A non stitching post!
Am seriously running out of cookbook space ................ again and have challenged myself to go through them, in the order they appear on the shelf, and sort out what we really want to keep whilst choosing a recipe to cook from each one. First on the top shelf is Rachel Allen's "Food for Living" which has never been used. I find Brownies generally rather dry and not very appealing but these, overloaded with chocolate and raspberries, promised to be "fudgy" so had to be trialled.
They're not as dry as most but with 200g dark chocolate, 225g white chocolate and a punnet of raspberries are not cheap! The pouring of melted white chocolate over looks messy but could be an idea for a festive treat with a bit more care ............... maybe even substituting canned pitted black cherries for the raspberries.
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........ progress on one of the seascapes. Layers of chiffon, a bit of machine stitching, wisps of fibre,a couple more scraps and some more embellishing .................
I find the 12 needle Baby Lock embellisher can be a bit overpowering for finer work so removed most of the needles to embellish down some yarns and fibres. Replacing the needles a couple of days later, 3 of them won't go fully in and protrude up to a quarter of an inch. It's not the needles as we've tried different ones so Baby Lock suggest I return the unit for investigation as the needle holder may be out of alignment inside the unit - don't seem to be having much luck with machinery these days!
Some pretty hair scrunchies for the Christmas shoeboxes ......................
Now just to decide which ones to put in each box.
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It all fits with some little gaps to fill with sweeties nearer the time. This category usually gets the least number of boxes so we're quite pleased with this one. There's a bit of a football theme with a mini ball (and pump), soap on a rope, stickers and pencil case lined with a football fabric which I've just finished this morning ..........
A friend in my knitted glove puppet ............
The boxed Meccano type set was way too big so I've repackaged it with the instructions and the knitted rainbow beanie hat squashes in nicely .................
Still hidden under a tin of drawing and colouring media is some plasticine and a small colouring book ................
I'm now going to cover the box, place an assortment of papers cut to fit the bottom of the box inside and then repackage everything all ready to add the sweets and drop off in November.
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Yesterday I started embellishing a background for a 3ft high seascape. About half way through I opened the packaging for the box frame to find that it wasn't actually a box frame, the backing sits right behind the glass. Oh well, it looks like two smaller pieces to fit frames that I do have then.
Random scraps picked out by colour, I quite like the guitar ............. "Festival on the Beach" ha ha! Quite lightly embellished, mostly just enough to hold the fabrics in place, I'm going to have a look through the chiffon and tulle for some overlays and then start stitching!
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I did finish another wallet this week
Sometimes I'd prefer to be more focused but with no real direction there's no need to be so I'll just keep muddling along for a bit. There's lots I could do but what am I going to do with it? I keep thinking about another design journal but who would want to look at that except me and I'd only have to find somewhere to keep it. It's nearly four years since my first blog post and I'm no more focused now than I was then - I really should do something about that!
Today I scribbled down some ideas for baby bibs so I might get onto them. I need a few more squares for the next I Spy quilt .........yellow, orange, red, pink and mauve novelty fabrics seem to be more elusive than black, blue, green etc. or at least they are for me. A specific artwork piece for the wall has been at the back of my mind for a long time which will utilise some more scraps.
This week I also decided to start a facebook page for my textile stuff. I like that I can add photographs and organise them into albums and it might help me to focus more in specific areas with sets/groupings of work. I'll see how it goes.
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Another one for the pressie drawer - the first "scrappy" project from the recent sort out. There's a riot of summer garden colour in this wallet. All the fabrics in the patchwork came from the scrapbag including the binding leftover from the bag in my first ever blog post. A few crazy quilt stitches and beads add some extra interest:
Talking of gardens, this was part of ours in March ............
and now ...........
There's still quite a lot to do but it's so much more managable for us now thanks to an enthusiastic young gardener who lives nearby, friends and freecycle for a lot of the bricks and paving.
If anybody know how to get rid of these weeds, we'd be really grateful for some advice. Suddenly appearing out of nowhere a couple of years ago we've having an awful trouble getting rid of them and they're spreading like mad!
Thankyou for all your recent comments, I do read them all and digest what you say - thankyou!!
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