A Spring Walk

This weekend Braveheart's sister, brother in law and one of his nephews came for a visit. We were delighted to welcome them, as they had not seen our house and garden before. We went for a walk together along the Wey Navigation, where I saw these lovely, cheerful pots of flowers on one of the houseboats.

I loved this spring blossom

and these brightly coloured barges

 and this graceful swan by the weir

I also completed a new project this weekend, this crochet lace doily. I am quite addicted to doily making at the moment.

A White Christmas

Well hello there, and a Happy New Year to all. I spent Christmas in Scotland this year, and it was a beautiful white, cold, wintry time. The header photo was taken on Christmas Eve, and the river is partly frozen.

We had a huge family Christmas with Braveheart's family, with thirteen of us around the table. After Christmas we had some lovely restful days just sitting and chatting or walking the dog before flying home.

Once we were home we had to start packing, because next week we are moving, which is very exciting. After two solid days of packing the house is a tip with boxes everywhere. My spinning wheel is buried somewhere behind these boxes. Oh well, it will all be worthwhile!

A Snow Day

At 6.00 a.m. we had two possible strategies. I thought that our journey was not essential and that we should stay at home, and Braveheart thought that we should leave as early as possible so as to get to work on time. We got up and had breakfast while we thought about it, and then were lucky enough to watch one of the neighbours trying to get his car out. The road was as you see in the photo, in fact the tail lights you can see in the far right are those of the neighbour in question. He cleared snow from the roof of his car, and that allowed me to see that there were about 12 inches. Hmmm, I thought.

He took 10 minutes to back out of his drive onto the road and get stuck in the snow. Then he took 20 minutes, a shovel, two pieces of carpet and five neighbours to get his car back on the drive. His wife stood in the doorway saying "you'll never make it". We watched from the window and took photos discreetly.

Braveheart decided that our journey was not essential and we should stay at home.

We measured the snow depth outside the back door:









and outside the front door:









The garden is a winter wonderland.
Kino and her three friends left for Africa a few weeks ago. She'll be gutted to learn that she missed the best UK snow event for 18 years! She is travelling over there until Easter when she is home for a week before returning to continue her trip around the world. Kino has her own blog, and you can read her articles (and look at some stunning photos) on Curiouser and Curiouser.

A day after her departure I received an email to say she had left her yellow fever vaccination certificate in her handbag and could I send it on by Global Priority mail. Unfortunately, there was no vaccination certificate in her handbag and after a lengthy search of her belongings I concluded that we did not have it. A difficult email conversation followed, as she was absent for days at a time and I had to travel to Paris and had no internet access, but the upshot of it all was that I phoned around her doctors in the last five years till I found the one who had done the vaccination, and then they issued a new certificate, which they posted to me and which I have now sent on to Kino at a youth hostel in Kenya. Here's hoping it gets to her alright!

The Times They Are a-Changin'

And so we are nearly at the end of another year. For me, the turmoil and bustle of everyday activities, the world of work and family, the highs and lows of the last year, are gradually stilled as we move through Advent. Christmas, for me, is a time of reflection and peace, where all the threads of life can be laid out, reflected on and their pattern seen before starting a new cycle in January. It is also a time of rest and recovery.

For the last five years, the transition from everyday life to the Christmas season has been marked by driving up to Cambridge to fetch my daughter home for Christmas. Cambridge is a special place for me, where I spent three intense, magical years of my youth, and which is full of memories of people, events and aspirations.

Every year, the drive up is on a cold, crisp, sunny winter morning. We load the car with Kino's things and then go somewhere for a quiet lunch. By the time lunch is over, the sun is setting and we drive home as it gets dark, listening to Christmas music on the radio. After this year, though, things are changing; in January, Kino is off to travel the world for a year or so.

I'm hoping to meet up with her some time, but more of that next year. Time for some more travel, perhaps! In the meantime, next Saturday is the drive up to fetch her, and I'm looking forward to it.

Since my last post (and thanks for the messages of sympathy and understanding by the way) I've at least written my cards, and Braveheart and I have made some progress in the kitchen.

We made some Christmas biscuits:


The Christmas Cake is well marinated in brandy and has been covered in marzipan. It is due to be iced this afternoon and Braveheart has ambitious designs in mind, so watch this space!



