Author Archives: pennygj

This Way…or That Way?

I’m rather hoping with your help I can find out a little something I’ve pondered on off and on for years. Nothing major, just a little curiosity.

I think I’ve mentioned the Knit and Stitch Group I started a couple of years ago in our little village. It started off at my place, outgrew the parking spaces, moved to the larger home of another member and out grew that and we’ve ended up in our new, quite swish, straw bale Village Hall. If you look at the picture on the link you can see the round Meeting Room where we now get together every month. Last night we had the best attendance yet!

We didn’t want to limit to a ‘Stitch and Bitch’ type knitting group, we embrace stitches of all sorts, knitting and crochet, needlepoint and cross stitch, patchwork and applique. We are pretty cosy in our round room, and very nearly lift the roof off with our nattering – in fact last night the Yoga teacher had to put her head round the door to shush us so they could get into their ‘cool down’ zone…. woops!

We had a crochet class last night as quite a few members were keen to learn, or brush up their skills and this is where my question comes in. I have taught knitting over the years, and although I am left handed I knit in just the same way as right handed people so it’s never been a problem. But crochet is a different matter. I just don’t do it like anyone else I know. I was taught by my left-handed grandmother, I don’t know who taught her. So it was left to Claire the Crochet Queen to impart her knowledge to the group. However, I have found that if someone struggles with the conventional method, my way seems to work. My solitary pupil was going great guns the unconventional way by the end of the evening. The thing is, it doesn’t actually look any different to the ‘real thing’ and seems so much more logical.

So, I’d love to know if anyone else does it my way..is anyone else weird like me?!

This is the ‘proper’ way…

…the left hand holds the work and the left index finger feeds the yarn round the hook.

For the life of me I can’t do that , I get in such a tangle. Inexplicably my grandmother’s ‘left-handed’ way does everything with the right hand, holding the yarn as in knitting…

I can’t be the only one, can I?

I love to find out!

And we had a new member last night, the lovely Gabriella Buckingham, who blogs here, sells here, and learns to crochet in a straw bale building!

Aah, I’ve spotted a small dog, hinting that it must be time for , whisper it, w.a.l.k.i.e.s. and by the look of the gathering clouds, I’d better do it quickly…

Looking forward to your comments!

P.S. I’ve just found out I’ve been nominated for the Dorset Cereals Little Blog Award! It would be SO lovely if you could vote for me, there’s a voting button at the top of the right hand side bar. Thank you so much x

Handmade Monday…again!

Happy Monday! I hope that wherever you are you are not being washed or swept away. Not too awful in Norfolk, but soggy enough for Higgins to decide a lie-in is the best option!

A shortish post today, I’m getting ready for a Needlefelting class this evening, for a local group. They are known as WISE, which I believe stands for Women In Search of Entertainment, so I hope I can keep them entertained. They meet in the pub, which is nice, although I think the drinks ought to be fairly weak while the felting needles are flying around! (I’m taking the monkey plasters, as insurance.) We’ll be making cupcakes again…

I seem to have scored a hit with the last project I was working on. Do you remember this?…

…which showed you in this post.

I decided it was a bit half-hearted and so put it back on the needles and used the remaining wool to make it longer, and more versatile, more of a statement. I needed a model…

…and it seemed to suit…

Can you see the look in her eye?

It never came off, and went out of the door that evening on a very happy daughter!

So I’m trying again, as I went shopping at the weekend and came back with more beautiful yarn…

which I now have it on the needles to pick up in odd quiet moments…. (I’ll be modelling this one myself, I think!)

While I was in Norwich I paid a visit to the Norwich Print Fair which is always very inspiring and is in a very interesting and pretty part of the city…

(click on the photos if you want to find out more…)

And was also able to meet two fellowTweeters! One of the upsides of spending time (too much time!) in cyberspace is linking up with people from all over the world, so you don’t often get an opportunity to meet up in person. I am @woollyplanet on Twitter, and introduced myself to Mandy Walden by waving my sheep pendant and going Baaaa! (Tim reckons I’m probably certifiable) but Mandy knew who I was! And I also found Sarah Bays, whose print of the ‘Chicken of Doom’ reminds me a lot of my last bird, Attila the Hen. If you can’t get along to the print fair, which is on ’till the 17th of this month, do look at all the beautiful prints on the website. I always come away wishing I had more wallspace.

