Attic24

Colours of Summer

rich red :: a brown paper bag of super sweet cherries from the market

pretty purply-pinks :: a jug of summery sweet williams

gorgeous green :: a vivid froth of alchemilla mollis in my little front garden

yummy yellow :: five big knobbly bobbly Spanish lemons bought to make homemade lemonade

bright blue :: morning summer sky :: 9am

 

beautiful blue :: evening summer sky :: 9pm

these are the colours of my day, the Colours of Summer.....

xxxx wishing you all a beautiful and happy midsummer Solstice, I hope your day has been full of summer colour and happiness xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ps many thanks for all your well wishes over the past few days, I'm certainly feeling a lot better although still not fully recovered yet. SO much snot, I still feel like my head is full of it! Little B is doing OK too, I think he's in the process of cutting teeth, so nothing much to worry over.

We both thank you very very much for thinking of us xxxx

 

 

Poorly

I'm poorly. And I'm feeling extremely sorry for myself. Apologies in advance if this post morphs into one huge big Pity Party.

I mean, I only have a head cold and nothing dreadful but oh boy, I do feel lousy. I'm also very tired, having had very disturbed nights with Little B all this week. I'm wondering whether he is also feeling under the weather as he has been crying a lot for no apparent reason these past few days (and nights).

Luckily Friday is the one day in the week that I keep free from planned stuff, and it's usually a day of pottering, shopping and preparing for the weekend. So today I've opened out our sofa bed downstairs and made it into a snuggle nest for Little B and me. The general idea is to spend the day doing as little as possible which sounds good in theory but i confess it's not going too well. I have optimistically put my crochet to hand, plus a gorgeous new book which arrived on Monday and has not even been opened yet. A couple of unread magazines too, but really and truly it looks unlikely that LB is going to allow me to relax and hook/read. Wishful thinking I think. 

However, I am quite good at Wishful Thinking, so I shall hope for the best. You never know. He may stop griping anytime soon and be content to lay and play beside me. Or sleep even. Yes, sleepy time would be good.xxxxxx

Little Cakes with Wings

Remember my post last week when I showed you some little fancy-pants cakes that I'd baked for my solo knit-and-natter at home? I had lots of requests for the pattern recipe (sorry, I've just been pootling about on Ravelry and my mind is on crochet patterns, although I do quite like the thought of a baking pattern!), ho hum, I've distracted myself now, where was I?? Oh yes, lots of requests for the recipe for these little winged cakes.

Not sure what to call them, J and I had a little debate about this last week actually. He tells me that in The North they are called angel cakes. And I then told him that in The South, we always called them butterfly cakes. And then to confuse things even more, my little baking recipe booklet refers to them as fairy cakes. So either way, whether you like your cakey wings to belong to fairies, angels or butterflies, the recipe is one and the same.

First you make a batch of little buns. I have an old faithful recipe which I always use, you can find it waaaaay back in my archives (March 2008, good lord, have I been gas bagging on here THAT long?)...click HERE to find it. This recipe makes eight cakes. 

 

You need to let the cakes cool completely before you start chopping them about or else it all goes hideously wrong so be patient ok? No crumbly disasters and no kitchen hissy fits.

So while you're waiting for the cakelets to cool, you can make your buttercream icing. Very easy thing to do :: into a bowl put 50g butter or margarine and 100g icing sugar.

Get jiggy with your spoon of choice and cream them together until lovely and smooth. If you're using butter and it's not very soft, cream it first before adding in the sugar.

Beat in a few drops of vanilla essence.

Now you need to get your little cakey to produce some wings. Take a sharp pointy knife and cut out a circle from the top of the cake. Put your knife in at an angle as you cut round so that you end up cutting out a shallowish disc shape rather than trying to gouge out a deep round hole, does this make sense??

Don't worry if it's not particularly neat, a rough circle shape will do fine.

Now cut your circle in half to form the two wings, then fill in the hole with a good dollop of buttercream icing.

Arrange your little wings on top of the icing with the straight sides pointing down and the roundy edges sticking up (took me an embarrassingly long time to get this right, I kept wanting to put the wings in upsidedown)

And the final touch (which I completely adore) is to dust lightly with some icing sugar. Ahhhhhhhh it is such a huge amount of fun to dust cakes!! They look so charming and pretty and so much more cakey when they've had a good dusting down!

And thats pretty much it, this recipe should provide you with some fun baking and some even more fun eating. They are just the right amount of sweetness.

My Little People love these cakes. Mind you, they are quite cruel to the angels/fairies/butterflies and pull their wings clean off before scooping out the icing with their Little Fingers. Then they wipe their sticky Little Fingers all down their clothes, the dirty little urchins. I hope you won't do that, these pretty little cakies do deserve to be eaten daintily me thinks.

