Little Tin Bird

This weekend has been All About Baking, the fruits of which is the rather deeeelicious Granola Bar. This is a chewy, sweet, tasty, moist, fruity, seedy, nutty square of pure awesome. Would you like to know how to make it? Ok! Here goes. This is a recipe my mum has been making for a few years mainly to eat after (marathon canoeing) races and also as a quick breakfast bar.

You will need:

• 6 oz of butter
• 5 oz clear honey
• 9 oz demerara sugar
• 12 oz porridge oats
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3 oz raisins
• 3 oz glace cherries (chopped)
• 3 oz dried apricots (chopped)
• 3 oz pumpkin seeds
• 2 oz ground almonds
• 2 oz sesame seeds
• 3 oz pecan nuts (roughly chopped)

It takes a little while to chop all of the bits that need chopping, so I would make sure that you chop them and then assemble all of your dried ingredients before you start melting the honey and the butter.

Right, now that you have your dried ingredients ready (pretty picture optional) you’ll need to preheat your oven to 190 degrees C and line a roasting tin (12.5 x 9.5 inches is the size we use, you could use different sized tins but you’d need to alter the cooking time accordingly) with baking parchment. Trust me, this is entirely necessary and you NEED to line it with this paper!

A word of advice with measuring out the honey, which is raaaather tricky: pop your saucepan on the scales and set it to zero and then weigh the honey straight into the pan. voila, accurate weighing and minimal stickiness.

Add the butter to the honey, and melt on a low/medium heat.

When the honey and butter have melted, add the sugar and stir until dissolved. Boil this for 1-2 minutes (whilst stirring) until the sauce is thickened.

Take the pan off the heat and then mix the dry ingredients into the caramel sauce. This is the part where you will be glad that you put all the ingredients in one bowl in the first place

When you have mixed the caramel thoroughly into the mixture, pour it all into the lined tin and press down.

Bake it for approximately 15 minutes or so until it is beginning to brown. You don’t want it to be too brown because it sets well as it cools.

You will need to leave it in the tin until it is completely cold before you take it out and cut it into pieces. Store in a tin, or enjoy straight away!

It is very, very nice. Also it is very filling!

The good thing about this recipe is that you can substitute parts of it if you don’t have the right ingredients. For example, the first batch of this that I made I only had half of the demerara sugar, so I just topped it up with normal caster sugar. I couldn’t find any pecan nuts, so I used walnuts and brazil nuts. You could use different dried fruits, if you don’t like apricots. I like to use some crystallized ginger in here too but not everyone does so I don’t do that very often.

So there you have it … yummy homemade Granola Bar. I hope you enjoy it, have fun xxxxx

I know that you have all seen my yarny rainbow in my last post as day 31 of Project 365 but I like it (and it’s my blog!) so I’m going to use it again today. It is quite fitting for today’s post as well, if further justification is needed. Ahh… yarny colourful goodness! The sky is soooo grey and boring here today, and frankly I’d rather look at yarn. And think about colour.

I love rainbow colours when I choose my yarn, and I love seeing bright rainbow colours for everyday things. But when it comes to choosing a narrower pallette, I do struggle. I love greens and blues mostly, seasidey blues and greens, plant-y greens and blues. Me and Andy have been talking a lot about colours and colour schemes today, but I’m not really feeling very inspired. So I sort of need to ask your help, if that’s ok?

Tell me, what are your favourite colours? If you had to choose say, 3 or 4 colours that go well together, what would you choose? And more specifically, what sort of colours do you like to see on a website? And indeed, are there colours that put you off using a website?

Your help with this is much appreciated - I’m really struggling with this! Thank you so much in advance

Lots of love, Heather xxx

Can you believe that January is very nearly over? It has (thankfully) gone really quickly. I don’t enjoy January very much! Anyway, I have completed a WHOLE MONTH of Project 365 with NO CHEATING. How good is that? I’m very impressed with myself. Above is a little collage of all my photos from this month (with the first photo twice because Picasa does not like uneven numbers), and if you would like to see them in more detail you can go to my Flickr here where they are all handily in a set. Hehe, is it daft to be proud of oneself for this?

This weekend is the weekend of the RSPB Birdwatch. You list all the birds that appear in your garden for one hour this weekend and then fill in the form on the RSPB website. We did ours from 12-1pm today with some bribery food of fruit cake, bread, apples and crackers. We have had quite a variety of birds in our garden this winter (have a look at this post) and they did not disappoint today. Usually we manage to pick an hour where the birds are all off appearing in someone else’s garden but this year was fab and we recorded loads of different types of birds. I guess word must have got around that we had the best food or something!

