Heroes

Went to see the new Bond and it needed a bit of thought which is odd for an action film... not usually thought provoking are they? So the new boy was better than good and he had a lovely pair of shoulders and the he fell for the bird real hard so why, when she has the love of this avenging angel of a man, didn't she fight to keep it? The characters were so good, that flaw really jagged out. Who on earth, when they are loved like that chooses not to accept their blessings?

And it was this that got me thinking. Name your favourite story, and I bet it has a hero or a heroine in it that does some rescuing, be it Lancelot, the Handsome prince, the guy in Die Hard or who ever. And the tragedies are when the hero fails in some way. Hamlet dies, Godot never turns up, Giselle's prince betrays her. But we all want a hero, we want to be rescued in some way, the love that saves us. Where are we when we turn our back on that? Not a good place, that's for certain.

Of course when blue eyed Bond and his bird were in Montenegro, or sailing to Venice there was no hint that he didn't put his socks in the laundry basket or didn't clean the basin after his shave
I bet they never ran out of loo roll and he always made her a cup of tea in the morning. Yeah.

I dunno, maybe these last few days I could have done with a private yacht and a private beach. I guess I'm lucky I've got the hero even if life's other little necessaries are yet to come!

Caffine and butterflies

Hi
I'm waiting for the caffine tab to kick in and until that happens no one is going to get a scrap of work out of me today. Ive lit the fire and thats it. I've stacks to do and can't get moving. I hate this.

Went out last night with Steph and Sara, had a fantastic time. Lowthers restaurant in Upper Cwmtwrch, what a place to find a genius chef. I had pork loin with chili jam and smoked bacon with melted Welsh cheddar, it was very good indeed.
So, great food and we laughed like crazy over nothing. Bear dogs and blue reindeer in lights being some of them. Seriously we saw the biggest blooming dog in the world last night leaving the restaurant. It looked like a wolf hound only it was white and its back was hunched up and it was thicker in the waist than a wolf hound. I was very glad I was in the car and a good hundred yards away.

Anyway, we talked about homeopathy, Sara's had some good results with it. I've always been a
bit sceptical, but this morning I'd be willing to give it a go. Anything to get me moving. I'll stick to caffine for the mo though, but herbs sound so much better for you. Although, you know... opium, digitalis, nightshade, hemp, monkshood, etc... they are all herbs too.

Well, I've got cashmere to spin before Eden and Lily spread it all over the floor again (yes seriously, its amazing they are still alive) and ruby wool to crochet, bedrooms to paint and usual work to complete. One more cup of tea and I've got to start whether I can or not.

Move it you lazy tyke!

Found this butterfly and liked it "et voila"

Homemade Cranberry Sauce

This is my own recipe for cranberry sauce. It's not too sweet and it actually tastes of cranberry which is more than you can say of most commercially made gunk. I'm such a fan of this that I buy loads of fresh cranberries at this season and freeze them so that I have enough to last me all year. Thats a lot of cranberries mind you.


12 oz fresh or frozen cranberries
granulated sugar to taste
the juice and grated rind of 1 orange
5 fl oz port
ground cinnamon & ground ginger

Pick over and rinse the cranberries and tip them into a medium sized sauce pan without drying them. Put on a lowish heat and cover with a lid. Simmer gently until the fruit has mostly popped but is not mushy. Shake the pan rather than stir it. It takes about ten to fifteen minutes to reach this stage.
Stir in granulated sugar to taste. This is hard to judge, so start off with about 2 tablespoons and add more if needed. Cranberries are very tart but you can get a milder batch so you need to be aware of that. The sugar causes the fruit to release juice and this is why no extra water is needed. Don't return the pan to the heat or the sugar might catch and burn. YUK.

Stir very gently and gradually the sauce will thicken and it is here that you add the port, the orange juice and rind and the merest whisper of cinnamon and ginger if you want.
Pot up into warm sterilised jars.

This is pleasant enough to eat in a sandwich on its own, but if you want to make it more like a chutney and sometimes I do then add half a red onion that has been super finely chopped and gently fried in a little butter.

