mumblings

I saw a really lovely necklace in a favourite shop but it was really expensive so I figured I’d have a go at making my own. I had bought some lovely beads in Cardiff but for the life of me couldn’t find them when I got home and wanted to do something with them. I guess it might have had something to do with being distracted with a kitten or two that month. I was having a tidy up recently and found them again – hurrah!

I knew vaguely what I wanted so had a nice time fiddling about with the different silver beads I already had. My plan was to make a part pearl, part crystal bead, part metal bead double-stranded necklace. I didn’t have that many silver-coloured metal beads of the type I liked that seemed to go with the beads and pearls and couldn’t really find any nice metal beads in the shops locally and the ones on the web had photos which made it difficult to tell what they would look like with the beads and pearls I’d already bought.

Eventually I came up with this idea for some earrings to go with the double-stranded necklace I’d planned and the plan started to come together.

It wasn’t long until someone came to help

or was it to hinder?

Tamyra is in the habit of stealing jewellery and taking it off to play with. I keep finding earrings and necklaces all over the place. She knows she shouldn’t have them so takes them when she doesn’t think I’m looking and then I find her playing with them later on. I’m a bit worried she will swallow something so have had to resort to keeping it all well out of reach in another room (thank goodness she doesn’t have opposable thumbs or I’d be in trouble) but she does keep going back to where they were before to look for what else she can steal. I did find where she had taken the beads to eventually

and managed to finish what I’d intended. I’d even managed to have enough to make a bracelet. I used a nice clasp I’d also bought in Cardiff so was really pleased with what I’d achieved.

I even managed to make some earrings to go with a necklace I’d already made for my friend O’s birthday

which in turn inspired me to plan out another necklace with some nice stones I’d bought last year and hadn’t really thought of what I was going to do with them.

I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

Thankfully Sirius was more interested in watching cars and people out of the window as two small kittens trying to “help” would have been quite a handful!

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Thank you very much for all of your lovely kind words about Merlin. It has been a very hard time and very sad too so blogging has fallen by the wayside a bit. I thought it would be nice to share some lovely joy now and here is a lovely package friends Chris and Jeanne sent for my birthday. Thanks, Chris and Jeanne – you’ve really brightened up a very bleak time.

Lovely yarn, a light-hearted book (already devoured), a stitch marker (always handy) and a HUGE bag of Bugles. Joyous

Sirius has been doing his bit to cheer us up by doing some amateur acrobatics. Here he is at the top of the doorframe chasing spiders.

He’s a funny boy.

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Merlin was put to sleep just before 11 this morning. He was purring right up until the end and the vet said that he had had a massive tumour on his liver. I will miss him

but pao will miss him the most as he was pao’s cat. Merlin made it very clear which one of us he preferred and if he had a choice he would choose pao’s lap to sit on.

He was pretty grumpy and not really much of a knit-wear model but this photo of him wearing a preemie hat is certainly a one-off.

He was a champion sleeper and he loved lying next to you when you were in bed. If you went up to bed, he’d be there ready to sleep purring away. He had such a deep purr it would send you off to sleep. pao has been known to have had to have the odd afternoon off work because Merlin had purred and sent him off to sleep. He was a good companion when you were feeling low or ill because he would lie on the bed with you for hours and hours.

Merlin and Ophelia came together and it is sad that both of them died this year together. Merlin started to look a lot older right after Ophelia died in March. This photo was taken just before the cancer really started to affect him taken in early July. We never imagined that just a month later we would be saying goodbye.

Merlin spent a lot of time at the vet and much of his life with us with a lampshade on his head. It was amazing as we thought he was going to die a lot sooner but his stubbornness meant we got three years longer than we imagined as he was diagnosed with a tumour back then. Even this morning, he was fighting not to get in his basket even though he was quite tired. He let me hold him which was quite rare and carry him home from where he wandered to last night. For his vet, it is a double tragedy as Merlin was a favourite patient but please keep him and his wife in your thoughts and prayers as his only son died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage last Thursday. We were all crying.

This is how I’ll remember him in this photo pao took of him. Lying in the garden, basking in the sun.

Good night, Merlin.

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Happy Birthday, Sirius! One year old today Is he still a kitten or does turning one making him a cat?

Discuss.

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Sooooo, I kind of went a bit AWOL there. Sorry for that – it’s been a difficult time but I won’t go into that. Instead it is time for a Saturday morning bullet post.

