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The Return

Even as the tiny silver slivers of ice and biting wind force each living creature unfortunate enough to be found in its midst to seek shelter beneath the moribund cedar, the house seems to gather in on itself.  Draping itself in the drab finery of the dour autumn day.  It stands cold and empty, its vacant eyes facing not to the sun but towards the dark gathering of storm clouds to the south.

The little blue car, nipping along the clandestine lanes, not raising a glassy eye of interest from the ruminate cattle, its bright flanks sheltered from the brutal force of the wind by the stripped bare vines and whipped willows of the hedgerows, plunging inexorably onwards.

Then, as if to mock the tumultuous clouds, one final ray of hope pierces the sky, seeking and finding its host, a golden reflection caught like a whisper in a mirror, but enough to shine like a beacon, urging onward the little blue car, and its occupant huddled now against the storm lashing at the rear.

And the house, reaches outward, skyward, sloughing its dreary skin like a serpent rising, its dead eyes filmed no more, but lit with joy, bright with the blessed sunlight; and it welcomes me home.

How could I have forgotten how long it takes to finish a cross stitch.

I feel like I have been doing it for days - which of course I have, slotting it in here and there whenever the light  is good enough to be able to see what I am doing.

But it does just feel as though it has been going on and on and on and on and on.

Anyway to give my poor tired eyes a break today I did all my paperwork - it was starting to feel as though Mondays were becoming a bit too routiney with the piles of stuff that sprout willy nilly on my desk so I swept them all aside yesterday and cut out another couple of bag patterns ready for the weekend in my studio and deferred the paperwork to today.

How easy it is to fall into a routine, and how depressing when that routine is so drab.

Whoever dictated that Monday's should be reserved for horrid things like tax forms and bills?  I don't work in an office anymore, I don't have to do things in office hours, and I particularly do not have to sit down and sort paperwork on a Monday morning if I don't want to.  The problem is that I am just the teensiest bit anal about things.  I often wonder what it must be like to be spontaneous and, well, exciting.

I went through a stage of reading various chick lit offerings, full of girls who jacked it all in and ran away to do something much more thrilling, and I just found myself getting frustrated with the characters, practically yelling at them through the pages 'why didn't you just do x y or z ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!'

Not sure if frustrated yelling is a pro or a con when it comes to the enjoyment derived from a novel.

Rapidly returned to mystery and crime, it was a less disquieting read.

I also had a shot at Stephen King's Dark Tower series, reading the first couple of novels.  I am really not sure what to make of these, on the one hand I think I would like to finish the series, it may get better, but on the other hand, I would have to invest in the purchase of these and I am not sure if I would find them worth the money.

I recently had some swapsies with a friend so I have a new set of books to devour, handy when the weather is grey and sleeting - yes sleeting - brrrr.  By now I normally have a couple of books on my wish list for Christmas, but so far nothing is jumping out at me.  When bereft of a library, and only ordering books on line, I find it hard to cruise around and find individual titles that grab me, I prefer to find a series of books or an author, it makes it easier to order and find them on line, knowing I will enjoy what I get.

Anyway back to Stephen King - what happened to him?  He used to write such interesting books, and now they all feel like 100 page novellas streeeeeetched out to huge novels that go nowhere and have nothing new to say.

It may be time for me to try a new genre of books, I feel as though I have read crime, horror, mystery and chick lit to death, I am not touching romance, although I did read some Georgette Heyer and found them remarkably readable some years ago, I have read a few classics but Ivanhoe stumped me and I came to a screeching halt on those, and the vampire-were-mances are a no go after reading the ultimately dreary Bella, Edward, Jacob series (obviously just for research).  Maybe some Stephen Faulks, or perhaps fantasy, I do like David Eddings - ideas on a postcard.

Right - that's me done now, letters answered, cheques drawn, online forms filled in, off to the post office then to work, and then - yet more cross stitch this afternoon.

Sunday's plumbing update

After installing the new fire, the Panadero Dublin, it was time for the next stage in the heating/plumbing refit.

The original plan had been for Brendan to create a boiler from stainless steel that would be mounted within the fire bin, but on his weekly trip to the scrapman (I think he has a not so secret crush - not on the scrapMAN but on the scrapYARD itself), he found a large coil of 8mm pipe, so decided to reshape this into a heat exchanger instead.

This should now fit into the fire with the minimum of effort, a two hole, two bolt affair.  At this point it is safe to say we have no idea how efficient it might or might not be.  The whole project is an experiment.  Well the winters are long here and it is best for everyone's sanity to have something with which to occupy your time.

Having lovingly fondled and shaped his heat exchanger and after a brief-ish interlude involving a Peugeot engine swap, it was back to the plumbing.

After some debate on the sitings of the radiators, we decided on an internal wall for the one due in my office.  Mostly because an internal wall retains more heat into the house, and the only other available place would put it under the office window, where I currently sit, but that is an external north facing wall, so some furniture reshuffling will have to take place.

Yesterday saw the radiator fixed to the wall, and the first tails of piping running across the floor to the bathroom below.  

I should say that heating my office is a secondary priority.  

