Needing a few more hours in the day

At the moment, life seems filled with "things to do" - and all these "things" seem to have my name on them.  I am sleeping erratically as if I wake in the night, these mental lists keep re-writing themselves and gibbering in my ear until I drag myself out of bed, feeling wrung-out but with sleep evading me as the lists perform figures of eight in my head.

I will feel better when I have finally got all the Christmas cards and parcels posted.  I think.  I hate having jobs waiting in the wings too, and there is a beautiful little Arts and Crafts ladderback chair sat in the hall, awaiting completion of re-rushing the seat.  Whilst the Gothic table was behind it, it was easily overlooked, but now I have no hiding place and hope to get on with it this morning.

As the back is narrower than the front and side struts, I started putting the seagrass corners in a month or so ago, to balance the front and the back before replacing the seat in seagrass.    Here it is in its completely stripped stage.  I'll show you an "after" photo when it is done.



Here's another project, a little 1930s child's deck chair.  I have the material.  I have taken the rotten canvas off.  It's now lurking in the Junk Room  . . .  It's a summer type thing to sell though, so no great rush with this (that's procrastination talking again I think!)

When we were in town yesterday, I bumped into Maria (Dotty's Daughter) and her husband.  It was lovely to see her and be able to say a proper thankyou for the lovely chart booklets she sent me.

Sorry for such a boring post, but no recent outside photos due to the persistance of the rain (though nothing like they have suffered in Cumbria and up North, poor souls.  No cake baking either, though I hope to get some stuff done for the Christmas freezer this week.

Anyway, I am away back to my bed for half an hour as my brain is on a go slow from lack of sleep.

Oh, I CAN do a photo of part of our stand at a recent Militaria Fair.   Don't get too excited though!

A show and tell moment

A few weeks ago my good friend Pam gave me a bag of Crab Apples.  Somehow they had something put on top of them and I suddenly discovered them this week and thought oops, I'd best be doing something pronto.  Half a dozen had "gone over" so to speak, but I still had a pound of fruit.  I just washed them off, removed stalks, cut into quarters and stewed up with about a pint of water, then put in the jelly bag.

It didn't make a great deal of juice, so I sat myself down on the sofa with a box of saved cooking apples from our trees, a knife and a bowl of cold water and cut up a couple of pounds more, stewed them up and added them to the jelly bag.  Both lots of apples gave me a pint of juice, which I combined with a pound of sugar next morning and boiled up briefly.  The result is in the top photo and I was delighted with the clarity.  Two of these are show quality I think - the small one has a little bit of cloudiness right at the top where I encouraged it through my straining funnel - it was setting as I was pouring it.  Anyway, more in the way of Christmas provender is made.

I also unearthed the latest batch of cider vinegar from the depths of the airing cupboard.  It had a good mould on top, and smells the biz, but is still pretty cloudy now it's been strained, so I will have to do what I used to do with the wine and rack it next week.  It's mainly for cleaning, but it would be nice to have some as good as the first batch I made, which was a stunning colour and NOT cloudy.

We went into town first thing to take back the BT Call Guardian phone which didn't work, and got a refund.  We have bought a cheap replacement for the moment, but will do some research into a more reliable model for the future.  It was a frustrating few days though.

Now I am thinking ahead to Christmas and planning some baking.

I have Christmas magazines which I have saved down the years too, so I shall be spoilt for choice.

I like to make some bakes which are different from my normal year-round ones, and of course, some of  these are destined as gifts.

The wind is howling about the place today (as it was in the night), but we have lit the log burner and are about to be snug by the fire, watching the racing this afternoon.  I will carry on with my Mistletoe x-stitch design and perhaps some of the mini-hexi runner.

Don't put off til tomorrow . . .

what you can do today.  Oh gosh, that really is the story of my life!  Every New Year I tell myself I will be a reformed character, but life seems to get in the way.  Well, that's my excuse anyway, as is, I'm an Aries, what else do you expect?!  I could get a PhD in procrastination.  I'm not lazy, just disorganised and busy . . .



Yesterday was a good catch-up day.   I  had a small bag of crab apples I had been given which had got "lost" in the kitchen. I found them last week and thought, I really MUST cook them up. Yesterday was the day.  They cook up into a tart pink jelly, but their colour was greatly helped by my jelly bag having been used for Elderberries last time, and though it has been washed and well-scalded since, the colour remains.

Later on, as there wasn't much juice there, I sat and watched tv and peeled and chopped some cooking apples to make some extra juice to go with this, and left it to drip overnight, so I will boil it up with sugar this morning.

We finally got around to another job which needed doing.  This particular projects has been waiting quite some for me to start work on it.  It was bought in better condition than this!  (It's a chess box, with expensive glass chess pieces).  It had been covered in a grey sticky-backed covering, but this had been torn and worn around the bottom, so that all had to come off so we could recover it.

