Long Days of Light

Some sunny yellow flowers from the croft field.

Have been enjoying the very long hours of daylight and particularly good weather this summer here on the west coast of Scotland. The picture below was taken at 10pm on the evening of 20th June when the sun was still setting and casting light on the hillside opposite. Although it's still light at that time, now in early August, it's not enough to see for reading and knitting.

The long awaited 'Fleece and Fibre Source Book' by Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarios has arrived by post. I'm still perusing this weighty publication and will share more about it soon, just to say it has been worth the wait.

There's at last been some produce from the garden - perpetual spinach has been prolific. It goes very well with bacon and mozzarella on homemade pizza.

The courgettes are also starting to develop, the cold start didn't help these at all.

Lots of left over ends of yarn about 9 metres in length in various colours were used up to make this circular crochet scarf. The rows are alternate single and double crochet.

And finally I'm going to spend some time learning to using a spinning wheel. This lovely piece of machinery has been very kindly loaned to me for as long as I want to use it. So when the evenings start drawing in this will help keep me occupied.

lemon drizzle cake

Found this easy straight forward recipe here while looking for mixtures for 2lb loaf tins.

Note added 30/ 5/ 2011. Here's a link to a conversion chart for grams into ounces, hope this helps converting from the metric into imperial. Click here.

Ingredients

225g softened butter
225g Castor sugar
4 eggs
225g self raising flour
finely grated zest 1 lemon

For the topping
85g Castor sugar
juice of 1 and a half lemons

Method

1. Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Beat together the butter and sugar until pale and creamy, then add the eggs, one at a time, slowly mixing through. Sift in the flour, then add the lemon zest and mix until well combined. Line a loaf tin (8 x 21cm) with greaseproof paper, then spoon in the mixture and level the top with a spoon.
2. Bake for 45-50 mins until a thin skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. While the cake is cooling in its tin, mix together the lemon juice and sugar to make the drizzle. Prick the warm cake all over with a skewer or fork, then pour over the drizzle - the juice will sink in and the sugar will form a lovely, crisp topping. Leave in the tin until completely cool, then remove and serve. Will keep in an airtight container for 3-4 days, or freeze for up to 1 month.

Hand Spun Cheviot Wool Blanket

After quite a long break from doing any spinning I pulled this project out of it's hibernation bag for another go at finishing. There's just over 1kg of cheviot wool roving for this blanket. It's intended to be uneven in texture and so far approximately 130 grams is producing about 124m of hand spun knitting yarn. I'm knitting as the yarn is produced and just about keeping ahead of myself using the drop spindle. There are 145 stitches on the size 7 mm circular needles (not using in the round) and the pattern is a combination of moss stitch with rows of knit stitch with extra wraps to make the open texture and hopefully gain extra length more quickly.