Duck Egg Cardigan

My cousin is having a baby so I wanted to knit something. After some time searching through my knitting books I decided on the Matinee Cardigan in duck egg blue cashmerino from the Erika Knight book Baby Bloom (you can find it here). It's a beautiful pattern and one which my Mum has knitted atleast once if not twice for all of my children. I also found it to be a great piece for lasting well beyond the 0-6 months the pattern states as its quite long.

I hope my cousin likes it. I've loved knitting it.

Honey from my bees

I've only taken one frame off my big hive so far this year and here it is.

As its their first year I want to make sure they have plenty to survive on during the winter so I'm planning on leaving most of the frames with them. The frame that I did take off was really full though and made nearly two big jars. So delicious. Keeping bees is awesome. Fact.

Two (almost) Free Art Activities to do with Kids

Painting pine cones - technicolour!

Flower pictures using the pretty ones that we find on our walks

7

Our very special Bou turned 7 at the weekend. We had a pink princess party with lots of pink icing, fairy wings and glittery face painting.

We played lots of games including egg and spoon races.

The fishing game came out again.

Homemade beanbags (I was still stitching these at 11pm the night before)

Summer's not over yet......

I've seen on quite a few blogs over the last few weeks people talking about autumn being on its way, preparing for a season change etc etc......come on peeps! We definitely do not feel the same way here and are still embracing all that a burning hot August has to offer.

This week I've made both Limencello and Orangecello (the second a bit of an experiment, we will see if its any good-it smells delicious)

Chin, chin!

Passata making

The tomato harvest has begun, which means so has the passata making. Check out my new machine which removes the tomato skins and seeds. 

Friday photos

Tomatoes, a cucumber and a whole load of chillies from the garden

One of the bow clips I made for the girls using fabric scraps

Making Roasted Peach Ice cream

We love....

Custard Lollipops!

Making fresh pasta

I'm really enjoying the Pizza Pilgrims cookery book at the moment and after my success with the Neopolitan pizza dough I thought I would try my hand at pasta making. Awesome results, the kids both loved making it and eating it, (#winwin) plus it helps use up the 28+ eggs the chickens lay every week. I'm definitely planning to make more of this.

Bicycle ride through the sunflower fields

One of the things the girls have been asking to do lately is the take their bicycles out onto the "road". (Well what they think is the road anyway. Its mainly our driveway and a chemin blanc that connects to it and it only gets the occasional tractor or post van. We didn't come across anyone on our ride which is a good thing for two slightly wobbly first timers.

So one day this week the heat wave had subsided enough for us to be able to bicycle in the afternoon sun and the girls really enjoyed being able to be on the open road.....

You can just see the roof of the house over the sunflowers.

That was July.....

Colour in the sitting room

Beautiful Artichoke flowers from the garden. The colour is luminous.

After reading the new cookery book Pizza Pilgrims I have some DIY Limencello on the go. When you lift the kilner jar lid it's smells amazing! A few more days to go and then I can make the sugar syrup.