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ps I do love the Silver Spoon icing sugar packet, don't you? The dinky little red tractor with it's union jack window, ploughing up sugar pink fields is very sweet indeed.

Edited to add ::: ooooooooommmmmmmmmm JAM under the buttercream you say????? Well I never, I am SO going to try this, the Little Peeps will be beside themselves :o)xx

Also am rather delighted that I shall need to put J straight on the butterfly/angel debate as these are clearly Butterfly cakes aren't they? I was right, wasn't I?? teehee! xx

A Summer Saturday

I was up early on Saturday morning, and when I say early, I really do mean very early. Like four thirty type of early. Little B has developed a habit of waking around about this time each and every morning, and although he is fairly easily settled back to sleep again for another hour or two, I'm often left wide awake. I'm trying to see it is a Good Thing cos 4.30am at this time of year is actually rather light and beautiful and full of birdsong.

So on Saturday at 5am or thereabouts I come downstairs, make myself a big mug of steaming hot tea, pick up my crochet bag and head back to bed for some peaceful very early morning tea-and-hooky time. It's absolutely blissful. I can't resist taking a photo of my granny stripe blankie laid out on the bed after I'd worked a few rows, the early morning light is really beautiful and makes the colours look amazing. Oh gosh, I am unbelievably in L:O:V:E with this stripy creation, it makes me go all giddy just thinking about it.

A little later on in the morning (around nine ish) we decide on the spur of the moment to take a quick jaunt out as the weather is especially lovely. We drive a few miles out of town to one of our favourite High Places, a place with spectacular views over the surrounding countryside. 

This is wide, expansive, open moorland, part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. There are many little verges at the side of the road for parking up your car, but nothing whatsoever in the way of amenities. Totally unspoilt.

We didn't have much of a plan for this rather spontaneous Summer Saturday trip, it wasn't a full on Outing as such. Before we left the house I had hurriedly made up a flask of freshly brewed coffee which I stuffed into my crochet basket along with a couple of mugs and some biscuits. The general idea was to get ourselves up, up, up to this beautiful High Place, breeeeeeathe in the fresh summer breezes, drink in the views, sit a while and ponder.

We have the Little People with us though, and they don't really do Sitting or Pondering in High Places. No, of course not, how insane to even think that they might! They bound out of the car like two overexcited dogs and proceed to run, jump, climb, build, throw. It's all very hyperactive for them (and J, who joins them for much of the time), whereas Little B and I opt for the under active approach to appreciating High Places.

I drink my coffee, admire the views, breathe in the air and partake in some High Up Hooky. Bloomin marvelous way to spend an hour!

I sit in the back seat of the car with my hooky on my lap and Little B to my right. We chatter together, I sing to him a little, and I marvel at how blue-blue his eyes are. Aren't they just?

Late morning now and we are back down from on high and home again, feeling refreshed and revitalised after all that fresh air. I ask Little Man if he wouldn't mind performing some Quality Control checks on my Granny Stripe blanket to see how it's shaping up. Little Man is my best/most honest critic, his judgment is usually spot on. He tells me it's not a good blankie for having near his face (not soft enough) but he likes the weight and warmth of it on his legs. He pronounces it "good". He doesn't leap about, clap his hands, exclaim over it's gorgeousness, but then he is not as bonkers as me.

 

We have a date on this Summer Saturday, a date to meet for coffee with the lovely Heather and her hubby who are visiting my home town for the day. So into town I stroll with Little B and Little Lady and we go to one of my favourite watering holes for some refreshment. Little Lady loves cafes almost as much as I do and she is well acquainted with this particular one. When we are here, she always, always drinks her drink ever so ever so fast then asks for paper and pen to do some drawing or writing. It's always the same routine. I've forgotten to bring my notebook with me though, so Heather kindly offers a page of hers.

I just love how the Little Peeps write out their thoughts, it's incredibly sweet. Can you understand what she wrote?? She's talking about two of her favourite indoor play centres (Lickle Monkey's and Fun Planet), and then about our house.....

Soft Plays

fun at licl Moncys. Fun Planit too. Kids like gowing there for FUN! It's good at both playsis.

Our House

Our house is nise and fun. BUT my bedroom is a mess. Its like a toy shop it's true.

Actually we had a good go at tidying up her bedroom on Sunday, pheww, so good to be able to see her floor again. It was getting quite hazzardous walking a narrow path through all the toys everywhere.

On Saturday is was our towns annual Gala Day. A parade with marching bands and decorated floats winding it's way through the streets to the local park where a surprisingly large and rowdy funfair had taken over.

