The end or just the beginning?

The late August Bank Holiday in England and Wales always seems to signify the end of summer, even though we all secretly hope that we will enjoy fair weather all the way through September. Many take the last opportunity to get away before the new academic year begins and the garden starts to fade as the number of new blooms don't quite keep up with the number that need dead-heading.

In some ways it has been a typical summer but in other ways it hasn't at all. When the sun has shone, I've lolled in a hammock; when the rain has poured I've baked bread.  There have been especially cool days and extremely hot ones and the rain always seems to appear just as the water butt shows signs of running dry. However, the garden seems a little confused, as am I.

Right on cue in May the tomato plants were planted out. They grew like Jack's beanstalk and began to flower; the fruit seemed slow to form but gradually grew... and then stopped...

In the middle of July, when I would expect to pick my first ripe tomatoes, they were still looking decidedly green and small. Since then they have appeared to be almost frozen in time. My heart began to sink and I made a concerted effort to eat up all the Green Tomato Chutney still languishing in the cupboard from 2014 to make space for the anticipated 2016 batch.

Decidedly green

Each evening I'd come home from work, make a cup of tea, and wonder around the garden looking for signs of ripening fruit. But nothing. Even the figs were ripening on schedule, with the first appearing in mid-August and the rest following in quick succession. I've picked 12 of the gorgeously squishy, sweet things this week alone and they still keep coming.

One modest-sized fig tree...

... producing fruit right on cue

Today's fig harvest

Just as I was about to give up hope on the tomatoes, one fruit began to show signs of orangey-life last weekend and it's now almost ready to pick. Its neighbour clearly got the message and is following suit and I've begun to see signs of others thinking about joining the party. Relief all around!

Signs of orangey-life?

Ripening for sure

Relief all round!

Oh, and the first sweet peas have also been spotted. Only about 6 weeks late! Well, better late than never. Perhaps this is a sign that this year's summer really will stretch into September. Let's hope so. But if it doesn't I can always amuse myself indoors making green tomato chutney!

Better late than never

Loafing around

The unseasonably wet and windy weather this weekend has somewhat thwarted my plans, and I know I'm not the only one with a lot of people putting off camping trips.

I managed to run some essential errands this morning without getting too wet or blown away but things seem to have settled down to an afternoon of steady drizzle with the occasional downpour. Any thoughts of venturing out of the house for a second time have definitely disappeared.

Although I tried to relax into an afternoon of reading I just couldn't stick to it and was suddenly gripped with the desire to make some bread.

So, with the Women's Olympic triathlon as my soundtrack I set about making a seeded cornmeal loaf, which is probably one of the simplest bread recipes I know, in spite of having a relatively long list of ingredients.

Pre-heat the oven to 190C or gas mark 5 and lightly oil a 1lb (450g) loaf tin.

Into a large mixing bowl sieve 175g strong bread flour (I used Dove's Farm gluten-free brown bread flour) and 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, then stir in 150g polenta, 1 teaspoon of caster sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 25g each of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, poppy seeds (reserving 1 teaspoon), and milled flaxseed (or seeds of your choice). Beat 1 egg with 150ml milk (I used almond milk) and 125ml yoghurt and add to the bowl, stirring with a wooden spoon to form a slack dough.

Transfer the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and sprinkle with the reserved poppy seeds. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 50-60 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack, although it's delicious served slightly warm.

A bag for a gift

I always like the idea of giving a gift in a gift bag but at between 80 pence and £2.50 a go it's a lot more expensive than conventional wrapping paper. I've therefore been thinking about making my own gift bags.

This weekend I had the perfect opportunity. I had a suitable size brown paper bag that I'd been given in a shop for a small purchase and had come across some left-over wallpaper. The wallpaper not only had a striking design but is thicker than conventional wrapping paper and so I felt it would hold up to being made into a bag.

I began by dismantling the brown paper bag, carefully prising open all the glued seams.

