2012 – a year like no other?

We're just about to turn the page and discover it's time for a new calendar, which usually means a good excuse to reflect on what the preceding 12 months has brought and whether our expectations of it came to fruition. In my case, I've had a fair amount of time for musing and reflection and generally summing up the state of play: it's nearly a whole year since I made the move from paid employee to chancing my arm in the freelance market.

Working at home hasn't been the wrench that some of my colleagues assumed I'd discover it to be. It has still only been three years since finally achieving the near impossible and having a roof over my head with my name on the mortgage. The novelty of having a place to call home that no one can take away from us still feels very recent. Being able to spend time there is something I relish more and more. I do get a little cooped up if I've spent 15 hours at my laptop for three days on the trot, but my peripatetic work life means I've often alternated between weeks at home and weeks freelancing in offices.

I thought I'd spend more time in the garden, but it was a lousy year for growing fruit and veg and my herbs and chillies required very little intervention. Creating a raised bed for beans, carrots and onions was a good idea, but the nearby conifer continued to suck moisture away and has already left the soil lacking in nutrients. The offending tree has been earmarked for removal when we finally get the overgrown eucalyptus tree cut down to size next month. My guilt is assuaged by having planted seven saplings at the Ambassadors Wood in Addington, near Croydon, as one of the volunteering legacies from London 2012.

Sometimes it's better to start over again rather than tinkering with what you've got. A fresh start looks set to be the Hattersley mantra for 2013 as we knuckle down and plan our planting year as well as making changes to our flat. Bigger kitchen ahoy!

During a fairly relaxed summer spent at home enjoying the Olympics and the associated events we painted and rearranged our front room. Replacing the dilapidated floorboards and sorting out the endless dust is the next big job. Noticeably, since becoming a home worker I've continued to sneeze but have deftly avoided the colds, flu and novovirus that were staples of my office-bound winters.

Interruptions, procrastination and inefficiency have also been largely banished. I still thrive on a deadline and have routinely ensured I've had too much on my plate, but I don't miss the meetings, email deluge or the succession of phone calls. There's a lot to be said for a quiet life, it seems.

On the other hand, I'm a lot less involved in writing about tech. Rumours, leaked photos and companies point-scoring bore me, so I'm a low-profile person now. Showing people how to use technology and how to make the most of it is another matter. I've continued to write how-to guides, bookazines and reviews and am just about to send to press my first ever book – a guide to the ‘iPad for The Older And Wiser’. John Wiley Publishing will be publishing the third edition (of which I am co-author) in February.

I've taught myself quite a lot too. I took on the task of updating and maintaining the website for the Brockley Max festival. The non-profit event was fantastic fun to be involved with (we ran free knitting and pom-pom workshops for adults and kids as part of it), and it gave me the chance to learn Wordpress. I also got my InDesign skills up to snuff and spent many enjoyable weeks working with Muireann and Clair and the design team at Antiques Trade Gazette, as well as getting to do the layouts (as well as lots of writing) for IDG's Complete Guide To The iPhone 5 and to the iPad Mini.

The best thing I did this year, though, was volunteering during and after the Olympics as a London 2012 Ambassador. A week welcoming visitors to a gloriously sunny Greenwich, followed by the infectious excitement of the Olympics and Paralympics meant I spent July and August on a permanent high. I love London and the people who make it such a fantastic place to live. It was an amazing privilege to share our unique city with the world this year.

2012 itself has a been a highlight for me. 2013 has an awful lot to live up to!

Festive roulette

Christmas shopping can be a chore. You start off by compiling a list of who you need to buy for, pepper it with ideas of what might suit this person or that and supplement those entries with hints dropped and tips gleaned from relatives in the know. The first couple of trips are fun. The Christmas decorations in the shops are inventive and fresh and you’re sure you can get pretty much everyone ticked off your present list in no time. Two or three more trips later, though, and the novelty décor has worn thin, the Christmas muzak has gone into grating overdrive and you despair of finding something suitable for teenage nephew or uncle with no known hobbies or sense of humour.

At the moment, I’m feeling abnormally smug because I started making a few presents ages ago. A couple of these thoughtful ‘makes’ have yet to be realised, but the fact that I know what the recipients of these hand-stitched gifts are going to get fills me with calm.

It’s the ‘argh-not-knowing-what-to-get-and-I-can’t-give-them-aftershave-again’ that drives me and many other people crazy.
Frankly, it’s no wonder shops do a roaring trade in smellies, calendars, novelty socks and boxer shorts.

Conversation at last week’s Brockley Knits Knit Night turned to just this problem – and a potential solution. Rachel told us about a new app that does your shopping for you and randomly selects items to send you based on your budget. The idea seemed to be about regularly getting something other than bills and estate agents notices through the letterbox, but on hearing about it I immediately saw a solution to my ‘what to buy those awkward relatives’ dilemma.

The Amazon Random Shopper is actually set up to give the account holder random surprises at regular intervals. A one-off assortment of oddities doesn’t have quite the same appeal and is no good for repeat business. As with trading cards and other lucky dip prizes, the whole point is having another go and seeing what you get next time in the hope it’s something better than you’ve just unwrapped. In fact, there's already a site - Gift Roulette - that lets you have as many or as few dips as you like in the bucket. Sadly, it ships only within the US.

Nonetheless, I think I may throw caution to the wind and select some utterly random items from Amazon this year based on little more than a product category and price.

Actually, come to think of it, I’m sure I’ve still got a chocolate roulette game in the cupboard that someone gave us last year. I wonder if it’s still in date…

Another side to why we’re losing our locals

There are lots of initiatives at the moment geared towards reviving local shops and services in the face of competition from online retail and out of town superstores. Even so, it's a depressing sight walking through many town centres and suburban hubs: boarded up shops, closed down pubs and bargain superstores abound.

A static economy hardly helps. We – as well as traders – need a helping hand to make things work again. The £10 day trip to Margate promoted by Southeastern Trains and Mary Portas is the sort of response required in the face of yet another Westfield mall with its all-day free parking and endless glitz. How are the established shops of Stratford, Croydon or elsewhere supposed to compete?

Shoots of success in the form of specialist shops run by individuals with a passion for locally grown food, home crafts or bike repair are bucking the trend in the area of south-east London where I live. But I can't help but reflect that until a couple of years ago there was a famous handmade bike shop in Deptford. Now, custom-made bikes are being built to online order, then shipped halfway across the continent or even further.

