Great British Sewing Bee

I have so loved watching The Great British Sewing Bee. Considering how many hundreds of hours of cooking shows there are to choose from any given week, it's about time there was some airtime given to craft other than those crazy demonstrations on the Shopping Channels.

The group of contestants were all lovely, and very entertaining to watch, no scheming or strategy's at play, people actually helping each other during a reality TV competition, who would have thought it. After the four episodes, and three years living here, I had also finally nailed my Birmingham accent, thanks to Sandra! There did seem to be a disproportionate number of contestants from Brum, even though the filming appeared to be in London. Sandra was the only one with a proper Brummy accent though.

The set was like a dream craft room, with bolts of fabric, rolls of ribbon and every thing between. I'm not sure about whether it might inspire those who have never sewn to take it up, seeing people who have been keen on it for years assembling garments incorrectly, unable to fit garments, and tears and tantrums. Most of the errors and tears being brought on by the short time allocated for the garments, but then anyone who sews knows that happens every time you decide to make something for an event (or was that really just me, still sewing my wedding dress the night before!)

For me though, it's made my fingers itch to get back to making my own clothes, although I do remember I drifted away from it because of all those fitting issues and tears. It also didn't help that I was working as a dressmaker for a costume shop, and sewing all day took all the interest out of sewing for myself. A critical look at most of my current wardrobe though is telling that firstly I don't wear many things these days that involve much tricky fitting, and secondly, it wouldn't be hard to make them a better fit or quality.

This gorgeous little girls dress, from Lauren would be enough to inspire anyone with little ladies in their life to get sewing, surely?

Watching Ann so serene and calm with incredible accuracy was inspirational though, and I love that granny square scarf.

I think this face from Lauren sums it up, any craft or hobby that can bring you to tears but then bring this much joy, has to be worth investing time in.

Can't wait for another series, of perhaps other spin off shows. 

Baking it up

 Courtesy of Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry, I'm still baking it up.

Malt Grain and Red Leicester Cheese Loaf

Wow, this was delicious. It smelt so good and cheesy when it came out of the oven, we managed to restrain ourselves until it partly cooled. Warm with a touch of butter was the best midnight snack, but toasted and spread with Vegemite at breakfast, mmm mmm mmm.

Bread, Jam and Blueberry Pudding

Best leftover pudding throw together. Had a crusty old sultana and spice bagel in the freezer, and one last slice of a supermarket loaf. Spread them both with apricot jam, threw in half a punnet of blueberries, and a sprinkle of coconut (to me Bread and Butter pudding just isn't right without coconut).  Made a 'custard' with a couple of eggs, dash of sugar and cold milk, whisked together and soaked the bread for an hour before baking. It puffed up, looked good, smelt great and tasted delicious!

Cowl knitting

I have a new favourite knitting stitch - the slip stitch honeycomb. I had never heard of it before, but being in a hurry to whip up a cowl with a gifting deadline on the horizon, it's a cracker. Every second row you skip every second stitch, so those rows go past pretty quickly. Such a simple stitch to make such a nice pattern.

Fresh off the needles, I'm assuming the stitches would even out a bit more after blocking

This was my first attempt on circular needles, and a cowl seemed a safe item to learn on as tension isn't so crucial. I haven't been able to knit with standard needles since a knitting blitz leading up to Christmas which flared up an old Carpel Tunnel injury, and my left hand goes completely numb after about two rows. Was interesting to see that the pins and needles didn't appear at all using the circulars - possibly because I could hold them in a more relaxed position closer to my lap. (When I knit on standard needles the right one is tucked under my arm and the left works around it, this means that arm is much higher and twists more. I might be looking for more circular needle patterns!)

After three false starts the Honey cowl, a free Ravelry pattern by Madelinetosh, whipped up in one afternoon and following evening. Alas after completing though, turns out this version is just false start number four. I started over as the first attempt cast on was uneven - I'm still learning to cast on using the finger method, second attempt; I ran out of 'tail end' yarn when casting on, refer still learning finger cast on! Attempt three; on reaching the end of the first ball of wool I realised I didn't have enough yarn to make the length I had started and changed to the short length.

