Festive Garland

I've had this project in mind for a while now, ever since Mum sent me up a string of the peeriest LED lights that I have ever seen. She also brought me up a small bale of festive fat quarters and I already had some chiffon panels so off I set snipping & knotting until I had my beautiful rag festive garland.

 

 

 

 

I am not sure how fire safe this garland is so I must stress that if you choose to replicate it you do so at your own risk and must NEVER leave it switched on and unattended. The LED lights that I used are battery operated, low voltage, cool to the touch.

We Wish You A Woolly Christmas!

I have been terribly afraid that amongst all the other things that I have to do, I would forget to make this years ornament for the Christmas tree, so today I made myself make space in the day, pulled out my knitting needles (which I haven't used in a very long time) and set to work creating a mini yarn bag complete with two tiny knitting needles.

 

The pattern is free on the Redheart website (http://www.redheart.com/free-patterns/yarn-basket-ornament). I made it in Drops Paris cotton yarn but it could be made in any medium weight yarn (DK).

A Wintry Walk

Just thought that I would share some photos that I took during my wintry walk this lunchtime.

 

 

Snow on the beach

 

Saxa Vord

 

Saxa Vord

 

Far end of the beach road

 

 

Frozen standing water

 

 

Snow dusted road to the Haroldswick Hall 

Shetland ponies braving the cold

 

 

Haroldswick play park

 

 

A drainage ditch that looks more like a brook today

 

 

Ethel joined me as I neared home ...

 

... and so did Peerie Man 

 

Reflection in the wet land 

 

 

The sea is as clear and cold as glacial water and looks SO inviting

 

 

ME! 

 

I hope you enjoyed our little walk around Haroldswick. I'm home now tucked up in front of the stove with a Christmas film on TV and the tree lights twinkling. Tonight R is going to his work's Christmas party on Yell and we are having a treat night, homemade pizza, Strictly Come Dancing, chocolate & if Ethel is good I might let her watch Twilight, she's a little young but is vampire crazy.

 

 

The North Wind Doth Blow ....

This weeks 'bad weather pod' has brought high winds, rain and vast numbers of lighting strikes to Orkney and Shetland, but to Unst it has also brought wonderfully seasonal hailstone. It battered the windows until the early hours of this morning and has left a beautiful winter wonderland in it's wake and it is so bitterly cold that it's laying.

View across the voe to Clibberswick

Even the rock pools are frozen over

Where has summer's 'alpine meadow' gone?

Low winter sun

Right on cue it has started snowing, Ethel has wrapped up and dashed outside and in a few minutes I am going for a brisk walk, alone, something I hardly ever get the chance to do!

Christmas Wreath - Voilà!

After hours of crocheting, felting, drying & finally assembling I have at last finished my Christmas Wreath and it takes my breath away! It is by far the most beautiful thing that I have ever made and I am stunned at what my hands have created, I hope you love it too.

 

I will definitely be felting the crocheted flowers and leaves for my wreaths from now on and as with this one I will mount them onto wicker wreaths too. Hmmm, that leaves me with quite a few polystyrene half round circles in my store ....  now let me think of a use for those ..... I wonder ....

 

I also have a little something else that I can't wait to show you but it is a pre-Christmas gift for my mum and it hasn't yet arrived so I will have to keep you in suspense just a little longer, maybe next week.

Busy, busy busy!

Tuesday was a hectic day along the beach road. I dashed home from the school run to finally finish felting the flowers for my Christmas wreath, the poinsettias had already been done but I still had Christmas roses and many, many leaves to do. I had been toying over putting them in the washing machine, as the label advised, but decided instead to give hand felting a go as I wanted to be able to control the degree of felting. So I boiled a kettle to get the water nice and hot and put in a generous squirt of washing up liquid then got to agitating the items in the water, in between they were plunged into a bowl of icy cold water and agitated again to shock the fibres into milling up. Each colour needed doing in a separately to avoid stray fibres attaching and spoiling the effect. I was surprised to find that some colours felted up much easier & quicker than others, the kirsch red and grass green reacting the best. When I was finally satisfied I squeezed them out, reshaped them and laid them on an old towel to dry, the old towel is very important in case the colours bleed. Drying took a couple of days but the effect is well worth it.

Then just enough time left to have a coffee in my very favourite cup, a lebkuchen biscuit from the musical merry-go-round tin that mum sent up and half an hour absorbed in a good vampire book.

Before picking Peerie Man up from nursery & coming home to spend the rest of the afternoon finally putting up our Christmas tree. Lots of folk on Unst have had theirs up since 1st December so we were a little late by comparison but we usually have it up two weeks before and two weeks after. A few years ago I stole the idea from Kirstie Allsop that the tree could be a scrap book so every year I make something new and add it on to the tree. This years addition hasn't been made yet but it will make an appearance before Christmas eve, by hook or by crook.

