Tuesday 31 December 2013

Christmas hooky project....

I've been hankering after this crochet pattern for a while now....

The problem is its in a Japanese book, that's particularly hard to get hold of....and even if I did get hold of a copy I don't read Japanese....ordinary Japanese looks intimidating enough never mind crochet terminology....

Sooooo I've been trawling t'internet to see if I could find a translation...... or a REALLY simple "how to" diagram.... but its been really tricky ..though there are a lot of debates about copyright....

Meanwhile I have this bag of gorgeous wool calling to me...


I briefly considered an alternative motif....


I even made a quick sample....


But it simply didn't float my boat...those lovely round Japanese flowers were calling to me....saying they were the perfect Christmas project; simple to make, only need to count to 5 at a time; portable; only need a bag, a hook and 6 balls of wool.  
I was even more convinced when I joined the first one to a few friends....


In fact, considering it was supposed to be a holiday project I got on rather well....perhaps a little too enthusiastically....I'd started row 2 before we went away....


....although if you look carefully the consequences of my enthusiasm will be clear!


HINT: check the size of the gaps between the flowers ....some unpicking and re-hooking will be required....

Anyway I got on brilliantly and in no time there were two whole rows of flowers....


And I was starting on row three when disasters stuck.....


I've realised my maths has gone adrift (I really should use excel when I feel the need to) and its increasingly looking like I don't have enough yarn to get to the end of the project....


...Secondly I've got all carried away with over enthusiasm again and mucked up the joining together again....


and finally, these sort of things seem to come in threes don't they, I seem to have been doing so much crochet that I've given myself a touch of RSI in my wrist.  
I've got no strength in it in certain positions....I've already dumped a whole mug of scalding hot tea in my lap, and we all nearly came a cropper when I needed to do a hill start on the drive to the wool shop yesterday...who designed hand brakes to be so difficult to use one handed!!  
It quite simply, flippin' hurts.
And to cap it all the wool shop was closed.

Grump grump grumpity grump.

Thank heavens I can cheer myself up with curry buffett, champagne and an evening with great friends.  Come on 2014...we need you to improve things rapidly!


EDIT:  Aside from anything else I've got a plan for that alternative motif....it looked rather good in the wool it was supposed to be made in....and I've already spotted an opportunity to buy more in February...


Sunday 29 December 2013

So how bad was the storm?

Its not often (or indeed EVER!) that I get home from work looking like a drowned rat and my boots take 2 days to dry out...At least I'd pulled them off before I discovered the water running down the bedroom wall  :(

Three soggy bath towels and a day working from home because there were no trains later, we decided to keep mopping up, stick with the plans to see relatives over the holidays and sort it all out when we got back.

There was an unexpected break in the general clouds and dreariness so we decided to take a stroll along the Hogsmill ...to see if some fresh air and sun shine would cheer us up.....

We didn't get very far before the scale of the previous week's storm became apparent...



Every bend in the river had gained a scarf of debris washed down from higher upstream...

 

In the sunshine some of the damage was almost picturesque...



Even big trees were ripped like sheets of paper....




We kept looking up and playing "spot where the branch came from"...

No one will be playing with this tree again in a while...well, certainly not to climb..


This one was simply ripped out by its roots.....



Although most were merely folded over, maybe the wind will be back again later to play with them again...






 Don't be fooled by all the sunshine it was really fresh and cold...look even at 3pm in the afternoon there was still frost...

 

 

Right, I'm pretty sure we've walked far enough to earn a slice of Christmas cake with a cuppa..time for home!

Thursday 26 December 2013

Boxing day

That quaint traditional English holiday when servants and tradesmen collected boxes of gifts and alms from their employers.

The modern celebrations involve either spending more money in the sales or rambling across hill and vale (chasing Labradors) in a desperate effort to exercise away the excess calories of the previous day's festivities.....





 





 





I rather sense that in 364 days time someone will be asking for their own Labrador....

Sunday 22 December 2013

Time to try this for myself.....

It feels like ages since I went to this workshop on Beeswax based cosmetics.

But I really needed to try to make some by myself.....just to prove I could really....and because I'd deliberately saved the cappings wax from this year's harvest...


For the record, cappings wax is the finest wax the bees produce each year - it comes from the honey containing cells, the bees havent had much chance to walk over it so its the cleanest,freshest wax in the hive...


I know they don't exactly look like much but hang with me here.....there's a bit of a process it needs to go through first...

Better gather the kit together to do that...


(Yup thats a packet of nappy liners, I'll get to them pretty quickly)
It needs a bit of a wash ...to rinse out excess drips of honey...

 

Then its a case of melting and filtering.....this is where the slow cooker and nappy liners come in. (There's a sentence I never thought I'd type)

With a bowl to catch the drips in carefully positioned in the slow cooker below....


The wax sitting in a nest of muslin and nappy liners....

 

Its a case of lid on and slowly warm.......

And in a matter of a few minutes the kitchen smells warm and yummy and beeswaxy....and the wax has disappeared through the nappy liner filter....

 

And underneath is a lovely pool of pure melted bees wax...

Which cools slowly into a lovely perfect disc...

 

Right now....time to gather the other ingredients...Cocoa butter and sunflower oil...


So I'll just grate that beeswax and crumble the cocoa butter together...

 

No ...no that really isn't cheddar cheese, and when I said crumble the cocoa butter I meant attack with large kitchen knife ..NEVER has a product been so misnamed!!

Then its just a case of stirring in the sunflower oil and warming it through...


 

Then the fiddly bit....

Filling the lip balm pots without flooding the kitchen side (good job I remembered the newspaper!)....


And there you have it!


15 little pots of home made scrummy lip balm, and the kitchen smells DELICIOUS!!!
.....Nearly better than my hands!
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