Trick or Treat

I've had this recipe for quite a while, so I decided to bake it yesterday evening and take the cake into work today.  This graveyard cake seemed perfect for Hallowe'en with a cup of tea!

The cake is chocolate and iced in buttercream.  The 'soil' is made from crushed biscuits and the gravestones are ginger.  The fence is chocolate fingers, which were a substitute for Matchmakers, as I couldn't buy them here.

I was pleased with the result and it seemed to go down a treat!

Progress

This weekend, I found some time to return to my knitting.  I am getting faster at this intricate pattern and the fact that I'm not constantly unpicking rows is certainly helping! 

It is difficult to give any kind of perspective with this as it is on a circular needle, but I think it is looking good.  My only concern is a comment which was made at home "It looks a bit small..."

Luscious Lemon

I bought some beautiful organic lemons at the market this week and I decided to bake a lemon cake.  The recipe that I chose is Lemon, Honey and Yoghurt which makes a light and delicious cake.  The cake is drizzled with lemon syrup and then dusted with icing sugar.  Just perfect with a refreshing cup of tea.  Anyone care for a slice?

Christmas Cake

I bought a new cake tin because the old one had seen better days.  I searched everywhere until I found what I was looking for and finally decided to order one online, as my options were otherwise limited.

What better way to use it for the first time than to bake our Christmas cake?  The results are great and the only difficulty that I'm now faced with is preventing a certain person from sampling it! 

Frost

This was the sight that greeted me earlier in the week.  We had an overnight drop in temperature and the rooftops were covered with frost.  In the distance (just visible) were the last of the autumn colours.  With the winds that we've been having, the leaves are coming down fast now.

We've had intermittent frosts over the last two or three weeks, so autumn is definitely in the air now.

To The Lighthouse

Yesterday afternoon was bright and sunny, so we decided to head out for a drive to the Eastern Shore.  As we approached the coast, the sun disappeared behind the clouds and we saw little of it for the rest of the day until we were almost home again.

We visited a spot that we had been to previously, but not explored due to inadequate footwear for the terrain.  It was cold following the beach path, hence the layers (I'm not actually that size in reality - I was wearing a thick down body warmer under my fleece jacket!) and the sunglasses were mostly to keep the wind out of my eyes.

 

I was unaware that I was being photographed from behind!

 

This dull grey water is the Atlantic Ocean. 

The shoreline is hazardous to shipping as there are rocks visible about a mile out to sea and the beaches are littered with boulders.

 

The lighthouse was a welcome sight as we parked nearby and were glad to return to the car after a very blustery walk.

 

Stranded Knits

My latest knitting project is the Snowstar sweater from Ann Kingstone's book Stranded Knits.  It is knitted 'in the round' and this is certainly a challenging project for me, as I've not had much success at circular knitting in the past.  It also requires stranding of the yarns and I've learned a new two-handed technique, which is saving me from much frustration when I get all tangled up, as has happened on previous occasions.

Ann has some terrific designs on her website and I've already got a project list in mind, if ever I can find the time to complete my sweater.  I would like to have it finished before the onset of winter, but at about two rows an hour, it may take me quite some time.

Autumn

I've had an extremely busy week, but I did take a moment to take a photograph of this display of Autumn colour outside a bakery where I had lunch earlier this week. 

The season is well and truly underway and the leaves are magnificent.  I am hopeful that we may get out to enjoy these last days of the colours before the winds and rain arrive to strip the trees bare. 

I love these days of soft light, sunshine and still warm breezes.  It really is a beautiful season.

I Tawt I Taw A Putty Tat

We have had to reorganize things in our kitchen whilst a cabinet is in the process of being refinished.  I found a home for my mice in the pantry.  Every time that I open the door, it makes me smile to see them standing there and I keep thinking of them saying

 

'There's nobody here but us mices!'

 

I believe that this was a reference to Merry Melodies' cartoon starring Tweety Pie and Sylvester.

Harvest Mice

This is a project which was started a year ago and it has taken all this time to finish it.  The pattern was purchased through Ravelry and I thought that it was such a sweet tea cosy for autumn.

One of the reasons for the delay in completion was the great difficulty in finding any beads of an appropriate size/colour for the mouse eyes.  I bought some which I thought were black only to discover that they were actually purple once I got them home and out of the packet.  I hesitated to give them purple eyes, so I was then back to searching for black ones.

Now that it is completed, I can't actually bring myself to use it in case the tea drips on the cosy and  spoils it, so for now, I am using it for display purposes only.  I'm very pleased with the results though.