Mint Sauce, Crochet and Loop!

Hello everyone!

I hope you’ve had a jolly weekend!

My weekend has been a flurry of knitting, crochet, sewing, cooking, and most happily today, a trip to Loop to visit Juju for another class.

This time, the class was on creating original knitting stitches. Juju is a brilliant teacher.

We were asked to take along our design books, and some yarn and needles, I took a very heavy backpack with me!

In my design book, I had a magazine cutting of a French scarf from circa 2004; I have been collecting stitch dictionaries in vain since then looking for the particular stitch used in this scarf.

Today I tackled this stitch pattern, using Juju’s techniques, which ensure you note all the details, and work methodically.

Here you can see my work in progress:

My brain is still processing the class, and we have stacks of homework for next week.

I came home, and Jon had made a terrific roast lamb dinner. A couple of months ago, I planted some mint outdoors in my windowbox. Today was the day I made mint sauce with it!

Possibly a few of you might not be familiar with mint sauce. My Grandad made fresh mint sauce always, he grew mint in an old butler sink (which used to be the home to my goldfish).

Here you can see my windowbox:

To make mint sauce for 4 people, you need sufficient mint stalks to loosely fill a small plastic 1litre jug.

You bring the mint in, wash it and gently dry the stalks and then strip the leaves off.

You need to finely chop the leaves until they look like green dust. Add half a teaspoon of sugar at mid chop, somehow it helps it to draw out the flavours.

As regular readers and my friends know well, I love mint! Mojitos! Woo hoo!

Mint sauce is one of my earliest memories.

Once you have chopped the mint with the sugar, add it to a small jug with a pinch of salt, then add malt vinegar until yhe herbs are completely covered.

Then you spoon this mixture onto your roast lamb dinner. Need I add how gorgeous my dinner was tonight? Mmm!

Now I ‘m watching Ironman 3, I managed to get the two balls of yarn I needed from Loop to finish my French Ladies Bag.

Also, I have only a couple of rows on my Noro Hat before its finished, and I have six walnut whips from M&S in my knitting drawer.

Life is good! I hope you’re well and happy.

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