We counted a total of 15 varieties of birds in our hour, which is pretty good I think. We had:

• 15 Sparrows
• 1 Fieldfare
• 2 Chaffinches (male and female)
• 2 Collared doves
• 2 Wrens
• 4 Blue Tits
• 2 Starlings
• 1 Pied Wagtail
• 2 Goldfinches
• 2 Robins
• 2 Great Tits
• 1 Dunnock
• 2 Jackdaws
• 8 Blackbirds
• 2 Wood Pigeons (Rach knows all about these as they sit above her bedroom window and wake her up at stupid o’clock in the morning)

I managed to take a few photos, please bear in mind that these were taken through double glazing (which is not very clean!) and using a coffee mug as a tripod because I’m not very steady with my zoom lens. So they are not fabulous photos, but a nice reminder anyway. If you hover over them you can see what type of bird it is (I’m sure most of them are obvious to you though.) It was great fun to do, me my mum and Alice all against the window with binoculars, it was very exciting. You still have a day left to do it so if you have a garden, get going! Chuck some bread out into your garden and get watching. Best time is in the morning really, they seem to disappear by the afternoon time.

Good afternoon everyone As promised, today is the BIG REVEAL of my very first baby blanket. I finished the final stripe last night and I’m so pleased with it. I’ve worked pretty much constantly on this for the last 3 and a half days and it’s grown really quickly. I like to do things quickly to keep up my momentum and interest - I hate it when projects become a chore to work on.

So here it is, all 21 stripes and 63 rows of it. I’m so pleased with the way it’s turned out and am happy with my colour choices. It had to be gender neutral, and no pastels. I used Hayfield Bonus Dk and one ball (the green) of Stylecraft Dk.

I used the Attic24 Ripple Pattern with a starting chain of 112 plus 3 for turning. I love this pattern, it’s very easy to do and has a really good rhythm to it once you get started. I had been worried that I couldn’t cope with a fullsized ripple (which is what I have planned for my Christmas yarn) but now I’m much happier having had a practice on a half sized one.

So what do you think? I’m pretty pleased with it Next week I am going to start my next baby blanket for Peppermints and Poppies as she is finding out the flavour of her bump. I’m so excited!

Lots of love, Heather xxxxx

Don’t worry, this is not going to be a Patrick Moore blog post. On Tuesday evening I was sat in my lovely red chair hooking away on the ripply baby blanket with my back to the window, blissfully unaware of the BEAUTIFUL sunset behind me. Fortunately my lovely brother thought that I might like to see this and drew my attention to it. WOWeee! in a matter of seconds I had extricated myself from my crochet (record time for me - usually I’m still tangled up in yarn every time I have to answer the phone or anything), grabbed my camera from my bag and hurried outside to the dining room because I just HAD to get this on camera. We sometimes have nice sunsets but this was a seriously good one with the added bonus of silhouetted trees. yay! Seriously, just look at it. Isn’t it stunning?

I’m so pleased that my camera has a “Sunsets” setting as it has captured the colours EXACTLY as they were. Perfect.

Amazing colours.

I think this must have been the same evening as Petit Filoux has written about.

As it set further it left a gorgeous purpley glow. Out at the front of the house the light was incredible. This must be what twilight is.

The moon really sets that photo off I think.

And then, just another five or ten minutes later the sun had finished setting and all was dark. I was so pleased to have taken those photographs and so very grateful that my brother pointed it out to me. I feel really lucky when I see things like that.

And while yesterday was cold and grey, today is cold with a brilliant blue sky. Actually, it is grey again now. But it was beautiful and blue about an hour ago when I took these two photos. I know the garden looks scruffy, but then I’ve yet to see a garden at this time of year that looks great. Besides, the birds LOVE our garden! There are soooo many of them out there at the moment and they are really loud because they are all setting their territory and trying to get a mate. This weekend it’s the RSPB birdwatch survey thing and hopefully we should be able to count quite a few. Oh and the Fieldfare has returned … I hope this is not a forewarning for more snow.

You should also know that it’s impossible to go into our garden without speaking to the rabbits and guinea pig. They just demand attention so much! They jump about in their hutchest and make as much noise as possible to get you to go and see them. Whiskey actually picks up newspaper in his teeth and hops about from one end of the cage to the other waving it about. Then he gives it to you when you do go over. So sweet.

Whiskey has the softest little nose ♥

Willow is always desperate to leap out and pushes the door really hard with her face if you go near.

Rocket is really sweet, but I think he only comes to see me because I usually feed him and he associates me with food. He doesn’t like to be touched but always wants you to go and see him.

Tomorrow I hope to do the Big Reveal for the baby blanket - I only have 4 stripes (so 12 rows) left to go which I should have finished by the end of today. See you then x x x x x

Bright and cheery tulips

New much-wanted birdy mug given to me by my grandma. There is nothing I like more than bird silhouettes

New hooking - a baby blanket for a friend. Gender neutral, and no pastels. It’s so much harder than you think when I just want to use BLUE for everything! I’m steaming through this mini blanket though, I only bought the yarn yesterday.

