MORE PROGRESS.....

I finally finished my February Lady Sweater and I love it. I am so looking forward to wearing it when the cooler weather arrives. I found perfect buttons too:

Today I made a Pyramid Project Bag, in a gorgeous teal colour Japanese style fabric. It has a white lining and I made it fairly large so it can hold good sized projects:

Here is my cake of the week, a Blueberry & Apple Muffin Cake. I made up the recipe myself as I was getting weary of following recipes that either didn't work out or were way too sweet. It's a really good cake, made in the food processor but I am sure it would be fine made by another method. It's not very sweet and the fruit makes it nice and moist, it's the kind of thing I like to eat for breakfast when I am rushing off to work at the crack of dawn and cannot bear the thought of toast (I am not a big breakfast eater). I love to use the most sour apples I can find and the blueberries are ones we picked a few weeks ago, we have 5 kg of them in the freezer so keep checking back for more blueberry recipes.

Blueberry & Apple Muffin Loaf

125g Chilled Butter, diced

225g Self Raising Flour

150g Caster Sugar

2 large eggs beaten

1/4 cup of buttermilk (you may need a little more depending on the flour)

1 large eating apple (or 2 small), peeled, cored and very thinly sliced

125g blueberries, fresh or frozen

1. Preheat the oven to 190/170 fan/gas 5. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin (I use a long narrow loaf tin).

2. Sieve the flour into the bowl of a food processor with a pinch of salt. 

3. Add the cubed butter and process until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. 

4. Add the sugar and eggs and whizz again, then add the buttermilk and whizz until you have a nice soft cake batter.

5. Spoon half of the mixture into the tin and spread it out, scatter with 2/3 of the blueberries and apple slices. 

6. Put the rest of the cake mixture on the top and spread gently with a spoon, scatter over the remaining fruits

7. Bake for 45 mins to 1 hour depending on your oven, mine takes exactly 50 mins. The cake is cooked when a skewer inserted into the centre comes put clean.

8. Cool in the tin for 30 mins, then turn out onto a rack. It will keep for a few days in an airtight container (if it lasts that long!) The cake also freezes really well if you wrap it in thick foil.

PROGRESS...

I have made good progress on my February Lady Sweater, I have just inches to do, I must remember to buy buttons for it when I am in town tomorrow.

I have been working on a colourway for the New Zealand Sampler Box which I am taking part in next month...my contribution is still under wraps at the moment but I will post more about this very soon.

It was quite a stressful week for me really, my dog Molly was hit by a car on Monday but she is on the mend thank goodness. It was her 9th birthday the day it happened poor thing, she was chasing rabbits, we are overrun with them at the moment. So I have been fairly housebound since as I didn't want to leave her home alone, good thing that I had a weeks holiday from work. So I did a bit of baking, a bit of dyeing and quite a lot of housework.
Apricot Frangipane Tarts:

Blueberry and Apple Loaf:

Recent hand painted fibre updates in my Etsy store: http://serenknitty.etsy.com

LEMONS AND LIMES.....

I made Lemon Curd today, it is a family favorite. I bought Sunkist Lemons from California yesterday for this reason. I am a great believer in eating local produce yet when it come to lemons I prefer to buy the imported ones, I find the ones grown here lack in juice, they are very dry and often very thick skinned. I remember once having to buy 2 kg of them to get 300 ml of juice! I make lots of different jams and chutneys but this is my most requested. It amazes me how so few ingredients (below+sugar) can make something so wonderful. The recipe I use makes 4 regular sized jars of Curd. I had to make fresh home baked bread to go with it now didn't I?

So the bread maker is on and everyone keeps nipping into the kitchen and checking the countdown display on the machine to see how much longer they have to wait for fresh bread....

