For my husbands birthday I decided to knit him his own dog. We are both a fan of English Bulldogs so this became the dog of choice. I had just reviewed the wonderful book ‘Best in Show’ on Historic Crafts and used their pattern for my project. You can read my review from back then below. The other day I got a wonderful email from the publishers telling me that they now have a website for the book: knityourowndog.com and for the launch and coincide with the Royal wedding here in the UK they are giving away a free pattern for you to knit your own Royal Corgi dog. Go on – it’s actually quite a fun challenge.

Take care,
Eddie

Review:

Best in Show: knit your own dog
by Sally Muir & Joanna Osborne, 2010
Collins & Brown

This book is mainly a bit of fun. All knitting doesn’t have to be sweaters and socks as we see here. Why not knit your own dog instead! Sally and Joanna will show you how you do it.
Divided into the breeds of dog there is a pattern for every dog lover. Whether your thing is a utility dog like the Dalmatians or a gun dog like the Labrador, there is something for everyone. Or as the authors suggest, you can also create your own mongrel. Mix the body parts of a Labrador with those of a poodle and get a Labradoodle.
I have always had a thing for English Bulldogs I made this my next project. The thing is, I have been making handmade presents for my husband’s birthday this year. But alas, I already told him about most of them. So this bulldog will be the only surprise.
You can see the finished project on Ravelry (you will need to login to Ravelry). I found it very fun to knit in my own plied, recycled sweater yarn. But I must admit that I am not too impressed with the sewing up instructions. They were quite confusing. On the other hand the bulldog does seem like one of the most confusing dogs in terms of sewing because of the nose. So maybe if I had chosen another dog I wouldn’t have had this problem.

Today I am very busy with my first ever shift as editor on the new Refashion Co-op blog so instead of showing you what I did today I will instead show you the Valentines card my dear husband made and gave me the other day.

Are you interested in refashioning clothes? Here is an extract from a post I wrote about the launch of Refashion Co-op this morning:

“This Monday (Valentines day for an easy to remember blog anniversary) I and 6 other wonderful women launched the Refashion Co-op. I want to share with you today a little about each of these women and their blogs but first I want to tell you that: WE NEED YOU! Ok that was more yelling than telling. But it’s true. We started the Refashion Co-op as a network and a place to get inspiration. But without YOU contributing your refashions or commenting and encouraging others in their refashions, well, it’s just not going to work.”

Join me on Twitter (@EddieDuckling) or on the Grey Duckling blog

In the last couple of weeks of the TAD challenge I have been doing quite a bit of sweater recycling. Over the last two days I decided to use some of those bits of sweater that were left over from the yarn making to make some sweater beads. I originally wanted to felt them – which I tried. But sadly some of the wool knit just doesn’t want to felt. But I will continue to try – next stop the tumble dryer!

Today the weather was aweful and this did put a damper on my plan to make a Valentines decoration outside. So I had to run out in the rain to get the budding branches and buying the daphodiles from the farmers market in the rain wasn’t as fun either. But I wanted to do this to have somewhere to hang my hearts.

If you have made hearts for Valentines how about sharing them on ‘A World in Love’ too!

Yesterday I had a go with this pink/green colour mix yarn and I really liked it. Today I decided to try out Judy’s magic cast-on for toe-up socks (from Knitty) on this same yarn.

I have made the toe’s so far and it worked wonderfully. No more short-row toes for me, my friend. I’m hooked. Thanks Judy!

Today I’m just going to let the pictures speak for themselves.

If you are interested in details catch me on twitter/facebook or have a peek at my blog.

Eddie

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Twitter: @EddieDuckling

Facebook: Eddie Roued

Blog: Grey Duckling

So what have I been up to today craft wise. Well I tell you – life is catching up on me so I didn’t really have time for much, but I did sit down for 15 min and have a look at a new fun little idea of something to do with all this yarn I have been making. 

As you may have notices of over the last couple of weeks – I do frog a lot of sweaters to get to the yarn so that I can reuse it. But today I finally got to some of the less fun colours. I already have some colours that I plan to dye but some are too dark for this. So I thought how about mixing two colours. 1) I get a thicker yarn and 2) I get more fun yarn. Because let’s face it most sweaters/blouses these days are not exactly made out of fun yarn. Also, since I go through all this trouble of making recycled yarn I might as well add my own little stamp on it. 

So today I mixed two types of red cotton that I had and knit a sample square and I did the same to a light teal cashmere and a light blue Ramie/Silk mix. In a way this mixing of colours and fibres reminds me of some experimental yarns I made last year under the name of Rare Breed yarns on Grey Duckling. I really liked the Green merino / undyed soya mix and the red silk / khaki cashmere mix. 

I really like the result and I may have some more fun with this tomorrow. 

On day 2 I was blocking my Echo Flower lace shawl. 

Today I want to show you some pictures of the finished and stretched shawl. 

