The blankets progress to date has been slow, gallivanting around at the weekend tends to but a stop to any significant progress. Much as I dream the elves are hard at work crocheting all night, it turns out its just the cat having a midnight prowl and no miraculous progress has been made with the blanket by morning.  I’ve promised myself a couple of hours every evening this week to try and break the back of it. 

We nearly did have a disaster though, I’ve got six more strips to go, plus crocheting around the outside and I’ve only 2.5 balls of the cream left…  So I have been working my way through the directory of outlets of the most recent Rowan book and low and behold Colourway.co.uk  had the dyelot I needed.  So pleased, crisis averted.  

Just a flash of colour from Greenwich Maritime, Tall Ships sailed past, the Cutty Sark looked glorious and the festival village was fun, I just forgot to take more photographs.

The downside, the queue’s, we missed out on going to see Dar Miodziezy, although we had booked our timed ticket online, their system had broken down so the queue had become over an hour long.  And it was the same for the queue’s for the river boats servicing the piers, hey ho, a lesson learned, pick the first tickets of the day and get up early!

I love Greek food, out of all the cuisines available that I am aware of, I mostly turn to the Greeks when I need a hit of fresh salads or to find new inspirations for seasonal fruits and vegetables that I might have raved over in their first flush and guzzled them down, but I now need an extra zing to make me appreciate their beauty once more.

I use Vefa’s Kitchen by Vefa Alexiadou as my main source of inspirations for vegetables during the summer months.  Personally I think Italian food can get too heavy with their pasta and pizzas, its not what I want to eat in the summer.  The Greeks favour much lighter dishes, with fresh fish, meats and cheeses as their main components, with salad dishes and rice, I just prefer it.

But one thing I absolutely adore is Dolma.  I love the zingy taste of the vine leaves and when my neighbour gave me permission to pick a few of his, I was a very happy girl.

As you can see they are very young leaves, if they had been any older I would have blanched them, but I just picked out the hard stalks in the middle.

Chopped an onion and sauted it, added some uncooked rice, took it off the heat, added another drizzle of olive oil and started to roll them.  There are recipes to add pine nuts or raisins and some cuisines make a meaty version, but I just like a plain Dolma.

Then place some of the older leaves at the bottom of the pan before layering up the stuffed vine leaves.  Give it a good squeeze of lemon, I only had limes, but it did the trick, add double the volume of water to rice and then a bit for luck, clamp the lid down and cook on a gentle heat until all the water is absorbed.

They were lovely.

To go with it I made a simple runner bean and chick pea stew, made from runner beans from the garden and flavoured with onion, tomato, garlic and fresh thyme also from the garden.

Simple, yet perfect.

I found that the true beauty of using the Docklands Light Railway to return from our adventures looking at the Tall Ships yesterday was the way the railway track had been elevated on long sections, it was a pleasure to see yet another view of London.

Especially when we released we had crossed that footbridge in Canary Wharf just a few weekends earlier.

And a snap of Canary Wharf tube station, I know I was mesmerised by the glass canopies and inside it is space aged streamlined metals.

But some of the best bits are when we go through the stations and your able to see the structures,

I find it quite entrancing and could probably sit on trains all day.

A few photographs of our trip on Emirates Air Line today.  Although a misty day it was the greatest fun flying over the Thames.

I went to Royal Arsenal Woolwich to watch some of the Tall ships coming in yesterday for the Tall Ships Festival, have a look on the net, its going to be amazing. Hubby had studied the tide times and been on the internet to work out that there were a few ships hanging around at Southend and between us we’d decided that they’d want a bit of water under them once the tide turned so I should turn up about three.  I wasn’t disappointed as they turned up in quick succession over the next three hours, well slightly that some weren’t showing off and still in sail, but it was fabulous none the less.

I’m drifting off to bed now, look out for the people perched in high rise places and my heart skipped a beat every time a ship came around the bend in the river.  I can just imagine how formidable they must have looked in years gone by.

Remember the shoulder of Pork?  Well I decided to make it into a nice sticky barbecue style mess.

First of all I soaked some black eyed beans overnight and then cooked them for nearly an hour until they were tender.

Then I fried some onions with some chilli, garlic, ginger and then peeled and chopped a Bramley apple, added a tin of tomatoes, some tomato puree, a good dollop of mustard, some sugar, some vinegar and the diced pork, not forgetting salt and pepper and then I had this.

And I let it simmer for a while until I had this.

And the apple had disintegrated to make it lighter and slightly tangier and sweeter and then I piled it ontop of a jacket potato and it became a thing of beauty.

And the rest was frozen for days when cooking seems either tedious, exhausting or boring…

I love woollen blankets, especially handmade knitted or crochet blankets, but it does have to be wool or maybe alpaca, I’d probably be happy with alpaca, hot, very hot, but happy.  I love the warmth that comes from animal fibres.  Even when its wet, wool keeps you warm, although it might be very heavy!  I know some people love acrylic, possibly for their bright colours or being able to wash it easily, but there are so many lovely washable wools on the market these days, at very reasonable costs and acrylic just does not keep you warm, well not like wool does.  And I especially love the tones that look like tweed, I told my gran that that was my favourite yarn, when I was about six, long before I discovered knitting in my forties.  She said it was her favourite too.  But there is one thing I always forget about woollen blankets..

They take a very long time to produce.  Well they do for me, I know there are some people who can just crack on with them and with a flourish produce a blanket in record time, I can do that for a quilt, I just can’t do that for knitting.  I get side tracked so easily, a pair of socks here, a few rows on a cardigan there, download that shawl pattern and spend the morning threading beads.. I’m just so fickle.  But my blanket is growing into nice long strips now, so the colours are coming together and I can get an idea of what it is going to look like, I’m so in love with it, its spurring me on.