Eye Candy friday goes supper frosty

Some more of my frosty photography for you. It was the frostiest morning so far this year yesterday and it lasted well on till 11am it was that cold !
Enjoy

Blocked starfish shawl and Photo shoot volunteer required

It still amazes me how much lace knitting grows when you block it, magic!


before blocking




after blocking

I just about found a piece of carpet large enough to block this out.

Now all i need is a photo shoot with my shawl being worn as a garment(I have requests for this already) Anyone have any spare time to themselves between Christmas and new year?(i know, not many gonna be able to say yes to this one) Fancy a mutual knitting photo shoot in some nice location somewhere in Cambridge?

Seasons Greetings All.

And I wish you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year too!

With love from Me,
Pepper the Cat
and Rudolph here, too!

Snowball recipe

In reference to an earlier post. A snowball is a lovely ( in my opinion and my family's, i cant speak for anyone else) drink hailing back to the good old 70's( why good, because i was born in the 70's) Here's how to make one you will need Advocaat Cold Lemonade Roses lime cordial (fresh lime will do, but trust me on this, the Roses lime cordial is really unique)
Take a tall glass, put one inch of advoaact in the bottom( i prefer two inches!) top up with lemonade and add a good slug of lime cordial, stir, drink and enjoy. It has a nice sort of foam on the top and is all thick and creamy underneath. The best way to describe the tastes is sort of like and alcoholic lime milkshake, yummy!

Gift from Bruge

As many of you know i don't get to travel as much or as often as i would like. And so when one of my friends goes on their travels i always ask if they would please send me a postcard, so i can sort of travel vicariously. Well Zareh went to Belgium recently and instead of a postcard returned with a small paper bag for me. Its contents was lace, and so very me, this friend of mine does know me very well. Cats playing with yarn!


Notice the crazed look in their eyes. So i have mounted them on red card and laminated Them, to protect the lace, and now i have a lovely book mark. Thank you Zareh.

New Photos

I now have a Flickr account so you can look at more pictures here too.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scarlettigerchilli/

Scarlet's chicken soup

I went off to Asda yesterday to buy some boneless, skinless chicken thighs, much nicer than breast meat in my opinion, far more flavour and less prone to drying out(and very reasonably priced at £2.49 for six compared with Waitrose charging £4.99 for exactly the same thing!) only to find they had sold out( because they were on special offer) So i ended up purchasing the boned and skinned ones. So after De-boning and skinning myself and batching up for the freezer i realised i had rather allot of bones etc left over. SOUP! I thought.
So out came my pressure cooker. Now i cannot tell you how good these gadgets are, they are so worth their weight in gold. Only 7 Min's for soup and 20 Min's for chick peas for starters, need i say more.

So here is the recipe, this is all i had in the bottom of the fridge that was going to work with this soup. had there been a carrot i would have added that too. As it was the soup was delish.

Left over chicken bones, skin, meat left on bone etc
1 large potato cubed
half and onion chopped
2 cloves of garlic
2 stalks of celery, leaves inc if they have them
one stock cube, chicken or veg
salt and pepper
enough water to cover the above.
little bit of oil

Fry off chopped onions and roughly chopped garlic and celery

Add chicken till sealed

Add water, stock potato and bring to boil, simmer for 7 Min's in your pressure cooker or 20-30 Min's with standard saucepan

Remove bones and skin. Pick the bones for any meat( i find rubber gloves handy for this task) and leave this in the soup.

Blend the soup until smooth

Season to taste.

Eat and enjoy!

Suitable for freezing

More Moggy hunting

More gifts arrived last night and this morning from my furry little weirdo.



In the words of the great Rolf Harris 'Can you guess what it is yet?' No? It's a used round tea bag!

Pepper came in at about 11pm last night mewing as if he had caught a mouse or bird, with me on the sofa thinking ' oh no, not at this time of night'. And then i am very proudly presented, a tea bag. He is so funny.

