tiny happy

Hello! I hope you are very well, wherever you may be.

It's been a little while (yet again…) but I thought I'd pop in to share some things I've been working on lately. This time of year is always busy, with work and other commitments. But as of yesterday many of us got some time in our days due to a nationwide Covid lockdown. My thought go out to everyone for whom this is really tough! It's not an easy time at all.

I'm always so grateful for my craft (and supply-building tendencies haha) so I've found a little more time for making this week.

I've been listening to the audiobook of Robert Macfarlane reading his recent book Landmarks. It's a beautiful work, filled with new and old ways of looking at and articulating the natural world.

Listening to him reading seemed like the perfect time to finish this embroidered piece I started in late summer, spurred on by the racket of cicadas coming through the window. 
For this, I used some single strand hand-dyed thread and worked free-form on cotton fabric. I'm not sure what I'll do with this piece – maybe pop it in a frame? It measures about 40 x 20cms.

Having a little more time for evening walks in the hills this week, I've started to get lots of new ideas for embroidered pieces, so I'm excited about that.

Other projects on the needles include another (my third…) Vertices Unite shawl – you can see the stiped beginnings of this one in the third photo above. Here's a Ravelry link to my second finished version, which was a gift for my sister. It's such a fun knit.

I also made myself a hat for winter – a little late, as it was the fourth of these I knitted and all that rib is a bit tiresome! This one is in the loveliest clay-pink shade of Rowan Felted Tweed and I used the Purl Soho Classic Ribbed Hat (free) pattern, found here.

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Do you like the sound of apple custard cake? I did, so when I found an Annabel Langbein recipe in the newspaper for one I decided to give it a whirl. It was a hit, and didn't take any unusual or special ingredients – I love recipes like that. The resulting cake was almost like a pudding – soft and vanilla-flavoured. I served it up with plain unsweetened yoghurt but it would also be pretty good with icecream. It looks like the recipe is behind a paywall unfortunately but this one is very similar, if not the same.

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Sending you lots of love, take good care,

Melissa