ode to St Delia of Christmas

This year I have moved away from the very trad Christmas cake, and plumped for Delia's Creole Christmas cake, definitely adult only as the fruit soak for a week in rum, brandy, kirsh (didn't have cherry brandy) and port!  And its been regularly doused in more rum!

Its smelling so good ;-)

And today was decorating day

 And I am rather please with it, The glaze is apricot jam and rum, which give a lovely jewel like quality to the brazils, pecans, apricots, hazelnuts, almonds, dates and cherry

Cant wait to tuck in!  Will try and wait to next week.........

Bless you! Slight problem I didn't think of!

Last November I started a simple but big knitting project with some beautiful 

Rowan Angora Haze wool, on 3.25mm needles. 

The plan originally (as I had 10 balls of each colour) was to knit a big shawl/blanket to drape elegantly round me when I was at home stitching and cold.

But it some how ended up a little narrower.

Well after 12 months, its finished, and I personnally think its rather beautiful, 

but theres one problem I discovered while knitting it....

Angora makes me sneeze!

So after a little re think and some brain storming from my knitting group at Creasey's, 

I made it into a short poncho.  

So the fluff is not up round my nose like it was when wrapped round my neck.  

And I love it, its keeping me nice and toasty while I type.

A Co-op with so much history...

Now I may not remember when our market looked like this

 But I do remember when it looked like this!

Then people started getting this weird idea that they wanted to be able to park their car right out side a food shop, and not have any trouble finding a space, how strange!  

So our lovely market building struggled and struggled, then about 10 years ago it got renovated.  

Out went the last of the stall holders and in came shops. Now we may all have our opinions of if that was right or wrong, but what I am more interested in is the fantastic job that was done in making this old building (early 1800's) work in the 21st century.

The co-op is in the west end, and here you can see the beautiful glass roof that I showed you in my last post.

I always need to remind my self when doing my food shopping to look up and admire this amazing skylight!

and no prizes for guessing what section of the market this used to be?

Meat!

And through into the inner street and on the left out side the back entrance to New Look, you can see this plaque...

presented to Guernsey and her cattle from the United States in 1960, 

but I cant work out those 1000th anniversary it is celebrating? 

 Ohh just Googled that, It seems that 960AD was the year that we think the Normans introduced cattle into the island and so started the blood line that became the Guernsey Cow from French breeds. Learn something new every day!

Then at the east end you sink down to HMV,

 these banisters are the one shown in the second photo down.

A very impressive music shop

With stained glass windows and every thing,

including a very grand entrance!

So next time you are in the market, don't just concentrate on your shopping, look up and around you because it really is an amazing building!