My First Quilt

This is the first quilt I made.

The little lass is now up and running around.

Autumn Leaves

After a break of five days, it feel like it is time to do a bit more quilting.  My Mam loves autumnal colours, and I suggested she might like a table runner for her dining room table.    This is the pattern I'm going to use.

Doctor Marten's Socks

These socks were knitted for my daughter, to be worn under her new Doc Marten's.  They have been worn, and worn, and worn.  A second pair was requested, and those have been worn, and worn and worn.  The plea has emerged, "Please keep knitting me socks!"

Lace Spoon

52 in 52
8  Lace Spoon

My daughter is studying art and one of her assignments is based around spoons.  She commissioned me to crochet a spoon for her.  She will take the spoon, dip it in porcelain slip a few times and then fire it.  The cotton will burn away in the kiln leaving just the porcelain behind.  

Calligraphy Cowl

So far this winter I have been wearing a lot of black.  This needed to change - colour was definitely needed.  

At Sweet Ginger, I bought this lovely yarn Colinette Calligraphy in Florentina.

This is going to become a warm, snuggly Möbius cowl.

52 in 52 for 2014

There is a challenge I have taken part in the last few years, making/finishing 52 items in 52 weeks.  There have been times when I have succeeded, and times when success has been elusive.  

This time thought, I decided to start at the beginning of my Christmas crafting rather than on the first of January.  

1  Mat for the Christmas tree

A friend gave us two cushions that almost, almost matched the colour of our sofas.  Sadly the almost match did not look good on the sofas, but as long as the cushions were in another part of the room they looked good.  It wasn't terribly practical, so I used the fabric to make a mat for the Christmas tree.  I didn't want the top of the chest being scratched by the base of the stand.  The mat was then edged in a cream fabric with small circles of red, gold and green.

2 and 3  Minion Hat 1 and 2

Hats for my elder daughter and her boyfriend.  One of them is delighted to have a Minion Hat.  The other is not terribly impresssed.

4  Square Hat

This is the hat my elder daughter really wanted.  It doesn't look much when lying flat, but when worn, it looks like there are cat ears.  

5  Penny's  Hat

Penny is a character from "The Big Bang Theory", and she has a hat just like this.  This hat made my younger daughter very happy.

6  Shaun the Sheep Shirt

There’s a family tradition of ‘interesting sleeves’ for shirts. The men in my family are all kilt-wearers, and the kilts get worn at formal events. The shirts look very formal when worn with a jacket, but when the jacket comes off, the silliness is revealed. My husband’s wing collar shirt has Winnie the Pooh sleeves.

I bought a shirt for my elder daughter’s boyfriend, and then unpicked the sleeves. These were used as a template and new sleeves were produced in ‘Shaun the Sheep’ fabric. The sleeves were stitched into the armholes and cuffs.

7  Denim and fleece quilt

top

This quilt is unusual in that it has no batting between the top and bottom layer, but with the weight of the denim and the warmth of the fleece it isn't required.  It is made by taking a square of demin and one of fleece and stitching around the square 2 cm in from the edge.  The squares and ten joined together with a 1.5cm seam allowance.  

The central panel was made from jeans supplied by J and family members. Cutting squares from jeans takes a considerable amount of time, and it was getting harder to find jeans to use.  Therefore I bought denim, and that was so much easier to use!  

The instructions said to fray the edges of the denim squares.  I found it best to do this before stitching.  It made the work progress well.

This is a warm, snuggly quilt, the same size as the duvet underneath.  It is the underside of the quilt that I like best.  It looks so much tidier!  No fuzzy, frayed edges.

underside

However this quilt has been made for a guy who is now almost totally blind. It is very tactile, and so snuggly.  I'm sure he will love it. (He does.)

Christmas Cake - Decorating Lesson

J and I have just spent a wonderful morning with Ruth,  playing with fondant icing, butter cream and cake.  Ruth is a very talented woman, and I'm sure if the need ever arose she could be serious, but a smile and a laugh are never far away.

Here's our cake.

Chocolate Brownies

Ingredients
170g plain flour

350g sugar 

150g coca

230g butter

4 eggs

10ml vanilla extract

100g milk chocolate (roughly chopped)

50-100g pecan nuts (roughly chopped)

Method

Pre-heat oven to 175C.

Melt the butter in a bowl, using a microwave, then add the rest of the ingredients. Spread in a 32x23 baking pan.

Bake for 40 minutes. 

Variations

I use Dove Farm gluten-free flour.  It is a straight swap, gram for gram.

Hot brownies, straight from the oven, make a wonderful dessert, especially when served with ice cream.

