Finished

At last, just in time for the cooler autumn evenings, I've finally finished my shawl. It is knitted from handspun shetland. I have already knitted a cardigan from this fleece and wanted a project that would make use of some finer spun yarn. This weekend I finally got round to sewing in all the ends and blocking it.

The pattern (Birch from Rowan Magazine 34) used Kidsilk Haze and 5mm needles. I used smaller needles and spun the yarn thicker than Kidsilk so that I ended up with a less lacy shawl.

I am really pleased with the result. Handspun pure shetland yarn is always very soft and light. The flock that the fleece came from was not registered organic but the sheep were kept under organic conditions, I washed the fleece in Ecover washing liquid and obviously spun and knitted it by hand so I think that its environmental impact was pretty small. Added to that, as it took just under a quarter of the original fleece which including postage I paid £12 for, then the shawl has cost me just under £3 - a bargain!

Quiet

The morning started very quietly today, there was very little wind and everything seemed still.

This is the first full week of the autumn term and so we are all settling back into our school-time routines. The quietness of the morning seemed to emphasise the return to a more structured time-table.

I took a detour on the way home from dropping off at school to pick a few blackberries. Just half a mile outside the village there was little sound, apart from the cawing of some birds pecking for grain amongst the stubble of the harvested fields and in the distance, across the fields, the sound of the children at the primary school that my children used to go to, playing outside before the start of school.

It was misty and slightly damp, it seemed as if I could almost feel the countryside beginning to slow down in preparation for winter.

I like quiet. When I am driving or when I am in the house by myself, I rarely listen to music or to the radio preferring to lose myself in my thoughts in silence.

As we have become more aware of our energy use and have not replaced appliances as they have worn out, I find that there are more moments when there is complete quiet in the house. No longer any whirring of a dishwasher or breadmaker, often the only thing switched on in the house is the fridge.

Until recently this must have been the level of noise in most homes. A couple of generations ago there may not have been a fridge.

Electricity came to our village in 1936. According to a local history booklet,

"The Wessex Electricity Company installed three lights and one 15 amp 3 pin plug free for each new customer."

-not much scope for a lot of electrical appliances then.

I wonder if the continual background noise we are subjected to, aircraft, traffic, etc, apart from the noise we generate ourselves, contributes to the general level of busy-ness and stress that many complain of today.

Perhaps in the future as we are forced to cut back on our energy use, amongst the many disadvantages will be the benefit of a quieter,calmer environment.

The photographs were taken during my blackberry picking walk this morning.

Tomatoes and Eggs

This is a rather sad photograph of the best of my tomatoes. They were planted rather late and the cool, damp summer hasn't suited them a all.

On Friday night turning on the television, I just caught the end of Gardeners World and learned that even tomatoes being filmed by the BBC were complete failures! Blight has been a big problem for outdoor grown tomatoes this year.

We only have a small area to grow food and using part of the garden and the allotment, our aim is to have some fresh organic produce available for as much of the year as we can. It will only ever be a small part of out total food supply.

This summer has been a poor growing season for vegetables for me and it has made me think about the quantity of food that my family of four eats. Failed tomatoes, failed courgettes and potatoes that produced very little this year don't really impact on my family's food supply because there is readily available food from the supermarket. If in the future we don't have the fuel to move food over large distances and the majority of our food comes from the nearby, then localised crop failures will have a much greater impact.

If changes in the way we get our food don't result in overall shortages, it seems likely that we will have to be much more flexible in our eating habits. During war-time, meals were planned around what was available on the day. With rationing the maximum amounts for some foods were fixed and these had to be stretched with other foods from the garden or ones that weren't on ration to make a satisfying meal. Today many people plan their menus in a completely different way to this. We are used to all foods being available all the time and so planning a weeks menus and then doing a weekly supermarket shop has become the way of life for a lot of us. I do this most weeks, looking at the activities taking place and then planning a quick meal if I have to pick up late from an after school activity, a meal that needs a bit more advance preparation on a day that I am not working or something cooked in the slow cooker if the whole family is out for the day at the weekend and we want to eat as soon as we get in. We are also in the habit of having our favourites regularly, I make pizza almost every week.

