Low Barns Nature Reserve

We decided to pop off to Low Barns Nature Reserve a few days ago to make the most of a spell of good weather.

The reserve is in Witton-le-Wear in Bishop Auckland, County Durham and is a lovely place to walk and bird watch.

They have a really good cafe too and the food is excellent.  Obviously at the moment they have closed the seating area but are still providing outdoor eating which was perfect for us.

We spent a happy couple of hours enjoying nature and felt totally recharged when we left.

De-stressing with Art

My first attempt 

I’m in the throws of a period of stress in my life. This has been caused through a long bout of difficult working conditions. I work in a supermarket and also as a Slimming World consultant. So as you can imagine on the one hand I am a key worker with all that that entails plus fifteen weeks ago we had the carpet pulled from under us when our Slimming World groups were closed literally overnight due to the Corona epidemic. I then had to start running my groups virtually which was stress on a whole new level.
I am just about to complete a forty two and a half hour working week at the shop and what with a lack of sleep, nausea and absolute exhaustion I thought I’d enjoy something very simple and a very gentle attempt at abstract art. This is as abstract as I go.
All I did was paint a few lines and coloured blobs on to a piece of glass, being very careful not to cut myself and failing miserably. I then blotted the glass on to watercolour paper pressing down hard. Once the paint was transferred on to the paper the glass was removed and fine lines were painted to represent the stems. There you have it. A little watercolour meadow painting in about ten minutes.

I also couldn’t resist showing you the beautiful roses I treated myself to yesterday. They’re not quite red but not quite pink either. What I do know is that in these stressful times they have cheered me up no end as did the Barrett’s strawberry milkshake sweeties. I can’t stop eating them. Delicious.

Chocolate Muffins

I was always convinced that my baking lacked a certain something and the only thing I could blame was that every time I admired someone else’s cupcakes and asked their secret it was the same reply. They had an electric oven and mine was gas.  That was until today. My friend Kelly brought cakes to work and of course they were made using an electric oven. Even so I asked her for the recipe and discovered that they had Coca Cola in them and she said it was that that made them so delicious.
So today I made the muffin/cupcake recipe and never again will I blame my poor gas oven. They were gorgeous.

I admit they are very simply decorated but that is down to personal taste and the fact that cake doesn’t  
last two minutes in our house so why worry about intricate decor. Slap melted chocolate and a cherry on top and we’re happy. So I bet you’re dying to know the recipe aren’t you? Well ok but keep it to yourself 😃

Chocolate Cola Cake

250g butter
200ml cola drink
250gr self raising flour
300gr caster sugar
3 heaped tablespoons cocoa powder
Generous pinch of bicarbonate of soda
75ml milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl. Gently melt the butter and cola drink together in a pan, then add the dry ingredients together with the milk, eggs and vanilla extract. Mix gently but thoroughly, then tip into a cake tin.  Bake for 55 minutes or until a skewer inserted in to the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Icing

Mix together 200gr icing sugar, 60gr butter, and 2 - 3 tablespoons of cocoa until blended. Add 2 tablespoons of cola drink and beat until smooth. Spread over the cake.

The recipe is for a full cake but I used paper cases and cooked for about 15 minutes until the top springs back when pressed gently.

I hope you try this recipe and if you do, let me know how it turns out xx

Stang Top

A blurry Curlew

The weather hasn’t been great for the last couple of weeks but rather than stay in we decided to drive up to the top of the Stang. It’s about a 15 minute drive from where we live and a favourite place for the hubby to cycle.
As you can see the clouds were heavy and it rained about 10 minutes after we left.
The views are spectacular but unfortunately my iPad wasn’t up to the job.  The bird song was beautiful with sky larks and curlews belting it out. We’ve never seen as many ground birds including grouse. It was fantastic.

Oatmeal and Raisin Cookies

 Ingredients 

190g Self Raising Flour
200g Caster Sugar
145g Brown Sugar
120g Rolled Oats
50g Raisins
180ml Rapeseed Oil
2 Eggs
5ml Vanilla Extract




Method

Mix altogether, drop spoonfuls of mixture on to a prepared baking tray and bake for 15 minutes in the oven on 175 degrees celsius, gas mark 4.

Absolutely delicious x

Wild Flowers

One of my favourite things in life are flowers. I love them all but when we’re out and about I find I’m especially drawn to the beautiful and delicate blooms of wild flowers.

The ones I’m noticing at the moment are the bluebells, poppies and wild garlic.

In addition there are forget me nots, wood anemones, violets, primroses and many more.

