Flutterby Patch

I'm having a blue day

It has been a blue day for me today and I've had great fun photographing a selection of my blue and white china and other bits and pieces. This activity was all due to being totally inspired by Rhondi's blue and white china so lovingly and artistically displayed in her beautiful home, see her blog Rose Colored Glasses. Like Rhondi, I adore blue and white china and have been an avid collector for many years. Some of it is antique (display only) but the remainder is dishwasher proof and gets thrown around quite a bit. I don't really have any favourite pieces but perhaps the piece with the most 'history' is the Tek Sing bowl. This was part of a huge cargo of porcelain salvaged from the sea bed in the South China Sea in 1999. The Tek Sing was a Chinese junk that sank in 1822 and unbelievably much of the porcelain remained intact and undamaged for almost 200 years. This little bowl would have quite a tale to tell.

1.Sundry china 2.Cup & saucer (1890s) 3.China cupboard
4.Mason's Ironstone jug and Staffordshire figure
5.Delft charger (1760s) 6.Blue glass
7.Dutch Delft houses and Swedish wooden painted horses
8.Bowl from the Tek Sing cargo 9.Another china cupboard
10.Toy sewing machine 11.Reference books
12.Millennium calendar plate 13.Stoneware jug
14.Snowdrop print 15.Teapot, tea bowl and plate C1760
16.Miniature Dutch Delft tiles and clogs

Well, I've had great fun as you can see but haven't done a lot of chores today so I'd better make up for lost time.   

Knitting an odd selection

Specialist yarn shops sprung up all over Britain in those heady days of hand knitting in the 1980s. At that time I experimented with the most gorgous chunkies and fluffies with the result that I now have a large bag full of yarn, all different lengths, colours and thicknesses. It has been waiting to be put to good use for a long time and I've thought long and hard about what I could knit from this odd selection. I wasn't looking for an ambitious project just something simple that hopefully wouldn't require a pattern. Then recently I read a book about the Austrain artist Hundertwasser. Oh those glorious colours he used! My mind was made up; I must create something with my yarn selection.

Work in progress

Using 7.5 mm needles I cast on 12 stitches in chunky yarn and began knitting (garter stitch). Work is still in progress. I increase one stitch at the beginning of every row and make stripes 3 - 4 rows long. A short length is just sufficient for one row. Two or three finer yarns together are roughly equivalent to chunky. Fluffy, fancy, smooth and knobbly, nothing is excluded. Everything is slowly getting used and I'm about half finished. All the yarn ends are at the edges and won't need sewing in as they will become part of the fringe to be added when knitting is finished. It will become one large tringular shape with the two short edges fringed. Guessed what it is?......That'sright.... A Hundertwasser inspired shawl.

If you aren't familiar with Hundertwasser's vividly colourful paintings just type his name into your search engine 'images', you'll get a very comprehensive selection. Ooh! Those colours!

Bread - the staff of life

Who invented the automatic breadmaker? Give him/her a prize. I have always been too busy (and lazy) to make bread the traditional way but since buying a breadmaker I have been making up for lost time. There are so many machines out there to choose from but eventually I opted for the Panasonic and cannot fault it. Making a standard loaf takes about 5 minutes to prepare and 4 hours to bake and there are many mouth watering variations to try.

For my standard loaf I like to make 50% wholemeal (ingredients above). I use milk instead of the recommended water (if I have enough available on the day). Pop all the ingredients into the pan, starting with the dried yeast, then the flour and finally the liquid. Place the pan in the breadmaker and switch on.

Four hours later the loaf is ready, light brown and delicious.

I use Carrs breadmaker flour which is reaily available from all major supermarkets. Carrs have an excellent web site with some mouth watering recipes to try.