Home sweet home

Gosh, well, this week was quite busy really. I went away for work on Sunday evening and returned home Wednesday evening. It's so nice to be home. Don't you find that nowhere is quite as good as home? So nice to sleep in my own bed and I missed DH lots. Home is brill:-)

While I was away this plant popped into flower on our driveway and I thought it rather pretty. Is it Cow Parsley?

In other news the hens are coming along nicely. They are getting feathers and are getting the hang of generally being hens. There has been flapping wings, running about and a little bit of "hen talk". DH reports that they have started following him when he goes past their enclosure to go up to the gararge plus they are kind of getting the hang of going into their house when it starts to get dark, but really they need a bit more practice. No eggs yet but it's early days and they need to concentrate on getting feathers and putting on weight.
There are three...it's just that I was unable to get all of them in shot together!

 Also, yesterday we had our first carrots out of the veggie patch....look....arn't they pretty?

There are plenty more still in the garden.
These went into a rabbit and cider stew half of which is in the freezer and half of which is in the fridge in preperation for weekday dinners.

 

The Woodland Shawl is trundling onwards....ever onwards. It seems to be taking a while but it's an enjoyable knit so I'm plugging away at it:-) I'ts a good project for boring hotel rooms and it will be coming along with me again during the next week as I will be away for three nights. Knitting......it keeps me sane!

Maybe Winter is coming

Today the weather is not nice at all - rain and wind - ugh:-(
Maybe Winter is coming.
Look......


..................not very nice, brrr!.

The hens are hiding in their little house away from the wind and rain, poor things!

On the knitting front, though, there has been some progress!
Oh yes:-) I am getting on with my Woodland Shawl and it is growing...slowly. The yarn is just right for it (thank you Ali:-)) all lovely and green...mmmmm. Green is definitely my favorite colour.

Here it is on the hearth rug - sorry not a very good picture but you can see that I have completed four or five pattern repeats.

I have added to the width by adding three pattern repeats to the original pattern; so instead of casting on 89 stitches I have cast on 125 to make it wider as I have two skeins of yarn instead of one as in the Thifty Knitters original.
And now...for some close ups......

and


Also, this arrived in the post earlier in the week.

It's a bunch of sock yarn from the UK Blankiemania Group on Ravelry for knitting the "Sock Yarn Blanket" by Shelly Kang. I have named mine the "Insanity Blanket" because it's just going to take an insane amount of time to complete it....each little square is about 3.5 x 3.5 inches! and I'm making this for a DOUBLE bed!

Anyway, the idea is that the bag of yarn gets posted from one group member to another and each member takes out the yarn they like and replaces it with an equal number of balls/skeins of yarn from their own stash of sock yarn. The idea is that we don't all have to knit 100s of pairs of socks to generate the left over yarn needed for the blanket or, indeed, spend a fortune on buying whole skeins of our own sock yarn and it's a really good way of amassing a varied collection of yarn for your blanket.
As you can see my blanket is still rather small! but some people in the group are on to their second and even third blankets!


I intend to knit some more after I have completed the Woodland Shawl; I guess it's just a project that ticks along in the background really.

New friends

We have new friends!

Three little brown hens. They are a bit bald at the moment as they have just come from a battery. We collected them today from the Battery Hen Welfare Trust. On arrival at their new home they needed a little encouragement to come out of the boxes we had collected them in. Here they are exploring their new home.
















We have names for them - Miranda, Callie and Caroline but we are not sure yet who is who! but I'm sure they will tell us.

After a cursory look around two went straight into the house and have been there ever since while the third who is much braver came out to explore just a little bit.

Normal service will resume shortly!

Oh my, I have been so slack with this blogging malarkey!
So, apologies, I am still here honestly, I have just been a tad busy lately what with friends, family and work and also:

Gardening
The garden is now winding down for autumn but we have had a fantastic crop of sweetcorn and runner beans and the chard is still going strong. Most of the tomatoes stayed green and we didn't get many, only about 4lbs. So I made green tomato chutney with the green ones and we have eaten the red ones all up....mmmmm yummy.