Did I say this would be a short post? How I rabbit on…

I’m linking up again with Wendy on 1st Unique Gifts for Handmade Monday where you can browse though the list of other crafty bloggers. Do go and have a look.

Have a lovely week, see you soon x

P.S. I’ve just found out it’s National Cupcake Week, very appropriately, although I don’t think those cupcakes will be as ‘high fibre’ as mine!

Silent Sunday

Banksy, and the World’s Most Chocolatey Chocolate Cake

I’ve suddenly realised I promised a chocolate cake recipe, and I haven’t quite finished my holiday photos!

Without going on and on any longer, I just wanted to share this photo, taken in St Leonards….

that Banksy gets everywhere doesn’t he?

Although where he found the sand to make those sandcastles from in St Leonards I don’t know…

Now, this chocolate cake…

….and why is it called Clovis cake?

Well, we have to go back a few years, when my son was getting married. For those of you that don’t know, my son is the children’s writer and illustrator Thomas Taylor… you can find out more on his blog, That Elusive Line.

When the children were small I’d done the usual thing of birthday cakes in the shape of dinosaurs and spaceships, which gave Thomas and Celia the idea that a cake in the shape of the little tiger which Tom was spending most of his waking moment drawing might be a jolly idea. Meet Clovis.

Cue, completely panic from me. Making a butter icing and smartie creation for 10 eight year olds was one thing, but a tiger shaped wedding cake for 100 people? Oh, and it mustn’t be a fruit cake…

However, I do like a challenge, so I set about trying to find a cake recipe for something which would be a solid and forgiving as a fruit cake without being heavy and dry. I have no name to credit with the eventual choice, it’s provenance is lost in the mists of time, it appeared in a Saturday Telegraph supplement, I’m sure no one will mind if I share it with you.

It’s eventual chocolatey-ness is up to you. Vast quantities are required, and if you go down the 70% cocoa solids all the way it will be a very grown up cake indeed. I tend to go half milk, half plain, which seems to agree with most palates.

Clovis Cake
Grease and line an 8”/20cm cake tin
6oz/170g butter
6 oz/170g caster sugar
8 oz/225g melted plain or milk chocolate
8 oz/225g roughly chopped milk or plain chocolate
6 oz/170g ground almonds
6 eggs, separated
3 oz/85g fresh breadcrumbs
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
Grated rind and juice of 1 orange
Pinch of salt

Beat the butter and sugar together, then stir in the melted chocolate with the ground almonds, egg yolks, breadcrumbs, cocoa powder and the rind and juice of the orange. Whisk the egg whites with the pinch of salt and fold into the cake mixture with the chopped chocolate.
Pour into the tin and bake at 180C/350F/gas mark 4 for about 1hr 40mins.

Cool in the tin for 10 mins before turning out.

Melt 5 oz/140g plain or milk chocolate with a 5 fl oz/125ml carton of double cream in a bowl over warm water. Cool, then chill for 30 mins until lightly thickened then pour over the cake to cover.
Cool and store in an airtight tin.

And that’s it. A great deal of chocolate, with more chocolate on top. It’s very definitely a celebration cake, not to be entered into lightly!

Dungeness

We might live in a small country, but it’s amazing the huge variety of landscapes Britain manages to pack in. When we first travelled to the South Coast from Norfolk, I loved the winding roads, the hills, the woods and the green-ness, (although I’m suspect the locals trying to get to the M25 curse those winding roads!) But you don’t have to travel very far along the coast to find an altogether different landscape, wild, harsh, mysterious and beautiful.

I’ve wanted to visit Dungeness for a long time, especially once I had heard about Derek Jarman, and his garden, so I was very excited to find we had a trip organised, with steam trains!

I took lots of photos, so I’ll mainly let them do the talking. I hope they give you a flavour of what a magical place it is.

We’ll get the nuclear power station out of the way first!

