Chive Vinegar

Here's another of those simple but wonderful ideas I've found on the web - chive vinegar. 

Simple, because all you do is fill a jar with chive flowers, cover with a clear vinegar (I used distilled, but cider or wine vinegar would work, and possibly taste less sharp), and leave for a week or so. 

By then the vinegar will have absorbed the oniony flavour of the chives, but more importantly it will have taken on their colour.  All that needs to be done, is strain and bottle it. So simple. Doesn't it look wonderful? I'm still struggling to come up with a use for it - I could add it to salad dressing but the impact of the colour would be lost. I feel it's best served in a decorative vinegar bottle (my mother had several 'cut' glass ones as part of fancy cruet sets) but I've yet to find the occasion.  

 

Syrups

I've been experimenting with something new in the kitchen - syrups flavoured with flowers and herbs.

The idea came from seeing posts about the idea on social media, and a scrap of paper on which I'd written down the recipe for lilac syrup. 

 I fully expected to end up with burnt brown stickiness in a ruined saucepan but syrup making turns out to be surprisingly simple. Add sugar to water and heat to dissolve it. (Don't leave the pan on the heat and walk away from it though, because who knows what could happen then)

Then add the petals or leaves (the amount varies according to which plant you chose to use but recipes for all sorts of syrups are readily available on the web). Let it stand a while, strain and bottle. 

Oh, and then test it. 

 Lilac, at the top, looks lovely even while preparing it. Lemon balm, below, looks less attractive.

Both give an unusual flavour to drinks whether added to lemonade or gin.

I'm now wondering what else I could find in the garden to try this with - lavender, roses, maybe sage or rosemary for a more savoury taste.

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!