Crochet, knitting and a whole lot more

Whether it’s the uncertain times we’re all living in or just general frustration I don’t know, but I don’t seem to be able to settle to one thing, so have a lot of different projects on the go.

This is a mandala mat I have now finished. I love how quick this made up and how easy the stitches were. Being able to almost finish it in one sitting was very satisfying. I found the pattern on
Attic 24 which is where I find lots of interesting little projects. They are always so colourful and just make my heart sing.

Another beautiful project is this Harmony Blanket pattern from the same blog (once on the blog just scroll down the left hand side in the patterns section). It is quite a classic granny square pattern brought bang up to date using Stylecraft Special double knit acrylic yarn. I have always loved Stylecraft and this particular range has about 85 colours which makes it my favourite go to for just about everything. It is only around £2.00 a ball for 100 grams too. I made this blanket a couple of years ago but sold it to a customer when I had the shop. She asked if she could buy it and I quoted £80.00 thinking that was far too expensive and she snapped my hand off and bought it on the spot.

I fell in love with this little cardigan pattern as soon as I saw it but couldn’t find my bag of green Stylecraft Life DK which would have been perfect.  Instead I started it in pure merino wool from Jenny Watson. It’s off white and the quality is gorgeous. Unfortunately I’m not “feeling” the colour.  Casting on 262 stitches was a pain and after the first row the second one didn’t work out. I am an experienced knitter so I contacted Sirdar who assure me that it is fine and that it is probably me. I’m not convinced as when I use a calculator it definitely isn’t working out but I will give it another go and then make it up as I go along if necessary. I will endeavour to find the bag of green wool before I start again though.

Next up is my little Frontline Hero Bear. A gorgeous free pattern that I discovered after reading a friend’s Facebook post. My niece is a Doctor and her partner used to be a paramedic and now works in a hospital as the person you see if the doctors are busy (I don’t know his full title). They have 2 little girls and I thought it would be nice to make Mummy and Daddy hero bears. If you can crochet, these are really easy to make and I’m so pleased at how the first one is looking so far.

So as you can see I’m very busy but a bit all over place. Hopefully out of all this chaos I will find a little calm!

Home to Egglestone Abbey via Thornsgill Wood

The weather today was absolutely beautiful, so warm it felt like a summers day.

This was the wood we stumbled across yesterday and promised ourselves that we’d visit it again today.

The path led us through the woods whilst hugging the stream on the left.

It was so beautiful and the scenery was stunning. We walked for about 30 minutes.

We walked up to the abbey but unfortunately the gate was locked. It’s free to go in but obviously with the Covid epidemic they are discouraging visitors.

Woodland Diversion

Hubby was off work today and my shift finished at 10am so we decided to get the shopping over as quickly as possible and then go for a nice long walk.

We took a route that we’d never walked before which should have brought us out at the Abbey but unfortunately ended up in a farmers driveway so made a quick detour back the way we’d walked instead.  On our way we had noticed another bridle way so had a quick look to see what we were missing.

It turned out to be a rather pretty woodland path with a little stream and lots of wild garlic and wood anemones lining the way.  As we’d already had quite a strenuous walk we will go back tomorrow. I can’t wait to see what else we’ll see . Every time we go out we discover something amazing. It is so magical.

Wild garlic and Wood Anemones  

Getting to grips with a little crochet

I have knitted all my life . I literally cannot even remember learning and was reading patterns as soon as I could read, making clothes for my dolls.
Crochet came a little later but was when my brother still lived at home and he left when I was about nine, so crochet has been a large part of who I am too although I didn’t really begin to love it until I started teaching it when I had my shop.

I started this pretty little mat a few days ago and it made up so quickly. The pattern is from the cute and easy flowers book by Nicki Trench and is one of my favourite go to books. It has some gorgeous patterns for mats, blankets, bunting and lots lots more.

Garden catch up and crochet

We both have the weekend off so we decided to make the most of the dry weather. We had another walk down to the river because yesterday we spotted a mink catching fish and darting around having a thoroughly good time. Unfortunately mink prey on water voles which isn’t good but they are very pretty creatures.

When we got back I went shopping and then we did a bit more gardening.

It’s looking even more tidy now, all ready for some pretty bedding plants if ever they arrive in the shops.  Can you spot the bee in the middle of the flowers above? You might need to zoom in.

As I like to pack as much in to my day as possible I also did some crochet from Nicki Trench’s book Crochet with flowers. I’ve made a lot of these gorgeous mats. They are so useful. I will finish it tomorrow time permitting.

I made this rainbow for the window a few days ago to show our support for the wonderful work the NHS are doing during these awful times.