Rainbows and a new granny stripe project

Hello hello,

This week has been half term and so filled with stuff and things and altogether very busy.

The pook spent most the week away with his grandparents in wales. He really enjoys his holidays with them however I miss him terribly when he is gone. He returned on Friday with his grandmother who stayed the night and babysit for me and Mr B so we were able to have a rare night out.

Went went to a local pub called the George and Dragon. This is a beautiful little pub which has a fantastic back room where Mr B and I had our wedding reception many moons ago. This Friday we went to see a man called Lonesome Dave Ferguson. He makes music like a magical one man band layering sounds by recording samples and mixing them all up together. Altogether we had a fabulous night.

This half term as usual has also been filled with Halloween fun. The pook loves Halloween and dressing up. This year we went to an event at Chiswick House.The house is set in a beautiful park with a magical lake. There were fun games for the little ones. Everyone brought along a carved pumpkin and a fancy dress competition.

The pook on the bus on our was the Chiswick House.

The boy and his pumpkin.

The moomoos dressed up as a spider. Found this costume in Fara charity shop in Chiswick. Three pound bargain!

Mr B and I enjoyed a glass of red wine and some pumpkin soup to keep us warm. There were many many wonderful pumpkins.

We placed our pumpkin by the side of the path.

When the sky began to darken all of the pumpkins were lit. It was all rather magical.

Walking back out of the park through the twilight we saw a family of swans swimming up the lake. Sadly the light level was too low for the camera I had with me.

This week as also the starting of new projects. I am embarked on the massive task to create a blanket for our bed. I settled on the granny stripe pattern provided by Attic24. The pattern is incredibly simple to follow and so I began hooking it on Wednesday when my new wool arrived.

I am loving this pattern. Its simplicity means I can hook away happily without the need to count or really concentrate. It is also growing rapidly flying off my hook.

I hope you agree that it is shaping up to be a beauty. Now as the moomoos is having a nap I will be settling down to add a few more rows.

Finishing a project makes me warm inside.

I have finished the apple jackets which I started earlier this week following a pattern featured in the Guardians craft section.

These were a pleasure the make. A quick and easy pattern that could be completed easily whilst watching a film or having a chat.  I made the green one first and then the blue. Both are made of cotton, the green Rowan and the blue Debbie Bliss, which I had hanging about from other projects.

They are awaiting their buttons which I have not found yet. What I would really like are a couple of large fruit themed buttons. Maybe enamel ones.

I think I may return to this patten at a later date an make some more of these cute little things. The pattern is also very easy to manipulate in order to produce larger or smaller jackets.

In between crocheting tiny little jackets we have been very busy. I have been baking banana breakfast muffins from Pam Corbins Cake book.

They are wonderfully tasty. Not to sweet an with plently of cinnamon. A wonderful start to the day.

I have also been to my print making class where I produced another Linoprint. The initail print when I was working out the composition.

I then printed a series in blue with more detail followed by another colour on top. I liked this combination of maroon and blue.

Finally a combination of blue and black which I think worked rather well. You can see that I have got better at registering with a resulting cleaner image.

Tonight I am off to my crochet course and looking forward to playing with some yarn. I have also ordered a nice stash of 17 100g balls which will hopefully pop through my letterbox shortly.

Banana Bread and New Projects

I will start with the banana bread recipe I promised last night. It makes the most amazingly delicious banana bread and is adapted from a recipe by Pam Corbin in her book Cake.

Ingredients

250g wholemeal self raising flour
pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
100g butter
125g golden caster sugar
100g walnut pieces
250g mashed ripe bananas
1 egg

Line a 1 litre loaf tin with some grease proof paper. I use the loaf tin liner available from John Lewis. Heat the oven to 180 degrees.

Sift the flour, salt and cinnamon in a bowl. Cut the butter into cubes and rub into the dry ingredients within the bowl until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and walnuts and mix until evenly distributed.

In a separate bowl mix the mashed banana with the egg and whisk lightly. Beat this mixture into the flour mixture until well incorporated. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and then bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

This loaf will fill your kitchen with wonderful smells. Pam Corbin is a cake genius!

I have also started a new crochet project today. The Guardian newspaper at the weekend featured a craft project from the magazine mollie makes. Well I couldn't resist and have started straight away to crochet a little apple cosey. I can't see any really use for this item but you will have to agree that it will be very cute.

So I am using some beautiful Rowan cotton DK that I had lying about the house. I forget what the shade is and cannot locate the label!

This is what I have done so far-

I love love love the colour and we pop another photo up when I have finished it.

Books for things to do and more crochet

The week so far has been wonderful. On Monday I attended a crochet course at The Make Lounge taught by Catherine Hirst. After nearly missing the beginning of the session due to my own poor time keeping I settled in for a delightful evening going over basic crocheting technique. I had decided to book myself onto this course when I first started to teach myself to crochet at the beginning of this year. Catherine is an excellent teacher and comes with the advantage of being a lefty like myself. This makes it so much easier to understand how you should be doing something. Looking at a righty doing something complex and then attempting to mirror them to your left handedness can be very difficult.

We went over basic stitches and were supplied with an excellent hand out. I am really looking forward to next weeks session. The was the added benefit that refreshments were provided including pompom bears. Why do they have belly buttons? They have eyes, mouths and belly buttons but no noses? All very odd I think.