I wrote a post on Historic Crafts about Estonian lace shawls that might interest. There is also some help over there if you are up for giving lace knitting a try yourself. 

Today I decided to give this pink lambswool blouse a go to make some yarn out of it. The thing is though that this makes for very thin yarn once it is unravelled – 24 st pr inch. So it will have to be 3-plied using the Navaho technique to make it a sports weight yarn that I can use. But I don’t have a spinning wheel at my disposal at the moment so this final step will have to wait. If you are interested in spinning and plying have a look at Historic Crafts.

I have great plans for this yarn though – I want to make a toy pig! Yes you heard me. A pig! I adore pigs.

See my other yarns on Grey Duckling where I am also writing a post on making yarn from sweaters. This post is still a work in progress and if you have any questions or suggestions – feel free to add them in the comments. 

I also wanted to share with you a picture from my first day in the garden in 2011. I brought down this new knitting project I just began. It is a lace shawl using the AeRang pattern. If you are on Ravelry come on over and have a look at the pattern.

I began my heart garland about a week ago on the first TAD day and today I made a couple more and I now have 5 all together. I only have 7 days left to make some more for the A World in Love project (described below). 

Are you making a heart or two for Valentines too. If so you are so very welcome to share it with us on the flickr group. 

The hearts i am making here are crochet with a magenta wool (see it on Grey Duckling) that I ripped from a sweater and 3-plyed last year. On TAD day four and six I did some more sweater unravelling. 

The pattern for the heart garland can be found free here on Skip to my Lou!

The idea behind A World in Love is really simple:

1. Handcraft a heart (anything goes!)
2. Take a picture of this heart in front of a place that means a lot to you
3. Share the image (flickr group, or post in in the Ravelry or the facebook group and it will be uploaded for you onto flickr) and us know where the place is!
4. Tell us about your handcrafted heart and why you took the photo where you did (optional)

The best bit is that all the hearts will be geo-tagged on flickr so that we can see how the love has spread across the world.

So are you going to join us. We hope you will. As of today you have 7 days to craft a heart in one way or another and share it with us.

Today I have been rather busy tidying my recycled sweater yarn on Ravelry and adding yarn to Grey Duckling. I have also been preparing this yellow yarn today. The yellow yarn is form a cotton sweater and I am planning to dye it with onion peel to get a more powerful yellow.

I also began writing this post on Grey Duckling about how to make yarn from recycled sweaters. The idea with the post is that it should contain a load of good links that you can use if you want to make or use recycled yarn. if you have any other suggestions or links do let me know. The post is still a work in process.

I have also been doing some more on the green sweater from the other day (TAD day 4). The bit’s that can be unraveled into yarn can be cut up and felted.

Today I decided to use some of the jars I have been saving by making some Rosemary Jelly to put in them. I have posted before on Roued is... about making Jelly. For me it is most definitely not a precise science. 

When it was all done and poured into the jars I wanted to make some labelled cloth tops. I had some left over fabric from a pair of trousers that I had used in other refashions last year. The top and zip were used in my berry skirt and parts of the legs were used in this blouse. 

I then used my much beloved alphabet stamp set to type out Rosemary Jelly on the top. I think they will make good gifts in the months to come. 

Today I finally got started on a pair of tester socks I am knitting with the help of Priscilla Gibson-Roberts book ‘Simple Socks, Plain and Fancy‘ (reviewed by Dee on Historic Crafts). 

Then as I was walking home I spotted through the door of a charity shop this green sweater. I fell for the colour at once and went straight in to check whether 1) it had the right stitches for unravelling and 2) it was pure wool. It did have the right stitches but it was only 80% lambs wool and 20% Nylon. Any other day I would have walked right away but today I was thinking in terms of socks and people keep telling me that socks wear better if they have a little Nylon mixed in the wool. So I though, why not?

I brought it home and started to take the sweater apart. While pulling it apart I wind it up into a ball on my ball winder. This makes it much easier to use later. 

If you are interested in more of my recycling sweater to make yarn projects you can have a look here on the Grey Duckling yarn page. I will write a post on how you do this in the next couple of days so stay tuned and let me know if you are interested. 

Also I am very interested in seeing other peoples similar projects so do share. 

Today I have been continuing on a rather long-winded project. In the autumn I decided to recycle all these many pairs of jeans I had lying around that didn’t fit any more. It all started with a post on Grey Duckling asking ‘how would you refashion jeans?‘. This gave some great ideas and I went ahead and made 9 project bags out of the top of the jeans and the bottom of sweaters.

The current project uses the legs of the jeans cut into strips. I am weaving these strips together with a twill weave of 2 over and 1 under. The jeans are all different shades of blue so I am using this to create a rug that will varigate from lighter to darker blues.

Oh and happy spring – the snowdrops our out in my garden.

So I finished the Echo Flower shawl I was knitting for the Historic Crafts knit along (KAL) on Ravelry.

