An Afternoon of Foraging

About this time last year I started my first attempt at making wine, I started with something I had available from my garden, the elderberry. I had originally wanted to make elderflower sparkling wine but you only get about a two week window and I missed it both last year and this year!! I blame the English weather hehe.

This year I have decided to do a blackberry and elderberry blend, but was concerned I wouldn’t be able to get enough wild blackberries. The original idea you see sprung from the desire to make something drinkable out of stuff I could get for free.

Well I have been foraging this afternoon (admittedly some of this was done in my parent garden) and have been very successful! I found loads of berries and I also found some sloes to make some sloe gin in time for Christmas.

 

In other ‘produce’ related news I am very surprised to tell you the peppers are starting to change from green to red… we planted the seeds so late in the season I was never expecting them too! The leaves look a little sorry for themselves as we had a greenfly 'incident'.

And I have also had a bumper crop (for me anyhow) of tomatoes, here is a lovely picture of the ripest ones. The big ones are from F1 bush tomato plants and the little tiddler is from a tumbling tom.

Have you been out foraging and found something special? Or have you been growing something yummy at home? 

Don't forget to checking with me on Facebook TheVioletPincushion and the shop on Etsy.com TheVioletPincushion Shop

Operation: Secret Sock Dog

Earlier this month it was my Dad's birthday, now I don't know about anyone else but I have nearly always struggled to find him an exciting present. He is however one of my few family members remaining not to own something animal or creature wise made out of socks, and so operation secret sock dog began!

I found a pattern online, Sock dog, it looked cute (although slightly over the top design), I set about following the tutorial. This turned out to be quite tricky, and I do not recommend this pattern to anyone with out a fair bit of crafting experience, especially as in the end I stopped following it and just used my own experience to finish the dog off! 

 Here is all the pieces after spending over an hour stuffing... it is an art to get the stuffing just right. 

 

And here is the finish sock dog, he has lovely pearly button eyes and for the nose I used a random sock toe from my box of sock bits I seem to have accumulated very rapidly over the last year.

 Isn't he just the cutest thing! I am now on the hunt for some new socks now to make a smaller version (he used an awful lot of stuffing up) to sell on the etsy site.

A couple of new listings up since I last blogged, check them out at The Violet Pincushion!

Ginger beer Experimental Results

It was just over two months ago that I reported on my ginger beer experiment, and I am sure now I can call it a complete success! I have perfected my method completed over ten different batches, at least to make a beer that I like drinking anyhow and have given ginger beer plants to three different people who hopefully have passed the plant on too. I now make a batch every two weeks or so, so there is always something to drink in the house, very handy when you can’t afford to buy anything! It also made a tasty British treat, lashings of ginger beer for the Jubilee last weekend... I do love a rainy picnic!

Alcohol wise I have another two projects in mind for the next couple of weeks, I currently have 4lb of Rhubarb in the freezer waiting to be defrosted to make a white wine, and this will be my first attempt at making a white. Secondly the Elderflowers are starting to bloom, I missed them last year, and they are only really about for a couple of weeks, so I need to get picking to make some champagne!

Finally I can announce I have started stocking my Etsy shop, just search for The Violet Pincushion in shop section or click here http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheVioletPincushion

  

I currently have 8 sock monkeys listed for sale to “test the water” but have several more I can post and other handmade items. This is very much a learning curve for me, especially as I don’t have a lot of spare time, but I hope over the next few months I can make improvements to the shops appearance (any feedback is appreciated) and make an effort to update here and on facebook more often.