Heart Hanger - Homemade Christmas Presents

It's been a long time since last blogging and so much has happened with Christmas, New Year holiday, working away from home, another new hip..... Yes, this is 'the winter of hipcontent' to misquote Shakespeare.

First of all it is now quite safe to reveal the family homemade present. This year I thought I would do something a little easier and less time consuming and settled for making shabby chic style heart garlands. But, oh how wrong I was. I mean, I 'cheated' by using a heart die cutter to cut out a vast number of hearts. Aha, what a sneaky shortcut person I am. However, I didn't factor in the hours it would take to sew the hearts together, turn them the right way around, stuff them, make the hessian roses, string them together and just, well, THINK about them. For example, what colours would each offspring like, what patterns, where to get the fabric from (obviously I had to buy new fabric as mine is still in storage), research the hessian roses, make the hessian roses, do a trial run, find some beads as extra embellishments, play with hessian leftovers to make tassles. Well, it goes on (and on). Don't get me wrong, I loved making them and actually made 7 in the end with two more to finish off FOR ME - they are really nice, but my goodness, they've consumed all my sewing time. The poor old hexagon quilt has once again taken a back seat because of Christmas.

Sunrise at Sutton on Sea

A beautiful sunrise is much more accessible at this time of year.....a civilised 08:00 start meant that even I was tempted out of bed (and outside) on a chilly dewy morning before breakfast. 

The beach hut decoration is pretty good this year. I love this one with the 3d solid wood sailing boat. Some huts just have amusing names like number 40 which is called Winks. Geddit?

Back at home and it's family tea Sunday. I'm actually able to potter about baking without the awful encumbrance of a crutch so have had a baking splurge. Some easy sourdough cheese scones and a new Orange and Almond cake recipe. The interesting thing about this cake is that you poach a whole orange for about 30 mins in a pan of boiling water and then blitz it in a food processor until you have a puree. The eggs and sugar are whipped until light and frothy and then the flour (I used spelt) and ground almonds and baking powder are folded into the eggy mix, followed by the orange puree. So easy to do. It's then baked for about 40 mins at 160C until the top is golden and springy. After cooling for a while I mixed some icing sugar with clementine juice and drizzled over the top.
1 orange
3 eggs
140g castor sugar
85g flour (plus 1tsp  baking powder if plain flour)
150g ground almonds

Hexagon quilt progress

My hexagon quilt is making progress but is undeniably quite slow since it is entirely hand sewn using english paper piecing technique. I thought I would have had it finished by now, but it is a sort of background task to do of an evening in front of the telly and has been much disrupted by christmas and birthday crochet and knitting. I actually un-sewed quite a bit of it on holiday as my original design didn't look quite right so I bit the bullet and changed it. The reasoning was that the hexagon 'flowers' in a granny's garden pattern were not prominent enough, and whilst it looked quite nice it just looked a bit of a hexagon mish mash. See what you think. The picture on the left is as it was, and the picture on the right was how I planned to change it. The photo's are less than perfect, but this actually helps focus on the overall vision of the quilt rather than the detail. The left picture is dominated by the red dots whereas in the right picture you can see the flowers. Anyway, that's how I see it and so I spent a wonderful couple of days unpicking the red dots and replacing with beige ones. Tedious but worthwhile......I hope.

Now I'm preparing a round of bright red flowers with pale red centres and it seems that finally I have a design! I'm not very good at planning to the last detail. My quilts generally evolve with a frisson of worry as to whether I will have enough fabric to finish. As for this quilt I did some panic buying to stock up with (I hope) enough fabric as it looks like it is becoming extinct. I have some enforced sitting around at the moment due to hip surgery so have made quite a bit of progress with the red flowers, although I had to do a huge amount of ironing to prepare the hexagons. Fortunately, all this can be done whilst sitting down listening to Harry Potter - it's all about the simple pleasures in life......... :)

