Easingwold - Part I

Everyone here seems to count the lock down from the 23rd of March, when Boris was very firm and very specific. But I count it from the 16th, when our WI craft group was cancelled because of his announcement about staying home and not gathering, made at 17.26. I went to the church, a few minutes' walk, to check that none of our members had missed the cancellation email and was surprised to find a meditation group in our usual meeting room and a business meeting down the hall. Then again, Bill had left at 5 to go to the running club.

Since I was out anyhow I nipped into the Co-op and bought fresh fruit and veg, a bottle of wine and a pizza for when he came home. I saw my neighbour, Dave, there and he was bemoaning the lack of paracetamol anywhere. I commiserated as Bill and I had searched North Shields that day for any hand sanitiser or paracetamol or even hand washing liquid (Bill's preference, I like bars) and came up with only some strange dissolving paracetamol tablets (that taste awful). I've not been in - or even to - a shop since.

But this is about Easingwold, where we'd just been the previous weekend, attending the Annual General Meeting (another phrase I never met until coming to Britain) of the Long Distance Walkers' Association. I had misgivings about going, but I knew Bill would go without me. If there was anything being passed around there he'd just bring it home and I'd spend the weekend worrying, so I went. I'm so glad I did.

Not only was it our last taste of freedom, but I met a different set of people this time, people who were great conversationalists and they always seemed to remember my name! Also, I got to know some of Bill's walking buddies a bit better. As usual the food was pretty good and definitely plentiful. Our digs were unusual. We were staying at the Cabinet Office's Emergency Planning College, which somehow seemed appropriate. 

We arrived on Friday afternoon and there was a series of walks of varying lengths planned for Saturday morning, one of which Bill planned to do. I could have taken a coach trip to York with a bunch of the other wives, but I've been to York quite a bit. I'd investigated charity shops at Easingwold and nearby villages online and when a gentleman at the front desk recommended Easingwold I was set. He described it as a 'lovely little village full of Georgian houses, clever little boutique shops, great charity shops and wonderful teashops'. Who wouldn't be sold? 

I decided that since it was only 2 miles to the village I would walk as parking cars can sometimes be complicated. Besides I'd had a large dinner the night before that needed addressing. The 2 mile route was on a main road without a place for pedestrians, though. I asked for and received a map of the area and saw that there was a short cut across fields, but did I dare? Another gentleman suggested that their walk would begin along that exact route and that I could accompany them to the village and then go my own way. So I did.

I was trying to notice markers so I could get back the same way. We went across a very bumpy field, then over a stile into a smooth field. We went across at an angle to another stile and then along a fence to two stiles, one right after the other. Then we went through a gate...and then I don't know what all. We were in the village. Much as I tried turning around to see how it would look on the return I was pretty certain I'd be coming back along the main road. 

The original - it was a big field! I do so love the lacey trees.

I had a lively conversation from a retired medic originally from Ireland, County Mayo. He had a lot to say about 'caring' as well as 'curing', which I found quite refreshing. I got some insight into why people might spend hours and hours each week wondering around together in all sorts of weathers.

There were no women on this walk, or if there were they were at the front. I chatted with a couple of men designated as 'sweepers'. The back group found my attire quite amusing, though they described it as 'elegant', which of course was ludicrous. One of them even asked to take my photo, saying I should be on the cover of Strider Magazine as the 'best dressed walker'. I thought he was crackers but I agreed to a picture. It hasn't appeared on Strider, but it did show up on the LDWA Facebook page.

My cropped version.

Bunting

[Note: For some reason Google, who hosts this blog, has taken a disliking to my photos on some of my recent posts. I'm checking them and replacing photos, but perhaps not always in the same location, as this is fairly tedious the first time, never mind a second and I've no idea if there will be a third...]

So far as I can remember, I didn't know what bunting was before I came to Britain. Not that I never saw it before, I just didn't have that word for it. I mostly remember it being a bunch of plastic flags, all one primary colour, on used car lots. They were strung from a pole or a roof to the ground to make a person notice the cars or the sale or whatever.  I just thought of it as 'a row of flags'. I thought of bunting as something to do with babies, but I'd no idea what to do with babies - still don't. I wasn't around babies much when I was growing up, being an only child and an only grandchild on both sides until I was 12. Surely 'baby bunting' isn't just this bunting in baby fabrics hung in a nursery? I thought it was some old-fashioned kind of swaddling or diapering or something. Anyhow.