The final size looks fine until you put it on, this yarn (Sirdar Flirt) is so deliciously soft that it just slumps down like a weird looking knitted necklace instead of a cowl. It needs to be remade either double the length or double the height to gain enough body. Unfortunately I only have two balls, so the search is on to find two more balls of the same dyelot!

Back to the stash and back on the needles, that gifting deadline is getting closer!

If you happen to have two balls of Flirt, colour 218 dyelot 10817 in your stash that you're willing to sell, I'd love to hear from you. Then with the knitting Gods on my side, mine might look like Madelinetosh's

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/m-a-d-e-l-i-n-e-t-o-s-h

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Inspirational overload, feels a lot like when you've eaten too many biscuits

Mr Sloyd has been working from home this week, with lots of deep concentration and conference calls happening it's been a mostly silent apartment during the day. I thought it was a good excuse for me to break away from that evil devil in the shape of a TV set and get on with quite pursuits of reading and letter writing.

Day 5, not one letter written for the week. Not doing so well on one of my New Years wishes, to bring back snail mail, I had envisioned writing a letter a day, some just a quick note-let, others a full catch up, and then having fun making all sorts of post-able creatives. The page listing my chosen snail mail recipients is the full extent of the creativity so far. Plus some purposely purchased store cards, and making a new card and letter writing box, all sorted by months and stocked up with stamps. Hmmm, this is sounding a lot like my previous years Diary habits, once the gloss of new stationery purchases wears off the activity dies.

What I have done this week is read blogs. Blogs and blogs and blogs. Blogs about other blogs, blogs recommending blogs and then more blogs. I stumbled into the blogging lark last year, after the occasional entertaining afternoon googling random blogs, and meeting a devoted and talented blogger in Crafted by Carly, (you can visit her here ,see how easy this blog reading leads to more?). Then, in no particular order, the laptop died, I took a trip home to Australia, Christmas arrived and went, and so did January and February in a fog of sickness.

Fast forward to April, shiny new laptop and ipad at my disposal, and five days of quiet with little distraction, and I've read hundreds of blog posts. There were blogs I had started following here and there but only ever given a quick glance, and this week many of them have led to other blogs, and for most of them I went back to the beginning and read almost every post.

Wow, my head is bursting with a zillion things I want to make, draw, paint, try and bake. This afternoon, between reading, I took leap two into Paul Hollywood's Bread recipes and baked Almond and Cranberry Biscotti, it hasn't quite worked, but it's quite edible. And I reached the end of my list of followed blogs that I wanted to catch up on the history of.

Some highlights that have left an impression;

http://mynameisfinch.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/wingsruffs-and-snaggly-teeth.html

The jaw dropping amazing work of textile artist Mr Finch , visit his awesome blog 'Mister Finch textil art' here

http://bear-ears.blogspot.co.ukaption

Celestarium - this shawl maps out the star chart of the Northern Hemisphere, and I absolutely gotta make me ones. This is the work of Audry Nicklin at 'Bear Ears', who taught herself to knit in 2005 and is designing and creating patterns already! Read about the creation of this shawl here. Her very cute dog Scooter makes the occasional blog appearance too. It's taking every bit of feeble will power I have to persist with making from my stash before diving into this, in fact I think I'm only fighting it off due to the knowledge that Audry has started on a southern star chart companion shawl, which is probably more Aussie appropriate.

http://sketchoftheday.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/bill-murray_9479.html

In awe of the sketch books, paintings and portrait work of Stephen Gardner, check out his blog 'Sketch of the Day' here

http://karolful.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/dance-drawings-no3-and-no4.html

More drawing, I've never seen motion captured in a drawing so well as by Karolina Szmkiewicz, her blog 'Karolful' is here

http://posie-rosy-little-things.myshopify.com/collections/embroidery-patterns-1/products/daisychain-abcs-crewelwork-sampler-pattern

This piece of gorgeousness is going to have me learn Crewel Embroidery this year, I'd been trying to think of what new craft to learn for the year. I foresee either presents, or tears, or maybe presents soaked in tears? The designer of this is Alicia Paulson, you can follow her blog 'Posie Gets Cozy' here

http://tinyhaus.blogspot.co.uk/

I'll finish with something tiny that will blow your mind, this is an iguana carved out of the lead of a carpenters pencil, yes folks that's a pencil, and the highly talented, and presumably incredibly eye sighted Diem Chau carved this and oh so many more tiny miracles at 'The pleasure of tiny things' here. The carvings from crayola crayons are incredible.

