<s>Wanna do a swap? Pattern for yarn/fabric/trim/whatnot… oh your know the usual.</s> gone. 🙂

I bought this pattern having been inspired by the ones I saw at A Dress A Day. I then spent the most of one day tracing the patterns (to keep the original perfect) and making a test version.

However the pattern just didn’t suit my shape. So it needs a good home.

The pattern contains all the pieces (uncut) and instructions. It’s sized 14-20.

Bust – 36" to 42"
Waist – 28" to 34"
Hip – 38" to 44"

I got this recipe from How to be a Domestic Godess by Nigella Lawson, which I nosied through while we were in Cornwall at the beginning of last month.

Anyways since we grow courgettes we always have way more than we could possible eat, so I thought ‘what the hell’ and gave it a go.

It worked out really well, so it’s only fair to share it with you lot. 🙂

Flora’s Famous Courgette Cake

60g raisins (optional)
250g courgettes weighed before grating
2 large eggs (or 3 medium)
125ml vegetable oil
150g caster sugar
225g self raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb of soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

sandwich tins or bunte tins, or even muffin tins. (The cake is kinda like carrot cake so it would work in lots of forms – bars, layered cake, buns etc.)

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4/350F/180C

If using raisins, put them in a bowl and coer with warm water to plump them up.
Wipe courgettes with kitchen towel then grate with the coarse side of an ordinary grater. When you’ve grated them, turn them into a sieve over the sink to remove excess water.
Put eggs, oil and sugar in a bowl and beat until creamy.
Sieve in flour, bicarb and baking powder and continue to bea until well combined.
Now stir in the grated courgette and add the drained raisins.
Pour the mixture into the tins (or whatnot) and bake for about 30 minutes, or until slightly browned and firm to the touch. (i stick a tooth pick in them to check.)
Leave in their tins for 5-10 minutes then turn out and let cool on the rack until your filling is ready.

Filling:

200g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
juice of a lime or lemon

Beat the cream cheese until smooth, then add the sieved icing sugar and lime/lemon juice to taste.

I think, because the cake is moist, it seems to keep pretty well. it should last for a week or so, assuming you don’t gobble it up. 🙂

I am distracted by fairisle knitting at the moment, I think in part
because I have a stash full of half balls of wool, and quarter balls of
wool, and the odd two or three left over balls from a finished project,
or from a sale that was too good to resist. Or from charity shops
(because pure wool at 50p a ball is impossible to ignore.)

Fairisle, as well as being fun and challenging to knit, also seems to
be a good opportunity to make the multiple balls go further and use up
some of the half or less balls. Thus shrink my stash, which will
justify my buying more yarn at some point, for bigger projects.

This is a sample square I made from the 20g test dyeing hanks I made a couple of weeks ago. The purples are log wood (the darker purple in the middle has iron added) and yellows are turmeric (again, the darker mustard has iron) and the off white you can hardly see in the photo is elderberries, which i think was meant to go red, but i didn’t pop the skins or something. (The white is the original yarn colour.)

It is double knit, which is too chunky for this climate and me, but it was fun practice, seeing if the colours would work together (they do, but i wouldn’t wear them).

Anyways my only barrier right now is not having a pattern I like. So I might have bought a cheap second hand copy of this book, so that I can learn more about the process (this girl has yet to steek, and that seem like the scariest thing you can do in knitting), and to get some ideas of colour designs that would work.

In the meantime I have socks keeping me busy, the flower and frost shawl creeping along, a baby jumper than i really need to get on and finish, and a need for 3 1/2mm circular needles so i can actually use a stack of my sock yarn.

But today I am off to Kew House with W and his dad. It’s a pain in the arse to get to for us, but it’s also one of my favourite place in the world. 🙂