These were non-negotiable.  Nailed into place over the original covering, we had to meticulously cut the new black Fablon round them.

Slowly getting there.  The bottom had a hole in one corner (puppy having fun judging by the look of the splintered wood and teethmarks!)  So we bought a sheet of black mounting board and restored that and then Fabloned over the top of it.

The finished box.  Not perfect by any means but smartened up no end.  This has been waiting since, ahem, August for me to "get around to it" . . .

Yesterday I also programmed our new telephone - a BT8500 Call Guardian - we had to replace the one we had as the battery wasn't holding.  I thought I'd got it right, but not according to my eldest daughter, whose phone numbers were carefully put in (along with all those who we are happy to speak to) and - I thought - allowed (as it's one of these call blocking phones to get rid of cold callers).  Unfortunately it seems to be getting rid of EVERYONE!  Back to the drawing board . . .

Update: this is going back to Tesco's as the blardy thing blocks ALL CALLS and doesn't even ring! We can only hear an incoming call on the ancient BT phone still plugged in up in my office.  Friends and family complain they can't get through (by email!!!)  So that's it, I want my £47 back.  About to plug the old one in again.  I know they are useless because I looked up bt's advice page and there are pages and pages and pages of complaints about everyone having the same problem and about it not being fit for purpose.  So be warned, and don't get one!  Guaranteed you will get no nuisance calls - in fact, you will get NO CALLS AT ALL!!!

I also got around to reading all the instructions on my Instant Pot, and I used it on the Slow Cooker function to make a chicken curry for tea.  It worked on that setting, so I will have to give it a whirl on the pressure cooker bit and see if it really is as speedy as it says it is.  Yoghurt making is also planned.  Do I HAVE to use those EasyYo sachets or would it work just as well putting a dollop of Bio yoghurt in some milk?

Oh, and can I pick some brains please?  I hate Date Syrup in the cupboard.  When I want to substitute it for sugar, does anyone have ideas of amounts?

It's wild old weather out there. . .

Yesterday was spent at a Militaria Fair across the Severn.  We had seen the forecast for the afternoon and NO WAY were we going to try and drive home over the bridge and via the M4, as the only times our car has let us down have been in torrential rain on the M4, after dark the first time too in very heavy traffic. Each time the wiper blades ceased working which is what you do NOT want to happen in such weather on a motorway.  We found out it was a common problem with Doblo's but weren't prepared to pay £100 to the main dealership for an entire new wiper unit when only a bush was needed (or was it a brush?) Anyway, we found a wotsit on Fleabay after the kind Green Flag chappy told us about it, having gotten us on our way that 2nd time.  The wotsit works, but we don't like to challenge it too far. Instead, we drove back via Gloucester, the Forest of Dean, Monmouth and the A40 through Abergavenny and Brecon (a route we know well).  Well, we know it when there isn't rain of such Biblical proportions you can't even see the road, and just past Huntley we had to pull off the road onto a garage forecourt and wait out the storm, which was on a par with a monsoon.  It seemed to take us forever to get home (2 1/4 hours to get there on motorway, 3 1/2 hours via the scenic route).  I have never been so glad to see our front gate.  No, tell a lie, I have been even more glad to see it - that was when I drove Eldest Daughter home from checking out Cambridge as she was offered a University place there.  We didn't get back to the car until 6.30 p.m. and started driving.  I think we finally got home well past midnight, and driving down  the everlasting Z-bends of that windy river valley between Sennybridge and Llandovery was absolute torture when you are as tired as it's possible to be.

Anyway, as I write this, I can hear the wind getting up outside, and I know it is raining, as it's been doing that all day.  Our river is on the rise now, needless to say.

Today we had to go into town to restock the Unit, go to the bank, get a couple of bits of Christmas shopping done, and try and get a replacement phone for our ageing one in the hall, which no longer holds its charge, so as you are wandering round talking and stirring things, it will go beep beep beep in warning and then go dead on you.

When I found out that I could get one which you could programme to stop unwanted cold calling (the bane of our lives), there was no stopping me.  We shopped around and found one still handsomely Black Fridayed in Tesco's, although now of course it is Monday, so they were a bit over-enthusiastic with stock levels.  Instead of paying £85 or so for a double one, we paid £47.  I think I could have got it in Curry's for £48, but at least we got Club Card points . . . It is now charging and we will have to get our geriatric brains around programming it tomorrow (not sure mine is up for the challenge alone as I know what I am like with New Electrical Things without one of the girls here to sort us out.)

Anyway, I finally got around to one of last week's jobs, which was making Persimmon Curd. Herewith recipes and finished project, and just DON'T ask  me about what happened when I put it on for an extra minute, forgetting to check the power level (it was full rather than 60% so you can imagine the blardy mess in the microwave after that little oversight when it boiled over mightily. . .)

The finished result had better set as I really DON'T want to mess around with the microwave version again.

Anyway, my Instant Pot electric pressure cooker/slower cooker/multi-talented beast arrived today.  I have unpacked it, that's all.  After a busy weekend, the drive home from Hell yesterday and not enough sleep, I know when my brain is beaten to a pulp so tomorrow is another day as far as the Instant Pot is concerned.

The kindness of friends

Look what arrived in my bread bin (aka mail box) on Friday (above and below).  These were magazines that my new blogging friend Maria (at Dotty's Daughter blogspot) had promised me, bless her.  Many many years ago, when my bigs were smalls, I asked for a year's subscription to the American magazine Just Cross Stitch as a Christmas present.  I still have all the magazines and especially loved the Christmas issue with all the beautiful tree hangings to make.  Well, that is what the magazine above is, and to keep it company Maria included the lovely Homespun Alphabets and Borders (just up my street) and a little Christmas Bear to stitch.  Thank you SO MUCH Maria, it was like Christmas arriving all over again and I was ridiculously excited!  I felt like I did in the quilt shop the other day when we walked in and got overwhelmed by all that was on offer!

I haven't done any x-stitch for over a year, but recently I have felt like sewing rather than crochet or knitting.  I narrowed the choice down and decided to make a start on this lovely little Mistletoe design.

Sorry, the close-up below is an odd colour because the flash doesn't work in close up, but you get the idea.

A better shot of that page and the designs on it, with the flash.  I am a very happy bunny : )

Friday was a very busy day and I seemed to spend most of it repainting and revamping a doll's house we have had a while but had to take out of the Unit because damp was lifting the wallpaper I had put on.  Then finally (we've had the leather for it since April!) we got around to refurbishing a beautiful Tonbridge ware writing slope we have had and enjoyed a while.  We got the skiver (leather) for it from Fleabay and on Friday we took the old velvet off, rubbed it down, and applied a new joining strip of fabric, before glueing on the new skiver.

There.  Smart as a carrot as my OH would say . . .  Let's hope it finds a new home soon.

Making Chutney for Christmas presents

First of all, my lovely sparkly lights bought with Christmas in mind.  I decided to have them on tonight (they run off batteries) to give a bit of atmosphere as I was making the first of the Christmas gift preserves, some River Cottage Hearty Ale Chutney  On the camera, before I downloaded this photo, it looked for all the world like I had captured a spooky ghost behind the lights, but of course it is just glare from them - although in a subsequent photo that didn't show at all . . .

This is the recipe from the River Cottage Preserves book (Pam Corbin's lovely recipes).  I hope you can read it clearly, if not shout out and I will type it up.  It was actually quite a clever recipe as it used 150g of tomato puree, which is of course a thickener and really helped to thicken this up whilst it was being cooked, besides adding flavour and colour to the mixture.  I used apples from the garden, my own home grown garlic, and the rest of the swede is now chopped, blanched and in the freezer for Christmas as G likes it - you know, the really fussy daughter . . . .

Basic ingredients all in there, chopped up and sprinkled.  Then came the vinegar.

Then a few good stirs to thoroughly combine the ingredients and a slow start so you can dissolve the sugar properly.

Simmering nicely,

Nearly finished - a little faster temperature at the end to evaporate the last of the beer (I used a bottle of Newcastle Brown which had come from my friend Annie's - she was teetotal).

Here's the end result.  A lovely reddy-brown colour from the tomato puree.  Where possible I always use new lids (got from Lakeland I think) but some jars are a non-standard size so just have to have their own lid - scalded and heated - back on.

Tomorrow it's jam making and some Persimmon Curd.  I'm looking forward to trying that.

A river walk again

The Lucozade-look has faded from the Larch trees across the valley now they have dropped many of their needles.

Above and below.  The river is running at speed again, but levels much lower than the recent spate.  I had a little walk along there on Sunday, camera in hand.  It was good to get out.

As it's winter, neighbour Gary has been enterprising and taken on some vanner mares to take the grass off Annie's overgrown fields.  I think they are some oblong to a local chap who has a lorry with "Bobby's Blagdons" on the side.  This cob has typical blagdon markings (white on legs and splashes on body) and there are some red blagdon mares here too.  These colourings are desirable in gypsy cobs.

These mares were hoping I was going to give them some treats!

This light-coloured colt-foal had a smudge of cream coat around his eyes so should end up that colour unless it was a trick of the light.  There are two white-grey mares in the field (one is mum) so perhaps he will just stay white-grey.

Above and below - it's amazing what a difference a bit of sunlight makes to the river valley.

Within living memory, this well outlet was the only source of water for a cottage above it.  It was derelict when we arrived in 1988, but I think was lived in until the 1970s.  It is hard to imagine no running water in a house.

Waiting for me when I got home was my Kitchen Robin,   His look told me he was hungry!