August 17, 2008

Coldham's Crumble

I love food, but the kind of food I love best is the kind that comes free because it grows in public. Right now I'm digesting apple and blackberry crumble after a successful fruit-picking mission to Coldham's Common. I'm definitely planning to go back next week; there are tons of blackberries getting close to ripening.

Coldham's Crumble
Filling: take apples and blackberries picked from Coldham's Common. Core and peel the apples, wash the blackberries, mix them all together with some brown sugar.

Crumble mix: 4oz plain flour/2.5oz brown sugar/1.5oz butter. Rub the flour and butter into breadcrumbs and tip over the filling before baking at 190 degrees C for 45 minutes.

EAT!

August 09, 2008

Knitting obsession

I'm becoming a bit of a knitwear obsessive. At the Folk Festival last weekend I kept spotting lots of garments that looked like they were hand-knitted and had to restrain myself from asking the wearers about them (I imagine they wouldn't have been best-pleased if I was wrong!). Simon thinks it's all a bit amusing, but I can just throw his model plane obsession back at him, so we're both super-geeks now. Anyway, it turns out I'm enjoying this new hobby so much I'm now planning on making all my Christmas presents knitted. I guess I'd better get cracking, since I'm not exactly the fastest knitter!

I've signed up for a Ravelry account to try and keep myself a little more organised with what projects I'm working on, but until that becomes active I'm going to attempt to keep track of what I've already done here.

So far I have two completed projects - the first being a scarf I made a couple of years back while I was in Nottingham, which I've never really worn. It was more of a practice project - all in garter stitch, which I don't find all that attractive and which, in any case, doesn't sit all that well round your neck - as you can see.

Continuing the garter stitch theme, I also completed this tank top in July - I prefer this, but I'm still not sure how often I'll wear it. It has a fine example of my cack-handed crocheting (I had to learn how to do this just for this top) along the neck and armholes. I'm fairly pleased with the result as a first attempt at altering a pattern. It fits!