• Slipped discs. Part of my AWOL-ness is because pao has slipped a disc and it is dreadful pain. Another couple of friends who have had this have told me it is VERY VERY painful. Mostly pao has been going to work as much as he can as per doctor’s instructions but it is not good.
• Knitting. We went to C Wool in Broadstairs (more on that in another post with photos as it is a very very nice shop) on our wedding anniversary and I scored some half price Rowan Cashsoft Aran gifted me by pao and his nan. I’ve been knitting a February Lady – I love this pattern and have been glued to my needles.
• Knitting again. I knitted like mad and finished my Stormwater Shawl (pics to follow once I’ve blocked it)
• Baking/cooking. I’ve committed myself to make a friend’s daughter’s wedding cake. (Yes, I am a crazy lady) In order to do this, I’ve got to empty the freezers out to make room for the cupcake containers which are going to contain the wedding cakelets. My friend and I have been scouring ebay for a suitable stand and finally scored one this week for a reasonable price. Yay!
• Gardening (definitely needs a post of its own). There has been a lot of heat-sapping HOT sun (yes, HOT sun has been felt in the UK – now we all need a collective lie down due to accompanying humidity) which makes things grow like crazy so have been busy pinching out etc.
• Reading. pao and I are part of a book club and we are really Yes, Man by Danny Wallace this month. I haven’t actually started it yet because I’ve been distracted by The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson – that is one great book so far. pao has already read all three books in his Millennium trilogy. I’ve been reading it slowly, enjoying it but I’d better get on and read the book group book as pao will want it soon so he can read it in time.
• Kittens. It is very hard to take yourself seriously when you have kittens. Tamyra is extremely loving and will sit on your lap and purr at you for hours at a time. Sirius has been pouncing kung-fu style so it is hard to be too sad when that pair are around.

Any how, even though it is Saturday. I’m up early ready to get busy again.

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I was inspired by Rachel Eats to try making some pasticcini di mandorlo. They remind me of the ricciarelli my student days in Siena – a bit of a sad time as my mother had died earlier in the year but also full of good memories of big church meals together on Sundays and contrade parades. There was a shop on the Via di Citta where I lived the first month which sold these and I remember my first taste of these and marvelling at how different they were from the kinds of biscuits we had in England. Nowadays, we do have them almost readily available here in the UK but it was nice to find a recipe to make them myself and re-create that heady smell of cooking almonds in the house.

Here is my take on her recipe:

300g ground almonds
200g icing sugar (plus more for dusting and rolling out)
2 eggs
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tbsp Amaretto Disaronno
Flaked almonds to decorate

Preheat oven to 180C.

Mix ground almonds, sugar, eggs, lemon zest and Amaretto together in a bowl. With your hands covered in icing sugar, roll out mix into balls.

Press an indent into each ball and place a flaked almond into the indent.

Bake in oven for about 15 minutes until brown.

Rachel says they should keep in an airtight tin for a few weeks but round here a few days will suffice

particularly when there are kittens who might be really attracted to the mix.

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I am so happy with these socks. They are almost a complete match and my first pair knitted in continental style. They are a little weird as they are on a slant but I like them.

And apparently Merlin does too! Have a lovely weekend!

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There is a lovely tea room in Canterbury called Tiny Tims which I like to visit on occasion and they make these amazing scone/cake things called Plump Pilgrims. We were having visitors on Sunday and I thought it would be nice to have something with our cup of tea.

I found the recipe for these Yorkshire Fat Rascals in English Traditional Recipes which sounded similar. Replacing the butter with margarine seems to have made them lighter. I’d run out of cherries so I substituted chopped apricots which were a nice addition. I also left out the almonds. There is an alternative recipe on the Waitrose website Mine didn’t have any spice in but I bet they would be nice with spice.

B brought these gorgeous roses from her garden. They smelt amazing!

Talking of rascals, Merlin could teach the kittens a thing or two. He is looking old next to those young ones.

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We’ve got Joey staying with us again

and Sirius was straight in to reacquaint himself but Tamyra wasn’t all that interested

until they had been properly introduced.

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Susie came round last Sunday night and we had a go at making some coconut creme croquembouche. The coconut creme was rather fiddly to make so I was really glad that Susie was here to help as you really did two pairs of hands to make sure things were added and didn’t curdle. She did a lot of stirring of the choux pastry. We went through a lot of eggs!

The method described of piping lumps of choux onto parchment didn’t seem to work so I got out some eclair pans which I’d gotten in a sale once. A friend of mine told me yesterday that our mixture should have been a lot stiffer so we’ll bear that in mind for next time.

I know now that they rise quite a bit so will just make half the mix next time.

They looked mishapen but were utterly delicious when they were filled with coconut creme and drizzled with chocolate. I used some Supercooks chocolate cake covering which seem to be very nice with the coconut creme.

Tamyra slept through the excitement but was quite interested in the coconut creme.

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