Christmas 2013

This has been one of the nicest Christmases I can remember in a long time.  No stress.  No bickering.  No falling out.  Just lots of silliness and rubbing along together brilliantly.  My Christmas started two weeks ago when I decorated the tree with the help of my little friend.

I was thrilled with the way Andy's present had turned out - I had lots of random items - wine, port, crackers, cheese, chocolates, etc, and really didn't want to wrap each thing separately - so had a brainwave of finding a suitable container for it all - I found a fab wine merchant on the internet and bought a wine crate for everything.  It looks brilliant.   And I was so pleased with the way that Andy's cardi turned out - he did say that it would take him longer to get ready to go out now because of all the buttons to do up - eleven!

This year, we managed to actually have Christmas Day on 25 December - this doesn't always happen due to weird shifts at work and other family visits.  We had a planning meeting a few weeks ago to share the jobs out - Mum and Dad hosted us and cooked the meat.  Amanda and Shannon did spuds and parsnips.  Pam did the rest of the veg.  And I did tunis cake, Christmas muffins, fudge and crackers and dips.  Mine was definitely the easiest option as I could do everything in advance!

The deal in our family - and we've done this forever so know no different - is that no-one gets any presents until after dinner when everything is washed up and put away.   Andy likens it to a concentration camp, but, if you don't know any different, it's fine.   We had so many presents again this year - in fact, we even lost a crate's worth of presents and didn't even notice until halfway through proceedings!

A really lovely day - tonnes of lovely presents, lovely food, good company.  What more could anyone ask for?

On Boxing Day, there were only six of us as Rat and Pam spent the day with Pam's family but it was pretty much more of the same - food, laughing, chatting - the only thing missing was the presents, but we'd already had enough of those!

Another fab day.  But Dad's parting shot as we left was pleading with us not to visit for at least a week!

Foraging

The internet is a wonderful thing.  You can hear a snippet of something from friends, colleagues, the TV or radio, and you can immediately look it up and either store it away for future use, act on it immediately or disregard it completely.   And this is how I started on my foraging obsession.  It was either a TV chef or, more likely, Countryfile, that revealed what could be foraged and used in cooking.   Once you have that information, it's then really easy to look up recipes on line also, no need to head to the library or to the book shop.  It's all good.  

The other great thing about the internet is also being able to identify the plants or leaves that you're after - I would be much less confident looking for goodies if I haven't printed off a large picture of the item beforehand to pop into my pocket and refer to.   The other essential item needed for foraging is ..... poo bags!   I'm sure the residents of Norfolk are a little concerned about Finn's digestive system when they see us striding along, me with his lead in one hand and half a dozen poo bags in the other - full of goodies!  

So far this year, I've got quite a haul of goodies, although I've been a bit disappointed in others.  Blackberries for example.  We've had such a wonderful summer - lots of sun but very little rain, so, although the blackberries were colouring up nicely, they weren't getting any hydration to fatten them up.  Luckily though, I picked tonnes last year and still had some in my freezer for just such a famine.  I did, however, get way more sloes than I usually do, so I now have some of those in credit for next year's sloe gin.

Another fruit I've learned about this year is rowanberries.  I had no idea they were edible.  And this year we've had an enormous glut of them.   Apparently it's been a very good year for nuts and berries, according to the Met office and foragers.  Something to do with the very long winter and then the fab summer we've had.  I don't really understand the physics of it, I'm just glad I can make use of it!   So, I foraged a few pounds of rowanberries from the trees outside the Hewitt School in Norwich, and I foraged the cooking apples I needed from my freezer!  It's always good to have fruit in reserve - while searching through the freezer, I also found lots of rhubarb too, so I've still got rhubarb chutney on my list of things to make.  That will be for the new year I think.  Anyway, back to the rowanberries and apples - I made a few jars of jelly.  Rowanberry jelly is apparently very good with venison or lamb, or cold meats.  I'm hoping it will be a fruity alternative to cranberry jelly on Christmas and Boxing Day.  

