Cider

Tonight we decided to try some of the homemade cider. This was after hearing a "thump" from the cupboard, opening it and finding a bottle lying on its side because the bottom was so distended. So I figured it was probably fizzy.


Jon did the honours while I stood well back while zooming in with the camera. Thar she blows! It's almost as good as a volcanic eruption!

The verdict: surprisingly good! From the smell I thought it was going to be quite sweet and sickly, but it's a little tart and very refreshing. Also mildly alcoholic. I guess the rest in the cupboard will only improve with age (as long as the bottles don't burst...)

In other kitchen news I got a rice cooker. I've been searching out recipes and I'm quite keen to try making a cake in it! Last night I made pumpkin and sage risotto which was delicious and really easy. The recipe is here. A list of recipes at Recipezaar is here.

Crochet baby vest

I finished this off recently. It was a gift for my new nephew Ronan, to go with the little ugg boots. The pattern is Vest Friend from Candy Babies. It was simple enough to work up, being all in sc, you just had to measure as you go because instead of "work 20 rows" it would tell you to work until it measured 20 cm. Also, the pattern had no fastening at the front, so I improvised the buttonholes... and even managed to get them to line up! The white yarn is the softest fleece you can imagine. I got it at a little yarn shop on the north shore while I was up there in February. Perfect for baby clothes!

I'm still listening to Podiobooks while I work, if there's nothing good on TV (ie most of the time). I listened to Shadow Falls, which I enjoyed. It was highly dramatic and a few of the actors were way OTT (one totally sounded like Stan from American Dad), but most were good and the story moved along well. Now I'm listening to Heaven - I'm one episode in and it's looking promising.

In kitchen news, I used up another batch of tomatoes tonight by making tomato paste. I roughly chopped them, added garlic, onion and some herbs (savoury and basil mint) and reduced it over medium heat for about an hour. I whizzed it with the stick blender and put it in the freezer in some muffin tins - when it's frozen I'll pop it out of the tins and put the chunks in a plastic bag. It will make a great base for a pizza.

April

Autumn is here, which means shorter days. That makes my weekends fly by even faster than usual! I spend most of the daylight hours outside in the garden, working on my potager and trying to keep the weeds at bay in the rest of the garden, at least until I have time to deal with them properly (when will that be I wonder?) Photos will follow, one day, when it's finally nice enough for me to want to photograph it.

I'm also working on my crochet - I just made this little table runner. This is a miniature dolls house scale piece, it's for my tinyland house if I ever get it. It only took one evening to work up, though my eyes were screaming afterwards...

Here's where the magic happens... usually at night with the light of many lamps! The ever present WIP is draped over the arm of the couch there. It's big enough that I can now snuggle under it while I work.

The harvest continues - I'm off to the kitchen now to make another batch of kasundi.

Snapshots from the kitchen on a Tuesday evening

It's been quite an age since I last updated here. Mostly I've been busy in the garden - it's harvest time, so here's what I worked on tonight...

Shelling beans - borlotti and cannelini. These will be stored dry for winter soups and casseroles.

This basket of tomatoes became several jars of relish. (And a lovely splattery stove top...)

Homemade pizza for tea - with homegrown tomatoes, broccoli and peppers.

It's hard to make fermenting apples into an attractive photo, but this is a bucket of what will soon be cider.

As I dashed outside to put the rubbish out, my eye was caught by the last rays of sun on the last leaves of autumn. So fleeting, and so evocative of this time of year.

How to read and crochet at the same time

I found this great site, Podiobooks, where you can download audiobooks for free. The good thing is that they seem to all be recent works, and there is a wide range of genres to choose from. You can donate if you like the story, and the author gets 75% of your donation. I'm listening to Weather Child, a historical fantasy set in Wellington in the 1920s. There's also LibriVox, which is older works from the public domain.

So, that's how I achieved three of my summer goals all at the same time: read, sit in the sun, and crochet. Above is my ripple blanket. I did a good amount of rippling over the Christmas break and just about doubled it in size. That makes it, oh, about a sixth of the finished size?

I also made these little ugg booties. I had to improvise the yarn as I couldn't find the suede used in the pattern (damn the pathetic yarn selection in NZ), but 2 strands of merino worked well, and the curly mohair looks even better and more sheepskin-like than the original pattern.

Here's my current WIP - the blanket's been put aside for a while. And I guess it's time to grab my MP3 player, sunscreen and hook and put a few more stitches into this baby.

How I spent my summer holiday

Once the madness of Christmas was over, the madness of gardening began. I still have my heart set on a potager garden, so I roped in Jonny to help dig up the ground. I used stakes and sticks and bits of wood to mark out the rough outline, to make sure it fits. I should have enough bricks to make the paths, but they need cleaning (I've done about half), and then we need to find out exactly how you lay a brick path - hopefully Youtube will help out there.

After several hours of digging and sweating, the reward was some homemade chocolate ice cream and fresh blueberries.