Convenience is killing local economies while simultaneously being good news for micro businesses which can reach out via the web and attract custom they wouldn't get through a high-street presence alone. Similarly, the local cake shop makes delicious treats, but it's the online and email orders for birthday cupcakes and celebration cakes that keeps the café it fronts open for business.

The other big casualty, of course, has been the local pub. Supermarkets and those bargain booze-cum-newsagents have largely decimated trade, seeing off the much-loved boozer in many towns. London property prices and the demand for more housing hardly help. In April, champion of south London pubs Antic Ltd took over and transformed a formerly rough and ready pub in Catford. The Catford Bridge Tavern is a popular, thriving, welcoming destination that serves both ‘ordinary’ and specialist beers, does great food and has rightly been taken into the bosom of locals.

Unfortunately, the pub is owned by a landlord in north London who would sooner see it turn a profit by becoming a supermarket and several flats. Regardless of the Tavern's popularity, success and the fact that it's the only place of its kind in a mile or two radius, it's under real threat. The site is worth a lot of money and there's already an interested developer and tenant. Even the most popular pub can’t compete with that. Nor can the neighbouring privately-owned shops and businesses that any big brand supermarket will inevitably decimate. There's been a great Turkish supermarket and bakery next door for the 20 years I've known the area.

The Catford Bridge Tavern's saving grace may be its popularity. As a desirable destination in a yet-to-be-regenerated area, it has plenty of ardent supporters. Twitter, Facebook, the pub's own website and an online campaign to save it are all in full swing. Tellingly, Lewisham Council's planning portal shows that 242 objections to the proposed change of use have been received, with not a single vote in favour. For once, please let people power prevail.

Thoughts about FitBit

Over the past four days I've been trying out a new gadget called FitBit Zip. It's a clip-on device that logs your activity levels and how these compare to your non-active periods. When in range of the laptop it's linked to (via a miniscule USB dongle), data is updated in your online account and graphs of your couch potato shame are generated. Tell FitBit what you’ve been eating and it will calculate how likely it is that you'll shed a pound or two.

Its main aim is to get you thinking about whether you're sufficiently active. A minimum goal of 5,000 steps per day is the preset target, with 10,000 a desirable aim. You get badges and a congratulatory email when you achieve them. You can also set yourself easy, moderate or challenging weight loss goals.

All of this is laudable – and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that despite working from home and not having a set exercise routine I was easily achieving my daily targets.

Once I've spent a solid week or more with the Fitbit Zip, I'll be sharing my considered thoughts in my review for iPad and iPhone User.

There are already a few things I've decided could work better though. A more comprehensive menu list that isn't so geared towards ready meals is one. I made a complete guess of the calorie count when I added Marmite on toast to my custom food list.

I'd also like to see a more positive spin on times when FitBit isn't logging steps. I may not be climbing stairs or going for a swim right now, but writing a report for two hours straight with only one tea break means I'm definitely engaging the grey matter, if not stretching my glutes. FitBit shows as grey any time you’re not apparently up and about doing stuff with your pebble-sized companion logging your every step.

Time spent watching X Factor and Grand Designs are certainly couch potato moments, of course, but FitBit also thinks you're idle when it's lying on your bedside table because you've forgotten to clip it on to your clothes. It's so unobtrusive that you have to remember to take it with you. Maybe it should buzz or glow.

You can manually inform the app that you were busy doing something that it hasn't recorded. You can add activities such as swimming, gardening, hiking or DIY, but unless you associate these activities with another fitness tracker such as Endomondo or RunKeeper

, it doesn't appear to credit you with any steps. You get acknowledgement in the form of coloured slices on the activity log for the day, but any time spent asleep is also taken into account (although the screen suggests otherwise). This means a large proportion of any day is likely to be grey.

Having got off to an excellent start with a four-hour-long walk around undiscovered parts of London, clocking up more than 15,000 steps, it was galling to discover the next day that a well-earned healthy sleep meant I didn't look so keen after all.

It's no bad thing to be shown what your average day looks like, but I'd also like a bit more encouragement and positive thinking from FitBit.

Passing the baton

Yesterday, I attended the AGM of Volunteer Centre Lewisham. I'd seen a message asking anyone interested in finding out what's happening with plans to bring back into use the former Victorian bathhouse (and latterly gymnastics centre) in Ladywell. Since Volunteer Centre Lewisham is one of the four parties working towards restoring the Grade II listed Ladywell Playtower and turning it into a community hub, it made sense to combine the meetings.

I've never volunteered in Lewisham, despite living here most of my adult life, and was surprised to learn that the organisation estimates that borough residents contributed a combined number of volunteer hours last year equivalent to £32 million. That's an incredible amount of goodwill and time devoted to caring, training, administration and thoughtfulness on behalf of other people. There are currently 900 volunteering opportunities in the area.

This summer, volunteering rightly became the focus of a lot of news stories and features thanks to those who gave up their summer holidays and their salaries to act as Games Makers and Ambassadors during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The cheerful army of volunteers "made the Games", according to many.

What also became clear is just how much those volunteers relished their weeks of involvement with the Olympics. They got at least as much from the experience as they put in. I certainly did.

As one of those lucky enough to have been chosen as a Team London Ambassador, I felt even more closely associated with the Games than the millions of sports fans glued to their TV sets and attending the events. Ask anyone who's chatted to me over the past three months. I've barely talked about anything else other than the Olympics and how much I've loved being a part of it.

Volunteering for the world's biggest sporting event wasn't exactly a hardship. We were given plenty of training, encouragement and support along the way by others who were themselves volunteers and who had stepped up to the mark to ensure what we brought to the Games was of value. Their invisible role was far more representative of what volunteering is like on a day to day level. Some of the training was delivered better than other parts, just as some of the locations at which the training days were held were more enticing than others. But in every case it was about people passing on knowledge, skills and experience - and the recipients soaking it up.

It's this experience that is intended to be the Olympic legacy. Volunteering is seen as a key indicator of how successful the London 2012 Games will be judged to have been and is something that the Games volunteers have been asked to comment on and actively promote.

Team London Ambassadors been offered the chance to complete Heart Start training, for example, so that in an emergency we could confidently use a defibrillator. Once trained, many of us will be taking that skill into our local communities and training more people in how to use this life-saving equipment.

