Christmas Fruit Mince..

It's December already, can't believe we are so close to Christmas and I feel so unorganized!

So to get me in the Christmas mood I made mincemeat (or fruit mince as it's known as here). I've made it before and blogged about it but I have, for the last 2 years, used a Mary Berry recipe that was in one of her books that I've had for many years but never really looked at. Again, this uses butter instead of suet and there are far less apples to peel, core and chop with this recipe.

Ingredients:
Makes 4 x 370g jars

175g currants
175g sultanas
175g raisins
175g dried cranberries
100g mixed peel
1 small cooking apple, peeled, cored and finely chopped
125g butter, chopped into cubes
225g light brown soft sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
finely grated rind and juice of 1 lemon.
100ml rum, brandy or sherry

You will need to use a large pan. Melt the butter over a gentle heat then put in all the other ingredients except the alcohol.

Simmer very gently for 10 minutes then allow to cool completely.

Stir in the alcohol.

Spoon into sterilised jars, seal tightly, label and store in a cool dark place.

Sunday Baking...

A Sticky Orange Marmalade Cake.

Today's recipe is for a very classic British cake, it's essentially a Victoria sponge cake with the addition of marmalade. The topping is what takes it to the next level.

But first a few tips ~ using Seville Orange chunky marmalade, if you can get it, makes a big difference - the regular orange marmalade just makes the cake overly sweet. I make my own Seville Orange marmalade but I have seen it available in New Zealand, usually on the International isle in the supermarket. Duerr's and Frank Coopers are both good brands. Seville Oranges have a very bitter but strong orange taste.

The cake will seem to brown quite quickly, use a sheet of baking foil laid loosely over the top of the tin if you feel it's starting to go too brown. The cake is supposed to be a nice deep brown, but not burnt.

Whenever I'm baking I try to fill the oven as I'm too Yorkshire to put it on for a single item, that's why I often make 2 things at a time. It's no trouble to double the recipe and freeze the second cake or gift it, or bake something else at the same time that requires the same oven temperature. But that's just me!

When beating the butter and sugar together, beat it for a few minutes longer than you think it needs, this gives a very light and airy cake. The cake will rise up while baking into a high dome, but will then fall flat again (which is a sign that it's almost cooked).

For the Cake:
175g unsalted butter, softened
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs at room temperature, beaten
175g Self Raising Flour
1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons chunky Seville Orange Marmalade
2 tablespoons milk

To finish:
3 tablespoons Seville Orange Marmalade
50g Icing Sugar, sifted
Water to mix

Preheat the oven to 180 degC, gas mark 4

Grease a 9"cake tin and line the base with non stick baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light, fluffy and pale in colour.

Gradually beat in the eggs a little at a time, beating well after each addition. Add 1 tablespoon of flour with the last of the egg.

Sift the remaining flour with the baking powder and salt and gently fold into the cake mixture with a large metal spoon, then gently stir in the marmalade and milk.

Spoon the mixture into the tin and smooth the top as evenly as you can.

Bake for 50 - 60 minutes or until nicely browned and firm to the touch. remove from the oven and run a flat bladed knife around the inside of the tin to loosen. Leave to cool for 15 minutes then carefully turn out onto a wire rack to cool, right side up.

Warm the marmalade (this can be done in the microwave on low power) and gently brush it over the top of the cake. Allow the cake to cool completely before icing:

Add a little water to the icing sugar and mix to a smooth and runny consistency. Drizzle it over the cake allowing it to run down the sides a little. Leave it to set.

This cake will keep in an airtight container for up to 5 days, but I bet it doesn't last that long.

Fast Food.....

I was a child of the '70's and grew up in a small village in Yorkshire where there was no such thing as fast food - as we know it today that is. No high street burger chains, no deep fried chicken shops, no pizza parlours - there was a fish and chip shop and in later years a Chinese take away both of which were a rare treat. Today fast food is everywhere you turn, it's often cheaper to eat out than to cook healthy nutritious meals at home. Food full of bad fats, chemicals and additives and heaven knows what else.

Today I needed fast food ~ after a long day at work and coming home ravenous with only myself to cook for:

Ruffled eggs with asparagus and wholegrain toast.

Preparation time: 1 minute
Cooking time:  4 minutes

No chemicals or additives.
Eggs from my free range hens, asparagus from my chemical/spray free vege garden. The butter on the toast is homemade cultured butter.
That's my version of fast food!