Cherry Harvest

In the garden of our (future) barn conversion is a rather large cherry tree. Last year we had a load of cherries on the tree before we went on holiday and none when we came back. Typical. This year our holiday timing has been a lot better and we've been able to keep an eye on the cherries. I picked some last weekend that were slightly under-ripe and put them on the window cill to finish ripening. The were ok, but a bit tart and tough - I de-stoned them all this morning and cooked them gently with a little water and honey to be used in some cakes and smoothies. This afternoon we popped over to the barns to get the car ready to take a load of stuff to the tip for the kids and we saw that the cherries must be ripe because a flock of birds flew out of the tree as we drove past. The only thing to do was to get a ladder and get picking! We picked loads and loads and had to stop because the bag was full. I fully intended to give up jam making until we had a proper kitchen but since we spied the jam pan in the storage container, we are going to give it a go. The jam pan was visible but almost inaccessible - we nearly had to give up on our jam quest,  but a bit of climbing and balancing and it was in our hands. Interestingly we had the forethought to keep it with the jam thermometer and bottling jug - it was almost as if we had planned it. The temperature on the thermometer was 100F so it's pretty warm at the moment in the container. Actually, the recent warm spell (after the monsoon season) makes our flat most uncomfortably hot; we must be mad thinking of making jam in our pokey furnace of a kitchen. 

Cherries not ready yet

Still not ripe

Ready cherries!

Scrap Quilt

I love it when a quilt is finished and this quilt has been even longer in the making than most. The quilt top was finished about 3 years ago and was then superceded by another more pressing project (and then another etc), and then packed in a box when we moved house. Since our 'short stay' in rented accommodation has become a long stay I found the box when we shifted stuff from one storage space to another and rummaged around  until I found the quilt top and some wadding and then quilted it periodically at Nottingham Patchwork Group's monthly Sunday sewing sessions. It now fulfils it's purpose in life as a birthday present for a daughter in lieu of a poncho. I was so relieved when she didn't want a poncho....Hopefully it will spend many happy years as a cuddly throw on a sofa.

This quilt started life as the left over blocks from a previous quilt, hence the turquoise and blue centre section. The rest of it is made from a load of pre-cut squares bought at Nottingham Patchwork Group so is actually made from the left over bits of other peoples quilts as well as my scraps and left overs. I enjoyed the piecing of the squares into half square triangle blocks - some might find it boring but I found it to be quite relaxing just chain piecing the squares together; the sort of stitching you can do whilst listening to a story. Then there was the positioning of the blocks and I tried really hard to co-ordinate the colours around the centre block so that the colours blended and changed. The strip framing each round of blocks was tactical as well as useful in finishing off some fabric as it made the next row of blocks fit without having to do too much in the way of measuring and maths. The only fabric bought for this quilt was the backing which is a nice paw print fabric, good for hiding less than perfect quilting and fun for a pet loving daughter.

Sourdough loaf with Sussex Magister Wheat

I tried a different variety of wheat in my sourdough loaf yesterday and it made a surprising difference to the crumb and lightness of the loaf. I usually buy wheat grain from the local windmill at Heage but the milling had to stop due to wet rot in the main beam thingy so I lost my grain supply. The good news is that after much fundraising the windmill now has it's sails back on and is back in action. In the meantime I bought wheat grain from Imbhams when I ordered spelt grain and maize so have a different variety to bake from. I'm not sure where Heage windmill source their grain from but it is definitely not the Sussex Magister wheat that I used yesterday. This has a much darker reddish colour and the dough was more springy and stretchy, whereas the Heage grain made a more rustic loaf with a greater depth of flavour. That is not to say that my new grain has no flavour, it is just lighter and more subtle (and just as delicious).

If only a photo could convey the heavenly smell and taste of a sourdough loaf

Whilst researching Heage Windmill for this post I saw that there was a classic motor bike event today so we picked an interlude between the showers and went for a look. It was a small but friendly show with much shiny chrome and classic bikes coming and going and roaring up and down the lane.  It was marvellous to see the windmill sails whipping round in the wind and of course it was quite essential to buy a bag of flour :)

Baby hats and bootees

More hats and bootees.........I'm on a roll. More babies are due and I'm really getting the hang of baby bits and pieces and am trying a few variations. This time I've used 'Vintage Pearl Baby Hat' pattern found on www.hopefulhoney.com. I looked at adding pearls, but I wasn't sure that it would be worth the effort as the hats have a vintage charm without.

Crochet flower brooch

Another quick holiday crochet effort. This time it's a flowery brooch. Inspired from 'Crocheted Flowers' by Jan Ollis, I adapted the antique rose pattern to match the yarn and fabric available (yarn left over from a hat, and organza from a bunch of flowers) to make this pretty brooch. It was a bit fiddly, but I was pleased with the final result.