I've been making some bunting for our WI's 10th birthday party in June. Not that we are likely to celebrate it in June, but we'll celebrate it someday.  I may or may not be there. Oh, I'm planning on being alive, but I don't really fancy returning to 'normal' life until they find a good treatment for this Covid-19, better yet, a vaccine. I doubt I can tie Bill down until a vaccine emerges, however. But enough of that stuff that never goes away.

Bunting. It's not too hard to make, depending upon how fancy you want it. Mine involved dinking around with a 1" strip of fabric folded into quarters, for the binding the flags would be hanging from. I used tons of pins and still got some steam burns, but none that blistered. 

I have a tape maker somewhere, a gadget that is supposed to magically produce bias binding. However, I  never succeeded in even getting the fabric inserted, so felt it a was of money. 

Then I tried a trick I saw on Youtube countless times, where you put a long needle into your ironing board cover and run the strips under it. That worked a lot easier than pinning. Then Bill suggested I make a video, which I did with his help - two of them. About as amateur as you can imagine. Not to mention my 90-year-old hands, due to baking in the sun for 40 years (hands on steering wheels get all the wrinkle making rays). He also suggested the second one, showing how to put the needle in. Seemed obvious to me, but I humoured him.

I finally worked out ot bring the two edges together in the middle before they went under the needle, then to use the weight of the iron back before the un-pressed section, to help me pull it all tight. That made the ends lie down to be pressed and it all went much faster after that.

I made my first flags with opposites sides in complementary colours (opposite side of the colour wheel) just to have a system. Those went in the centre of my binding. Then I made a diagram on an envelope and selected pairings of colours so that nothing would repeat very close on each side, in colour or at least in pattern.  No idea if that makes sense. I tried to use the whole rainbow, including lighter shades but not including neutrals. 

Me trying to figure out how to control the fabric, also to get the cameraman
to not burn himself and not block my sight.

It makes a big mess having all those colours out at once! But then I always make a big mess when I sew. Hope to make a few more sets of bunting and then move on to something else. I'll let you know how that goes.

Placing the needle was far easier without the first time, without an audience!

Enjoy the videos (good for a laugh if nothing else). I'll never take a slick production for granted again!

Jars

I have a whole other post drafted about hoarding collecting of things most people would throw away. I hope to develop in to show why this is not crazy, but useful.

For the moment I will show you the jars I've collected, with the help of Vivien, I might add. The reason I started saving small bottles was because of the fruit alcohols I make for Christmas presents. It turns out that few bottles look right other than small (187 ml or thereabouts) wine bottles or slightly larger ones with nice shapes. A salad dressing bottle seems only destined to hold salad dressing or a lemon juice bottle only lemon juice. Perhaps it's a lack of imagination on my part.

Keepers.

However, wine bottles are great for freezing rose hip syrup. And then Bill took up making homemade wine. I was pleased to see him find a new hobby. So far there have been few results I call really drinkable, but every now and then he comes up with something really nice, like elderberry and damson wine. We tend to keep bottles with a punt (a dip in the bottom) for dealing with sediments for his wine making. Flat bottomed bottles are for rose hip syrup.

When Buy-the-Kilo opened up at the metro station near us, she sold her products either in expensive (to my mind) new jars and bottles (£2/£3 each) or she took community donations of jars which she cleaned and sold on for 50p each. Mostly she encouraged people to bring their own containers. I am amazed I've not written here about her marvelous shop, but then I've not written much here of late at all. It deserves its own post, I think. Anyhow, I saved jars to take to her.

For Jackie / re-cycling

Then when I began wanting to make jams I needed the type of jar with a dimple on the top. (Jam making in Britain is a whole different process to most food preservation in the US. I won't pretend to have the expertise to explain why this works). I wanted smallish ones, so that I could spread the varieties out and interesting shapes were nice, too. Since we'd recycled most of our marmalade jars from the past and honey jars don't have dimples, I needed help with this. Vivien also went through a jam making stage but she kindly shared a few of her jam jars. When I got really desperate I went down to Buy-the-Kilo and bought jars from her for 50p each. She had some nice square ones on offer.

