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Stravaiging

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Cake is always a good idea

Posted by Lindsay on February 26 2023 at 10:19

Yesterday I had a wee cooking session and one of the outcomes was Mozart Cake.

I don't know what the connection to the composer is - did he like coffee, chocolate and marmalade?

It's a recipe from my mother's pile of saved ones and I only ever remember it hand written so I've no notion of its origin. No notion, either, of what sparked the idea to bake it as it is years since I have, but I inevitably felt the need to tweak the recipe.

In case you are in want of a nice easy cake, I've attached a link below to a pdf where I give you the un-fiddled-with version and then what I did with it.

And I have just remembered that the original had an icing sugar/lemon juice icing, just to add to the fun.

Cake file attachment below

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Messy, unfocused, curiously stressful.

Posted by Lindsay on January 28 2023 at 14:06

WARNING - Stream of consciousness ahead.

evening light

I know where January went. It evaporated in fog.

I had plans.

Plans to be calm and restful, to gently stitch some of the multiple new samples I've wanted to make.

Plans to take more 'me' time and read, cook, knit, sew, watch films, walk, dream, play.

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Two Northumberland Beauties

Posted by Lindsay on December 21 2022 at 10:12

In October I wrote about being in Yorkshire. In that same North of England trip I also caught up with two rather talented women who run businesses closer to home.

Northumberland is a county of contrasts - city life, beaches and castles, fishing communities, the largest reservoir and man made forest in England, high hills and empty moorlands. It borders Scotland and as the crow flies is only three miles from my village!

woven blankets

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Surfacing

Posted by Lindsay on October 10 2022 at 11:40

Books. My little world would be much smaller without them and I know I am far from alone in that feeling.

So many authors, so many subjects, never enough time to fully indulge our reading desires.

I've just read 'Surfacing'.

Kathleen Jamie has a wondrous grasp of lilting language. Her words describe times past, the everyday, the detail, the immensity of space and the tiniest scratch of a bird’s beak.

Her collections of essays transport you into the natural world with such a lightness of touch; you are gathered in and effortlessly carried along by her prose.

Here is the last paragraph of the last tale where she is standing still, lost in a wood.

‘Green ferns in the groin of an oak. Green moss cloaking a stone. Voice of a crow. Voice of a chiding wren. A smirr of rain too soft to possess a voice. Voice of the shrew, the black slug. Voice of the forest. Did you hear something move out the corner of your eye? The same moth come back? Or another leaf falling?

You are not lost, just melodramatic. The path is at your feet, see?

Now carry on.’

In 2004 the position of Makar (National Poet for Scotland) was authorised by the Scottish Parliament.

Kathleen Jamie became our fourth Makar in August 2021.

Do explore her few precious books.

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