A spiral crochet scarf, or two

I saw these on pinterest and thought that I would have a go at making one.

One turned into two (they're slightly addictive!) and I am pleased with the outcomes.

I'm currently selling them on ebay as despite being lovely, I have more than enough scarves to last me a lifetime, and sometimes the pleasure is more in the making rather than the wearing.

Look me up - I sell as kew20k - and I had a massive clear out on the weekend so have many items up for grabs, including some of the rather lovely but unfortunately unseen and unpurchased items from our disastrous Summer Fair. But back to the scarf for now...

Scarf 1, the original. I followed one of the many tutorials that are available. I can't find the specific one - but the one at the link here looks similar. It looks great on.

Scarf 2,  the skinny. Worked using the same pattern idea but in a silkier thread and with fewer rows of crochet in each spiral. This one is more of a necklace / scarf combo as it won't do much for keeping the cold out but looks pretty good on.

Hope you're enjoying the blog catch up posts!

I'll include some contemporary restaurant visits in the next few posts too, just to make sure it's not all historic.

Holiday in France, and a bit of Switzerland

Ok, so Summer holidays were good. We had a lovely time around Morzine.

Mountain biking, walking and making the most of our Summer season multi pass for the ski lifts was good fun. We got over the border into Switzerland one day, thank goodness the bar for lunch took credit cards as we'd not got any Swiss francs with us.

You know it's a steep ride when it takes 3 hours to climb to your lunch, and 20 minutes to get back down the valley.

In the swimming area of this beautiful lake I swam with tadpoles just getting their little legs. They're called 'tetards' in France.

We stayed in clean and basic accommodation with Alpine Elements and were fed really well. Cake every day to accompany watching the Tour de France and a varied 3 course evening dinner menu.

Good fun had by all, and a few achy muscles to remember it by!

Lemon and lime squash and my home-grown redcurrants

I made home-made lemon and lime squash to use up some fruit which we'd bought for juicing and which hadn't got used.

I can't find the recipe I used, but it's very similar to one used by Hugh of River Cottage (see below)

http://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/lemon-orange-squash/

Some recipes use cream of tartar and citric acid, but as a) it was so tasty it got drunk in a flash and b) the fruit was sharp enough I found it wasn't necessary.

I have posted before about making redcurrant jelly. It's a firm favourite with my family as it's not too sweet and keeps its fruity tang after being made into jam. It's also good with sweet or savoury.

I have previously been given the red currants I have used, but was given a redcurrant bush last year. I was hoping to include a home-grown element this year.

So I have made these lovelies:

Using my usual recipe of choice, a wonderful Delia concoction. And what about the home-grown element, well maybe next year. I only got this many currants....go on, can you spot them?

Ginger cake for Macmillan cancer 'Big Coffee Morning'

I have been busy, but not blogging, since our Summer Fair.

The Fair was a total crash, it was a baking hot day and there was no-one about in the town centre. We had a trickle of people in who knew us, and managed to pull in a few people for home-made cake and coffee. We didn't make a loss, but for the time and effort put in we'd have made more money rattling buckets or packing bags at our local superstore. Boo and hiss.

It's not all to waste, though, we've got a ready prepared tombola for our next event and I've listed a few items on ebay to see how they go.

I'm intending to catch up over the next few weeks with my blogging activity, and pull out a few of the highlights from recent months. It's not going to be everything, and it's not going to be in chronological order!

We had some lovely people at work organise a bake sale for the Macmillan coffee morning, and I'd like to proudly show off my efforts:

I was really pleased with it. The recipe was from all recipes uk, I just increased the ginger content.

It was quick to pull together and looks pretty much like the picture - result!

Summer fair preparation

The 1st Meadow Covert Scout Group summer fair is coming to the West Bridgford Community Hall on Saturday 6th July 10.30 to 2.30.

We're fundraising to update the Scout hut in Edwalton, and to fund the ongoing activities of the Group so that we can provide scouting activities for as low a cost as possible. We've already had great support from the people of Edwalton, Gamston and West Bridgford in our collection of the Sainsbury's active kids vouchers, securing over 1500 vouchers. That's not bad for being in an area surrounded by collecting schools where loads of people shop at Morrisons.

update...... after counting up the vouchers from last week - we've topped 2000!

We'll have a tombola, home made cakes, children's games and a craft stall all run by the Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Sea Scouts.

We're also delighted to be joined by some professionals! We've got the Black Acres Soap Pantry (as featured in my previous post from the Handmade Boutique in the Mailbox) and Katherine with her Phoenix cards. If you can't come on the day but wish to help out the Scout Group card orders placed with Katherine using the reference 'SCOUTS' will earn a donation to the Group.

The Beavers and I are running the craft stall so I am getting ready with preparing some wares to sell on the day. As work is in progress I therefore have all sorts of things round my house currently!

We're going to have felt flowers, felt and shrink plastic magnets, brooches and iron-on clothes patches for starters. I've worked out most of the designs now, it's just getting into full-scale production mode. I think there may also be some room for some bookmarks made by the Beavers. 

Here's a little taster of what we've got on offer.....

Felt corsages (with pins on the back for easy attachment to coats, bags etc)

 

Patches for ironing onto the holes at the knee in children's trousers or for decorating bags

 

Hair bobbles

 

Happy anniversary! Afternoon Tea at Stoke Rochford Hall

Today we had a lovely afternoon tea at Stoke Rochford hall near to Grantham. It was a little odd to drive past a pre-fab conference centre to the hall, but MLH read some literature that it was once a teacher training college so that made a bit more sense.

The tea was beautiful....

Sandwiches (beef, crab, cream cheese and cucumber)

but the cake was better......

Scones, jam and cream ( and butter too if you're MLH x)

Chocolate brownie

Fruited tartlets

Fruit cake

Far too much for one sitting, but the lovely people there gave me a doggie bag to bring home. So I have lovely cake for tea time tomorrow too!

The hall itself is rather lovely, as are the variety of animals we saw on our drive through the countryside home (ducks, lambs, lambs mums, a hare, pheasants and a deer's bottom disappearing into a hedge - presumably there was a deer's top somewhere in the middle of the hedge, but that's pure speculation).

I'd also arranged for us to go and see the local theatre group's production of 'Ghost Writer' and I can thoroughly recommend it. The team always put so much effort into their productions and it really shows. At the interval you're left willing for the time to go quickly so you know what the end of the story is! I really like the way they had the ghost materialising from strange places, great lighting effects and several 'play within a play' moments where it was difficult to know where to look as there was so much going on on stage.

We had front-row seats and a lovely half-time cuppa for the bargain price of £7.50. Funny and with a bit of suspense, Ghost writer is a definite must-see. Thanks WB Theatre team. Although, shows are all sold out so unfortunately unless you've already booked you won't be going.

Catch the sunshine between the showers

Here it is!

What a lovely place I work at :)