It all started peacefully enough, the mixing of water and flour in the hope of making a sour dough starter.  After a week and a couple of floury feeds to my hungry new born I had this, a happy little fellow indeed, burping away. And then disaster struck, the oven died on the very same day that the central heating did. Hubby ordered the parts for the cooker and phoned British Gas and I looked at my sourdough baby and wondered what to do and decided to make the bread as far as I could and slow it down in the fridge if need be and hope that the cooker would spring back to life with a new part – there was no guarantee at this point.

I made the dough by adding water and flour until I had a dough that I felt was about right, adding a little salt with the flour and then kneaded for fifteen minutes.  I think it was just slightly too wet but it was a lovely dough and was springing to life under my hands, it really was a pleasure to work.  I did a bulk rise, which took longer than expected,  we had a very cold snap so it was sat in an icy kitchen and this happened to be a good thing as when the mail arrived the cooker part was not with it.  Oh, so I finished the bulk rise overnight in the fridge with fingers crossed that it would arrive soon.

The next day the part came and hubby fitted it and ‘hurrah’ the cooker sprang back to life and I was able to knock back the dough and set it for its second rise in a heavily floured tea towel sat in a bowl. And that rose for about three hours, I then plopped it into a heavily floured cold cast iron dutch oven, slashed it with a knife, covered it with the lid and popped it into a cold oven, whacking the temperature up to its highest as I did so. I quite like the cold oven baking, I think it gives you a nicely flavoured bread without the burnt bits. The dough was very soft, so spread a little,  I wonder if it is worth baking in a bread tin in a dutch oven?  I took the lid off for the last twenty minutes to colour the bread. And 50 minutes later we had a lovely sourdough loaf to go with some home made butternut squash soup and slithers of vintage cheddar cheese. Time taken 9 days. But you know it was worth it.

I have been meaning to blog about this jumper for quite a while, having finished it weeks ago, but then the wind turned to come from the North and I started to wear it and found out exactly how snuggly it is, all thoughts of blogging forgotten.  I’ve not worn Rowan Cocoon as a jumper before and found the first shed of excess mohair was like a Newfoundland’s first moult of winter fur on a warm spring day, that is to say heavy and ongoing. But after a quick brush up it became less irritating from all those loose hairs spreading across clothes and into eyes and just became a lovely comforting jumper with a large amount of Hygge about its person.

This jumper’s pattern was Lyra Vee by Sarah Hatton from The Cocoon Collection in Rowan Cocoon, colourway in Seascape.  Now the arms might be a touch long, but all the better to keep cold hands warm with on brisk winter walks and the body might be a tad short, but all the better to go with woolly winter skirts and thick tights, I really don’t mind, and one day, I might block it!, to shorten the arms and pull down the hem a little. But until that merry day when it needs its first bath, again, probably in the spring much like the aforementioned Newfoundlands, I will love it, just the way it is.

And so the bullet journalling continues, some of you may remember the August post of my exploits into the world of bullet journaling.  Now I am some six months on and as always there have been new to me buying opportunities. I love my Leuchtturm 1917 with a passion, but its too big to carry around, as is my colourful, love all the stickers Erin Condren.  I still use them both daily, but wanted something a little smaller.  I tried a passport sized Stamford travellers journal, but found it too small on some occasions and the way it fastens irritates as it makes the notebooks crease at the edges, which I don’t like. It’s fine for days when I want something super light as I am carrying other things but it wasn’t my unicorn. 

And then I heard about the Midori, Oh the Midori Traveler’s (yes it really is one l) Notebook is a thing of utter beauty.  It is so simple yet so adaptable and the paper that Midori use is fountain pen friendly and super smooth, it is just gorgeous.  Eventually after much consideration and googling I ordered the camel in standard size. I thought the colour was quite a feminine choice. I put a couple of gold beads on the elastic and a couple of beads on the bookmark and was a happy camper, setting it up with two graph paper books, one for bullet journaling and one for journaling in a more private way.And a craft file  to store a few bits and bobs with cat paperclips.And a free (meaning unmarked) weekly diary. I decided against the plastic pouch as most of the time it will be living in a handbag anyway, so I felt that was unnecessary and the same reason to forgo a pen holder, preferring to place my fountain pen upright in my hand bag to lessen the likely hood of a mini disaster.  I also didn’t want to overload it, preferring to keep the aesthetic of the Japanese clean lines.