 

It was very full on. The Little People were beside themselves with Fairground Fever, the excitement was huge.

It cost lots. So many rides and activities capturing Little Eyes, so many pleads for this and that and just-one-more. But oh it was fun!

Amongst all the noise and chaos, it was still possible to find a moment's calm...the familiar fields and hills that surround our town and park are looking radiant at this time of year, the fields golden with buttercups, the trees so lush and green. Heather and I sit a while on a picnic blanket and crochet together, such a lovely Summer Saturday-ish thing to do eh?

Later still and J has stayed at the park with the LP who refuse to come home, but I am home again and putting a sleepy Little B to bed. The light at this time of day (7pm ish) is amazingly beautiful, I sigh with pleasure at my beloved Attic view looking so gorgeous and summery in the early evening light. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, beeeeeeautiful.

Much later now, ten o'clock and J takes the (very hyper) Little Peeps back to the park to wait for dusk and the Gala Fireworks to begin. Oh my, those children are waaaaaaay beyond excited by this point in the day. I am up in the Attic when they set off, they go up in a big gang with many other neighbourhood families from our street and I can hear them all shrieking and chattering.

I sit and look out of the window and wait. Wait some more. The sky turns darker and darker and finally the first fireworks begin. I get to see them from the Attic window, and although it's not the same as being there in person, I still enjoy them a lot. Gawd, I sooooooo love fireworks, really I do. Love 'em.

Quite a day we had on Saturday.

Such a lovely, lovely day. So full of Good Things. Full to bursting.

 

And speaking of Good Things, a quick gratuitous Stripy Crochet picture to end my ramblings. Ohhhhhhhh smoochy smoochy, I do so L:O:V:E my blankie (haha did I tell you that already??)!!! Thirty seven gorgeously gorgeous stripes so far, mmmmmmm, looking good if I say so myself :o)

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Progress

Little B and I have quite a busy out-and-about schedule these days, it's not all idle cuddling and sofa snuggling for us you know. Mondays we go to Messy Hands, Tuesdays it's baby Move 'n' Groove, Wednesday mornings we meet with my out of town friend for coffee, then in the afternoon it's Baby Massage class. And Thursdays, my favourite and bestest day of the working week, is as it always has been :: Knit and Natter at the cafe. Love my Thursdays, I very rarely miss K&N cos I love it so so much.

So you can imagine how antsy I get when something prevents me from enjoying the deliciousness of Thursday cafe mornings, and I'm glad to say it doesn't happen often. I had my bag all ready to go this morning look :: there's granny stripe (xx mwah xx, I love you Granny Stripe), with the next 3 colours already selected and ready to hook. And then it transpired that really Little Lady was not well enough to go to school after all. I mean, I did feel sorry for her looking so pale and washed out and suffering with a tummy bug but it was terribly inconsiderate of her to be ill on a Thursday. I've told the little Peeps, time and time again, that they simply cannot fall ill on a Thursday, it's just not on. Tsk tsk harrumph.

Little Lady is an extremely good ill-person though it has to be said, she is very self contained and low maintenance. She either spends all day horizontal on the sofa watching films (if she is really poorly) or pootling about in her own very special Land Of Make-believe (if she is mildly poorly). Today she mostly spent her time drawing pictures and immersing herself in the land of My Little Pony.

To relieve the antsy feeling of missing K&N, I did some baking this morning. Made these rather fancy-pants Fairy Cakes with real butter cream icing. I always, always instinctively bake when the Little Peeps are poorly, I have no idea why. But today I did have a very specific reason to bake cos I had this idea......

......my idea was to have my very own Knit and Natter morning at no.24! Ta-dah!! Genius!!!

I thought that if I can't get to the cafe, then I shall try and recreate the feelings of Cafe Goodness within my own home. Yeah! So I set a tray with a mug of frothy coffee and a plate of homemade sweetness and set about enjoying some morning hooky time. 

The natter was a bit limited as Little Lady was away in the Land of Pony and Little B is not quite up to saying much yet, but we did our best.

Little Lady may be low maintenance, but Little B certainly is not. He's at a stage where he doesn't enjoy being put down for long, dislikes to be left alone. he's happiest when he's got full on one-to-one attention, preferably with lots of silly noises/singing/chatting/raspberry blowing etc. So it wasn't long before I needed to have him up on my knee, much the same as in the cafe then really, he was just being thursday-ish wasn't he?

Little B spends a good part of each day practicing how to use his hands. Grab grab grab, he will get a hold of anything that comes close enough. Toys, clothes, cloth, hair, grab grab grab. Oooooo a metal sticky thing, that looks interesting, grab grab grab. It doesn't make for easy granny striping. Progress is slow at my K&N.

