Mushy peas anyone...

Please do not get me wrong, I love mushy peas as much as the next person, but I keep drifting in and out of love with this colour. I wandered into a yarn shop a week or so ago and got completely seduced. They stock all the Rowan yarns, and I simply adore Rowan yarns. I love the colours and to my knowledge it is the loveliest yarn to work with.
I used to knit a lot as a teenager, but that is many moons ago, and have not done much of it since. But I decided there and then that I was going to make this...
It was actually great discovering that knitting apparently is in my blood, it all came back to me immediately and I have not been without my needles for the past 8 days or so. It is nearly finished now, only part of the border to go. If only I was more sure about the colour...
To make myself love it more, I got some shoes in the same hue...
I will show you the finished project when it is done, I am already looking at more projects...Am as addicted to knitting as I am to crochet now!

Enjoy your crafting and the sun!

A campsite treat...

As I was camping out in front of the tv for a big chunk of the weekend watching Glastonbury festival, I felt that a campfire treat was appropriate.
The idea of s'mores has always held a particular fascination for me. As you can not get plain graham crackers in this country for love or money, I decided to make these instead. I was amazed at how quick they were to make. And not only that, they are quite special too...
I halved the recipe as I felt that 30 cookies would be a bit much, but as I am the original ditzy queen (can I blame the weather?) I used the full quantity of oatmeal. This also meant that I could use the whole egg and not just half a one which would have been awkward, so in a sense it worked out perfectly. I guess the cookies turned out a bit drier than they would otherwise have been because of the oatmeal, but they are gorgeous anyway.

S'mores Cookies
1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (125 gr) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup light-brown sugar
1 large egg
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, cut into 30 squares
15 large marshmellows, halved horizontally

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, pulse oats until finely ground. Add flours, cinnamon, salt and baking soda, pulse to combine. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, scraping down the side of the bowl. With mixer on low, beat in flour mixture until just combined.
Drop dough by tablespoons, 1 inch apart, onto two baking sheets. Top each with a chocolate square. Bake just until lighly golden, 11-13 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Remove sheets from oven, heat grill. Top each cookie with a halved marshmallow. One sheet at a time grill until marshmallows are lightly browned, 1-1/2 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.

The other thing I did this weekend is set myself a reading target. I saw this on another blog I was reading the other day and thought that was a great idea. I set myself a summer reading challenge. Between now and September 21 ( which is the official start of autumn) I want to read the following books.
1. The Knickerbocker glory years, Martin Lampen
2.The language instinct, Steven Pinker
3. Cheerful weather for the wedding, Julia Strachey
4. Bloomsbury, a house of lions, Leon Edel
5. Pastures nouveaux, Wendy Holden
6 Cover her face, P.D. James
7. Consequences, E.M. Delafield
8. Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, Jane Dunn
9. Bloomsbury in France, Caws and Wright
10. A vintage affair, Isabell Wolff
11. Matisse, a life in the south of France,
12. Austerity Britain, David Kynaston
13. Millie's flirt, Jill Mansell
14. Mrs Woolf and the servants, Alison Light
15. Home to roost, Deborah Devonshire
16. Howard's End, E.M. Forster
17. The voyage out, Virginia Woolf
18. My turn to make the tea, Monica Dickens
19. How to run your home without help, Kate Smallshaw
20.Cold meat and how to disguise it, Hunter Davies.
I might have been a bit over ambitious, but ... see how I will fare.
Enjoy a gorgeously warm week!

Aaaah summer...

You just know that summer has arrived when you have Royal Ascot, Wimbledon and The tour de France in succession. Can you tell I am an extremely fanatic armchair athlete?
And there is the summer solstice of course...
We have just had the longest day of the year, but there is still plenty of sunshine to enjoy! The garden is looking lush at the moment, and everything seems to vie for your attention.
The lily in the front of this picture needs an award. It appears every single year, yet has never bloomed, for the simple reason that is is eaten every single time by one of those pesky orange lily beetles. This year however, it has come further than ever, so ... we live in hope.
The rest of the garden is just a lush riot, it is gorgeous, if you like the ordered chaos style of gardening that is.
My favourite rose of all time deserves a little spot in the limelight too...

Enjoy the sun and the green spaces in your area!

Where did all the trees go...