Next, I folded the paper handles out of the way and used it as a template to cut out a rectangle from the wallpaper.

Placing the paper bag over the wallpaper rectangle I then folded along all the lines of the original bag.

Re-checking with the brown paper template as I went, I used double-sided sticky tape to construct a new bag from the wallpaper.

The inside base looked a bit messy so I cut out another rectangle of wallpaper and stuck this over the bottom.  This not only hid the seams but gave a further level of rigidity and strength to the bag.

The next step was to add some handles. A few years ago I picked up a rivet set for the princely sum of £1.00. The set included 100 rivets so I wasn't expecting too much from it, and admittedly didn't get perfect riveted holes but they seemed to do the job. Lining up where I wanted the handles I punched 4 riveted holes along the top edge of the bag.

Of course, if your chosen paper is very robust you could just use a hole punch to make the holes. You could also cut your paper template about 3cm taller and fold over this margin so that your holes are punched through a double thickness of paper.

All that was left to do was to add the handles which I raided my ribbon box for.  As you can see in the photo I've a lot of ribbon! Some is left over from other projects but I also salvage ribbon from pretty much everything - boxes of chocolates, gifts, even those that come attached to the inside shoulder seams of clothes to keep them on the hanger. You don't need to use ribbon if you don't have any since buying it specially would rather defeat the object of making your own gift bag at a lower cost than buying one. Depending on the look you are going for you could use wool, raffia, string - whatever you have to hand.

If you think this all sounds like a bit of a palaver, it was all done in the time it took me to drink a mug of coffee - which I did as I went. I was pleased enough with the result to use it immediately. A friend who has been loving all my crocheted animals is about to move into a flat in a newly converted church. I thought it only right that her church flat should have a church mouse.

Wrapped and ready to go

Doing nothing - well, almost nothing

I've been learning to do nothing. It's really good for you - I read so in the paper. Although apparently, unless you are dead, you are always doing something. However, doing nothing is supposed to help boost your creativity; your brain needs the 'downtime'; you're more likely to be able to regain your own attention (whatever that means); and being busy isn't always about doing the important things in life. At least I can agree with that final point.

Mind you, I'm still none the wiser as to what 'doing nothing' really entails. For example, does lying in a hammock and reading a book count as doing nothing or do I technically have to put the book down and contemplate the sky? And what about swimming? I mean, apart from keeping count of how many lengths I've done, surely that's downtime for my brain? Or perhaps not? Or perhaps I should just not count the lengths?

Oh let's face it, doing nothing really doesn't come naturally to me. Not if I have to ask so many questions about how to do it!

So, apart from 'indulging' in lots of un-busy swimming and reading, I've also turned my attention to making some presents. Of course, the alternative to making presents is buying them but even I know that shopping cannot possibly be counted as doing nothing, so I'm just hoping that blanket stitching whilst listening to a radio drama is.

Anyway, as a result of my doing nothing, or at least as close to doing nothing as I have so far managed, I have made another of my appliquéd blankets. I'd bought the fabric about six months ago but with a birthday rapidly approaching, it finally made it to the top of the list of projects.

Having not made a blanket for ages I'd forgotten how satisfying and relaxing I find the whole process. And perhaps it's as close as I'll get to doing nothing - after reading and swimming of course!

A crocheted menagerie

My summer of crocheting is going very well indeed, which is just as well since the weather has generally been pretty miserable to date. However, I have found it very easy to while away a cloudy Sunday afternoon catching up on Radio 4 dramas whilst crocheting toy animals.

When I completed my second animal from the Edward's Menagerie collection, I was only planning to make one more. This would have seen all three 2016 babies catered for. Or at least, so I thought. That was until the glamorous grannies in the office caught wind of my new project and a couple more requests came winging my way.

As a result, I've now made three more animal toys, with the last due to meet its new owner tomorrow.

The first bunny proved so popular that it was swiftly followed by a second.

The much awaited elephant then made an appearance.

Followed this week by Winston the Aardvark.