The whole point of the new fire is to heat the bathroom, which currently has - or rather had - its own wood burner, which we never lit.  The priority is to install a radiator fed from the living room wood burner, which we do light every night, to heat the bathroom, but not knowing how efficient the boiler or heat exchanger may be we have run the second radiator to the office in hopes of being able to heat both rooms even if that does mean turning off one radiator so that the other one can get hot and not being able to have both running at the same time.

In addition I have benefited from a new shelf for all my junk because the system requires an expansion tank, to allow it to boil and for the system to be topped off.  Another of Brendan's scrapyard finds this - an old kettle - looks more decorative than a plastic tank anyway.

My office is currently a few piles of files, shoe boxes and other assorted oddments scattered across the floor, in anticipation of the plumbing being finished some time this week, hopefully Thursday which is another national holiday.

Might be worth mentioning that our internal partition wall is so thin that when Brendan was drilling the holes for the shelf brackets he managed to drill right through into the bedroom, so another bit of fixing up required there too.

The bathroom fire is now just an ornament, bereft of its flue pipe, and has revealed the garish fact that the floor below it did not get waxed and treated when I did the rest of the floors in July, but the up side is, I can now reclaim the large piece of marble it used to stand on as its hearth stone, back to its rightful place in the kitchen as my dough board for bread making.

Feeling sooooooo satisfied

It is a wonderful feeling to finish a crafty project in a couple of hours.

Today I crocheted a rug from the recycled t-shirt strips I cut a while or so ago, and used my handmade wooden crochet hook to make it with.

And now it adornes the floor in the bathroom.

This was so easy to make, but I really fell in love with using recycled cotton t-shirts and my huge hook because it is just so so so so fast!

Start with a chain of 25, on the basis that my strips of fabric were a couple of centimetres wide on average and my hook is about 22 mm size, this gives a width of approx 60 cm.

The body is then crocheted in half double crochet, a new stitch for me but really easy, it gives a denser, knobblier finish to the rug.

I have no idea how many rows I crocheted because I just kept going until I had used up all my cotton strips.

At the end of each row, chain 2 to create the first stitch, turn the work, then hdc in each stitch to the end.

How to : HDC = half double crochet

yarn over the hook as you would for a double crochet

push the hook through the top two yarns of the hole

hook the yarn and pull through all three loops on the crochet hook - don't yarn over again

so, yarn over the hook, push through the top two yarns of the hole, don't yarn over again, pull through all three loops on your hook to create one half double crochet stitch

When it was time to join the strips, I just knotted them together and wove the tails back through the stitches.

May have to reward myself with a glass of wine and slice of cake now.

Do you want a Jamie 30 minute version?

3 Bean Stew

But before that, does anyone else watch Jamie Oliver?  

He is currently on TV doing a series of 30 minute meals, that normally include a main, a salad or side dish and a pudding.  If I could just mute the voice over I think I would quite enjoy this series, but it is on at that sitting down in the evening with a glass of wine time, and has no other competition so inevitably it prattles on in the background.  

I have yet to be inspired by any of the food on offer apart from the salmon the other night - but as I cannot convince anyone else to eat salmon that is one recipe that will have to fall by the wayside.

But the point of this little entry was not to run down Jamie Oliver and his pre-pubescent presenting style, but to wonder where on earth his prop buyer has got to.

For me, one of the greatest pleasures in cookery programmes is looking at all the little bits and pieces of crockery, cutlery and gadgets, and coveting them.  

The derisory 'Delicious Miss Dahl' was one such programme, who cared what she said or what she cooked (with the cooked in inverted finger commas) when she had so many pretty things surrounding her.  Nigella is a disappointment in this sense, but her cooking does make up for it, won't even mention Heston or Nigel Slater, Delia occasionally had a bit of eye candy, but the king of pretty props used to be Jamie.  

And now - nothing.  

I have watched several of the new shows and have not felt the urge to cruise ebay for anything afterwards.  Bring back the props buyer!

Weeeeell - back on track now.

This 3 bean stew thingy is one of my favourite tapas nibbles, but it also makes a fantastic side dish - this evening it will be accompanying some roasted duck legs.

The long version involves dried beans, for the Jamie style 30 minute version use tinned or frozen beans.

2 large yellow onions

4 rashers of streaky bacon chopped into chunks or some lardons

1 litre of chicken stock

1 cupful each of any beans of your choice - chickpeans, flagelot, haricot, butter, kidney, borlotti etc

salt, pepper

fresh or dried thyme

Use a large oven proof pot with a lid.

Fry 2 large onions that have been roughly chopped in a tablespoon of olive oil with some black pepper.  This is not enough oil to thoroughly cook the onions you just want to give them a bit of colour.

When the pan looks too dry, add a splash of water and put a lid on to sweat the onions until they are soft.

In another frying pan, fry off the bacon, then add the bacon and any liquid from the pan into the onions. 

Add the beans, season, bring to the boil then leave on a high simmer for 20 minutes, add some fresh thyme, stir thoroughly and serve.