And while this was going on we have been sorting out the house, getting rid of piles and piles of unnecessary tat, when I came across a couple of twenty year old but very beautiful atlas, as well as a complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica all sat unused by our boys, the internet had really taken off by the time they needed to research information for homework, I think they looked at the books once or twice, that was all.  Now even I won’t start cutting up a set of Britannica’s, well not unless I can think of a crafting project worthy enough to do so, but felt the atlas were fair game. So while hubby was out this evening, he gets a little sensitive to things like this.. I thought I would cover my notebooks.

First choose your page, and then cover the outside of your notebook in glue, I chose a pritstick as my weapon of choice. Place your notebook on the reverse of the picture that you want, press down, and then roughly cut the page out and then trim down the edges until they are flush with the original cover. Like so. And I must say it worked really well. I repeated this twice more, the first was a page on Antartica, perfect for winter I thought, the second was part of the country I travel through most often and I actually managed to squeeze my home town on and can see the route to London as well as lots more of course. It will give me something to look at during the long car journeys we so regularly seem to do.  The third was the southwest of the country, so I can while away the hours on said travelling trips trying to pronounce the villages in Cornwall and wondering which ones would be lovely to visit.

Isn’t it just perfect for a travellers notebook and would make lovely presents for people, you could theme them to the person so easily.  Friends from all corners of the globe could have their very own map covering inexpensive notebooks in their Christmas stockings, and an Atlas can be bought for a couple of quid if one looks carefully enough, as well as their being Bible Atlas’s and Truckers Atlas’s, as well as a myriad of other types I shouldn’t wonder. All finished  and reinserted back into my Midori.

Mission accomplished.

I strongly believe that exploring the creative side of oneself gives more joy than the sum of its parts. I tend to be quite eclectic, having learnt enough to satisfy me,then wandering off and picking up a new thread that led off in often quite an obscure way.  Knitting and crochet led to patchwork and quilt making which led to stained glass window making, which bought me back to sewing, whilst at the same time the allotment led to jam making, pickle making, cake making, bread making, chicken keeping, blogging and photography!  Then sewing led to dressmaking and tailoring which led to note taking, bullet journaling and the odd dabble in water colours and fountain pen management and not forgetting my new loves as yet to be documented of weaving and tapestry.  Now I don’t presume to be a master of any of these, but the pleasure they give is immense.

So when I saw a free taster course of sour dough bread making advertised on Eventbrite by The Learning Loaf, to celebrate Urban Food Fortnight,  I immediately booked two tickets, one for me to fine tune a couple of details of sour dough making that I thought would be interesting to see how the masters do it and one for hubby for him to explore his inner creativity.

Graham was a wonderful tutor, not least in that he didn’t weigh any of his ingredients.  That small detail gave me so much pleasure as I’ve always thought that often as not some bread making books can be a little too complicated, giving percentages as well as weight of how much water a dough should contain.  I’ve always felt that bread should be made by feel and that one should trust in ones own instincts and often as not you’ll get something extremely tasty to eat.  After all did the Ancient Greeks weigh their flour and water to the nearest gram, I think not.

It was a wonderful treat to be able to feel just exactly the give in the dough after mixing and kneading, and also quite reassuring it was very similar to my own at home.  Hubby had a lovely time kneading his very first loaf, he really got into the swing of it. His technique was lovely, definitely a bread maker on the rise. Soon we were hunched over some lovely breads, tummies loudly grumbling in anticipation as they were cut up for us to try. Oh they were good, just so very, very good. Honest, good bread, the flour milled by a working windmill in Brixton – Graham tells of how he collects his flour by tube, how’s that for minimising your carbon foot print.

