To everything - turn turn turn. There is a season - turn turn turn. And a time for every purpose under heaven.

Boy is it getting chilly of an evening!  Blankets are coming out and my need for knitting socks is abound.  Luckily that is exactly what I am knitting, therefore contentment follows easily.  I am looking forward to dark evenings cooried up on the sofa with my cats and my man, listening to their snores.  My hard working Mr Biscuit nods off, as often as not, as soon as he sits down.  Hence why I get my nightly cup of tea before his lovely bottom touches the comfy sofa!  

Today it is so dark, I am considering putting a light on.  The Autumn is here.  I've felt it coming for a wee while now.  I realized too that this is to be expected when my boys are three weeks back at school and a lot of you folks out there are ending the summer hols right now.  It is time for the garden furniture to get packed away in the hut for the winter, it's unlikely we'll be using it again so no need for it to sit neglected out in the garden.  That makes me feel bad.  When it's gone my body knows it's past the point of being out there relaxing soaking up [any?!?] sun. It's also time for delicate herbs and flowers to get put in their little plastic greenhouse as frost can come at any point now.  I am craving hearty soups and hot jammy puddings.  I have taken to wearing socks indoors, feeling the need  for cosy toes, and cardigan centred comfort.  Am reading more too.  Finding it easier to not move around so much and to simply sit without necessarily making something with my hands.

I am heart glad the weekend has arrived.  I like getting my men folk around me.  Mr Biscuit is planning a hilly Highland walk on Sunday with a friend though. My boys are still desperate to see the Smurfs film.  Maybe this weekend.  A canal walk for brambles?  I was still picking them at the end of September last year. Cake, in some form or other, is a definite condition for a good weekend, this weekend.

Hope yours is a happy one!

X

The 52 Marvellous Makes Madness Challenge - Week 9!

Another week and another make.  We went for a lovely walk along a local canal and took tubs with us, just in case, and luckily we found lots of these...

and with a thrifty, home made Christmas in mind and an offer of five half bottles of vodka I decided to get these together...

and make some of this...

I also plan to make a cranberry version too as I still have two bottles of vodka left.  I've made the cranberry one before a few Christmases ago and it went down (excuse the pun) very well.  They are such easy things to make, fruit, sugar, vodka and a couple of months of shaking the jars daily at first, then weekly later, a decant through a sieve into bottles and that's it.  You can use the drunken fruits up if you like, my father-in-law puts his raspberries which have been steeping for months in gin, in his Christmas trifle.  It sure adds a kick!
Here is what it looks like

...the vodka has already taken on the vibrant colour of the brambles and they have plumped up drunkenly with the vodka.  I may even try a wee taste of it myself.  I have only drunk vodka properly, twice, the first time at uni and my flatmates claimed I became very argumentative and aggressive so I tried it a second time as and experiment and I felt argumentative and aggressive so I haven't partaken in it since but I wonder if I've mellowed with age (it has been fifteen years) and should give it a try again.  I did try some scrummy shots in a vodka bar in Edinburgh before uni and I was fine then and I have lovely memories of cola cube, soor plume and chilli flavour shots, ice cold and head clearing.

I got the quantities etc from Nigella's Kitchen book and have a recipe for a cranberry and a lemoncello vodka from old Good Food magazines.  If anyone would like them get in touch.

Of course I have assumed you all know brambles are blackberries and you didn't need me to clarify!

X