Gardening bear

Happy Handmade Monday everyone,

I am very happy to be able to share with you my biggest cross-stitch project to date...my little gardening bear! It is by no means a giant bear but it has taken me a rather long while to get finished...mostly because of my laziness!

Earlier this year, I was very kindly given a whole lot of cross-stitch stuff from Mr T's Nan. It included a little kit to make this cute little guy.

A few months later, a frame was bought to showcase this little achievement of mine:

Small in size but not in the number of hours it has taken me...I am not sure I am ready to take cross-stitching to the next level??!

I am keeping this post short as I am suffering from a very bad case of burning chilli hands after cutting and deseeding a subtantial amount of chillies to make preserves. I will write about these once I'll be able to properly feel my fingers again!

Please pop across to Wendy's blog for Handmade Monday :-)

First outing of the snow boots

I did not at all believe my friend Annabelle who said that snow was forecasted last weekend. Seven days before we had a beautiful weekend and wore shorts and flip-flops so there was no way we could have snow and a drop of 20 degrees celsius!

Erm...and this is what we woke up to on Sunday morning...

Annabelle 1- Made in Suisse 0...well at least the dog was happy there was snow to roll around in! So the snow boots came out of the cupboard and we set off all together on a morning walk. It felt a bit surreal to be seeing this winter wonderland in October!

Back home, the snow boots came off and I remembered to top up my bird feeders as my little feathery friends were having a tough day!

Was la Suisse the only place to get snow or did you also enjoy a white weekend where you were?

Baby Suisse proudly presents...

There are yellow and green stripes and what I call "waffle" stitches...

Both items were quick to knit and much needed now that la Suisse has entered winter...

The pattern for the hat can be found in this lovely book full of ideas for babies (yours or your friends...)

The hat I knitted is the one featured on the cover albeit with only 2 colours

100% Baby Suisse approved!

Join me in Wendy's Handmade Harbour to discover some inspiring blogs :-)

Silent Sunday

Waste not, want not

Hello again,

It has been a little while since I have been able to sit down and spend time with you all. I have been kept rather busy with Baby Suisse and a stream of visitors coming from France and the UK to marvel at the little one.

Every time I sit down to start a blog post, Baby Suisse wakes up from his nap or decides that playing alone on his mat is not fun anymore and my efforts are thwarted...fingers crossed this time...

Let me tell you about my tomato plant...

 

 

We have now moved into Autumn and while we still have a few days of sunshine every now and then, the temperatures have dropped and it is well and truly the end of the summer vegetable growing season. The tomato plant would unlikely survive the winter so I decided to scrap it but I didn't want to waste all the green tomatoes that were still on it.

One full kilogram of green cherry tomatoes...what to do?? After looking around on the internet, I came across this recipe to make green tomato chutney. The French recipe calls it a chutney but to me it is closer to relish than chutney taste-wise. But enough about semantics.

The recipe calls for green tomatoes, onions, brown sugar, cider vinegar (although I only put half of what the recipe called for), chillies (I used 2 of these from my garden)...

 

...cloves,laurel,coriander,salt and pepper.

Not too many ingredients (unlike my rhubarb chutney) and an easy-peasy recipe. Mix everything in a big bowl and leave to macerate for an hour.

Then cook for an hour on a medium heat,occasionally stirring before blitzing with a food processor.

Pour into sterilised jars et voilà!

It truly is delicious, best enjoyed with meat or add a spoonful to ratatouille or pasta sauce.

à bientôt :-)

Silent Sunday

Pumpkin regatta

Left:is it a flamingo trying to pass as a pumpkin or a pumpkin trying to pass as a flamingo?

Since it is the second year running we have gone to Juckerfarm for their pumpkin festival (read about last year's trip here), it has officially become a tradition in the Made in Suisse's household. Unlike last year, we weren't so luck with the weather and it rained the entire time...but we did not let it defeat us and still spent a few hours enjoying all things "pumpkin".

Perhaps not surprisingly, the theme this year was Olympia, and just like last year, we were amazed at he number of pumpkin and amount of work that has gone into every single one of those sculptures.

We all agreed that the swimmer was our favourite!

Once again, we indulged in some delicious pumpkin-based food: pumpkin sausage, pumpkin chocolate brownie and, for the first time, sipped some beautiful pumpkin prosecco. It sounds rather gross, but believe it is exquisite!

This year, several mazes had been created using apple trees and this fantastic Snow White pumpkin was sitting in the middle of the largest maze. Isn't the witch awesome?

 

 

The highlight of our trip this year though had to be the Pumpkin regatta. It goes like this: crazy people grow huge pumpkins, crazy people carve huge pumpkin into a one-person "boat", crazy people decorate their floating pumpkin, crazy people form a team and elect one of them to race in the annual regatta on Pfäffikersee.

 

Start of the Regatta

 

 

 

 

Not everyone made it dry to the end of the race though...it was funny to see the poor guy in the bottom pictures slowly sinking into the lake :-)

 

 

I am already looking forward to our trip back next year :-)