Breezy, wet weekend waffle...

Aw, Harvey finally decided to let Riley share some sofa time. Note that they are sparkly clean for this thanks to a spot of pebble bottomed river splashing (as opposed to our mud bottomed river).

At the end of our very long garden to one side lives a woodturner. From time to time we find fish carcasses, chicken bones and various bits of pig thrown over his fence into the back field. Apart from attracting rats and goodness knows what else it's a bit of a nuisance for our dogs. Apart from the dubious age of the food, things like chicken bones can be a choking hazard. Harvey has been trained from a puppy to leave it all alone but Riley thinks it's bonus dinner time! This morning I had to wrestle half a pig from his mouth, ok, well I exaggerate a little, but it was a large strip with extremely thick skin on it and hairs still on it, urgh, gross.

We had the coarse plaster applied to fill all the big holes and channels where the new wiring has been fitted. The kitchen really doesn't look all that different hence my lack of kitchen update posts. Once the smooth plaster goes on, which starts on Monday it will begin to look like progress is being made. Once dry we plan to paint everything white and then lay the floor. The thought of having a proper floor that is not bare concrete is pretty exciting. It is a bugger to sweep mud from concrete I can tell you!

So this is how the far wall looks. The new fuse box will be hidden in a wall cupboard. The rather strangely placed double socket is for the microwave and coffee machine.

This pic shows the ceiling rough plastered over where the wall came down. The whole ceiling will be smooth plastered next week too so that will mean removing most of the contents of the kitchen once again. I've lost track of how many times stuff has gone out and come back in again.

The rest of the room looks pretty much the same as these pics. We are having fun deciding where to fit two medium sized dog beds. There's the hall or the kitchen, but I don't really want the two enormous plastic beds we've acquired because they are a bit of an overkill, neither dog needs the space they provide and we will no doubt keep tripping over the darn things. I will show you the ideas we've come up with in my next post. From the sublime to the ridiculous!

Sanctuary...

Messy work going on in the kitchen. Big holes being filled with sticky brown stuff, otherwise known as plaster. The only place I can sensibly retreat to is our living room/conservatory. Just happens to be where I keep my crochet works in progress.

I've recently caught up with a pal of mine and she has a wee baby boy. Having visited for tea and a big catch up I think I've sussed out her taste in colours, oh and the baby was seriously gorgeous. I had these wool with merino balls with baby clothes in mind because it's a really soft blend. It's making the softest blanket and it's surprisingly good to work with. I've got two of each colour, eight balls, so I will just keep working the traditional granny squares until I run out. I'm using join as you go with the darkest blue so hopefully it will do for baby age and a bit beyond.

It was really good to meet up after about five years, it made me think how easy it is to lose touch with people, and how good it is to have friends.

The life of Riley...

We have a new addition to the family! Meet Riley. As you can see he likes to rearrange the cushions on the sofa and then climb on top of them and sleep.

Riley is four, the same age as Harvey. There were a few stand offs before Harvey decided Riley would do. Riley came to us through the magic of Facebook. He was free to a good home due to a new baby. I thought he might have naughty habits that would be a bit challenging. We've got used to having one well behaved dog. So far so good. He sits nicely when you want to put his lead on, he comes back when he's called, he's rubbish at fetch but one obsessive fetcher in the family is enough! He's also quite respectful of the cat. She's taken to him much quicker than we expected (she sulked for three months when we bought Harvey home as a puppy).

He doesn't seem at all traumatised for being re-homed (he came via the owner's friend, so three homes in as many weeks). He's made himself quite at home, and it feels as though he's always been here. We've been on lots of extra walks just to see how he behaves, and he's passed all the tests with flying colours. He doesn't bother other dogs, he doesn't go too far ahead of us, he understands 'wait' when we get to the end of the walk.

So Harvey has a brother and we have a madhouse!

Foraging...

