In the bleak mid-winter....

We're staying at my parent's home in Richmond, North Yorkshire for the festive period. I've seen snow here before but never over Christmas. We're sleeping in the summer house in the garden as my MIL is in our usual room. I've been using my flip flop & hand-knit tabi sock combo to pad from the summer house to the bungalow but woke up to fresh snowfall this morning which was too deep for bare foot/sock bravery. Luckily my Dad appeared in the garden, shovel in hand, to clear the way and my mum brought us coffee. I'm easily pleased.

Later in the day we went for a tramp round the field next to my parents estate (housing estate, not country manor). It was so pretty in a bleak mid-winter way.

Yesterday I wore normal, shop bought cotton socks for the first time in ages. It was also the first time I had cold feet since I've been wearing hand-knit socks all the time. I'm back in the hand-knits now and intend to stay that way til March.

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Lashing and lashings...

As well as talk of Clementine Cake on twitter there has been talk of brewing Ginger Beer. Ginger beer is my drink of choice and I'm always in search of a good one. I find many commercial ones too sweet. Once on holiday in Brasil I had a ginger beer made with freshly squeezed ginger which is the gold standard at the moment and a tough act to live up to. @eskimimi (who has a lovely blog ) linked to this River Cottage recipe last week . I had to hunt around for brewers yeast as the brewer's yeast you can buy in chemists and health food shops is deactivated so won't work for brewing, despite the name. (trade descriptions act anyone?). I ended up buying my yeast online after consulting my brewing guru Bioniclaura . As well as knitting Laura brews her own beer, which I got sample when I stayed with her and her lovely dog and husband in Dublin when I went over at the end of October. More on that later. I couldn't wait to get started but had to wait til we returned from Hasti

Ceilings

Over Easter we went to Istanbul. It's one of those cities that's been lurking in the corners of my mind, from tales of Roman Constantinople, to bordering Europe and Asia with its dreaming mosque minarets. So I booked a bargain of a city break two days before we left, chucked some clothes in a bag, picked up a guidebook and off we went. There are more blog posts and photos on the way, as we had an excellent time there, but as you can see I was quite taken with ceilings and spent most of our four days there looking up.

We have a winner...

Check out my pea seedling, how intact and un-nibbled it is. My mysterious object, as correctly guessed by Madmurdock and Montyknits, is a gastropod guard. It seems to be working. I'd heard that slugs and snails don't like slithering over hair. I tried using hair clippings a few years ago as a barrier. It worked for a few days, til I found chewed, leafless stems and on further inspection a guilty slug covered in ginger hair. Hopefully the fleecy barrier will stay in place and mean I get a good late crop of peas. Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who took part.

Ginger Knits UK

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