If you have a surplus of over-enthusiastically bought clementines that aren’t quite as juicy as they once were, here’s an idea for a zesty, caramelised treat; Light the oven and set to gas mark 5 Top and tail the clementines. Place top and tail slices into a pan with some sugar, cinnamon and water. Boil. [...]
Craft
Paperchain Party – Combining house decoration and Christmas Cards in one!
The annual Southwyck Christmas party went well yesterday; caught up with a lot of friends I haven’t seen in a while, ate and drank in a festive fashion, and even had an unprompted singalong!. This year’s theme was to make a paperchain to be strung in the living room; each person contributing a link decorated [...]
A very homemade Christmas; Mints, Fudge & Scrub
So this years gifts have been mostly handmade, including; Peppermint & Rose kind-of-creams* Frankincense / Clementine bath salts** (a bit fail, as most people have showers I found…) Fudge*** – supremo hit (if I may say so myself!) as it worked first time, is v tasty and easy to adapt. A tiny bit of fail [...]
Favourite jumper shrunk? repurpose its sleeves!
Loved, loved this Noa Noa jumper given to me by a far away flatmate. It was constructed by two jumpers, one inside the other. Made of quite fine, but toasty warm mohair. But! Mohair felts, however gently you (hand) wash it, and eventually the two layers pretty much became one; plus it shrank quite a [...]
The joy of knitting top-down!
After some initial colour doubts that meant it languished for almost a yeear and half (!) at collar stage, this jumper was a breeze to knit; so much quicker and more satisfying trying on as you go – and no seaming!. I have a feeling that I may never need to buy another jumper pattern; [...]
wicked
dunno why I look so glum – I’m v happy knitting things in the round, and top down… sooooo much more satisfying to try on as you go :)
Ostrich Plume Lace Bonnet
Aww this came out at a minute size, but he wore it well :)
Norah Gaughan
Somehow I wasn’t aware of her before now (although had loved her Target Wave mittens in Interweave). Just saw that 3 of her booklets will be available at Loop soon, and so want to cast on *new* projects… argh! Plus there are a ton of cool free patterns on the Berrocco site itself, including Britannia [...]
Stirring Jam – Craft Club Jam 2008
So this year we found pick-you-own heaven in the form of Garsons… At the last minute we discovered our intended PYO was closed due to *no strawberries at all* and so Garsons was picked at random… oh happy day :) Between us we picked not only the raspberries and strawberries that went into the jam, [...]
Recycled cardi hottie
Finally got around to recycling a fave cardi (has beautiful glitterly bits in it – never found yarn like it…). It had felted a little too much, moths had got at it, and the arms had gone too long. And yet I couldn’t sling it. The British summer was forgotten this weekend, so whilst it [...]
Easy Brioche Stitch!
I’d been tempted to try this waffley, tweedish stitch for a while but could never make sense of the way the pattern was written.Example patterns include exhaustive, but v. complicated abbreviations, and overly descriptive ones from an ancient ‘mon tricot’ (although this is let off, as it has an extremely helpful picture of double stitch [...]
One of my faves
Into the double figures now!… Just over 15% done… hehe..