But who am I to complain, I am in good company, I get to drink my coffee and eat my fancypants fairy cake, and somehow I do manage to get one whole granny row completed. It feels like a major achievement.

I'm being very very good with my tail ends here. With the granny stripe it's not possible to crochet over the ends as you go which is what I normally like to do, no, you have to weave them in afterwards. I don't find it too much of a pain so long as I do it at the end of each colour change. I go forwards with the needle one way, then darn the end back on itself the other way for good measure. Job done.

I'm really, truly in SO much love with making this blankie, it's such an utter pleasure. I'm particularly finding the play with colour hugely exciting, it's giving me plenty of heart-skippy happy moments of joy.

I've made 26 stripes so far, all randomly selected colours. I like to pick out maybe 3 or 4 colours at a time so that at the end of each stripe I pretty much have the next couple already sorted out.

Ahhhhhh such joyfulness!!!!! I feel all smoochy looking at these pictures, my fingers are itching to get back to it......

My Little People are tucked up in bed and it's my happy hooky time now, so I'll love you and leave you and see you all soon

Toodle-oo!

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Staithes

Ahhhhh the little village of Staithes, so impossibly picturesque! It's hard to believe I was here beside the sea only five days ago, it was the last place we visited before coming home on Friday. Staithes is a true gem of a place on the north east coast of Yorkshire, roughly between Whitby and Saltburn. It's one of those places that kind of tiptoes into your soul and takes root, leaves a lasting impression and a strong desire to return.

On Friday I was trying to recall the last time we were here :: we stayed here a couple of times when the Little People were teenytiny, renting a teenytiny little fisherman's cottage right down by the sea. I remember that it was my Birthday (so October then) and Little Lady was still teenytiny enough to be sleeping in a moses basket and carried around in a sling (so ooo mmm errrrr about 5.5yrs ago then)...and I have so so so wanted to return ever since.

It's a very quiet, quaint and quirky place, similar in many ways to Robins Hood Bay. You can't go rushing around when you visit Staithes, no no, you have to slow right down and take it easy. Park your car at the top of the hill and descend on foot. Take your time, enjoy a little bit of light meandering and pootling and pottering and pondering. Slowly slowly, down we go, down through the higgledy piggeldy jumble of houses and rooftops.

Ahhhhhh these beautiful, charming little houses and rooftops are hugely inspiring and heart-expanding for the likes of me. Aren't they just delightful?? I mean, you do know how very very much I just adore little houses, don't you? So you can imagine me in Staithes can't you, feeling like my heart is about to grow so big and wide with pleasure and happiness that it'll p:o:p. I am soooo delighted with being here that I involuntarily start to skip (yes truly) and luckily I am holding Little Lady's hand at the time so we end up skipping together. Yiippppeeeee, such fun!!

Descending down through the steep narrow street there are little glimpses of the sea here and there, it is indescribably beautiful, especially on such a glorious morning. These pictures were taken at about 9.30am ish so it was still quite early in the day. We peeked down little side streets, oohed and ahhed at the beauty of it all.

This is the main street in Staithes, the High Street. There are only a handful of shops on the High Street and at this early hour it's wonderfully peaceful.

It really is the cutest little place.

We are almost at the bottom of the hill now and to the right is this pretty little side street :: heart-skippy stuff for sure. Down a little bit further, around the corner beside the weatherbeaten old Crab and Lobster pub and there it is....................

..............the sun dappled sea, the dinky little beach, just exactly as I remember it from before. Nothing has changed, all is good. Breathe it all in mmmm-mmmm.

We stroll a little along the seafront and the Little Peeps run down onto the beach below to do what Little Peeps do best next to the sea :: messin around in the sand. Soon be time for Seadrift Cafe to open, it's almost ten o'clock. There are tables and chairs all set out ready on the pavement in front of the cafe and I am dreaming of a large cup of Very Good Coffee with something sweet to the side. My dream does indeed come true, and I get my v.g. coffee and cake with sea views, and enjoy it enormously.

Ahhhhhhhh I've gone all dreamy and seasidey now after writing this post! As you have no doubt gathered we enjoyed an amazing time at the coast last week and it makes me so happy to sit and write about it. Thank you as always for sharing my memories with me, I appreciate your company more than I am able to say xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Connievan Jolly Holiday

Hello, so lovely to be back! Been pootling through my photographs over the past couple of days putting together the visuals for the latest installment of Tales From The Connievan. I surely hope you're not going to get fed up with hearing about all things caravan related cos I have a feeling that this'll be a long-winded, enduring, obsessive love affair and I can't see it letting up anytime soon. I just can't get over how happy being a Caravan Owner is making me :: I am love love love love love loving it! So much!!!

