Welcome to Oscar...

Oscar has arrived, he's a Blue Agouti English Angora rabbit ~ he's so cuddly and absolutely gorgeous!

Look at all the beautiful soft fibre that he's growing for me to spin. 

Bottled Black Boy Peaches

It's black boy peach season, they are beautiful eaten fresh when perfectly ripe but to be honest I prefer them cooked as I think cooking them takes them to another level. So, out come the preserving jars, pop them in a low oven to sterilise them at 120 degrees.

I make a basic syrup, 1 cup of sugar to 5 cups of water as I don't like them too sweet. Melt the sugar into the water over a low heat then bring to the boil, reduce the heat so there's just a gentle simmer.

While that's happening get on with preparing your peaches. When you have a lot of fruit this can become quite tedious and time consuming. For peaches that I'm going to bottle I have a cunning method: slice the peach in half around it's natural crease and twist apart, leave the skins on, remove the stone (which comes away very easily in this variety). Once you have done a good amount carefully put them into the sugar syrup. Cook for about 3-4 minutes on a low heat (they still need to feel slightly firm, don't overcook them or they will turn to mush). Scoop out the fruit and place it into your sterile jars (the wide necked jars are much easier to fill), the skins will slip off easily as you are doing this if you prefer them skinless. Ladle the hot syrup over the fruit in the jars filling to the brim, then run a knife down the edge of the jars to release any trapped air bubbles. Top up with the liquid to the jar brim again if needed then seal the jars. When they cool wipe them over with a damp cloth to remove any stickiness. Easy peasy.

I made 8 jars of bottled peaches and 2 jars of sauce. The sauce is made by cooking chopped peaches with 50% sugar, so if you have 500g chopped weight of peaches use 250g of sugar and the juice of 1 lemon, cook gently until the sugar dissolves then add 1 cup of water, keep cooking until the fruit is soft. Use a stick blender to puree the mixture then bring to the boil. Remove from the heat and pour carefully into sterile bottles/jars. This is lovely poured over ice cream or greek yoghurt.




Now I'm waiting for the rest of these to fully ripen so I can make jam and chutney:

A Finished Sweater at Last!

I'm feeling very pleased with myself today as finally the lace weight sweater is finished:

Yarn: Malbrigo lace
Colour: Azul Profundo
Pattern: Inspired by ZickZack tunic
Finished sweater weighs 130g (just over 2.5 skeins)
If I were to knit this again I would make the armholes deeper instead of using the measurement on the pattern, it will block a bit larger in that area but I think to be more visually in proportion I should have made the armholes 8" instead of 7" otherwise I'm happy with it ~ it fits perfectly and is beautifully light and warm. It was a lovely easy knit and I did just a regular round neck instead of the cowl neck.




I've also finished all the knitting on my Bean cotton sweater, but just need to seam it together and finish off the neck edging:

Hoping to get this completed over the weekend.














I started knitting another pair of Simple Skyp socks for my hubby:

Yarn is John Q Designer Earth Wear (85% recycled Possum Merino blends & 15% nylon.
Colour is Silver Grey.
Haven't used this particular yarn before, I try to stay away from possum blends as you end up covered in dog like hair when knitting with it. This isn't too bad though.







Then there's this bit of spinning I squeezed in, possibly the best I've ever done:

Corriedale.
'N' ply
white/natural
270mtrs
88 grams

In Loving Memory.....

I got the sad news last week that my favourite Auntie had passed away, she was the person who taught me a lot about knitting. Although my Mum and Nan had shown me the basics of knitting at a very young age it was my Auntie Jean who later showed me the important stuff, like how to turn the heel on a sock, the different methods of casting on and off, how to work a saddle shoulder, how to make a neat buttonhole, and how to neatly seam and hand wash hand knitted garments. Under her tutelage I had the best dressed dolls in the village, all kitted out in hand knit sweaters and aran dresses. She had worked for most of her life in the woolen mills in Yorkshire and was such a great knitter - she also taught me about different fibres, warp and weft and worsted and tweed. She was by far the most patient person I have ever known and I've been remembering all of the wonderful times, in days gone by that I had spent with her. Just the two of us going on day trips on the train in school holidays, to just sitting together in front of the fire drinking tea and watching old black and white movies on Winter afternoons.

I saw her on my last visit to England and spent the day with her, it was like I had never been away and although her hair was a little greyer she hadn't changed a bit but told me the sad news that she could no longer knit due to chronic arthritis in her hands. She was still the happy, friendly loving Auntie that she had always been. As I left her house that day I knew that it would possibly be the last time I would ever see her. This special lady has always been and still is my inspiration. No matter what I'm working on I always remember some little tip or trick she had showed me.


It's been a strange year so far in that I feel like I've hit a wall with my knitting since way before Christmas. I just seem to have lost my mojo, and haven't been able to do any knitting or decide what I want to knit next so I've let it all slip by the wayside, after deciding it's easier not to do any, at all.