Dry felting

Sounds awful doesn't it? Like some sort of digusting disease that sheep invent, but no. Honestly, what a place the Guild is. Just as I get the hang of spinning and accustom myself to this terrible addiction, then I discover blogging about it which has its own peculiar charm, especially considering that no one reads this! And then I go to a dry felting workshop, completely unexpectedly as it turns out, and find yet more fibrous fun to fiddle with. I tell you only a heroin addict gets more fun from a needle than I do at the moment. Yuk. Bad taste or wot? (Never mind the hour is late and its staying in.) Get some merino top, jab it with a felting needle, keep yer fingers out the way and the world's your bowl of Uncle Robert.

So far I've done numerous flowers in varying colours and levels of success,


one Xmas tree, several Xmas puddings,




a mutant cat and a rodent of some kind that might be either a squirrel or a chipmunk if I could figure out what either one looked like.



Oh I've also done the Geoff Capes of the robin world. This lad is BIG... for a robin that is.
(Neither he, the xmas tree nor the mutant cat lasted long, they might have been big but not tough enough to stand up to Lily)

Totally unconnected but interesting enough to consider before going to sleep: What would you prefer, the ability to fly or the ability to time travel?
Just when I think I've reached a preference, the other one waves at me seductively. I really can't decide.

Announcement!! DAH DAHH!!!

Can't get near the computer because V is creating a website for Derry and Sara, but want to announce that the ruby wool for V's Crimbo jumper is done at last! Fanfare, trumpets, applause, elephant parade and all that jazz. Now that you know that, sleep well dear ones

Out to Lunch

Well, its just five past nine in the morning and already its shaping up to an odd day. It's wet, cold and in V's pungently expressed words "It's bleedin' 'orrible out there". Still the fire is ticking over nicely and I don't have to go out to Steph's until 11.30 and even then I'm having lunch cooked for me. I'll probably take my mum's pressie with me to work on, I don't fancy lugging the wheel out in the wet.

I've spent the morning so far, writing the church's Christmas concert. I only do the words, Faith does the songs and lyrics and indeed everything else. I'd been having real difficulty getting the feel of the project this year, but I hope I have cracked it now.

I also had a candlelit bath this morning. I woke at five so that certainly allows for some "me" time. Not that I'm going to make a habit of it you understand and it was certainly relaxing enough that as yet, I don't feel sleep deprived, early days yet though I suppose.

I've also surfed around a few spinning blogs and by and large enjoyed them even if they made me feel inadequate. They were very pretty many of them with lots of photos. Oh I must get the hang of posting photos.

Well, I've more spinning to do and Rose's room needs sorting and I'm going out today so, lay on Mac Duff

The Wingham Wool Sampling Day

Name a fibre that can be spun. Go on, anything you can think of. Well, it was at Stretton Sugwas Village Hall yesterday thanks to Rugh and Allan Gough of Wingham wool. There was wool of all kinds, Merino, Sheltand (three kinds) Finn, Jacob, Gotland, all sorts. There was alpaca in at least fifteen shades, some natural, some dyed . There was a rainbow of dyed merino. Silk of every form and colour, from cocoons, tops of finest mulberry to tussah to Indian noil. Linen, jute, cotton in many stages of processing. Synthetics of the weirdest kind. There was soya bean fibre (looks like honey tussah silk and spins like it too) tencel which is a kind of cellulose and beautiful stuff, and there was milk protien fibre. I kid thee not. I took a sample but I haven't have time to spin it yet.

The day went so quickly what chatting to the members of Hereford Guild and cups of tea, lunch, a stroll around the churchyard and spinning up free samples , I was in a little spot of paradise.

After all my Christmas spinning is over, I want to make myself a grey wrap if possible so I wanted to try out specific fibres to get a nice thick, soft, lofty yarn. I had though about alpaca because fellow spinner, Birdie made herself a lovely scarf in cream alpaca and it looked very luxurious. But after trying the grey I thought it was slightly too hairy and not really that soft even if spun up quite thickly, and it shed worse than my cat. No. So tried a blend of wool, alpaca and silk which sounded promising and it was exactly the right texture but rather too expensive to buy enough to make a wrap so then at last I found a funny top of jacob wool that looked like an everton mint and it spun like butter. Sold.

