Bloo on Green ~ In which I start the making of something quite fabby !!!!

Hellloooooooooooooo me Loverlies

Here we are again looking at homemade things that are a bit more than special and fun and hopefully better for our world in some way.

I had a thought about candles the other day. I am not sure if i could get away with candle making up here unless it was the loose bead variety but i desperately wanted to do something. Candles are something we use quite alot of and it's coming up to that time of year where candles make all the difference and can make a room not only feel warmer but actually warmer as well.

How was I going to do this ??? I had no idea until looking through an old herbcraft book I can upon instructions for herb candles. Herb Candles ??? really ??? I continued to look realising that you used bought pillar candles and could dip them in water to place the pressed herbs into them ... Well I have to say I think I might jsut be onto something this time. Our budget is worse than little it is non existant right now, however at times we all have a loose £1 coin in our pockets and this is when the £1 shops come in handy. Himself is now under instrudtions that when he picks up the girls in Exeter on a Saturday he is to pop into the pound shop and pick up a tower candle.  I would love to go but it is another bus fare and that bus fare would be our electric for a week so that isn't happening!!!

Instead what I have started doing is pressing the leaves to go on the candles. No I don't have a special posh press that everyone thinks they need to do this I have lots of huge massive doorsteps of books and that combined with some tissue of whatever sort you have in the house in our case it was loo roll will do the job nicely.

Work from the back of the book it makes it easier to do several layers, put down 2 layers of tissue on the right hand page.

Pick your leaves off the stalks. Today I am using Ivy leaves, they mean something to us and they will give a great effect to the completed candle. 

Be choosey with your leaves though and don't use any damaged ones and put whats left in the compost of back where you found it as Ivy will regrow from these stalks.

Lay your leaves out face down on the paper. and give them plenty of room around themselves as you don't want them to stick together by accident, or curl wrongly in the pressing. 

Carefully cover the leaves with 2 more layers of tissue and close the book by about 20-30 pages to start your next layer. 

The book I used has over 1500 pages in it so I was able to use up all the leaves at one go with plenty of room in the bok for more should I want to press some more. Which I will do when I find the right ones. If you are going to use ivy use lots of different varieties I found 4 last night so I will have quite a variety. When it comes time to make the candles I will definately let you know. Until then leave your leaves to press for a good couple of weeks. I may  take less time I jsut like to make sure. They can then be kept in an airtight container layered on the sheets they were pressed with to keep them safe. 

Have fun with this one

xox Love and Light xox

Stitch and Bitch ~In Which Himself is Weaving and I now have something to Bitch about !!!

Happy Tyr's Day me Loverlies

Boy have I missed writing my Blog. Sorry about the absence again however I have things going on and things aren't making life easy for someone wanting to write a blog!!! Like serious meds now having to be taken until the specialists decide what to do with my back ... and are quite happy leaving me on crutches and slowly on the road to becoming a morphine addict because noone will do anything until it I can no longer walk because I can't feel my legs!!!

Yes grumpy sorry but hey thats what Stitch and Bitch is all about getting the bitchies out ... so here goes another one .. this is the second time I have written this blog ... I published it an hour ago and since I was here and able to I was getting a jump start on tomorrows and whoops I appear to have deleted it O.o  GRRRRR!!!! Is it Monday and no-one told me or something !!??!! cos it sure feels like it !!!!

Anywhoo the wonderful and most fabbytastic Himself has taken over the loom. It isn't a huge thing can sit on your lap and was a gift from a former flat mate a couple of years ago. I finally brought it off the shelf the other week and dusted it off only to find the instructions in German O.o My wonderful long suffering man that he is Himself translated the whole lot. Let me make clear what he did. He typed out the manual by hand into the Google translator thingy and it took him a goodly couple of hours and then popped the translation into a document in English so I could read it !!!

.... and I still couldn't figure it out o.o pfft!!! so we called upon a friend who teaches weaving at a fabbytastic place locally and she came over with her wonderful little sprout and we figured it out together YAY!!!!! and then it fell to pieces after I had ma\de it long enough and we tied off the ends O.o .....