Then a strange series of coincidences occurred:
A few days ago an email landed in my in box from one of the many knitting/craft sites I subscribe to. I usually just delete them as I can't be bothered reading most of them, they are invariably glorified adverts, I don't know why but something made me open one of them. It contained a downloadable knitting pattern that I liked the look of and immediately printed off. Then looked at the yarn it used, it was DK cotton, I don't normally knit with cotton, but I remembered that my husband had brought me back some packs of Sublime Organic cotton from England recently. I went to the cupboard and pulled out the first one I saw, it was a soft green, the colour is called Bean. Well how strange ~ because my nickname for my Auntie Jean was Auntie Bean.

I cast on and after working the first panel I realised that it was the exact same pattern as a very special cardigan that she had knitted for me when I was 10 years old. I can remember every detail of that cardigan like it was yesterday, it was for a very special occasion and matched a gorgeous dress I had, the colour of the wool was called crushed raspberry. I remember when she was knitting it and I would call in to see her every day after school to check on it's progress lol. I wore that cardigan until it literally fell apart. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part but I feel that Auntie knew I was stuck in a major knitting rut - so she sent me the knitting pattern, the yarn and the happy memories.

More Spinning

Well it's already the last day of the month, I haven't been doing much in the way of crafting really but I have been doing a little spinning:

Fibre: Ashford's 70% merino 30% Alpaca
Colour: Rosehip
2 ply yarn
4 ply weight finished yarn
skein: 92g/ 355mtrs

Fibre: Halfbred combed top
Colour: Light Fawn
3 ply ('N' Plied)
Sport weight finished yarn
Skein: 254g/565mtrs

More Jam Making....

It's the1st day of February already, I haven't had any time to blog about anything for the past couple of weeks. My husband has had to return to England at very short notice as there's been a sudden, unexpected death in the family, so I'm left here holding the fort by myself.

I've been knitting away on my zig zag tunic on and off, and I recently bought a jumbo flyer so I have been spinning, the only thing is the bigger the bobbin, the longer it takes to fill it!

But today I decided to make jam:

Peach Jam
1 kg peaches, skinned, de-stoned and sliced
800g sugar
juice of 1 lemon

Firstly, put a saucer into the freezer.
Then skin the peaches by scoring a cross on the base of the fruits. Dunk them into boiling water for 2 mins, then plunge them into a sink full of cold water. The skins will now slip off very easily.

Remove the stones and slice the fruit.

Put the peaches in a large pan, I use a stockpot to make my jams. Add 2 tablespoons of water plus the lemon juice and cook gently until the fruit softens, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and add the sugar, stirring very well. Heat very gently until the sugar dissolves, then bring to a full boil and cook for about 10 minutes, until setting point is reached. Test for the setting point by putting a teaspoon full of jam onto the saucer from the freezer, when it's cold push your finger through it, it should wrinkle up, if not boil for a further 2 minutes and recheck.

Stir in a knob of butter to disperse any scum and pour the jam, carefully, into warm sterilised jars.

Apricot Jam
(needs to be started the night before)

1 kg apricots
1 kg sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon butter

Start by greasing the pan with the butter. Halve the fruit and remove the stones, layer the fruit in the pan with the sugar, pour over the lemon juice, cover and leave overnight.

This process draws the juice out of the fruit, firming it up.

The next day cook the fruit over a very low heat, until the sugar has completely dissolved. Bring to a full boil and check for a set after 10 minutes, mine took 12 minutes but each batch veries.

Put into warm sterilised jars and store in a cool dark place.

I spun this skein of yarn ~ I bought the fibre as Polwarth, but I'm certain it isn't Polwarth it feels more like half bred to me:

95g, 300mtrs of DK weight yarn.












Now I'm spinning this beautiful Half Bred fibre:

Onto these giant bobbins:

I've got 210g onto one bobbin so far but still have room for possibly another 50g or more. I'm hoping to spin a sweaters worth of yarn, wish me luck!

A Belated Happy New Year & A finished sweater!

A Very Happy New Year to everyone!

I finally finished a third Riddari sweater, this one used a combination of mill spun and hand spun wools. The main body is knit in a mill spun aran weight wool and the colour details are all hand spun shetland yarns that were left over from one of my previous Riddari. I'm really happy with this one, it actually blocked out quite a bit larger than I anticipated but that isn't a problem:

The pattern is Riddari by Vedis Jonsdottir.














As always, I'm on yet another self imposed yarn and fibre diet for 2016 as the stash didn't get reduced avery much throughout 2015. 10 days into the New Year and yes, I already broke the diet:

No will power at all when it comes to a sale, especially when the sale is in a yarn shop.
20 balls of Naturally Heather DK in Heather brown, 14 balls of Naturally Merino silk in a bold red and a ball of Earth Wear Possum sock wool in silver grey.









However, I have recently cast on a top for myself using some stashed yarn that I have had for about 8 years:

The pattern is ZickZack Tunic and the yarn is Malabrigo lace, colour Azul Profundo, which is a 100% soft merino singles yarn. I'm making this as more of a top rather than the longer tunic on the pattern.









Picked the first of my sweet peas that I grew from seed. They are a Heritage seed - appropriately called 'more scent' and just a few of them have perfumed the entire room within a very short space of time: