New Year's Resolution

 Hello and I hope you all had a lovely Christmas. I took some time out of blog land to relax and spend some much needed time with my family. It has been lovely. Almost time to come back to the real world now. 

The past few days I have been thinking, reviewing my status in the world I guess. Taking a look at my aims in life and re-assesing them as most people do at the end of the year. I have decided to go 100% rubbish free by the end of the year to help my sustainability. 

This means I will only purchase things that come in recycliable, reusable or compostable containers. And try and buy in a bulk where possible. Not only does buying in bulk save money, it also has less pacakging. 

Inspired by this blog here No Trash Project, Colleen lives in NYC and has given me some excellent ideas, I thought were impossible in a city, so I must try these out.

I have started this a bit early as I was running out of castille soap. I bought the smaller bottle at the end of April last year and only finished using it yesterday. I paid £5 for it and got almost a year's use out of it, so not bad value for money. But to save even more money I bought the next size up which was £8 something so who knows how long it is gonig to last me.

The next thing I was running short of was washing powder. I have been using Daz washing powder since I moved out from my parents' house nearly 6 years ago now. I must give it that most UK washing powders still come in a carboard box which is recyclable/compostable but all the health warnings on the side give me the heebie jeebies. All the grease lifters and optical brightners and heavy synthetic perfumes etc, are they really needed? I looked around online and came across BioD, it is 100% natural with no perfume and it comes in a paper bag which uses less material than a box so it should break down easier and faster on the compost heap. I bought a small 1KG bag to see how it fairs but you can purchase much, much bigger bags.

The next thing is packaged snacks, sometimes I like to make myself something to take to work for lunch, sometimes this isn't possible and I need something to grab and stuff in my bag quickly before I leave. I found these from InSpiral, quite expensive at £1.45 a pack, but they look tasty (haven't gotten round to trying them yet) and the package is compostable which is excellent. Snacks is something I need to work on, but I think it is more a self-discipline issue, as I make snacks for a week, but then end up eating them the day I make them!

 

The next thing I thought about was increasing the amount I compost, most councils in England provide you with a food collection bin which you either empty into your garden waste bin or a sepeate larger bin you keep outside. Which you can put most food waste in and they collect it, compost it down and sell it back to you as compost. 

I wanted to cut out the middle man, and was looking at ways to compost the things you can't easily do on your heap, i.e. dairy products, cooked food and bones. 

The simplist way seems to be a Bokashi bin, where "bokashi" is a japanese term for fermented. Basically you put all your food waste into the special bin, spinkle some bran which contains a bacteria in it and leave it to break down for a few weeks. Most websites suggest you need two, one to fill, one to ferment. I am thinking I might need more, so this is a trial run to see how long it takes me to fill and then I can work out how many bokashi bins I need.

You get two products from the bokashi bin, liquid which you syphon off with a special tap which you can use as liquid plant feed and the fermented waste which you need to dig into the compost heap to finish breaking it down before you can use it. 

 The basic kit gives you one bin and two months' supply of bran. but the actual bin is a behemoth. In the picture you can see it next to a standard issue council food waste bin. It's easily twice the size so not practical for everyone.

 

 

 

The Bee Keeper's Quilt

I have been working on the Bee Keeper's Quilt project of a while now. It's the kind of project that has lots of little components that are joined together, known has "hexipuffs", super cute and very easy to master. The pattern is available here from the wonderful Tiny Owl Knits. Her videos are wonderful to watch. Almost like a kindred spirit to me, I love her whinsy patterns too. She is a little crazy and all kinds of cute. And her cat, so so so cute!

So here is my version so far. It's worked in DK on 3.5mm DPNs in the round. It needs to be worked quite tight, so the stuffing doesn't come poke out. Guage doesn't really matter either. The methods I used to make them is a long tail cast on, KFB as an increase, K2tog as a decrease and I use three needle bind off to finish. But the pattern describes many, many methods of making them yourself. I like to leave long tails on the work too, that way if you line them up correctly you can use them to join the hexipuffs together.


I don't really have any plans for colour schemes, just using up all my left over scraps and trying to use up all the icky colours that have been given to me. Here is a bunch of herxipuffs I have knitted up this week.

 

Here are all the other hexipuffs joined together. Nice and "clashy clashy" as my Mum would say. Nice hodgepodge (I love that word) of random colours.

 

Quiet time

The past couple of days, since Friday I suppose I have spent with my boyfriend. We watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 which I really enjoyed, went out for dinner twice, it has been lovely. We have had some pretty nasty weather too.

Just last night we had a very wild storm, thunder, lightning, winds, rain, the works.

Our veg man also delivered the first pumpkin of the season. Now I just need to work out what to do with it. Any ideas or favourite recipes?

I have also been churning out mini hats for the Big Knit.

Hopefully the weather is supposed to calm down this afternoon so I am hoping to go and pop them in the post.

The last photo is my first fair isle knit. I always thought colour work looked scary, but I have been watching a programme on the BBC iPlayer about the Scottish Islands. I love the history and the culture of them and would one day like to visit at least one of them for myself. 

In the one about Shetland and the surrounding islands, they had a brief section on Fair Isle and it's knitting heritage. There was a clip about it being passed down the generations and made me smile when it showed the grandmother knitting a jumper at a million miles an hour and the grand daughter with the extreme concentration of every stitch. 

They were also discussing they can knit a jumper in about ten hours which blew me away. So far it has taken me two weeks to knit a pair of socks. So I looked into the methods of fair isle knitting and discovered a few tricks along the way to help me knit faster. 

New arrivals

I wanted this post to introduce our new feathery family members and be filled with lots of lovely pictures taken in lovely bright sunlight. But unfortunately, being Britain, the weather is never as we expected. Currently I am having to batten down the hatches as it feels like a storm is blowing in.

So for the time being, let me introduce Doris, Mabel and Unnamed Chicken. 

Unnamed Chicken will eventually have a name! Still trying to work one out for her.

They were delivered on Monday, where the lovely delivery driver sat up the coop for me, clipped the girls wings and gave me some basic care instructions. 

They are settling in nicely. No eggs yet. But the rabbits are still very confused by them.

When I first let the chickens out into the fenced area they were a bit flappy and tried to fly which completed freaked the rabbits out!

Garden update 4/10/13

I haven't posted a garden update in a while, mainly because there hasn't been too many interesting goings on. How is everyone's garden doing? Definitely the air has turned autumn-y and everythong seems to be winding down for the impeeding cold of winter. The leaves have turned their rich-red-orangy colours too.

My brassicas got decimated by caterpillars (apparently it has been a great year for them and their numbers have been dramatically higher this year), so I have replaced them and covered the with milk bottles.

I saved all the bottoms I cut off too, these are to use as drip trays.

I have also transplanted about 100 strawberry seedlings which are all over the conservatory. Going to be a bumper crop next year. My white strawberry plant is still flowering and still producing fruit!

I have also planted some peas in the other raised bed for over wintering and they gave just started to sprout too.

Sour dough bread

Well yesterday marked the one week birthday of my new sour-dough-y pet. I must say he is coming along nicely.

I have almost remembered to feed it daily and has taken on all the usual characteristics of a sour dough starter. Let's have a peek inside.

Nice and frothy looking with a nice beer like smell.

I also have started using it to flavour the dough of my bread. Not quite ready to use it without my commercial yeast yet. But soon.

This loaf tasted fantastic. Never again will I buy bread.

Over the next few days I will continue to grow it and hopefully it will replace the commercial yeast in my loaf.

Gratitude Sunday

Joining Taryn in this heartfelt tradition. A time to slow down, to reflect and be grateful.

Last week I didn't have the time to post a gratitude Sunday post. But I do this week, that is the first thing I am grateful for, some time to slow down and enjoy life rather than worrying about superficial things.

I am also grateful to. My grandad for giving me load of advice about getting rid of those pesky caterpillars that have almost decimated my cabbages :(.

I am all grateful for the abundance of fruit this year. Last year it was a poor because we had such a rubbish summer. This year it has been pretty decent so I guess that's another thing I am grateful for. 

And after living in this city for nearly two years I finally got myself down to the handmade and vintage fayre that happens about three times a year. I must saw it was pretty awesome, I didn't buy anything but I had my eye on a few bits which I will see if they are still there today.

Much love to my readers, I am also grateful for you too. 

 <3

Sour dough starter

On Monday I started my sour dough starter so I don't have to rely on shop-bought yeast (on more steps towards sustainability). I followed the instructions on the back of the bread flour packet. It wanted 70g of flour and 70ml of water, which works out at about three heaped table spoons of flour and a bout an inch of water in the kilner jar. You need to store it somewhere warm, I keep mine in the airing cupboard in amongst the towels, and feed it 70g of flour and top up the water 70ml a day and give it a good stir. I forgot to do mine yesterday, I hope it is ok!

You need to do this for about a week, and then you can store it in the fridge and use 150g instead of yeast. After that you feed it occasionally when the bubbles stop forming. 

Foraging

I love stuff for free, I mean who doesn't?! I especially love free food and that's why I love foraging so much. As a child I used to go blackberrying and scrimping on my own and with the grandparents. On my old walk back from college I often bought home apples and blackberries which meant only one thing for desert... Crumble. One of my favourites. Yum.

If you need any more inspiration for foraging I suggest watching this video: http://www.eatweeds.co.uk/soulseekers, The video gets across the pashion for wild food Robin
 has, I love Robin's blog, it had loads of great recipes for wild food and hints and tips about what
 to find at what type of year.

There's a local park near me which is fab for foraging so I set out with my equipment...

A good selection of plastic containers, set out and two hours later came back with this:

Blackberries in the top container, rosehips under that and raspberries at the front. I also found sloes, which

 are not ready yet and lots of new stinging nettle growth, I didn't bring any gloves with me so I couldn't pick them :(

 I made stinging nettle soup once and it was very tasty. I also read on Robin's blog nettles make very good pesto so I shall try that one day.

What is your favourite forage and the recipes which go with it?

Spinning/dyeing update.

I spun this wool a while ago, but only have just gotten round to dyeing it. I have changed my method from using the microwave to using the oven, it seems to make less smell which my boyfriend was very pleased about.The kicthen tends to smell like what I decribe as pickled sheep.

I love love love the colour. It reminds me of the sweets called fruit salads.

Planting mad.

Today, I received 64 brassica plants. 16 each of kale, cabbage, white sprouting broccoli and spring greens. Planted them as soon as possible, in the midday sun. Phew, I was sweating buckets by the time I had finished. Little bit squashed in my raised beds now, I shall probably pick some for baby leaves to thin them out and see how we go.

Also harvested some cayenne chillies, I will make some fermented hot sauce - like Tabasco. I am also planning on drying some out and adding them to some olive oil for dipping bread. 

These chillies are off of the bigger of the two plans. My other one isn't doing too well, does anyone know the cause of the chillies doing this?

Back onto the hot sauce. Easiest method I found was to toss the peppers into a clean jar, add some garlic cloves, salt and water.

 

And saving some seeds of course. :)