Having been on holiday to Vienna with Jane and Chris, Bill's sister and brother-in-law, we discovered not only that Chris liked stewed apples but we did as well. So I began saving coffee and other large jars for freezing stewed apples to eat with our porridge or cereal. These coffee jars were also useful for filling up with dried fruits or popcorn at Buy-the-Kilo.

More keepers.

We got all these jars out of the loft or under the stairs because I understood that Jackie, at Buy-the-Kilo, was running out of her community donated jars and bottles and I had placed an order with her. Our original plan was to take these jars down to her when Bill picked up our order. Then she changed her mind about this and was using her full price bottles. All her dry products she was putting in paper bags and charging 10p each, what they cost her. It may be that people are nervous about used jars or she doesn't now have time to be re-cleaning them all.

Of course, jars can be used to store food, much like the plastic containers we're all used to. The freezer has lots of glass jars in there with various contents. The same as with plastic containers, they need to be under-filled to give room for expansion when the contents freeze. With plastic containers the lid will pop off while glass may shatter. 

My button collection is stored in jars, sorted by colour group. That deserves a photo by itself when I get a moment. How can just staying at home feel so busy?

In the end, I picked out all the jars I thought I might want for jams, stewed apples and purchasing post-pandemic at Buy-the-Kilo and we recycled the rest. I didn't have to heart to ask Bill to haul them all back up into the loft. Hope I don't find I needed those after all!

Hillheads Delivery

Our £25 delivery (now costing £29.25) came from Hillheads Farm shop a few days ago. Being more in Blog Mode, I thought to take a photo. My first thought was how plastic heavy it was, but this is the normal for foods in this country. Our order included:

1 each: white cabbage, iceberg lettuce, celery, swede/turnip, cucumber, 

1 kg (2.2 lb) each: carrots, onions, (new) potatoes, leeks, tomatoes, bananas

2 heads of broccoli, 1 bunch of spring onions, 3 bell peppers, 6 apples, 5 pears, 6 satsumas (sort of a tangerine but easier to peel)

500 g (just over a lb) of mushrooms

I wasn't sure about what to do with this food, so I erred on the side of caution: I filled one sink with slightly soapy water and the other with cold rinse water, and ran each of these items through each. I set the lettuce, celery and leeks upside down to drain. Bill and I dried each of the other items. 

We bought our usual 25 kg bag of potatoes last autumn and are getting near the bottom of it. Maybe in late January or early February we were out of onions and so went back up to Laidler's and got another box of those and on a whim we bought another net of carrots. Only they weren't the usual horse carrots (ugly, awkward shapes) but nice, large, straight ones. We still have carrot overload though. And now we have more. Plus boxes of blanched carrots in the freezer from the first net we bought. 

There is a story in the book, The Medical Detectives, by Bert Roueche, The Orange Man. Turns out he ate too many carrots. We'll not make the same mistake. Looking at my copy of this book I'm reminded that it was autographed for me 30 years ago by Philip Brachman, who taught some of my classes at CDC. I remember him as a lovely man and a superlative teacher. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago.

I can see I will be using part of the carrots with the cabbage to make coleslaw. Cooked carrots mashed together with cooked swede is quite nice. I had run out of spinach and my planted salad leaves aren't quite large enough to harvest as yet. While I wouldn't choose iceberg lettuce, I'm grateful for it all the same and shredded carrots are a feature of all my lunchtime salads. When the carrots start going off, I will chop, blanch and freeze them, then add them gradually to stir fries, a common meal in our house.

The rest of it we'll sail through rapidly. While I'm quite happy with my Hillheads order - and I could have added some dairy products had I realised, I think when we are close to running out we'll be supporting the South Gosforth fruiterers in North Shields with our next order.  The chaos and mayhem of empty shelves at supermarkets doesn't seem to be a feature of the local shops, which we've generally used over the past decade. While they took a while to organise delivery services, we're happily back on board with supporting those local shops and only buying at the supermarket the items that can't otherwise be obtained.

Hope you are all keeping safe and well!

"Not Just Jam and Jerusalem"

That's what they always seem to say about the modern day Women's Institute.  I've always thought "What's so bad about jam...or Jerusalem for that matter?" Other than it is impossible for me to sing and I think William Blake was crackers.  

