Colourful Stripes and Clearing the Stash

Last year I really embraced stripes in my knitting. They're colourful and bright, and, most importantly from my point of view, they help use up the odds and ends of leftover yarns acquired over the years.

This first one (above), a wool cardigan, is a bit of a cheat as I bought some balls of the brown yarn to pull the other colours together and to be sure I had enough for the button edging, but I think it's worked really well, and helped use up a variety of yarns.

Next was a cotton v-neck jumper. I'm not actually a great fan of cotton yarn - garments tend to be heavy and take forever to dry - but I've still accumulated a store of it which needed using up. There were a lot of odd balls which accounts for the random narrower stripes and the weird colour change from blues/greens to red/orange but I think overall it's worked, and is baggy enough to wear over a warm dress.

Last, and in a way the least, was a really random project using up all sorts of colours to make this short-sleeved jumper. I'd hoped to be able to alternate large and narrower stripes, but as I progressed it became obvious that in some of the yarns I just didn't have enough. Also, I didn't really want to have a white stripe as it feels too startling at the side of the more muted colours. As a garment though it's growing on me - and at least no one knows that it wasn't intended to look this way.   

    
 Something that really puzzles me though is - if I've knitted up all these oddments of yarn, why doesn't there appear to be more space in the storage drawers? In the hope of one day making some space, I've started my next project - a long cardigan, and yes, it's striped!

Stripes again

I'm determined to work my way through the stash of accumulated oddments of yarn, so that's going to mean a lot of stripes - and also a lot of garments based on this pattern which has become one of my favourites. I like woolen short-sleeved jumpers for winter as a warm extra layer over long-sleeved t-shirts; they keep my body core warm, while not having bulky sleeves to get in the way. Also, they don't take much yarn. For this I had 2 and a bit balls of maroon, slightly less of the grey, and a single ball of the lilac, plus really short oddments for the two narrow stripes. 

From the armholes up I knitted all pieces together - not quite in the round but as one super-wide piece.  This helped keep track of how much of each colour yarn was left - and as you can see, there wasn't enough to make the lilac band as deep as the others. Let's pretend that was a deliberate design feature :)

Anyway, it worked, it fits, it works colour-wise with a lot of my other clothes, so all i need is cooler weather to be able to wear it.

 

Raspberry Vodka

After a fortnight of soaking raspberries and sugar in vodka, it's time for straining and decanting back into the original bottle.

There was just a little too much to fit, so I had to sample some - and very nice it was. The colour's gorgeous too. It's definitely more of a success than my rhubarb gin which smells strangely of olive oil.

I just wish I'd thought to steam off the original labels!

When life gives you raspberries ...

 They say 'when life gives you lemons, make gin and tonic'. Well, life (or the allotment) is right now giving me raspberries - far too many of them.

Some have gone into the freezer to turn into jam at a later date but this autumn's crop has been so bounteous that I'd thought I'd experiment with some of it.


So, raspberry vodka.









4 ounces raspberries, the same of sugar and not quite the whole of a 35cl bottle of vodka - letting it sit, shake frequently, and wait for two weeks.
I've made blackberry vodka before, which was lovely, and rhubarb gin which was less so and needed interesting mixers. Hopefully this will fall into the 'lovely' category.
Fingers crossed for two weeks

Baby-sized cardigans, and clearing my yarn stash

I decided at almost the last minute to knit my
grandson a jacket for Christmas - a sort of baseball jacket. It took me a little over a week, and helped use up some bits of yarn I had stashed away, but was FAR too big!
It will probably still fit him next Christmas.

I was so taken with this way of using up my oddments of yarn, though, that sometime in January, filled with new year's resolutions to clear out my yarn stash, I thought I'd make another - similar but different, and smaller this time. I'd have plenty of time to make it before moving on to my newly-purchased wool intended for myself.
Or so I thought.

