Earlier, Mum rang, Auntie Vi (Mum’s sister) died very suddenly today.

A lovely, generous of spirit lady who will be greatly missed.

To Bean or not to Bean that is the question?

Or in other words, my precious runner and french climbing beans are really quite high to still be in 3 inch peat pots and are crying out to be put into the ground. But, will we have a frost or even a risk of a frost before the end of May. I am too nervous to risk it at the moment, which is why I am constantly checking long term weather forcasts.

Dads home, he came home on Friday, he gains strength and confidence every day. We are all very pleased.

I made these for the Girls at Tuesday Night Knitting.

They seemed to like them. Well the plate became bare, which is always a good sign.

So I’d better write the recipe down before I forget.

230 grams of desiccated coconut
150 grams of golden caster sugar
1/2 tsp of vanilla essence
2 large egg whites.

Whip the egg white a little just to break it down and then mix together all the ingredients, it needs to become a firm texture.

Place in bite sized balls on a baking sheet which has oiled greaseproof paper on it. Pop in oven which is has been prewarmed to 180 C and cook for ten minutes, check after nine. So that they are slightly singed to a nutty brown. Take off tray and allow to cool on wire rack. I reckon they would be quite nice dipped or drizzled in melted chocolate as well.

It was hubby’s birthday yesterday and I made these for him. I didn’t make the buttons, I just made the buttons into cufflinks, I can’t even claim it was my idea, (thanks Girls!) but he was tickled pink with them and promises to wear them to a client meeting this week. (which will be the next time he wears a double cuff shirt)

There was going to be socks, but about a month ago, when I delicately asked if he’d like a pair of socks, he was perhaps not in a receptive mood so declined my generous offer. But then, last week, he moaned that I hadn’t made him a pair. I cannot knit socks that quick, well I can, but not nice, summery, cotton ones. So he is going to have to wait. (To be honest the knitting bug has left me at the moment, I think its because the plot is taking up my thinking time. Although I have just ordered subscriptions to a couple of knitting magazines this morning, so it is still burbling away in the background.) I tried reasonably hard (a day in Stratford upon Avon, a day in Leamington) to buy him something else, but the plain fact is, he doesn’t actually want anything, so we decided to keep it simple this year.

There was going to be cake, but then hubby didn’t want cake this year. So these went unused. A bit cruel I know, but son no.1 and I giggled like school girls when we saw them in the shop and just Had to have them and knew of the perfect victim, who unfortunately didn’t want to play.

So, after a trundle around to some car boots, we sat and drank wine, whilst chatting to the chickens and dogs, went to bed for a couple of hours when the wine and the heat took their effect and later ordered a Chinese meal. It was nice.

Hubby in “I love my Dogs” mode. (three out of the four dogs) The dogs just ignore the chickens, and the chickens ignore the dogs, this took quite alot of dog training on my part. (especially with the terrier whose not in these pictures)

Buff Orpington

Three Black Rocks

Lilac Araucana

Wellsummer

Its going to be scary..

But wigless I will be.

I miss the wind blowing over my follicles!

Ugh,

I’m making a pair of Fetchings at the moment. Well, I was until I threw them down in disgust half an hour ago because I have run out of wool on the last two rows (well three if you include the bind off) on the last thumb.

I have made these in exactly the same yarn (although a different colour) twice before and I knew it was going to be tight, but even with gathering all scraps and knotting (I can hear the gasps) them together, its just not enough.

Ugh, and, I had shown them to my Mum (the grateful, what was soon to be keeper) earlier.

My tension must have relaxed over the course of my rather young knitting career.

I don’t think I have any scraps of the bamboo yarn that I was using. Although I’ll have a rummage in better light tomorrow and there is a dim lightbulb blinking at the back of my brain that indicates that indeed there may be a scrap of something hiding somewhere. They don’t have to be perfect, as they were, (which is why I was using a bamboo mix and therefore washable) going to be used as gardening Fetchings to keep Mum’s joints warm.

