Design it, knit it, wear it!

I found this beauty in a charity shop on my way home from Loop. What will my next project be? A cool hat and scarf? Funky leg warmers? A lace shawl? I haven't opened the box yet so I'm not sure if the fuzzy pink and purple yarn is still in the kit, I'm hoping it isn't. My plan, if I can get the thing working is see if I can make some simple dolls and toys for charities who give knitted toys to orphaned kids in African countries.

As for Loop, my equivalent of a crack den, well, I had a splurge. I figured I don't smoke, I wear what I make for myself and I need more socks. I finally got an op date so will need hand knit socks post op as they don't dig in to swollen tissue.

Here's the latest addition to my stash, got clean needles too. OK, enough with the drug analogies, The Wire is on every night and I think it's seeping into my consciousness.

Check out the Zauberballs from Schoppel Wolle, I can't wait to get started with these. There's yet more Misti Alpaca sock yarn, some Scottish 4ply from Rennies, and some new Knit Pro needle tips for my interchangable cable needle set. Sorted!

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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...

Food: easy five spice soda bread

In that idle time between Christmas and New Year some have dubbed Twixmas, I found myself recuperating from spending a week with my very intense mother-in-law by watching mid-morning TV. I flicked over to Nadiya's British Food Adventure where this recipe for red split lentils and five-spice soda bread caught my eye. I'm a big fan of curry; it's my favourite cuisine and the combo of lentil soup and soda bread ticked the right boxes. My dad is a keen breadmaker and he talked about making soda bread over Christmas which had tickled my interest. While I like the idea of making bread, I'm unlikely to have bread flour or yeast in and I find the kneading and proving off putting, but soda bread is doable. The lentil soup was eaten before I thought of photographing it. It's similar to dhals we routinely make for dinner - so cheap and easy to do - though the garlic and butter were a treat. The bread has lasted for a few days as there are only two of us in the house...

Just beet it - part II

Here it is. The beetroot dye experiment results. I had read that beetroot turns a disappointing orange colour when the dye is set. The most saturated end turned a beautiful burnished orange however the far end of the skein, which had been a delicate shade of pale pink before cooking was a mucky yellow. The cream/mucky yellow colour dominated the skein and wasn't as graduated as I'd hoped for. I decided to redye the cream section, leaving a small section of the Naples Yellow (mucky yellow) for contrast (I actually like the colour in small amounts and looked up a nicer name in my Artists Colour Manual). I added a few drops of pink food colouring to the beetroot vinegar just to see what happened and over dyed the mid portion of orange with more beetroot vinegar with a few drops of red food colouring. This is how it looked while drying... ...ta dah ! Here it is reskeined . Well half the skein anyway. I was in a rush as I wanted to enter it in a dip dyeing competition on Ravelry w...

Ginger Knits UK

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