I've always been fascinated by 'wild' food. Way before all the TV programmes and websites dedicated to it. See previous post re chestnuts, our garden also had hazelnuts. When we were not building dens in our back garden we were out exploring local woodland. Thanks to the likes of The Famous Five we made it a game to 'live off the land'. More than likely just a handful of blackberries and some stolen apples. I say stolen, lying outside the property on the grass, but it felt like stealing hence we didn't hang about for long!

So M and I went back to the crab apple tree that we found tucked away in a corner of the village. No-one else seems to be in a rush to make crab apple jelly so we filled a basket with roughly the amount we needed, leaving plenty for the birds.

We spent a while removing stalks and that tufty bit on the bottom and then simmered them until they were soft and pulpy. There's no need to cut them up because they split easily when cooked. Well ours did, maybe bigger ones would need cutting in half. (We reckon ours are Golden Hornet but we could be wrong). A jam bag would have been handy at this point but we made do with the muslin square we had from making marmalade last year and suspended it over a sieve over a pan (don't squeeze or the jam will end up cloudy). It made a surprising amount of juice.

Add seven parts sugar to ten parts juice and keep on a rolling boil, removing scum, until it thickens. Then keep testing it on the back of a cold spoon. This is never an exact science and we may have erred in the side if caution here and left it a tad longer than necessary (nothing worse than runny jam).

We halved the recipe given on the BBC Good Food website and used 2kg of fruit. This made three large jars. Tested for breakfast by M...

...and announced a big success. So three big jars of jam for the price of 1kg of sugar, about 50p per 600g. That was fun.

Are you sitting comfortably?

When my brother and I were young (and foolish) we decided one day to gather up all the fat chestnuts in our garden and sell them from a makeshift market stall outside our house. We had at least half a dozen mature sweet chestnut trees in our garden so there was plenty to gather up. Bear in mind that we didn't get a lot of passing traffic (our road was a dead end) and we were both painfully shy when it came to strangers. Mum wasn't keen on the idea but reluctantly agreed thinking the project wouldn't last five minutes. She was right, but not in the way she (or we) expected.

We reckoned on being out there for quite a while so after weighing up portions and bagging them up we set up our table and a lunch box containing various refreshments and snacks for ourselves. Every aspect was thought out including our prices (we knew what was being charged elsewhere and undercut it by a little). Five minutes into our venture a car drew up and a man got out. R mumbled something like, 'oh heck' and I tried my best salesperson smile. Even more terrifying was cutting a deal for him to buy the entire stock! I said if he bought everything I would give him 10% off and he laughed heartily and accepted. No doubt he ran a shop somewhere.

M is under strict doctors orders to walk more for his sore hip. This is music to my ears because it's always nice to have company on a walk. Today we didn't venture too far but came across a very small sweet chestnut tree. I couldn't believe the squirrels hadn't got there first. We scooped up the entire windfall. I've since googled recipes and there's more you can do with chestnuts than I realised. I think we will probably just roast these though.

We also picked what we thought might be a crab apple, and may go back for more now that we have a recipe for crab apple jelly. No sense in wasting free food!

Another year older...

The best laid plans and all that... we shelved plans to go to the coast this afternoon on account of the dreadful weather. I did a spot of crochet, opened my pressies, got lots of nice cards...

...and just when I was worried I might never find a tasty gluten free cake, one arrived here via Jake (whose football training week was a bit of a wash out) in the shape of a Warburtons Blueberry and Cranberry muffin complete with birthday candle. Thanks Mum! Now all I need to do is force everyone to sing Happy Birthday and my day will be complete.

PS. Thanks R&L for the very apt 'too many candles, so little cake' how true, how true.

NB. I resisted the blue hair dye. I'll have my mid life crisis next year.

T. A. C...

So I'm surfing the net and thinking about doing something vaguely Halloweeny. Yes I know that's not a word, but it should be. Then up pops a crochet skull. Very cool I thought. Looked a bit tricky. Studied the photo and knew it would probably start with a figure of eight chain... dug out some white cotton. Ten minutes later casually show E what I made, 'Wow, cool!'. So there you have it, teenage approved crochet (TAC). I'm now attempting to circle it off in black cotton to make a coffee coaster for her room.