New Celebrants Forum

I have just started a Google+ Community for Celebrants and have invited the people on the course with me and Geraldine to come and join.  It has been a while since I wrote on this blog, and a lot has happened - my writing is selling well, novels are coming along and I have a new grandson called Nathaniel Elliot, who is the most beautiful child, and I am not in the least partial!

Another Recipe - Sweet Pickled Plums

It has been a while since I posted a secret recipe.  It is plum time again and the tree at this house is so full of fruit that the branches are almost trailing on the ground.  I have picked loads and frozen them, with the stones in, waiting until I have time to make some plum jelly, the best jelly in the world.  I will also make some of this beautiful Victorian recipe.

Sunday
7^th October, 2001
Sweet Pickled Plums

'I made these in the summer and forgot to write down the recipe. I haven't tried it yet because the 6 months haven't passed. I gave a jar away and now have a large jar left. (Did try it and it was beautiful with ham and very moorish).

It must have been a short ceremonial meeting, maybe just one day, because here I am writing down this recipe on the Sunday. I remember making this quite clearly when I found this recipe in a book with Victorian preserve recipes. I couldn't believe it would work out well, it looks quite weak and odd when first made, but it was smashing at Christmas – they were eaten like spicy plums!'

I love plums, especially Victoria plums eaten warm on a sunny day in the Summer, sometimes with puppies round my feet. Perfectness. I think I have told you this before!

Ingredients:

2 lb stoned plums

2 lb sugar

1 ½ pints distilled vinegar

1. Put fruit in the saucepan and cover with water, cook until soft and then drain.
2. Put sugar and vinegar in another pan and heat stirring all the time until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil and boil for 30 minutes.
3. Add fruit to the vinegar and boil for 15 minutes and then pour into the preheated jars
4. Cover and seal as usual.
5. Store for 6 months before using.

Four patchwork bags

I have been making bags for the past few weeks to show that patchwork and quilting is not just about big bed quilts.  On the 30th August we will have Enrolment Day for the U3A and I shall take these bags and some quilts to decorate my signup desk!

We went to the Festival of Quilts last Thursday and I bought this pattern.  It is a huge bag with pockets for ruler and cutter and big enough for an A2 mat, perfect for class.  Here are the pockets -

This bag is called a twisted patchwork bag and I learned to make it at a class in Barrington Quilting.  I am waiting for the pattern to turn up.  Luke and Caroline gave me the fabric for mother's day, I love blue and white.

This was supposed to be a small version of the blue and white bag, but I couldn't remember how to make it - no pattern - and it went wrong, so I turned it into a drawstring bag without a lining and put lots of beads inside.  I especially like the Japanese endings of the drawstring!

This is a perfect bag for a child - I made it with five inch charm squares - and put an elephant button on the front for more decoration.  Here is the lining and the elephant button.. 

The pattern for this bag came from the Popular Patchwork magazine and used half a charm square pack.  I am very inclined to cut up some five inch squares from my stash and make another one, they are so easy to make and so attractive, especially for a little girl.
If I make another one, I shall put the stages on this blog.  Please leave a comment if you would like to see step by step instructions for it.

Lilly and Molly

Here are some photos of the dogs playing with Fred this lunchtime.  As you can see Molly has grown like a weed!

Gaia, She is all the life there is.

So here we are again with our world view changed, seeing ourselves back in the centre of the known Universe. We moved from seeing the earth as the centre four hundred years ago, to the earth being a tiny speck on the ocean of the Vastness, and then back again to the centre in one huge fell swoop.

For, according to a mathematician or two, we are likely to be the only, sole unique life force existing anywhere in the terrible cold vastness of space and time. It is apparently full of energy, but not of life. He has worked it out, plotting the variables for life against the numbers of stars and planets. And its just us. So again, we are alone.

Why should it matter? Why should we care in the day to day minutiae of mortgage, bills, work, children, friends, sleep, what difference does it make?

For Buddhists to be born human is they say the most special and fabulous thing. They have this lovely image of a blind turtle swimming in the Pacific Ocean and catching on its head the only golden ring floating in the beauty of that sea. To be born human is as likely, they say, as that turtle catching that ring. How much we should then value our sentient, thinking, beauty appreciating, language adorned life, woven through with love. How we should wonder at new life, especially new human life, for its rarity and its wonder and its self-awareness.

Maybe it is not a turtle and an ocean we need to think of. Maybe, if we listen to that mathematician, it is one planet and one life force in one Universe. Only one, we are the only one.

Without us all, all this teaming life that exists everywhere and in all sorts of difficult places on this beautiful blue globe, the Universe is truly sterile. It is just explosions and gases and elements and rocks - one enormous science lab without anyone to watch its experiments. One terrible cold, linked by terrible heat without anyone to look at and love it.

Let's be careful of nuclear bombs, chemical warfare, biological weapons, global warming, poison on the land, chimera, people made in jars, animals made for experiment, mountains of food and starvation of children. Let's watch out for tsunami, earthquakes, volcanoes, hatred, greed and lies. Let's condemn cruelty and violence of any kind, towards anyone and any form of life.

We must be careful, we are all there is.

Michael's Quilt

I have finished Michael's quilt which was supposed to be for his 60th birthday, only 2 years late!  Anyway, here it is

I am pleased with it as it is very men type colours, I wouldn't have made it for myself!

He wanted ying and yang symbols, which are his favourite, and I had this put on in the all over quilting pattern -

Callum, my nephew, is taking it back with him tomorrow.  I just hope Michael likes it!

Date, Honey and Apricot Slices

Friday

5 October 2001

Date, Honey and Apricot Slices

Here we go again with the tray bakes, this must have been a big meeting with the ceremonial group. Now I cook for the cake sales in St. Mary's church in Glastonbury, and some day I hope for my children in Newcastle.

I wrote -

'I made these as a try out and gave them to Wendy for the boys – they were lovely so I made more to take to the meeting in Glastonbury on Sunday.'

I spent a great deal of time driving up and down the motorway in this year and found lots of different ways of getting to Avalon. The best was the motorway, because you can't get lost, even me, on two straight roads. This was before we had a satnav, now I rarely cry in the car through frustration at being lost again.

Good old Jane, the satnav lady, though she does sometimes send me up very strange roads, better her than myself.

Oven: 400F/200C/Gas 6 for 25-30 mins

Ingredients:

1 pound mixed dates and apricots

7 oz butter

10 oz wholemeal flour

4/5 oz soft brown sugar

5 oz oats

2 tbspoons water

1 tbs honey

Steam dates and apricots for 10 minutes, mash and chop up and mix with the honey.

1. Rub butter into flour and add sugar – it can be good to chop up the butter when it gets sticky.
2. Add coats and mix in lightly
3. Pack half of the oats mixture firmly down into the tin and cover with the date mixture
4. Put remaining oat mixture on top like breadcrumbs.
5. Bake and when done leave to cool, cut into slices in the tin.
   Ice if desired.