Meet Horace

I am so excited to show you this post. I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I am making a Hippopotamus with my friend Karen. Well, it's time you met him. I've called him Horace.

Hello Horace!

This is the story of how Horace came to be...

Karen and I enjoy making lots of things together, even though we live over a hundred miles apart, we meet up on Facebook and sit and chat while we crochet. We made hippos together using this pattern from Heidi Bears.

For Horace I raided my stash of yarn (which is now taking over my studio, depite having an enormous walk-in wardrobe of it's own!). I only used three balls - in fact, not even the whole ball. I used 75g cream, 72g shocking pink, 66g lime green.

This yarn is acrylic - it was also an absolute bargain at 50p (UK) a ball. Although the label says it is DK (that's double knit), I think it is actually more like 4 ply. Heidi Bears suggests using sock yarn, but I didn't have any spare sock yarn so this would have to do. I adjusted the hook to suit - you need to use a smaller hook than the one suggested by your yarn weight. So, since this has the appearance of 4 ply I went down from a 3mm hook, to a 2.5mm hook. Remember my lovely spiral hook I got from Hand-Crafted by Annie? Yes - this is the project I bought it for. It was really comfortable - using a plain old metal 2.5mm hook felt like I was crocheting with a paperclip - the spiral hook was a joy! Thanks Annie!

I won't repost the photos of me making the African Flower motifs, they are still here if you want to take a look...

Well after much chatting, giggling and frogging (it's darned hard to count to seven AND have a conversation you know!), we made all our motifs - there were quite a few of them!

The pattern contains the directions to make all these different shapes, and the construction instructions. I really recommend that you read the WHOLE pattern before you start - I discovered to my horror that I had re-make the ears because they aren't a standard hexagon! OK, it only took me half an hour to sort it out, but I was so near the finish line! The ears are the last bit. Oh well, luckily Heidi didn't hear my cursing ;-)

Heidi suggests that you use the join-as-you-go method. I seem to have a mental block on this and STILL can't manage it. She suggests that you can sew the hippo together if you prefer. Ut oh! I'm allergic to sewing! So, me being me, I made it up as I went along and used a DC (UK term - SC in USA terms) join. Since this makes a ridge where your seam goes, I decided to use the lime green yarn to construct Horace. The way I had arranged my colours, I'd hardly used any green as there was just a thin single round of it in the motifs. I'm quite pleased with the effect of this method :-)

A word of warning - read, double check, and re-read the instructions as you make your hippo - I had to keep unpicking mine - oh and count carefully! I managed to mis-count the side on one of the motifs and had to undo an hour's work. Boy was so annoyed! I also recommend pinning the pieces at each stage and comparing them to the pictures in the pattern - it saves a whole lot of heart ache I can assure you.

Legs

The DC join lies in a particular direction - there is a definite ridge on the "right side" (ie the side facing you as you work), so I ad-libbed a bit with the instructions in order to give myself nice long seams to work along, so that the ridges all faced more or less the same direction. This is my interpretation of the neck end of the body:

Neck/Collar

After much effort, I managed to construct Horace - although he did look rather like a gorilla at one point.

Now I was ready to stuff him. I used synthetic kapok toy filling that I got from Ebay - the hippo took a surprisingly large amount of the stuffing - 250g for one hippo. That's one hungry hippo! You need to stuff him carefully - sculpt him a bit with the filling to give him a nice friendly shape.

As I planned to use Horace as a doorstop, I needed to think of some kind of weight to fill him with since 250g of kapok won't stop much! I thought about using builder's sand or gravel, but thought it could get a bit messy - so I hit upon a cunning plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel. (OK, I nicked that line from Blackadder) Curtain weights are flat, round lead weights - I found them in John Lewis' curtain dept - 4 weights for £1.50. I put 8 weights in each foot, so now my hippo is heavy AND has flat feet!

Pip seemed quite perplexed by this stage...

What's that Mum?

So I gave him Blue - his favourite smelly toy - to play with while I got on with Horace.

Oh dear, Blue doesn't seem as interesting as Horace.



Now the body was complete, it was time for the head. This bit was really fun as Horace took on a bit more character at each step.

There is no elegant way to add a hippo head, as I soon discovered. There's an awful lot of manoeuvring the body around and propping it between your legs. Thank goodness Pip was the only person who was watching me!