In the rest of the vege garden things are happening slowly but surely. The weather was hot for the first week of January, but it has been slowly regressing back to a more winterlike state. Yesterday we had to light the fire in the afternoon.

In the photo above are the zucchini plants at the front (green and yellow are going well, but 2 other mystery plants are sulking and not doing much). The borlotti beans don't want to climb their trellis, but they have cute little pink flowers and some red-patterned pods forming. The yellow plants at the front are pyrethrum, given to me by a neighbour.

Here are cannelini beans next to the concrete post, and further down dwarf peas with a miniature bamboo trellis.

In the glasshouse things are better - here are my Black Krim tomatoes. They need to darken up a bit more before you pick them. They grow very big and heavy and the flesh is solid and meaty, and has a great flavour. The skin tends to split, but on the plus side it's very easy to peel off (after blanching) once you have picked them. Definitely my favourite variety this year.

Here's the cucumber vine next to one of the Arctic tomatoes. I expected the Arctic to have done way better than they have - since they are supposed to like cold conditions, and I sowed them in March. But they were overtaken by the Black Krims which were sown in mid August.

The cucumbers are doing well, but I need to keep pollinating them with a paintbrush. I have a recipe (one of many good ones in the Yates Garden Fresh Cookbook) for bread and butter pickle so I'm going to save up the cucumbers for that.

This is my "picking garden" - a blowsy mix of cottagey beauties that are adorning vases all through the house. I'm enjoying watching the colours change in this little patch as new varieties poke their heads out.

At the moment I'm harvesting zucchini, tomatoes, lemons, peas, carrots, cucumbers, leeks, broccoli, rhubarb, sorrel, strawberries, and plenty of herbs. How is your garden doing this season?

Harvest and a blueberry disaster

The garden is in full swing. Here is the harvest from a couple of nights ago - cucumber, zucchini, broccoli, baby carrots, tomatoes (Black Krim and Arctic) and leeks (though they look like spring onions). I made this into a delicious vege curry just with a Pataks Korma Curry flavour sachet and a bit of cream. Too easy!

I also had a terrible accident with the blueberries. While getting the hose out to do the nightly watering, I flicked it and it brushed against one of the blueberry bushes, breaking the branch right off. Given that this branch holds about two thirds of the harvest and they've been slowly ripening since September, I'm a bit devastated.

I quickly put the branch in water, in the slight hope that it will strike roots. I've tried this before though with no luck, so I really think it will be destined for the compost heap.

At least it looks pretty in the meantime.

Handmade Christmas presents

This is what I came up with for my four young siblings this year. They're all enjoying gardening, so I found four tin watering cans and personalised each one with a name and stickers. Then I tucked a packet of seeds inside each one.

They were super excited to get those seeds in and start watering!

Close up of Anya's watering can. (To see the rest, check out my Flickr page)

For a couple more garden-themed gifts, I took some cuttings from various herb plants I had growing (I love this bit cause it's free!). I saved up some cans (also free!) and painted them white, and decorated them with ribbon. I also punched some holes in the bottom for drainage.

To finish it off, I made wooden plant labels for each herb.

Each one was decorated a bit differently.

About 4 days before Christmas I had a brilliant idea. People are always asking me for lemon recipes (usually while raiding our giant lemon tree), so I thought I could compile some of my favourites into a cookbook.

So, as well as the hustle and bustle of organising menus and work dinners and all the last minute things, I was also typing this up and copying and binding it...

Got there in the end though. Who knows, I might even make another edition next year.

This quilted mat wasn't made by me, but by my auntie many years ago.

Goal for next Christmas: start the presents early, finish them early, wrap them and put them away! I was getting really sick of thinking about them towards the end. Anyway, that's all over now. I have another week's holiday and I'm aiming to spend some quality time with the garden, a book and some crochet.

Weird Cat Behaviour #3

WEIRD CAT BEHAVIOUR #3

Making a bed out of anything you shouldn't be sleeping on. This is the tablecloth, which is quite a bit larger than our table. Lui never normally sleeps on these chairs, but as soon as they were draped with a clean white cloth he had to get up there and sit on it. Then he burrowed in, all the while pulling the cloth a little bit further off the table. See that stain on the carpet there? That's where the vase of flowers landed. Thanks Lui!

Days 12 and 13

Day 12 was my gift. I was busy over the winter months crocheting these starry snowflake ornaments. I used a vintage pattern, vintage thread from my stash and a 1.75 mm hook! The pattern is really easy (if a little fiddly) so I made tons for Christmas presents and for myself. I made them in four colours:

white

pink

fawn

blue

While everyone was opening my gift, I got to open the special #13 gift. It was from Penelope Harris, and just look at what she has created: a sweet little needle book.

It's made of the most beautiful soft woolly felt and has space for all the essential needles and pins.

And even room for a hank of threads (I'm always making little piles of offcut thread, so perhaps if I have a place to store them I'll actually use them up now?)

Thanks so much Penelope!

And that's it for the 12 Days of Christmas swap this year. Thanks to all who were involved, it was a wonderful event once again.