One of the reasons I went to the Volunteer Centre meeting last night was to find out what's happening locally on the volunteering front.

Coming back to the Olympic legacy plans, there's already been a weekend of local sport intended to entice those inspired by our sporting heroes and heroines to take up a new activity in their area. The nationwide Join In project in August was a great start.

Last weekend, at our local track, I observed girls of all ages being given their first ever javelin lesson, while a assembly of teenage boys and a girl of around 10 were shown how to crouch for a sprint start and run 100 and 200 metres.

It's not just about sport, though. The volunteering spirit is about sharing the skills you have in whatever field you specialise - or simply lending a hand, as per the Brownie motto, to make things happen.

As well as a thank-you from the Mayor's office for being part of the pink and purple London 2012 welcoming committee, we got an email yesterday checking our address details so we can be sent a commemorative baton. That baton, of course, is more than just a keepsake. It's a symbol of what we, as volunteers, can pass on.

Plum Tarte Tatin recipe

With apples and plums hanging off the tree ready to be picked, it's the perfect time of year to make fruit tarts and desserts. I'm not quite ready for a pie or a crumble, though.

A recent episode of The Great British Bakeoff saw contestants grapple with fruit tatin. A classic dessert that the experts on cooking shows often dismiss as fairly simple stuff (I’m looking at you, Greg and John), the spareness of its ingredient list is deceptive.

The caramelisation, the amount of juice your chosen soft fruit produces – and what you decide to do about it – as well as the pastry itself, all pose pitfalls. I fell victim to the first of those pitfalls when I attempted to make my first ever caramel and ended up with gooey buttery sludge.

I consulted the Sweet Tarte blog for directions because baker Rachel had come up with a delicious-looking plum tarte tatin. Exactly what I hoped to make.

Unfortunately, rather than the glorious tarte she conjured up, I created nothing more than an icky mess using the butter and sugar caramel mix she suggested. My skillet pan perhaps wasn't ideal. It's a griddle pan, to be honest. But it was the only heavy-bottomed pan I have that can go in the oven.

Undeterred, I've had another attempt today as my punnet of plums won't stand too much more delay. I'd love to be using homegrown, but my young tree failed to crop.

I chose a different caramelisation method with only sugar, based on the directions on Sara Buenfield's BBC Good Food recipe.

This time, I used a heavy saucepan and transferred the sticky caramel mixture into a shallow baking dish for the cooking part. To try and keep the caramel from setting immediately, I placed the glass dish on top of the gas ring I’d extinguished moments earlier, so at least there was some heat. A swift smear with the flat of a knife meant I was able to spread the caramel across most of the dish before placing the plums cut side down and folding the shop-bought puff pastry over the top. There was very little to show for my 4oz of molten brown sugar though.

While the caramel experiment was taking place, I had the stoned plums in a glass dish and sprinkled a generous amount of caster sugar over the top. This helped soften them up, as I didn’t want to precook them or to peel off their skins. There wasn’t really much juice to worry about at this stage. However, I should have paid attention to Rachel’s comments about the excess juice as I also ended up with some in the bottom of the dish. Thankfully, when turned out my tarte, there was only a little seepage and the pastry was largely fine.

Next time I’ll get rid of any juice I can before placing the fruit in the dish to cook. I'll also invest in an ovenproof pan so I don’t have to dance about the kitchen transferring dangerously hot substances. I might even end up with some caramel on top of my fruit.

Plum Tarte Tatin

4oz caster sugar
teaspoon of butter [optional]
400g of very ripe plums, stoned and halved
extra caster sugar to sprinkle over plums
chilled puff pastry


Preheat the oven to 200-220 degrees
Wash, half and stone the plums. Place in a bowl, cut-side up, and sprinkle over around 1oz of caster sugar
Make the caramel by swirling a pan of caster sugar over a medium heat. Stir to prevent sticking. Wait until the sugar is properly liquid, not just slightly runny. It should be golden brown.
Place the plums face down into the caramel mixture, remove from the heat and allow to cool
When you’re ready to cook the tarte, gently place a sheet of chilled puff pastry over the top of the dish, trimming off any overhanging pastry. Press down only the very edges, not on the fruit itself.
Transfer the tarte to the centre of the oven and cook for 20-25 minutes.

When the pastry is all puffed up and has some colour, take it out the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.

Get a serving dish or large platter. Gently place it face down over the top of the tarte. Ensure you’re wearing an oven glove on the hand that goes under the tarte dish as fruit retains its heat in a big way. Put the other hand on top of the serving platter and quickly invert the tarte so the plums are exposed. You may need to use a flat knife to help release the pastry of the tarte from the dish you cooked it in.

Once the tarte has cooled, serve warm with cream or custard.

Blottr: sophisticated citizen reporting

If ever there was a situation inflamed by social media, the London riots of August 2011 was it. There were YouTube videos of looting and hundreds of erroneous tweets that gained currency as other people took them at face value and retweeted them.

Sitting in my spare room half a mile from the larceny taking place in Lewisham high street and a stone's throw from Peckham, Eltham and other supposed hotspots, I was incredulous at the reporting taking place. We'd got off the train to a certain frosty frisson, but most people were uneasy and curious in equal measure and wanted to see for ourselves what was actually happening. That local news sites, Facebook posts and Twitter all seemed to suggest apocalyptic scenes of smashed up cars, forced entry and burning buses was no comfort. Nor did it tally with what we could see or hear for ourselves. Eventually, we stood out in the empty streets and called home to reassure family that the situation was very far from what TV reports suggested.

A year later, Twitter reactions and breaking stories on news sites based on digital hearsay continue to mislead. But a healthy dose of skepticism has crept in too. You can make the outrageous and the implausible ‘trend’, but it's just as likely the voice of dissent or counter-information will have its time in the spotlight too.

Sites such as the BBC's and The Guardian's allow commenters to agree with or not, report or simply refute what others say, making the blog commentaries more democratic and balanced too.

What Twitter and other instant reporting tools can't always do is substantiate what they claim within the 140 characters the short form posts allow. So you could be breaking an important story, but if you can't say all of what you need to to back it up, its impact may be lost and your message buried beneath an avalanche of trending posts about @1D's multi-million-pound Pepsi deal.