It has really been the most amazing journey. it’s the second time I have knitted lace and the first time I have made a shawl and I loved every minute of it. Obviously I didn’t knit the whole shawl today – I just finished it off and blocked it today. The thing with lace shawls is that (as you can see in the gallery) when you knit it seems kind of small and scrunched up. But then you block it quite heavily and you get to see all the beautiful patterns.

The Echo flower shawl pattern is a free pattern by Jenny Johnson Johnen. It’s on ravelry but you can also download it here.

As my theme for this TAD is recycling I better tell you how this project fits in:

The yarn I used is 100% merino that I salvaged from an old sweater and 3-plied on the spinning wheel (meet the yarn on Grey Duckling)

Now it’s the waiting game. The shawl has to dry out while blocked and it should hopefully stay this way. But will I have the patience to wait for it.

I’m gonna begin this TAD challenge on a hearty note. My theme for TAD this february is going to be recycling. I will be using recycled materials and trying to find new and ingenious ways of making them into fun creative objects.

This heart I just made is crochet with a magenta wool (see it on Grey Duckling) that I ripped from a sweater and 3-plyed last year. Later in february I think I will do some more of this yarn making from old sweaters.

The pattern for the heart garland can be found free here on Skip to my Lou!

But why am I making these hearts you may ask? Well let me tell you.

In january my friend Cecile and I came up with this idea to spread the love a bit for Valentines. Actually we want to spreaad it across the world – hence: A World in Love.

The idea behind A World in Love is really simple:

1. Handcraft a heart (anything goes!)
2. Take a picture of this heart in front of a place that means a lot to you
3. Share the image (flickr group, or post in in the Ravelry or the facebook group and it will be uploaded for you onto flickr) and us know where the place is!
4. Tell us about your handcrafted heart and why you took the photo where you did (optional)

The best bit is that all the hearts will be geo-tagged on flickr so that we can see how the love has spread across the world.

So are you going to join us. We hope you will. As of today you have 14 days to craft a heart in one way or another and share it with us.

Happy crafting,

Eddie

Knitted heart in front of Winchester Cathedral

I am also going to share a little knitting project I did the other week for the ‘A World in Love’ project over on Flickr.

The wool I used is called ‘Pure wool from Hampshire’ and was bought at the Winchester farmers marker (how appropriate). It has been dyed naturally with Brazil wood and has the greatest deep red colour. I must get some more.

The pattern is Heartfelt by Norah Gaughan. If was such an easy little pattern and it took no time at all to make. If you are not on Ravelry you can also find the pattern for free here!

I would also like to encourage YOU to join ‘A World in Love’, craft a heart and share a photo of it in front of a place that is special to you.

Love Eddie

Before test blocking

During test blocking

After test blocking

Join the Historic Crafts Echo Flower Shawl KAL on Ravelry!

I just finished Mr. Owl for John yesterday. The pattern is for ‘The Owl’ by Laura Long from Knitted Toy Tales.

Check out the project on Ravelry!

These Mens Gloves by Jaeger Knits are made with a wonderful 1940s pattern free from the Victoria and Albert Knitting Collection. They are from the collection: Essentials for the Forces. The V&A hold a nice collection of 1940s patterns to knit which can be downloaded and used for free.

See the project on Ravelry!

Ripe Elderberries by debcll (CC on Flickr)

Next to Elderflower, Elderberry is my favorite cordial. I am otherwise quite partial to making jellies at the moment – not the desert type but the type you eat with meat, pie, veg and pretty much everything in our house. But unfortunately the Elder tree in our garden did not have enough berries in reach to make both so I chose cordial. I did however go hunting down the road and found loads of berries for dyeing – which you can read about on Historic Crafts. But I would never want to use these berries from bushes so close to the road for any food or drink.

The cordial recipe I used is pretty simple. You need to make a juice out of the berries using these measurements:

• 1 kg Elderberries
• ½ l Water
• 3 apples

I only had c. 300 g of Elderberries, which I therefore boiled with 150 ml water and 1 apple chopped up in bit pieces. I boiled this mixture till the berries burst and I then sieved the mixture to get the juice only.

Warning: Note that certain parts of the Elder tree are poisonous. However, ripe berries are not and in this recipe we are only using the juice. This is why I sieve the juice once more through a coffee filter/muslin cloth just to be sure that no other parts of the tree comes along for the ride.

For each liter of juice you will need:

• 375 – 500 g sugar
• 1 tsk citric acid or a squeeze of lemon

Mix the juice with the sugar and lemon/citric acid and give it a boil. Clean/disinfect your bottles and pour it in them.

I guess you can drink the cordial mixed with cold water but I always mix it with boiling water for a hot cordial which does wonders when you are feeling a bit under the weather.

The pattern is the ‘Printed Silk Cardigan’ by Connie Chang Chinchio published in Interweave Knits, Spring 2008

Go over to Ravelry to see the project details.