TARDIS Birthday Cake

I made a TARDIS as a birthday cake for my daughter. There was a little hiccup in the time vortex and if didn't fully materialise until this afternoon. The TARDIS itself was a bit wibby-wobbly-cakey-wakey. However, a couple of enterprising people armed with cameras may have caught a glimpse of it. 

Ohhh, now that I look at the picture... it is wibbly-wobblier than I had first though!

Denim and fleece quilt

My current quilting project is a denim and fleece quilt.  The denim comes from old, old jeans that are no longer fit for purpose, and fleece comes from fleece blankets bought at B&Q.  

This type of quilt is rather different from the average.  This quilt is made by cutting out 16.5cm squares from old jeans, and new fleeces.  16.5cm (or 6.5") is the width of my quilting ruler.  A square of fleece is placed on a square of denim, and 2cm in from the edges of the square a line of machine stitching is made.  These sandwich squares are sewn together fleece sides facing, the stitching being 1.5cm in from the edge.  The denim is then frayed.  

The top of the quilt is a patchwork of denim squares.  These are outlined by the frayed denim and the lines of colourful fleece.  The bottom of the quilt is just fleece.  

This style of quilt is incredibly textural.  It is a perfect quilt for a blind person. 

Carrot Cake Adventures

At some point in my life I am going to use a recipe as written. I don't know when this will be, but it will happen. My husband had asked for a carrot cake for his birthday cake. This recipe was from the interweb, plucked at random because the accompanying photograph looked good.  The amount of oil in it was concerning at the time, and when I peeped in the oven half way though cooking I could see bubbling oil! It was not an appetising sight. This led to an experimentation with some of the ingredients and quantities.

This is the current recipe:

195g gluten-free SR flour

2 level tsp ground cinnamon

200g dark brown sugar

120ml vegetable oil

120ml apple sauce

3 eggs

270g grated carrots

90g chopped walnuts

The recipe called for 270ml of oil, and I used 120ml, and 120ml of apple sauce. In the next incarnation of this recipe I will add in some apple juice for additional moisture, bringing it back up to the 270ml level rather than 240ml.

Whilst baking, I discovered that there was no castor sugar in the house, but there was dark brown sugar. This has a better taste, so I used that instead. However, the original recipe was a bit too sweet, and with the inclusion of apple sauce, I decided to reduce the amount of sugar to 200g. This would be fine for a cake that is going to be iced. We didn't apply cream cheese icing, and so it wasn't quite as sweet as I would normally like my cake to be. Next time, I'll probably use 250g of sugar.

We've had walnut problems with this cake - there's been none in the house! The first time through I used pecans, and rather nice they were too. This time it was almonds. But we like walnuts. If I could just drill into people's heads the different between things in the baking cupboard and general snacks I would be able to bake with walnuts!  

Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

250g self-raising flour (Dove gluten-free)
2 tsp cinnamon
100g sugar
1 egg
200g finely chopped apples
150ml apple juice
90ml vegetable oil
50g pumpkin seeds

1. Prepare the muffin tins, and pre-heat the oven to 200C
2.  In a large bowl, mix the flour, cinnamon, sugar, pumpkin seeds.  Mix well.
3.  In a second bowl, mix the egg, apples, apple juice and oil.  
4.  Add the wet to the dry, and mix quickly.
5.  Spoon into muffin cases and bake for 20-25 minutes.  

This recipe makes about 10 gluten-free, dairy-free muffins.  The muffins freeze very well, and are great hot, warm or cold.  

Baby quilt

This is the quilt that I am currently working on.

First Bobbin Lace

This is my first attempt at bobbin lace!

The camera was focusing on something in the background, hence the fuzzy picture.  I can see that there's a mistake in the middle of the lace where I have crossed a couple of the lines that go straight down.  And I think there are a couple of places where it isn't 'under, over, under over', but I can live with these mistakes in this very first piece.  

Holiday Knitting

This year, I made 5 socks, started a 6th and knitted the front of a cushion cover.  

29 and 30.  white slipperette socks

31 and 31.  white slipperette socks

32.  Twisted Dozen sock in purple

(Not knitted on holiday, but definitely knitted, two additional slipperette socks, taking the total to 34.)

Last year I made socks for my Dad, and I asked if he might like another pair. There was a resounding 'Yes please'.  This time they are in a soft, soft merino 3ply.  Normally I would work in 4ply and cast on 60sts for an adult.  With this being 3ply, I am using 72sts and 2mm needles.  The needles are just half a millimetre smaller (diameter) than my standard sock needles, but they feel so much smaller!

