Winter Warmers

Brrrrrrr! Actually here in west Norfolk UK we aren't doing too badly with the weather, and today it is dry, no rain sleet or snow, but it is dull dull dull and I am COLD!!!!!!!! So food has been a great cheerer-upper, both the cooking of it and the eating of it. Also I have spent hours with a crochet-hook and yarn in my hands, hooking away like a mad woman. Some stitching too - bizarrely I am making paper-pieced hexagons. Not a lot of music playing, to be honest, just not in the mood for it. I am in the throes of post-Christmas ennui and finding it difficult to do anything which I'm not feeling passionate about at the moment.

So, here we go with some photographs of warming activities.

A wondrous smoked fish risotto. I used the poaching liquid - milk - to cook the rice, a bit unusual I guess for risotto - but it was luscious!

This is a stuffed and roasted pork loin. Well, two pork loins actually. The recipe was one I pinched after we watched the Hairy Bikers Comfort Food episode on television. It's a bit of a faff, and not something to whip up every weekend, bit it was delicious, went a long long way, and really is a bit of a show-stopper. Great for serving up to a bunch of friends!

A stuffing of fresh white breadcrumbs, chopped onion, stem ginger, garlic, eating apple and some of the syrup from the stem ginger jar really sets the very lean tenderloin off. I served it with a sauce made from the pan juices, ginger wine, and cream. No low-fat rubbish in this house!

What's off my hook?

This lovely (though I say it myself!) chevron shawl has been a delight to make. The pattern just tootles along, very relaxing and soothing. I made it with three 50 gram balls of DK  - pretty fine DK . Then I thought no, it will work better as a shawl than a scarf, so hooked another three balls. I love the colours in this variegated yarn, which is Rico Creative Melange DK in Pastel Mix. 

What's ON my hook?

I'm using up all the left-over Stylecraft yarn in my basket - I have a LOT of it! I'm making oodles of these solid granny squares and stitching together not randomly but not too concerned with clashes of colour . It's a great little  "as you go along" project, when you just want to do something un-challenging and you can make a square in no time… they all add up. I've no idea when this will be finished, and I don't really care. 

What's NOT on my hook?

Well, I blush to admit…. after my great enthusiasm to get cracking on the Moorland Blanket from Lucy art  Attic24, that I haven't begun mine yet. I had such a battle doing the tension swatch ; the actual pattern wasn't the problem, but the starts were weird, and I went wrong each time, so my finishes were incorrect too. The middle bits were OK because I fudged it, but I can't start the blanket in this manner, I need to crack the entire pattern first. I note that MANY people have been frogging row after row of the blanket - that's a lot of frogging! So not just me. Lucy assures us that she did too, and that the pattern gets easier as you go on, and I'm sure that's true. But I can't raise the enthusiasm to get going knowing `I am probably going to have to be ripping it out , maybe more than once, before it clicks. I feel very guilty. And I have to say I have NEVER had a problem with any of  Lucy's patterns before, she writes an excellent tutorial. No idea why this one is so difficult.

What's on my sewing table?

Well, I had no intentions of making another quilt. And certainly not a hexagon one. But I caught sight of some of my gorgeous fabric which I had been 'saving' for a special project (unspecified!). And I thought - why am I hanging on to these fabrics? At my age I need to be using it up! And stitching away at a few hexies really appealed, you can do a few , or work at the different stages, cutting paper templates, cutting fabric shapes, stitching a few together….. and so on. Very undemanding I guess. So the fabric I picked up was the Kaffe Fasset collection, and my even older Liberty Lawns collection which I've had knocking about for about 25 years. I've supplemented these fabrics with others of similar pattern. It was so liberating cutting into them!

I had a small amount of the bright roses fabric so cut six hexies from this, and made six granny's flower garden blocks. However, I didn't want that to be the dominant pattern in the quilt, so have softened the effect by attempting a random colour-wash effect around the granny patches. NO IDEA how this will pan-out, as I have no plan. But using these gorgeous fabrics is such a joy, it is really warming me up!