Afternoon Tea Party by Mary Cassatt (Wikimedia Commons)

I made this cake for my knitting group the other day and they seemed to love it. So I thought I might share it with the world in English. It is a traditional Danish recipe and a quick Google search turned up nothing in English – so here goes!

Ingredients:

Cake:

• 450 g sugar
• 500 g flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 4 tsp vanilla sugar (powdered sugar with vanilla in, often used in Danish recipes – can be bought in Waitrose. Or you can use vanilla essence instead.)
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 300 g melted butter
• 4 eggs
• 375 ml milk

Icing:

• 200 g melted butter
• 100 ml brewed coffee (brewed instant coffee will work just as well)
• 2 ½ tbsp cocoa
• 3 tsp vanilla sugar
• 200 g dessicated coconut
• 275 g icing sugar

Recipe:

1. For the cake mixture, begin by mixing the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, baking powder, vanilla sugar and cocoa)
2. Melt the butter and mix it with the other wet ingredients (eggs and milk)
3. Prepare the baking tray by lining it with baking paper. This is a big portion of cake and it’s supposed to be rather thin so the mixture shouldn’t fill out more than 3 cm at the bottom of the baking tray. In Denmark we have this type of baking tray that fills out the whole oven and is perfect for this type of cake. But I would suggest using 2 British normal size baking trays.
4. Turn the oven on at 190 degrees Celsius (gas mark 6)
5. Then mix the dry and the wet ingredients together and pour into your baking trays.
6. Bake them in the oven straight away for 20-25 min. You might have to give it a bit longer in a gas oven. To check that the cake is done you can stick a fork into the middle and if it comes out clean – it’s done!
7. Prepare the icing by mixing all the ingredients together (melted butter, brewed coffee, cocoa, vanilla sugar, dessicated coconut and icing sugar).
8. Let the cake cool off and then butter the icing in an even layer.
9. The cake can be eaten straight away but should be kept cool (fridge is good). You can also freeze it.

I hope you will enjoy this recipe and if you have any questions or troubles making it – post a comment!

Ingredience:

• 200g Walnuts
• 150ml Honey
• 100ml Cognac
• Water

Recipe:

1. 200 g walnut, in halves or coarsely chopped or a mix of both.
2. Place the walnuts in a bowl, pour hot water over them and leave for 5 min. Drain.
3. Heat 150 g honey +50 ml of water in a pot.
4. Add the walnuts and simmer at low heat for 5 min.
5. Add 100 ml of cognac and reheat.
6. Pour in sterilized glasses and leave to cool. Store in fridge.

Serve cold with cheese. Tastes wonderfully with a good brie and fresh baguette or with a blue cheese.

Hope you will enjoy this as much as I do.

Greetings from Birthe

Lavandula spica, from Medical botany by William Woodville from Wikimedia Commons

Lavender Jelly
While the previous elderflower jelly could have jellied a bit more this lavender stuff I tried out can hardly be called a jelly at all. This seems to be a cycle for me every time I try cooking a new thing. First time it turns out fine because I follow the recipe to the letter. Second time I try to variate the recipe, it turns out OK. Third time I decide that I am a professional by now, I can make up my own recipe. I can’t and as with this lavender jelly it’s a disaster. Luckily, I then decide to go back to the original recipe with a couple of workable adjustments and then it turns out fine again.
Just for the record I have now saved this lavender jelly by putting it all back in the pot, adding some more pectin mixed with sugar, and given it a good boil until it reached setting point. I have also just learnt a easy way to see if it has reached setting point. I read it on the back of the pectin pack. Fish out a teaspoon of the jelly while it is still boiling and put it on a plate. Blow on it and if in a couple of seconds you get ripples in the jelly it has reached setting point.

Blackberry illustration from WIkimedia Commons

Blackberry Jelly
My first fruit jelly. This being my fourth attempt to make jelly it of course turned out a success. I went back to the measurements from Nigella Lawsons Chilly Jam recipe. 600ml liquid with a 1kg of jam sugar.
I had been out in the garden to pick the berries. Unfortunately the birds had been at them and some where starting to rot. However, I got enough for this portion. I boiled them with 800ml water and two apples chopped up roughly. After sieving I ended up with about 650ml juice. I melted the jam sugar in the juice and then allowed it to boil for about 10 min till it had reached setting point.

Have a look at the project on Ravelry!

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 50 g margarine
• 250 ml sugar
• 150 ml flour
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 500 ml milk
• 250 ml dessicated coconut
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla sugar

Process

1. Cut the margarine in small pieces
2. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk it
3. Pour into a buttered pie dish
4. Bake at 180 ? for 50 min
5. Serve with Crème fraiche

Rosemary Jelly

1. Pick some rosemary (I used 8 generous size stalks for 7 jars or jelly.
2. Peel the rosemary leaves of the stalks (Save the top 4 cm of the stalks for later).
3. Boil the rosemary leaves with 3 apples roughly chopped (pits and all) an enough water to cover the apples generously.
4. Strain the liquid (you should get between 800ml and 1L liquid).
5. Put the liquid back into a jam pan or similar (I actually use my wok as I don’t have a jam pan).
6. Add enough sugar and gelling agent to make the amount of liquid you have jelly-like. I actually added 1kg of Jam Sugar (sugar with pectin added) and then found that I needed to add about half a sachet of pectin  more because I didn’t want it sweeter but I needed it to be more jelly-like.
7. Heat this up so that the sugar melts into the liquid and then leave it at a rollicking boil for about 10min.
8. Leave of heat to cool down for about 15min and fill into sterilised jars.

