My new fingerless gloves!

Here are my new pair of gloves which I just finished knitting yesterday.

I knitted with the excess wool that I had from my doctor who scarf so now I've got a whole winter set safe for the hat which is my next knitting project!

As you can see, it's all done in fair isle which was simple to do. The middle part was a bit difficult though as I was using three strands of yarn at once so it was hard to keep the tension loose.

Sorting out the finger holes were a bit tricky too. The pattern I was using wasn't the clearest so I had to spend a lot of time just deciphering it! Speaking of deciphering, my sisters and I have just been doing exactly that working out how you spell the blinking word!

I couldn't have made the gloves at a better time actually. I've been feeling really cold recently what with the transitions of the season starting.

So what do you think of the modeling then??

Battenburg cake!!

If any of you just happened to be wondering what I've been up to today then here it is! I made a battenburg cake.

Of course, it didn't take me all day. I've been up to other stuff too like guitar lessons and cycling.

Thank you very much to my aunt who gave me the recipe for this. It came out really well as you can see.

I did have a few hiccups though and one rather blonde moment! For some reason the cake just wouldn't cook so I ended up having to whack up the heat. The cake was in for a total of 40 minutes as oppose to the suggested 25-30 mins. Don't know what happened there but eventually it cooked.

I wanted to make my own marzipan too but the ingredients were so expensive for that. I worked out that I would need to buy £5 worth of almonds! 5 quid for a few bags of nuts???!!!! I love almonds but still! For that reason, I opted for the ready made stuff!

My blonde moment in the baking process came at the end when I had to heat up the jam. Ok then, I thought. So on went a saucepan on the hob and I plopped a spoonful of jam in. BIG mistake! The noise and smoke that came from this pan was insane. I'm really surprised it didn't set of the smoke alarm.

I quickly got the jam out and slowly started to pour water in as it was spitting out little bits of boiling sugar everywhere.

Not clever!

If saucepans were to convey emotions, this one would be very angry indeed!

But it all worked out and I've got a big thumbs up from people who have got their chops around a bit.

Isla the snake!

I'd like to introduce you to my most recent creation.

This is isla the fair isle snake. Isla with a silent s which is quite ironic for a snake!

I made her on double pointed needles which I've never done before.

I'm actually quite proud of this knitted make actually as I've successfully managed to do a range of knitting techniques.

For some reason, everyone I've shown has really really loved her. I think it's her colourful body and characterful eyes. Hey! She's like Kaa from the jungle book hypnotising everyone with enchanted eyes!

What effect does she have on you?

My baking extravaganza!

I've been doing lots of baking recently. Allow me to show you around some of my edible creations.

This here is a mosaic chocolate button cheesecake. I made it with my little sister Megan the other week. It was her last day of the summer holidays so I thought that we would have a nice time baking together. She adores giant buttons so I came up with the idea of putting a mosaic design of them on top.

Last week, I got given a bag of apples that were picked from my friends garden so I've spent the week cooking them up into varies recipes.

I made this apple and ginger cake with a hazelnut crumble topping...

And then on your right an apple and raisen crumble.

Gotta make a crumble if you have apples don't you?!!

Then last night we made a coco pops strawberry custard cream flan. We had some coco pop mix left over so I made some sandcastles out of them!

So there we are. Everythinng that I've cooked in the last couple of weeks. Have I made you drool on your computer keyboard yet??

Thou shalt have a knitted fishy!

Here's the knitted fish I made a couple of weeks ago now.

I wanted to knit this little guppy because it involved using a range of knitting techniques. The middle of the body consisted of doing fair isle; something I've never done before. I was a bit apprehensive about trying it but turns out it was pretty easy!

I ended up giving the fish away to my friend who needed a bit of cheering up at the time. With it's funky colours I think it definitely did the trick!

She's named it Willie. A good solid name for a fish I think!

Tip of the Tongue!

This is a song that my cousin Bethan and I wrote together whilst I was down visiting them in Devon. It's called Tip of the tongue.

I had a great few days working with Bethan on this. We seemed to work really well together and managed to combine ideas that really gelled. I really hope that we get another chance to write together soon. What with us living on different sides of the country though, it's going to take a bit of planning. I guess we could do it through skype or something. That would be cool!

The way we're sitting playing our guitars looks really funny doesn't it! It literally is a case of we're mirror image with each other what with me playing left handed and her right. Now if we were identical twins playing then that would look really freaky!

Enough of my ramblings. Enjoy the song and please leave some feedback.