If you fancy a bread making course I have to recommend the Learning Loaf, not least because of all the other good stuff, how their business is growing from using the catering facilities of a school over night and how they are giving back to the children and the local community. And if that doesn’t make a good honest loaf, I don’t know what does.

A few weeks ago hubby and I trotted around London Zoo, it is simply the best thing to have a Zoo on one’s doorstep, and is one of my dreams come true. Unfortunately the tiger cubs weren’t out to play which was the main reason we had gone, and then it rained and we ended up viewing all the lovely fish in the aquarium.  It is not easy to take photographs with flashes of lights and fingerprints on tanks and extremely low light and no tripod, but I did my best.I loved the roti island snake necked turtle, he seemed to be having a high old time. They are critically endangered and it is thought that there are no longer any in the wild, all that are left are in conservation zoo’s around the world.  That certainly gives one something to think about. Kambuka was behaving himself on the day we went, as a side note we almost went to the zoo on the day he decided to have a little wander. And the lemurs are much fewer in number, sadly some of them were quite old when they arrived. And then we had a quick trot around to see one of my favourites, (after the Penguins!) The Rothschild Giraffe, the tallest of the nine types and the most endangered.  I wish they had more space, they are lovely to see at West Midlands Safari park where there is a herd of them walking around and you can feed them from your car window, they have a really long blue tongue and they love the pig nuts that you can buy and actively wait for you to wind your window down an inch or two to give them a tasty treat.  It is quite scary to do, but absolutely wonderful.

It is a sad fact that it always takes longer than one might imagine to produce a crop of tomatoes,  what with them being a Mediterranean plant and needing a long and bright growing season.  In this country, traditionally and certainly long before the advent of double glazing rather than a frosty windowsill the preferred spot to start the seeds off by the keen amateur grower was on the top of a nice warm television in the days when they were nice and deep, preferably on Boxing day.  You can imagine the fuss this caused, when the majority of the household was still in a festive and entertaining mood.

As hubby only decided to retire in February, we were too late to sow seeds and get good solid growth on our own tomatoes, not least we didn’t own a cold frame or had built a greenhouse, at least one of which we would have needed to prevent long and leggy growth.  We tried to purchase some of our favourite tomatoes which had been grafted onto a vigorous root stock, but they had sold out.  So we were at the mercy of a few garden centres and B & Q.   The garden centres provided us with a few good plants, B & Q were a big disappointment.  The plants were fine until they started to set fruit, and then we realised they had all been mislabelled and we were left with a large supply of a yellow fruiting variety, which was tasteless.  Basically a years work down the drain.  I think I will grumble about this B & Q tomato buying experience for many a long year and warn others to be aware of their quality control.

But moving on their were some successes and we had some beautiful tasty tomatoes, which have come into their own in the summer and early autumn. They are tasty treats to enjoy with relish.  And just as a little extra, our geraniums are still doing well, I am keeping them in this winter as the trial pot that was left through last winter did not freeze and has done well all summer.
We shall see how successful we are come the spring.

Last winter I realised that I hadn’t knit a jumper for me yet, and that it would be lovely to have something just to sling on to keep cosy and warm in.  I saw the jumper Bellerose by Martin Storey, adapted the colour way slightly and started knitting. I’d not done stripes before and it was quite fun.  The colours I chose were Almond and Granite and Raspberry and Mustard in Rowan Pure Wool Superwash Worsted and the jumper came out a treat.  It hand washes nicely and I have worn it almost continuously since I finished. It’s just a very me jumper and I love it.

