Baking and taking cake

On Friday I'm finally making it to an outdoor film screening. As well as an unfeasibly large pile of warm clothes, I'm baking and taking a blackberry crumble cake to enjoy with my oldest friend and her daughters. Like many of my baking sessions, this will involve going a bit freestyle. Although I haven't been making cakes for very long, I'm confident enough in my cooking to alter recipes to suit me.
The recipe I used is based on one from Hedgewizard's diary blog. I think I've made it before with apples as described, but now it's customised. Now I just have to avoid eating it before Friday...

How to make elderflower champagne - free fizz!

If you like elderflower cordial, you'll love elderflower 'champagne'. What's not to love: it's (almost) free fizz - and I'm a big fizz fan.

How to make elderflower champagne 
Pick five or six elderflower heads, preferably on a sunny day. Choose elder trees that aren't on a busy road, and avoid flowers lower down that may be contaminated by the urine of dogs, foxes, or even humans... Pick off any insects etc before using. Don't run the flowers under the tap or you'll wash the natural yeasts off.
Pour 20 litres of cold water into a plastic bucket of at least 25 litres capacity. Stir in 1kg of ordinary sugar until dissolved. Drop in the flower heads and stir to submerge. Add the zest and juice of two lemons and 4tbsp white wine vinegar. Stir to mix, then lay a clean teatowel over the bucket and leave for 24 hrs, stirring occasionally.
After 24 hours, pour the liquid through a sieve to remove the detritus, then pour though a funnel into a collection of two-litre plastic bottles (bought for 17p each, full of water, from a well-known supermarket). Leave the bottles for at least two weeks. They'll become more rigid as the fermenting causes carbon dioxide to build up, and you can unscrew the top a little (carefully!) to release some of the pressure.
After two weeks you can drink it, and it'll be around 3% alcohol, depending on how your fermentation went. It slips down very easily, and is particularly delicious with gin - probably best not to drive to be on the safe side...

Stone love

I take after my dad in that I love to interfere with the natural positions of stones, piling them up, standing them on end, balancing them on top of each other, or other items.
I'd love to call it 'land art' but I think that might be a little grand for my efforts.
I'm a big fan of Andy Goldsworthy, and I like the idea that you're changing the landscape for someone else to discover.

Left: stone circle by the river near Machynlleth, Wales. We stayed in a yurt here and it was a magical trip: close to nature, mindblowing reiki and peace and quiet.

Stone circle of a different kind on the beach in Southwold, Suffolk. Mr MI! was fishing and I amused myself. (I like to go fishing but not that day.)

Stone and wood combined on the beach in Rhodes, Greece. From this angle, it resembled a woman looking out to sea

Customise a T-shirt: ribbon collar and cuffs

I'll come clean: I love ribbon. I hoard it. I spend lunchtimes gazingat it in VV Rouleaux, Liberty and MacCulloch & Wallis. And now and then, I actually make something with it. I took a basic navy V-neck T-shirt from Uniqlo, and sewed on some toning striped ribbon from Jane Means around the cuffs and the collar. I started sewing on the ribbon at work, carried on with it on the train home, and finished it off at home. The T-shirt has been uplifted into a whole new fashion class and best of all, it's unique.

We've got an allotment!

After just two years on the waiting list, we've got half a plot - shared with one of our friendly neighbours, who's also a new plot tenant.
We've had a quick peek over the fence (haven't got the keys yet) and it's hideously weedy and overgrown as you'd expect, but there are a couple of artichokes, two rose bushes and a massive lavender plant, as well as a bean frame and lots of odd pots and bit of wood and metal poles lying around. This is going to take some time...
Although I may mention allotment issues on here now and then, it's not going to become an allotment blog; there are already loads of people who do it far better than I could.

Sew cute

Seen in the window of my local soft furnishings shop (also where I arrange to have my sewing machine serviced), this gorgeous cake decorated with a curtain tassel, reels of thread, ruler and pins. Seriously impressive.

One of the wonders of nature

Looking too good to eat, marvel at the swirling geometry of this Romanesco broccoli... fractals in food. According to Wikipedia: 'The head of Romanesco broccoli is a visually striking example of an approximate fractal in nature. The pattern is only an approximate fractal since the pattern eventually terminates when the feature size becomes sufficiently small. In computer graphics, its pattern has been modelled as a recursive helical arrangement of cones.' And the number of spirals is a Fibonacci number. You can read the definition of Fibonacci number here, but although I'm good at functional maths, I stopped at O level.