And a Happy New Year!

Hi- I am of course aware that I haven't been here, lets both pretend that I have been here as regular as clockwork..and move on, thank you very kindly! If I am honest I started to really struggle before Christmas which became really clear when I couldn't even be bothered to pick up a crochet hook or a ball of wool, everything and I mean everything became too much of an effort. To the extent that once D had gone to work I would go back to bed and easily sleep for another 3-4 hours. However, I feel slightly better most days and I have taken up the hook again-I am nearly finished on quite a big project-I will take some pics this afternoon..I promise!

And what have you been up to I hear you say..well, wellity, wellity, well...we had Christmas, D's mum loved her cushion (in Delft colours) or she made noises like she did, who knows.
We have both been ill, various flu and non-flu type viruses (virusi?) but we have come out of the other side now thankfully. D has also gone back to work now, he gets three works off for the Christmas break but a fair amount of that is used up by working from home-so not really 'off' for three weeks.

For around a week now we have been getting snow, the top photo was (i think) about 3 days ago. We live on quite a steep hill which isn't that clear from that picture but what is clear is that you cant really see anything into the distance-normally we can see rolling fields, trees in the distance, windmills turning...and you know what..I love it! I haven't been out in days but I do love it! The chickens however, not so keen and I cant say I blame them, the floor is nasty, wet and cold, the ramp to their house is cold and icy, they just keep sitting in their eglu peeping out.

These are the steps up to our garden, the bushes are laden with heavy snow-yesterday snowed non stop until about 5pm. Getting up these steps didn't feel too tricky, there is ice under the snow but it feels 'OK'. However, having to bend myself almost double to get under the branches while wearing my pj's, dressing gown, thick socks and walking boots wasn't the most fun so far in 2015!

And this is the view coming down:

That does look a little tricky I admit but it was fine, even the wobbly step!

Have you got snow, or are you in the middle of summer right now?

Take care x

GGGRrrrrrrrrr

What a few days!
We haven't had the bad weather lots of people have in the UK and I am really grateful for that. But we did have some bad winds which led to our back gate getting broken and seeing as D was out of the country I have had to fix it by wedging a wheely bin up against it to make sure Mrs P and Flossie don't get out-as they love to be nosey! I wonder where they get that from!

While D was away we had some news that we have been waiting for ages for-it looks like we might have had an offer accepted on a house-the week before, we accepted an offer on ours! Its very exciting but I won't really be able to accept it until we get the keys!
In celebration of that I started to crochet something and I promise I will get some pictures taken as soon as possible. I am not quite sure what it will be yet-I had thought about joining in with a 'granny a day' type project, but being realistic and saying I'd be doing the equivalent of weekdays only (5 squares a week). Anyway, we got the house news and D was away, so I was on my own...and I just wanted to get going on something for the new house so I went for it. I am following the pattern for 'flowers in the snow' from this lovely page:
http://solgrim.blogspot.co.uk
and I have to say I am loving it. It is going to be a great stash buster as even a really tiny amount can be used for the very middle of the 'flower'. The main difference I have made is that the outer colour on my 'thing' is a very dark blue. Again I will be adding some pictures but I am having mega PC problems today-its probably me that's the problem. (I managed to mess with my Etsy settings and thought I had completely locked myself out...when I got my tech assistant to help me remotely-my daughter on her mobile phone, she had no problems at all she uttered the fateful words "you are using your email account to sign in with aren't you? Whoops, I was using the wrong email address...don't tell her will you!!)

I then was able to deal with the huge excitement that was the first query from a customer on my Etsy shop...I saw an email notification last night but it was very late so when I have eventually accessed my messages today I was feeling so excited...until I opened the photo she had sent for me to create for her....it was knitted! I can knit, but I've not done it for years and to be honest I just prefer crochet-nothing wrong with kniting for all you fans, its just not for me :0)

So, now I am feeling a little deflated in the shop-type way, but am happy that people are accessing my little shop, I am also feeling more than a little excited but fearful about the house sale-only fearful about it maybe not going through, everything about the house is good and it will be 'our' first home after all this time (I moved into D's house so its always been just his, so this will be different)...right I better get going with my huge list of jobs but I think after the massive stress I just had due to my lack of techy-ness I need a coffee
See you soon!

Nothing much to see here..

Bit of a slow few days blog-wise. Been too dark to take pics really and I've been busy with other stuff so not much to post anyway...we're in the middle of some house stuff that takes time but isnt photogenic..and the weather generally does not lend itself to interesting walks or visits.

The chickens have been very funny this last few days, living up to their 'silly' name. We, I'm ashamed to say still have got our Christmas tree, Ive been trying to take some small bits off and burn them but its been so wet and we only have a chimenea to put it in so I was fighting a losing battle really. Anyway, we had a viewing on the house so I thought I'd better move it, what with it being February now :0/   
So I put the tree in the flower bed that the 'girls' have, (used to be a flowerbed until they and their predecessors adopted a scorched earth policy as D says), so there's lots of bed and not much flower now! Anyway, before I let the girls out of their run the other day I propped the tree against the compost bin. I went out a couple of hours later and they weren't outside which is very unusual whatever the weather. when I went out later it was starting to go dark so they'd gone to bed..it wasn't til the next day I realised they were boycotting outside. I stayed outside for a while, pottering and trying to tempt them out..but no, they were too busy staring at the tree! By late afternoon they had obviously had enough and went out, but not near the tree. Just in case anyone's worried, their food and water is 'inside' where they were waiting/sulking. They're back to normal now, even Flossie who nearly had a very embarrassing accident today when the open gate blew shut while she stood behind it so it nearly pushed her flat on her beak..luckily shes a fast mover and got out of the way by shoving Mrs P in the other direction.



