Hoes and Stitches*

Over on my allotment blog I mentioned I wanted a hoe. I'm having a lucky week where things I need have materialised. Last night after the Stitch London WWKIP Knit Crawl I headed west to my friend's birthday/football watching party. They mentioned they had an old hoe left by the previous home owner which they didn't use.

The hoe end was wrapped in a plastic bag and I took it home on the tube. It was the last tube of the night so was full of footie fans and tipsy people. I was sober as I knew I had to get up early today so I put the hoe between my knees and got my knitting out (yes,more sock knitting). While the knitting was uneventful two people on two separate occasions grabbed the hoe handle thinking it was the tube pole. I think the World Cup has imbued the nation with a light-heartedness so there were laughs all round added to by drunken blokes singing the choruses from 80's pop hits - badly. I wish I'd taken a photo but even a photo can't sum up how much fun London can be.

*Yes, this blog post is an excuse to use the title Hoes and Stitches as thought up by the clever Jenny Willknits.

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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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