Sold!

Well I am really pleased to announce that I sold my first circular pin cushion on eBay today.  Ok, I didn't make that much money, but every little bit I do will go toward sending blankets and hats to children in South Africa.  I'm really pleased, and I hope the person that bought it likes it as much as I do!

On another topic, I found a quick, cute project yesterday.  It is a knitted flower!  There reason I went looking for a flower is all about a circular loom.  We were at Cost Co. the other day and couldn't resist buying a knitting kit with 12 balls of yarn, a circular hat loom, and a few other bits and pieces.  I knocked out my first hat pretty quickly, but it looked a bit bland to me.  So I thought, why not embellish it with a flower, and the search began.  


http://nezumiworld.blogspot.com/2009/06/world-wide-knitting-in-public-day.html

Is the site I found, and it only took about an hour to make it.  Give or take a bit, I had to keep getting up and helping the kids, hanging the laundry, you know what I mean.  Anyway, here  is mine:

I needed to use a thicker yarn for the middle bit, but not a bad first go I think.  I think if I persevere with the loom I'll try out a variety of flower patterns.

Lacy Leaves Scarf

I finally finished this scarf, yay!  It seems I started it ages ago.  The pattern required more attention than I sometimes had to offer.  It is called Lacy Leaves, and is a free pattern from the Bernat website. 

http://www.bernat.com/search.php?key=lacy+leaves&searchResults=&PATTERNS=Search 

You have to sign up for a free membership to see the patterns, which is totally worthwhile. On the subject of patterns, I am amazed at the number of talented, creative people out there that are willing to share their patterns.  Thanks so much!  I use free patterns all the time.  I just found one for a knitted flower I'm going to try, but there's time for that later.

 

I knitted this scarf in Sirdar Balmoral yarn, which is a fantastic wool.  It is 72% wool, 25% alpaca, 3% silk. It is warm and soft against the skin.  I'm going to try to sell it in my Etsy store, we'll see if anyone else loves it as much as I do.  Here are a few pictures:

A busy day

I had a busy day today.  After dropping the girls off at nursery, I came home and got to work.  First I made a circular pin cushion: 

 It was fast and easy and I think it looks pretty good for a first effort.

Since I've been knitting for the charity KAS Care for a while now, I've built up a rather large amount of things to mail to South Africa.  I thought if I were able to sell a few things I could use the money to offset the price of the postage to S. Africa.  That in mind, I also finished a knitted lavender pillow as well.  

I'm not too sure about the lavender pillow, it seems a bit lop-sided. 


After the girls got home we did some gardening.  We picked more blueberries, raspberries, and pulled up the onions.  Then we planted tulips--my favorite!

Canning

I've just spent a few hours canning baked beans in my pressure canner.  I learned to can from my Grandma, wonderful woman that she is, and we spent a fun summer putting all sorts of things in jars.  I started canning beans mainly to cut down on sodium, and because sometimes it is hard to find a certain type of bean (like black).

Canning baked beans started when we lived in the United States, and we couldn't find British style baked beans anywhere.  If you don't know the type I mean, they are small white beans smothered in a lovely tomato sauce.  Not sweet at all like most of the American baked beans.  I had purchased this book Fix-It and Forget-It for recipes to use in my slow cooker.  Let me just say, the book is useless.  I am not a person that likes to open tin after tin, dumping them in the slow cooker and calling that dinner.  So most of the recipes are just no good to me.  Except one.  The sole reason I keep the book on the shelf is page 203, From-Scratch Baked Beans.  The recipe is credited to Wanda Roth, from Napoleon, OH, and she has got it just right!  I double the recipe, tweak it a bit, and then can it.  Here is what I do:


     From Scratch Baked Beans
     5 cups Great Northern dried beans (2, 500g bags)
     8 cups water
     3 cups tomato sauce (passata)
     2 tbs brown sugar
     3 tsp salt
     1 onion (med-large), chopped
     1 tsp chili powder
     dash of cayenne pepper


Combine beans and water in slow cooker and cook overnight or 8 hours.  I always do this at night so I can can them in the morning.  If you don't want to can, the next step is adding the remaining ingredients and cooking for another 6 hours.  If you want to can, add the other ingredients and then prepare your jars.  I usually get 9 pint jars from this recipe.  Can according to your pressure canners instructions.  For me it is 10psi for 75 minutes.  Viola!

Time to sew

I'll admit I've been obsessed with knitting for a while now.  I've started knitting for a charity called KASCare,  http://www.kascare.org/

knitting up blanket squares, hats, and pullovers.  These are then sent to South Africa for children in need, often orphaned by AIDS.

toddler pullover and hat

So while I've been doing my part to keep children warm, I've neglected my sewing machine these past few months.

I am sure most parents would agree, but it really seems my kids grow at an exponential rate.  They are 4 1/2 years old, but already wearing trousers for age 5-6. They have long legs, and they just keep getting longer.  I was trying to figure out a cheap way to keep them in trousers, which they will only get covered in paint, glitter, and glue at nursery.  I find it hard to spend a lot of money on trousers only to have them covered in stains in a week.

Then it hit me--I've got a huge pile of fabric thanks to my wonderful Grandma and Mom, I can make them skirts.  So off I went to buy them some tights, as it is getting cold here in Scotland, and today I started on the skirts.

Rori modelling a skirt

Crofters Pie

After just having dinner, I had to write about this.  A few years ago I started messing about with a Shepard's Pie recipe, and now I've pretty much perfected it.  My husband and I renamed it Crofter's Pie, in the hopes that one day we will actually be crofters.  

Today we took the kids and Granny to see Disney on Ice.  It was a very good time, but knowing that we would get home late, I made dinner before we left.  I cooked the Crofter's Pie, then just left it in the oven for when we got home.  A few minutes in the microwave and we were good to go.  I don't think it has ever tasted so good.

Crofters Pie

3 large potatoes

2 tbs butter

1/4 cup milk

1 lb ground beef (or turkey, pork, lamb, I've used them all)

1 onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

I large carrot either grated for diced

2-3 large mushrooms (more if you love them)

1/4-1/2 cup frozen peas 

a couple of sprigs fresh thyme or 1/4 tsp dried

a beef bullion cube

1 tbs flour

black pepper to taste

Directions 

1) Boil potatoes until tender.  Mash with butter and milk.  Maybe now is a good time to say I don't believe in peeling potatoes.  Who has the time, or in the inclination?  Just scrub them really well and off you go.

 2) While the potatoes are boiling saute onion, meat, garlic, carrots and mushrooms all together.  I find you don't need to add oil because of the fat in the meat.  Add pepper and thyme and peas.

3) When the meat is done, if there is a lot of fat you can drain in, then dissolve the bullion in a bit of hot water (say, 1/4 cup) and mix that into the meat mixture.  Add the flour to thicken a bit, and give it a good stir.

4)  Transfer meat mixture to a casserole or deep pie pan.  Spread mashed potatoes over meat.  At this stage my Mom would put cheese on the top, knock yourself out if you want to as well.

5)  Bake at 375F, 190C for 30 minutes or until potatoes are lightly browned.

Ready to eat!

BLUEBERRIES!

Yesterday evening Isla and Rori helped me pick blueberries in the garden.  Now, we've only got one plant, and it is a miniature at that, in a container, but we are getting loads of blueberries this year. I guess pruning it properly for the first time last winter paid off.  Next up, raspberries!