There’s a thread about this here, on Ravelry.

There’s quite a lot of books, stories and poems that made me cry when I was little. And also many more that make me cry now that didn’t as a child! I loved ‘The Foolish Giant’, and found my old copy recently and was reading it to my boyfriend and couldn’t stop myself from choking up! This never happened when I was little. I have just got more of a wuss in my advancing year I guess!

As far as I am concerned, a good late night snack should;

• Need little or no cooking. Acceptable cooking includes eg toasting, melting or some slight heating and stirring.
• Contain few ingredients, none of which should require much prep.
• No more than one pan may be used.

Acceptable snacks include, but are not limited to;

• Toasted goods.
• Reheated leftovers.
• Cereals (including porridge).

In general, the snack should not be excessively healthy, though it may contain healthy elements. Hence a piece of fruit is not acceptable, but fruit trifle or carrot cake is.

 

A short but sweet one from me tonight as the computer isn’t free, so I thought I’d take advantage of my as-yet-unused iPhone Wordpess app. It all seems very clear and simple, but typing like this doesn’t give the same satisfying sensation that a real keyboard does.

Today was a lovely temperature, especially by 6pm when I left work. It was really chilly!

I am really looking forward to the fireworks in Oxford next weekend. I hope it’s clear and there’s a nip in the air. I’ll be taking my wellies just in case though!

Three cheese scones

Firstly, apologies for the dreadful photo. My camera broke last night. It was on its way out, but it’s finally given up. It’s a real shame as I could really do without the expense of a new camera, but there’s so much brilliant stuff to take pictures of in November and December.

I’m going to try NaBloWriMo again. I failed miserably every other time but I thought I’d give it a go!

Today has been a lovely day.

Went to the Bristol Slow Food Market and bought some nice bits and bobs. Then I went and taught some knitting lessons at Woolly Thinking. After that, Rob and I went to The Market Place for a fab roast dinner. Then I made some cheese scones for supper. They were loosely based on Delias recipe, but I mixed in a spoon of creme fraiche in with the milk (not sure if it did anything, but thought I’d see – it wasn’t noticable) and I made them savoury with the addition of three cheeses; some cheddar cheese, some parmesan grated in after I rubbed the butter in then added salt, pepper and mustard powder and then the third cheese; Stitchelton blue cheese which I pressed into the rolled out dough. I then rolled it like a swiss roll to enclose the cheese. I then wet the tops with an egg wash and popped them in the oven. We ate them warm with butter and Sharwood’s mango chutney. Lush!

I LOVED that today was cold enough for gloves…finally!! I love Autumn and it’s been lovely and warm this October, with beautiful colours this year, but I’m ready for the CRISP and COLD! And winter coats! Scarves! Jumpers! I can’t wait!

Based on Nigella Lawson’s Madeira loaf recipe from ‘How to be a Domestic Goddess’ or off her website.

Here’s my version;

120g butter at room temperature (I always use salted, but it’s up to you)

100g caster sugar

grated zest and juice of one lemon

2 large eggs

105g self-raising flour

45g plain flour

Method is almost exactly as per the original, except that I split it between 11 muffin cases instead of a loaf tin, they were a little bit on the small side, so next time, I’d do 10 for this quantity. I baked them for about 40 minutes. I think 30 would be ok – I forgot about them which is why they got 40! Just check them by putting in a skewer, and if it comes out clean they are done.

Here’s the methods copied and pasted from the original so you can see the differences.

1.

Preheat the oven to 170ºC/gas mark 3.

2.

Cream the butter and sugar, and add the lemon zest. Add the eggs one at a time with a tablespoon of the flour for each. Then gently mix in the rest of the flour and, finally, the lemon juice. Sprinkle with caster sugar (about 2 tablespoons should do it) as it goes into the oven, and bake for 1 hour or until a cake-tester comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack, and let cool in the tin before turning out.

For the mascarpone filling, I whisked (by hand – you don’t need an electric one at all) a small tub of mascarpone for about 20 seconds till loosened, then added about 200g raspberries and a couple of tablespoons of icing sugar, then mixed together gently. I didn’t want a uniform pink colour, so left streaks of bright red and the cream of the mascarpone here and there.

Next time, I’d use quite a lot less raspberries, maybe only 80 – 100g, as I couldn’t taste the mascarpone at all. It’s a lush filling, don’t get me wrong, but I’d prefer a more creamy taste.  It would also work well with whipped cream instead of mascarpone, I think.

Ravelled here.

It’s just a basic feather and fan pattern based on 3 yo’s/2togs. The yarn is gorgeous. It’s Devon Fine Fibres cashmere. You can get it from iknit.  Their online shop is off line at the moment though. When I bought it, it cost £12.50 per skein, which is 25g and 95m.