Adding photos, links to maps, audio quotes and a couple of explanatory lines can make all the difference – but only if you have somewhere to post it. UK citizen news site Blottr was set up for this very reason. Celebrating its second birthday and with the obligatory Android and iOS apps with which to report on the move, it allows 'ordinary' people to report extraordinary events.

At yesterday's event to mark its two years were posters showing that Blottr was the first site to break the news of Gaddafi's death, along with a photo. News agencies and the BBC trailed the word on the street – and the web. If such citizen sites can get the details right and not be derailed by partial reporting – there's every reason to expect citizen sites to gain currency and become established information outlets in their own right.

Just today, there were multiple reports about the identity of the British family shot dead in their car in France. Multiple sources – guests at the campsite, word from policemen at the scene and other people in the know – all gave the same name.

Traditional news sites were conflicted about how to proceed, with the BBC and Guardian electing to state that such reports existed but that they would wait for the official statement from the French authorities before naming the slain family.

Not everything that's instant about the internet is for the good, but the democratisation of information and our ability to have a stake in what's reported surely is.

Time to loosen up those hips

I've got to do something about my hips. They're causing me more and more pain and nothing I've done to date has managed to lessen it.

Hip openers are meant to help but they sound painful. My hips already crunch and grind and lock up. Opening them up to more abuse doesn't really sound desirable. What's being opened and extended is the range of motion your hips can cope with. It's one of the big benefits of yoga – and it’s something I’m sorely in need of.

It's National Yoga Month in the US. In honour of this, my friend and yoga fanatic Ann Chihak Poff, wrote on her GoFitGirl blog about how to get started with this stretching and strengthening discipline. She kindly credited me with prompting her to consider what a beginner needs to know about starting yoga practice. It's something I've toyed with, but I've never got beyond trying breathing exercises and the initial stretches recommended on yoga videos and online.

The Wii Fit convinced me that there's something in yoga for me (but I eventually tired of the Wii Fit itself), but I didn't really know where to begin. I was put off by terms such as ‘hot yoga’, ashtanga, bikram and hip openers and scared of what a random gym class might entail. The local yoga practitioners I'd approached for advice all seemed less than keen to take complete novices. But it's about time I took the plunge.

September's going to be my 'get back into getting fit' month and Ann's helpful blog post was a timely reminder of how many resources are out there when starting a new form of exercise.

Lengthy walks and back stabilisation exercises have done little to ease the ongoing hip pain I've been having, so I need a more aggressive approach to fixing my spine and joint issues. Armed with some passes to the local gym, I'm off to reacquaint myself with the cross-trainer, the fixed bike and, yes, some yoga classes to ensure I’m stretching properly and lengthening my contracting muscles. Yikes! But anything's better than sitting here in pain worrying about how much worse the pain might get and letting those joints get stiffer still.

A summer of TV like no other

(or how to become a couch potato in three easy steps)

Boris Johnson promised us Londoners a summer ‘like no other’. When it finally arrived, London 2012 didn’t disappoint. The Olympics has been a triumph that’s swept us all along in its wake.

Sellout events, kids and adults alike taking to the streets on their hastily dusted-off bikes, fish leaping out of streams in alarm as Brits discover the joys of open water swimming. The sun shone, public transport ran pretty much on time and almost everyone got behind the Games. A nation of moaners and apologists transformed itself into delighted, proud, welcoming, chatty, sports-obssessed patriots. Long may the momentum and the new-found enthusiasm for ourselves, our sportspeople and our nation continue.

Most of us experienced the Olympics and got caught its fervour through the internet and the TV. Though quite clearly slanted towards British hopes and rooting for any British interest when one was at stake, the BBC did everyone a service by its sheer infectious enthusiasm for the subject.

I can usually walk away from the screen and find some other distraction, but the Olympics coverage was simply essential viewing. My freelance writing productivity nosedived – I know of many other usually diligent office workers who spent the fortnight ‘shirking from home’ too. But my capacity for goggle-boxing increased beyond belief.

Midway through The Games, yet more temptation arrived. I’d been commissioned to review a new TV service called YouView. This doesn’t just serve up standard terrestrial channels plus endless repeats on Dave and US imports on Really. It gives you all the catch-up TV you could wish for too. Didn’t get your fill of the Opening Ceremony the first time round? No matter: it’s on iPlayer, along with the interminable Closing Ceremony and gems such as documentaries on Bradley Wiggins’ bid to win the Tour de France last month.

There’s plenty of fodder on ITV Player, Demand5 and 4OD too – and this cunning YouView service gives all of it to you on a plate, even suggesting extra morsels of related content. There’s an integrated programme guide, an on-demand film rental service courtesy of Sky Now and whatever you wish to watch is almost instantly available.

It may very well be my downfall and crush what vestigial willpower I had to leave the couch and head to the gym. I’m sure that’s not the Olympic legacy Lord Coe had in mind.

Defeating the elephants in the room

As my other half will attest – and my cupboards prove – I’m pretty good at starting projects and not so good at completion. Most of these projects are knitting-related, though there are also DIY must-dos on my personal nag list. Most faltered because I got into a pickle with the pattern.

There's not a single one I started and then abandoned because I didn’t like what I was knitting. So I've set myself the challenge of finishing several of my in-progress projects over the summer. I've just finished sewing up and pressing the basketweave jumper I’ve made for one of my little nephews. His twin will be getting a matching cardigan in the same pattern and yarn, but not before I finally finish a project with their names on from last year.

Cuddly elephant toys with matching Indian headdresses and backcloths seemed ideal when they were babies. Unfortunately, I had no idea quite how long each would take and how complex the apparently simple moss stitch design would prove. I’m a lot better at knitting now than I was a year ago and much quicker to spot and correct mistakes. The tens of hours I spent trying to get the decreases, cast-ons and overall pattern correct and the frustration at not understanding why the pattern wasn't coming out as I anticipated meant the elephants soon became a trial. That I spectacularly missed the deadline of when the gifts were expected didn’t help. And I still haven't worked out how to make their ears less ragged.

A couple of false starts on elephant two, a few months of ignoring the project completely and reasoning that the twins were now beyond needing soft toys and I almost let myself off the hook. But of course, I couldn’t.