We had such a fabulous Jolly Holiday last week, it was pretty much perfect. We went across to the north east coast, to a magical little place that we've never visited before called Saltburn by the Sea. So it was a double whammy for me really, as not only did we get to spend 5 whole days jollying with Connievan, but we were beside the sea too, woooohhoooooo!!!

We booked onto a very small campsite called Bunnyland (I kid you not) which was a combined small campsite/boarding kennels/cattery/rabbit breeding/bed and breakfast type farm. It was in the midst of beautiful moorland countryside, with the sea sparkling in the distance and a green and golden buttercup field given over to a very informal campsite. We rolled up with Connievan on Monday afternoon and were given a fabulous pitch in the corner of the field with uninterrupted views all around. There was a swing under a small clump of trees for the Little People, and yes there were rabbits. Lots and lots and lots of rabbits, plus a few cats, chickens and a stunning peacock too. The Little People were so happy with this setup, they spent their whole time bicycling up and down the track between Connievan and the rabbits, with frequent detours to the swings.

I didn't take that many pictures inside Connievan as she isn't particularly photogenic just yet. I did want to show you our bed though, oh how wonderful our caravan bed is! So cosy and comfy and lovely, although I do apologise for it's unmade state, I certainly didn't bother to style this picture for you did I? 

Waking up early each morning was such a pleasure...drawing back the curtains and opening the window to take in the glorious weather and the green and golden scenery was bliss. The above view was mine-all-mine as I sat in bed with my tin mug of tea each morning, I couldn't have been happier.

Saltburn by the Sea is a very charming old Victorian seaside town. The beach is huge and expansive, the sea comes in across the sands in big, rolling waves making it perfect for surfing. And considering the weather (FABulous, glorious sunshine), it was very, very quiet too.

You can see my Little Man there look, sitting in the sea just chilling by himself....

....and this is Little Lady, putting the decorative touches to her sandcastle.

Little B, wiggling his toes in the sunshine....

....and this is me look....sitting in our newly purchased (and quite brilliant) beach tent, hooking myself into a delirious granny striped frenzy complete with sea views.

 

Hooky, hooky, stripy, stripy, glance up to the see the sea, squeeeeeeeeeal with happiness, then back to the hooky. It was blissful.

Saltburn has a rather splendid pier look, it's been beautifully preserved over the years and is blessedly free of Entertainments.

You basically stroll along it and view the view. Breathe in the air and admire the rolling waves. Think salty thoughts then stroll back again. Wonderful.

Saltburn also has this :: an amazing way to get from the seafront up to the top of the cliff where the town lies. There are steps of course, but why toil up the steps when you can ride up in fantastical Victorian Style??

It was a wonderful feeling, rising gently up and up above the beach and pier below....

....sitting cosily inside these cute little painted carriages with the most beautiful stained glass windows.

The view from the top of the cliff was breathtaking.

I think Saltburn was at one time a little run down and neglected, but has enjoyed a revival in recent years. It was all beautifully designed and well kept....

....and a real pleasure to stroll about in the afternoon sunshine taking it all in.

The town itself is small and quaint and wonderful. Very ornate and pretty. Lovely swirly whirly bits. I really liked it a lot.

After a stroll about town where we picked up some provisions from the local bakery and superb deli, we made our way back down the cliff, via the steps this time. Ahhhh coastal views, you can't beat 'em, they make my heart soar.

After a day at the seaside, it was so good to return "home" to our little corner of buttercup field. The days were hot last week, and it meant that we were able to happily sit outside enjoying the sunshine well into the evenings.

Connie's table lived almost permanently outside and we ate breakfast out here as well as evening meals.

Outdoor eating was kept simple :: crusty bread, chevre goats cheese, ripe tomatoes, crisp apples...

...and chilled white wine. Connievan has a super oven and gas hob which we very successfully cooked on, but I do love the ease of picnic style food eaten outdoors on a warm evening.

After the food was cleared away, we continued to sit outdoors and indulge in a little relaxing hobby-time. Colouring, building domino runs, reading and hooking were all carried out around the table as the sun descended in the sky. It was absolutely blissful.

 

Such a wonderful week, we were all sad to see it end. Little Lady cried when it was time to leave, it was quite heart breaking. Connievan is surely helping us some build some wonderful family memories. I'm cherishing them, holding them close, full of gratitude for such happy times.

Tomorrow I'll show you another little place that we visited, so do drop by for more sea breezes....see you then xxxxxxx