Baking Mojo: Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffins

I don’t usually write up my cooking and baking endeavours.  The Boy has stolen the apron in our house and doesn’t get excited about cooking unless you are reinventing the wheel every meal.  I’m more particular about foods I like and particular dishes that I want to be ‘just so’ when I plan to eat …

The Deadline Dress

August has been busy in the Edinburgh house and the craft room was mostly occupied with guests coming to stay for the festival.  Aside from this I haven't actually managed to unpack the sewing machine after the move - and worryingly the plastic casing seems to have taken a bit of a knock in transit …

Botany Lace? BO’tony LACE?! Oh NO!

Botany Lace is actually delightful but this lovely little cable and lace shawl - 'Dovana' by Ysolda Teague (she of the wonderful and perfect Orchid Thief) - has always prompted involuntary Chekov impersonations and sometimes looped viewings of the Botany Bay scene from Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. I'd been wanting a yellow textured …

Blocked! on blocking and unblocking the blocking block

I have a secret bag that has been getting fuller over the last year or so.  No not the stash!  It's a bag full of finished lace shawls that have been languishing in need of being blocked.  There was even a project I never listed on Ravelry so I have no idea when it was …

Hug a hoodie! Capucine/Capuchin/Capuchon

It's been I while.  I can't believe it's Ash Wednesday already.  Pancakes were had last night for Shrove Tuesday including some really quite fabulous savoury pancakes from our trusty vegan cook book 'Peace and Parsnips' by Lee Watson.  Although I'm afraid the pancake part was just the usual half a pint of cow juice, 1 …

To err is human… : Pelican Dress

This project is again using birthday fabric from my mother (aren't I a lucky lady).  I was calling these birds cranes but I think subsequently I stumbled across it somewhere online where they were definitely called pelicans and discovered that the design was named 'Ship Shape' (kind of obvious come to think of it seeing …

Sheep top time: a project from the 2016 vortex

Now, well done if you remember that I had started working on dress 'R' from the first Stylish Dress Book by Yoshiko Tsukiori back at the end of 2015.  I had two metres of birthday sheep fabric that was absolutely adorable and remarkably calming.  It's such a crisp print but the colours are so neutral and muted …

Wispy Bridesmaid Shrug

I'm not one to advocate throwing money at a problem. However, my lack of inspiration to knit much of anything, words included, was certainly salved with the arrival of this beautiful yarn. No discounts, no windfalls, just pure excessive expenditure on a yarn that I have in more rational moments written off as just too …

Happy New Year 2017 (Goodbye 2016, the year that wasn’t)

I have actually managed to pretend 2016 didn't happen at all on this blog.  I had a vague urge to write something just before Christmas when I could see the full twelve months of silence rising up to meet me.  And then didn't.  The last post I started was on January 15th 2016 where I …

Merry Christmas!

There are so many things I have been wanting to write about but I have been a Christmas misery this year.  For the first time in my life I had to work Christmas day.  I LOVE Christmas. But this year the run up to it just kept on reminding me that I would spend the …