For Americans reading here, Jerusalem is a hymn, the words of which were written by Blake. The first line is "And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green", referring to Jesus having possibly visited England. See what I mean? It's got a nice tune though and a room full of women singing is often quite majestic. There is a fun part about a chariot of fire and a sword in there. My favourite line is the last part about "England's green and pleasant land" which is absolutely true. But our WI doesn't sing Jerusalem at our meetings.

So what is the Women's Institute you might ask? For the moment, look it up in Wikipedia. Or visit their national website. If one day you might have access to Lucy Worsley's programmes, which are excellent, she did one called Cake Bakers and Trouble Makers. There seems to be some cross over between the Suffragettes and the Women's Institute in that they both rose to fame in Britain around the time of WWI. But enough of history.

Blackberry Jam and Apple Brandy Ginger Jam

What I really want to talk about is jam. My jam. My homemade jam. Although we did get a jam making demonstration some years ago, I never really got into jam making. I figured I wouldn't be able to do it 'right' and all that worry about it setting properly was too much of a headache.

At some point I wanted to find information about gardening in a location with similar weather to ours up here in Tyneside. Seems like most gardeners are down south, like most of the people in Britain, and it's not the same weather at all. I don't know if I was right in picking Seattle, Washington as a similar location but I grew to love the blog northwest edible life. And when she wrote about pectin free jam, I had to try it. She doesn't write much for the general public, I guess all of her new stuff is for Patreon subscribers or maybe she's retired on the proceeds of her book The Hands-On Home - A Seasonal Guide to cooking, preserving and natural homekeeping, by Erica Strauss. Of which I have a copy.

Strawberry Ginger Jam and Cinnamon Apple Rum Jam

I've pulled it out the last couple of autumn's when we started foraging and when my friends with apple trees shared their bounty. Anyhow, inspired by Erica's pectin-free recipe and even more by her dry zingers (spices) and wet zingers (alcohol/liqueurs) I started experimenting. Instead of using pectic she simmers the liquid out of the fruit until it is a jam-ish consistency or thereabouts. It's a lot more fun than the serious jam making you read about elsewhere.

Crabby Lime Chutney/Marmalade, Elder Apple Jelly, Blackberry jam

We've had cereal for breakfast for years but this winter switched to porridge and when it looked like spring was coming Bill decided to get out the bread maker; my scales have nagged me ever since. But we've been working our way through my home made jams. I gave away a lot of it at Christmas and we've gone through a few jars. However, I have a jar of home made pectin (from crab apples) yet and I may have some more fruit in the freezer. If not, I have quite a bit of tinned fruit and alcohol soaked fruits from my damson gin and blackberry whiskey Christmas gifts. Also some gifts from Vivien in the form of alcohol soaked fruits. I'm torn between getting ice cream to eat them over and turning them into jam. We'll see how it goes. And there is a load of sea buck thorn juice in the freezer. That's probably another post altogether.

I can't tell you how much satisfaction I get each morning, eating jam I made on bread Bill made.  I highly recommend having your own go at jam...and you could always learn to sing Jerusalem as well.

Ironing Board

A few years ago Bill redecorated my craft room - three years ago almost to the date. I got some new carpet at the time and when there was underlay left over, I kept it (of course I did). I had a couple of ideas for how it might be useful.

One was as shoe liners. UK size 3 is the closest I can get to what is size 5 in the US and probably with age I need more of a 5.5. Size 3 fits better than it used to but I need liners for a lot of them so I don't slide around inside. Unfortunately, I found that the shoe liners I cut from carpet underlay were far too thick for this purpose. So I moved on to the next project.

We have two ironing boards in this house and I can't recall why. One is standard size, lives in the kitchen pantry and Bill uses it to do most of the ironing that gets done in our house. It gives him something to do. I don't mind ironing at all except when it comes to sheets and he's the one who likes ironed sheets so I let him get on with it.

The one in my craft room is extra wide. I remember Bill bought it and came home with the story that two little old ladies in the queue behind him remarked 'That's an unusually large one' and he turned around and said he didn't hear that often from ladies, which made them giggle. I was just glad I wasn't with him.