What else did I get?
Lots of dyed merino, I needed some more cerise to finish off Aunty Heu's shawl and I bagged up some bits and bobs of bright merino to felt with Rose and sew on the new curtains for her room. I think I'l make a few flowers to embellish Mum's pressie too.

Some tussah silk to ply with the Welsh black and silk blend that I worked up last year and has been sitting in my attic waiting for when I can steel myself to weave once more. But then I thought, well its going to have a long wait so I may as well crochet it and use the stuff rather than wasting quite a pretty yarn.

And my frivolous purchase was a batt of wool and silk that I have no project in mind for - which is always fatal.But it was such a fab colour, a mix of pinks and lilacs in wool blended with white silk. It looks like turkish delight. I had a little go at spinning some up but the yarn did not do the cloudy loveliness of the batt any justice at all, so I thought that I would take it to the dry felting workshop that the guild is running next Saturday and see what it turns into. I have never tried dry felting and have no idea what the process is but I hope it will be suitable.

soooo pretty

I also bought some camel down to draft into a roving and ply with a really thin yarn to make something fancy. The colour of camel down is not appealing. If I was to be charitable I might call it toffee, but I'm not usually charitable when it comes to brown. However, the feel of the fibre is comparable to cashmere and it is half the price. And I thought once it is made up and some brightly coloured felt flowers are sewn on it will soon cheer up.

And that is about it really I picked up a lot of little scraps for sampling later so I can order more of the fibre in the future which is really the point of the day. But I didn't look at the felting machine and I didn't get a nostepinne (balling stick - cheaper by far than a balling machine) and I resisted the angelina fibres too. As it was I spent quite enough considering Christmas is only around the corner. Which reminds me, I must get on with V's ruby wool. To paraphrase Tom Jones "I think I better spin now". See ya.

Get the Mulled wine out Mother, I'm freezing

Cold, cold, cold. The wind is whipping down the valley and slicing right through anyone who gets in its way. Back from a lovely coffee morning with Sharon from church and snuggled up in front of a blazing wood fire with Lily and Eden munching on buttered pasta and ham with fried aubergines Yum. Brambly Hedge is on the video - The Secret Stair and the mice are tucking into their mid winter feast and I am just starting to thaw out. My feet are tingling. Thought I'd do a spot of blogging before my cup of tea and onto the work of the day.

Its a mulled wine and chestnut evening tonight if I am any judge. I think we'll have lamb koftas and savoury rice with the last of the aubergine dressed in tumeric. Chestnuts and mulled wine to fill up any gaps left over with some toasted marshmallows for something sweet. Lovely.

Recipe for Mulled Wine
I have perfected this recipe over many years and I think it is as close to perfect as I'm ever going to get anything

Bottle of inexpensive red wine. ( I use the French table wine from Tescos but the Bulgarian cabernet sauvignon is good too

1 orange, sliced into half inch slices, dont use the top or bottom slice as there is too much pith in proportion to flesh and pith makes it taste bitter. (I will resist the urge to make any further comment here)

Brandy or port or sherry in order of preference. If you want to make falling down water then use all three. Fill a large mug half full with chosen plonk - Tesco's own tawny port is lovely for this - and top up to full with water. Add another mug of water or else you'll be asleep by eight.

Soft brown sugar to taste. I use about 1 or 2 tablespoons. Don't use too much or else it will start to taste medicinal, weird I know but there it is.

5 cloves
1 large cinnamon stick. Tap the stick very gently with a wooden spoon. It releases the scent of the spice into the wine.
1 decent sized piece of whole dried ginger root. This can be difficult to get hold of. I got mine in a health food shop in Aberystwyth, Do not be tempted to use powdered ginger, it clouds the wine and it hangs around on the tongue too. If you cant get it whole dried, use fresh but then make it a large piece.

Put all the ingredients in a large sauce pan and heat very gently until steam starts to curl slowly from the pan. Strain and serve in heat proof glasses.

DON'T DRINK THIS AND DRIVE AS IT IS STRONG STUFF!