A few weeks ago, we met up with Dhilan and Devan when we went en famille to the Olympic Torch event in Manchester. The boys were a delight, dancing along to the music and bashing their inflatable beaters together above the heads of their parents. I sensibly kept quiet about the jumpers I was busily knitting for them, but also instantly realised they’d still enjoy the elephants I’d long ago promised to make them. I’m still cursing the pattern and my gung-ho attitude to projects that are really beyond me, but I’ve since made lots of headway with knitting those elephants. And I’ve started enjoying the fact I’m getting somewhere with it.

By the time we next meet up with Dhilan, Devan, I'll have two lovely handmade elephant toys and two cute jumpers to present to them. Oh, and late last night I made a simple-as-can-be stocking stitch 'dude doll' from the latest Let's Knit magazine because I knew it would take barely any time at all.

Sure enough, I stuffed it and sewed it up this morning before work. It was fun and I love the fact it'll be ready to show off to my knitting friends at this week's Brockley Knits meet-up. But the satisfaction will be nothing compared to finishing those elephants and presenting them to the boys.

Ah well. As I found myself trilling in agreement with Morrissey this morning, "I started something, typical me, typical me, typical me".

Online is where money is to be made these days and I've spent a while trying to figure out the best mechanism for doing so. I've summarised some of the pros and cons of online sales setups in the introduction to Google Wallet that I recently wrote for PC Advisor.

Along the way I discovered that there isn't really a magically simple way of selling direct to your friends on Facebook, despite what plug-in pluggers Ecwid would have you believe (you end up having to create your stock list all over again, as far as I can work out). And there are far too many confusions associated with Google Wallet and Google Checkout for my liking. Google likes to change things up every now and again and tweak the tools it provides people, which here has resulted in an imperfectly integrated mash-up of the two mechanisms it offers online merchants for selling directly from their websites.

I'm beginning to see why portal sites such as Amazon Marketplace and Etsy are so attractive. You lose out because of the cut the site takes from your proceeds, but you also end up being able to get on with the all-important process of sourcing, packaging and designing your products in the first place - presumably what you got into your chosen business for in the first place.

Since I've spent a while creating stockists, seller accounts and items that people might conceivably want to buy from me - and since no matter what I do, the 'dummy' site I created in Wordpress to host my pseudo shop just won't accept my Google Buy Now buttons whichever mechanism I choose to generate the relevant code, I'm now tentatively opening shop here on my personal blog.

Should you want to indulge in some handmade socks, hats, scarves or toys for your very youngest, I'll be making them on a 'make to order' basis. But if you are happy to bear with me, I'll make you something unique for a decent price.

Email me at rosiehattersley@gmail.com to discuss what you'd like me to make - or press the Buy Now button to buy baby socks if you dare.

Thanks for your interest,

Rosie

I'd like to teach the world to knit

but I can't, because I'm left handed.

We've had two knitting events over the past two weeks (we being the Brockley Knits group I help run) and I've dismally failed to teach anyone to knit properly. Right-handed, that is.

The Brockley Knits knitting tent, complete with knitted bunting and pompoms

I first realised that showing someone how to knit when one of you is left-handed and the other right-handed is a problem at our Knit Night at the Brockley Max festival.

Having a camera and video camera in my face while I tried to show a complete beginner how to cast on didn't exactly help. But nor did trying to compensate for my left-handed ways by attempting to work out how a right-hander would wrap the yarn. It was a right mess and only got worse the more I tried. A good job other people were on hand to show newcomers how to get started and pass on their knitting skills.

It was a great night and we were really pleased with the attendance and got many compliments for the knitted bunting and 'paper' chains we'd strung around the venue. Mostly not our doing, but it was nice to decorate the place. We've even been asked to knit some for permanent display at Mr Lawrence Wine Bar, our fortnightly knitting night venue.

Last weekend, we took Brockley Knits properly public. We had a large open tent up on Hilly Fields and welcomed anyone who wished to to join us in knitting or making pompoms. Our was just one of many activities that people could join in with - face painting, making felt butterflies, creating a graphic novel, taking part in the Animal Magic Carnival Parade or simply hanging out, enjoying the live bands, dancers, craft stalls, farmers' market, bar and brand-new cafe. Brockley Max's final day is always a great day out.

Again, I had the left-handed issue when it came to teaching the basics of knitting. It transpires that my self-taught method of casting on is different from other people's too. Well, it works for me. Anyway, creating a slip knot, then a second loop that you then slip on to the same needle as the first loop shouldn't be as awkward as I manage to make it look. Once you've got the idea of what it is that you want to achieve, which hand you hold the yarn in and which direction you slip your stitches shouldn't matter all that much. A few people were happy to be shown how to knit lefthanded as they figured they were trying it out for size anyway. Ruth spent ages teaching people how to cast on and knit the more usual way and there were always pompoms for anyone who didn't fancy knitting at all.

Quite a few people came along, pulled up a chair and knitted circular chains or bunting, while many more came over and talked about the knitters in their family and expressed an interest in perhaps coming along to a daytime or evening knit sometime. The day was really about meeting knitters and generally getting our name out there, and it couldn't have gone better. We'll be knitting in Brockley again soon - and not just when it's officially World Wide Knit in Public Week.

Off-kilter pompoms

Pom poms don't have to be adornments for garments - they can be creations in their own right

We're putting on a workshop tomorrow to show kids the basics of knitting. We don't really know what age the kids will be since it's part of our local Brockley Max community arts festival and people can simply turn up and give it a go. 

Our own experience is that learning to knit doesn't necessarily come easily - but it's pretty addictive once you start. But with lots of things to do on the day and limited attention spans, we thought it a good plan to also offer pom pom making as as option. Pom poms are often used to finish off a hat, bag or scarf and are ideal as a project to take away and complete once your enthusiasm on the day wanes. 

I remember sitting in my bedroom when I was about 10 making pom poms. I haven't done much of it since. With a bagful of multicoloured scraps of yarn, I've experimented with two and three colour pompoms for my pre-event practice. Now I'm thinking of what I can use them for afterwards - ideally something that doesn't lead me back in to the danger zone of flipping through a knitting pattern book and starting a new knit so I've got something my pompom can make complete.

Pom poms can be objects in their own right. Make a few and you've got the makings of an animal body, cut out and glue on felt shapes and give yours a face or attach it to a length of elastic and taunt the cat. But there's one inescapable fact: pom poms always come out spherical. 

