Advent - Day 5 - Still hot

One of the reasons I haven't been blogging much is because I've been on my travels. Lucky me. One of my best mates has been travelling around Asia this year so myself and a few friends went to visit her in The Philippines. I find travel tricky to write about, mostly because I do so many things I don't know where to begin. So, to counter that here is a festive snapshot of my travel companions in Coron, on Palawan Island. Even though it was the end of October Christmas things were everywhere, a bit like the UK.

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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...

Picture this

I was surprised to see that visitors to London's galleries and museums are down as the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), cited as having the largest drop in numbers, was busy when I visited earlier in the week. The busiest part was the Portrait Award exhibition and while the pieces were technically brilliant only a few grabbed my attention. People often get hung up on art, what should they like, what's the correct way to talk about it. I say ignore all that and look with an open mind. If something takes your fancy, great, if it doesn't, move on. Someone else will like it. If you can't make it to the NPG you can see all the entries online . Here are a couple I like. I'm not going to say anything about them. It's up to you what you think about them. If they intrigue you there's more info on the gallery website. Patchwork by Paula Wilson © Paula Wilson The New Religion by Conor Walton © Conor Walton It is disheartening to see visitor...

Champagne Bubbles

We went for a stroll this afternoon along the Seine where my MIL lives to work off the champagne and cheese from New Year celebrations and build up an appetite for our postponed Christmas meal. It was a good opportunity to take some photos of my latest FO, Bubbles hat by Woolly Wormhead . Compulsory Catalogue Pose I've met Woolly at several shows over the summer and we sat together at several meal times at the infamous Knit Camp as well as getting tipsy at Knit Nation. She's ace and also a great designer. She leads a pretty interesting life, living in a converted double decker bus in Italy. Take a look at her blog which is a good mixture of her day to day life on the bus with her partner and young son and loads of great knitting tips. The Bubbles pattern was great fun to knit and worked up pretty quickly, the cables providing just enough interest to make this a great knit while watching Agatha Christie mysteries on TV in between eating festive leftovers. I used Araucan...

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