Now for some reason the pattern doesn't include a tail with it. Well, luckily that was easily remedied by knitting an i-cord. I used the lime green again, and two sock pins - double ended needles at 1.75mm size.

Cast on three stitches and knit them all - I had done a few rows before I remembered I should be taking photos!

Now shove all the stitches along to the other end of the needle.

And knit all the stitches again - depite the yarn being at the other end of the row, you just knit as normal, pulling the yarn across the back of your work. You will end up with a cord.

Keep repeating this until you have a tail the length you think looks good against the hippo. Cast off all the stitches as normal. And that's how you make an icord - very handy if you want a cord to match a hooded jumper you have knitted.

I finished off my tail with a glass bead I made myself. Yes, I made the bead myself! It was great fun - a Christmas gift from my sister to go and spend half a day learning how to make glass beads with a very dangerous blow torch and some skewers. It was really good fun! Sadly the Fireworks Studio in Bristol is now closed, but this little film clip shows you how it is done - if you look up "fireworks lampwork glass beads" in your area, you may find you can do a similar course. I made 12 beads that they put in their kiln to cool down under controlled conditions, and they posted them out to me within the week.

I confess, it was pure chance that I happened to make a bead in lime green with a pinky-orange swirl. Or should that be serendipitous?

Horace is complete!

I'm really pleased about how Horace turned out. I had my doubts at times, and I'll admit, I did find it rather boring making so many motifs all the same. But, now Horace is finished my pride at how he looks has over-ridden my doubts and I've forgotten how dull it was repeating the motifs - I imagine it's like child-birth. OK, it's probably not quite as bad as that, but you know what I mean...

Horace is now fully employed and standing guard at the bathroom door.

I hope you love Horace as much as I do. I think I know what someone will be getting for Christmas this year... Or maybe an elephant? But first, I need to finish some things!


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Travels from my armchair - part two

In keeping with the Indian theme of yesterday's post, the sun came out and it was boiling hot on the terrace.

Well, I promised you the recipe for my palak paneer, so here it is. My kitchen got cursed by the fact I had my camera with me and I had a bit of a sticky pan disaster - but not to worry, it still tasted divine :-)

You'll need oil, onion, chilli, minced garlic, ground turmeric, ground cumin, ground coriander, garam masala, spinach, a few tomatoes, coconut milk and your home made (or shop bought) paneer made with 2 litres of milk.
Cube the paneer into 1" pieces and fry in quite a bit of oil. Be warned it can jump around and spit as it cooks. You want to get it golden brown all over. The shop bought paneer holds it's shape better than the homemade version, but it is a bit rubbery. As you can see, my pan decided it wasn't going to behave so it got a liberal coating of paneer stuck to the bottom! Oh well, it's added to the texture. And of course, when I tried to prise it off the pan the paneer crumbled. Well, these disasters only happen when you've got guests coming to watch!

 

OK, now for a bit of multi-tasking. Steam the spinach (200g) in hardly any water. You want to cook it for only about 3 minutes so it's wilted but still bright green.

While that's cooking pop your chopped onion in to the pan, using the same oil - I always use red onions, same as Rick Stein, they have a sweeter taste that suits the India palette. Soften the onions, but don't colour them. The bits of what looks like breadcrumbs in my pan with the onions is that pesky stuck paneer!!!

Now add 0.5 teaspoon of turmeric, and one teaspoon each of ground cumin and ground coriander. If you like cumin you may want to use whole spice rather than powdered - or even both! Add a big dollop of minced garlic (probably about 3 cloves of crushed garlic) and the chilli, chopped quite small. Choose a chilli that suits your preference for heat. I like these chunky fat fairly mild chillis for this dish, it is supposed to be mild, sweet and creamy, so you don't want a birds eye chilli that blows your head off! This calls for subtle flavours. Cook off the spices - being careful not to let them burn

Drain the spinach and squeeze out as much liquid as you can - 6 sheets of kitchen towel does the job

Chop your tomatoes (I used 3) and add them and the spinach to the pan and give it a quick stir.

 Then add a whole can of coconut milk - this recipe is not for the dieter!

Add the golden paneer to the pan and leave it all to bubble away for about 15-20 minutes, making sure you don't catch the bottom of the pan. You will end up with a nice reduced masala sauce. Then stir in 1-2 teaspoons of garam masala and give it a couple of minutes. (oopsie - the camera steamed up!)