So, what would we do if the tomato harvest failed? I use about a bottle of passata each week in pizza, pasta bake, bolognese sauce etc, it has become so much of a habit to just open a bottle when I need it that I rarely stop to think about it. Of course we would soon adapt, as everyone did during the war,(pizza made with pesto instead of tomato sauce is great for a change) but in times of change, it is comforting to be able to eat foods we are used to. Perhaps this is the time to get used to eating meals which use a greater variety of ingredients (preferably grown nearby as these will be most likely available) so that we will be more flexible in our eating habits when we need to make changes.

The other food I have been thinking about since we got our own chickens is eggs. At some level I did know that hens did not naturally produce a lot of eggs in the winter unless they were kept with artificial light, it was just something that I did not think about. I bought a dozen eggs every week and sometimes another half-dozen if we ran out. As we are trying to eat more seasonally I am thinking about eating eggs less in winter which until recently must have been what everybody did. Now that both our hens are laying we are getting 12-14 eggs a week which is our current level of use and I am wondering if we can reduce our egg intake during the winter as we get less eggs. Of course, as we have only had the hens for two months I have no idea how many eggs we will actually get in the winter.

Looking back at the war-time situation, in June 1941, ration book holders were allowed one egg as often as supplies permitted which in winter was one egg per person per month and in spring up to two eggs per person per week. By 1944 the ration was 30 eggs per person per year. Poultry keepers could exchange their egg ration for poultry meal.

So another food that I will try and eat seasonally will be eggs. As long as we get some eggs during the winter, I don't think it will be too bad. Instead of baking a Victoria sponge for Sunday tea in winter, it could be scones or jam tarts, and I shall have to think up another quick meal to replace omelets which is my standby for an almost instant meal.

The book that I've been reading about war-time food is The Wartime Kitchen and Garden by Jennifer Davies. Its a BBC book which was brought out sometime ago to supplement the TV series a few years ago.

Knitting update

I haven't posted anything about knitting for a while, but that doesn't mean I've stopped knitting. Since I was small I have always been knitting something and often several things at once, although now I try to limit myself to not more than three projects at the same time.

I finished this jumper a few weeks ago.

The pattern is from Alterknits by Leigh Radford and John Rizzo. This book has some knitting patterns in it but it is more a book of ideas rather than a pattern book to follow exactly.

The yarn is Rowan Scottish Tweed. I used the 4ply in Apple which gives a nice flecked appearance. I'm very pleased with the colour and the neckline but not sure about the raglan shaping around the shoulders, but maybe its just how a raglan is supposed to be, I've always knitted set in sleeves before. I don't know how to change it so I'll leave it as it is and wait for the cooler weather so I can wear it.

At the moment I am spinning the corriedale pencil roving I bought from Crown Mountain Farms. I am spinning it fairly fine and although that means that the individual colours are lost, I am pleased with the yarn. The colours have blended nicely, my favourite autumn colours.

The colours show up better on this photo of the knitting taken outside.

I have chosen a pattern that I've used before so at least with this one I shall know that I like the fit.

Last but not least is the sock knitting.

This is my "knit in the car while I'm waiting" knitting. I haven't really touched it during the six weeks summer holiday but now term has started and I will be waiting outside school, waiting at the station etc etc. Very simple sock knitting that I can do without thinking and without looking either for those few weeks when its dark by the time I meet my son from the train.

End of Summer Trip

Wanting to prolong the summer holidays as long as possible, we managed to squeeze in another short Youth Hostel break before the new school term next week.

We stayed this hostel on the banks of the River Wye at Welsh Bicknor.

It is a victorian house and was originally a rectory. Next to it was this very pretty but now disused little church.

It was in an isolated setting but judging by the size of the rectory there must have been a lot more people living in the area in Victorian times. Most of the gravestones were old, mid to late nineteenth century but nothing much after that apart from a couple of new ones 1975 and 2000. It seemed a sad little place as if it had been locked up and forgotten with the churchyard all overgrown.

The River Wye was very pretty and calm but in places the damage caused by the floods last month could still be seen. We spotted debris in the over-hanging trees about 10-12 feet above the current water level, very difficult to imagine on a pleasant summer evening.

We spent the two days walking in and around the Forest of Dean, a quiet end to the summer holidays.