Elderflower jelly

This I decided to go while also making this years elderflower cordial. To be honest you can pretty much follow the above instructions but with 8-10 elderflower heads and also 3 apples.

I thought that the apples would mean that the whole thing would jellify easier. But I don’t think this really works. At least not for me.

While trying to find a recipe that would work for me I came across this page with more exact measurements for those who need this!

Seeing as everyone in my family love Lego my idea was to sew 24 bags that we can reuse year after year.

1. Cut out 24 rectangles in your favorite fabric (they don’t all have to be the same colour) at a size of between 12-16 inch x 5-7 inch (they don’t have to be the same size either). Either cut them with a zig-zag scissors or zig-zag them on your sewing machine all the way around.

2. Fold the short edges and sew them in to make a nice edge. Then fold the pieces on the middle inside out and sew down the sides.

3. When you are finished sewing them – turn them inside out – fill them with lego or anything else you want to put on your advent calendar – tie some ribbon or jute string around the top and put them on your advent calendar / string.

My previous experience with the Brownie Box Camera taught me that keeping the shutter open for more than a snap shot will inevitably give blurry photos. I decided to try it out in stead with snapshots of landscape images and where better to do this than an archaeological park in Italy. Most of the photos as you can see below turned out fine. I got a bit nervous for them on the way home where the Italian airport advised me not to put film into the checked in luggage. I don’t remember seeing this sort of sign at Gatwick so I thought for a moment that the 3 medium format film I had brought out with me had been ruined even before I used them. However, that was not the case. The only problem with the film itself was the second one which I changed at Forum Romanum and just put back into the box without tape. When I took it out again it was a bit loose resulting in exposure of the last couple of images of Forum Romanum.

Along the way I also lost a  of photo (dark one) where the camera must have rolled on by it’s own in the bag. The is also a couple of overexposed photos (clear ones) where I thought I would be clever and leave the shutter open for a while to take in movement. I have learnt from this experiment that this does not work in daylight. Will try it again sometime at night.  I had a great time taking these photos and even though the brownie is bulky it is very lightweight and thus easy to bring around. I brought out 3 medium format films on which the brownie will allow me to take 8 photos each giving me 24 photos in total. In comparison with the 1000 photos we all took with various digital cameras on this holiday, 24 photos seem so few. However, once you get into the mind frame of wanting the perfect picture for the brownie it turned out to be quite hard to use all 24 photos.

So I fixed up the new old Singer I bought at a car-boot sale. Or in other words I took it all apart and cleaned it and gave it some proper sewing machine oil. Actually I took everything apart including the motor. Ups! So now I know how an old sewing machine motors looks inside. That was a little bit of a panic. However, it all turned out alright. I somehow managed to put it back together again. Fancy that, me the sewing machine mechanic! It even sounded OK and didn’t blow up or catch fire when I turned it on again. However, it wasn’t strong enough to actually sew. So I thought I had ruined the motor.

I decided to take the machine to the nice guy at the Sewing Centre to have a look. He said the motor was OK, it was just the belt that was tired and wonky. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any new ones he could sell me so he suggested I went home and dipped the belt in boiling water for a couple of seconds to shrink it a bit. It worked. I now have a fully functional Singer sewing machine. While cleaning it up I realised that the horrible red inside of the bottom case was rotten. I took it out and John fitted a new bottom for me. Then I painted it my favorite colour (teal) of which I of course had a tin standing around (don’t you always). It looks and smells much better now.

Finally, I tested the machine this weekend sewing a roll-up pouch for John’s paint brushes. It worked perfectly, but as my mother pointed out it can only sew straight stitches. However, she was wrong when she assumed that this meant that I couldn’t use it for anything. Before I was sewing straight stitches by hand so this is a great improvement.

I bought the trunk at the wonderful Winchester car-boot sale. It was just calling out to me and I knew exactly where it could go and what it could be used for.

The only problem with it was that it was that the paper inside, lovely as it was, was dirty and falling of. So I set about to add some new wall paper. The shelf of the trunk also had a very flimsy bottom which I ripped out. Hubby fashioned a new bottom out of ply-wood. It was hard work and took a whole Saturday. I think the finished result is wonderful though.

I just used some standard wall paper from Laura Ashley (cheapest I could find because they had a sale on), a sachet of Wickes wall paper paste that you mix with water and a tube of super glue I had lying around (don’t you always). I used the super glue on the trunk around difficult bits, on nails and along the edge before putting the wall paper on. It was impressive to see how well the wall paper stuck to the wood of the trunk, but the super glue was useful on those difficult spots.

