Simple Ice Cream Recipe

A friend of mine gave me this really simple recipe to make ice cream. You don't need an ice cream machine or any other fancy equipment. All you need is a mixer and a large tupperware or another type of sealable freezer dish. If you don't have a dish that has a lid on it, don't worry aluminium wrap works just as well as a cover.

Ingredients:

2 packets of cream (about 500ml total)

1 can of condensed cream (about 500 ml)

Whip the cream together until it's the consistency of whipped cream (without the sugar) then add the condensed milk and mix a little longer until it's the consistency of mousse.

Pour the liquid into your container and freeze it.

Like I said, really simple. Of course this is just a basic "vanilla" type ice cream, if you want you could add some chocolate powder to make it chocolate flavour, or strawberry flavoured either with fresh strawberries or powder (the Nesquick kind, the one you add to your milk). For the one I made, I added Oreo biscuits which I'd crushed into tiny pieces and then mixed into the mixture with a spoon before putting it into my container. I'm definitely going to be trying it with some fresh blackberries this summer. Enjoy

Yarn Dyeing - Helen Deighan Dyes (Rinse Water)

I used the rinse water from dyeing the 100% Blue Faced Leicester yarn from Tall Yarns to dye some undyed wool. I didn't have time to undo the ball of wool, so I dyed it as is and left it over night. The following morning I carefully squeezed out all the excess water and put it out to dry for the better part of the day (it was nice and warm outside so the outside dried fairly quickly) before unraveling it carefully and hanging it by the fireplace on a hanger to dry out further. By the next morning it was nice and dry.

Lara at 4 months old

Knitted Purse in Rowan Felted Tweed

This is a little purse I knitted from Simply Knitting Magazine issue 65. I still need to cut and sew the lining for it and then piece it all together, so you'll be seeing it once it's completely finished.

Rowan Felted Tweed - Seafearer (170)

3.25mm needles

Prym purse handle

Yarn Dyeing - Helen Deighan Dyes

Yarn Dyeing - Coffee

Ovelha Negra Socks No. 3

Pair no. 3 of the Ovelha Negra Socks. I've almost reached the point that I don't even need to look at the pattern anymore, I guess I'll get there in another couple of pairs.

Yarn used:

Regia 4ply Kaffe Fassett Easter

3mm needles

Ovelha Negra Socks No. 2

Here are my second set of socks using the pattern I got from the sock workshop I did at Ovelha Negra last month.

Yarn used:

Regia 6ply Mosaik Color - Papagei

3mm needles

Yarn Dyeing - Blueberry / Cherry Tea

Used two bags of Blueberry Tea and one bag of Cherry Tea to dye 30g of wool. The actual colour is more heather than shown in the photo, will still need to think what I'm going to be using it for as it's a very small amount.

Yarn Dyeing - Wild Water Mint Leaves

This weekend I decided to try some more dyeing. This time I used about 280g of the white wool I have lying around to dye with Wild Water Mint Leaves (plenty of them at the farm). This time I mordanted the yarn first using alum powder seeing as I'm going to be using this yarn for socks most likely, as my mum is really enjoying the two pairs I've knit her already.

The colour came out a yellowy green which I'm really liking a lot, so I'll use about 100g for a pair of socks for my mum and the rest I might just use to make a cute little purse featured in Simply Knitting issue 65 (pg 61)

Jada - Update

This is just a quick progress photo of Jada. I love this Lenpur Linen, it's just lovely to work with. I only have another 3 pattern repeats to do (18 rows) before I reach the end of the main piece and then I'm only left with adding the ribbing on the sleeves, sewing it all together and the ribbing around the whole bottom piece.

Best Friends - Cats - Finished

Yarn Dyeing - Stinging Nettles

Having 12 skeins of white undyed wool (left in the picture) lying aroudn the house I decided to try my hand at dyeing using natural products. Seeing as they are plenty of stinging nettles around the farm, I picked enough to fill a aluminium kettle (capacity of about 1.5 liters) and then added some fresh spring water from the pond that was overflowing. I boiled the nettles in the water for about an hour, removed all the leaves and plant matter left, making sure to sieve it to have minimal particles left in the water. I had about 15-20g left over from a pair of socks I'd knitted and added that to the water after it had cooled down, and then brought it back to the boil for another hour. At the end of that, I left the wool to cool in the water and when it was nice and cool I gently squeezed out any excess water and then hung it out to dry during the night. Seeing as it was so very little yarn, I decided to make a nice little bag/purse for putting all my stitch holders in and then used the original yarn (white) to sew some little flowers on it.