This is where Himself decides to take over and I helped him keep the tension tight on one end while he threaded the warp around cos the stoopid thing isn't one of these wonderful massive easy things that you thread it individually noooooooo you have to weave it back on itself in one long thread ....

Many rude words have been said about the person who invented this machine ... by myself and our friend and even Himself at times, however he seems to have taken to it and is at the moment making fabby cloths for the girls under thier lamps for thier bedside tables. Now to me thats a real dad !!!

So whilst I am here writing this and a couple of other blogs so i can keep up this week he is in the living room watching boy stuff and weaving hehehe.

 It took ages to get him to stop long enough to get his phone out of his pocket so I could take the pics so I took another one hahahaha!!!!

Whilst all this was going on a Red Admiral Butterfly flew past my face knocking me off balance a bit and landed on one of our chalices on our alter !!!!

Being as this appears to be the kind of day I appear to be being taught things i figured I might just look it up ... and I might just look up the other creature that haunted me and chased me around the flat on  the weekend too!!!!

Spiders normally in this country don't bother me I've lived in Australia and the ones here are nothing compared to what you have to put up with over there, but I am telling you this thing would've grabbed the remote given half a chance and cracked open a beer and watched the game given half a chance!!!!

So lets look at the nice one first

The butterfly is the symbol of change, joy and color.

It is the symbol of the soul. They remind us that life is a dance, not to take things quite so seriously. They also remind us to get up and move. Dance brings the sweetness of life. Butterflies bring color and joy to your life. Look at them and remember what joy is in your life, if it's a lot or a little, it is still joy. They teach us that growth and transformation does not have to traumatic; it can occur gently, sweetly, and joyfully.

 Spider: Creativity and Weaver of Fate

A spider totem teaches you balance --between past and future, physical and spirit, male and female. She is strength and gentleness combined. She awakens creative sensibilities and reminds you that the past is always interwoven with the future. Tarantulas (and all spiders) are the keepers of the primordial alphabet and can teach you how to write creatively. Her body is shaped like the number 8 and she has 8 legs, which is symbol of infinite possibilities of creation. Her 8 legs represent the 4 winds of change and the four directions of the medicine wheel. Spider's message is that you are an infinite being who will continue to weave patterns of life and living throughout time. Do not fail to see the eternal plan of creation. Those who weave magic with the written word usually have this totem.

 http://www.linsdomain.com/totems.htm 

Just in case you want to check any out yourself there is the link this is a great site for suiuch things 

Also I have just been taught an important lesson just cos it looks icky doesn't mean it is ... I kinda like that me thinkies. Makes me feel better having a reason for crawlies about the place!!!

Anywhoo I must away have plenty to do and 2 other blogs to write before I am lynched by you lot for not keeping up with it again.

Have a fabbytastic day no matter what you are doing 

xox Love and Light xox  

Cookie's Corner ~ Crab Apple and Rowan Berry Jelly

Morning Me Loverlies!!!

Today's recipe is a fantastic traditional recipe, loved by millions over the centuries, not only as an accompaniment for hot and cold meats, or as a jam used in all the usual ways, also as a farmhouse traditional sore throat remedy that might jsut actually help the rheumatism as well in the cold months of winter.

Sounds like something that came out the back end of a cow I hear you say, but no it isn't. Big Pharma aren't allowed to patent natural growing plants, so they disregard them as a whole medicine and only use the parts they can synthesize and patent namely the chemicals. These are pretty much the same no matter how you package them only this way they taste better.

Now let me make this perfectly clear right now !!! I am NOT a qualified herbalist, or biologist or anything else with a fancy name or letters after it. What I do is read. ALOT. I read about things I don't know about and I use the books that universities use as thier textbooks and encyclopedias and internet sources and professinal sources for my information. I do not in anyway suggest you forgo seeing your GP or a qualified Herbalist as listed by NIMH. I am not saying ignore thier advice what I am saying is talk to them and see if you can use this in conjunction or instead of other medications that may not be necessary as this might work better than a strepsil and is half the price of a packet of them.