It is now situated where I imagined is would go and I filled it with all my yarn (which is in spite of hubby’s protests not a lot). I use the shelf for the yarn I am working on and other sewing bits and pieces.

After having to throw away my last batch of fruit liqueur in December, because it had gone moldy, I was quite distraught. The problem was that I had in my naivety added to much water to the mixture.
Anyway, not one to make the same mistake twice I decided to make some more and only add the minimum of sugar-water. This time I made: strawberry liqueur, gooseberry liqueur, redcurrant liqueur and licorice liqueur. The recipe is as follows for the fruit liqueur:

1. Clean the fruit .
2. Buy some cheap vodka (yes they will look strangely at you in the off-license when you ask for three bottles of their cheapest vodka).
3. Add the fruit to a jar/bottle and cover with vodka.
4. Leave in cool place for about a week or if you forget it just leave it longer.
5. Filter the fruit of with a sieve and then filter the now coloured liquid with a coffee filter (or piece of muslin cloth) just to remove bits and pieces.
6. Mix some sugar into boiling water (whatever way suits you). Probably about 200-250g sugar to 1 liter of water like in the original Lemoncello recipe. Add the sugar-water to the vodka at the rate of 2 vodka to 1 sugar-water. Just enough to make the mixture a little sweet and not pure vodka. But not so much that it goes moldy after a couple of months. Of course you can also drink it fast and then you won’t encounter this problem.
7. Leave it for about a month to settle and then enjoy!

As I wrote in a previous post I have a No. 2 Brownie.
I got an Ilford HP5 Plus film put in it and tried taking pictures with it this weekend. There where 8 photos on this 120mm medium format film and I used them all on portraits of hubby’s family.
As you can maybe see the camera still works. However, I took the portrait photos outside exposing the film for about 2 seconds each time. This did result in a certain amount of shaking and blurred photos.
I think in the future I will try and use the camera for landscape photos using the snapshot function to avoid blurred photos.

I have been wanting an antique singer for years now and while rummaging around at the car-boot sale I found one. The guy only wanted £3 for it so I thought bargain. Even if it doesn’t work I won’t have lost much.
John has given it a good clean and I need to take it apart and give it some sewing machine oil. We checked out the electric cord and the machine seems to work. So I will just have to figure out if it needs any spare parts and then get them.
I can’t wait to give it a try.

As I good digital archaeologist I have already found some history on the singer. The serial number on the machine is F1569002, which means it is a model 99k produced in 1911.

I have just been to the Media Workshop’s Darkroom course and have developed my first picture in more than 8 years. I went to the course mainly to refresh my memory before I begin going to the workshop on my own. However, I have learnt a lot of new stuff in just two evenings. When I learnt to develop black/white in my teenage years it was mostly a question of developing as many of my own photos as possible. It might be because of the last 8 years of taking digital photos that has made me loose interest in printed pictures so now I can concentrate more on the development process. I learnt tonight how to add a filter to change contrast and how to develop areas of a photo more or less by giving it 5sec more and covering up bits of the image with a waving hand. Very fun!
Can’t wait till tomorrow and being able to develop the medium format film from the no. 2 Brownie.

When I came back from the conference in the US my husband had been to the car-boot sale with his mate and surprised me with a 1930s No. 2 Brownie model F.

He was motivated but he fact that I have decided to take up black/white photography and development again. I used to do this when I was younger than I am now. Because it is at least 8 years since I have last been in a darkroom I decided to take up the Media Workshop’s offer of a quick course in darkroom use.
There I was pointed towards City Photographics, an independent photo retailer at Bedford place. Here I bought a 120 medium format film and was shown how to put it in the camera correctly.
I also found the old manual for the camera free online. Without this I would not have been able to take any photos at all.
This week I had my in-laws visiting and I used the opportunity to take loads of portraits of them with both the Brownie and a 35mm camera.
So now all that remains to be seen is whether any of the portraits I took with the Brownie are good or if it even works. I will have to develop them and see. I am so excited!

I have been in love with the idea of having a couple of retro crochet gloves for a long time but all the gloves me and my friend ever looked at where way to small for our working class hands. So what can a girl do.

Well she can make some herself. I had actually begun to make some gloves myself with a very simple square pattern. Unfortunately, I had begun from the fingers working my way down so that I was left with 10 fingers without knowing what to do next. Funny enough someone in my knitting group was also crocheting gloves and she pointed me to the Hook Yarn and Needles page where I found some great patterns for just this. So I finished of my pink gloves with inspiration from the Smart Crocheted Gloves. They did turn out a bit funny because I began from the fingers down instead of the wrist up.

