Crochet: Hellebore flower

A few weeks ago I decided to crochet some of the flowers that I have in the pattern book "100 flowers to knit & crochet" by Lesley Stansfield.
This flower was so quick and easy to knit, it was done in minutes. There are only 4 rows to make. Haven't made a faster project.

The truth about cancer docu series.

A few years ago my mother was diagnosed with Mesothelioma, a type of cancer that is in the cavity behind the lungs because of exposure to asbestos dust. It was awful to see what it did to her. She ended up with having the cavity behind her lungs fill up with fluids, which compressed her lungs, which made breathing very hard. This happened several times before her passing. The way she ended up breathing was heartbreaking.
Unfortunately there is very little to be done for this type of cancer. Her consultant told her that the only treatment available was very harsh and required her to be quite fit to be able to go through it, but as her health wasn't great, he recommended against it, as without she would live longer than with.
This ordeal triggered in me an interest to learn more about cancer and to especially learn a lot more about prevention of cancer.

I have read various books and looked into quite a lot of research with regards to cancer. I have learned over the years is that I am frequently appalled by how the present day medical establishment treats people with cancer. The treatments are very harsh, painful and debilitating, but the part where people get told they are going to die within x amount of time really bothers me as well. It would be psychologically much nicer to talk about staying alive and how the plan is to achieve that. Some research has shown that having a positive view on it and surviving it tends to give very good results in people living much longer.
Besides that there are so many other choices people can make. Unfortunately most of those choices are completely unknown to the vast majority of people, which is quite sad, as it would be so much better if people were given a choice on they would like to treat themselves and their children.

I have read up on Dr. Gonzalez and his treatments, I watched various presentations he did. All very very fascinating. I have also read up on Dr. Burzynski. His treatment is also totally fascinating. And there are many, many more Doctors who treat cancer in different way, which aren't the standard way of treatment, with very, very good results.

Today there is a trailer of a docu-series (free to watch online) available about cancer.
Here is the link where episode 1 starts: The truth about cancer
This series is actually tremendously interesting as it goes into a lot of detail about cancer, prevention and treatments. The information shared in this docu-series has the potential to save lives. Therefore, I recommend watching the series, or buying the DVD if that suits you better. It is never bad to learn more about such a difficult illness.

On this post you will find a few pictures of my mother. The series being broadcasted online made me think of her, so here it is in her memory.

Recipes: Crumpets, sourdough

Recently I made sourdough crumpets for breakfast. I had had the crumpets one buys in the supermarket on occassion, but didn't really like them. I tried to home made version with white flour every now and then, but still I wasn't satisfied, there had to be a more nutritious way to make them with sourdough. So I read a lot online and experimented a bit. The result of my experimentations you will find below. It is certainly very tasty and my children loved them, hopefully yours will as well.

As for the toppings, you can use a variety of things, savoury and sweet.
Sweet toppings can be: sliced or mashed fruit, whipped cream, clotted cream, butter and cinnamon, home made fruit butter or such. The possibilities are endless.
Savoury toppings can be: home made nut butter, tomato or any other vegetable, either cooked or raw, with some salt and pepper, melted cheese with a vegetable, such as tomato or mushroom, cheese, fried or poached egg, ham, salami, fried bacon, pulled pork, or whatever takes your fancy. You can add some herbs or spices, or chilli to make the flavour you want. Again the possibilities are endless. 

Recently we made pizza crumpets, just add a bit of tomato sauce, salami, ham, mushrooms and cheese and put them under the broiler. The kids loved them :-)

Origin: United Kingdom

Difficulty: easy
Time: about 1 hour start to finish
Serves: 4
Yield: 8 pieces 
Traditional, Vegetarian

Equipment:
* egg, crumpet or american pancake rings, I used silicon ones that I bought on Ebay
* frying pan
* bowl for the batter

Ingredients:
* 2 cups / 500 ml sourdough starter
* 2 TBSP sweetner, such as sucanat or any other whole sweetner (you can omit if you prefer, for instance for savoury crumpets)
* 1 tsp celtic sea salt
* 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
* 1 TBSP water to dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in
* butter, coconut oil, ghee, lard or beef drippings for greasing your pan and rings
* optional - herbs and spices to your liking

Directions:
* Warm up your pan, grease it, grease your rings.
* Put the sourdough starter, sweetner and salt in a bowl, mix well. 
* Mix the bicarbonate of soda and water together.
* Once your pan is hot mix the bicarbonate of soda/water mix with the sourdough mix. Now it will start bubbling and poofing up. 
* You can now put your batter in your rings, make sure you do not fill them up too high as they crumpets will rise while baking. I used a gravy spoon to fill my rings, which was halfway up the ring, but by the time the crumpets were cooked they were to or slightly over the top of the rings, which wasn't a problem as the batter had cooked and was firm.
* Once you see the characteristic holes in the top of the crumpets and they are dry at the top you can flip them over and cook the other side a bit, or, if you prefer tip them out onto a plate right away. When you choose to cook the other side, take them out when they have the colour you want.
* Grease your pan and rings again (clean the rings in between in case they have dough on them) and make your next batch.

Possible substitutions:
butter - ghee, coconut, tallow, lard, beef drippings etc.
sucanat - honey, maple syrup, coconut/palm sugar, maple sugar
celtic sea salt - himalaya salt, persian salt

Unpasteurised milk UK

There is an online petition in the UK to support the possibility to buy unpasteurised milk in UK. I think it should remain an option to buy unpasteurised milk in the UK.
The milk produced by farmers who sell it unpasteurised is of a much higher quality than the milk bought in the supermarket. The farmers that I know who sell unpasteurised milk are treating their animals much better. Their animals have a very good quality of life.
The farmer where we buy our milk also has the calves drink directly from the cow for the time they need it. They are not bottle fed at all, unless that is necessary. According to our farmer this is a much easier way of working with much less problems, and therefore a win-win.

I have signed the petition and hope many more will do so. You can find it here:
unpasteurised milk petition

Knitting: apple

Recently I was asked to knit an apple for one of my children.
While I was knitting it I got a bit worried that it wouldn't look as good as I would like it to look. I followed a pattern by Susie Johns. By the time it was done I was very pleasantly surprised as it looked very good.
The one that I knit it for has used it for its purpose as that was only short lived as it had something to do with her course work.
So now it has been handed to my youngest children so that they can play with it in their kitchen and shop :-) Multi purpose apple :-)


Here is a picture. It knits up really fast :-)

I used Womens Institute Unique Yorkshire yarn from Hobbycraft. This is a 100% wool yarn, as I prefer to work with 100% wool yarns, as this makes felting and needle felting at the end really easy to do.

Making the stalk was very very easy. It was a 3 stitch i-cord and it knit up really fast and easily.

Adding it to the apple was once again super easy. The stalk created the indents at the top and bottom as I left the thread very long, so that I could use a doll making needle to stick it completely through to the bottom and go back and forth a few times, while leaving a little brown visible at the bottom, so that is really looked very much like a real apple.

It was such fun to do!

I've made photo's from various sides of the apple, so you can see how it turned out. I knit it in the round as I really do not like sewing projects up, so I'll knit a project in such a was that I can knit or crochet as much as possible together before resorting to the needles. As this was a project that was with 2 colours and in the round I twisted the yarn around each other all the time. On the photo to the left you can see how this ended up having a really cool effect. Through the green you see the red, as it is twisted round all the time. You also see some green through the red. I found that that gave the apple a much more natural apple effect than just having a part red and a part green. Apples don't have that :-)

Quite pleased with the result all round :-)