Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a very happy and peaceful Christmas.

Mum's Christmas Present

Well, here it is!  All finished except for one last seam and my name and the date.

Micromys Minutus

Today I received what is probably the last birthday present I shall get this year.  My friend Julia recently attended a straw plaiting course at Acton Scott Historic Working Farm in Shropshire.  As a beginner Julia learned how to make a 7 strand plait for hat making and although Julia didn't make these Harvest mice herself the plait she learnt is the same as is used for the bodies of the mice.

The Things We Do For Love

It's our wedding anniversary tomorrow so in honour of the occasion and because I'm always being moaned at for making cakes for other people and none for Rob I have made Chocolate Brownies.  This has meant the ultimate sacrifice has had to be made - I've had to use the only bar of dark chocolate in the larder (stocked purely for medicinal purposes of course).  I shall have to hope for a bountiful chocolate harvest at the weekend to make up for it.

The brownies are made from a Lakeland recipe no longer extant on their website meaning that I had to go searching through the pile of printed out recipes in the kitchen, peeling the pages apart from where they'd been spattered with ingredients from long-ago-consumed offerings (there is a chocolate brownie recipe on there but it's not this one).

If you want to make some too the ingredients you'll need are:-

225g soft margarine
110g dark chocolate
400g caster sugar
2tsp vanilla extract
4 beaten eggs
100g walnut pieces
170g plain flour
pinch of salt
1/2tsp baking powder

Melt the margarine and chocolate together.  It's best to do this in a large Pyrex bowl in the microwave.  Once the chocolate has melted add the sugar and mix well then add the vanilla extract, eggs and walnut pieces.  Measure out the flour, salt and baking powder and fold them into the chocolate mixture.  If you can resist the urge to eat the raw mixture, pour it into a lightly greased brownie tin and bake at 160C for 50 minutes.  Be careful not to overcook the brownies, the top should have just a slight crust while the underneath remains soft.  If you can bear not to scoff them straight from the oven, leave the brownies to cool in the baking tin.  The recipe says the mixture makes 36 brownies but here in the real world mine are divided into 12 because there's just no point in making them any smaller for Rob.

The first time I cooked this recipe I'd run out of table salt and used sea salt from the grinder instead.  The salt sank to the bottom of the cake mix making an interesting contrast between salty base and gooey chocolatey cake.

Nobody Here But Us Chickens!

Today I have been to my friend Sylvia's house.  She has helped me to cut fabric to make patchwork chickens.  It's easiest if you cut all the pieces you need before you start to sew the chicken so you don't have to keep stopping and starting.  Here's how I made them ...

To start with here are all the bits of fabric cut up ready.

Each chicken takes a surprising number of pieces!

Begin by sewing two tiny squares right sides together ...

 ... once you've sewn the seam you need to press it open to reduce bulk as you sew the next pieces.

Continue sewing pieces on until you have used up half of the pieces.  Once you have completed one side you need to repeat this process until you have two mirror-image squares, one for each side of the chicken.

Next you need to prepare the chicken's tail by cutting the large square across the diagonal and sewing the two short sides together before turning them right sides out.  Then cut a comb and a beak from felt.

Now you need to pin the two sides of the chicken together ...

 ... you need to fit the two squares together accurately and insert the comb and the beak.  Sew along the top edge and down the side so that the beak and comb are secured then sew along the bottom edge but leave a gap between the two red pins so that you can turn the chicken right side out.  Don't sew along the 4th side at this stage.

The next stage is to stitch along the 4th side but in order to do this you need to open up the fabric and line the two "side" seams up so that they are in the middle.  You then need to find the centre of the long side of the triangular tail piece, insert this into the seam and stitch into place.  Your chicken will now look a bit like a humbug!  Once all this is done you need to turn the chicken right side out through the gap you left in the 3rd side and press.  Stitch some tiny buttons or beads on for the eyes then fill the chicken with lentils, dried peas or lavender and finally stitch the gap up by hand to keep the filling in.

Ta da - chicken!!!

So far I've made a small chicken and a large one but I've got lots of pieces cut ready for a middle size one too!

Using Up Scraps!

As a crafter I hate to throw anything away and usually end up saving even the tiniest scrap of fabric or card or whatever in the fervent belief that it will be just the ideal thing to complete a future project.  I also have friends who share this philosophy.  We keep (or give away to the like-minded!) mountains of what other people would consider to be rubbish!  Consequently a few months ago I was given some scraps of fabric.  My friend Dawn had made some bunting and these were the bits left over.  Common sense would have dictated that they went in the bin but I looked at them and an idea started to come together in my head.  These scraps would be perfect to use in crazy patchwork.  I dragged out my fairly ancient and frankly rather unloved sewing machine and set to work.  Now, over the years I have had a difficult relationship with my sewing machine.  I dream up wonderful ideas of the things I could make, my sewing machine throws a wobbly, spewing out yards of knotted thread rather than the perfect stitches other people seem to achieve with their machines and I get cross, put the machine away and give up.  Despite having to do lots of unpicking and resewing, the crazy patchwork gradually came together although my machine let me down on so many occasions.  After listening to yet another tirade of swear words and sewing machine related abuse my husband finally took pity on me and we went shopping for a new machine.  Rob was keen that I have a machine that would allow me to do the things I wanted to be able to do but he also had a budget in mind.  We set off to see what Sewfine in Watford had to offer.  I took my patchwork along with me along with another project I'd been working on and showed the sales lady what I wanted to be able to do and she pointed me in the direction of a Janone machine which she said would be perfect for me.  She spent ages with me going through all the features, the whole experience was revelatory.  I never knew such machines existed.  The only snag was that I knew it far exceeded the price Rob had set.  With a heavy heart I left the shop muttering that I would have to think hard about it and would get back to them with my decision.  When I got home I did some research on the internet looking into other machines and seeing if I could find my dream machine at a better price to no avail.  It was all very depressing.  Rob and I chatted about the situation and he said I could phone Sewfine up and order the dream machine if I really wanted it.  Well, since then I have had an epiphany as far as machine sewing is concerned.  I love it!  I never thought it could be such fun.  I completed the crazy patchwork and decorated all the seams using one of the many new fancy stitches at my fingertips then I made it into a cushion front and found some pink fabric to match in my stash for the back of the cushion cover.  Although I must admit I was very tempted to keep the cushion myself I decided to give the cushion to Dawn a few weeks ago and I believe she now has it in her bedroom along with the bunting.

The cushion front made from crazy patchwork using scraps.

The back of the cushion.

Parking

We spotted these signs during our stay at the hotel over the weekend.  Nothing out of the ordinary as far as the first one is concerned .....

 ..... but it's not every day that you see one of these ..... !