By now I had fallen in love with the Sunlight Gloves. They where sophisticated and elegant and I thought that if I could make them in the right yarn they would be perfect for my upcoming nuptials. But it was so difficult to find the right yarn specially since I did not understand the yarn type and hook sizes in the pattern. But I had a go with a hook size 1mm and some natural cotton crochet yarn size 20 and I think the result it quite good. I will definitely be wearing them on my big day and hopefully they can become a family heirloom.

The pattern is fairly easy to follow. Where I thought it needed a bit more explaining was when it came to making the fingers but I guess there is a lot of trial and error in that trying to make it fit the individual. I think I redid the opening for the thumb 15 times before I was satisfied. Also with the first round of chains at the wrist I found that with my yarn and hook I had to make the chain a bit longer otherwise in scrunched up when I added the pattern.

As a final extra, I did wear these lovely gloves at my wedding. It was a wonderful day and I an sad to say that I only wore them for about 30 min during the ceremony. When we got to the exchanging of rings I took them of, gave them to a bridesmaid and completely forgot all about them. However, the good thing is that they are very flexible and any friends or family who want to wear them for their own wedding can do so.

I made these wrist warmers in a rush before christmas as a X-mas present for my best friend. I couldn’t find a pattern I liked so I had to make it up and as a result of that the first one I made is a bit loose while the other is nice and snug. I actually really like them myself and luckily I wrote down what I did so I can recreate them.

Then what I do is take a jam jar and put the spices in it together with a bit of left over juice and store it in the fridge. Then when I next want some I just pop this into the pan and fill up with juice. This time around it should be enough to just warm it up and put the spices back into the jar since a bit of the juice has already been soaking for a while.

Enjoy!

Warning though: do not let the jam jar with spices stay in your fridge till June next year – it is pretty nasty to clean. I talk from experience.

So now I have decided to stick to the original Lemoncello recipe. Unfortunately, I could not get hold of un-waxed organic lemons before Christmas so this batch is with limes instead. Smells good though!
Hope this works and I get a wonderful Limecello out of it.

Note: with the citric fruit liqueurs I have discovered that the longer they get to stand around for the better they become. Some of them taste really soapy until they are about a year old.

Ingredients
425g warm (not hot) water
500g Amo rye bread mix
13g dry yeast or 25g fresh

The water must have a temperature which your little finger feels comfortable in (not too hot and not too cold).
The bread mix can now be bought in the UK and this is a great chance to promote the great places where it can be bought (only two). The first one is available all year round in the shop and cafe Scandinavian Kitchen in London. The other is the fantastic Danish Christmas Bazaar which is being held this weekend 29th – 30th November 2008 at the Danish YWCA also in London.
While in Denmark it is very normal to buy and use fresh yeast I have not seen it on sale in the UK (except for at the Scandinavian Kitchen) but luckily dry yeast works fine too.

Process
1. Place the ingredients in your baking machine in the order above.
2. If you have a rye bread setting (I don’t) put it to that otherwise use the normal white bread setting (not rapid)
3. Set it to the dark crust
4. As a kg bread mix will make a 1.6kg bread I suggest setting the weight on the machine to 700-800g.
5. Turn on the machine and let it works it’s magic.
6. When the bread is done fish out the hook and let it cool down for half an hour in a damp cloth to allow the crust to be more soft.

Good Luck!

Even so, it was not the actual weaving which resulted in me standing here several years later not really having got anywhere with this pattern. It was more the fact that I had setup so long a weave without some sort of loom. I had tried using these turning hooks at the other end (bought in a fishing supply shop) which made it possible to un-tangle the thread once in a while. Unfortunately, The whole thing was just to long to handle and some threads became looser than others so I gave up for a while.

However, now I am back! I have decided that I must finish it very soon so I can begin doing fun things with my cards again. I want to go some more double-face free-style patterns and letters. It just makes such a good present like the one for Maria (the post about letters). She still uses it as a key chain!

So far I have tried out a couple of patterns from the book and they where really fun to do. However, in the future I will try out some new things for myself. The thing is though that it is so relaxing (for me at least) to do and so easy to take around with you (except on planes). It also give such an instant pleasure since most things are quite easy to finish of. So far I have made a small bag (which I am not sure what to do with since I never use things like that so it will probably go to a friend) and a very nice scarf with green and pink flowers (for my sister). So stay tuned for more.

I actually began knitting after all in spring 2009, but I still love to crochet!

Ingredients
These are basic ingredients based on the process described at the atlantic blog.

• 1 large or 2 small garlic cloves
• 2 cups leaves
• big pinch of coarse salt
• 3 tbsp pine nuts
• 5 tbsl grated hard Italian cheese
• 3 tbsp oil

For the garlic for all three portions I used smoked garlic from The Garlic Farm on the Isle of Wight – also found at Winchester Farmers Market. I only used one medium sized clove pr portion and looking back I could have used two since smoked garlic has a very mild taste.
For the cheese I used Parmesan and for the salt as always I used some lovely “Læsø Syde Salt” from the small Danish Island called Læsø where the Læsø Saltsyderi make salt from the very salty ground water which they extract through a traditional process.