Then this morning i get out of bed on to step on something that was squishy, and my mind think eeewww! I looked down to find this



A very well chewed piece of blu tac!
Awwh bless him, i am not very well, so he keeps bringing me presents.
What next though? A winning lottery ticket would be good, a caring and funny man would be fantastic( though i suspect not easy to drag though the cat flap) I can but hope he brings something a little more useful home. In the mean time i shall continue to be amused by his antics and hope that this also makes you laugh.

eye candy friday recipe

It was a very had frost yesterday so as i went out top up the bird and squirrel food stations i thought it would be lovely to take some frosty pictures. And seeing as i am running a nice fever at the moment, 5 Min's outside without a coat was quite refreshing. So here we have a nice photo of frosty mint. Sparkly!



Which set me thinking, ooh, you could make mojitos out of this without the need for much ice! So here's a link to a recipe I found on the net, oh don't you just love Google. so it may be winter but nature has sent us the ingredients for a summery drink. Ain't life funny.

I wondering if its possible to grow a lime tree outside in this country in the summer? To provide the lovely addition for this drink and the good old 1970's British favourite Christamssy drink 'snowball'

P.S. For Starfish shawl

I have just realised that i photographed the shawl upside down and so you get reverse stocking stitch instead of stocking stitch, sorry. Will get it right when i do blocking photos, i promise.

starfish shawl complete

Hiya All

I have for the last month or two been slowly chipping away at the Starfish Shawl in Nora Gaughan's 'Knitting Nature'. and its now finished! This was very pleasing to knit, once you got past the cast on of 750 sts! EEK i here you cry.I know i though that too, but each deacreases and so it can only get quicker to knit. The pattern was very easy to memorise, once set up. And i lucked out in shoping from my stash with a cone of yarn that i purchased at a chaity shop for a £1. Couldnt it be any better than that! After done the burn test on it, it turned out to be a pure wool too. Doulbe whammy! And to hit the hat trick, i still have a half to a third left of the cone to do another lovely lace project with! I am feeling not only proud, but smug too. And quite entiteled too i think so too.









All it needs now, as you can see, is a damn good blocking. Ah but do i have carpet space big enought to spare?

More pics to come soon i hope.

Pepper's been a hunting

Now i have to tell you i do have an odd moggy. As a kitten he retrieved things( i think that perhaps a past life as a dog?) Any thing from tennis balls, from a neighbours dog, electrical tape, from a neighbours shed, nail files, who knows where from and now to top it off this

Left over burger in paper! on my door step as a gift for me.

He did start his hunting career in an odd way too. He started with lumps of moss as a kitten, aww bless him that was cute beyond belief, and he was so proud of himself too. then came worms, not my favourite i have to say, as you could use the bathroom in the middle of the night only to have squishing sensations underfoot,Yeuch!! And at the end of the week when i came to clean the kitchen floor and lift up the door mat i would find......... dried squished worms! That he had saved for later on. This was not cute.

So we shall see what else he get ups to in his old age( 10 years old now bless him) apart from going more and more salt and pepper( yes that's where his name came from) and growing more ear hair( yes! male cats do it too!! can you believe it)

He also seems to have odd food tastes too. Going absolutely crazy if you bring a melon in the house, he loves the stuff( a fruit bat in a past, past life?) along with raisins, chick peas, and soya beans. he does like all the usual like cheese, butter, cream , fish , meat etc too, He's not that weird!

Eye Candy Friday Goes Pink!

I know, me and pink are mortal enemies. But the wonder of nature can still have me lovin the pink stuff. This is one of my mums orchids,(Isn't the macro setting on digital cameras fantastic!) boy can she grow these things, i have never seen such amazing blooms. I will endeavor to remember to take a non close up shot to show you just how amazing next time i am over there. In the mean time, Enjoy.

Is this KITTY porn?!!

Yes you did read it correctly!