Princess Baby Bonnet

I finished the baby bonnet, but I ran out of yarn and didn't have enough to do a knitted tie cord so I made a twisted cord instead:

The bonnet is knit flat in one piece and shaped with short rows at the bottom edge.
The back of the head is then worked in two halves and grafted together along the centre back. The pattern is A bonnet for Every Princess.
It took 27g of yarn.

Oaty Caramel Squares

Lovely little treats that taste like a flapjack with gooey caramel through them, very naughty but extremely nice!

Recipe
Base:
1 Cup plain flour
1/2 cup Self Raising flour
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
3/4 cup soft brown sugar
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 egg, beaten
150g butter, melted and cooled

Topping:
100g butter
1 can condensed milk
2 tablespoons golden syrup

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
Line a square or rectangular slice tin with non stick baking paper.

Mix all of the dry ingredients for the base together in a large bowl, then stir in the melted butter and egg. The mixture will be moist but crumbly and will hold together if you squeeze it in your hand.

Tip 3/4 of the mixture into the prepared tin and press it flat with your hand.

Put the topping ingredients into a saucepan and cook over a low heat until the butter has melted and everything is mixed together. Pour this over the oaty base then sprinkle the remaining 1/4 of the base mixture over the top. Bake for 30 mins, cool in the tin and chill before cutting into small squares.

The little baby dress is coming along well, I managed to get quite a bit of it done last night and now the hem is in sight.

A Merino Baby Dress

I cast on this cute little baby dress earlier in the week. It's to send to a dear family friend in England who is expecting a little girl later in the year. It's the second time I've knit this dress:

The dress is knit top down as you can see, the neck part is worked back and forth flat to create an opening (which later becomes a button band) that sits at the front of the dress. Halfway down the yoke is joined and is then knit in the round. The skirt section has a slight A-Line shape. I plan to finish the hem with a further stripe of the pink merino.
The pattern is Little Sister's Dress by Tora Froseth Design.




The yarn I chose for the dress is Mackenzie Merino 4 ply in natural and the pink trim is just a bit of hand dyed merino sock wool that I had left over from something else.
I hope to finish it over the weekend.

Apeldoorn Tulips are just coming into bloom in my garden. These particular ones always make me think of Keukenhof in Holland ~ which has got to be the best place in the world to see tulips. When we lived in Germany we would go to Keukenhof every Spring to see the tulip fields.


I absolutely love this time of year.

Finished Hand Spun Socks!

Finished these last night and I was going to block them, but to be honest I really don't think they need it:

See the teeny tiny ball of leftover yarn? That's 6 grams ~ I was cutting it fine but I weighed the yarn before starting (93g) and after knitting the first sock so I knew I had enough - although as I got to the toe on the second sock I did start to doubt my calculations. All came right in the end though!

No-Bake Apricot Slice

We are having another extremely windy but beautiful Spring day here in Canterbury. The lawns look like they are covered in confetti from the cherry blossom getting blown around, such a shame as the trees had just come into full bloom. Always the way with mother nature though!

However, I managed to pick a bunch of freesia before the winds flattened them, they smell so beautiful~

It's way too windy to be outdoors working in the garden (which is what I had planned on doing today), so what else is there to do except spinning, knitting and possibly a bit of baking.

I'm trying to cut down on the amount of sugar I use and eat. This recipe does have sugar in the ingredients (biscuits and condensed milk) but I don't add any sugar to the recipe and I also leave off the icing as that is almost pure sugar - instead top it with a few tablespoons of desiccated coconut which is much healthier than icing it:

Apricot Slice (the slightly healthier version)

1 250g packet super wine biscuits, or any other plain biscuit would work, roughly crushed
1/2 cup of desiccated coconut + extra for topping if required
200g condensed milk (half a can)
120g melted butter
1 cup of dried apricots, roughly chopped

A slice tin lined with non stick baking paper




Put everything into a large bowl and mix it all together. Press it into the tin, pressing down well then sprinkle the top with the extra coconut and press that onto the mixture so that it sticks on.

Chill for a minimum of 2 hours, slice into fingers and serve. If you chill it overnight the biscuits will soften nicely, if you eat it straight away it will have a bit of crunch to it.

More Hand Spun Socks!

So, do you remember this skein of sock blend yarn that I spun and dyed a while back?

I over dyed it to make it darker so I could knit it into socks for my Husband - he wouldn't wear a lighter colour:

I'm really happy how this dye job turned out, a nice semi solid deep blue.
The pattern is Simple Skyp Socks. It's a simple 2 row pattern that looks more complicated than it is.