I’m doing 3 rows per stripe as it’s soooooo nice to have less cutting and changing colours. I’m so lazy.

and yes … save the best til last. 260 squares on my patchwork blanket. Blimey. My wrists started to hurt quite a bit after 3 days of “20 squares a day” last week so I’ve had to lay off it a little bit. It’s no fun if you start to hurt yourself. It’s a bit scary really. My grandma and my mum both really suffer with their hands and have an awful lot of problems with them … it looks like I have inherited this as well (I have other problems with them, it’s not just from over-crocheting) so I’m trying to enjoy my crocheting but not make my hands bad at the same time. It’s hard! How depressing, sorry.

And a couple of random thoughts for today: 1) the word “crocheters”. I have seen this in print a few times in the last week and every time I have read it as “crocheteers”. As in musketeers. I think that’s my new term for all us hooky people - crocheteers. hehe.

2) Don’t you hate it when you’re having a really good, invovled, fun dream and then you wake up and it’s gone? I was having such an ace dream last night, really detailed and it was so fun. And now I feel really sad that I do not have this dream, and that it’s not real, and that I can’t get it back. And that I voluntarily (by having set my alarm last night) ended this dream because I wanted to go to Tesco with my mum. Tesco! I would rather have that dream back!

Edit: It took me sooooo long to write this post. I couldn’t think of any words to go with the pictures. It’s like …  ok here are som pictures, make your own words. Enjoy! I don’t know why but my head is not on straight to day At All. Totally muddled and confused and weird. I don’t even know things like “do I want a cup of tea” or “do I want to ripple or granny?”.  Argh. What’s wrong with me today?

I’ve been quite an inside person these last couple of days, working steadily on my blanket. I’ve done 260 squares now, can you believe it? I’m running low on some yarn colours that I’m hoping to restock on Saturday, and also my wrists started to ache so I’ve put my hooks out of reach for now.

To blow some cobwebs away this morning I went for a bit of a walk. Not a huge walk, more just a long stroll really. I walked a little way along where part of this used to go, which is where my mum and me went for our snowy walk a couple of weeks ago. It looked rather different today!

The sun was low and really bright so unfortunately I have my shadow in some of the photos.

I was pleased that it was so springlike out today. The sky was blue blue blue and there were so many birds flitting round the hedgerows and singing, it was lovely. There were quite a few buds on the trees as well, although the hedgerows and plants still looked shocked from all the snow.

It was lovely, really. Several times I just stopped, and stood still and listed to the quiet and to the birds. There was a tiny bit of traffic in the distance, and the sounds of the school playground that carried a little as well, but pretty much it was just me and the silence. I do love my own company when I’m out like that. (Most people get fed up with the amount of photos I take when we go out walking!) There was a really Good fresh smell too, the smell of damp, licheny trees that are beginning to warm in the sun, the smell of mud, growing and best of all just of general outside. I do love the Northamptonshire countryside, the fields and the hedges and the trees. I love the Yorkshire countryside as well, but I think the drystone walls that break it up can sometimes look a little hard and harsh on a landscape, wheres here there are fields and hedges and gates and stiles.

I like to stop and take in the detail on walks as well, some ivy

Brambles

Gorse

Hoofprints

Perhaps these were from this inquisitive fellow?

I’m not very confident with horses - I’m quite glad he was behind a fence, although he probably could have jumped it if he’d wanted!

Despite the springlike feeling, it is still wintry outside, as evidenced by the trees. I took about a thousand tree photos today, and whilst I love each of them I thought I’d spare you them. Unless you want a whole post dedicated to my tree photos? You only have to say the word!

I love this next photo loads … it’s as if the trees are holding branches, aww.

I did my A Level Environmental Science coursework on Lichens, and boy do I wish I’d had this camera then.

That’s Xanthoria, in case you were bothered. Lichen is made up of a fungus and an algae living in a symbiotic relationship … it’s really interesting actually but I won’t bore you any further

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This is my sister whilst at university. She is training to be a journalist. Which explains the hiding in bushes, sort of. I’m glad she is spending her time well whilst at uni!

By the way, my current square count is now 240. My fingers are on FIIIIIIIIIRE! and my eyes are all goggly. Whoops. Oh and yesterday I made chocolate crispy cakes out of cheerios. Chocolate cheery cakes! Yes indeed. Time Well Spent.

Can you say rubbish photo? Whoooa yes. I will try harder tomorrow, promise.

I told myself I would wait until I’d reached 200 squares before putting another picture of this blanket on here. I reached that on Saturday, so here it is.

So. This blanket. I am UTTERLY IN LOVE with this blanket. Its wonderful and I lovelovelove making it. I am going to go to 400 squares, so doubling it widthways than lengthways. I want it to be double bed sized so it might need a few more rows each way to make it the right size. But 400 is my next target. It will be slower progress now because each row is 20 squares long rather than just ten.

*snuggles*

Oh, I have added a few more blogs to my bloglist at the side. Hello!