So where has all this inspiration left me, a little blurry eyed, a third of a way into a new knitted cowl, and a little too full of Biscotti.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Blooming baking

I've been watching Paul Hollywood's Bread series on the BBC and feeling like giving hand made bread a go. I'm not entirely new to bread making, we had a fantastic Panasonic bread maker back in Australia and would regularly make our own bread in that. For years now on most weekends, when we are home, I make homemade pizza one night, making the bases from scratch. However on the few occasions in the past that I've tried to make an actual loaf by hand it's fallen flat, literally, I end up with an unintentionally heavy bread with a line of uncooked dough towards the base. Over the last twelve months though I think I've finally learnt how to knead by hand properly though and my pizza bases have improved from that. So I'm ready to try again.

When I sat at my desk this morning looking for inspiration as to what I would do today I looked at my new weekly goal list, and there it was 'bake a fruit and walnut loaf'. So in the absence of feeling any more creative than that, bread it was.

Goal list seems to be working

Checked out Paul's recipe on line and got to it. I'm using the recipe for Bloomer and a few things are different than my usual basic bread dough recipe (I make my pizza bases following Jamie Oliver's basic bread recipe). Firstly salt, specifically the volume of salt seems like a lot, as does the oil, but I'll follow true to the recipe for this firs time at least. Secondly it uses cold water rather than tepid, so the rising will take a lot longer, I'm guessing there's some sciency reason here about proving slower making better texture or something, so I'll follow that too. Lastly, there's no sugar, I always thought there had to be to feed the yeast? One thing this reveals is I haven't been paying much attention at all when watching the show! The one change I have made is making it 20% wholemeal rather than all white.

So measuring and following recipe, and I make a blunder at the first hurdle (I seem to have a problem following recipes!) I miss read 40ml of olive oil as 40g, and after pouring it in, and then looking at the volume of oil on top of the flour I realised and tried to scoop some back. Then went ahead an mixed it, it looked, and felt awful.

Blech play dough

It wouldn't come together and felt really dense, I tasted a bit, yep I'd made play dough. I didn't want to spend 5hrs waiting for this to rise, and then bake to make something inedible so I called it and threw it in the bin.

Do over. I don't think my trusty bargain priced IKEA scales are sensitive enough to measure the salt, so I found these great substitution tables at Kitchen Geek and worked out the 10g of salt equates to 1.5 tspns - which still looks a lot to me, but then again in the first batch I've now realised I measured 40g of salt! I also double checked my spoon measures to ensure I had the oil measured right this time (this still looks a lot too).

This at least seems a lot more like dough. Something else different here is the recipe states to oil the board and knead on the oil rather than flour it, the dough already seemed so oily but I went with it. Which it was a much easier knead than usual and I'll start doing this with my pizza dough. After 10mins kneading the dough looked less oily than at first. So now to see how long cold dough without sugar takes to rise to triple the size?

Starting size

Hmm, four hours later and it's only doubled not tripled - continue and bake brick, or bake lighter loaf at midnight? Having just read this great list of tips on 'How to fix dough that won't rise' on Wiki How, I'm going to try warming it a little more (its in the boiler room, so I've hit boost on the tank). I'll give it half an hour and otherwise go with double - maybe it's the wholemeal flour I added, maybe it was too much salt?

So I settled on double

After four hours of proving, I decided it was now or never. Did the second knead and then formed it into the Bloomer shape. I wish I had remembered at this point to take another photo, of this dismal looking little loaf, but unfortunately it had taken so long to prove I was too busy making dinner!
Beyond all expectations after just under (another) two hours, it was like a proper sized Bloomer!

I followed Paul's instructions of adding a water tray to the bottom of the oven, and spraying the loaf with water, both to provide a crisp crust, and an (almost) perfect (except a bit too spread out) Bloomer!

It cut fantastically, nice even bake (why thankyou Mary), the crust is perfect, and it tastes delicious (especially slightly warm with butter and Vegemite!)