There must have been a huge amount of wishful thinking going on there, because with one thing and another I didn't complete the project till March!
Originally I'd intended to make the sleeves in blue, but there wasn't enough of that yarn.
I think the tan colour works well though, and the various coloured stripes will match with a variety of brown and blue jogging bottoms and denim baby jeans.

On now to my own cardigan before summer arrives ...

When life gives you courgettes ... make marmalade

If there's one surplus from the allotment that I hate, it's courgettes. There's only so many of them that you can eat (and to be honest I having been cooking much with the heat), and they don't freeze well.


 The only options left are chutney and marmalade - and we eat more marmalade.











It's weird, but simple, and does actually taste like marmalade once cooked. Basically, peel and chop the courgettes, getting rid of any seeds. Weigh them and put them in a jam pan with their weight in sugar, and leave overnight.
 For each pound of courgettes, add a lemon or two (I save squeezed out ones in the freezer) and a handful of frozen leftover orange rind. I boil these separately to soften, then cut up finely and add to the courgettes.



 




Next day it all just needs boiling up - gently at first to be sure the courgettes are soft (sometimes I mash them to avoid lumps) then quickly to set.

Up-cycling

I've been busy recently up-cycling a couple of t-shirts. Both had 'problems' but I didn't want to throw either away.




The first had got snagged on something, and a small hole developed. Now, I'd hate to throw a perfectly good T away just for that, but I couldn't wear it outside the house in such a state - so a little applique was needed.

Oddly when I started to hunt through my accumulated scraps of material, I found not only the perfect shades to 'patch' with but they were already cut in flowers shapes and ironed to Bonda-web! Obviously they were part of an abandoned project - but I can't remember what!


So some quick work with the iron, then a little machine sewing to make sure they stayed in place, and looked more 'flowery', and this favourite has a new lease of life.







The second project was different. I have several t-shirts exactly the same, bought because they were organic cotton, but over the years I'd decided the neck-line was too high for me. I tried experimenting with one - cutting the neck lower but then it gaped too wide and fell off my shoulders! So that didn't really work.
I realised though that I had another t-shirt which was definitely heading off for re-cycling; it had dropped completely out of shape, and just looked like a sack when worn. So with nothing to lose, I cut a strip from the bottom hem of this grey T and sewed it around the baggy neck of the purpley-blue one. It worked!
On a roll, I then decided to take another deeper strip of grey, fold it in half to give a finished hem, and sew it to the bottom. Personally I think it worked really well. It makes the contrasting neck trim look a deliberate design feature, and makes the shirt a little longer which is better with jeans.

In fact, I was so pleased with my efforts, I showed my teen. 

"You know," she said, "I could have loaned you some cash to buy a new top."

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Using up pumpkins and apples

Last week turned out to be a busy one making jam and chutney. First I discovered the end of the pumpkin turning frankly quite disgusting, so I salvaged what was left and made chutney.

 It's another of those 'adapted' recipes that I came up with a few years ago when I had a glut of gooseberries, and then altered slightly to make use of pumpkin instead. It's spicy (ginger and chillis) but fruity (orange juice), and my favourite even though it never turns out exactly as the previous batch.

 I still didn't use the whole pumpkin up but had a chunk, about 8oz, left over, enough for goulash.

Then the apples - I thought all our home-grown apples had been used up, but then we needed a cardboard box and checked what was in the one in the back porch ....and found some apples! Some were only fit for throwing straight in the compost bin, some were still fine to keep a little while but most were best used straight away.
I also have too many frozen raspberries, so I combined them, about 50:50. It's a lazy way of getting round the 'pip' problem of raspberries. I prefer jam made solely from raspberries to be sieved, but it's so time consuming. This way, with raspberries  making up only half the fruit, I don't bother.

I still have some left-over apples, but for last autumn's crop they don't look too bad and will soon be used in apple sauce or as stewed topping for breakfast cereals.

