Tea Time

I am in the process of moving house – downsizing!  My garden is too big for me to manage and as my R.A is playing havoc with my mobility I have decided to move to a smaller property.  My new place has a garden a quarter of the size of my present garden, however there is an upside, it is on the edge of town and will have an outlook of paddocks and the Tararua ranges.  My neighbours will be sheep and it will be interesting to see what the cats make of them!

I am in the process of getting rid of stuff!  Lots of stuff!  I have been here 10 years and my lordy I have heaps of stuff!  On Monday I took a large load to the local hospice.  Good, you would think, well I succumbed to the sight of some china.  I have a thing about china, especially teacups.  I walked out the shop with two sets.

This: 

And this:

I adore the green set, such an unusual colour, and I seem to have a thing about green at the moment.

Yesterday it rained, which is good as we desperately need it here.  But it meant I couldn't get out in the garden (I am in the process of tidying it up and potting up cuttings for my new place.)  I thought I would have a go at making a tea cozy that I mentioned a couple of posts ago. I had it all planned in my head, but discovered to my dismay that the ivory cotton I thought I had was only remnants of a previous ball!  I didn't want to go out and buy some as I was nicely settled so I made this instead:

It was just big enough for my smallest teapot and I am rather pleased with it, I need to sort out the decreasing rounds when I make bigger ones.  I used popcorn stitch and it gives the cozy enough thickness to not have to line it.

I had to test it out this afternoon and it did keep the tea hot.  To celebrate my new cups and the cozy I decided to bake a cake, something I haven’t done for a while.  It is a really quick and easy recipe.  Pineapple Fruit Cake, very yummy.

Pineapple Fruit Cake

16 oz (450g) canned crushed pineapple

2 ½  cups dried mixed fruit

1 cup castor sugar

4oz (125g) butter

Pinch salt

1 tsp mixed spice

1 tsp baking soda

2 eggs lightly beaten

1 cup plain flour sifted with 1 cup self-raising flour

Oven temp 160 C (360 F)

Mix the pineapple, butter sugar, spice, fruit, salt and bring to boilo and cook for 15 minutes. Add Baking Soda and cool.  When cold add eggs and flour.  Mix and put in a lined cake tin (20cm) and bake in lower half of oven for 2 – 2 ½ hours.   Allow to cool a bit before moving from tin.

I have realised that I have now been blogging here for just over a year!  Time flies.  I have enjoyed showing you all my makes over the last year and of course visiting you all.  However, over the next month or so I don’t know if I will have time to post with all that I have to do for the move.  So, bear with me, and hopefully normal service will resume at the end of April.  I will still be working on my blankets and be doing the odd doily when time and energy allows.

 Ambrose is finding this moving lark rather exhausting.

Thanks for visiting and have a wonderful weekend.

Cal and Cake!

Finally I am catching up with my Mini Rings of Change Cal that Kate is hosting.  Above is last week’s rounds 15 – 19.

This week’s rounds were very simple and enabled me to catch up quickly.  However it is starting to get quite sizeable and heavy to handle.  I can now see it as a rug for my bathroom.  I am very pleased with it.  It is really interesting to see how colour affects how the design looks.  Even though we are all using the same pattern they all look so different because if our colour choices.  Head over to Kate and see!

It was a national holiday yesterday – Waitangi Day.  I was going to the park to watch the celebrations but I wimped out as it was stormy strong gale force winds, eek! I felt bad for the people that organized things, especially as by middle afternoon the weather had cleared and blue skies prevailed.

So, instead I spent time in the kitchen and prepared vegetables for pickles and did a big batch of freezing beans and tomatoes.  To celebrate my housewifely skills I treated myself to some baking, one of my favourites  -  Muesli Slice.

It is an old Edmonds cookbook recipe (for those outside NZ the book is a national treasure and I wouldn't be surprised if every home had one!)  Originally published by Edmonds in 1907 to promote their Baking products.  For many years I think till the 1960s every newly married couple was given a copy by the company.  It is being constantly revised and recipes change as trends in food change.  My first one I got from my grandmother when I married is very fragile and falling to pieces, but I keep it as there are some old favourites that are not in my current copy err pub in 1994! I will need a new one again soon as pages are starting to come out and are rather brown! I wonder what recipes are in the current edition.

There that is my input for celebrating NZ!

Anyways I spent the afternoon doing my patchwork, sipping tea from my favourite china, really girly pink afternoon and all!  The patchwork is nearly finished and I have decided on the crochet panel but will tell all next time.

