Since buying organic fruit and vegetables is way more expensive than the regular range, I thought it would be interesting to actually compare the cost to see if it really works out cheaper to grow your own organic produce. I decided to make the comparison between the humble cucumber and tomato.
Knitting: How to Block a wool sweater
Blocking is the penultimate step in garment knitting. (The last step is usually weaving in ends.) Blocking is the act of submerging a knitted garment in water or steaming it, to get the required form of the garment and to "relax" the stitches in order to get the best fit possible. This helps the garment mesh together to construct cohesive fabric. It is like a spa treatment for your hand knits.
Growing Vanilla Orchid and How to make Vanilla Extract
Vanilla is an expensive commodity because since there are no natural insect pollinators like the Melipona Bee in other places, vanilla flowers have to be hand pollinated, a very delicate process, in order for each flower to produce any seed pods...
The Pantry: Pickling, Preserving, Storing and Uses
Time to read 7 minutes Once you have taken the time to sow, grow and harvest your own vegetables, it's equally important to know how to conserve and store your produce so you enjoy your harvests well into the winter months. Here are a few tried and tested ways I have stored some of the... Continue Reading →
In Praise of Bartering and How to
Time to read 5 minutes During the pandemic, bartering helped me to grew my local connections, helped me to learn new skills and ultimately, got me into knitting. At the time, we lived in Bristol. I worked from home and I had the time to tend to a lot of plants. I bought, propagated and... Continue Reading →
Creating Recreational Outdoor Spaces
Time to read 2 minutes Recreation is pretty important in our home. My husband and I love competitive games and we had a few dead zones on our property which was not suitable for planting in, which would be my first choice but we managed to create a few additional areas where we can play... Continue Reading →
Natural Homemade Remedy for Scalp Health
If you're struggling with dry, flaky scalp or would just like to make a simple, natural treatment that feels cool and refreshing to the scalp and will stimulate the hair follicles to promote growth, read on for the scalp oil recipe I devised to nourish my own problematic scalp.
Ideas For A Bougie Indoor and Outdoor Tortoise Enclosure and Tortoise Care Cheat-Sheet
Tortoises make amazing pets, but they do require lots of research and initial out lay but honestly, get the basics like food and shelter correct, and they are pretty low maintenance on a daily basis compared to say, our cats and dog.
Knitting – What’s on my needles going into 2023
Time to read 7 minutes 2022 saw many finished objects under my belt, but something strange happened to me from about August. Yes, I continued knitting on wool and mohair garments throughout the sticky summer but once I had banged out a few sweaters and cardigans for myself in the first half of the year,... Continue Reading →
My 2022 Knitting roundup – some of my favourite projects knit in my 2nd year of knitting
Time to read 4 minutes I have been knitting since 2020 (haven't we all?). As a self taught knitter who spent about 8 months of 2020 trying to self-draught now completely unwearable and/or unflattering garments, I feel 2022 brought with it some improvements. I’ve had some challenges in life recently which incidentally has led me... Continue Reading →