Ovelha Negra Sock

Regia 6ply - Nordic

3mm DPN

pattern: Ovelha Negra / Xana

Left over yarn used to make two mini socks

Jada from Rowan's Lenpur Linen Collection

After having finished the toe-up socks for my mum last week, I could no longer resist JADA from Rowan's Lenpur Linen Collection book I'd bought in December at Ribbels last year while I was stopping over in Holland. While I was in Australia I wrote the owner an email requesting the book and the yarn in the green colour as shown in the picture and in Lagoon (balls of yarn shown in photo). When I finally got to the shop on the 4th of December, I didn't like the green colour (might have something to do with the poor lighting due to the bad weather outside), so instead I bought Laggon which is a gorgeous colour. I'm about halfway through knitting this piece. The Lenpur Linen yarn is lovely to knit with, really soft and easy to handle and glide off the needles (50g = 115m/126yards and is made from 75% Viscose Lenpur 25% Linen), I'm using 4mm circular needles and then the pattern calls for 3.25mm needles also, but as I don't have those in circular I'll either be using a 3mm or a 3.5mm circular needle (any ideas/advice on which I should use will be welcome). I'm hoping to have it finished in another week or so, and who knows I might be able to start using it shortly as the weather seems to warming up finally.

There's plenty more patterns in the book I want to make, but I'm going to probably substitute the yarn for some other Rowan yarn as my LNS doesn't stock the Lenpur Linen (yet).

Sock Workshop at Ovelha Negra

As mentioned in my previous post I went to a workshop at my LNS - Ovelha Negra to learn how to knit a sock properly. Well Xana, our teacher, had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare the workshop. She'd made little books with the pattern we would be knitting during the workshop (the paper in the background); she'd cut all the sheep shaped yarn holder out of pretty tough cardboard and wound all the yarn on it (don't you just love the green colour, will need to ask if there is any more of this yarn available); then out of MDF type wood she cut out a foot/leg shape and added a coat of varnish so that we can use it to dry our socks on for them to retain their shape (not in the photos); she also made the goody bag (photo below) from scratch including the embroidery on the front and Ovelha Negra donated the contents.

So I arrived at about 14.45, only 15 minutes before we were supposed to start and as I walk in, the lights go out, luckily it wasn't too dark a day, but we ended up getting candles and lighthing them as the afternoon wore on.

Well the goodies in the bag were two balls of Regia 6-ply sock yarn, colour shade Nordic, a set of 5 Addi DPNs in wood (lovely and soft, fantastic to work with) and of course a pattern for a medium sized woman's foot. I promised myself not to start it yet as I still have so much stuff to finish, but I just couldn't help myself, and so now it's been delegated to lunchtime knitting, in other words it only comes out at lunch time at the office. Having only started it yesterday, I've already managed to reach the part of the heel flap on the first sock, that's how quickly the yarn knits up, and the needles really help a lot also.

The sock we knitted in the workshop won't actually fit my foot as I was running out of yarn and we were all running out of light (the lights eventually came on around 19.00 when we were just about to leave). It's a cute little sock though, and I'll probably hang it up somewhere around the house as a reminder of the workshop. Xana was a great teacher, and trust me seeing as the instructions are all in Portuguese I really needed her help as I don't read patterns in any language other than English. Ovelha Negra also deserves a big thank you for hosting this workshop and giving us this lovely yarn and needles to make our first pair of socks. I learned a lot, loads of neat little tricks and from now on I won't be afraid of knitting socks, and I'll get them to look like socks and not deformed things like my first attempt.

Toe-Up Socks

This is the first ever toe-up sock pattern I tried (freebie from internet - http://wendyjohnson.net/blog - generic toe-up pattern). I knit the first up in an afternoon and the matching pair in two evenings. I made them from some wool I'd bought in a flea market/yard sale years ago in Holland (I believe it was at a old people's home in Leiden), and it was a whole box full of this yarn in several colours. Each "ball" is approximately 100g and it was enough for me to make 1 pair of socks and still have some left over. I used Pony size 3mm Bamboo needles which were lovely to use. My mum was the lucky recipient of these socks as she had a hysterectomy at the beginning of March and was stuck at the hospital for 4 days. She didn't use them in the hospital though because she didn't want to get them dirty, however, she's been using them ever since she's been home, and now of course I need to make a lot more. I offered to make some for my gran, but she said she had so many socks still to be used at home that it really wasn't worth it. My aunt, however, didn't have any such problems in saying that yes she definitely wants a pair also. However much I loved knitting these though, I really wanted to try knitting a sock that didn't come out looking deformed like my Kuogi sock, and so I decided to go to a workshop at a LNS (but more on that in another post). Well I'll be at the farm again this weekend and I'll be bringing some more of this yarn home with me to start on knitting some more socks.