Basil Pesto
For this one I used all the basic leaves from my basil plants which now look a bit sad. I bought them a couple of months ago to make some pesto and when I had plucked all the leaves of then I decided to leave the plants in the window thinking that they would probably die anyway in a couple of days. It has to be said that I have not had a lot of luck with basil. I tried last year to grow some from seed – but they soon died. Every time I buy some from the shop they also tend to die quite fast no mater what I do. So this time expecting them to die I decided that I was just going to ignore them. Within a couple of days they began to look a bit droopy and i gave them a bit of water and already they began to look a bit better again. This had continued for about a month until the other day when I had three plants full of the most beautiful fresh basil leaves. I have found the secret – basil just doesn’t like attention – at least not from me. They want to be left in peace and have a bit of water once in a while when they go all soft and droopy. Lets see if I can ignore them enough this time around for them to grow those nice leaves back.

Watercress Pesto
The Watercress pesto probably looks the best. I got the Watercress from Cresson Creative at the Winchester Farmers Market. Last time we went we also got some watercress sauce to mix with Crème fraiche and put on our pasta and this was also very good. Apparently, all this watercress comes from Alresford which on Sunday the 11th May will host the Alresford Watercress Festival. Watercress is recognized as a ‘superfood’ and has been grown in the Alresford area for centuries and was introduced to a wider population with the railway in the mid 19th century.

Rocket Pesto
The rocket came from a pack from Asda – not very exciting really. Also I realized while trying to mix the rocket with the pinenut mixture in the mortar that I should have removed all the stalks from the rocket. Actually I should probably have tried to do this mixing in a blender and not by hand.

As you might see all three pesto are very coarse. This is on purpose as I wanted to try making pesto where you can actually taste the different ingredients. I succeeded in that. However, in the future I might still attempt to mix basil pesto in my mortar but I think I will stick to making watercress or pocket pesto in a blender. The leaves are quite exhausting to chop by hand.

Ingredients

• 125g Flour
• 1 1/4dl Milk
• c. 1 1/4dl beer
• 1tbsp oil
• 3-4 eggs
• bit of salt
• bit of sugar
• bit of lemon

Process

1. Mix dry stuff
2. Mix wet stuff
3. Mix both together
4. Leave to rest for 1/2 hour
5. Cook thin pancakes with a little fat/margarine

When doing anything with beetroots always begin by putting your rubber gloves on. It is a real pain to run around for several days afterward with pink fingers.

Wash the beetroots and cut the ends of.

Put them in a pot of water and added some salt.

I boiled them for quite a while. Don’t try to boil them till they get soft because they won’t – they are not potatoes! Boil them till you can put a fork into them and they feel non-raw. Sorry I know this is not very helpful but it is difficult to describe. Basically if any of the big ones feel raw in the middle then give them some more otherwise you will have raw pickled beetroots and well unless that is a favorite of yours I wouldn’t do it. Trust me I tried and it wasn’t very good. Another time I tried baking them and they where probably a bit overdone but this was actually preferable in comparison with the raw ones.

So when you believe them to be done tip the whole thing out into the sink and pour loads of cold water over them. That way the skin will easily come of when you (still with your rubber gloves on) peel them.

Then you cut them all into slices that are c. 5mm wide and put them into your jars or whatever you are going to store them in.
A bit about storage: If you are going to eat them within a couple of weeks I would say you don’t need to think about preservation too much. Keep them in the fridge and the vinegar will do the rest. But do store them in glass containers or you will find that your nice Tupperware is pink for the rest of it’s life.

The vinegar is basically a mixture of vinegar and spices set to boil for 1 min and the left for about 2 hours to cool down. The recipe for the vinegar is as follows for about 2kg beetroots:

• 1.5L vinegar – I used pickling vinegar and a dash of red wine vinegar

A note on vinegar:
I have a recipe that says use malt or wine vinegar which I tried one day. I used cider vinegar for one portion and red wine vinegar for another and boy where they strong. John loved them but I found them a bit too much. Pickling vinegar is also good but I find that it may become to boring so I spice it up with a dash of something stronger like in this case red wine vinegar.

Spices to use accourding to a recipe I have

• 1 tbsp coriander seeds – I did use that
• 1tbsp peppercorns – Also used that
• 10 cloves – Forgot that
• 1 bay leaf – Used that

I also added a couple of cardamom seeds and some juniper berries for the simple reason that I had them lying around and that I like them. I also ended up adding some chopped garlic cloves.
So basically it all depends on the mood your in and what time of year it is. Last christmas I tries putting the cloves in with aniseed and a cinnamon stick. Unfortunately you couldn’t taste it because this was the batch where I had used pure red wine vinegar.

• Finally you can add some sugar – my recipe says 250g – this time I probably used about 200 ml

And that’s it I guess – leave then for about a couple of days and then start to eat from them. Enjoy!