Since I like to do different, I'm now trying out asymmetric pom pom making for size. I've figured out that simply shifting the hole off-centre will have little effect on the finished object. So I'm trying elongated shapes instead - long animal bodies and lozenges for legs. I may even make pom pom veg. 

Rhubarb and blueberry sorbet

I've been growing rhubarb for the first time and was initially impressed with how well my little plug was progressing. Its leaves gradually withered though as the constant wind and rain took its toll and I began to regret not harvesting what I had when the red stalks were very still very small but looked juicy. 

The plant is back on track and is making steady progress now the pot is safely tucked under the cover of my makeshift plastic greenhouse and I still hope to taste its fruit in a couple of weeks time. 

Meanwhile, the UK weather has done a complete volte face and has gone from hail and torrential rain to a full on heatwave. It was 34 degrees in our garden today, which suited the Mediterranean herbs quite well but did the seedlings I was potting out no favours. 

Escaping to the cool indoors, I investigated what we could have to quench our thirst. Iced tea and coffee, especially a refreshing roiboos, but there's also a stash of pureed rhubarb my friend Susi gave us a while ago. 

I've cobbled together a DIY sorbet recipe, adding 150g of blueberries to the green rhubarb mix and a dash of mint. Ginger is a good alternative to mint, while most recipes use strawberries for the colour and additional sweetness. Several recipes I found online suggested a dash of spirits such as gin or vodka - this Kimberly Hasselbrink one looks amazing - to break down the tartness of the fruit. 

I don't have an ice cream maker so blended everything in the food mixer to make it as smooth as possible and then kept nipping indoors to stir up the mixture as it froze - a good discipline for ensuring I didn't get too much unseasonal heat. 

Rhubarb and blueberry sorbet recipe

Place 200g of stewed rhubarb (thaw out frozen stewed fruit; use fresh if available) in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. 

Simmer with 100g blueberries, 150ml of water and around 50g of caster sugar. 

Add small sprig of fresh mint or half a teaspoon of freeze-dried mint

Slowly bring to boil, stirring frequently

Remove from heat and allow mixture to cool

Whizz up the mixture in a blender until it becomes smooth

Pour into an airtight container and freeze for around two hours or until begins to firm up. Stir or break up into chunks and blend in food processor using the chopping blade. Return to freezer and allow to freeze. 

Will need around 15 minutes to become sufficiently defrosted to serve. 

Serve with fresh fruit and/bitter chocolate cookie or mouse. Add a mint leaf for decoration. 

Great British Jubilee Bake

Now that's what I call a cake. Edd Kimber's Great British Jubilee Bake

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine posted a photo of an incredible-looking cake on her Facebook page and threw down the gauntlet to her friends to try and bake a Jubilee-themed Victoria Sponge cake too.

It wasn’t an entirely random challenge. Vinnie works as a PR and one of her clients is Bart Spices. They’d got Great British Bake Off winner Edd Kimber to come up with a new spin on the good old Victoria Sponge using some of their spices sourced from various Commonwealth locales. That's his creation pictured above. 

There’s a competition running until 11th June inviting wannabe bakers to come up with their own Jubilee-themed cake: A baking masterclass is at stake.

By way of enticement to get involvement, I was sent the recipe and spices to have a bash at recreating Edd’s cake. To say I messed things up would understate things somewhat. Attempt number one was hastily abandoned after an accident with the spice grinder. This set me back a few days as I waited for a replacement to arrive. My next attempted bake tasted great but fell apart even before I’d tried the tricky feat of horizontally slicing each half of the cake in order to stuff them with creamy icing and blue and red berries.

Fingers crossed it’ll be third time lucky as there’s only a few more days left to submit entries and I don’t want to be a laughing stock on Facebook, where voting takes place: www.facebook.com/bartspices.

I'm dearly hoping it's anonymous. 

Red, white and blues

I don't know about you, but I'm finding all this British jolliness a bit wearying. Red, white and blue is a cheery trio of colours and I've as fond memories of the 1977 Silver Jubilee as anyone else. We had a lovely street party, the sun shone and I remember being made very welcome by the ladies who were pleased to have a young volunteer for buttering sandwiches before we all tucked in to a vast picnic.

But 1977 was a full 35 years ago and there ought to be some more relevant cultural signifiers than Union Jacks being enthusiastically waved and its familiar motif being spattered across anything able to take a print. The good old red, white and blue is having a dreadful effect on fashion, as a stroll down the aisles of most high street retailers proves. Bed sheets with elongated Union Jacks, floor length and with enormous armholes at the sides are neither maxi dresses or beach cover ups. They're just dreadful.

Last week I witnessed the daubing of the Union Jack right across both windows of one of the most prominently placed pubs in the Leicester Square/Covent Garden tourist zone. Sure enough, when I walked past the next day, not only was the view from the windows completely obliterated, but a giant fry-up and a call to come on in for some Great British Grub was superimposed over the top. We have a tough enough time convincing sceptical overseas visitors about the excellent cuisine to be found in the UK, without reminders of such unhealthy examples. Ok, I'm being a bit of a snob here, but I do think we're playing up our dear old stereotypes when there's no need.

This year's Jubilee is also responsible for an outbreak of bunting - and here I'm guilty of encouraging it as I thought some simple garter stitch pennants in bright colours would be the ideal project for a knitting workshop I'm helping run as part of our local community arts festival.

There are numerous examples of kitschy flowered fabrics snipped into shape and finished with crimped edges - perfect if you want to put on an afternoon tea and serve it on your lawn or in a summerhouse to ladies of a certain age with pressed curls, faces powdered and defiant red lips. I'm afraid I don't know many ladies like that and I'm just as fed up with the tweeness as I am as the giant flags adorning every surface.

Luckily, bunting doesn't have to be kitsch or monarchist - it simply signifies celebration. So while I'm sticking to bunting for its conveniently small size and speediness to create, I'm also slipping in a few non-traditional motifs of my own. After all, Her Maj is Queen of the Commonwealth, which currently comprises 54 countries. That gives us an awful lot more scope than simply red, white and blue.

Why Pinterest needs you

I've been spending a bit of time with Pinterest. A friend warned me of the danger of doing so: it's rather a visual vortex. One intriguing looking photo leads to a slew of others and before you know it you've pinned and followed hundreds of posts and digital cork boards and half a rainy day has disappeared.

