November

Above: Love seeing the moon during the day.

Time for a little catch up. I’m happy to report that the high strength vitamin D tablets that I started taking last month seem to be helping with a lot of the seasonal misery that I get at this time of year. Also the first half of the month was very mild, albeit a bit wet and windy. As predicted a big named storm took the last of the leaves from the big sycamore in the garden. The temperature has dropped like a stone lately now though, and ice and frost are a regular morning feature.

Above: The view from the back door featuring two birds flying by that I was lucky to catch.

Right, I have had several goes at writing this now and I’m sick of trying to make it sound good and deleting and rewriting so it’s going to be a bit stream of consciousness instead. Brace yourselves. I’ll try not to go too far off piste but I’m making no promises.

Above: Before we totally lost the leaves.

The one thing that I do like about this time of year is the comfort food, mine is usually chicken based because it’s not quite as expensive as other meats. Chicken and chorizo with chickpeas and chicken and barley with root veg are current favourites. Though having a pile of veg to use up before shopping prompted a massive tray of roasted vegetables which was delicious. If you’ve not tried roasting Brussels sprouts before I can totally recommend it.

Above L-R: Chicken and chorizo in the slow cooker, chicken and barley in my bowl.

Above: Veg for roasting.

Also on the pile to be used were a bunch of apples. I like an apple but just lately every one I’ve had has had a really tough, thick skin and they’ve been really unpleasant to get through; it’s put me off wanting them. I don’t like to waste things though and the birds can only eat so many apples so I decided to core, peel and chop them up into a crumble. I added cinnamon and mace to the apples and coconut and oats to the crumble topping and it was glorious. I didn’t add any sugar to the topping and only a tiny bit to the apples so it wasn’t over-sweet either.

Above: From apples to crumble.

I’ve been looking for a good flapjack (British oat-based confection, not the U.S. kind) recipe to use for breakfasts; I struggle with breakfast as my stomach often rebels at the thought of it but I definitely need something in a morning. Most flapjacks are really high in sugar so they’re not that good for every day and I wondered about breakfast bars which is a phrase which popped into my head from nowhere. Quick search on BBC food and I came across Nigella’s breakfast bars recipe. Actually she has two but the second one is when she was going through that weird phase after the Saatchi divorce and subsequent court case and needed to present a clean face to the world. The first recipe is on her website and also in Nigella Express and that is the one I used.

Above: Breakfast bars, rippling with healthy things.

They were the easiest thing in the world to make, though trying to find shredded coconut in the U.K. is not easy and I had to get it from an Amazon seller which rankles but at least it was a seller and not Amazon proper (I’m telling myself this so I don’t feel too bad for using Amazon). It’s a really customisable recipe too so I can just chuck in whatever dried fruits, nuts and seeds I have to hand. Most importantly, they are really good.

I have cut out two garments to sew, the first is a pair of velour pyjama pants to wear as lounge pants, I think I mentioned I might do that in a previous post. I have also cut out a kind of dress/tunic thing from some striped fabric that I bought to make pants from but it turned out that the stripes ran the wrong way for pants (unless dressing like an old timey convict is your thing) and it’s been languishing ever since. The only problem I may have is that the neck band is cut against the grain (for stretch I guess) and I didn’t have quite enough width left so I’ve had to cut it in two pieces. Fingers crossed that it will be fine.

Above: Cutting out stripey fabric makes your eyes go googly.

My knitting is growing slowly, I keep getting distracted and also moss stitch is a pain in the bumbum over an entire garment. It’s an odd way to knit a jumper, going from wrist to middle, front and back in one piece but not technically difficult. I bet I struggle with the second half though, like second sock syndrome but bigger.

Above: I am actually further on that this and have all the stitches for the back and front on now.

Speaking of knitting I have another couple of old Rowan magazines, I am properly obsessed with them. I have an idea for a kind of challenge to knit only Rowan patterns for next year. I’ve queued up a bunch of patterns from my various books on Ravelry to pick from. The only problem is going to be yarn substitutions because most of the yarns used in the older books have been discontinued. That’s a problem for future me though.

Above: Behold my newest obsession. I love them, the patterns, the styling, everything.

Though the sun going down at 4pm is still a little upsetting it does produce some spectacular sunsets, when it’s not grey and miserable anyway, the dawn isn’t too bad either on a cold and clear day. Also as at the time of writing the Solstice is only four weeks away! We’ll soon be at the top of the hill and even though it will still be dark at teatime the knowledge that the days are slowly drawing out again will keep me going for the rest of the winter.

Above: The sky is on fire!

Above: First light.

I’ll leave you with a few pictures of November which hopefully aren’t too dreary.

Above: This looks a bit odd, took it from inside the car. (I was in The Range's car park and didn't want to look like a weirdo)

Above: Sweeping leaves is a never-ending job le sigh. Also, that fuchsia is still flowering.

Above: Speaking of still flowering, what is this geranium doing? It's November for crying out loud.

Above: Flowering at the right time though is my Christmas cactus, it's going mad this year.

Above: I think this is a copper beech leaf. I don't have a copper beech and neither do my neighbours. Sure is pretty though.

Above: Barely a leaf left.