House-Off 2011

After visiting Germany and Austria several times during the winter festive period and seeing the glorious Lebkuchenhaus displayed in the windows of bakeries and sweet shops, I resolved that one day when I was spending relaxing Christmas at home, I would make my very own Gingerbread House. This year was that year, and I'd been reading various websites for the last few months, and some good friends in Germany sent me over some genuine German Lebkuchen spices to help me on my way, but at home only Daddy knew, just incase it turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.

A few days before Christmas my sister and I were indulging in a look around The Good Shop in Worthing when she turned to me and whispered conspiratorially, "Don't tell anyone, but Boyfriend and I are going to make a gingerbread house for Christmas day!". My world briefly crumbled, then I recovered my composure and said that I had been planning one for ages and that she could make one if she wanted, and that would be okay because mine would be better anyway! Amid this sisterly rivalry, House-Off 2011 was born, and we spent the next few days trying to psyche each other out with jokes such as, "I wonder if I could make candy hay to put in the hay loft of my gingerbread stable block" and "Do you think the inhabitants of my gingerbread house would prefer a hot tub or swimming pool?". Except I wasn't joking.

On the day before Christmas Eve I rolled out acres of gingerbread (following a recipe from the BBC Good Food website), cut it to the rough size for baking, and then used my templates to cut the final shapes as soon as they came out of the oven. On Christmas Eve I made up the icing and assembled my masterpiece, doing the decorative icing after it was structurally sound. 

First, I pieced together the hot tub as a practice, and because it needed most time to set as later I would waterproof it interntally with melted white chocolate, and as my joints were less than neat, it benefitted from a milk chocolate outer covering too. I filled it with blue curaço to give it that "Come jump in" look.

Next up was the dog kennel. By now I'd realised that the icing set faster than I could work, so I softened it very slighted with some warm water. I assembled the walls and let them set while I coated the hot tub in chocolate, then added the roof and some decorations.

While I was steeling my nerves for the house itself I worked to improve my icing accuracy by decorating a small copse of fir trees, the herd of reindeer, a couple of snowmen and Mr and Mrs Santa. These fab cookies were made using some stand-up Christmas cookie cutters I had bought (furtively) in the cook shop where House-Off broke out. I didn't roll the pastry out thin enough, so some post-baking cookie carpentry was in order to make them fit together - I thought were worth the effort though.

Time was ticking and I could delay the main event no longer. With a certain amount of nervousness and several boxes of sugar and flour to act as supports, I iced together the walls of my house, iced the chimney onto the roof, and then the roof onto the house. I was getting more confident with icing by now, so did some more decorative icing around the edge of the roof to make icicles, and around the Foxes Glacier Mint windows for some festive cheer, then carefully added the kennel, hot tub and stand-up cookies to the scene. I'm pretty pleased with it - I think I might have found a new hobby!

And here they are together for comparison. I think they are both good, but in different ways. I think mine has a more Austrian mountain village look to it, while Sister-Girl's is a more fun 'Hansel and Gretel' style. Roll on next year, when there really will be a stable block!

'Hideaway' Quilt

In the depths of my deep dark Antarctic winter, while I was frantically knitting my Winter blanket, I started wondering about patchwork quilting, in part I think as I imagined it would be a faster way of crafting. With a lack of both supplies and knowledge, I had to set my fabric lust to one side until such times as I could pursue it properly.

'Hideaway' Quilt

Shortly after my return home a leaflet about a crafts demonstration at a local church was pushed through our door, and happily quilting was one of the events! I met the lady who runs the local quilting group, joined up and started sewing! A few days later I fell into a quilting shop; the fabric fumes quickly went to my head and I came home with a charm pack of Moda's Hideaway fabric, and absolutely no idea what to do with it.
I decided that simple was best, so spent a few hours arranging and rearranging the squares into a pleasing order, and then a few days sewing them together, while thinking how quick this patchwork lark was.
It took a few weeks to find and sew the right border fabric, and once basted together, it then took a few months to actually quilt it all together... and suddenly quilting wasn't seeming like the quick option!
Working the quilting out was part hardcore maths to make it all fit neatly, and part totally winging it and hoping it would turn out alright in the end.
I'm really happy with the end result, and have learnt a lot about quilting, not least, don't attempt detailed quilting on a busy fabric, or your hard work will be wasted! Fortunately the outer border's celtic knot detail shows up nicely on the reverse side, so all is not lost.
All it needs to be properly finished is for it's intended recipient to be born!

Leaves and loops

Celtic knot border

Reverse side

Pumpkin Crunchin'

Just a quick post to blog this year's pumpkin carving. I'd love to claim originality for the design, but I spent a fair while doing Google Images searches for pumpkins, and found something similar there to use as a starting point.I drew out the design with a dry-wipe marker first, then went over the marker with a scalpel, before using a small kitchen knife to finish him off. We had lots of Trick Or Treaters this year, and he was a big hit with both the children and the parents!

Slindon Pumpkin Festival

The village of Slindon in West Sussex is famous for its annual Pumpkin Festival, a tradition which was started almost accidentally by the late Ralph Upton when he laid his pumpkin crop out on the roof of his barn to cure the skins. The pumpkins attracted attention, so Ralph started making pictures on the roof using different sized, shaped, and coloured pumpkins - while the rest of the world measures pictures in dots-per-inch, this is a display is more inches per dot!

The 2011 display - a wheelbarrow full of pumpkins!