Hubby and I have been trying to fit this little jewel into our itinerary for what seems forever, so when a gap opened up at the same time that the Roof Gardens were open to the public and it wasn’t raining we raced across London to Kensington High Street, eager as eager could be to find what treasures lay in store.  As we entered the building I spied a polite notice asking us not to feed the flamingos and ducks as they were on a special diet, and to be honest, I gave a wry grin and took it as a little joke, fully expecting to see fiberglass models of said birds.  So you can imagine our surprise as we turned a corner and there were four elegant flamingos trotting towards us, free as they say, as a bird.  The flamingos are fondly known as Bill, Ben, Splosh and Pecks, which suits them perfectly.  After amusing ourselves with a little photography, it was lovely to photograph them so close up, we turned another corner and found a mother duck with 5 ducklings, along with lots of other little ducks floating around the place. The gardens truly are a marvel,  there are three distinct areas, a Spanish garden, a Tudor garden and an English Woodland.  We spent a good couple of hours admiring the planting of mature trees and shrubs, the beautiful pathways, bridges and buildings, and glorious mini lakes and streams. Every detail had been attended to and it was easy to see why the gardens have been given Specific Historical Interest and given a Grade II listing by English Heritage.  The gardens are free to the general public when they are not being used for events, you do need to call first to see if they are open.

Enjoy.

For me at least August has always, in so far as possible, been a month to let time stand as still as is possible.  This is the moment when the hard work in the garden begins to bear fruit, the grass slows down and barely needs cutting and if it does, well who really cares and just a casual browse of dead heading the flowers as I pass while gently watering the geraniums is all that is necessary.  A time to relax and enjoy the moment.  When the boys were young we would go off for the day two or three times a week to the ‘Happy Fields’, with a bottle of pop, sandwiches, blanket all carried in a ruck sack, football being bounced as we walked the couple of miles to the park to spend the day by the old badgers den and Finham brook where it was safe to paddle on worn by the stream ancient sandstone. Then walking home, the boys ravenous with hunger, slightly crisp at the edges where the sun had caught foreheads and shoulders and listening to their wonderings aloud about what was for supper.

In August I do the bare minimum, windows do not get polished, cookers are not cleaned, housekeeping is kept to a one step ahead of catching botulism regime and no more, for me sitting in the garden or pottering about is far more important than whether my shelves gleam. And potter we have, we have visited palaces, both Buckingham and Hampton Court, there have been seaside trips to Brighton and Deal, there has been night time driving around central London just to see the sights at midnight and sitting in the garden by candlelight until 4.00 a.m. listening to the sounds of the night while enjoying the cooling of the air.  There have been wanderings along Kensington High Street and night time exploring of St. Pancras Station listening to the pianos donated by Elton John played so beautifully by complete strangers,  there was a little exploration of the city and Leadenhall Market and trips to London Zoo.  On the hottest of days home brew has been drunk and very much enjoyed while sitting and enjoying the garden, the sweetest of tomatoes from the greenhouse have been picked and eaten in the simplest of salads or pasta dishes, the latest Rowan magazine has been devoured and a cardigan for winter cast on.

August is such a beautiful month to catch your breath in, to relax and just be.  To stop striving to resolve all ills and remember as Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam so eloquently puts it,

“One Moment in Annihilation’s Waste,

One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste…”

And while I was allowing myself to just be, a seed sparked life, one that has been sat in fertile soil for as many years as I can remember, definitely since the age of seven or eight and I decided to explore it just a little.  Only to find I had exactly what I needed just, metaphorically speaking, around the corner.

To cut a long story short, I found a Handweaving studio just off Finsbury Park and trotted over for a look and after playing selected a loom that sang the loudest to me and headed home. Two days later and I produced my second piece, the first a scratty looking dish cloth, this one a very expensive cotton tea towel in a log cabin weave.All praise August and let us hope for a little more of the long balmy days of late summer.

We went to see the tiger cubs at London Zoo last week, they are just four weeks old and Mum does a very good job of hiding them, either by feeding them from a long distance away or hiding them in the long grass.  We hung around for a couple of hours then we got these shots,one of the cubs going off for an explore…definitely up to something… when Dad decides to come over and say hello… Dad greeting his cub, – looks fierce doesn’t it !!! followed by a little lick… and then Dad wanders off, cub then heads back to mum to tell her all about his mini adventure.