Plastic bag

Small plastic bag/purse with cork buttons

Stripey back...

Ok - I don't like plastic bags!  When we go shopping we try and always bring fabric bags to avoid having to get the plastic ones.  And yet, in the kitchen drawer and larder, hidden away in the corners lurk some plastic bags...and as a project on a rainy day, I thought I'd try and convert those into well, a plastic bag...It's probably more like a purse but could be used for cosmetics or similar. It's knitted it out of strands of plastic and has a couple of cork discs as buttons.  Quite sweet really....

What to do on a rainy day...

Well, what not to do is take the dog out before 8am and get absolutely soaked!  You know that the weather is bad when not even your 9 month old puppy is keen to go out!

Old bananas = banana bread...ta dah!

Instead, a much better thing to do is to use up the squishy old bananas that have been lurking in the fruit bowl to make banana bread...mhhhhm! I can see a slice of this with a hot mug of tea in my near future...The funny thing about this weather is that instead of wanting summer foods like salads, I am now craving casseroles and looking forward to making Christmas cake...that is just wrong in July, isn't it?

Gooseberry growing

Gooseberry & kiwi jam...

Last year our gooseberry bush had a total of 2 (yes, two) gooseberries on it and we decided to cut the bush right down to ground level.  It was either grow back better or we'll chuck you out completely...Well, fast forward to this year and I am pleased to say that I harvested 150g worth (a small bowl full). To get the most out of the crop, we decided to make jam - gooseberry & kiwi jam, in fact!  Not a huge amount came out but enough to fill a couple of small jars, so I am very pleased!  Let's hope next year's crop will be even bigger!

As can be seen from the photo, the sun is out today!  How lovely!  We still don't exactly have summer temperatures but at least it is dry today.  Quite worrying just how many floods and flood alerts are occurring throughout the UK - we are quite lucky that we have not been affected by those and just had some miserable wet days.