I have one more planned before I will probably be hanging up my crochet hook for a while. Well, that is unless someone else I know happens to announce that they're pregnant! But for now, the weather is improving and it would be wasteful not to dig out the hammock and enjoy the sunshine for a few hours...

Strawberry Pot Secret

Have you ever been challenged by a strawberry pot? I mean the garden plant pot that has holes around the sides so that you can grow plants out of them as well as out of the top.

They always look lovely planted up with cascading plants but I then find them impossible to water. Watering from above invariably results in the water running out the uppermost holes in the side, never reaching the bottom; and the pot is generally too tall for it to be able to be effectively watered from standing it in a saucer of water.

Well, I am happy to now be able to share an ingenious secret watering device for just this sort of pot. It comes in the shape of a disused bit of plastic waste pipe - the sort that runs from the plughole of any domestic sink to the drain. I had salvaged one from my old kitchen before the skip was collected and it was just a few centimetres shorter than my strawberry pot.

First things first, you need to drill a series of small holes into the waste pipe so that it is entirely perforated.

Next, take your empty strawberry pot and line the bottom with gravel to aid drainage and give your pipe something to stand up in. Nestle your now very leaky waste pipe in the centre and fill that with more gravel. It should now be able to stand upright in the centre of your pot.

Now begin to plant up your pot, being careful not to get any soil into the pipe as this will just silt up the gaps between the gravel.

Once fully planted you can water the pot by pouring the water into the pipe. It then gradually seeps out of the holes you drilled into the surrounding soil. Well, that's the theory anyway. Fingers crossed it works!

I've planted my pot up with six different varieties of thyme - Broad Leaved, Orange Scented, Lemon Variegated, Foxley, Silver Posie, and Creeping Red - with some less-hardy parsley and tarragon in the top, which should be easy to replace since it's unlikely to survive the winter.

A badger for a bag

There is a club whose mascot is a badger wearing a yellow scarf. It transpires that, for a number of very practical reasons, the female members of this club all have very similar handbags and, as a result, I was asked by one of the members to create something that she could attach to her bag to make it a little more distinct. After all, it's no good arriving home, sticking your hand into your bag to retrieve your door keys, to find that you've accidentally picked up someone else's. Chances are you would also be missing your mobile phone, probably all your phone numbers, and any means to pay for a locksmith.

A badger seemed like the obvious adornment and, indeed, what had been requested. And so it was that I sat down for this month's craft club with a very particular mission.

It has been a while since I needle-felted anything three-dimensional. My first attempts had been rather tiny key rings but knowing how hard detail is to create in miniature I decided to go a bit bigger this time.

Earlier key rings for a couple of newly-weds...

...and for my rhino-collecting friend

For a whisky-loving Dad

And perhaps my most ambitious project to date - yes, it's tiny!

Fortunately I had a good source of inspiration from a book of British mammals. I've had it for years but had only unearthed the other weekend when I was having a clear out. Not only did it have a family of badgers on the cover but four pages inside with lots of different and very beautiful illustrations of this elusive creature (sadly, I've never seen one in the flesh - and alive - just on television or squished by the side of the road).

Anyway, I began by making a simple cylinder for the body and a ball for the head, always leaving loose fibres at one end so that they could be felted together.  Then came four small, relatively flat cylinders for the legs, again with loose fibres at one end to aid attachment. These were all in black. I then took a blend of cream and light grey to make a tail, in a similar fashion to the legs, but much smaller; and then two tiny black ears, each backed with an even smaller bit of white.  All these were felted together and worked with the barbed needle to get the right overall shape before adding elements of white and light grey to give the animal its distinctive markings. Initially my fellow crafters seemed surprised to see me adding grey as people often think of badgers as being black and white but my trusty field guide assured me otherwise.

I was quite pleased with the final result, the yellow scarf enabling me to securely fix in place a keyring so that it could be attached to the handbag and, hopefully, make it easily recognisable.