I can't see myself idling away hours on a sunny day - Pinterest doesn't say anything; it just shows you stuff. The appeal of Pinterest is that it's all lovely stuff. Beautiful homes, perfectly styled hair and fashion, cute pets and admirably well executed home crafts. There are photos and paintings too, along with some shining examples of architecture and product design.

Pinterest began as a closed shop, open to crafters and bloggers and anyone with an established web presence who would recognise how sharing boards of beautiful things might catch on. The social sharing site is now in a loose 'invite only' mode but actually has more than 18 million users and is soon set to become mainstream. It's not quite Facebook yet, but it shares some of that site's attributes and works directly with it, as it does with Twitter.

Twitter's similar, in that it offers an instant means of sharing items you like. With Pinterest, it's about the pictures rather than clever words. Perhaps recent Facebook acquisition Instagram is a better example. Once something's 'pinned' it can be seen forever (unless you unpin it, of course) on your Pinterest board.

You can pin video as well as photos, so there's scope to pin 'funnies' and all sorts that you might previously have shared on Facebook but that disappear off your page once a few more posts appear in your Timeline. I recently berated Videojug for its not always funny funnies. Get them on Pinterest and let the world decide.

It's this sort of engagement (and that Videojug and Vimeo do within their own environs) that Pinterest desperately needs. It could be a cool place to hang out, but it's dominated by photos of wedding dresses and cute designer things for kids. It needs rescuing from its saccharine coating and to be given some balls. 'Bloke' stuff, punk stuff, not quite so comfortable to look at stuff.

Corkboards use pins for a reason, so you can jam them in with a thumb and show the world that 'this' is what's worth looking at. Duh!

Free time me time

Next week, I was supposed to be going to China. I’d have been shown the ins and outs of a number of useful new products that Hewlett Packard are keen to show those of us who cover such exciting things as printers and laptops. We’d be told about the research and development that goes into designing such useful business tools and, back in the UK, we’d eventually get to give our take on what we were shown.

Based on previous business jaunts with HP, the likelihood is that we wouldn’t be allowed to share our thoughts on what we’ve seen until a week or even a month after our return from Shanghai. I certainly wouldn’t have been spilling any secrets about the under wraps gadgetry while I was in China.

Nonetheless, my role as a ‘self-employed business advisor’ did not meet with the authorities' approval and I’ve been refused entry to the country on this occasion. I’ll have to keep my thoughts on printer technology to myself. I'd love to have spent time in such an interesting city as Shanghai, though. 

All this gives me a bit of time on my hands (not something I’m very good with – I keep myself busy at all costs). I’ve done enough work to keep me busy before I went away and when I got back, but I’ve suddenly got a full work week to fill.

My first thought was, how about doing some of the things you couldn’t have done if you were in China. 


I could get political and talk about the silent demonstration in Trafalgar Square last weekend by followers of the Falun Gong. 


I could talk about some of the services that westerners enjoy and the Chinese are denied, the latest being the Google Drive cloud-storage service. It wouldn’t achieve much and, besides, China has its own version of the internet and its own online services. Its people have far bigger issues than whether they get such generous data storage allowances with Baidu.

Instead, I thought I’d plan my unexpected ‘free’ week around things that I couldn’t do if I were in China. 

There’s no excuse not to get out on my bike or haul myself down to a local gym and start sorting out my weak back. My back has been playing me up again of late, but I never make the time to sort it out.

I can declutter the flat and finally get some sort of order in the spare room that was originally planned to be my work-at-home space. Someone else will appreciate those books, those tops and trinkets that have long gone unloved in this home. There's three more tomes beside my bed and I might just be able to read them. 

The weather’s turned and the garden is crying out for attention. It’s not too late to have a second stab at getting some vegetables to grow.

I can dig out my cameras and start properly getting to know how to take worthwhile photos without recourse to clever tech tricks. I've officially got time to knit! 

And there's a certain cake I've been challenged to bake that requires patience and not a small amount of decorating skill. 

I'm beginning to wonder whether I ever had time for Shanghai at all. 

Teenage Cancer Trust kicks right Royal oldies into touch

I’m pleased to see the Royal Albert Hall has announced changes to the way its members are able to dispose of unwanted tickets for charity concerts. Earlier this week there was a kerfuffle when news emerged that a couple of its wealthy patrons were making tidy profits on the secondary ticket resale market, with those for Roger Daltrey and Paul Weller's Teenage Cancer Trust benefit concert selling at up to £299 apiece against a face value of £50.

Members of the Royal Albert Hall pay around £1000 per seat to the charity – the Royal Albert Hall, this is (yes, it does seem rather incredible that such a venerable institution has charitable status) – and in return have a certain number of seats allocated for each performance. This allows them to show largesse and entertain family, friends and clients. Not no one likes every act that takes to the stage, nor has the time to go to every performance, so for those events for which they have surplus tickets, selling them to someone who can use them makes sense.

Giving them to someone who can use of them makes even more sense. Having got ‘cheap’ seats to see PJ Harvey at the Royal Albert Hall last year, imagine my delight when while queuing for the lift to take us up to the ‘gods’  at the top of the auditorium, a lady who holds a number of seats in the stalls offered me a pair for the third row – for free. It was a fantastic gift and a matter of pure chance that I was in the right place at the right time. It’s also in complete contrast to the attitude of the other debenture members who have been criticised for selling theirs and profiting from doing so.

Inability to secure concert tickets is the bane of every music fan’s life. Your favourite act finally tours and you can’t get tickets for love nor constant redial or web page refresh. Moments after the event sells out, tickets magically appear on a secondary sale site at hugely inflated prices. Entrepreneurial, yes, but one that comes at great expense to the average music fan. The same thing happens for other high profile events, but the Glastonbury Festival has become the standard-bearer for this nefarious business.

When Arctic Monkeys announced their first UK tour as a headline act, I found myself on the receiving end of this. An eBay bidding novice, I grew tired of constantly being outbid at the last minute for every ticket I went for (I soon learned about auto-bidding tools, but not before the tickets were gone and my patience exhausted).

I soon discovered face value tickets were available for the same tour in Germany and Holland, but eventually plumped for Philadelphia – an extravagant option, but less so as I was able to combine it with a long overdue return to visit a dear friend in New York and my first holiday in some years. My ticket cost $15.

Such options have now become fairly standard, with travel packages for festival fans being offered.