Very encouraging starting point, can't wait to try the next another loaf.

Posted with Blogsy

Edinburgh Easter

The UK weather has been a bit crazy in March, with a sudden and severe throwback to proper winter. With no where booked for Easter, the weekend before we thought we better make a plan! Considering how badly the UK copes with snow, and peak traffic (having sat in three hour Easter traffic queues before), and peak numbers of airports we had a dilemma. We wanted to go somewhere, but didn't want to deal with traffic or long airport security queues, and given the snow train cancellations would be no surprise either.

We eventually formed a plan of Edinburgh, a city we hadn't yet got around to visiting. It was a 50/50 bet, my husband had business in Manchester on Thursday which took us halfway by car. So we caught a train from Manchester on Thursday night, knowing on Monday we had half the trip by train, half by car - halving or doubling the risk of delays?

The weekend was gorgeous with winter weather, clear blue skies, sunshine, but cold. Which was fine, we had our coats and hats, so happy to be in a pretty city, without snow or rain we mostly walked around for the weekend admiring the Georgian streets and green spaces.

On the art front, we visited the National Portrait Gallery, which as a bonus had an Annie Lennox exhibition on of her personal archive of costumes, handwritten song lyrics and music, personal sketchbooks and photos. It was small but I really enjoyed it, what amazingly neat handwriting she has, and very self critical self portrait drawings - which were really quite sad to see in their own way. The building itself seemed quite modern inside, then we wandered into this amazing central atrium. Amazing lights, murals, paintings, stained glass windows, it was as stunning as any of the painting galleries.

detail from the mural - I love finding dogs and horses in paintings

Of course you have to visit the Castle when in Edinburgh, and although we decided to just have a general wander around rather than check out every gallery and museum within, we did wander into one of the military galleries, and came across this painting - The Thin Red Line (1881), by Robert Gibb.

It reminded my of 'Scotland for Ever (1861) by Lady Elizabeth Butler, which hangs in the Leeds Art Gallery, were I've visited and sketched the horses many times. I wrote about this here.

After the poignancy of The Thin Red Line, I noticed this beauty in the next cabinet - surely the campest enlistment poster ever?

We also did a bit of retail therapy while we were there, in two independent shops (always excited to find something beyond the high street dominators), both of which we loved, then later found out they are owned by the same owner. Well worth seeking out if you are ever in town. Paper Tiger has a fantastic selection of cards and gifts, we left with an armful of both! Next door is Studio One, this store has a huge and eclectic range of gifts, unique handmade items, Stylish design (the largest range of Littala I've seen outside of Helsinki/Stockholm), books, toys, jewellery and it just goes on! We certainly picked up a few birthday cards and presents, and just a couple of things for us too! Maybe it was a good thing we were on the train and couldn't carry anymore?

love my new fox terrier brooch from Studio One

I look forward to seeing you again Edinburgh.

PS As for our great travel planning, the train home was only delayed by an hour, and the roads were clear by the time we got underway, our weekend apartment was in a quiet area and the two people we know in Edinburgh were both around for Easter so we could catch up. A successful Easter trip all round. 

Little boy booties

I wanted to make some booties for a friends little boy, who is nine months old, as the weather back home in Australia starts to turn cooler. I didn't want something that looked too babyish though, and couldn't believe my luck when I found a ball of black baby wool in the discount bin - black baby wool, who knew they made such a thing? Considering it was in the discount bin and they are no longer stocking it, I'm guessing it hasn't been a big seller though.

I thought the Mary Jane style, although usually girly, would work as a 'shoe' that can be worn over a sock, for added crawling winter warmth and toe comfort.

The pattern is from Caroline de Hugo, Baby Booties - 18 Pretty pairs to knit, I love this book. For some reason I had awful trouble keeping track of the moss stitch, it was hard to see row by row in the black, so there was quite a bit of frogging.

I used black toggle style buttons to try and 'boy' them up a bit too. I'm really happy with them, just hope they fit and don't keep falling off with his commando crawling!

April is the new New Year, right?