Seeing as there's no pictures of anything productive, how about a picture of a sad looking cat

 

During the very hot summer he got far too warm so there were regular damping downs to be had...he didn't like it but I'm sure he felt better afterwards!

New blanket

Hi,
A few weeks ago I decided that I quite fancied making an 'Elmer' blanket. They are quite different to the ones I've made before which have tended to be either multi coloured granny squares-both large & small or stripey-horizontal or rippley. I got the pattern from the one listed on www.littletinbird.co.uk  It was extremely easy to follow and very straightforward. I even picked up a really useful hint: this will probably take me longer to type than do, but here goes.. When you are joining a corner of a square and you have for example a chain of 6 & you need to find the stitch to slip stitch into (usually 3rd of 6 chains), instead of counting up from 1st stitch, count down from the 6th, it really is MUCH easier! I apologise if everyone in the world knows this apart from me but maybe if it helps one person it's a good thing.
Anyway, back to the Elmer blanket, I was happily plodding on, loving the way there were blocks all of one colour and then I remembered a blog I'd looked at over a year ago-we had a trip to New York and I was looking for a shop to visit while we were there. During a break I looked up this blog- purlbee (and some others) and here I found this beautiful image:

And that was that! I had a little experiment and added two white outer rows to the rainbow rows of red then orange and yellow, then green, then blue and finally purples of shades such as indigo, violet and lilac. I was very happy, so my Elmer blanket became a Mondrian blanket-until I realised that actually Mondrian's pictures don't look anything like that, but the name has stuck for me! 

So, here is my Mondrian blanket, it's only small-big enough for in a buggy or a car seat:

That's Ted sat on the blanket -dont worry he always looks like that-his head always has a severe wobble-so sever in fact that he has a rather large needle stuck from the back of his head to the top of his back...think it was coming a little loose there! The pictures at the minute are very dark-I was desperate to take some pictures and even with 4 very bright bulbs shining down and another lamp shining directly at the blanket it still looks quite dull-it was actually still light when these were taken!

Here's another shot..the dolls aren't hiding anything, I was experimenting with the pictures-it seems i have temporarily lost my camera so these were taken on an I-pad which doesn't work very well i don't think...ahh well...

The only other thing to say is, the chickens....well we have two and one of them suddenly moulted. If you have chickens you will understand what I mean by 'suddenly moulted'!...she went to bed normal one night the next morning she had probably lost half her body weight in feathers on Christmas eve-eve, anoyingly I didnt get any pictures of her, but she was something like this

She gradually got worse until she was much worse than that photo. But by Friday just gone, she'd pretty much fully feathered again, so well done Mrs P!! Now we're just waiting for her to start laying again-hers is the bigger of the two eggs so you can see why we are hoping she will start laying soon as managing with just the little eggs from Flossie isnt easy!

 

Be well!!

Easy breakfast

I would like to begin by saying I AM NOT A GOOD COOK! I find it quite boring and I hate the clearing up afterwards. However, I also like to eat nice stuff...so what do you do?

Well, I try to make easy things that dont make much mess, that's what! Over December I was getting into watching some of the cookery programmes on TV and this recipe came from one of the Jamie Oliver ones from quite a few years ago. The recipe was for breakfast pancakes and on the programme his young daughters were making the pancakes and of course we thought "yeah right", but then they looked so tasty that we decided to try them one day over the holidays...then another day and another..you see where this is heading dont you..?

Here's a picture of the finished product-the picture itself is not so great but the items in it were lovely...and easy!

Yummy Blueberry, yogurt and honey breakfast pancakes, for tea!

This is the recipe here if you would like to give them a go:
1 cup of self raising flour
1 cup of milk
1 egg
Pinch of salt
Toppings of choice
Butter

Firstly-decide what cup you are going to use-as long as you use the same cup to measure the milk and the flour it will be fine, this is as much measuring as you need to do.

Add a cup of SR flour and a cup of milk-i usually use semi skimmed to a large bowl.

Add an egg-if using a very large cup for your measures then use a large egg, if using a small cup use a smaller egg. (this is where it helps what we have 2 chickens with one that lays eggs like ping pong balls and the other that lays emu eggs!!)

Add small pinch of salt.

Put knob of butter in frying pan and heat, this needs to be sizzling before you start to add the batter.

I usually add around half a ladle of batter for each pancake, the butter should be really sizzling before you do this. 
If you want to add fruit to you pancakes do it before you turn them-we have tried blueberries and also have defrosted frozen red berries and used them, we did try chocolate chunks but i think chips would be better. Press the back of a spatula down on the fruit when you have added them. 
When there are bubbles popping in top of the pancakes they are probably ready to turn. Flip them with a spatula and brown the other side, when theyre a nice golden colour they are ready. 

We serve them with a dollop of fat free natural yogurt and some squirty honey. The only washing up is a bowl, a frying pan and your plate!