In the case of the Royal Albert Hall tickets, of course, something else was at play. Profiting from the fact you are automatically allocated tickets is one thing, but it feels immoral when you’re doing so for a charity concert. The performers and promoters were giving their time and talents for free (and rightly getting publicity and goodwill in return, natch).

I was lucky enough to attend the first ever Teenage Cancer Trust concerts and have been to four in all over the years. One year, having delivered to its modest office some donated items for distribution around the various cancer wards that the Teenage Cancer Trust has been instrumental in creating, I was asked whether I’d be interested in buying a ticket for one of the events. These, I was told, were tickets that supporters of various types were unable to make use of, and had therefore returned to the charity so they could be sold and more money raised.

Surely this is what is supposed to happen. That or give the unwanted tickets to the kids on behalf of whom Teenage Cancer Trust is fundraising. There’s also a group of kids in attendance at these concerts, bravely declaring their intention to battle on through a horrible disease.

I’m sure many more kids – with cancer or without but facing challenging circumstances all the same – would love the chance to attend. Now the Charity Commission, organiser Harvey Goldsmith and the board of the Royal Albert Hall have stepped in to prevent such profiteering, it’s possible many more of them will get the chance to do so. 

Masterchef mischief

Lime cheesecake - the spare bits

Masterchef has much to answer for. I don't just mean the hours we spend drooling over the incredible creations that they manage to pull off, week after week. It's the idea these so-called amateurs implant in us hapless viewers' minds that we too can conjure up incredible culinary creations. 

A few months ago, I wrote of my intention to whip up an easy-peasy panna cotta and use it as a foil for the fun-looking endeavour of spinning sugar and caramel creations into fancy shapes. On that occasion, it was Celebrity Masterchef putting foolish ideas into my head. 

Since I'm vegetarian, it took me a while to find a suitable recipe that sounded easy to make and used agar flakes rather than gelatine to set the pudding. After much searching, the Waitrose store in the basement of John Lewis on Oxford Street came up trumps. 

When I eventually had the right combination of ingredients, time and recipe, I made a right hash of what several food bloggers experienced in Hawaiian cookery had assured me was an easy to make much loved classic, coconut panna cotta. Coconut is mildly less fattening than double cream, which is good, but I didn't manage to get my agar flakes to dissolve sufficiently. When I came to wash up, I realised a fair chunk had congealed in the tumbler in which I'd mixed it and didn't make it as far as the saucepan where it would set the coconut milk 'custard'. 

I'll try the recipe again, as it tasted good, but my expectations of what constitutes simple on a cookery show have been suitably adjusted. 

Lo and behold, one of the contestants in the final of Masterchef this year had to use agar flakes to make an item in a hold (a Michelin-starred chef wanted an edible barbed wire ring). Seemingly, Andrew's first ever attempt was a triumph. Really? Honestly? 

Today's creation looks a little more successful. I've whipped up a lime cheesecake using my wonderful new food mixer. The flan tray I have with a removable base wasn't quite deep enough, so I've got excess filling. Thankfully, some pretty glasses were able to accommodate the spare, so I crumbled in some more digestive biscuit and butter base mix, packed it down and spooned over the lime cheesecake filling. 

Smoothing off the top and neatly transferring the mixture to the glasses wasn't *wholly* successful, as some telltale smears suggest, but if the TV chefs can fudge, so can I. 

Green cross code

When I was young, I was a keen rollerskater. So I'm very pleased to see a dozen or so skaters regularly speed along the streets where I live in Lewisham. Their confidence is impressive. This evening, as they were travelling in procession and triumphantly gliding through the red lights (there was no one crossing at the time), one of them raised his arms aloft in joy.

Thankfully, the traffic in the immediate vicinity tends to be either sporadic or an absolute jam. The bottom of the road is a bottleneck, there's the pedestrian crossing awkwardly sited just after the entrance to the station and, more critically, a bridge over the railway that hides the crossing and unexpected skaters enjoying the freedom of the open road.

So far, to my knowledge, there haven't been any awkward scrapes. This despite the steep hill leading down to the intersection that car racers, skaters and cyclists all love to charge down.

It's not really the skaters I worry about though. They seem to do a fair job of keeping their wits about them; road sense (or second sense) must be a requirement for them.

It's the pedestrians that concern me. Whether skater, van, cycle or car, walkers increasingly seem to take their life in their hands. Walking out in front of oncoming traffic while on a crossing; stepping out into the road where there isn't a crossing; pushing a buggy ahead to ensure the traffic stops. This worked in the days when we all observed rules such as slowing down and stopping when a pedestrian was even vaguely near a zebra crossing. It doesn't happen half as much in London any more. Cars and vans now seem to dominate and don't necessarily cede right of way to insignificant - inconvenient - other road users.

For years, I've shouted at drivers ignoring pedestrian crossings or speeding up through changing lights. I swear at bus drivers - among the worst offenders at iinfringing on other users' road space and sitting static on crossings, forcing pedestrians to walk out into the traffic in order to cross.

At this rate, I'll have to change tack and shout at fellow walkers instead. Obliviousness in the face of other road users' bad manners as well as acting unpredictably and walking out to meet it only had to go wrong once. Perhaps if you're distracted by an unexpectedly skater.

Flowers for Amber

Our glamorous assistant Amber loved to be involved with whatever we were up to

We've been trying to think of an appropriate memorial to our lovely cat, Amber. She loved being mistress of our home and garden, so I thought some flowers or a shrub might work well. She was often to be glimpsed stealthily stalking petals and creatures through long grass or using daffodil stems as cover. She'd sit tight, choose her moment and then leap into the air, often with an insect or petal (occasionally a baby bird) in her triumphant grasp. In her element, she was elegant, graceful - and occasionally deadly. 


The flashes of colour from deep brown and black to orange and yellow bewitched us, as did her affectionate ways. When we can home of an evening, she'd stretch out luxuriantly on the rug and show us her tummy, ready to be rubbed and tickled. A small cat, she managed to double in length when stretched out awaiting her tummy rub. 


We have some video clips that immortalise her agile movements, but pulling up a video file is not the same as the flash of colour unexpectedly catching the eye. 


I like the idea of assembling flowers and plants that symbolise her beauty and that have their own majesty. I've found some black velvet petunias and some burnt orange 'crackling fire' trailing petunias I hope will fit the bill.