No tinsel just a couple of strands of beads!

One of my first ever makes - a felt stocking for Peerie Man.

Crocheted silver snowflakes, 'vintage' button hearts and a bauble we made when AA Fired Up came up from Lerwick to the Under5's Group.

A red glass bauble that hubby & I bought our first year together, 'Flying Garrick' toadstools that were last year's addition, and a Santa ornament bought in last year's sale. The bows are homemade too and always remind me of hubby being made redundant on Bonfire Night and us dreading Christmas only to be rescued by a firmer employer who took him back & where he loyally stayed until we came to Unst.

A peerie red bell bought for Ethel's first Christmas, a ''vintage' button star and a tiny enamelled bauble brought back from Singapore by Nanny for Ethel.

Just enough time to enjoy the twinkly lights before Wednesday's lightning induced power cuts!

There are so many more things I would like to show you but I will definitely show you this years addition when it's done.

Wakey, Wakey,Rise & Shine!

The summer may have passed but the autumn brings its own beauty. We have had a wonderfully dry week with temperatures hovering around & above 8 degrees, and for the most part clear blue skies. Every day we have woken to the early morning sun, peeping over the horizon & bathing our house in a warm orange glow. Looking out of the front windows across the voe has been almost blinding. All the photos were taken at the same time, 08:35am, with the first being directly facing the sun (naughty I know, it made my eyes water!) and the other two were taken from a slight side angle.

 

We are so lucky because the moon reflects on the voe the same way, that however, is much harder to photograph because we have 3 street lights outside the house that don't spoil the view but do affect the camera shots.

Drops Everything ...

I have been dying to post a picture of the finished Sophie's Garden Mandala but have not had good enough indoor light to do so but this morning the sun lit up the living room and so I snapped a couple of photos for you.

I wanted the back to be in a single colour so have ordered up 8 more 50g balls of Drops Paris in Strong Blue & a pack of Attic24 buttons to complete it.

Also on the go this week is a Christmas wreath. Rather than make this last year and try to bring it to Shetland undamaged, I decided to bring the materials up instead. The pattern called for Wash & Filz-It but I have used Drops Eskimo instead, it has the same yardage and is 100% wool suitable for felting, it's also quite a bit cheaper.

 

The pieces are ready for felting, which can be done in a 40 degree machine wash, but I'm going to give it a go by hand as I want to use dish washing liquid. They will then be attached to a 30cm wicker wreath. The pattern has a crocheted bow on it but I felt that looked a little 'old-fashioned' so I will use ribbon or chiffon on mine, I'm not decided yet. I bought the pattern on Ebay and it is still available.

I want to stress that I do not receive incentives from Drops to promote their yarns, I just like to give credit where it is due and Drops do produce quality, competitively priced yarns. In the same vein I order most of my yarn from Wool Warehouse (www.woolwarehouse.co.uk), they deliver very quickly (I have no idea how they get it to Unst so fast), don't charge extra P&P for off mainland and give free delivery on overs over £25.

I have lots of other things in the pipeline and just can't wait to show them all to you soon.

An Unexpectedly Busy Day

When my alarm woke me up at 5:55am my day was supposed to be filled by driving the entire length of Shetland to Sumburgh Airport and then taking the flight out to Aberdeen for a hospital appointment, I managed to make it to the Belmont ferry terminal, in south Unst. Apparently there was some kind of disruption which meant a Saturday service was in place and the 07:30 ferry I was meant to catch would be an 08:25 at the earliest, not nearly enough time to make my check-in so deeply disgruntled I turned the car around & drove home.

 

As Rich had taken the day off, he did the school run and ran some errands whilst I had an hour to descend back to earth from the stratosphere I was still orbiting in! There is nothing better to salve the soul than immersing yourself in a good book and the one I had on the go was Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, a modern day Romeo & Juliet love story between a zombie and a girl. We have the DVD of the film but as always the book turned out to be far superior. Two coffees, a chocolate biscuit and a couple of hours later I felt human again - excuse the pun!!

 

 

After lunch I decided that I really should do something productive, so, as I had been to Lerwick on Wednesday and had a fridge full of ingredients I thought I would spend the afternoon making and baking.

 

*****

 

First came homemade Christmas mincemeat. Richard likes shop bought mince pies best but as they range between £2.50 and £4 for 6 in the local shops he will have to have mine! I used a variation of a Delia Smith recipe with just what I had in the store cupboard, although I did buy a lemon and a baking apple in the town.