VW Beetle

This is my favorite car. I have an every day car, but this is definitely the one I enjoy driving the most. Sure it has no power steering, no radio, is really heavy to drive and makes a hell of a lot of noice, but I just love it. This car is from October 1968 and used to belong to my maternal grandfather. When he was no longer allowed to drive he mentioned selling it, but I told him that no way was he allowed to sell it, because I wanted it, hey I grew up watching Herbie movies. My granddad never did sell it, and it sat in a garage gathering dust and rust. When I started working I started saving up for two things, buying a house and totally renovating my little VW Bug. Well we housed the car at one mechanic, but he ended up ripping me off and stealing parts I'd bought (well my dad had bought for me). So then my godfather mentioned to his mechanic (who is a strictly MG guy) that I had this little Bug that needed a lot of TLC, and he said he'd do it for me. At first though he was like "What's a young girl like you want with this old falling to pieces car". My response, I love it and it belonged to my granddad (he'd sadly passed away in 2001 and never saw the car the way it is now). Well, after 2 years of working on this car, he finally asked me when I wanted the car back because he needed the space in his garage as he'd just bought a whole load of old MG's he was going to be fixing up. So he finished it for me and then I got to drive it while I was on vacation in Portugal. Now I'm here permanently and every time there is a sunny day (it doesn't do to good with wet roads), I take the Bug out for a spin. I get compliments from everyone, young and old. Actually a neighbour of my gran's who remembers the car the way it used to be (beige/grey color) commented on it to my gran one time I was visiting her, and she's like, yep it's my car, and then corrected herself saying that it's really my car.

Believe it or not, but the car is about 95% in it's original condition, there's a back piece over the wheel that had to be replaced because when my granddad bought the car it was already secondhand and the previous owner forgot to mention he'd crashed into something or other and had the dent fixed, but this made the metal weaker and over the years rust completely ruined the rest of it. The engine is 100% genuine except for the springs, they also disintegrated due to rust. I chose the color, because I love blue and I think it's just perfect. I'm hoping to join the "Circuito da Boavista" Oldtimers next year, now that I've finally registered the car as a classic/oldtimer. (www.circuitodaboavista.com - for info)

Kuogi Socks - Finished

I've heard all sorts of comments about how disproportionate this sock looks, but I guarantee you, it fits perfectly. I'm just finishing off the second sock, just the toe decreases to go and then I'll try take a photo of the socks on my feet so you can see that they do really fit perfectly well.

Actually despite the looks, I've already had requests from my aunt and mum to make them some, although they think that it's a lot of work, actually I averaged 1 week for the first sock, and am doing the same for the second sock. So for a pair of socks, I guess it's just two weeks total.

Well I'm off for a long weekend (4 whole days) at my parents farm. It's carnaval on Tuesday next week, and we've closed the office on monday, so no getting up early for 4 days, woohooo. Also I get a lot of time to finish off the second sock, project 128 and I've already started knitting the Bernat Mystery Afghan KAL (freebie on the bernat blog - www.bernat.com/blog), so I'll be working on that and I'll have some progress shots for you next week.

Have a great weekend everyone

Project 128 - Update 3

So this is as far as I got yesterday evening, after working on it for part of Saturday and Sunday. Had to help my grandma most of the time walking around. She had a nasty fall at the market on Saturday, and pulled a muscle in her upper leg, and now she's having a hard time walking around. Of course I also played with my dogs, and my aunt came over on Saturday to check on my gran and she brought Lara along who got to meet all our dogs. We were worried about Jojo as she's usually quite nasty around other dogs and people she doesn't know, but she sniffed Lara and then ignored her the rest of the time. Dakota on the other hand wouldn't leave Lara alone, she kept sniffing her and she was constantly drooling, she wasn't looking at Lara as food, but she wanted to take care of her, it was really cute.

Ok, it's late, I need to go to bed and get some beauty sleep, another full week ahead of me. bye for now