There will be an update soon, I promise.  In the meantime, have a look at Over The Gate, a forum for a variety of home and countryside interests.

We’ve been here for a month now, we’re mostly unpacked and we’re making a start on the first part of the decorating – our bedroom.  We’re living in the spare room so we have room to manouevre.

I can’t quite visualise yet how the room is going to look when it’s finished – we know where we think we want the (as yet unpurchased furniture) but that’s as far as we’ve got. Mr BH and I re-decorated his flat last year, but we just painted the hideous mustard yellow walls left by the previous occupants in very pale neutrals, and changed the vinyl tiles on the kitchen floor.  The aim was to smarten it up to sell, not to make a home that represented both of our tastes.  It’s going to be interesting making the decisions together!

I did train, although not as much as I would have liked.  I made it to the pool at least once a week (before work, which made me feel disproportionately dedicated to the cause, not being a morning person at all) and I had one “open water” training swim.  Monday evening, half a mile swim down the Thames, followed by a picnic dinner on the riverbank.  Heaven!

One gloriously sunny weekend in August, we (Mr BH, and the Boo-parents) headed down to the south coast to explore, and to find out how well Boo floats.

We wandered around Portland, admiring the view (scenes like this make me wonder why I moved from one land-locked county to another, when I love the sea so much)

We accidentally found the Tout Quarry Sculpture Park, where there are some amazing carvings amongst the old workings.

On recommendation from some archaeologists we met at the Portland viewpoint, we drove to Church Ope Cove, where Mr BH and the parentals loafed while I pottered with the camera, and had a last training swim.  This was test of just how mad I was for deciding to swim 1 mile in the sea without a wetsuit.  It transpires I’m not mad at all, the water was lovely (definitely more bracing than warm, but comfortable as long as I kept moving)

We walked a little way up Chesil Beach (before we got blown into the pub by the wind!)

We ate a delicious dinner in a restaurant in the new Olympic Marina at Portland, then staggered back to our B&B.  The following day we were on Weymouth Beach bright and early, and I was looking rather apprehensively across the bay…

The finish is about 1/3rd of the way into the picture from the left, the dark groyne at the end of the terrace of cream houses.  1 mile.  Fortunately the sea was completely calm, and although I found the lack of landmarks to orientate myself made it feel as though I was barely moving, I completed the swim in about 35 minutes.  I was very pleased with this, and with the £400 I raised for a cause very dear to me.  I am planning another one next year…

Post-swim, we wandered around Weymouth in the sunshine, before heading home for a long sleep!

There has been some knitting:

I still don’t put my projects on Ravelry, but I have spent more time on there recently trawling for patterns.  My queue is now so long that I doubt I would get be able to knit all the projects if I gave up work and knitted full-time until my fingers seized with arthritis, but on the plus-side I am ploughing through my stash at a respectable rate.  There is now some space in the Box of Doom, which is just as well, as I will be embarking on a baby-blanket knitting project soon (no, not for me!) and I’ll need some room to store it in-progress.

First, a modification of Eden’s Eve (I knit the yoke in stocking stitch, not garter, to better complement the colour changes in the yarn.  Also added a border, just picked up all the edge stitches and cast them off again on the next row).  It’s Wendy Fusion in Anise (discontinued now I think) and some white acrylic.  A well written pattern in a good range of sizes (with the boy’s version included too) so it was worth paying for.  Gifted to a friend’s little girl.

Next, stash-busting some Peter Pan DK.  I don’t know any baby boys of the right size, so this is currently in the Box of Doom awaiting a recipient.  Pattern is Sweet Baby Sweater, I think my only modification was to knit the button band as I went along, instead of as an afterthought.

Finally, a Hitch-hiker scarf for me, in Schoeller + Stahl sock yarn, bought ages ago to make a phone sock for Mr BH.  Not my usual colours, but I have worn it several times, it’s a useful design and it co-ordinates with a surprising number of items in my wardrobe.

And the customary headless-Boo shot:

There has been some baking:

A bumblebee cake for a colleague – rather hastily thrown together… My first attempt at baking a cake in a Pyrex bowl, and it worked very well.  This is my usual chocolate mud cake, I used the quantities for an 8″ round split between two bowls and baked until it seemed cooked.  Iced with butter-cream and more additives than I care to think about, wings are white chocolate.

