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Showing posts from September, 2015

MacMillian Coffee Morning 2015

cakes all ready last night A big baking session last night in my kitchen. Most of you that follow my blog will have been touched by cancer either a family member or friend - most people are touched by this at some point in their lives. We always thinks its someone else until it happens to us. I remember thinking oh god not the C word, my dad, why my dad? before sobbing.  Two years ago my dad was diagnosed with throat cancer and fortunately for us he had fantastic care through MacMillan and is in remission with regular check-ups. So this year I decided to hold another MacMillan coffee morning, or rather day at work! It started at 10am and finished at 3pm, not bad for a small office with only 14 members of staff there today. We grazed all day long. My day started with cake for breakfast, lunch was cake and tea time was cake. I think I'll be off cake for a day or so. jam tarts in progress I love cake, who doesn't so three ladies at work decided to bake and sell the yum

jam making and gardening (a lovely combination)

A fully packed weekend, need Monday to recover! So here are some photos of my weekend in the lovely warm Kent sunshine. I hope you had some sunshine where you live, sadly its now raining. Faversham food and crafts on Saturday with Jack, lots of lovely produce and a great selection of hand made gifts. Sunday, spent almost the entire day gardening but did save time to make strawberry jam and chill jam and a few more rows of my snood, almost done and this one will be added to my Folksy shop. I plan to make another for myself on holiday later in October. I bought a bargain bundle of Cath Kidston yarn on eBay, can't wait to receive it! garden tidy-up well under way Local Kent strawberries   row ten complete home made strawberry jam home made chilli jam for my MacMillian coffee afternoon at work

Cath Kidston granny stripe cowl

The start of another new project, this time a Cath Kidston inspired snood.  This has been on my to-do-list for a very long time. I was lucky to find 4 balls off wool in my local knitting shop sale bin for £1.50 each plus I bought one at full price. The pattern suggests 13 rows but I may make mine a bit wider. Here is the pattern link if you fancy making one  the beginning adding the blue curled up under my granny stripe blanket

September Sunshine

Saturday night knitting spot What's up with the weather? Four days of lovely sunshine and today's temperature was 21 degrees, perfect. Perfect for a spot of knitting in the garden. I bought some Louisa Harding Akiko yarn last week, it's beautiful, soft and the colour is just lovely - denim meets Aqua. It's knits up well and the blackberry stitch beanie is just perfect, soft and snugly. You can find the pattern here I'm off to the Broads in October and although I've already knitted two of these for myself, it's always good to have a new colour and it looks great in the sunshine. knitting in the garden I've now gifted the latest granny stripe blanket to my niece Megan who's off to Bath next week to start her first year in uni. She loved the blanket which was such a relief, I've been making it on and off for almost six months alongside my granny square blanket and I managed to finish both of them in the same week. I'm sit

Hedgerow jam (blackberry jam recipe)

I found this great recipe on Friday. My next door neighbours daughter had been picking blackberries and I offered to make her jam from her harvest. It worked a treat and tasted lovely. Obviously I had to keep one large jar to sample with uncut bread and real butter! the finished jam one large jar for me   about to start

Do you Tunisian crochet?

I had the hooks, the basic patterns and this week I've had the time. I took the week off to chill out, do nice things including of course lots of crochet time. I crochet in the Beth Chatto Gardens on Wednesday, more about the beautiful gardens in another post. If you've never been and you are near Colchester, Essex you should go it's such a tranquil place. crochet granny squares at the Beth Chatto gardens So earlier this week I found my Tunisian crochet hooks, popped over to Pinterest and taught myself in under 5 mins and now I'm hooked, I love it. It's sort of a combination of crochet and knitting. I experimented this morning with a bag full of merino scraps left over from my granny blanket and here is my stripey snood in progress.  I made up the pattern, here it is.  Start with a foundation chain of 30 on size 6 hook, use DK that would normally require size 4 pins. Then change colour on the return pass. It gives you a nice contrast row a