’re not already a subscriber you could buy them before the end of August, or sign up to my newsletter and get the code. Or both! Why not sign up anyway?

That’s all from me for today, have a good week and keep knitting! K x

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Stepping Out

A close-up of turquoise, purple and blue knitting; part of a sweater in progress

This is the first blog post I have written whilst sitting outside on the patio. We are so lucky to have outdoor space of our own and this year I am determined to make the most of it.

The birds have proved extra greedy this week – I put up a new coconut half yesterday and it’s already half gone! I’m hoping this means the birds need extra energy for flying around and feeding small ones. It’s great to see the blackbird still doesn’t know he’s supposed to be a ground feeder too – though he is a very messy eater when perched on the apple tree. There is so much birdsong around me and it’s wonderful; it almost distracts from the roofing that’s going on a few doors up!

I’ve planted some of the seeds for our veg patch – courgettes, broad beans, mange tout peas and coriander, along with some nasturtiums, which are lovely and peppery in salads. We were given some potatoes by a friend (already chitted) and these have been planted into potato sacks. Recent years have been very disappointing potato-wise when they’ve been in the ground as they’ve been riddled with crawlies when dug up. And we always manage to miss one or two which gets messy later in the year. This method should be more successful, as long as I remember to water them. There are still other seeds to sow, but not for a weeks or so yet – squash (a couple of varieties) and cucamelon which my sister-in-law had great fun with last year.

Things have been quiet sales-wise this month. I’m thinking of expanding the range of images that I burn onto coasters, hanging hearts and stitch marker pots, to include more knitting themes. Think along the “I love ewe” type of route and you won’t be far wrong. I intend to develop some prototypes over the next couple of weeks, so keep your eyes peeled! If you have any suggestions or requests do let me know 😊

My knitting commission, AKA the Secret Project, is coming on apace. There is now a jolly big spreadsheet, lots of drawings to help check calculations of different sizes and I this morning I wrote out the rest of the pattern (in rough – there are some stitch counts to fill in). I am now ready to pick up the pointy sticks and carry on with the sample, which is great.

Forced downtime from knitting the Secret Project hasn’t been all bad though as it got me back to working on the sleeves of Serenity by Joji Locatelli – that jumper I began in January! I’m on Day 22 of the advent calendar yarn, as there were three mini-skeins I chose to put aside for bed-socks, and I’ve found a 50g Triskelion Yarn Elen Sock (now discontinued, but I have a chunk of different colours in my stash) skein which seems to use the same yarn base and the colour flows on perfectly from Day 25 if/when I run out of the yarns from my Bear in Sheep’s Clothing advent calendar.

My Serenity sweater at different stages of construction

I’ve also stepped out into the world and been to the shops early this morning, before it got busy. I got most of what we needed, dropped some bags in to a charity shop that wasn’t full for donations and even saw a friend to talk to briefly! In person!! What with that and our mini trip out to Llandudno (NOT the pier – it was heaving with people, but we found a quiet corner of the West Shore to enjoy for half an hour or so), it almost feels like I’m emerging from hibernation. Must remember to spend more time outside. It’s good and the sun on the back of my head makes me happy.

Take care and, if you can, do more of what makes *you* happy, K x