I have seed potatoes to plant today, as much as I would love to sit here knitting socks, sadly I can't!

Finished Hand Spun Socks...

I got a wiggle on with the socks last night and got them finished off.  I soaked them for 15 minutes and gently blocked them overnight. I'm really happy with them and enjoyed the whole process:

The socks took 75g of the merino yarn. There are more of these socks in my future, I can feel it!

Handspun Socks.... Same but Different!

Carrying on from my previous post, I decided to knit socks with my hand dyed superwash merino that I fractal spun:

I'm surprised at how they have turned out, how the colours shift and that the two socks are so different yet they go together nicely as a pair.

I'm almost at the finish line with these, the yarn has been beautiful to knit with and it gives me great satisfaction knowing that a week or so ago this was a bag of undyed combed merino top and is now almost a pair of warm and smooshy socks.

I decided on plain socks as I wanted to show off the colour play rather than go for a fancy pattern. Sometimes with handspun it's best to let the fibre/yarn do all the talking ~ less is more.

Finished Sock Yarn!

While at the craft fair this morning I had the time to finish plying the superwash merino I've been spinning this week. It just needs a good soak in a warm bath and it'll be ready to knit. I'm really happy with how this colourway turned out:

340 metres of fingering weight yarn~fractal spun, it's destined to become socks.
Now the bobbins are empty I will have to decide what to spin next. I think it may have to be the purple gradient superwash!

Spinning Superwash Merino

I hand dyed a batch of superwash merino a few days ago. I love how it takes up the dye. If you were to dye some merino alongside some superwash with the same dyestock, same method, they would both come out rather differently, I know because I have done it.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a pic of the fibre before I started drafting and spinning, so here's a pic of the fibre all ready to spin:

I'm spinning this as a fractal yarn.
I split the fibre in half lengthways and spun one half of it onto one bobbin. I divided the second half into three lots lengthways and I'm now spinning those three lengths of fibre onto one bobbin, starting at the same colour every time. Then they will be plyed together for a 2 ply yarn!

The first bobbin.














On a sad note, my beautiful dog Ruby passed away yesterday.  Life already feels so strange without her presence. Ruby has been part of our family since she was 6 weeks old and she was 14 years and 9 months when she passed. A very good age for a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
Ruby and my 2 Son's grew up together. We are all so saddened by her loss. It's a case of keeping myself busy (as always).
A dog is for life, but unfortunately only for their life, not ours. We have many happy memories of her. She would have been 15 on Christmas Day 2015.

Ruby at 12 weeks old.

Ruby, photo taken yesterday morning. She passed away in the afternoon. Rest in peace my little Princess.xx

Dyeing Fibre & Yarn

I've been messing in the dye pots again:


A knitter's Paintbox, Part I
Merino Superwash High Twist Yarn
Fingering weight
Gradient dyed
Part 2 & 3 coming soon!

Nor' Wester
Merino/Bamboo 80/20 blend
150g

Purple Rain Gradient Set.
Superwash Merino
100g











The lighting in the photo's is not so good but the colours are showing pretty true to life.

I've also been busy sorting out stock, packaging alpaca fibre and dyeing a few extras for a craft fair on Saturday. I plan to take my spinning wheel and hopefully get in a couple of hours spinning time.

More Fibre & Silk & Fleece etc....

While having a sort through when looking for the Suri Alpaca fibre I found these:

65% Alpaca

15% Merino

20% Silk

135g

Beautifully soft carded fibre.

Multiple batches of silk hankies (mawata) that I dyed a very long time ago.

What a nice feeling to find things I had forgotten about as they have been sitting hidden in a box in a cupboard for so long. I've always meant to get around to having a go spinning the silk hankies ~ maybe next week.

I spent a leisurely hour in the sunshine working on the Gotland fleece. I washed it a few days ago, it was extremely dirty ~  think it had 4 or 5 scours in total. Using really hot water and some wool scour, I divided the fleece up into multiple batches of 100g or so then put it in small mesh bags. The water was filthy in the first 3 scours. I also rinsed it in hot water then laid it out to dry on an airing rack.

Afterwards I read up about Gotland fleece and found out that it felts easily and not to use hot water lol! Mine survived the washing process, but I don't agitate the fibre when washing ~ just letting it sit in the hot water for 5 minutes is enough, then lift out the bags, repeating the soaking process until the water is clean. It's now all clean, dry and ready for combing:

A few locks that I've combed to sample the fibre. Looking forward to seeing how it spins.

Spinning Suri Alpaca...

