A Silence Decends on The Hill

This morning I was woken with a start by screaching and squawking as I flew to the bedroom window there was a huge dog fox in the garden, I screamed and shouted to make it run and leave my beloved chickens alone but it stood there and stared at me before making off up the frosty hill and disappearing into the fog. I was left with Harold my cockerel and one very nervous chicken, my other two girls, Mrs. Nesbit and Betty, have yet to be found I have inspected the hen house and found some feathers around the outside but I am still hoping that they are hiding, quivering somewhere in the garden and not daring to come out! I will take another look later and hope that I can coax them out and that they haven't been killed :( Harold and Annie2 are still standing by the coal house not daring to move

Monday morning and as I wander about the house collecting stranded cups and dropped clothes there is a strange silence, no laughing, shouting or calls of "Mum!!" the Easter holidays are over, husband and children gone and I am back to my normal routine.
Now there may have been days in the holidays when I felt like pulling my hair out at with what seemed like endless bickering but I miss it. I feel slightly sad that the boys are growing so fast and soon won't need me as much as I need them, I don't want my nest to empty as I actually love the noise and little ones with friends and feeding the 5000!

I have had a lovely time at home over the Easter period with my husband, children and friends.
The first Saturday got off to a good start, our dear friends Helen and Kevin called around, Helen was upset and a visitors dog had killed her favourite chicken! So to commiserate we decided to have a lovely cream tea with some freshly baked scones, cream, jam, tea and a bottle of champagne.

It was at this meeting that I thought Helen might also enjoy crochet, she does knit but its always useful to have another string to your crafting bow! I got out some crochet hooks and tried to show her how to crochet a simple flower, how we laughed! Enough to say that I sent her home with a hook to practice :)

I have been quite busy on the crochet front over the holidays and have even invested in a few more hooks, some new wool and the odd thing to top up my craft supplies.

The black hook is a Knit Pro soft grip hook I had from Bibelot and the other two are from a wonderful shop on Etsy, take a look at NK Designs shop Linda does some lovely things and will do special orders too!

These are some cases that I have crocheted to put my hooks in, aren't they just beautiful! The lining is a cut up Next dress that I had but the colours work so well with the cotton I picked.

Wendy 100% cotton, not quite sure what I will be doing with this yet

2 Balls of felting wool and I have already made some lovely little felted cherry brooches with this

Waiting to be felted

and here they are after been washed, all lovely and sweet, I think that these would look great pinned onto a denim jacket or even just onto a bag for some extra decoration and bling!

Some of my little Sunflower items

 This is a little flower hanging that I made, I had the design from Attic24, it was quite difficult to photograph as it kept blowing about, when I showed my husband, he said "well its very lovely but what is it?"!!!!!

A selection of my crochet flower brooches

Little girly bags

 

Some of my lovely colourful cottons that I had from an old friend we called "Mr. Turner" they are devine and all on old wooden spools, they look so good in one of the drawers in my little set I had from ebay a few weeks ago.

And just take a look at this basket £2 from Oxfam, it is quite rare nowadays to find any nice vintage stuff in the charity shops, but it was my lucky day and it holds all of my new bits and bobs

This was found on the collectors market I haggled the seller down to £8, I thought it was just such an unusual little mirror having the drop down shelf underneath.

As you can see I have been very busy on the crochet from so I haven't done too much baking this week apart from a marble cake. We called in to see Helen and Kevin and she had made one and when we got home, the boys requested that I make one too, so here is my recipe:-

250g softened butter

250g caster sugar

250g felt raising flour

80g cocoa powder

a pinch of salt

4 large eggs

1tsp vanilla extract

grease and line an 8" deep cake tin (springform or with a loose bottom)

50g each of white chocolate and milk or dark chocolate

Pre heat oven to 170c

Cream the butter and sugar together along with the vanilla extract until pale and fluffy. Gradually and very carefully add the beaten eggs, adding a treble spoon of the flour with each glug of the eggs. 

Sift in the remaining flower and salt and gently fold in with a metal spoon.

Divide the mixture into two bowls and into one lot of the mixture add the cocoa powder and fold in gently until completely gone. 

Now add alternate blobs of the two mixtures into the cake tin and then draw a knife through the mixture swirling to give the cake that marbled effect.

Bake in the oven for about 1 1/4 hours, then take out and leave to cool completely on a baking rack.

To top the cake I just melted in separate bowls some white chocolate and some milk chocolate and then drizzled it onto the top of the cake and swirled about with a cocktail stick.

So that was my Easter, and as I said earlier, the house just seems so quiet  as I sit here at the computer writing all of this, all I can here I Harold the cock crowing trying to call Mrs. Nesbitt and Betty, but it looks like that fox has taken them.

The weather is cold again and I had to scrape the car to take the children to school, I can't believe the weather at the moment we have gone from flowers and sunshine

to thunderstorms, torrential rain and hail stones the size of marbles!

Have a good week

Claire xx