My bread machine has been stored away for over 2 years. When I lived in England I used it at least 3 times a week, I had 2 favorite recipes that I continuously used: a basic white loaf and an oatmeal loaf. We emigrated here and waited forever for our shipping container to arrive and I remember the day after getting the bread machine out of the box and putting it on. The loaf was a complete disaster, closely resembling an house brick. I tried again over the following weeks, many times, tried all the different brands of bread flour and the results were awful every time. Then someone told me that the flour in New Zealand does not have a high gluten content and that is why it would not rise the bread. So I went to the Mediterranean food shop and bought some 00 Italian flour. I have used this flour to bake bread by hand and it came out perfect. That is what is in the machine today and I am feeling hopeful of the outcome.

On my travels this morning I made an impulse purchase... yet more wool. I did have a specific project in mind though (so that justifies my purchase!) I bought 12 balls of Cleckheaton Country Silk 8 ply in a gorgeous shade of green which matched my limes perfectly:

The yarn was on sale (I think it was half the normal price) which made it a great bargain purchase plus I had a gift voucher for that store. I have just cast on for the February Lady Sweater (please excuse the shabby garden seat cushions in pic above, they really need a wash!) The only thing I am not sure about are the nobbly bits in the yarn, I am hoping they will grow on me. I usually opt for smooth yarns. It is really nice and soft and I am going to try my best to get this finished before I start my KAL shawl on the 20th March, so that gives me 10 days.

LEMONS

Tomorrow there will be Lemon Curd, maybe Lime too...

Busy Busy Busy............

Busy Busy Busy.......

I have been making new stock for my Etsy shop  http://www.serenknitty.etsy.com
I spent most of the day sewing boxy project bags, then trying to photograph them, but I could not get pics of them all as it was getting too windy and the clouds were starting to roll in off the mountains so it was a losing battle really, I will try for more shots tomorrow. I really like these fabrics, most of them are Amy Butler prints, I love the bold zingy colours, they are so much nicer than any project bags I have seen in the shops here. I use them for all sorts of things and they do hold quite a bit. I still have some skeins of sock wool to photograph too but I never got the chance today with the weather - 2 semi solids, a crimson red and a very deep purple. I will show them off tomorrow.

I haven't done any knitting for 2 days now and my socks need finishing. I spent yesterday afternoon dyeing sock yarns. Would love to get the socks finished as I have signed up for a knit along starting on 20th March with the Color Swap Group on Ravelry and the theme is shawls. I think I'll knit another Aestlight but bigger than my blue one. I'm going to use the cherry alpaca yarn I received in the Amazing Lace Swap last week.

The problem is that the Stonington shawl keeps popping into my head and I have some ideal yarn (Utuna) to knit it with which I received in a swap last year. The stonington is a big project and I would never finish it this side of Christmas considering everything else I want to knit between now and then.

Tomorrow.......... I shall be concentrating on catching up with all my household chores, my hobby room and dye area need a good sort out/clean out but I had better not go in those places until I have finished all other tasks or I will get side tracked and nothing will get done lol!  I should really cook a nice meal for dinner.... I am still wanting to make Bienen Stich cakes, maybe tomorrow :-)

Lazy Saturday

Today was a gorgeous day, great weather, no agenda, just a nice Saturday.
I called at the local Farmers Market on my way into the city and bought one of these:

A Bienen Stich Cake (Bee Sting). I was really surprised to see them as I have not seen one of these since I lived in Germany, where they had a different topping of slivered almonds with a honey glaze on top. These were just as nice though and certainly a blast from the past. We used to buy these from the local German baker shop and you could get them as big as a dinner plate!

Something else I wanted to mention are Flatto peaches. I saw these for the first time this week, tried them and they are great, so easy to eat. I will be buying this variety from now on, they are a great shape for putting in lunch boxes.

I made some progress with my socks, I ended up ripping it out yesterday, when I tried it on it was way too big, so I started over with smaller needles:

I really like the pattern, it is so easy to memorise and I think it shows of the colour really well.