As I don't appear to have finished any knitting for ages I thought I would at least show what I have been doing. I have finished my mittens interrupted and the matching scarf (which have been pretty useful these last few weeks).

I have been crocheting some snowflakes. This is the first one, in size 10 cotton. It needs starching and blocking I hasten to add, but it looks pretty cool so far.

I have been slowly but surely getting on with my Babette blanket in the car driving to work. Obviously I'm not the one driving, of course. Here's all the squares!

Here it is so far. I'm loving those autumn leaves colours, which are such fun to do. Only about 10 more to go and then I can start on the final section - Winter!

I have decided to start assembling it, so these squares have been blocked, and I hope to start sewing them together very soon. As soon as I've finished blogging about them and made a few more snowflakes in fact.

I hope all your Christmas preparations are going well!

Purl's On The Move

A very quick post today because, Dear Reader, I am PACKING. I have been packing since lunchtime and so far I have a mountain of boxes and one tiny room is nearly empty. I have until Wednesday afternoon to pack for the move and then I am on holiday for 10 days and the day after I get back from the holiday I am moving.
I can't imagine how I will get everything into the pitifully inadequate number of boxes I have, or how I can do it in the time available.
Thanks for listening. I'm off to do some more now.

Oh, and last week The Intern became a Graduate Consultant. I have finally got the camera back from him, and here is a taster - I promise I'll sit down and write about it properly in a few days.

Elderflower Wine

According to all our recipe books, it is essential to pick elderflowers in full sun so that the flowers are fully open. It was also essential to pick them this weekend, as the next few weekends are booked up, so on Saturday afternoon off we set with a big supermarket shopping bag (re-useable I hasten to add) to find elder trees.

After a few miles of elder desert, the first tree we found was at the side of a busy road. We stopped the car, put on the hazard lights and picked frantically, with one eye on the traffic. One or two people seemed a litle impatient with us for some reason.
After that, things improved and we managed to find quite a few trees, but in safer locations and on foot, although many of them seemed to be the other side of a ditch behind ranks of nettles. "How many elderflowers do you think we need?" I asked. The recipe said 3 pints of elderflowers for one gallon of wine, so we decided that we would fill the bag and then see how many we had got.

After two hours of pleasant wandering down country roads and lanes, the bag was full and we made our way home. Now we had to process them by removing all the stalks.
Here are the hardworking stalk removers.


The bag seemed bottomless, and it took three people an hour to remove all the stalks. Here's the preserving pan full of flowers(6 pints).

I added boiling water to each container and left the flowers to steep for two days. I do love the smell of elderflowers, which is lucky as it permeates the entire house at the moment.

The next stage is to put the liquid into demijohns, add sugar and set it to fermenting. We think we have enough for four gallons (hic), and the wine is only about 12 months away, hooray!

As Kino was here for the weekend, I was able to give her back her skirt which I had fixed. This skirt was bought a few years ago and worn once at a summer garden party. Kino spilled some water (or more probably wine) over where she was sitting and had the happy thought of placing some black sugar paper over it to sit on in order to protect the skirt. Hmmm, well apparently the dye in sugar paper is not fast. Not until it's bonded with fabric, anyway.
After some fruitless attempts to turn the hideous black stain into a feature by painting it with silk paints, she sent the skirt to me to see if I could remove the stain. I tried a number of treatments but was unable to do anything but reduce it a bit. I concluded I would have to remove the section of skirt with the stain and replace it, at which point it went into the Too Difficult pile and has remained there ever since.

Until....I visited the Dylon stand at this year's Ideal Homes Exhibition. For reasons I won't go into I was looking for technology to remove dye, and found the Pre Dye treatment. This apparently removes all dye from almost everything. Light bulb! I could remove all the lovely hot pink dye AND the stain from the skirt and then re-dye it hot pink. I asked Kino for permission to try this radical treatment and she agreed.
Here's the skirt after all the dye had been removed.

A sort of dirty beige remained -and a small green mark where the black stain had been. Then I re-dyed it using a lovely flamingo pink. It came out perfectly, and here it is being worn by Kino, who was very pleased to have it back again after three years. It looks really great!

Oh, and the small green mark? That was the silk paint!