Winter Wonderland

My back garden, under snow.

The quaintest of the five pubs in the village: The Woolpack.

The village church.

And the little chapel by the old abbey on our favourite short walk.  Just a pity that it is painfully cold and treacherous underfoot.  Ah, to be six again, when snow was an unalloyed pleasure.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...

Eighteen years we have lived in this house, yet I doubt  if we have lit this little stove more than five or six times.  Some early experiences involving a lot of smoke, and the presence of perfectly adequate storage heaters, have made it seem like a waste of time.  Still, as the temperature drops outside, what could be nicer than to bask in front of an open fire, enjoying buttered crumpets and mince pies?

Note, among the brassware, a piece of utilitarian laundry equipment, which I remember my mother buying new.  Called a "poss," it was in weekly use alongside the dolly-tub, boiler and mangle during my childhood.  And now here it is decorating my hearth.

Another little sampler from my collection.  In this case, a mystery item from a junkshop.  The imagery speaks of the Twenties or early Thirties, but it is still very much a sampler (click to embiggen)

Saturday brought an unpleasant surprise.  My husband having just collected a batch of timber destined to be our new dining-table, set off for his shed anticipating a few hours of pondering and pencil-chewing.  But, through night, a large, high, storage shelf had collapsed, scattering a scrow of debris over his workbench.  Thus began several hours of final reckoning and a trip to the tip.  When did I think I would ever complete a macrame lampshade, started in the early Eighties?  His shed is much improved by this enforced de-clutter.  Only this little owl survives from the macrame enterprise.

Stored Goodies

More Christmas preparation in the form of spiced preserves from Delia's Christmas book.  Pears in one jar, with lemon slices, and clementines in the other, both drenched in wine vienegar, brown sugar and cloves.  The kitchen certainly smelt like Christmas as these simmered.  In January, they are lovely with cold cuts.

Delia's Christmas food programme on tv, however, was like a voice from another age.  Who now slathers on the butter and double cream with quite such a free hand?  Though it is true that her Luxury Fish Pie was lovely because of the unctuous nature of the potato topping.

Our loft was recently much admired by two chaps from the local historical society, because its unimproved state allows full sight of the rafters with their many centuries of alterations and road -grime.  Stashed up there I have all those items bought at textile fairs and boot-fairs and charity shops, knowing they would come in one day.  That day has now arrived for a piece of tweed woven from sari silk scraps.  It's so long since I sewed anything for myself that I was unconvinced by this, but in fact, with skirts, it is a question of hitting a length which is currently in vogue and matching that with what one's figure will stand.  It looks very lively with a bright top picking up one of the colours and the obligatory black tights.

Stir up Sunday

Now is a good time to start preparations for the Christmas feast, while the rain slatters down on the windows and the spirits sink.  Now, and not at the end of August, which is still summer in my book, but was when the first items appeared in the shops here.

I made my cake some weeks ago and have opened it up to feed it dark rum.  Rum always featured heavily in West Cumbrian Christmases... rum custard, rum butter ... and rum to feed the cake. Long traditions going back to when Whitehaven was a major port. 

This, another of my sampler collection.  I found this square of white lawn with its haunting inscription in  a box at  a local boot fair here in Essex.  I paid all of thirty pence for it.  What can be made of the fact that the fine lettering of the verse is followed by a coarser hand for the name and date?  Was it finished by someone else to memorialise the death of the original stitcher?  Or was it undated and the date is there just to suggest age it doesn't have?  The tiny stitches of the verse certainly look authentically old.  I just love these fragmentary pieces with their unknown histories.

Windfalls

A box of apples, Fiestas.  Some twenty years ago, we were given a fan-trained apple, a retirement gift  for which my father-in -law had no wall space.  We then established espalier pears and felt that cordons would complete the set - we have a very narrow garden with plenty of brick wall to cover.

What we did not grasp was that some apples are too vigorous for cordons and that, as the years pass, they will grow in their own way.  Thus, our neighbour reported that a good crop of Fiests was ripening on their side of our wall, from the top growth of our tree.  This week she brought round the last ones to fall, a surprising late bounty.