I thought I had better offer some socks to my Mam, not really expecting to make them.  Mam surprised me and said she would love some.  This is the woman who taught me to knit when I was 4.  It was quite a thrill when she choose one of my patterns to be made up into socks.  

Dad's feet are almost the same size as my husband so it is easy to make socks the correct size for him.  For my Mam, I wanted her to try them on at each stage to ensure that they fitted perfectly.  

One Mammy sock made, and one Daddy sock started.  Christmas knitting is under way.

30 Days of Giving - Days 17 to 30

Days 17 to 30

I tried, I really did, but blogging on a daily basis is not for me.  I thought I would manage it for 30 days for this project, but it didn't work out.

One of the problems was the task itself, to donate £1 a day to 30 different charities.  I simply don't come across that many charities in my daily life.  It feels really mean donating £1 at a time in anything other than a charity collection box.  Those are designed for small amounts of money.  Giving on-line, my concern is that the money is consumed by the administrative costs involved in using an on-line service. After just over two weeks I had exhausted the local charity boxes within my daily orbit. 

My Mam does a huge amount of charity work, especially knitting for 'shoe box charities'.  She is currently making 'glove puppet' mittens for the shoe boxes.  This gives the child two toys, but also warm hands.  

I used the remaining £14 from the '30 Days of Giving' to buy a large selection of sew-in craft eyes.  My Mam and her team of helpers will use these eye to add life to the glove puppets, and toys they make for children in poor circumstances.  

It actually feels better making this £14 donation than the previous sixteen £1 donations.  Whilst my Mam isn't running a registered charity, I know she will be putting those craft eyes to good use, and that final products will be given to registered charities.  Lots of little bits of good will come from this donation.

It is also good to say 'Project completed', even though I had to change the rules part way through.

Oat Bread, second version

I was in a bread-making mood recently and thought "I know, let's make oat bread!" But, this time around I didn't have nearly enough oats. This is the modified, modified version of Oat Bread. We like it better than the previous version.

Also in the previous version I had cut the quantities in half. This time I have doubled them up again. It fitted into three small loaf tins, and the slices of bread came out at about the size of half a slice of shop-bought bread.

The gluten-free breads I can buy locally lack body and texture. If you squish a slice of gf bread between your fingers it almost turns back into a dough. In gluten-bread, this would be a sign that the bread was undercooked. The addition of oats in bread gives a great deal of body. When you bite into the oat bread it actually feels like you are biting into bread!

200g of gluten-free oats

2 (14g) sachet of dried yeast

360ml of warm water

120ml of oil

4 tablespoons of sugar

360g of Dove Farm gluten-free flour

2 teaspoon of xanthan gum

1 tsp of salt

big pinch of cinnamon

4 eggs

In a food processor,  turn the oats into oat flour.  Add the yeast, sugar, flour, xanthan gum salt, and cinnamon.  Mix in the processor.  In a jug, break the eggs and mix, add the oil, and mix, then add the water.  Once combined, add to the dry ingredients.  Beat for a few minutes until fluffy. Turn out into a well greased loaf tin.  The dough will be a sticky mess at this point, not the beautifully smooth dough ball of gluten bread.  Place the tins in a warm place and leave to rise until it has doubled in size.  Sprinkle the top with a few oats, and bake in the oven at 175°C. 

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Dove Farm flour is a great multi-purpose flour.  It is made from rice, potato, tapioca, maize & buckwheat.

30 Days of Giving - Day 16

Day 16

Riding for the Disabled is today's charity.    Many years ago, I had a friend who was horse mad, and who volunteered for Riding for the Disabled.  She would accompany the novice riders, helping to ensure that they were safe.  She spoke of the joy, contentment, excitement and exhilaration on the children's faces as they realised that they were able to control these huge beasts.  Suddenly their closed worlds exploded and possibilities presented themselves.  

RDA is a charity that expands the world of people with disabilities.

Thirty Days of Giving - Day 15

Day 15

Crossroads Care is an organisation that seeks to help carers.  So often the needs of carers are overlooked and they can become isolate and exhausted.  Crossroads Care provides more than 50,000 hours of respite care to people on the island, as well as providing other support and advice.

The charity has a number of charity shops. These have some very useful functions including providing low cost clothing and goods, to recycling items no longer wanted/needed by their owners, and providing much needed funds for the charity.

Thirty Days of Giving - Day 14

Day 14

Today's charity is the Manx Diabetic Group.   Their aim is to "press for the right of all diabetics in the Isle of Man to receive the best possible care necessary to help them maintain good control of their condition and to be able to live a fulfilling life."