Over the years I've developed two distinct and opposed patterns when it comes to diaries and calendars. Some years I'm all fired up, diary in hand before the end of December, birthdays all marked up on a calendar ready to hang, grand plans of being super organised in the new year. Usually this lasts till around March, and somewhere around August I find the diary abandoned for months during a fit of searching for a lost overdue bill or list of birthday dates.

On other years I drift aimlessly into the New Year, maybe buy a calendar and diary in the post Christmas sales, never really writing much in it but for the most part keeping things in order for the year.

Ironically this is only in my personal life, on a work front my diary, calendar, appointments and deadlines were always organised.

Last year, for the first time in my life, I kept a fully written diary for the entire year, granted there was a bit of a back dated catch up at the end of December as things had fallen off a bit mid November, but even so, there it was, an entire year recorded. Where I was and what I did every day. Yet I think I also missed more birthdays than ever as I didn't use it as a planning diary, more a journal. Birthdays and important dates were marked on the calendar in the kitchen, which proved useless as (and I know this from my diary) we were away from home for more than half the year last year. It wasn't uncommon to look at the calendar and realise it was two months behind, simply because we had hardly been home long enough to do a load of washing, repack and back out the door.

This year, has been a total wipe out so far. I was sick for the month of January, which dragged into recovering for February, and then drifted into March aimlessly and suddenly realising it's April and well and truly time to pull my socks up and get on with things. As my American friend would say, I've been having my own pity party, and it's time the party's over!

A touch of sunshine, improved health, and a fun extended St Patrick's weekend with friends all combined to boot me properly, and finally, into the New Year, and thus the diary is finally started.

What I learnt from last years was that I wanted to make more of an effort to acknowledge peoples birthdays, and that recording every days activities means inevitably there are days when the most thrilling thing to enter was that I got two loads of washing washed and dried. Then on days in a foreign country I'd have so much to record it wouldn't fit. So I settled on trying a blank journal for the year, and just recording the high (and probably the low) lights. I chose a moleskine sketch book so that I could also draw in it if I want to record something visually.

I've just roughly divided the pages up into months, but not pre-labelled them so the number of pages I want to use on a day or week is not preset. This of course meant I couldn't go through and mark up birthdays. So in the back I've created a number of lists (oh how I love a good list), Birthdays, Christmas, a crafting wish list and requests, dates and locations of concerts or shows we'd like to go to if around (we can rarely pre plan due to work travel, and tend to find out about a show the day after it was on), blogs and books to check out, a snail mail list and a list of goals for the year.

Then to make sure I'm doing more of what I want to and not accidentally letting the days at home drift by in a haze of washing, suitcases and TV I created a goal list for the week, as found on cornflower blue studio's blog here. I imagine the 'this week' part will become irrelevant most times, and rather it will just become a rotating list, swapping out the post its as things are done. A more in my face version than the 'to do' list in the diary.

Goal list following Corn Flower Blues instructions, diary Birthday and Christmas lists

The third tool I'm using this year I picked up from this post about 'feel good lists'. As a way to keep myself in check that I am doing things beyond the daily mundane and not just letting time slip by. I guess it's kind of my version of new years resolutions. Using Julie Greens format I have allocated a group of everyday tasks, 3t imes a weeks tasks, and an 'a la carte' 10 times a week group. For example here is my a la carte list:

Choose 10 per week

• Bake Something
• Cook dinner from a recipe
• Knit
• Cross Stitch
• Paint
• Call mum
• Future business planning
• Computer free day
• TV free day
• Go somewhere new
• Organise something
• Finish Something
• Walk to Chinatown shop/cook
• Check birthday lists/plans
• Renovation plans/ideas
• Garden/flowers; plant/tend/visit

I kicked off the diary with a big brain dump of everything on my mental to do list, high priority, low priority, and the never going to happens, got to work on the urgent ones and will pick my way through the rest with the weekly goal list. A clear mind leaves space for creativity, and mine was full to the brim of guilt, over missed birthdays, unmade calls, ignored emails, and unfulfilled promises. Turned into a list it looks much easier to move on.

So my post it goal list for this week?- bake a walnut and cranberry bread loaf, blog, call a friend back home, cook something from Jamie's 30min meals, send April birthday cards.

Best get back to my desk, I feel the need to cross something off a list.