Tuesday involved my favourite type of shopping which is book shopping. After having watched Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstalls new TV series all about veg I was inspired and popped out to the book shop to buy his new book. Being a veggie and obsessed with cooking I am always looking for inspiration. Hugh's new book is interesting as it is not aimed at veggies. It is in fact aimed at carnies who he would like to encourage to eat less veg and less meat/fish.

The book is filled with delicious looking recipes crammed with a multitude of different veggies. I am exciting about cooking for it this weekend. I plan to start with the North African squash and chickpea stew to help combat the chilly weather.

Whilst in the bookshop i could not resist buying a cake book which I had had my beady eyes on for a number of months - Pam Corbin CAKES. The books whole look is wonderful and charmingly retro. The recipes included cover a vast range from traditional Victoria sponge to hazelnut macaroons. Today I baked the banana bread with a few simple adaptations. I hate raisins and so exchanged the raisins for walnuts and also I used wholemeal self raising flour rather than plain white and baking powder. The banana bread produced is Divine! I will try to pop the recipe up when I have a moment.

Tonight I am off to my print making course where we will be covering silk screen printing. I have yet to come up with a design to print this evening so really should make that a priority this afternoon between herding the now far too mobile moomoos around the house and making sure that the pook does his homework.

wish me luck!

Printing, painting and baking in the autumn sun

Hello!

The last couple of days have been full of crafty life fun. Baking cakes and cookies, lino printing, drawing and silk painting. I have been enjoying getting to grips with a number of projects that I have had on the go for a while.

On wednesday I went to my print making evening course. I am loving print making. Claire Palfreyman a local artist is running the course. I am two weeks in and enjoying every minute. This week we started with a small drawing exercise looking at our ability to capture the texture of an item rather than looking at its form. The exercise was very intersting and helped with the linocutting where texture is very important.

This weeks lino print was a challenge. I picked a design that required a lot of work. I was really stretched the complete the print within the three hours available. Here are the results.

First the lino block that I cut

And this is one of the prints

When lino printing you have to be very aware that an image you create will become a mirror image when printed. This can become very confusing when using text.

Another project I have been working on are some painted silk cushion covers that I am making for christmas presents.

Here I am drawing on the pattern freehand with clear resist.

And here I have begun to layer colour onto the silk. Still quite a lot of work to do.

Lets hope I can keep the motivation up and that the weekend is as productive. We are planning to visit Kew gardens with the children. All of the trees should have a wonderful autumn display of colour. Hoping to get some nice photos whilst I am there. I have been neglecting my camera of late.

Kew Gardens is one of my favourite places to visit. There is always so much to see and not matter how many times you have visited it always looks different. On cold days I like to wonder around the hot houses pretending we are on a trip to the rainforests of Borneo of something similar.

Well it is late for me so good night X

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cookies

Today I baked some chocolate and peanut butter cookies. They were devine. I love peanut butter anyway and can often be found with a spoon poised above the jar snacking.

The combination of the dark chocolate and the salty peanut butter is wonderful. I have played with a recipe from the hummingbird bakery to make these cookies. I prefere to use all golden caster sugar rather than a combination of white and brown. I also prefere dark to milk chocolate. The recipe is as follows-

Ingredients

110g unsalted butter
200g golden caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
120g crunchy peanut butter
170g self raising flour
50g dark chocolate - chopped roughly
1 large egg

cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Then whisk in the egg vanilla and peanut butter.

Add the flour and mix well until you have a smooth dough. Mix in the chopped chocolate until evenly dispersed. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. Heat the oven to 170 degrees.

scoop spoonfulls of dough and roll between hands into balls. Press on to a prepared baking sheet spaced evenly. Bake for 10 minutes until golden. Lift from the baking sheet onto a wire rack and cool.

This recipe makes 24 cookies.

Hundreds and Thousands

Today has been filled with gusting wind and the smell of baking. Tomorrow is the DSA bake sale at my sons school. I like to buck the trend and bake some cakes rather than buy them from the shop. So I gave the pook free rein to decide what he would like me to bake. He decided on vanilla cupcakes topped with vanilla cream cheese frosting and decorated with hundreds and thousands.

And these are they....

I love cooking but my hear belongs to baking. Its not just the yumminess of the product but also the fact that you can make the food look so beautiful and inviting. This afternoon I have promised the pook that we will bake peanut butter and chocolate cookies. It will require a great deal of will power to let them cool and not snaffle them whilst they are still hot.

Crochet, Printing - What a busy time

This week has been amazingly busy. From one end to the other crammed with things and stuff and commitments. On wednesday I started a printmaking course at open ealing. The course is wonderful. Over the first three weeks we will be exploring monoprinting, linoprinting and silkscreen printing. The aim is to spend the final three weeks working on a project using one, two or all the printmaking types that we have covered. This week I played with linoprinting. My fingers are covered in cuts from nicking myself with the lino cutting tools. I however had so much fun.

I also had a little play with monoprinting which despite the name can involve a whole rainbow of colours. I am looking forward to playing about with this more next week.

Other happenings this week include this crocheting of a little cardigan for the moo moos. This is the first cardigan that i have created. It went ok but wasn't a massive sucess. What i found was that I was able to make the components easily enough but struggled with the construction. I pay yet pick it all to peices and start again.

I will add some pictures of the crochet and printing in the morning when the light is better for taking photographs.