Because of the very good summer we had, Mum and I managed to grow tonnes of tomatoes.  Towards the end of September, when it was evident that it really wasn't sunny enough to ripen up the remaining tomatoes on the vines, Mum gave me a load of her green tomatoes to make tomato chutney.  And I had a few to throw into the mix too, but I was just a few short to make up the weights, so I must admit I did resort to buying a few red ones to make up the numbers.  

I always feel very virtuous when I've been making up batches of jams, jellies or chutneys and the house smells wonderful - especially with the cloves I threw into the chutney.  The vinegar smell does tend to hang around a bit though - so I always try and make chutney on a day when I can throw open all the doors and windows to get some fresh air in.   Really rewarding and potential Christmas presents too - what's not to love?!

Ninnies - December 2013

I haven't managed to type up blog posts for most of the Knitters with Attitude meetings this year because, apart from making very little sense, the group members' collective sense of humour is particularly filthy and would cause offence to the most liberal minded of readers.   And in fact, this post will have to be heavily edited to pass censorship laws! 

This meeting was held at Mo's and we had a fab time as usual - lovely food, wine, sherry, laughter, friends - and the added bonus of Christmas presents!  Michele proposed a motion a few meetings back that we have a Secret Santa for the group, where we all had to make something.  Imagine!  We had to make and, more importantly, FINISH something!  

So, we had eight very different projects and we should all be congratulated on our inventiveness, I think.   We had a wool covered bottle vase; a scarf and lacy gloves; a beautiful tissue box cover; a gorgeous little tea light holder; a fabulously intricate crochet table centre; crochet slippers; knitted slipper socks and a cock in a pot!   There's always SOMEONE who has to lower the tone!   Actually, this turned out to be the star turn and I think we've all put in our orders for one in the new year.

We had the usual madness and mayhem after food - I'm not even sure that we have any e-numbers with our food, we just always seem to have a massive sugar rush?   Some of us ended up in the loft, some of us went and camped out in Mo's laundrette and, at one point, ALL of us were contemplating having a barn dance in Mo's enormous bathroom!  

And, as for the conversation ..... well, topics included genital warts; beef stew; desk cocks; knitted phalluses that fit inside each other like Russian dolls; Priscilla Queen of the Desert; and that Elle will never look like a dancer, or, indeed, a man!   See, I told you it made no sense!

Our next meeting should fall on New Year's Day, so I suggested we skip a January meeting.   After much sulking and flouncing, we are meeting a week later instead, on 8 January.  That's me told!  

Craft fairs

We haven't done any craft fairs for a couple of years now - I can't even remember why not, because actually I've really enjoyed the three we have done this year!  

The first that we did was back in November in Wymondham and we used it almost as a dress rehearsal for the two upcoming fairs in Norwich.  And we did surprisingly well!   We had some lovely supporters turn up too - Carol, Rachel and Shirley and some of Amanda's work colleagues also.   The fair itself wasn't very well organised as the stalls were all spread out too much and there wasn't much "soul".   However, it was a great practice run and we learnt quite a lot.

The second fair - the Norwich Makers' Emporium - was lovely - a pretty little church hall where we were all more squished in and so we could chat with the other stall holders and I've now got HUNDREDS of ideas of new things I want to do!   We spent most of our takings at the cake stall opposite which wasn't quite the plan either!  

By the time of the last fair - the Norwich Makers' Market - we were dab hands at organising and dressing our stall and it looked fab.   Even if I do say so myself!   We didn't speak so much to the other stall holders - despite being squished in a lot with them! - because we were too busy selling.  Goodness me, we did well!   Again, we had some lovely supporters come and see us - Elle, Jonathan and another couple of Amanda's colleagues.   And it was a really lovely atmosphere - lots of Christmas music and the stalls were definitely more festive at this fair. 

I really hope that Amanda and Shannon want to do some more fairs next year - I certainly don't want to leave it a couple of years to the next one!