And I was going to show you all, just how clever I was, (yeah right! (she can’t even buy enough yarn!!)) because one was cabled with a cable needle and one was cabled the way Carie had shown me, without a cable needle. And we would have ummed and aahed about what I perceive to be a slight but quite interesting difference and why that would be so..

And on that note, I’m off to bed.

I love our Araucana’s Eggs, she’s laying nearly every day at the moment so I am able to eat them in quantity. There are two resons I love her eggs so much, firstly, they taste richer than the other hens and secondly the yolk to white ratio is extremely generous, there really is very little white to yolk. As you might be able to see in the picture below, which has three Araucana’s eggs in it. Also they are smaller eggs which can be nice and they are so pretty. We had hoped to have a hen that lay blue eggs, sadly you can’t tell by looking at an Araucana which colour egg she will lay, ours turned out to be more of a khaki green, but I still get excited by that.

A line up of our hens eggs, the Araucana’s egg is at the top. Hubby is so much better than I at distinguishing who has laid which egg. I, normally under test conditions, (we are quite a sad family) can guess the Black Rocks, the Buff Orpington (lovely bird that one, my favourite, the Queens mums as well) and the Wellsummer, although she doesn’t produce as speckly an egg as she once did, off course I can guess the Araucana’s and by deduction I should be able to guess who the Buff Sussex is, but to be honest, I’ve normally become confused and sit looking at it.

Just another piccie to show you the various colours.

Considering they are four years old, (industry kills off egg laying birds after 18 months) they are still laying well and five out of the seven are laying nearly every day at the moment.

This is son no.1’s absolutely, without a doubt favourite salad and as soon as the weather turns warm, he begs me to make it for him. So of course I have varied the recipe a little over time.

The original recipe and the one I have taken piccies of today, although I did add a second packet of feta cheese, (the original recipe requires 9 oz) as this is demanded by the hungry hoardes is..

1 medium red onion
4 limes
1 medium to largish ripe watermelon
2 packs of Feta cheese.
3 – 4 tables spoons of Extra virgin olive oil.
I medium jar of Black Olives
bunch of flat leaf parsley
bunch of mint, chopped
black pepper.

Slice the onion into half moons and steep in the lime juice whilst you prepare the watermelon, cutting it into nice chunky triangles. Break the feta up. Add them to a large bowl or a large platter can look nice. Tear of leaves of parsley and chop the mint up and scatter over. Pour the onions with their juices over, add the drained olives and black pepper, drizzle olive oil over, toss gently.

This makes a lovely, sweet, salty, sour and very refreshing salad, which is delicious when the weather turns warm.

A variation we have tried and agree we prefer, we use watercress, which adds a peppery/spicy note. We then don’t add the parsley and mint and we like to use olives stuffed with anchovies and sometimes a little salt mixed in with the lime juice can be very nice, it just depends on how salty your feta is.

I know that I am probably the last one on the planet (in knitting circles) to find out about this book, but find out I have. Yesterday, Son no.1 and I took ourselves off to Coventry for some R & R. We had lunch at The Noodle Bar, which is yummy, (and they do rice noodles for me) and then off to look around gaming shops for him, wool and bookshops for me. I found “The Friday Night Knitting Club” written by Kate Jacobs. Well, as soon as I saw the front cover I was hooked! I read the first page of the story, it made me smile, as images of a certain wool shop and its owner floated through my imagination. I’ve had a quick scoot around the net and their making a film about it! Wouldn’t it be lovely, if we (as in Tuesday night knitters) all went as a group to see it.

I’m just off to the plot, if the weather keeps fine. My knitting has sadly been pushed to one side as the demands of my vegetables grow. April is one of the busiest month of the allotmenteers calendar. If you can get through April, (well its really end of March to mid May) with limbs and back intact, without having lost it all to the weather, you should be in with a chance of having decent crops, at least in something.

I’m slightly concerned that my courgette seeds haven’t sprung into life as yet, so I may need to ‘check’ or in other words wiggle a pencil around in the pot to see if the seed has rotted or has germinated. (or even if the mice have had another free feed!)

I’ve more pea plants to put in, which will be done hopefully today, depending on how soggy the ground is and I suspect I shall find a few other little jobs up there.