Cupcakes and Possum

So I am finally getting to grips with my holiday sickness..........aka home sickness which manifests itself as chronic misery that I am not living in my latest holiday destination!  I have had this a lot over the years....Scotland, Italy........ but never as bad as New Zealand.  I have spent hours on the net hoping to find the perfect job in the perfect place, read NZ literature, bought NZ apples, watched every film and TV programme I could find with NZ as a backdrop (Top of the Lake - just fabulous!) - looked up any Kiwi acquaintance I could remember and suddenly sent them chatty emails - seriously I have had it bad, very bad this time!  Although K is no better - I swear he is at the point where he would seriously struggle if he had to watch England against the All Blacks - especially if Rory McGraw was playing (remember our camper van......!)

Will we emigrate again?  Well lets never say never......... but we are now at the stage where we have been in the desert coming up 5 years and this time of year is particularly hard - we have not been able to go outside for any significant length of time for 5 months now and September promises so much - yes its cooling down a couple of degrees but its still F* Hot!!  I know that in a month or so the fun will begin with the F1 and I will start to enjoy it again - but the thought of too many more summers here is beginning to weigh heavy in my heart when I so love walking in the woods with a dog or two......... The kids too are asking more and more to go 'home' wherever home will end up being - who knows!

Anyway, moving away from the philosophical...... I have been knitting and baking - mainly to take my mind off work, which is hideous but I wont bore you with the gory details!

Firstly I have cast on a shawl from the gorgeous possum yarn I bought in Arrowtown, in a little shop called Woolen Sttitches.  I wanted a big warm shawl and this yarn is just so soft and a gorgeous variagated autumn colour way!!  So I am starting off with just a garter body - the colours work so beautifully together that there really is no other need for anything fancy!  Once its big enough then I will put quite a simple border on it and just let the yarn do the talking!!

Gorgeous Touch Yarns Possum

This photo is probably a better idea of the colour way

So watch this space for an update........

The other thing I have been doing is to try cupcake making - but this time rather than guess what to do, I decided to look at some tutorials on You Tube.  These were my first attempts and although you can't see on the photos, I even made the sponge on the inside multicoloured to reflect the icing - yes yes I know thats probably a bit anally retentive - but what the heck thats just me!

They tasted fab (recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery book Cake Days) even though I think they were 15 points each on WW!! Until next time.................

Photo is not great because we were desperate to eat them!!