Unfortunately the squash never got round to making any squash, not sure what that was all about. There are five plants, loads of leaves, loads of flowers and NO squash! humph! if anyone out there has any ideas on what we did wrong I would love to know as I want to try again next year. The courgettes on the other hand... well they made up for the distinct lack of squash by pumping out loads and they are still going strong with little ones still. I suppose they will keep on courgetting (hey, new word!) up until we get a frost?
I also got a second row of chard and one of beetroot in and a row of pak choi. The carrots and the first row of beetroot need to come up over the following few weeks so I'm looking forward to that.
On the flower front, the sunflowers have been lovely, all happy and cheery as they look out over the garden wall at passersby. I will definitely be growing them again next year.
Also, great news, our Parish is going to get some allotments; so exciting as we currently don't have any. The Chairman said that "land has been identified" and "negotiations are ongoing" so hopefully there will be space for little'ol me to have, maybe, 1/2 an allotment to start with? Then I can grow DH loads of sweetcorn....he likes that idea, lol:-

Cooking and Brewing
Lots of cooking has been occurring as well. Well, with all the courgettes, sweetcorn and beans! So, as well as the green tomato chutney, mentioned above, I have also made more onion marmalade, some courgette salsa and a load of blackberry & elderberry wine.

The onion marmalade and salsa went down very well with our lovely friends from Devon who we went and spent a weekend with during September. If fact the salsa is so good that out of the six 2 pint jars I made we have only one unopened jar left which tells me that I must plant more courgettes next year!


The wine should be ready for the Solstice Dinner Party and should make approximately eighteen bottles, not that we will be drinking it ALL that evening you understand!. It has calmed down now as it has been in the demijohns for about one month. Prior to that it was exceptionally lively so it was just as well it was in the brewing bucket! otherwise it would have been all over the kitchen floor like a pink monster! Mind you it made the kitchen smell lovely:-). It will need racking soon to separate it from the sediment that is forming at the bottom of the demis, probably next weekend? we'll see.

Knitting
Well, not much knitting has been happening although when I went up to stay with my folks in September I did take my latest knitting project - The Thrifty Knitters Woodland Shawl, which I am knitting in Olive Grove from the wonderful Yaffle Yarn (created by the supremely talented Ali).



While I was there my mum took a shine to my Garter Yoke Cardigan so we bought the pattern online and went to her LYS where she picked out a contrasting yarn to make the yoke as she already had some lovely yarn for the rest of the cardy. For me, well, being in a yarn store was just too much of a temptation so.....I bought some green aran so that I can knit another GYC for myself.

Photography
On the photography front, in order to try to get to grips with the finer attributes of my DSLR and achieve a level of bravery that means that I can take pictures without the auto functions I have been going to photography evening classes (although they don't call them that anymore). It's been fun, and I'm learning stuff! so I am hoping that my skills will improve and you may (or may not!) notice a difference, lol!

So that's kind of what I have been up to lately. Ill be back in a bit, honest! take care and love to you all, Em:-)

Getting on....

Ok, so today I have been getting on and doing stuff.

The house is all hoovered and clean and all the washing is done. I have also made some jars of red onion marmalade. These are popular as gifts - friends and family seem to like it so it must be good! Here are some pictures of the marmalade cooking.............

and the finished article............

I also made a lemon tray bake ............



mmmmmmmmmm.........cake:-)

(05.09.09 - edited to add link to Lemon Tray Bake recipie)

Sadness

We are very sad here at the moment.
Our lovely hens Meredith and Isabel are no longer with us. Isabel died on Thursday morning and Meredith on Friday morning. We don't know why this happened, it was very sudden but we think that it was probably a combination of underlying conditions associated with their former lives as battery hens.

Here are a few of the pictures I took of them recently having fun in the sunshine.
If you click on the picture it should take you to an album.

Meredith & Isabel

Dyeing to knit...peas anyone?

Hi there,
Recently I went on a dyeing workshop run by Jeni from Fyberspates with about ten other folk from the knittyverse. We had a great time playing with wool and colour and amongst other things I dyed up some yarn in green (my favorite colour) and called it "peas!"

So, I have finished the first thing knit with yarn I dyed myself - yay!
Here is my "Peas Hat" knit in the round on 4mm cirs. It's kind of my own pattern but really simple as I sort of made it up as I went along.