Crochet felt

There is a local fabric shop called the Eternal Maker, when it first opened I spent too much time exploring all of its nucks and crannies (I still spend to much time there - its almost home, such lovely fabrics and bits and bobs there uses just wating to be explored oooooooh).  One of the things I found was pure wool embroidery thread. This gave me the idea of crocheting with it and using the washing machine to make felted flowers. These little flowers have been carried around in my tool box for the past months.  I had thought of making jewellery with them, I then thought of brooches amougst many other ideas. I feared that they where going to end up as one of those started and not finished crafty journeys. Well they have finally been released from there captivity. Guess what I made........

Star Wars

A lovely Starwars card for my nephews birthday. The background felt is handmade and the black bold letters are cutout of shop brought felt, mainly so that the letters had a precise outline. When he opening the card (he's 4) he hummed the music that you associate with Darth Vader, should I worry now or later!?

Strawberry Shortcake

Another Be-Ro recipe from my new book. I love homemade shortbread it has to be homemade it! tastes so much nicer than the brought ones. That lovely crumbly creamy texture, ummm oh so nice. Shortbread are my second favorite biscuits Gingerbread are my first so its very apt I feel that I make this my second recipe and Gingerbread my first. I like order!

 Here is my Dad's presentation skills in action! nicely done Sir. The biscuits were lovely I feel that this will be a recipe that I will be making over and over, quick simple and yummy.

Wish there where some left looking at these pictures is making me crave shortbread......

New Years resolution!

This year I plan on making my own bread and trying not to buy any!. It tastes so much nicer than store brought bread and its something I always wish I had time for, so back in January this was the first loaf I made. I followed a recipe that my Dad has perfected (he's the bread baker in the family so I though I would use some of his skills).

Bread

It was yummy, I don't tend to eat lots of bread so when I do it's a treat, which is another reason I thought this year is going to be the year of homemade bread. The recipe worked well, it rise well, I think I needed to add more salt though. But hay not bad for the my first attempt.

In February my friend lent me her Paul Hollywood Bread book and these where my roasted garlic Petit Pains, these where gorgeous and will be a regular home bake in my house, yum!

The roasted garlic adds a lovely smoky garlic flavour to the bread and goes amazingly with a plain tomatoes sauce and fresh pasta. 

My next endeavor was crumpets, I have always wanted to try making my own. And they where fun to make, the way the batter bubbles when you fry then was very interesting to watch. I only wish I had bought more than four crumpet rings as it was time consuming cooking them in batches of four. 

This is my breafast the next day they where scrummy with butter and honey. 

These where again from the Paul Hollywood book (I think I may be working my way through it!). Stilton bread, the recipe had bacon in but due to my vegetarianism I left the carnivorous element out of the mix. Again these where soooo nice, lovely on there own with butter. Though I eat most of them with tomato and basil soup. I discovered that after a few days they made scrumptious croutons, the melted Stilton inside was to die for and a great combo with soup. 

                                     This is just the beginning there is more to come .......

oooh look what came through the post......

This is so exciting....

When I set up my blog 3 years ago I set out to work my way through the Be-Ro cook book that I grew up with. This is something I am still doing (its a slow process) so you can imagine my delight when this came through my door, a new Be-Ro cook book .

Well what shall I make first! well my favorite biscuit is ginger bread men, in my old Be-Ro book this traditional recipe is lacking, though in my new book it isn't. So this was an easy decision......

And hay presto! yummy gingerbread men. My first recipe from my new Be-Ro cook book.

Mothers day card

I know its a bit late! well the card arrived late to as I forgot to post it before I went on holiday, so this year my Mum got a belated card and a picture of it on the day. Oh well, she still loves me!

I have been working on a bit of a theme recently with layering fabrics, so I decided to stick with this and cut out some letters from bought felt as it stays together better than the hand felt I make. I then sawed them on to different fabrics and then on to a bigger bit of handmade felt. 

Ninja Turtles!

My attempt at needle felting Ninja Turtles for my nephews birthday. At least he recognised them and was able to tell me there names, that's all you can really ask for is it.

Experimental egg marbelling

I thought it might be nice to get into the Easter spirit and make some decorations. This is the first time that I have blown out an egg, and it was harder than I expected! now I am no good at blowing up balloons so for me this process took longer than the marbling! I had looked into two types marbling with nail polish and food colouring. Both have similar principles. For the nail polish technique you put drops on nail polish into water, add the nail polish on top of each other and use a tooth pick to mix it up to create this fab effect. 