I bought a macaron/macaroon recipe book just because…brightly coloured and sweet, what’s not to like?  Had my first attempt a few weeks ago – not perfect, but not bad (if I do say so myself!).  This is what they were supposed to look like (caramel flavour):

This is what they actually looked like:

The book takes you through each stage with a detailed description, then lets you loose on the various flavour combinations.  The shells are mostly just almond flavoured, with appropriate colouring.  The variety comes from the filling – in this case it should have been a homemade caramel but I cheated and used Dulche de Leche from a can…

I will attempt some more soon – ideally I need to get some bigger baking sheets, rather than the trays I currently have.  I used a nozzle on my piping bag which was a little large, next time I will just snip an appropriate amount from the end of the bag.

There has been some tie-dyeing:

A friend recently had an 80s themed party.  As you may know, Mr BH and I take fancy dress a little too seriously.  I also have a slight shoe fetish, which given my day job and the practical, outdoors nature of my hobbies, doesn’t get indulged very often.  My outfit was designed around a pair of particularly lovely fuchsia pink stilettoes – these were not a novelty purchase, but as you can imagine, they are limited in their day-to-day usefulness!

So…pink stilettoes, black leggings, over-size pink earrings (these were purchased for the occasion, I do like dangly earrings but silver and artistic is more my usual style), back-combed hair, pink nails and lips, all sorted.  But what to wear on top?

1) Buy a cheap XXL white shirt.

2) Carefully scrunch it into a bizarre shape with multiple elastic bands and bits of string

3) Assemble fabric dye (I used Dylon in an appropriately lurid shade of “Flamingo Pink”), salt, scales, jam thermometer (so far only ever used for dyeing, never for jam-making)

Don’t use a saucepan you really love.  This one will forever be slightly flamingo.

4) Vaguely follow the instructions on the Dylon, I think it recommends stirring for 15 minutes then soaking for 45.  I stirred for 15 minutes, then panicked that I’d lose all the definition and started rinsing.  I recommend doing this in the bath.
5) Do a happy dance that the process has worked so far.  Rinse, spin and dry.

6) Modify – I made a slash neck which turned out to be indecently slashed, so added some ribbon straps to hold it up.  This had the added bonus of making the whole garment sit about 3″ lower than it had with the original neckline, which helped to cover my backside.  Since I went through puberty, I prefer to only wear leggings with substantial top garments that come to mid-thigh, otherwise I feel like I’m exposing myself.  This one was a little outside my comfort zone, length-wise!
It worked surprisingly well, and was fun to do – although I don’t think I will be doing it again – as retro as my taste in design can be, the 80s aren’t really a decade that gave much worth repeating.

There was also a yarn-dyeing escapade in June, hosted by a friend from the Thursday night pub knitting group I attend when I can.  It was a very entertaining day, but sadly my dyeing was pretty poor and I ended up with nothing worth knitting up (and therefore no photos worth blogging!).  It wasn’t completely negative though, as I have a great idea for a colour-scheme for another Hitch-hiker scarf, in bright tropical/parrot shades.  I repeated one of my attempts at home with Dylon (instead of the food dyes previously used) and some lovely Cashmerino/Silk which worked better, and I have already knitted that up.  It’s a gift for a friend, so I will post pictures once I’ve given it to her.

I’ve learnt that black is impossible to achieve with food dyes, and difficult to get with Dylon – I think if you left the yarn to soak for the recommended time it would give you a good black, but the shades of grey into black I was hoping for came out more lavender coloured.  Maybe next time I want that effect I will try over-dyeing purchased grey yarn…

There have been some outings and makings in July too, but I will save those for next week – there’s only so much WordPress/Picasa I can take in one session!

Mr BH and I are currently embroiled in the process of taking on a much bigger project – it will be much blogged about so we can keep track of progress, but knitting, baking and outings may be put on hold for a little while as this project is going to be a major thief of time and money!

Making use of our National Trust membership with a visit to a local stately home.  It was too nice to go inside, so we just admired the architecture…

…and wandered through the gardens…

…taking photos of the pretty flowers…

The following weekend we went for a dinner-picnic…

…flew the kite…

(that’s Mr BH, by the way, not me)

…and enjoyed the late-evening sun…

With a sudden burst of energy, the same weekend we walked a 10-mile circular route, through pretty villages…

…across a stream…

…over a field…

…through some woods…

…across a meadow…

…along another stream…

…under some tall trees…

…and past a variety of pretty flowers…

There has also been quite a bit of knitting going on, as well as some caking, and all the usual day-to-day working and house-work and the tedious business of trying to sell one’s flat.  Anyone want one?