Weird marmalade

 In a combination of pursuing my New Year resolutions and avoiding a horrible mess in the fridge, I decided in was time to make marmalade. I've been using bits of this huge home-grown pumpkin in various chillis, soups and goulashes, but not really using it up quickly enough and it's starting to show signs of rotting.






I don't have a very precise recipe for this marmalade. The original recipe came, I think, from Farmhouse Fare, a compilation of recipes sent in to Farmers Weekly but I've altered it here and there, and I just rather throw in what I've got available.








This time I've used 3lb pumpkin, several frozen lemon husks and a lime previously 'juiced' for mojitos.

So, five jars of marmalade, and I still have at least 2lbs of pumpkin left!

New year - new projects

 Part of my list of New Year's resolutions was to cut down on all the clutter I have around the house. A lot of it is the pile of old clothes and off-cuts of material that I hang on to 'just in case'. Well, I'm starting off the year by turning at least one small piece of the stash into something useful.
My old peg-bag, made from a tablecloth off-cut, had seen better days - in fact at points the material was almost worn through. Time for a new one!

Hunting through the many piles of material I've hoarded, I came across this quite sturdy IKEA fabric leftover from covering cushions a few years ago. It's probably a better weight than the tablecloth material I used last time and its slightly odd shape encouraged me to try a different design.

There were two matching pieces with a big, cushion-shaped, curve taken out so I joined them together (you can just see the central seam on the finished pic below) and bound with bias strips to make an opening through which to grab the pegs - it maybe would have been better with elastic threaded through as it looks a bit gaping, and I don't want to lose pegs all over the garden. Other than that it was basically a case of joining bits together to make the right-sized square, with a hole for the hanger at the top. The project was finished in an afternoon, and a little bit of material stash used up - both of which have to be good!

Bread and butter pickle - with courgettes

 Last year I tried making bread and butter pickle for the first time - the proper way with cucumber. Now though I'm faced with a glut of courgettes. I don't really like to freeze them as no matter what I do with them afterwards they turn out soggy and tasteless, so.... thinking they're not very different to cucumbers I'm trying to pickle them in the same way.

Basically, slice them and an onion.




Sprinkle with salt and leave for an hour

Pour over the hot vinegar with sugar and turmeric added ......and wait a few days before tasting.

Now just crossing my fingers and hoping the experiment's worked!

Panic stations!

 I was shocked at the weekend to discover most of the pumpkins and squashes stored from last year were starting to rot - some just a little, some past hope of salvaging!

I then decided I ought to use up some of the remaining good bits - quickly!

So, time for some marmalade making.

 It's possibly simpler than traditional marmalade - cube the pumpkin/squash, add some chopped up lemons (all from the freezer where I keep the bits leftover after squeezing for juice or grating the rind) simmer till cooked and squashy. Add sugar and stand over night. Then boil till set.

Lovely orange-coloured, lemon-flavoured marmalade.

New lease of life

Just after Christmas I set out to alter an old jumper that I no longer wore. I wanted to shorten the arms, lengthen the body and remove the ribbing from the neck. So here it is all finished. no more throttling neck-line, no more sleeves getting in the way, and no more gaping bits between jumper and trousers! And all a lot quicker than starting from scratch - the hardest part was unpicking the old seams, after that everything went easily.

Tea cosy - but it could be a hat

I posted a pic of my Christmas present scarf on my FB page and a friend asked if I could make a tea cosy. Well, I've never tried one but it's basically a hat, right? Just with gaps at the sides.

To be sure I didn't completely mess things up I borrowed a knitted tea cosy, counted the stitches and rows,then sorted out lots of bits of odds and ends of wool and got knitting. 

I didn't like the first attempt - the colours were too dull - so I added some brighter ones to zing it up a bit and I'm really happy with it.

 I'd even wear it as a hat!

Scarf finished - and a change of plan

 Here's my first knitting project of the year finished already! One of my daughters bought me some fluffy sequined yarn for Christmas, and, with so much time over the holiday spent watching TV, it's already knitted and ready to wear!