65% suri alpaca
20% hand dyed merino
15% hand dyed silk
125g

A beautiful fibre blend that I'm spinning as a fine single and will possibly 'N' ply it. The Suri and the silk both add a lovely sheen. Looking forward to finishing this one!

Vintage Yarn ~ In Pinks!

I confess that I broke the yarn diet for a second time, but I had good reason ~ a small stash of vintage yarns that crossed my path, how could I say no?:

87g of Jamieson & Smith 2ply jumper weight in the bottom cake.
94g of the same yarn in a different colour (3 cakes) and a skein of Rowan 4ply Botany. Now don't they just go so well together?

I'm surprised to find that Jamieson & Smith still produce these 2 shades of heathery pinks.





This week's spinning project is ~ black Suri alpaca blended with merino and silk, beautiful fibre. I shall post pics tomorrow.

Merino & Bamboo Fibre, Bambino, Meriboo ~ Dyeing Fibre for a Gradient Yarn

I bought some natural 80% merino 20% bamboo fibre to see what it would look like once dyed. I wanted a gradient colour scheme:

I've dyed this blend in a yarn base before but never as combed top. I'm in love, it's squishy and soft and I love the way the bamboo takes up the dye differently to the merino. I'm planning on spinning a laceweight 3 ply yarn. Really loving these pinks and purples at the moment.









Here's how I did it:
Divided the fibre into 5 x 20g lots and soaked in cold water + 2 tablespoons of white vinegar.
Mixed up some red, blue and black dyestock.
Pink = 1 teaspoon red dye
Mauve = 1 teaspoon red + 1/2 teaspoon blue
Lavender =1 teaspoon red + 1 1/2 blue
Purple = 1 teaspoon red + 2 blue + 1/4 black
Black/purple = 1 teaspoon red + 2 blue + 1 1/2 black

It's a beautifully sunny Spring Monday here in Selwyn, I even managed to get a couple of hours out in the garden - weeding, tidying and mulching, the work outside never ends whatever the time of year.  These little beauties are springing up all over the garden ~Trilliums. I love everything about these:

The colours of the Trillium inspired me to dye this Polwarth:

I mixed up the deep purple red, yellow and green to match the shades in the flower and painted it onto the fibre, once the dye had exhausted I poured on some other random colours I've had sitting around for ages, this is a great way to use up all your bits of dyestock that are lurking about. It's often surprising how the colour turns out.
This is 200g of NewZealand Polwarth, all ready for spinning into a very very colourful yarn.

Sunday Baking ~ Lady Grey Tea Loaf

A nice light and fruity tea loaf made with simple ingredients, perfect for Sunday afternoons:

Lady Grey Tea Loaf

300 ml strong black tea (lady grey/Earl Grey are nice for this)
300g mixed dried fruit (anything you have to hand, raisins, sultanas, apricots, dates, cranberries etc)
25g mixed peel
60g soft brown sugar
2 tablespoons soft butter.
2 eggs, beaten
275g plain flour + 2.5 teaspoons baking powder, sifted together
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons honey to glaze

Oven preheated to 170 deg.

First brew the tea, then pour into a pan and add the fruit. Bring to the boil then remove from the heat, stir in the sugar and butter and let it cool.

Line a loaf tin with non stick baking paper.

Add the beaten eggs to the fruit mixture. Mix together all the dry ingredients and sift into the fruit mixture, stir in gently but thoroughly, try not to overwork the mixture.

Pour into the tin, smooth the surface and bake for 50 mins- 1 hour. It will be well risen and nicely browned on top, it should feel springy in the middle when you poke it with your finger.

Leave it to cool in the tin for 30 mins then turn it out onto a cooling rack. Warm the honey and brush over the top of the cake.

It will keep in an airtight container for a week and will stay nice and moist. Delicious plain or spread with butter.

Emptying the Bobbins & Tarndie Polwarth

I spent a few hours today plying and emptying some of my bobbins, I love the feeling when I have empty bobbins. Then I finally finished the batch of Halfbred that I started such a long time ago, and plyed up the last bit of the Shetland that was left over:

Halfbred, 446grams, 1425 mtrs, hopefully a sweaters worth of yarn.

Shetland, 984 mtrs, 350 grams














My next spin (starting in about 5 minutes) is going to be this beautiful fibre that I received recently from Australia, it's Tarndie Polwarth. 100g white, 50g grey and 50g dark chocolate. I'm looking forward to spinning this and I like to spin Polwarth by putting a lot of twist into both the singles and the plying as it can poof up considerably when soaked/washed.