Dog + Cake

So my beautiful fruit-filled, brandy-laced Christmas cake is no more. Diego, our 5-year old lurcher, managed to help himself to over half of it last night. He was not a well puppy, there was puke on our bed, on his bed, on the sofa, the kitchen floor, the sitting room floor, the hallway.... the poor thing could only have ice cubes every hour to rehydrate him and now he's on a fast until lunchtime to help his stomach settle.

The Decimator

I feel so guilty - I mean this is the dog whose illicit food spoils over the years has included: raw potatoes, a block of butter with the foil still on, a whole partridge, a dead pigeon, plastic bags...so really I should know better than to leave the house with any kind of food anywhere in reach.

The Decimated

Although the cake was decimated I did save just about half of it and it is very, very good so you can't blame him really.

Tutorial Tuesday: Fragrant Christmas Stars

One of the main reasons I love to read craft blogs are the tutorials. There are so many talented people out there who are generous enough to share techniques and ideas with the rest of us, I especially like the ones with lots of photos so its hard to go wrong. In the spirit of Christmas and general thanks, here is my little contribution to the Free Internet Tutorial Canon, as it's known (in this house, anyway).

Fragrant Wax Stars. They smell of vanilla, honestly.

 I love candles, but I hate chucking out the remains of expensive fragrant ones. This is my solution. Obviously this involves sharp knives and hot wax, so all the usual safety precautions apply. Take your time, don't get the kids to help you, you know the drill.

You will need:

• The remains of one candle
• Baking tray lined with tin foil
• Canola/Sunflower/Vegetable oil (anything with very little colour or scent)
• Bain-Marie - a heat-proof mixing bowl placed over a barely simmering pan of water
• Spatula
• Cookie Cutter
• Darning needle
• Letter press set, or whatever you choose to imprint a design on the wax

Line the baking tray with the tin foil and brush with oil. Make sure you use a tray with sides and that the foil lines these as well, or you will have wax all over the place which is a b****r to clean up, quite honestly.

 

Break up the candle. Remove the wick first, you can usually just pull it out from underneath along with its little metal plate.  Now this bit is tedious, but check all the pieces you are going to melt are clean and free of burnt wick and other dirt etc. A quick wipe with a clean linen tea towel is good enough. 

 Melt the wax in the bain-marie, just like chocolate. And just like chocolate, leave it to do its thing and melt down slowly without too much poking and stirring (When cleaning up use a little rubbing alcohol to get rid of waxy residue on your bowl and wash in very hot water).

When the wax is liquid, pour it carefully onto the prepared baking tray, which you lined and oiled earlier. Did'nt you? It will start to solidify straight away.

 After about 30 seconds or so the wax should have cooled enough for you to work with it. Treat it like cookie dough - use the cutter to get as many shapes as possible and the darning needle to make holes to hang them with. I had initially planned to make a garland out of these, spelling 'Happy Christmas' If you want to use letters too make sure you imprint extra as they break easily when stringing (as I found out later, when I had no extras. Tragedy).

While the wax is still pliable use the spatula to lift away the excess - just like cookie dough! Instead of getting rolled out again, this can go back into the bain-marie to get re-melted until you have enough shapes for your design.

Ta-Da! Festive and fragrant, ready to be strung into a  garland or used as individual decorations.

It'll be Winter, then

Today outside looks like this:

Grey, icy and -12. Brrr.

What better day to stay inside in the warm with some brandy, cake and a darning needle?

Chaos Theory

So the very lovely fabric I ordered from Etsy arrived on Friday. Much excitement all around, in which mood I decided to get going on some Christmas gifts (details here). Shortly, my work table looked like this:

There has to be a better way...

To my shame the picture above illustrates my usual working environment, with all my notions and threads in a zip-lock bag and fabric over chairs, etc. At least there is tea, I'm not a savage.
After more tea and some Ginger Nuts my brain started working again and I realised the solution to my problem was staring me in the face (or, more accurately, languishing on a shelf in the basement).

The Ginger Nut: No 6 in my Biscuit Top Ten, above the Custard Cream but below Digestives

Ta Da! I give you, My Work Box!

That's proper Irish mud on there, you know (and yes, I have scrubbed it)

I bought this little work box for 5 euro seven years ago in Lidl, when I was working as an archaeologist in Ireland. It's spent many long, cold, windy and wet hours on various hillsides waiting for something exciting to happen, getting filled with random bits of string, rusty nails and pens jammed with mud.
I like to think I am giving it the cushy retirement it deserves.

Happy to serve once more, alongside my rather natty sewing machine cover.

Crafty Christmas Club

Oooo, I am super-excited, and its only 9am! While perusing Tilly and the Buttons yesterday I came across the Crafty Christmas Club, a brilliant idea where you can show off your Christmas projects without spoiling the surprise for the recipient (unless of course they get sneaky and have a peek). I love this idea as I've not told a lot of people about this little blog as for the next month or so its all going to focus on their presents. Problem solved!
So if you are not going to be getting a gift from me this year, check out all my ideas and progress at the club.

Mmmm, Christmas Cake

It's that time of year again, the air is cold and smells of bonfires so it must be time to make the Christmas Cake. I'm very British and my Christmas is mainly to do with dried fruit and brandy, both of which my Canuck husband dislikes intensely. Despite this every year I make my cake and I am the only one to eat it, which means half of it goes into the freezer and I'm still eating it at Easter, running out just in time to make the Simnel Cake (more dried fruit, no brandy but  - quel horreur - marzipan).
The cake is supposed to take two days to make - but as I am pushed for time this week I am going to cut corners and only soak the fruit in brandy for 8 hours instead of twelve, hopefully get it all in the oven this evening and cooked by bedtime (it takes 4 hours in the oven!). This is a post which will run and run as the cake gets wrapped up and put away for at least a month, getting  a regular brandy feed once a week (lucky cake).

Sultana's, raisins, glace cherries, mixed peel and brandy....mmmmm

Stashbusters!

Welcome to my new blog! The other day I realised not a day goes by without me making something, be it bread, a cake or knitted scarf.  I figured a record of all this frenetic creativity would be nice. So here it is.
As Christmas is coming up, and as once again we have very little spare cash I'm doing a Handmade Holiday. I'm also trying to use up as much of my stash material, so am looking for knitting patterns by yarn rather than by desire. One day I will be able to buy yarn again....

Yesterday I finished and posted my sister's birthday present, a lovely soft cowl, using this pattern from New York Miniknit and a skein of Patons Decor I've had for ages. The Ithacowl is such a great pattern, once you get going its very TV-watching friendly, and the result has lots of drape even with a thicker yarn like this one. The Sister is lucky I didn't just keep it for myself...

Ithacowl!

I woke late this morning but extremely motivated, and decided to get on with my mother-in-law's festive gift. She is doing an art degree right now and draws and draws and draws. So this is what I came up with:


 

A pencil roll! I followed this great tutorial and I'm pretty happy with the result.  I'm especially pleased with this as I used an old dress shirt of The Husband's as the lining, and cut up an old flannel sheet as the interfacing.  The outer fabric is Tweet Tweet by Keiki for Moda which I originally bought to make cushion covers, realised it wasn't quite right and promptly hid in the stash box.

Before Christmas I will fill the roll with nice pencils and cover a hardback sketchbook with the Moda fabric.

And finally, I made some bread....mmm, bread.