Happy New Year.

Tonight I'm going to stay on the settee with a good book and some bread and cheese. The cat is on the window ledge and the man is on his way home. I have some lovely festive memories and no expectations of what 2011 will bring. I'm just going to wait and be surprised when it happens.

Merry Christmas

 

I'm grabbing a few minutes before the festive chaos takes hold to share a few pictures with you. All is quiet for now with an almost full moon shining on the white fields around the village. The snow is beautiful but painful on the paws, as Magnus found out.

 

When the weather is cold  all I want to do is stay at home and keep warm and my newly found obsession with all things yeasty has been perfect for days such as these. I'm still learning though,  today I had to leap out of the bath when I realised that I'd mixed up a huge batch of dough and left it to rise but forgotten to add any yeast. Thankfully it turned out well in the end.

Whatever you do and however you celebrate at this time of the year,  I wish you every happiness.

Bread and circuses

Well, maybe not a proper circus, just some snazzy bunting. This was one of my stupider pre-Christmas ideas. Wouldn't it be a great wheeze I thought, to make bunting to give to three of my favourite small girls as presents. Many millions of triangles later I realised that as I had drawn round the template with dressmaking pen, I would also have to hand wash and dry many million of triangles rather than risk them in the fierce spin of the washing machine. I still have to line them up in some semblance of colour order and sew them together. I might even make the girls' names out of felt and sew them on too. Thankfully they all have very short names. By that time there may be no posting days left till Christmas.On the other hand I might just stick with plain pennants and have a fighting chance of them arriving on time.



The goo in the jar is my new best friend the sourdough starter, by day it lives in the fridge but mix with water and flour and leave overnight it will turn into the most incredible mass of life and bubble. The bread is tangy and chewy and I'm filling the freezer with what is left over. At least if the weather turns again ( as the forecast threatens for this week ) we'll have enough to eat.

I've been thinking a lot about photographs and their context this week. It is wonderful how good something can look when you don't see that is going on in the background. As an example, I give you the arty shot of my sourdough and then the reality of me in the kitchen balanced on a chair wearing stripy pajama trousers. And yes, I did knit those socks.

A dripping story.

After looking after the birds with such loving care over the summer and experiencing the ultimate in feline stir-craziness, it seemed a little unfair to lose them to a cold snap. According to the RSPB the birds rely on having enough fat resources to see them through our freezing winter nights. What is doom to our arteries is a life saver to the robin and the sparrow and the blue tit.


   

Which goes a  long way to explaining the purchase of two large packs of beef dripping yesterday. This morning it was the star ingredient in my bird cake, along with some sesame seeds, bread and some coconut that I found in the cupboard marked use by 2009.  Melt, mix and leave to set.

The birds seem to like it. Unfortunately so does Magnus.

Confusion abounds.

The house is proving to be a source of confusion for Magnus and the local birds. Magnus can't belive that the living room window sill should be used for purposes other than his own ( the radiator underneath is pleasingly warm) and he was most put out this week when I needed it for :

A - Hat blocking. This is the Cabled Beret by Ashley Hasse. A lovely fast knit and the first time I've used a plate for blocking, not that Magnus cares.


B - Sourdough. Inspired by the yeasts of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall I've been wandering around the house gathering my own for a sourdough starter. It needed a warm place to get going and once again the Mog was not best pleased.

The poor old birds are also very confused, they think that the kitchen window is fresh air and have been bashing into it at regular intervals. This time I found a dazed goldfinch lying on its side looking like the end was nigh. A few minutes held in the warmth of my hand and then a quiet cat-free spot for recovering was all that was needed but in order to prevent another dull thud, I made a bird sillhouette and stuck it onto the window. You can see by the picture why I never pursued a career in fine art. The birds seem to be fooled though and that is the main thing.

 

We were all surprised by the view from the kitchen window the next morning. The first snowfall of 2010.

Pink in the middle.

                                 
The clocks went back last Saturday which means the official end of British Summertime.  The light begins to dim around three in the afternoon and the curtains are closed against the chill by tea time. Which may go some way to explaining the peculiar outbreak in the Mog household. There is a lack of colour in the day that needs to be addressed.

                                          

Now I'm not really a pink sort of a gal - I wanted football boots for Christmas when I was little and was more inclined to arrange my dolls into various tableau than to dress them up in snazzy frocks.  I remember creating wonderful fairy lands on the spare bed and in the bottom of the wardobe.  I remember greens and blues and the brown of my rug with the horses on it. It has taken until this gloomy autumn for the pink to appear.

I've had plans to make a quilt for ages and have collected many different old shirts from Angus' finest charity shops.  The quilt remains unmade but I have sacrificed some of the fabric and cut them into strips for a scarf. The backing is an old man's flannelly dressing gown that I bought second hand and subsequently boil washed against lingering germs. The end result is vibrant and shiny and bold and far too much for me. The next step is to slowly hand stitch across the lurid side in a simple Kantha style. I have a long train journey in front of me next week and this looks like the perfect project to take with me.

Curious Questions.

I'm subscribed to YouGov, a pollling site where you fill in surveys on a variety of subjects. Eventually after what feels like years, YouGov send a cheque for £50 as a thank you. Every week or so a new survey appears in my inbox and most of them are about things I care nothing about, like mobile phone companies, or banking.

This morning a much more relevant survey appeared. I'll leave you with a few of the questions. Silly answers much appreciated! You may need to click the pictures to read some of the options as they came out a wee bit small.

In other news, I have been tidying up the plates of tomatoes that I saved from the outside plants when the frosts threatened. These poor fellows have been languishing by the kitchen window in the hopes of finding a few rays of sunshine to aid their ripening. There are some smaller than my thumbnail and all are beginning to show their age. I decided to hasten their shrivelling and have sliced them in half, sprinkled on some sugar, salt and pepper and I'm hoping the house will smell like a small Italian town in summertime. The kind of place where the tomato harvest is laid out on the rooftops to dry in the heat of the sun and the locals dip their focaccia into extra virgin olive oil while tearing basil leaves just for the joy of it. Instead of a damp Scottish village where two platefuls of old toms are stuck in a fan assisted oven.