Has any of you ever witnessed from nearby how huge trees, twice as high as the house. are felled in urban areas. I certainly never had seen it, and even though it is a sad, sad sight, it is totally fascinating.
Two huge trees that were in the garden of our neighbour at the back of our house were badly damaged by the storm we had a few weeks ago and they had to be taken out completely. As their house fronts on to a main road and their gardens are incredibly long, there was no way it could be done from their end. This meant that the trees had to be hoisted over our roof and the bits of tree would be deposited and disposed of in our road. Believe me, this was something the whole neighbourhood came to see...
First there was the guy who had to fell the tree, no climbing trees for him, he was hoisted over the top of our roof by a huge crane...
Then he was gingerly lowered into the tree. This is actually a very delicate and skilled procedure, as the guy steering the crane can not see a thing, he is looking at our house, and has to rely on what the man dangling from the crane tells him what to do. Apparently that takes a few painful manoeuvres before they have got that down pat... These two had obviously worked together before.
After he has secured himself, the sawing starts...
And we have bits of flying tree, the crane driver again has to rely on the description of the bit he is getting over the roof in order for him to know how to place it in the road without damaging everyone's front gardens. This was truly one of the most skilled performances I have ever witnessed.
And this is where the tree goes... This machine eats huge trees in about 30 seconds, awesome and frightening at the same time.

Have a wild Monday!

To market, to market...

It is always lovely to catch up with old friends, particularly on a nice day out. Last week I met an old friend at the station and we went to a town about an hours trainride away from here. It is in the south of Holland, Den Bosch, and it is a gorgeously relaxed town. Originally I hail from that part of the country, and I always feel like I am at home again when I am there. People really are a lot more open, relaxed and friendly around there.
They also make a lovely cake there, called Bossche bol, which is basically a giant profiterole to be marginally rude about it. It is a real speciality of Den Bosch, and they make them nowhere better than there, particularly at one bakery called Jan de Groot. The thing that always make me smile is that he obviously has his marketing down pat as well. There is a little tearoom attached to the bakery which is always chock-a-block, but in all the other cafes that serve his Bossche Bollen as well it is either advertised outside or specified specifically on the menu that they come from his bakery... there is someone who understands his trade. Anyway, as ever, the first thing we did when we arrived was have a cup of tea and a cake, we both skipped breakfast that morning in view of this, now, there is dedication for you.
My friend had made a long list of all the things she wanted to get, so after our cake we set out to do some serious shopping. First we went to the market...
This is a gorgeous market, really quite big and well laid out. There are always loads of plant and flower stalls, and fruit and anything else you can think of.
We had a look at the cathedral and strolled on to the main square next to that. We then discovered that there would be a Tattoo that evening and all the bands that were taking part were having a march through the city that afternoon. That was a real surprise, as we both love brassbands and show bands. As a teenager my friend used to play in one and I just adore the sound of brassbands. So, we abandoned our shopping plans and had a look at all the bands, there were a few quite special ones there. Unfortunately we could not stay till the evening, otherwise we certainly had done so. However, we will go to the military Tattoo in Breda in October. I have never been, and she is just very glad to have found someone who will gladly come with her, as she does not know anyone else who likes things like that.
So, we learn something new about our friends every time we meet up with them, and that is just truly lovely. They open our eyes to new things and make the world really a richer and more interesting place. I love it when things like this happen and when people are flexible enough in their minds to just throw plans overboard and do something different from the original plans. We had such a lovely time!
Hope your weekend is not too windy... it is blowing like mad here again...this is a glimpse of what happened to the poor trees in our neighbour's garden after the big storm we had a couple of weeks ago, more of that in a different post.Enjoy your weekend!

My granny is a giant...

I had a lot of yarn in my stash and as I have been obsessed with crochet for a while now, I decided to start a giant granny. I guess it is going to be a picnic blanket... I will make a few cushions to go with it as well.
As I could not help myself I also bought a few skeins of wool in pretty, pretty colours, I intend to make a blanket with that consisting of lots of little squares, I have started on it, but there is not much of it to show you.
My main obsession these past few weeks however have been these...
I think I mentioned it before, but I am not a girl that does things by halves, and lately my days have looked like this: breakfast, reading, cups of tea, reading, some light housework (never overdo it, reading, tea, reading...oh well, you get my drift.
I have really immersed myself in the era of roughly 1900-1950 of late and have become obsessed with the Bloomsbury Group (again). Imagine my surprise and joy then to find these two lurking amongst the books I already owned...
Such a lot of inspiration and sheer delight I get out of these books, I cannot even begin to tell you.
Look at some of the projects...
And some of the pictures in the book (which are immeasurably better than the pictures I took of them)...
What else have I been doing? Taking a break, I guess we all have these moments where we do not really feel too well in ourselves, it is never very serious, but it can throw you off course slightly.
After a lot of watching Spring Watch (brilliant this year I thought), tennis at Queen's (watching that is)and the Derby at Epsom I feel a lot better again. Which is just as well, as on Monday I have got a very unexpected job interview for a job I would really love, love, love to get.
Wishing you all a very sunny, warm and fulfilling weekend!