Another pair of navy mittens, this time in an acrylic/wool mix, bought in Wigton, where I had gone hoping to identify some of the places in Melvin Bragg's "A Son of War".  And a very depressed little place it is, especially in drizzle.  I cheered myself up with a trip to Caldbeck, lunch at the Priest's Mill and a tour of the Wool Clip shop. 
Last week, my birthday brought a bounty of a different kind.  My family like to find mail order suppliers of delicious things to send us.  We have had a parcel of venison before now, and one year my husband was in raptures over a hamper of baked goods delivered by the local WI Market.  Smoked fish from Loch Fyne is always welcome.  This year my sister sent a box of breakfast items from Dukeshill.co.uk.  We started in on the sausage and black pudding and have enjoyed bacon sandwiches through the week.  The porridge oats may be destined for flapjack..  But the most surprising thing was the insulation in the box, sent by next day delivery, not the post.  It is made of wool, looks like Herdwick,  scoured and processed into a flat layer and encased in food-grade plastic.  They suggest some further uses for this, such as seat pads.  We'll see.

Finally, a sampler from my small collection.  in this case, from Norway, the work of one Kari Svenkerad, part of a group I picked up by chance in a junkshop in Nysbyen some years ago.  Probably these are the evidence of a school curriculum preparing girls for a life of make do and mend, and not in a good way.  This one has such clean graphic lines it is like a piece of drawing, but they are different ways of darning cloth.  Whoever Kari was, she was a great needlewoman.

Butterflies

At last I summoned the resolve to visit the dentist; a loose molar had begun to ache.  I learnt to avoid the dentist after several encounters involving bridgework and crowns, in which the idea seemed to be to keep the patient in the dark as to the outcome and the amount of pain to anticipate - "Oh, that was just the worst case scenario!" one breezily informed me after a simple filling sorted out what he had described as requiring root canal work.

My strategy has been not to look for trouble, and I can't help thinking it has saved me not only pain but money over the last ten years.  Still, I find myself going up the steps for the check-up, only to find myself greeted by a recent ex-student, who is to be the dental nurse in attendance.  She is a strapping girl with a confident personality, but it must have been odd for her too.  The dentist was quick off the mark and we moved straight to the extraction, after three injections.  Poor old tooth was very loose and took seconds to dispatch.

A little tour of the shops was in order, I felt and, as sometimes happens, I felt something call my name in the first charity shop I entered.  This lovely tablecloth has a few small loose sections, but is otherwise unstained.  It looks a treat on our front room table.

To Ally Pally on Friday last.  One forgets just how awful driving into East London actually is, but it was a delight to look at some of the exhibits.  Past experience tells me not to buy special offers as they can be variable in quality.  Instead, my eye was caught by two balls of Mini-mochi in autumnal colours.  The highlight of the day was taking lunch at one of the dreadful food outlets and discovering that the ladies sharing the table were keen knitters but had not heard of Ravelry and were unsure of the exact nature of blogging. I do hope they are now revelling in the riches on offer.

Recent knitting has been a pair of navy blue mittens for the husband of a dear friend.  Mittens for men are apparently a rarity item.  I was happy to oblige, using some Jaeger Alpaca I had on hand.  Working out a pattern for 4-ply was a small challenge, but they are now in the post, without me taking their picture.

Design features

Working on the blond strips for the Celtic throw.  I tried a more complex cable, but it needed something simpler and more logitudinal. 

Barbara Walker's "Treasury" is a fantastic resource, not only for the stitch patterns but for the historical notes.

This is a pair of uneven cables, which she decribes as a kind of ancestral cable, in which two stitches are crossed behind four each time, giving a smoother, more stream-lined effect.  In the centre, Jacob's Ladder, again a traditional element.

Today, I gathered what must surely be the last of the blackberries and a clutch of apples from the hedge.  Carrying those and the handful of taters we had unearthed while digging over the potato patch, we enjoyed the rare October sunshine.