Chop up some fresh coriander and throw it in just before serving. I serve this with wild rice and some curried vegetables. The paneer is probably laden with calories, so a bit of veggie padding fills you up!

Enjoy your dinner, then retreat to the easy chair to digest...

I hope you enjoy trying palak paneer for yourself - would you like more of my Indian recipes? Let me know and I will include some more in future posts. xx

Travels from my armchair

Well two weeks of resting and recuperating from my end of year exam has left me feeling... hungry! I think 4 weeks of bad eating and even worse sleep caught up with me. A bit of R & R was required. So feet up, out in the garden with Pip and my hook has been my regular spot.

And when my hands started to ache, I read books that I had chosen myself - believe me, it wonderful to read for pleasure after a year of reading and studying nineteenth century novels. For a part time correspondence course, this module from The Open University has hard going! So I've read some modern and some contemporary fiction. BLISS! What a shame I can't read and crochet though... so I have no updates of interest to report about my rainbow blanket or my Hippopotamus just yet.

So, I thought I'd tell you about what I've been up to... As I say, I've recovered my appetite for good food - and for me good food means CURRY. And by some extraordinary coincidence, Rick Stein has a new TV show about his travels around India collecting and adapting Indian recipes. So immediately went out and bought the book that accompanies the series...

Hey hang on a minute, how did a second book get into my basket?

Marvellous.

Reading through these books reminded me of my own Indian Odyssey. I was lucky enough to travel around India in 2001 - I can't believe it's 12 years ago. I can still smell India, and taste the food, as if it were yesterday.

Lorries by TATA - these carried people on the ROOF and were often highly decorated, and always to be heard tooting their horns

India is chaos - I kid you not, it's just nuts. Traffic fumes everywhere, noise everywhere and people... yes, they're everywhere too!

Train station at Gorakhpur

I was really fortunate when I visited India. I was part of a group of people who went there to help at a free school and at health centres. We also distributed food in some of the more remote villages in Bihar. I can't imagine getting another opportunity to meet real people and see how they live - nor to experience such generosity among really really poverty striken families. And we made friends for life with the family who hosted us and whose work the school and health camps are.

Grace School

Health Camp - villagers are listening to a talk on the importance of boiling water

After spending time in the remote northern region of Bihar, a few of us went travelling around - here's a few of my favourite snaps.

Mist over the Taj Mahal at dawn

Me looking really rather young

Really random... This child was plonked on my lap by a family who wanted a picture of me with the wife and baby!

The Merchant Palace at Udaipur - now THAT's what I call decor!

It was while we stayed at The Merchant's Palace in Udaipur that I tasted paneer for the first time. It's basically a kind of cottage cheese - in India it was made with buffalo milk - great news for me as I am allergic to cow's milk, but I LOVE cheese. Here in UK you can buy paneer ready made, but it's made using cow milk, so I make my own from full fat goat's milk. I thought I'd share how...

You will need:
2 litres full fat milk
3 tbsp lemon juice or white vinegar
 

To make paneer you need to use full fat milk - 2 litres for 4 people. Put it in a pan and heat it gently until it boils.

You use 3 tbsp lemon juice or white vinegar to make the hot milk separate in curds and whey. 

OK - the milk's boiling.

Add the lemon juice.

Line a colandar with a clean tea towel and tip the contents of the pan in - try not to splash yourself!

When the whey has drained through the cloth, scrunch up the cloth and press down hard to squeeze as much whey out as you can.

Use the milk pan filled with water as a weight to squeeze out as much liquid as possible - leave it for an hour or so in the sink to drain.

Line a container with strong kitchen towel.

The curd is left behind in the tea towel. Now you can make a block of the cheese.

Scrape the curds off the tea towel (I'm a miser so I literally scrape every last crumb of curds off! Don't want to waste any) and fill your lined box. Press down with the back of a spoon to make an even layer of cheese.

Bring the sides of your paper towel over the top of the cheese and pop in the fridge.

Once the cheese is chilled you can cook with it. I love palak paneer and will be making some later today. Cheese, spinach, curry - HEAVEN!

PS apologies for the slightly odd photos - I tried saving them with transparent backgrounds - thought I'd cracked it, but they've got black backgrounds instead. Damn you technology!


I love to hear your comments about my blog. Let me know if you tackle home made paneer yourself. I'll be posting my palak paneer recipe - and some photos of my dinner - soon :-)