New projects: Home brewed cider and home made socks

 

I've been enjoying a lot more free time and head space since closing my business and enjoying my Mondays off my day job instead of spending it scrabbling around on social media, writing marketing copy and worrying. 

I've spent it on jobs around the house, perusing things I'm interested in and taking in the Summer warmth and greenness. Here's my evening view from yesterday, as I sat at the end of the garden after a day of gardening and painting:

Here are a couple of things I've been doing in the past week:

Brewing

I can’t recall what sparked it off but me and Mr Crafty Blueberry decided to start off a batch of homebrew after not making any for about 7 years. We used to make a lot of homebrew wine, but since then have become more occasional drinkers of decent quality wine, and I don’t know if our own homebrew would live up to that! But we do like a good, simple cider so are trying that instead.

It’s a simple recipe, just 100% pure concentrated supermarket apple juice, sugar and cider yeast. It didn’t start fermenting as it should so I aerated it by tipping it from one demi john to another a few times and that gave the yeast the oxygen it needed to get started. It’s going strong now and should be ready in 2 – 4 weeks. I've started a second batch too, aerating this one at the start and, thanks to the warm weather, it started fermenting on the same day.

If it turns out well a bonus will be that the ingredients are so simple; no extra added chemicals like in mass produced stuff. OK, that doesn’t make cider healthy but I like the idea of drinking something that’s more old fashioned and down to earth than heavily marketed brands.

That’s one of the reasons I prefer to make things for myself when I can. It’s less convenient and takes longer but it makes me feel like I’m doing less of what the marketing industry want me to do; more time feeling capable and savouring the process of making, less time being a consumer of content and products.

The next step is to find a local apple juicing day in Autumn and use that for cider, that would be great.

Knitting

After getting a trapped nerve in my left wrist in March 2022 I had to give up knitting and crochets completely as they were one of the contributing factors. The injury is now as healed as it can be thank to rest, acupuncture and patience and I’m slowly rebuilding strength in that arm (slowly because I keep forgetting to go the exercises and yoga I need to do).

Two weeks ago I decided to see if I could comfortable manage knitting again and cast on a sock. I haven’t missed it terribly but it has been lovely to pick it up again. I’ve found I can comfortably do 10 – 30 minutes a day and don’t want to do more than that, because as much as I loved knitting I did spend too much time on it, and didn’t have much time for anything else. Not being able to knit opened up time for other things, from drawing to cooking, walking to simply resting and looking out of the window, calling a friend, reading and so on.

The trouble is that knitting and crafting became a coping mechanism, something I did to get through a hard day or avoid difficult thoughts. As well as limiting for the sake of not damaging my arm I’m also limiting it because I don’t want to become reliant on it again.

Limiting knitting to a few minutes a couple of times a week is a good way for me to practice patience, something I struggle with as I want things to be finished quickly. It’s the same with homebrew; you start something in motion and have to accept that it will take time and can’t be rushed. I’m continually trying to apply that to how I approach life in general, because I’ve done myself physical and mental damage by rushing and trying to do everything at once, and I’m now learning to live more slowly and with contentment with the slowness.