I only managed a little crafting time today, I got some more stitch markers made up and also got a lot of fabric ready for sewing, I will be making Boxy Project Bags tomorrow for my Etsy shop. I would love to fit in some dyeing time too if I can.

My Husband bought a car today, a Fiat Bambino, it needs a lot of work. It will be a nice project for Dad and Sons to do together. I am trying hard to imagine what it will be like when it has had a full restoration, but at the moment it looks like a heap of junk.

The picture above isn't the one we have bought, ours is a rusty red colour, lovely!

Yet Another Addiction!

I have found another addiction, that is currently first on my list followed by knitting, petting yarns, spinning fibre,  etc. I have started dyeing my own yarns and now have some for sale at www.serenknitty.Etsy.com (I made my first sale a few weeks ago!). I started dyeing mainly because since moving to New Zealand I have found it very difficult to get the knitting yarns I want, especially good colours, choice here is very limited and most of the yarn shops seem to have an abundance of novelty yarns or acrylic (which are not my taste at all). I have been buying most of my knitting supplies from overseas but the postal costs are sometimes extremely high. So I guessed if I wanted to have any choice I would have to supply that myself.

I started knitting Wanida socks by CookieA last night, I am using my favorite colourway (Hydrangea). It is knitting up lovely. The pattern is nice and easy and I am loving the results so far.

The wound yarn looks like this:

The colourway was inspired by the huge Hydrangea bushes growing in my garden, I live in the Canterbury countryside and find a lot of my inspiration comes from my garden and the surrounding areas.
Here are some yarns (mainly sock yarn) I have dyed over the last few weeks:

I have some more yarns to list in my store, I have been experimenting with darker shades, this range will be named 20,000 Leagues under The Sea. I would dye every day if I could, and when I can't I dream about it!

A QUICK CHANGE OF SUBJECT.....

Coffee makers. Over the years I have had numerous coffee makers, all have let me down in one way or another, whether their own fault or not. I have tried them all. Electric, filter coffee makers, French Presses (plunger). I also remember many years ago when I lived in Germany buying one of those new fangled machines that was supposed to steam the milk etc but it never gave good results (I have since read that unless you are willing to spend thousands on one of these machines, then the others are just not worth buying as they do not have the required pressure).

So on with the story... an impulse purchase at the weekend:

All I can say is this is by far the best coffee maker I have ever owned. Perfect coffee every time. Maybe it is true that often the most simply designed items are the best?

RAVELRY SWAPS:

I am a member of quite a few groups on Ravelry and often take parts in 'swaps'. I love receiving packages from other countries. Here are the ones I received this week:

My package from the Amazing Lace swap, from Hreow in Scotland. This yarn is beautiful, Luxury Sock, 80% Superfine Alpaca and 20% silk, the shade is Double Cherry from Bluefaced.com, it is unbelievably soft. Hreow was very generous and sent me 2 skeins which means I have 524 meters (200g)! I am thinking of using this in a shawl knit along I am taking part in next month. I also received a huge amount of Chocolate, all my favorites (that I really miss, we have Cadbury's here but it is not the same taste).

Later this week I received another package from Hreow, this one had knitting magazines, a pattern and a book of lace knitting which I love (it has quite a few patterns in I would like to knit including EZ's Stonington Shawl).

My Teal package from Colour Swap 6, coutesy of Lolabella. The yarns are gorgeous (I love sublime yarns). I also got a pack of Knit Pick Harmony interchangeable tips (love these too). A gorgeous package and I love the colours.

I have just finished knitting my Hand made project for my spoilee in the Colour Swap 6 group. It is sat drying out on the deck, as soon as it is dry it will be mailed, it has a long way to travel!

I feel a little guilty, I usually try to mail my packages within plenty of time of the deadline, this time I was late starting my package as I had a spell in hospital last month, emergency surgery for a Cholecystectomy. I feel heaps better now, it took a while to get over it though but I feel better than I have done in ages.