A few of the 20+ different varieties of pumpkins and squashes.

As well as the pumpkin artwork to look at, the produce is also available for sale. There were at least 20 different varieties of pumpkins and squashes from the tiny We Be Little to the somewhat larger Atlantic Giant.

The pumpkin-sellers are very knowledgable about what to do with your pumpkins once you've bought them, and can advise which are best for carving, curries, pies,  soups or roasting.

Pumpkins also last a long time, which is just as well, given the number we came home with!

Where you least expect it

Rainfall data for Solitaire, Namibia

I travelled over 6,000 km across Africa and what did I find? A rain gauge. In a desert no less. Which goes to show that you can take the girl away from the met station... but the girl will always find her way back to the met station! 

Rain gauge onna stick

Sussex Sun Halo

I was hanging the laundry out this morning when I looked up and a sun halo:

22-degree sun halo in Sussex

This particular beauty is a 22° degree halo which is formed when sunlight is refracted by ice crystals in the barely-visible cirrus clouds. While not rare as such, it is certainly unusual to see such a complete example in the UK. I am using the bird-feeder to eclipse the sun so that the sensor on my camera wasn't too flooded with light from the sun (I was in point-and-shoot mode).

Optical effects are probably my favourite thing to see in the sky. Antarctica was great for them as the cold atmosphere means they appear more frequently. Seeing this gave me a spring in my step all day! If you are lucky enough to spot one, view it wearing sunglasses and use your hand to block the sun to avoid damaging your eyes.

In other news, the strawberries are progressing well, and I think I'll have my first strawberry any day now!

Met Office Mk2 Strawberry Gauge

Met Office Mk2 Strawberry Gauge

A few years ago, when I worked for The Environment Agency, I used to visit and maintain various rain gauges around the West Midlands. We looked after them on behalf of the Met Office, who used the data to calibrate their radar images of rain fall. We had some automatic tipping bucket gauges, some monthly storage gauges and some daily or '5-inch' rain gauges. These are the classic Met Office rain gauges which were invented in something like 1872*, updated to the Mk2 in 1875, and haven't changed since. They are a thing of beauty.

Periodically rain gauges would need to be replaced if they failed inspection, and I rehomed a couple with vague ideas of using them in the garden for plants or something sculptural. They have sat at the bottom of Daddy's garden ever since, but during a recent conversation with friends about using copper tape to slug-proof strawberry plants, I realised I had the perfect solution - I give you the Met Office Mk2 Strawberry Gauge!

The main body of this one already had a slit in one side after a nasty incident with a grounds-keeper and a ride-on lawn-mower (final score: Lawn-mower 1 - Rain gauge 0). I lengthened the slit and tidied the edge up with a metal file, then drilled a line of holes on the other side and used a hacksaw blade to make another slit. I hammered the top of the slit inwards, and used pliers to persuade the bottom half outwards. I didn't manage to make the hole very big and had to sort-of post the stem/leaves through from the inside, but it worked. I also drilled several holes in the bottom of it to allow for drainage. The lid of the rain gauge was used as-is with no modifications, as it has an internal funnel which allows it to drain.

Overall I am pretty pleased with how it came out, although doing the metal work was far harder than I had anticipated. I have another base, and several internal cans, but I think the neighbours deserve a break from banging, thumping and drilling for a few days - my arm muscles certainly do!

I'll have to wait a few months to see quite how slug-proof they are, but I am looking forward to fresh strawberries for breakfast enormously!

*That's a total stab in the dark. I remember from university that it was pretty old (18-something), but don't quote me on the exact date. Do let me know if you know though!

British Sea Power

The weekend kicked off to a lively start a few short hours after my flight landed, with a trip to The Dragoon pub in Brampton to watch Drunken Pilot, who were quite good musically, but also quite funny as well.
On Sunday British Sea Power played at The Junction in Cambridge. I came to know British Sea Power because they did a song about the Larsen B ice-shelf in Antarctica, which was one of our winter songs. They played a great set, including a mix of stuff that I knew and songs from their new album.

Czech It Out!

 I might not be in Antarctica any longer, but that's no excuse not to do fun stuff in fun places. I've spent this last week at Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic at a workshop organised by the World Meteorological Organization. The aim was for different countries to come together to discuss how to improve and re-evaluate the data collected from Dobson spectrophotometers. Dobsonmeters measure atmospheric ozone by looking at the difference in absorption of different wavelengths of UV light. The occurrence of severe ozone depletion (The Ozone Hole) over the South Pole was discovered by measurements from a Dobsonmeter at Halley Research Station in Antarctica.

We had a visit to the Czech Republic's Solar and Ozone Observatory, and a dinner and some talks from the Ministry For The Environment which were very interesting.

The town was very pretty and extremely well-provisioned with bars and restaurants, of which we fully availed ourselves. There was an excellent selection of traditional Czech food and the service was very good.
A few photos:

January's Crafty Round-Up

At long last, I have some knitted FOs!

• Field Socks - turned out not to be field socks, but more plane, train and general distraction socks. Modelled here by Grandad, but as yet ownerless, as Grandad thought they were a bit too loud for his tastes.
• Arisaig, at long last! The front shaping was a nightmare, and then all of the ribbing turned out too elastic - seriously, you could have bungee-jumped from it. Lots of patient frogging, and we got there in the end.
• A coil pot and two pinch pots, made at my pottery class. I was looking through the Adult Education prospectus for a Spanish course, and decided that playing with clay also looked fun. It really is.