I cast on 40 sts with 4.5mm needles (36 for the pattern with a 2 st garter stitch border at each end (which I never remembered to do on the purl rows, so I gave up on that pretty quickly!)

It’s 140cm long. I’d have loved to make it wider and longer, but I think £25 for a scarf is more than enough!

Here’s some pics. They’ll be more eloquent than me, I’m sure!

The two shiny yarns are Hipknits silk/cotton in a DK weight.

The pale sea colours skein is some DK-ish BFL also from Hipknits.

The dark sea colours and the purpley one are heavy laceweight pure cashmere from Knitwitches. I very nearly bought some of this at Ally Pally in autumn but resisted then regretted it, so I’m very glad I got another chance! I couldn’t remember the name of the company, but the yarn sparked my memory.

I would definitely recommend Wonderwool. There was virtually no ‘tat’ that you get with some of the bigger shows. It’s also fab for spinners and dyers. There was every kind of resource you could want.

I’ve fallen in love with these cakes.  I discovered them at the Love Food Festival a few weeks back. The cakey bit is nice, but just ordinary cake, but the frosting! Oh the frosting! I am slightly concerned that there may be ingredients in there I don’t normally eat, like, *shiver*, margerine or something and that’s why it doesn’t taste like any buttercream or cream cheese icing I ever make. But I don’t care. It’s gorgeous. I’ve eaten way too many in the interim and will not be eating any more til after my sister’s wedding in June. Well, maybe one or two… They are decorated with glitter! And flowers! And hundreds and thousands! They are so lovely to look at you can hardly bare to eat them. But then you scoff two down in 5 mins, hey ho.

I’m currently making the Toasty Shrug from Rowan Classic’s Winter Gifts.  I’m making it in silver. I love the pale green in the picture but I don’t wear much green. The silk feels really lovely to knit up, and I think the book has some fab patterns in it.

I also have the yarn to make Wilhelmia from The Milk Cotton Collection (scroll down for pics). I haven’t yet decided whether I’m going to make the jumper or the cardigan. I’m probably going to make it sleeveless though and about 4 inches longer than in the book.  I’m doing it in a colour called Liquorice which is a sort of burgundy, but nice and not school-jumpery at all!

I also snapped up 16 balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky in moss green for just £2.15 a ball. There’s 15 of one dyelot and 1 of another which I thought would be useful as my gauge and just-in-case ball. I think this yarn may become this cardigan, though possibly with ever-so-slightly longer sleeves. It was originally going to be this one, but the one project I’ve seen done in this yarn looked kinda droopy, so I’m as yet undecided.  I’ve trawled Ravelry for another idea, but drawn a blank so far. £2.15 a ball is quite a saving from £8 or £9 originally full price so I’m happy just to stockpile it until something lovely presents itself.  It might even end up being a sofa blanket, as I doubt I’m going to find enough of this yarn for a big project so cheap again. Lots of reviews of this yarn have said it pills a lot, so maybe a garment is not the best plan.

Seeing as I’m being so useless at blogging, I’ve got myself a Twitter . I quite like the idea of the one-sentence-ness. And I’m in good company with Stephen Fry and Imogen Heap being twitterers.

I think I’ll be better at updating it ’cause it’s so short and I’m so lazy hehe.

Hmmm.

I’m not very good at blogging ‘as and when’ things happen due to being so sleeeeepy in the evenings following my 6am starts.

I might make blogging after each bloggable event a bit of a February resolution.

It was my 29th birthday on Tuesday.  However,  I decided to celebrate my 24th for the third time instead (one on my actual 24th, and last year too). I had a day off, but mostly sat around in my pj’s which is all I seem to do these days when I have a day off. I did make about 100 (two batches) Homemade Oreos (sans filling because I hate biscuit filling type creme) to take to school though. They went down really well and I got loads of compliments, which is always nice!

On Saturday I started my new knitting job. It went well. All the other ladies on the department were ever so lovely and friendly and welcoming.   There’s a lady from Rowan coming on Tuesday to help me figure out a daily ‘routine’ and show me the ropes.

I want to factor in some ‘at the table’ time every day so that people will feel that it’s ok to sit and knit there with me. I also want to get up some timetables about when I’m available to help with problems and so on.  I’ve got loads of idea that I can’t wait to try.

I think another of my random resolutions will be do get out the house and do something on my days off, or at least get up and get dressed so I can be spontaneous if the mood takes me! One problem is that me and the boyf now won’t have any days off together, so all the normal couple-y things are out. I don’t do things on my own as I feel like a real lemon when I’m on my own unless I’m on my way to work or something. A problem with knitting is that it doesn’t mind if you’re festering in your dressing gown at 3pm when you do it – I doubt horses for riding, or personal trainers at the gym would feel the same way!