Strawberry cordial

I made 5 bottles of strawberry cordial, after soaking the strawberries in the sugar syrup for 5 days, I strained the liquid off. This was poured into strerilised bottles and that was it. It should keep for 6 months in the fridge. We drink this with fizzy water. Tesco sell 2 litre bottles for about 20p- bargin! This was the first time that I had made this cordial and did not think that it had as good a flavour as the strawberry and rhubarb, so next year will probably make more of that.

finished knitting my first pair of socks

I started off by casting on 44 stitches onto one needle.









Then spread the stitches over 3 needles. The first couple of rows were the tricky bits. Trying not to twist the stitches or create stiches.












This is the ribbed cuff - socks are worked from the top down, whereas normal knitting is usually done from the bottom up!







The heel is turned!











Et voila!!! a finished pair of socks. They were actually quite quick to do. The next step to master is a bit of a pattern, maybe some stripes. I sewed a little felt flower to the sid of each sock.

Earlier this year I had bought some new curtains from Ikea, they were far too long, so I had to shorten them and cut quite a bit off. I used a lot of this material to make my bunting. But had cut off the felt flowers for using for something and here was that perfect something.

Also today I added the yeast to the strawberry wine and started to stir it twice a day. Stirred the strawberry cordial twice. Strained the Borage and Malt wine into a demi john. Made a loaf of bread, walked to the market and did some gardening...... more about all this another day

Strawberries

Yesterday I drove 6 miles to Holly Farm, Stutton in Suffolk. It is about half way between Manningtree and Ipswich.

I picked 10 lbs of Strawberries.

I used 4 LB of these strawberries to make wine.
After washing and removing the hulls I hand squashed them into a streralized bucket. Added the zest and juice of a lemon and 6 pints of boiling water and 2 1/4 lbs of sugar. Later when it had cooled I added a crushed campden tablet and 1 tsp of pectic enzyme. This is left for 24 hours, when the yeast and yeast nurtrient is added. The "must" as it is now called is stirred twice a day for one week.

I also started some strawberry cordial. In June I had made Elderflower cordial and Strawberry and Rhubarb cordial. These were lovely diluted with some fizzy water. I put some of the Elderflower in plastic bottles and froze them for later in the year, but we drank all the rest.

I have not made this recipie before so a bit of an experiment.

Strawberry Cordial -

put 900g of sugar in a steralized bucket and add 500 ml of boiling water, stir until disolved. add 500g of washed hand crushed strawberries and one sliced lemon. Add 40 g of citric acid. Cover and leave in a cool place for 4 days, strain and bottle.

I also made some strawberry shortcakes and have a load of strawberries left for just eating!!

I turned a heel!!

This was the only wool I could find. Found Nana's box of needles and in it were some double ended pins - just right. So I started to knit... I messed up the pattern, dropped loads of stitches but some how it looked like a sock

Knitting

I haven't knitted for years, used to make lots of jumpers for the children, but they went out of fashion. A couple of weeks ago I saw some handknitted dishcloths on a blog, looked futher and found some free paterns to download and then managed to find a shop selling knitting wool. Three dishcloths later.... I found some very funky sock patterns, but had always been told socks were too hard.

Up for a challenge I ordered a book from the libray.