Peapod Soup Etsy Shop

I want to enjoy autumn for a bit before I start to get all festive. We've been going on lovely walks around here, and gradually finding pushchair-friendly routes. The best places are along the canal or in the woods. I know if this pregnancy is the same as the last one, then I'm going to be housebound for the next few months. Its very painful to walk while pushing a pushchair loaded with shopping, but gentle strolls with my husband are just about bearable and I'm not going to give in just yet!



On Wednesday I bumped into a friend in town and  I nearly burst into tears because I was in so much pain and didnt know how I was going to make it home. So I've given up walking into town, and I'm doing all my shopping online unless I go with my husband in the car (I don't drive).

The weather has been lovely for autumnal strolls, and we're really lucky to live in such a nice part of the country, even if the town where we live isn't that great. I love woodlands, especially oak woods. I think the colours and darkness and textures are my natural habitat, the way that some people 'seaside' people or 'mountain' people. All good walks should invovle a country pub and real ale, although I have to stick to a Dandelion & Burdock these days.


 

In the woods we stumbled across this baby owl! H loves looking up at the trees.



This is Caen Hill Locks, on the Kennet & Avon canal near Devizes. There are 29 locks in a row, once I went through them in my brother's narrowboat, it took us all afternoon.

I'm hoping this weekend will mainly involve vegan cupcake-eating, jerusalem artichoke-digging, compost-spreading, some more walking and christmas decoration-making.

Hurrah! Finished Socks.

I seem to have about a hundred crochet projects waiting to be started, mostly for other people, so I'm glad I finished my cosy autumn socks last night. Now I can start on something else...

They are made from 1 ball of King Cole Zig Zag yarn, (bought from ebay for less than a fiver) and I went up a hook size because my feet are bigger from being pregnant. I also added a few more rows to the main foot part. A really nice project to carry around because they're so small, I worked on them a lot during our 3 and a half hour car journey to see my grandmother, it was the first time she had seen her new great-grandson. The pattern is on Ravelry and Etsy.

Hurrah!

It's time to start thinking about making things for Christmas; the raspberry gin is getting nicely pink in the back of the cupboard, I've made my little H his first stocking, and today I baked the Christmas cake. I've used this Delia recipe for the past 5 years and it always comes out great, the only change I made was, after soaking the dried fruit in sloe gin (instead of brandy) overnight, the mixture still seemed quite dry so I so added half a cup of strong black tea and let it soak for a few more hours. This will be my first christmas at home with my husband and baby, (we got married in July), I usually go to my parents in Worcester, so I'm getting really into the idea of making it really special. After 4 and a half hours in the oven this is what came out:

Really moist and yummy looking. I will wrap it in foil, feed it every now and again, then decorate it with fruit and nuts.

Reasons to be cheerful...

It's not much fun having SPD/PGP, so I thought I'd distract myself by writing about some much nicer things...

1. Finding a Christmas present for H in a charity shop, a Djeco vintage-style wooden puzzle. American bloggers sound so much more hip when they say 'thifted'!

2. Making a funny monkey, another present for H. I've been reading a book called 'Radical Homemakers', about reclaiming the home, not being a consumer. I'm not sure that its particularly radical, but I do like lots of the ideas. I can definitely relate to it since giving up work to be a mummy. When you work full time you do spend more money; for example, after work you might be too tired to cook so you buy a takeaway or a ready meal. At the end of a hard week, you might feel you deserve a nice new dress. I dont want to buy H plasticy toys made in sweatshops halfway round the world. The book talks about making toys for children, but you cant really avoid consumerism altogether, I mean I still had to buy the wool and the stuffing... The pattern was from Ravelry.

3. Making some lovely crocheted socks, just for me! I'm always making things for other people or for etsy, its sometimes nice to have a project that's just mine. Cosy socks for cosy evenings at home. They're made following this pattern.

4. What a horrible word 'weaning' is! H is 7 months old, and eating us out of house and home, and its nice that now we can all have bowls of porridge, just like the three bears. Mine has brown sugar, cinnamon, seeds and a sprinkling of bran.

5. Carving a Halloween pumpkin, then hiding upstairs with the lights off because we're scared of trick or treaters! We made spicy pumpkin soup the next day.