Roasted chestnuts are the desired accompaniment with this but gingerbread is good too.

Right, I'm off to the kitchen to make some serious comfort food.

Puritan collar shawl

I liked the puritan collar shawl so much and it eventually worked out to be quite simple once I'd got the hang of it that I decided to make another one for V's aunt. I found a brilliant cerise yarn very chunkily spun in a single and away to go.

Pattern for Puritan collar shawl
With chunky yarn and 15mm hook, ch as long as you want the shawl to be from elbow to elbow. I did about 35 ch.
Foundation row: 1 dc into back of each ch.
Row 2: * ch 3, miss 1 dc, dc into next dc, rep from * to end.
Row 3: * ch 3, dc into 3ch space, rep from * to end.

These two rows form the pattern (very simple isn't it? Barely a pattern at all really)

Work this for 4 or 5 rows depending on how wide you want the shawl to be. Take into consideration the breath of the shoulders that are going underneath and be adaptable. With this pattern, an error does not really matter because if the work has to be undone, it works back up so amazingly quickly

For example, my sister is very slight, I used a fine spun yarn, plied double, with a 10mm hook and the result was light and cobwebby. Aunty Heu is a far sturdier gal and needs something with a bit of weight to it, hence thicker gauge yarn and 15mm hook, change width according to recipient but the premise stays the same
I find undoing very disheartening and have decided that from now on, chunky and quick is the only way to be.
The most important thing however, is to be flexible with the work. Perfectionism and I do not get on. If its an pretty colour and it is soft to touch, preferably warm as well then I am happy enough. That said, ask me about the cashmere scarf I worked for my brother in law. It was all the above and the stiches were not mutilated at all but what in the unspun fibre appeared to be a soft cocoa brown, turned out in a worked up scarf to be a desperately awful khaki or as the Welsh say "cachi" which translates as a crude word for poo.

Anyway, back to the pattern.
By now shawl should be about 36 inches long and about 6 inches wide. Break off yarn and count in to the 5th 3ch sp. Start work from here in pattern rows. Continue in row until you reach the 5th 3 ch sp from end and stop there. Work only those few middle stitches for another 6 rows. break off yarn and work in ends.
You could if you like work a contrasting colour round the edge in dc.

It should now look like one half of a bardot style cropped, short sleeved top. I'll see if I can put a picture of mine in for you to compare

Catching up

Oh my gosh, have I been busy or what. I don't wanna brag or nuthin but I'm a raging ball of wild fur.
Yes I've finally managed to get to see Brother Bear and I want Koda. Any way, got the threading hooks done for the guild AGM, very pretty they were too. Wanted to take a photo but lost the camera - found now but hooks are gone to various homes at the bring and buy.

I have gone banannas with the spinning and crochet. Sooo happy to have finished Rose's amethyst jumper,

Finished Lily's poncho, ran out of wool and had to order more from Winghams. Still haven't had time to spin that up because I was wrestling with a cow of a pattern for shawl for Lady Grace. In the end I gave up and rehacked it ala Siani. It looks umm... individual now. More a puritan collar than shawl but light enough for bed wear which is where it will be used I presume.
Lady Grace has a lovely house and she keeps it immaculate but it is plentifully supplied with draughts. I did her a little Juliet cap to go with. I hope she'll spot the irony. You never know.

Its a lovely yarn mind. Merino, cashmere, a little silk and a touch of angora for texture, all in cream and it is superbly light but warm. I want one myself but you know how it is. I haven't made anything for myself just yet.

I'm getting there on the ruby wool for V's Christmas jumper. He's a bit disgruntled that I havent covered more ground with it and I thought I would have had it all spun up by now but I reckon there is only about 200g to go now.

And best of all Oh frabjous day, calloo, callay! there is a sampling day by Wingham in Hereford this Saturday. Stretton Sugwas (I kid thee not, where do the English get these names from?) village hall 10 am til 4 pm and I'm a happy bunny. Okay so Hereford isn't exactly a hop skip and a jump from Neath but eighty miles is a near neighbour in the Outback. I must hoover my skip of a car.