How does your garden grow?

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

No silver bells and cockles shells here but some zucchini and tomatoes!

Not my garden either but the tiny piece of land which belongs to the house across the road. No-one lives there and as we have had the the key for many years, this year when DH cleaned it I finally persuaded him to plant something useful instead of leaving it empty. 

It just grows wild otherwise and there were often adders there so it is far better to keep it cleared. The old man gave us the key originally and his sons have changed locks and given us the new keys after he passed a few years ago. 

Last year the owners didn't even come down here at all, the year before just for a week in October to get some olive oil. They would like to sell the house but there is no market and it is in really bad shape, so it is just sitting there eating money in taxes since the old man died. The usual village story. The old folks pass, there are no jobs and the young people have nearly all emigrated. 
As the children grow they prefer more interesting seaside resorts so parents no longer come here on holiday. This is not a tourist place.

Anyway, we planted just a few zucchini and tomato plants and have been blessed with a great yield. I still have the flowers everyday for the "frittelle" (I have a photo recipe here on my blog)
It is amusing as it is now no longer the season so I am the only one on the street who still has some.

Today I made some sauce again with our very own tomatoes. I know we have the ones DH grows with my inlaws, but somehow to actually go into the garden and pick them is so much more satisfying! There is nothing sprayed on them and the only work is to take down a couple of pails of water. I save water when rinsing etc so it is also ecological, water is precious here.

It was amusing that the other day I actually gave my Mil some tomatoes as she didn't have any and was going to buy some! 

What's Cooking?: Yarn!

As some of you know I do not like the local homemade wine. Although many enthuse about it I tend to think it tastes like vinegar...far better to drink a nice glass of ice-cold lemon tea!

So here I was one morning with a bottle of wine. So what did I do? Threw it into a pan, added a skein of yarn and cooked it! Lol!

DD came downstairs. What's cooking? Yarn!


Experiments! At worst a skein of yarn gets thrown out!

I brought it up to a boil and then left it till it cooled down.

Rinse well under running water. No need to add vinegar here! Lol!

Surprise surprise it actually came out quite nicely! It is more of a dusky rose colour than the brown the photo shows. Difficult to show a true colour.

Now I need to design something to knit with it!

Disney Princess Merida doll

Well as I said in my previous post, I bought a Disney Princess Merida doll from Ebay. An almost 14" doll she has such a sweet expression. 

Of course she needed a new dress although fortunately she already had her original shoes! (Not an easy find!)

Needles and yarn clickety-click and I have made two new dresses for her! 

Obviously a spa-treatment was in order after my success with Ariel! 

Now her curls are so cute even though I am the world's worst hairdresser! 

As usual the pattern is available in my Ravelry store and will soon be on Etsy!

Ariel's hair styling session.

I recently bought a couple of dolls on UK Ebay for the grand amount of £1.50. The postage cost me more. 
The one I was interested in was a Disney Merida (more about her another time) but there was an Ariel doll included which was a bit worse for wear. Together they cost far less than other Merida dolls available so I placed a bid and won them. A great deal.

Ariel's hair was in a really bad state so I decided to try my hand at restyling it. I am NOT good with hair at all, but figured that it couldn't turn out worse than it was! 

So armed with dish-soap, fabric conditioner, straws, clips and tissues I started! 


First I washed her hair with some normal dish-soap. Rinsed well and then treat it with fabric softener in fairly hot water. Let it soak a while and then combed and divided it into sections. This was the part I found hardest to do as I wasn't sure how it was best to divide the locks.


Then I rolled it with a little tissue paper onto the cut off straws and secured the curls with a hairgrip. 

Dipped her hair into warm water again once finished and left to dry. 

Today I took out the "curlers"and Tada!:

I think she looks far better! 

DD has already commented that she will style it better for me but I am really happy with the result. Not bad for a first try. Her hair feels really soft and is shiny. It was dry and not nice to touch! 

See ya in Venice!

Well I have just published my latest pattern: See you in Venice!

There was a honeymoon knit-a-long on our Ravelry American Girl doll knitters group so I just had to design something for my dolls.

 It has been a fun couple of months. June was a wedding theme.

 Of course I also designed Bride and Groom patterns! 

Poor Groom was not so enthusiastic about the idea!

Obviously I also needed a bridesmaid dress!

All of these patterns are as usual available in my Ravelry store!