This is the pattern:

I modified it slightly – I knit the actual rabbit in Sirdar Snowflake (finally finished all of this yarn, woo!), his legs in Sirdar Country-Style, and his jumper in Sirdar Crofter.  (Other brands of yarn are available…).   His clothes aren’t detachable (as per the pattern) but  I added cuffs to the trousers and the hem, neck and cuffs of the jumper to make him a bit more 3-dimensional.  I also knitted him in the round, instead of in flat pieces.  He’s much taller than I was expecting, about 18″, and although he was fun to knit once, I don’t think I’ll be doing it again.

My version:

]]> http://boohound.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/a-belated-easter-bunny/feed/ 0 boohound rabbit pattern rabbit http://boohound.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/the-wonderful-thing-about-cake/ http://boohound.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/the-wonderful-thing-about-cake/#comments Sun, 08 May 2011 20:28:14 +0000 BooHound http://boohound.wordpress.com/?p=280 Continue reading →]]> …is that it can be baked for any occasion.  Birthdays, weddings, Christmas, of course, but what about other occasions?

Summer is on the way, and I’m spending the weekend with my lovely Mum, who always takes good care of me:

My Dad has walked 900km, raised over £1,000 for charity, and I’m very proud of him:

To the person who told me “it’s just cake” – wash your mouth out!

We started in Montford Bridge at 10am, stopped for lunch near Leaton at 12pm, and arrived at Frankwell in Shrewsbury, 12 miles away, at 2.30pm.

It was a lovely sunny day, and so peaceful on the river – we only saw two other boats towards the end of our trip.  The river was very shallow as we had so little rain, but we still saw some fish (little tiny ones).

We need to learn more about steering, but as soon as we have some more storage space I think we will be investing in a canoe of our own, to use on the Thames locally, on the Severn when we visit Shropshire, and on lakes, rivers and estuaries on our UK holidays.

First, only use suitable materials.  This fleece had been Approved by Molly, which means it is highly rated for comfort!

You will need fleece in at least two colours, matching thread, and something to pad the beds with – I used thermal lining for curtains, as that’s what I had handy.  You could use wadding, more fleece, or an old towel or duvet.  I used a sewing machine because it would have taken aaaaages to do the applique by hand (if your sewing is as dodgy as mine!).  I also used some iron-on interfacing, which gave the fleece a bit more structure and was easy to trace the outline onto.  Ironing onto fleece, especially ribbed fleece like this, needs to be done with care though (take your attention off it for a second and you will end up with iron marks on your pet bed, not a good look!).

Spread everything out on a large table…

Choose your design – I wanted to decorate the beds with silhouettes of the animals they were for, but alas, I cannot draw.  As usual, Google was my friend, and I managed to locate exactly what I wanted.  I printed off the pictures A4 size, drew a grid over them…

…then scaled them up to A3 size…

…then had one of these while I figured out how to turn the drawing into a personalised pet bed.

I traced the outline of each dog onto the iron-on interfacing…

…then laid the interfacing onto the fleece, and cut out the silhouette.

The next step was a bit technical, and slightly nerve-wracking, so no photos – I fiddled around with the sewing machine to get the right settings, and appliqued the silhouettes and initials onto a single layer of the background fleece with a narrow, close, zigzag stitch.

I next machine stitched the decorated fleece, a plain backing piece of fleece and the inner padding together along 3 sides, turned them right side out, and top-stitched all round the edges to finish the beds.

A green one, for a Border Terrier cross called Hendrix:

A red one, for a Labrador called Sasha:

A blue one, for a Lurcher called Flash:

And last but not least, a purple one for a little cat called Magic:

Friday:
A little bit of housework, a visit to a local village-by-the-river (unimpressive…), followed by a pint (Coke for me, something a bit more rustic for Mr BH) and a stroll by the aforementioned river.  Lovely, peaceful, but too cold for a swim – maybe on our next visit.  We’re very lucky to live in such a pretty part of the world.

Saturday and Sunday:
A little light DIY, in the form of ripping up the cracked, stained vinyl tiles on the kitchen floor…

…consuming some hot cross buns to keep our strength up…

…and laying smart new vinyl tiles.

This productive domestic activity was interspersed with the consumption of much BBQ-ed food, kindly cooked for us by family and friends as sadly we have no outside space (yet).  I baked some speedy cupcakes as a thank-you for the tasty food.

Monday:
A walk across the fields…

…to a little village with a church…

…for a delicious pub-lunch with some friends, and a chance for their rather bouncy Labrador to cavort in the ford…

It was a wonderful weekend…and look what we’ve got now!  Another four-day weekend!  I wonder what we’ll do with this one (apart from blogging…)