The Muesli Slice was yummy, I changed the recipe a bit,  its meant to have chocolate icing but I don’t like icing (yeah really).  But I needed my chocolate fix so I added chocolate buttons to the mix, divine!  Here’s the recipe if you are interested.

Muesli Slice

50g butter

½ cup brown sugar

2 eggs

¾ cup s/r flour or use plain and add Baking Powder 1tsp

1 cup muesli

2 tsp grated lemon rind

½ cup chopped mixed peel (I don’t add this as my muesli has flavours that would clash!)

¼ to ½ cup of chocolate buttons or chips.

(I make up my own muesli by adding dried fruit, such as figs, currants, raisins, apricots, cranberries, nuts such as almonds walnuts and coconut flakes to rolled oats)

Cream butter and sugar, Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.  Sift flour and add BP if using.  Fold in the rest of ingredients to mix.  Spread into tin and bake at 180 C for 25 minutes or till golden.  Add icing if you want.

Enjoy!

Thanks for visiting and I will see you next time.

Mand-A-Long

Hello, I am linking this post to Chrissie's Mand-a-Long.  It seems that there is a bit of an obsession with Mandalas in crochet blogland!  I know I am obsessed.  I posted last week about the mandalas I did them, mainly with 4 ply wool, using variations on Winks pattern from Simply Crochet.  I have carried on the good work with the one below, an antique feel this time, more subdued.

It matches a find from one of the local op sops this week – Japanese lustre cup.  I haven’t shown it here but the outside of it is very beautiful too – a teal green with gold trim.

Yesterday, I decided to go a bit brighter and the result was these two.

Very Summery!  The top one was a variation of a Mandala pattern by Wink on Tuts.  The pink wool one is more or less following the pattern I found on Made in K Town’s Blog.  I see great possibilities for these and I am in the process of trying out my own design – getting the increases right for each round is the difficult trick.  But I will beat it.  I will post it when I have.

The other thing I have been doing this week is trying out motifs for a light shawl that’s the other obsession I have at the moment – er …. Along with bags, both crocheted and embroidered ones.  Below is the motif for the shawl that I have settled on.  The colours will be just right for the cooler nights we are getting with Autumn.

That has been my crochet week, why not go over and check other Mandalas at Chrissies Crafts.

P.S   Oh, this Mandala obsession actually has been around a longish time for me! I posted about these pot holders when I first started this blog last month.

Also linking with Cosmos and Cottons Monthly Mandalong

Pink and Cozy!

Now I am not a pink girly girl, I am more into bright colours and zany.  Well I thought I was.  Last week I noticed that pink has started to creep into my life!

It first started with the trio Colclough china set I found in a local op shop.  I just had to have it!  In the same shop I found a tray cloth (I adore vintage table settings and china).

I have a pretty teapot and for a while I wanted to do a tea cozy that matched it prettiness.  Most of the tea cozy patterns on the net are for rounder pots.  I eventually find a couple of sites that showed you how to make a cozy to fit the shape of your pot.  So, grabbing some very pale pink I started.

It needed some flowers, so I visited Attic 24 and learnt how to do some roses and other open flowers

As you can see it is starting to get rather pink and girlie!  More so when I decided to add some pearl buttons and do a scalloped edging!  At this stage I started to giggle at myself.

I got a bit carried away and added a tiny flower and pearl button at the button where the bottom is attached.

Attaching the flowers was fun and by this time I was chortling loudly, Tada how girly is that!

Actually, I was rather pleased and proud of it, and had to go rushing out to show my neighbor it.  Result she wants one for her teapot!  Yesterday showed my bestie and she wants one!  I have been told in no uncertain terms not to call it girlie but romantic.  And this setting does look romantic.  My two buys at the op shop. (Tray cloth and china trio, plus the scarf I crochet over the last two days.

The scarf is actually a peach colour and the pattern was a fancy trellis  pattern from a library book on vintage crochet.  It will be ideal for the cooler nights we are now getting with the arrival of autumn.  Got to be cozy!

This pretty and feminine stuff is starting to scare me, think I will get back to my CAL blanket from Little Woolies blog.  So far its taken me about 3 months and I am about 2/3rds through.  That should stop the urge I have to crochet a lacy shawl.  But don’t be surprised if you see one soon, I think I am fighting a losing battle!  Because as you know we all have a little bit of romantic girlie stuff inside all of us.

Anyway that has been my week crochet wise. 

PS I have asked one of my friends to slap me if I start to wear pretty pink dresses!

I am linking this to Annemaries Haakblog weekend Link your Stuff.