Personally for years I have had serious issues with my tonsils including 74 quinzies and uncountable numbers of tonsilitis. Yes I still have my tonsils and I will keep them as they are the first line of defence of your immune system and if they are inflamed there is a reason. Of course I reckon smoking for the last 22 years hasn't helped, but stop yelling at me i went cold turkey 6 weeks ago and haven't looked back.  So NER!!!! Anywhooo I used to find that when "the scratch" used to appear a spoonful of this jelly used to help me out enormously!!! and in most cases a teaspoonful a day would do.  Considering the choice between that and the pills they give you at the docs when you have a throat that won't swallow water, horses would bolt at the size of them!!!

The biggest thing I love about remedies like this is you don't realise it's medicine and nor do children if you handle it right. If your kids are used to your homecooked foraged recipes they won't even blink an eye if they come into you and you give them a piece of soft bread and butter with a spoonful of this on it and they will be more than happy to suck it on down.

Anywhoo I feel I must explain how this is possible and how it works ... you know the science of it .. well here is the easiest explanation I could find.

Rowan or Mountain ash (Sorbus aucuparia) is a species of the genus Sorbus, native to most of Europe except for the far south, and northern Asia. In the south of its range in the Mediterranean region it is confined to high altitudes in Balkan mountains.  The red-orange rowanberries are ripening in from July to October.

Rowanberries are rich source of antioxidants. An investigation of rowanberry flavonoids showed the presence of rutin, quercetin-3-glucoside and quercetin-3-D-galactoside. Quantitative analysis of berry flavonoids showed quercetin-3-D-galactoside as a major compound, being 24.55 mg/kg fw (2).

Human food

Rowan or Mountain Ash fruit / berries are too astringent - unpleasant are not suitable to be eaten raw. The fruit (berries) of Rowan can be made into a slightly bitter jelly but also marmalade and juices. The fruit (berries) have many uses eg. to flavor liqueurs and other alcoholic beverages.

Rowan berries contain sorbic acid, an acid that takes its name from the Latin name of the genus Sorbus. The bitterness is coming from parasorbic acid which causes indigestion and can lead to kidney damage. It is important that berries are cooked in order to remove bitter taste. Cooking removes parasorbic acid making rowanberries edible.

Medical uses

In traditional medicine, the ripe rowanberries are made into a decoction used as a gargle for sore throats. The berries were used as a treatment for scurvy because of their high vitamin C content. A decoction of the bark is said to be good for diarrhea.

http://arcticberries.se/rowanberry.htm

So there you go there is the science and now onto the recipe and the fun stuffs with lots of piccies!!!! 

Crab Apple and Rowan Berry Jelly

Ingredients

Equal measure of Crab Apples and Rowanberries

Juice of a lemon 

Sugar

Put Rowan Berries in pot no stalks or leaves, 1/2 lemon juice, and just cover with water. Bring to boil fast and keep cooking until the berries are really really soft

   Repeat this process for the Crab Apples

  Place the Rowan Berries in a  jelly bag or like we did in a piece of muslin or similar and hang over a bowl for about 4 hours. 

 Repeat for the Crab Apples  

 Mix equal amounts of the juices and add 1lb (450g) sugar for each pint (600g) of fluid in a pot 

 Stir on heat until completely dissolved Cook fast til setting point is reached 

 Skim froth from top and seal in jars 

 You can experiment with cloves, ginger, rosemary, lavender as flavourings .. not all at once that would be scary ... or even cook your crab apples in some left over cider !!!

We have 4 litres of the Crab Apple Liquor left so we is out tonight getting some more Rowan Berries before they are all gone to make some more!!! I am wanting to have 5 jars to sell at the market in the next month or so. We shall see how we go.

Have fun today no matter what you are doing

xox Love and Light xox