 It's vibrant and pretty. The downside of this technique was that I only was able to marble on one side. After attempting to repeat the technique on the other side the nail polish over lapped and spolit the original print. So I used nail polish to take of the top layer creating this delicately printed egg.

The marbling with food coloring was even less successful, the theory here was that you added vinegar and food colouring to water and then added oil and another colour. I found that the colours where so faint and due to the oil the colours never dried. Oh well you've got to experiment I love a good experiment!

Funky Baubles

 These funky little Christmas tree decorations are a bit late or I suppose I could argue that they are very early, and I could make out that I am very organised! ok so truth, I have been very delayed due to moving so close to Christmas. But they are ready now and where very fun to make.

I thought of these after my friend moved into her new home and brought her first Christmas Tree, after looking around the shopping with her for Christmas decorations and seeing her leave with a limited supple, I had decided that she needed some funky decs. These where the colourful end result.

The bass is a polystyrene ball and the colours have been randomly dry felted over the ball. Ok they may not be overly festive but they are bright and funky! and would look lovely on a Christmas tree.

Return of the Black Forest

This is not a new addition to this blog I made this for the first time two years ago with the guidance of my mother. She has been making this for Christmas since I was a little girl and it is an amazing recipe . Tastes sooooo good, good old Delia!. Normally at Christmas we have this with blueberries and raspberries here I stuck to the traditional fruit of cherries.  I made this one for New Years day.

Black Forest Roulade

Think I'm becoming an expert, what do you think?!

Mincemeat!

After making my Christmas Pudding I had some left over products. What better way to use this up than to make some mincemeat! I had no idea that making mincemeat was so easy. I also have to admit that it was not my idea my house mate suggested it she was also kind enough to provide me with a cooking apple, extra dried fruit and some words of wisdom. All of which she just had lying around.

Soaking dried fruit

Over the Christmas period I picked up the Sainsbury's  Christmas magazine (always good for a gander!) and I stumbled upon this interesting recipe for Mincemeat Brownie Tart.  I personally am not a fan of mince pie's, I'm sure there are lost of people out there that feel the same, I have to say this was gorgeous.  I defiantly recommend it, its not to chocolaty and was amazingly moist all on it's own.

Chocolate brownie mincemeat Tart

I obviously had to also make some traditional mince pies. Nothing interesting with this recipe though!and they all went (after the brownie tart mind).

Mince Pies

Felted Ipod and tablet cover

Front of the Ipod cover

 A while back I started hunting in charity shops for wool jumpers so that I could experiment with machine felting. I have found it hard to source wool products as they tend to come in a percentage wool to another often man made fiber, which limits its felting capacity. This one was one of my own old tank tops and was 100% wool, because of this it felted really well on a 60'C wash with an old pair of jeans.

Back of the Ipod cover

 The tablet cover was made first using most of the jumper and the Ipod cover was made from the remnants as you have probably gathered. It was a patchwork cover and offered me an opportunity to use my Stitchopedia book which I greatly recommend it is a bible for embroidery, hear I used Blanket stitch in orange to add some definition and flatten the seams.

I have managed to find and felt some jumpers so there will be more to come on the machine felt front.

Christmas Pudding

 My first Be-Ro recipe in ages! I haven't had much time to bake over the last year a combination of moving, moving again, putting all my baking stuff in storage etc. You know it all just gets in the way, oh and an essential component for being able to post on your blog would be access to a computer, which I now have thanks to Santa.  Thanks Santa.

I was expecting Christmas pudding to be complicated, I was wrong, it's not..... This is the first steamed pudding I have made and I had no idea how I was supposed to steam a pudding. As I have recently moved I had limited cooking resources. I had to treat myself to an early Christmas present of a pudding tin, damn! hehe.

Anyway this simple recipe involves you mixing all the ingredients together and steaming them in a pudding dish. I used my slow cooker, which was not true to the recipe to do the steaming (sorry not being very authentic). But it was the only way I could think of doing it with what I had access to.

This is my well prepared pudding ready to be steamed, all I did was add boiling water to a pre-heated slow cooker up to approximately 2 inches and then leaving it overnight. I don't like fruit cake so I made this for a friend that feels that Christmas should involve Christmas pudding, hope it was nice and Happy Christmas.

Oh and I have eventually found my Be-Ro recipe book in the storage unit (it took me long enough! I was able to find this recipe on the Be-Ro webpage) so I plan on continuing working my way through the recipes. Yay