If using dried beans, soak overnight, then as above, but when you add the beans to the stock put the pan in the oven for about 3 or 4 hours to cook slowly and absorb the stock.

I normally use a mixture of dried and frozen beans.  A cup of chick peas, to a cup of frozen borlotti (I usually have some that have not dried enough naturally for storage so I just throw them in the freezer), and a cup of haricot beans.  When using frozen beans - do not let them defrost first - they go all mushy and lose a lot of their texture in the cooking if you do.

I think I need a prop buyer too.  

This Le Creuset enamel pan came from a car boot sale here in France about 3 years ago, and has been very badly treated by me since then.  I only paid a couple of euros for it, which is a good job really because once it hit the stone floor a couple of times most of the orange enamel fell off, and it has a couple of dents now too.  It is just the right size for 3 people though, and is so handy from hob to oven on the Rayburn but equally on the gas stove that I cannot bring myself to replace it, not until I spot another one at a bargain price anyway.

As I sit at my kitchen table writing this, with my stew bubbling away behind me, I realise that quite a few of my kitchen buys have been inspired by the pretty props on TV cookery shows, so in order to save pennies  I need to either stop watching the shows or start being grateful that the quality of prop buyer has dropped dramatically.

Thursday's before and after make over

With another grey day on Thursday, I scuttled off to my studio as soon as I got back from work for a quick makeover.

Not me more's the pity but some seat cushions from the kitchen chairs.

These were given to me about a year ago, a nice shade of cream, unfortunately the cats took to them and after several months of feline love and affection they are looking a bit worse for wear.

In amongst my fabric stash I had a pair of green curtains and some left over patchwork squares, and a couple of hours later the cushions look like this.

And in about another twelve months time I am sure I shall be doing the same again I'm sure.

What to do with the skirt offcuts - oh no that dreaded C word

Yep - Christmas.  That's the one.

Not sure you are all thinking of Christmas yet but in our house it is banned from being mentioned before the first of November, but now of course it is time to start considering such important things like the decoration theme for the tree, which of our poultry is going to have the honour of gracing the table, and of course who I can cross off my homemade card list this year.

So to get me in the mood, we decided (Thea and I that is - Brendan has no choice in the matter), that the theme this year for the tree is au naturel, and for the table, red reindeers.

From the skirt that I butchered the other day to make a bag, I had some of the lovely material left over, really pretty beige brown floral and peacock design and so I set to making some birds for the tree.

This is a really simple stencil, cut out facing left and right on the pattern material and some plain backing material, then some wings also cut from the pattern material.

Pin the wing in place on the pattern side and then just running stitch in a bright contrasting colour cotton all the way around, adding a couple of bars to look like feathers.

 A quick cross for an eye and the bird decoration is done.

Pin the right side of the pattern material to the right side of the backing material and machine sew all the way around except for about an inch left open on the bottom.

Turn the birds the right way by stuffing them through the hole with your finger, and pull out to the hem all the way round to shape the tail, head and beak.

Then stuff the bird through the small hole you left open, once filled, just close the hole off with a few blanket stitches.  For that little bit extra I also added a couple of heads of dried lavender into the stuffing so that they will smell lovely on the tree too.  To keep them smelling fresh from now to December, just seal them once they are made into a ziploc bag or a sealed plastic container.




I then added a couple of chicken feathers, through the stitches on the wings to finish my Christmas decoration birdies off.  I am sure that the kittens are really going to appreciate the effort I put into these.

Held hostage by my teen

The last day of the school holidays and I expected Thea to spend the day glued to the TV or the Playstation.

(sniggers evily) - that is of course after I made her help me this morning. We had a pantry clean up and brought in all the jars of jam and chutney from the barn and stacked them in the new spaces we created inside, cleaned all the shelves down and reordered everything, then scrubbed the floor clean around the gas cooker.

After all that when she sloped off to her room I did not expect to see her again until this evening when she normally starts demanding pizza or chips or some such teen food.

So you could have knocked me over with a feather when she turned up at the door of the studio and asked whether I would stop sewing and spend some time with her watching a film or something.

In the end she set up the laptop in the studio - well I did have the fire lit and she discovered my biscuit stash - and we had a lovely afternoon watching box set DVDs, giggling, eating junk food and I still managed to get quite a bit of my cross stitch done - did you guess what it is yet? - you can just make it out in the photo.

You also just see the bag I had started to make when she trotted up, but the machine was too noisy to run over the DVD so I have that to look forward to tomorrow!

I love grey wet Mondays...

... but only when they are a Bank Holiday - like today in France.

Hi Ho Hi Ho - its off to my studio I go!

I have had a lovely day shut away from the grey cold miserable Monday in the studio with my little fire lit, my little kettle bubbling away and a sneaky stash of biscuits.

Cut up one of the 50p bargains that I bought in the UK at the car boot sales to make a bag for sale on Etsy and I have great plans for the off cuts too.

I hope it is just as horrid tomorrow because then I won't feel as guilty spending the day holed up in the studio again.

Even better, Ferguson has finally got over his fears and spent the day lounging around on the comfy chair in the studio with me.