6. Best of all, my brother and his girlfriend had a baby girl, no name yet, but she was 2 weeks late and weighed 9lb 10!

Peapod Soup Children's Clothing

Peapod Soup etsy store is now open! I decided to open a 2nd etsy shop, because I think people we getting confused between the crochet patterns available at The Tree Bridge, and with finished items. So now the tree bridge stocks patterns only, and Peapod Soup stocks colourful vintage-inspired childrens wear. Look out for colourful tank tops and retro christmas stockings soon!

 

Salisbury

Quite often I miss living in a city, I miss art and culture and shops and galleries. I miss the museum in Cardiff where I would go in my lunchtimes to look at the paintings. The town where I live is very small with not a lot going on.

 

So a couple of weeks ago we went to Salisbury for the day, as the international food festival was on. It's amazing how you can live near to somewhere but somehow never get around to going there. We spoke to people with American and Australian accents, like they had travelled around the world to come to Salsbury, but I've lived here for 5 years, and only ever driven through.

 

We went to the Catherdral where there were sculptures by Sean Henry. It was great fun going round the catherdral trying to spot them, after a while we didnt care about the historical gargoyles and architecture and things, we just wanted to take a picture of every single sculpture. They were so eeriliy realistic. There is also a copy of the Mappa Mundi there. Salisbury has a really nice feel to it, with lovely cafes and shops and interesting buildings.


The Sean Henry exhibition is on until 31st October.

Simple Pleasures

I think people can be divided into two categories, those who thrive on interaction with others, and those who get exhausted by it after a while. I'm definitely the latter. I like people for a couple of hours, and then I want to go and hide in the bath with a good book. I think its why I found school hard, you have to be around hundreds of people all day long, and there isnt much energy left for learning after that.

The best job I ever had was being a gardener, I could have my mp3 player on all day and just get on with my daily taks. At the same time, I worked in a fabric shop, and it was tiring talking to customers all day long. My husband could always tell which job I'd been to that day. If I was energized but calm, it was gardening, if I was exhausted and grumpy, it was the shop.

So now I get to be at home with H a lot. I love it! I've gradually come up with a routine so I get my housework done quickly (one room per day). It just makes me really happy doing quite mundane things like hanging H's nappies out to dry in the sun. Or rearranging the food cupboards. I think I was meant to be a housewife! Then in the afternoon we go for a walk or I do an hour of crocheting. I do go to baby groups and things, but sometimes its just lovely to just have time at home.

So my simple pleasures are:

   

Nappies drying in the sunshine

     

Organic veggies from the farmers market

  

and baking. Yum!

Blackberry & Apple Jam

It's definitely feeling more Autumnal here in Wiltshire, and there are plenty of berries in the hedgerows. I took H out blackberry picking, its such a nice feeling picking the abundant fruit, knowing its going to make enough jam to see us through the winter. People always stop to talk, and lots of kids stop to ask what I am doing.

Blackberry & Apple Jam

You will need:

Equal quantities of fruit to sugar.

For example, 3lb of blackberries, 1lb of apples to 4lb of sugar.

If you use crab or cooking apples, you wont need to use jam sugar, regular granulated sugar will be fine.

About 8 jam jars with lids

Cling film or waxed disks

Directions:

Wash and sterilise the jars, either by putting them upside down in a warm oven for 20 minutes (about gas mark 4, 180 degrees) or use sterilising solution.

Wash and pick over the fruit. Peel and core the apples and put them all in a large saucepan, and heat until soft, about 30 minutes. At this point you can strain the fruit pulp to get rid of pips, but I don't usually bother.

Add the sugar and stir on a gentle heat until you reach the setting pojnt, this should take about 20 minutes. To check for setting, put a teaspoonful of the jam on a cold saucer, leave to cool for a few seconds, it should be jam-like and not runny. 

Pour the jam into the jars,m sela with waxed disks or clingfilm and put the lids on. 

Enjoy on toast, or my favourite is a big spoonful on my porridge.

My brother & his girlfriend are expecting a baby next month, they don't know what they are having but I know they like bright hippyish colours, so I made them a hexagonal blanket in yellows and using all sorts of scrap colours I had in my stash. I will be publishing the pattern in the next few weeks.