 

1 baking apple peeled, cored & chopped fine

3 1/2 oz vegetarian suet (I sieved off the flour before weighing)

4 oz currants

9 oz combination of mixed dried fruit & sultanas

1 oz mixed peel

2 oz glace cherries (quartered)

6 oz light muscavado sugar

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

2 tsp mixed spice

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

4 tbsp orange juice (from a carton)

 

If you want alcoholic mincemeat you could replace the orange juice with whisky, brandy, rum - whatever you prefer.

 

 

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and leave for 12 hours or overnight before packing into sterilised jars. This should make about 2-3lb.

 

 

The smell in the kitchen was divine, a citrusy, spicy Christmas smell that had me feeling more than a little bit nostalgic.

 

*****

 

Next came the ice-cream. This recipe came with my first Magi-mix ice-cream maker and it has remained a firm favourite with all of us even though the maker long since sprung a leak and has been replaced with an Andrew James one which I find much superior. Today the ice-cream maker had remained in it's box and I have reverted to the old fashioned method of production, simply because of the quantities I was making.

 

1200ml double cream (2 x 600ml)

2 x 397g tins of condensed milk

4 tsps. vanilla extract.

 

I tipped all the ingredients into a large bowl and whisked it with an electric hand whisk until it became light & fluffy. I then transferred it into 3 polythene containers (about the size of Carte D'or tubs) and popped it in the freezer. I usually take it out and whip it half way through freezing but to be honest I don't think this is necessary for this particular recipe. (It is a must with custard based ones).

 

 

Wonderful on it's own but we intend to save some to put on warm mince pies

 

*****

 

My third job was just a 'quicky', chopping leeks and popping them in individual bags for the freezer.

 

 

I'll use these for a hearty, warming Leek, Chicken, Bacon, Butter Bean & Pasta soup and when I do I'll post the recipe. It's one of my own and every time I make it I throw something else in but it's always delicious.

 

*****

 

And finally Dark Chocolate and Sweet Potato Cake. On the whole I use the recipe from my Good Housekeeping cook book, only replacing the chopped milk chocolate with dark chocolate chips and omitting the almonds. It's purely a matter of personal taste.

 

 

This is a moist, rich, spiced chocolate cake and you shouldn't be put off by the sweet potato. One for the freezer and one for our tummies!

 

It always make me glow when a day starts as a disaster and ends as a success.

 

Wild & Windy

The weather has been wild & windy on Unst these last two days, the ferries have been cancelled and even venturing out to take the peerie man to nursery has been a challenge, so how better to wile away my odd free hours than in front of a gloriously hot peat fire, working on my mandala cushion, watching the waves tearing across the voe.

 

 

 The mandala is now complete and my next job is to square it off & turn it into Sophie's Garden. I was tempted to block it, as it is a little wavy, but have decided to see what it is like after the squaring instead. I hadn't intended the colour scheme to turn out as it has, it was an organic process which at times has left me wanting to pull it out and start over but I must admit that it is growing on me. I am normally drawn to muted tones but for some mad reason have decided that my life needs more colour, even if it doesn't sit that comfortably with me at the moment.

 

 

The wind speed and direction has caused the sea in the voe to be more that a little bit choppy, but it's so exciting watching the waves rolling in, crashing into the bedrock and sending spray tens of feet into the air. It's a battle to keep upright in the wind and the short walk to the car makes your hair thick with salt and your lips briny. The wonderful white nights of the summer have also passed and the darkness rolls in at around 4pm.

 

I really did try to photograph the spray, several times, but each time I went out it was so windy I struggled to hold the camera still and couldn't catch anything of any magnificence. True to form, every time I came back in, there one was!

Sophie's Garden Mandala Progress

In September I showed you a basket of deliciously coloured Drops Paris cotton yarn and the Sophie's Garden Mandala that I intended to make from it and convert into a cushion for my new blackberry sofa. Well, I'm not too proud to admit that I have been putting it off for some time fearing that I wouldn't be able to master the intricate pattern work it required. So yesterday I decided it was time to pull myself together, and tackle it one round at a time and so far there has been no problem, in fact before bedtime I had completed up to and including Round 13, so I thought I would show you my progress so far.

 

 

 

The mandala is currently 11" across but will be approximately 20" when it is finished and squared off. The pattern is written in US terminology but Moogly (http://www.mooglyblog.com/) provides translation and also tutorials of stitches and techniques that you may be unfamiliar with. The pattern can be accessed via Moogly who featured it on their blog or directly on Dedri's blog by following the link in my previous post.

 

The mandala is laid on my Auskerry North Ronaldsay Sheepskin rug which I bought in Orkney many years ago but have only just taken out and laid in the living room.