I took this about two years ago, in my old house, as he did look so cute.
And thought it would tickle some of you out there to post this with a dubious title.

Something fun!

'At last i hear' you gasp with a sigh of relief

Now you see me

Now you don't

My cat's reaction to all the boring car posts

Pepper it seems, has an opinion for every subject!

Fame at last!

Not really the good sort. I am however very pleased as now the local area knows whats going on. And this may help prevent this happening again. The reporter has it almost all accurate, a few small details that aren't quite right, but they don't really matter.

I also arrived home today to find CCTV cameras on the drive way, yeah the landlord! Now how many of you can say you have ever said that?

Newspaper

Hiya

For those of you that are local. You may, or may not, be interested to know that the Cambridge Evening News will be running an article about me and my vandalised car tomorrow. Thats Wednesday 5th December

more smashed car pics

P.S. the editing has gone haywire and i seem to be unable to alter the large font in the previoius post.

Not such a nice blogg

Hiya All

For those of you that don’t know, My car has been vandalised twice in the last month, and apart from all the damage to the windows they smashed, 3 the first time, 1 the second time, they also stole £700 of my favourite CD’s,

IT’S HAPPENED AGAIN!!!!!

Friday night at 23.10 and I am just about to turn the TV off and go to bed when I get a knock on the door. And it’s my neighbours. And I know whey they are here. My car has been vandalised again.

So I go and change from my pyjamas and dressing gown back into jeans and head to the end of the driveway to meet my neighbours. And the scene that meets me is quite astounding in the worst possible way.

First thing I notice is that the rear windscreen and the front screen are smashed in along with two more windows.

There is a massive (so heavy the landlord could only just lift is off) concrete block on the bonnet (hood for those of you across the pond) of my car.

They used this to smash the front windscreen in. Then I see the fence post on the back seat.

They also took a bike secured at the bus stop and dismantled it to used; there are dents all over my car. There were also about 10 vodka bottles smashed all over the drive way.

My neighbours had chased the kids (they were no more than 4’5” tall) with hoodies (what a stereotype!) that they caught at it but they were to fast to catch. They had called the police too and had had the rapid response unit out to help.

I stayed up till 2 am waiting for the police, to make a statement and have the scenes of crime officer (soco) out). After having made my car watertight for the night I was so exhausted and just went to bed. Next morning I have the police on my door step waking me up at 7am to take the statement. They have been very helpful doing everything they can.

So I have spent my entire weekend sorting this out, I have had to had all the glass replaced again, buy new wipers as they had damaged these, and a new petrol cap as they stole this.

And then a couple of hours on my hands and knees on Saturday afternnonn with the landlord and lady picking the vodka bottle glass out of the gravel driveway. On Sunday I had to wash and re-hoover (autoglass did the worst of it) the car as when I turned the heating on powdered glass blew in my face, this took me another couple of hours, in the frezzing cold. I could hardly walk by the end of the day and I am today in so much pain.

And the cost od the damgae so far is £260; this doesn’t include the £700 of stolen CD’s. These little b*@$*+@/s are enjoying themselves on a firday night smashing my car up little realising they are making me ill, risking me losing my only mode of transport (as it wont be long before the insurance company refuses to pay for repairs and writes my car off) the risk of the car being written off is higher and higher each time this happens, and I cannot afford to replace it. And the cost of repairing it will soon be something I cannot afford. What little savings I have are dwindling fast( this is money I have been saving for a holiday that I have been trying to take for 10 years) and soon I wont have any left to use to repair the car. What happens then I don’t know.

The other neighbours are all planning to move out. For me this is of course not an option. I can’t park the car else where as it wont be covered by the insurance.

I am now emotionally and physically drained, I don’t know how much more of this I can cope with.

The police asked me if I have any enemies or anyone that would want to harm me in any way. As those of you who know me, I try to live my life well and be respectful of others, as I believe that what you do in life will come back to you.

Why me?