So back to what I intended to knit next - or not. I'd sorted out a heap of blue/green/brown wool to knit into a short-sleeved jumper but, while thinking about stripes and patterns, I remembered this old long-sleeved jumper that I rarely wear any more, and I'm going to 're-do' that. I'll pull a thread or two and cut the sleeves just above the elbow, take the neck ribbing off (it's a bit high) and with unravelled yarn from the sleeves extend the rib at the bottom (it's a bit short for with jeans/trousers). It sounds a lot of fuss but will be quicker than knitting from scratch and I should have a finished garment while the weather's still cold.

Unseasonal Sewing

I started this renovation project - turning an old pair of trousers into a skirt - back in October,when it might have been warm enough to wear it. I got through all the tricky bits of sewing, adding extra panels down the side seams to make it wide enough, quite quickly then ran up against tracking down material for the inside waistband. After that I really just needed to get the hem turned and sewn, which I felt a bit inclined to leave - possibly even till Spring! I decided it was a better idea though to get it finished, even if it's too thin to wear right now. This way it's ready and waiting come warmer weather.

Despite the fiddling of having to add extra panels, I'm really pleased with how this has turned out. it certainly looks better than the scruffy trousers.

Trousers turning into skirt...continued....

 This project had run up against one of those things which always slow me down - the need to hunt for a bit of fabric in the huge stash hidden upstairs.

All I needed was enough to make a waistband lining but the thought of getting everything out of the cupboard...and then it not going back in again, stopped me from making the effort.

Anyway, eventually I plucked up the courage and sorted something out - a bit a leftover from another skirt-making project. So the waist is lined, but not totally finished. I've added some rather shaky buttonholes for the draw-string (long while since I've done any and forgot how the gadget worked) ...now need to turn everything under and sew it down.

Next step.....hemming...if I can get it level!

Recipe testing - Hilaire Walden's Sensational Preserves -Hot Green Tomato Chutney

With the nights dropping colder, I decided last week to clear the larger green tomatoes from the allotment plants.... and then, of course, it's time to make chutney.

I've got a couple of favourite recipes and this time went for a hot spicy version from Hilaire Walden's Sensational Preserves. It's actually referred to as plain 'Green Tomato Chutney in the book, but I label it as 'hot' to differentiate it from the other green tomato chutney I make, and because the chillies and ginger in it make it hot!

As on previous occasions, I tampered with the recipe slightly, replacing cider vinegar with ordinary 'malt' and adding extra sugar. The recipe only calls for an ounce, which doesn't seem much at all - nothing like thw amount used in other recipes - so I upped it to 4. This year I used fresh green chillies (home grown) as called for, but previously I've used dried red ones.

The instructions only suggest boiling for a short time but this seemed likely to leave the veg rather chunky. I prefer a chutney with an almost puréed texture, so I cooked it all for slightly longer and mashed everything up. 

I wish there was a reliable way of predicting the ultimate amount of recipes like this, as I ended up with 2 jars and a bit left over - which never looks attractive.

Free lunch - 12th October

It's been colder this week - which leads to more interesting and varied lunches.
Ok, I still started the week with all-the-salad-possible wraps; cucumber, tomatoes, homegrown chutney, onion, beetroot, and a bit of cheese (not home grown!)






Tuesday, I tried something slightly different - popping a mini sweetcorn cob from the freezer in the oven to warm through while sausage rolls cooked, all with one of my coleslaw salads of tomatoes, cucumber, beetroot and cabbage.






Wednesday - proper cold weather food - leek and potato soup.










Back to the wraps but this time with the yellowy bread and butter pickle made from our cucumbers





Friday - Salad to use the spinach and radishes picked that morning at the allotment

Sandwiches and salad for the weekend

One 'free' evening meal this week - goulash with homegrown tomatoes, onions, peppers, potatoes and beans.