Working in these projects has brought lots of colour into my daily life, which is something I crave. Now I just need to find a sudden passion for exercise and I might feel a bit fitter. Until next time!

Crochety!

The sun streaming through the windows encouraged me out into the garden to take some autumn photographs - clogged up with leaves as it is! Still a few summer herbs, and good old geranium. The bird house gets used as a perching post, but not for nesting, and the large bug hotel appears empty, but the one Jim made  has three or four residents I think.

     Hanging on to my parsley for grim death! Of course, when the frost hits, that will be it for the year.

           I'm hoping the chards - white and rainbow, will see us through winter, along with the kale.

                                Back of the cottage in the late afternoon autumn sunshine.

                                              Really pleased the bug house is being used!

                                                   And still the cranesbill survives!

I've really got back into crochet the last month or so; perhaps it's the weather! Lovely to cosy up with a basket of gorgeous wool and a crochet hook when the evenings are dark and the temperature drops. Colour-schemes buzzing round my head all the time.

I'm very excited that my wool has arrived for Lucy's (Attic 24)  latest  "Moorland" blanket, though it has to sit on the back burner until January when she begins the Crochet Along pattern on her blog. I haven't even opened the bag in case I'm tempted to dive in and use the wool!

I do have a fair amount of Stylecraft yarn which I've just boosted with a small delivery, in order to begin my own latest blanket which I am calling "OCEAN". I'm using the Lucy pattern from her Cosy Stripe Blanket, but have come up with my own colour scheme. A little like her Moorland idea, I used the natural colours of an outdoors scene. I wanted to depict the colours from the grassy dunes, down to the beach, and into the ocean. I haven't used a photograph, and my colours repeat as a block rather than as Lucy has done hers following the vertical striations of the photograph. (If that sounds skew-iff,  I mean the striations are horizontal in a vertical context.) I think that's what I mean anyway.

This is my "Cosy Stripe" blanket, using Lucy's pattern and colour scheme. This is our favourite of all the Lucy blankets I've made. It works up very quickly and soothingly.

OK so this is MY colour scheme for "OCEAN" It begins with four shades of green, depicting the grassy dunes, the sea-buckthorn, samphire and other seashore grasses. Then comes the dry sand at the top of the beach, followed by the damper sand closer to the sea. Then comes the almost white surf, and four more shades of blue as the water gets deeper and further away from the shore.  This 'colour repeat' is only 22 rows whereas Lucy's moorland depicts the entire vertical slice of her photograph, and is one single scheme with no repeat. (although colours are repeated obviously).

Here I'm just beginning the first repeat. I love all these shades, so am excited afresh each time I change colour! "OCEAN" is intended as a gift for someone special, but no more about that just yet.

As a break from the blanket I'm using up all those little balls of left-overs to make solid granny squares. NO IDEA what I'm going to do with them, but they are building up nicely into a little pile; I'll just keep going with them until I have sufficient to do something with.

Each little ball makes roughly four or five squares. More left-overs will accrue, so obviously this is an on-going project.

                   More greens required - and some shades of red too, I think. Time will tell.

Rummaging through the sewing room, I found a basket of multicoloured granny squares which I began years and years ago - I'd forgotten all about them. They are a pretty disparate crowd, but I have thoughts about adding a couple of rows and pulling them together with one or two colours, so they will blend more easily. Again, no real idea of the outcome, but there will be enough of them for a throw.

The light in my sewing room wasn't the best when I took this shot; the squares are much brighter than they appear here. And of course, greens never seem to come out properly on the blog, for some reason!

No other stitchery going on at the moment, I am obsessing about crochet - and you know me - one obsession at a time! But of course I am cooking and reading, and even doing a little gentle walking! Yes! Me! I hope you are all finding something  lovely to obsess about and are enjoying yourselves.

EDIT :  APOLOGY!!!!  Whilst publishing the comments for the previous post, I inadvertently clicked on the "DELETE" instead of "PUBLISH" but I cannot for the life of me remember whose comment it was. Please, if you commented and haven't seen it posted, let me know - I never delete a comment and would hate someone to think I have whisked their kind comment away without publishing it!