Shush, don't say the 'C' word.

Our stall, looking festive.

Yesterday we had a stall at the Knockvicar  'winter market', notice the wording there, no mention of the dreaded 'C' word. Not once did we hear the word mentioned, 'have a good one'  and  'seasons greetings' was as close as it came.

The music was Irish Folk, no dreaded 'I'm dreaming of a white C'. Clearly the stall holders and customers were all like minded people. That did not however stop sales of things that were definitely seasonal, including our 'plum puddings' even though they were labelled as Ch------s puddings they sold well.

I think everyone enjoyed the day, we certainly did and we did quite well with the puddings, jam and my glass painted items.

Considering how much else was going on in the area yesterday and the fact that this was only a small event, just ten stalls it was surprising how many people turned up. In the local town there were two craft fares going on, a Bric-a-Brac sale and the  Farmers Market had double the normal amount of craft stalls.

Treebeard, we have to find a tree for him to guard.

For once I was very good and did not spend all our profits, I bought just one crafted piece of wood, he has been named as 'Treebeard'  once weather treated, he will find a home in one of our trees.
Every so often I lose my bread making MoJo, it has happened  with pasty and very occasionally with cakes as well, we have never been able to pinpoint exactly what is going wrong especially with bread and I will change the recipe, change the yeast, add milk, drop the milk. The last six weeks has been such a time with the bread, it's been OK but! We then got our new delivery of flour although we still had enough old flour left for another half a dozen batches of bread,

MoJo's back again.

I decided to use the new flour and, hey presto, the bread was back to normal. I then realised that for some reason the last sack we had did not get stored in the plastic dustbin that we have for this purpose, maybe we were to busy when we got delivery or just did not bother, anyway the problem is now solved, we are back to storing the flour in it's dustbin and we have moved to a smaller sack, 18kg instead of the 25kg that we normally buy, fortunately we have two friends that order from the wholefood catalogue so one or the other would have an order going in when we next need something.

Misty, now six months old.

The two kittens are growing well,

Freddy doing a Google search. 

Freddy however is twice the size of his sister Misty, despite his nearly dying when he was very young, they are super kits, full of fun and adventure, the rest of the cats all love them and Felix our rescued black and white cat is great at keeping an eye on them when they go out, not that any of the cats are very impressed with the weather at the moment, damp, windy and chilly, they seem to think it's all our fault.
The seasonal madness seems to have started, shopping trollies loaded to groaning point, TV ads telling you that you must buy this, that, or the other, or you wont have a good time.  All for a couple of days of indulgence, and in many cases to be in further debt. The shops close for just one day and  I'm sure that the shops will open again, there is no need to stockpile a whole warehouse full of 'goodies' much of which is totally unnecessary and will get dumped anyway. Our  treat will be the turkey, still running around on a farm a few miles away and a tin of fruit for the sherry trifle, we love a good sherry trifle ( ours should carry a government heath warning) which we will share with friends on St. Stephan's day, the veg will be from the garden even if our Brussels Sprouts have let us down again, our soil is rather too  light for a good brussels sprout, they will be good enough for us and we will keep trying.

Some of my glass paintings.