Prospect Cottage, Derek Jarman’s home…

It’s privately owned, so you can’t go in the garden, but just stand rather conspicuously on the road with your camera!

I wasn’t quite close enough to for the poem on the end wall to show up, but if you love poetry, you can find it here.

It’s incredible how anything can grow here, and the wonder of the garden is how attuned it is to the landscape. For every gardener who has desperately tried to grow something tropical in a cold windy garden this is a triumph of going along with nature, finding what grows naturally, and mixing it with driftwood, rusty metal and flints and stones, and without boundary fences letting merge seamlessly into it’s surroundings…

Thomas bought me a wonderful book…

..which beautifully describes how the garden came about, with such fantastic photography it made my efforts seem a bit feeble…(but it didn’t stop me from trying!)

It’s amazing what get’s washed up onto the shingle!

There are two lighthouses, the old one…

and because the shingle has built up over the years and made this one too far inland there is a shiny new one…

We walked down to the sea…

(We could still see the power station!)

There was a mysterious tumbledown building surrounded with rusty fences and barbed wire…

…and everywhere brave little plants doing their best to bloom in these harsh conditions…

…and we even found an Open Studio to visit…
Where the artist has a novel approach to recycling his paint brushes…

Then off to the train…

…where we had to make a difficult decision. Is Higgins…

a dog…or a bicycle?

Ummmm…..

The train ride was great, but noisy and Higgins wasn’t too impressed.

…and spent most of the journey with his head firmly wedged between our shoulders to block his ears!

I found a lovely little train I would have liked to bring home…

Such a pretty colour!

Phew, a long post, and there’s a certain amount of hovering going on which suggests it’s a mealtime, so I’d better sign off.

If you still haven’t seen enough, have a look at this great little blog….where you’ll find another Dungeness fan!

See you soon …x

Flapping About!

Hello, Hello, I’m home and doing what I always do, too many photos, so much to say don’t know where to start…..flap, flap, run round in circles…….

BREATHE……….

…..and out….

Phew, that’s better….

We had a wonderful few days away in East Sussex, the weather was fab, we had time with the family and Higgins is still trying to catch up with his sleep! He had boys to look after, and he couldn’t possibly do his usual napping in a sunshiney place in case something good happened and he missed it. Also, he had a Very Important Job to do as an Artist’s Model, and he kept forgetting which was his best side…and if you’d like to see all the sides, you’ll find them here…

Until very recently Sussex and Kent were counties I travelled through on the way to the ferry, and I just got tantalising glimpses of interesting places in the mad dash to the port. It’s been lovely to have a reason to visit and explore, and you can catch up on some of the places we’ve been in these posts.

We visited Hastings Old Town on the first morning where the locals are fairly laid back…

…or a little scary…

…but the shops were very pretty…

…and they had the flags out for us…

well, I say flags…

of course not all of us are really into shopping…

I’m not going to gallop through everything in one session, we’ll all lose the will to live – so the trip to Dungeness will be in the next post!

I did manage to get the knitting out, and I’ve finished the birthday socks…

…and I’ve been experimenting with the lovely cuddly yarn I showed you before to make a sort of cosy collar.

It’s like a scarf without trailing ends. I’ve knitted it on circular needles and it’s just five rows of knit and five rows purl to give the ridged effect. I didn’t use all the yarn, I was being impatient, so I’m going to put it back on the needles to make it longer as the ridges make it scrunch up quite a lot. I’m going to experiment some more as I think it would be great with more stitches so it can be looped twice round the neck, or just adding an extra ball of wool so it’s long enough to pull up like a hood. I’ve a feeling I shall be fighting my daughter for this one!

Once again I’m linking this to the lovely Wendy of 1st Unique Gifts and Handmade Monday. Do go over and say hello and find all the links to other crafty blogs.

I’m being particularly ‘handmade’ this Monday too. I was very excited last week to find out I have been selected to take part in the UK Handmade Showcase, in the ‘Wonders of Wool’.

Have a lovely week, I’ll be back very soon…x

Planet Penny

Crafts, Crochet, Patterns & Tutorials