It wasn't terribly long before the pattern of the metal grid showed through the thin padding and the heat-proof cover. It actually marked the pattern on the fabric being ironed. So I put a couple of fluffy terry cloth towels in for extra padding and added a wide binding to the cover so it would fit over the layers. This worked for a few years, but of course the towels got flattened and the grid showed through again.

I decided the time had finally come to tackle this.

I was impressed at the thin foam padding still being in one piece even though it was so deeply marked. As you might guess, I didn't throw it out, but put it in a bag in which I collect tiny bits of fabric and thread, thinking it might be useful as stuffing one day.

My old friend, Joanne, crocheted hanger covers after padding the wire hanger with foam rubber. Like me, I doubt she bought the padding, it was no doubt left from something else she had. I still have the hangers she made for me.

I pinned the padding to my carpet underlay and traced it with a felt tip marker. Then I put the padding aside and moved the project to the top of the ironing board. I'm too old to be crawling around on the floor any more than I have to.

It was a challenge finding something to cut the thick underlay. Scissors hurt my hand and I wasn't prepared to wait for Bill to hunt his utility knife down. I had my own utility knife but wanted to keep it sharp and doubted I had extra blades for it. I went through my collection of X-acto knives to find the one I did have more blades for and then hacked my way around the outline. I ended up doing this twice as the old padding must have once gone over the edges of the board, but this underlay was way too stiff for that. Eventually I had the size I wanted.

Then it was a matter of re-stringing the cover. I'd cut the old cord, made from 3 strands of some sort of silk or cotton crochet thread. I didn't throw it away but doubled up each of the single strands and added it to my ball of short bits, for knitting Innocence smoothie hats. I have made these for Age UK for several years now. Frankly, though, they don't really serve any practical purpose other than to net Age UK 25p for each one made. Kids collect them but I expect they eventually find themselves in the trash bin, so why waste good yarn on them? Scrappy yarn makes quite interesting hats and pom poms after all. 

Anyhow, my recent gifts of fabric scraps have piled up in the corner and so I can't get to the crochet thread collection at the moment. Instead I used a skein of orange embroidery thread for the new cord. I tied it to a large paper clip to slip it through the binding. I wrapped it around a metal bar I've had for a while, part of another collection someone gave me, to help pull it tight without cutting my hands. 

Lo and behold, a long cap came off this bar to reveal a needle fine crochet hook. I can only imagine trying to crochet with sewing thread, this hook is so fine. I never knew that's what this bar actually was!

So, I now have a nicely padded ironing board, ready to do some sewing! It "only" took me three years to do this and it feels almost that long since I sewed anything. I'm looking forward to it.

Back to the Blogstone

I've been meaning to get back to writing ever since this pandemic thing started, there have just been a number of other pressing priorities:

• finding food sources that will deliver (I have asthma and Bill just turned 72)
• taking stock of what food we have and where it is
• tackling the gardens when weather permits
• convincing Bill to stay home
• learning Zoom and Whatsapp to communicate with WI Committee and Book Group
• finding new programmes on Netflix (Simon shared his code with us) that Bill will watch
• proofing my US tax return sent by the accountant (I think she used various and weird exchange rates on my British income and I'm completely unimpressed)
• putting together a craft email on how to make bunting for WI Craft Group
• having developed a toothache and the dentist won't see me so long as I can eat, sleep and don't have a fever (though once I have a fever, since I cough all the time, will he see me then?), I clean my teeth a lot, do salt water mouthwashes and rub on Colgate toothpaste for sensitive teeth. 
• wash my hands obsessively
• go for long walks to try to counteract all the food we're eating (Bill is still running)
• trying new recipes as a form of entertainment
• trying not to sit still for more than 30 minutes at a time (bad for your health to sit too long)

Who knew staying at home could be so exhausting?

It's always hard to start writing again after a pause, I seem to have to find my voice again. But I have started taking photos again and those always help me get started with the words.

Hope you'll join in with comments! I may find time to look up some of my old blogging buddies to see if they've picked up their blogs again.

(P.S. In addition to writing new posts, I'm going back and reviewing old drafts that never got published. For example, a couple about redecorating and rearranging my craft room:

The Great Sewing Room Reveal - Part I & Part II