Small Person at Easter

We were lucky to have Small Person for 3 days last week.  Her Mum messaged me today to say that SP had been very excited on the way home, telling her all the things she had done.

I hadn't thought we'd done much,  so I was scratching my head a bit to work out what had been so enjoyable (so that we could, perhaps, repeat it).  I asked DH  what his recollection was.

She'd been to the Allotment with DH, twice;  She helped DH with putting the base down on the new Garden Girls run;  we'd made cheese scones. There had been a lot of homework - maths puzzles,  comprehension,  reading,  and there had been  lots of teacher-mistakes in (I was seething!).  We'd watched some TV;  she came to Air Rifles with us; we played a couple of games of Hide and Seek.  She'd played on the xylophone I bought to put in the chicken run;  she'd tried to teach the chooks to eat seeds from the xylophone;  she'd tried to get the Girls to fly up on to her outstretched arm.  She'd read most of the first chapter of A Bear Called Paddington out loud, and I'd read th elast couple of pages to her.

We'd done some work on Space and she used my laptop to so her research She likes it because it has a touchscreen.     We tried to help her remember the planet names, as she was mispronouncing a couple: Plunto instead of Pluto,  Mercy instead of  Mercury  . To help her remember Pluto, I told her to think of Mickey Mouse's dog, and  said "Hey Pluto!" in a Mickey Mouse voice.      It sort of worked,  except everytime she said Pluto, she said it in the same voice as I had used.   She was very upset on Pluto's behalf to find that it wasn't classed as a proper planet any more.

I taught her (or attempted to teach her)  the mnemonic  My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Noodles to help her remember the order of the planets.    To help I was trying to get her to picture her own Mum being excited andholding a big dish of noodles.  This is where it stopped working, because SP was adamant she didn't like noodles so her Mum wouldn't give her any,  and her Mum wouldn't be excited about serving noodles anyway.

She popped to the shop,  and she borrowed DH's old phone to use while hers was out of action. She was very excited that it had facial recognition (which didn't work when she tried it wearing a Minions hooded dressing gown).

She's most excited because our youngest DGD is coming next week for a couple of days.  They haven't seen each other for over 3 years.   I hope it all goes well.

Distraction

The start of a difficult few days, today.

I decided distraction would be the way to go  so I started by decluttering my baking cupboard.   That may not sound like much of a challenge,  but it is - it's a floor to ceiling 500mm larder cupboard.     I've already decluttered (sold, selling, given away, charity shopped, binned) enough stuff to give me one free drawer.   The rest has been rearranged to reflect changed priorities, which mainly means most of my cake tins are now in a crate up out of the way,  the sugarcraft stuff has been thinned out and packed into one small drawer,  and I've been brutal in culling my cookie cutters.

A couple of other bits got sucked in to the decluttering process,  and a few more will undoubtably follow.

No creative work done.  I keep thinking I ought to do those two tops that are currently buried under the mountain of bakeware but I need to clear the clutter first. I know that's just an excuse.    And I keep thinking I ought to be making some bits on the embroidery machine.I was going to make a treat bag for Small Person for Easter.      I ought to try and make that bag thing I bought a sewing pattern for.

Ought, ought, ought.   We all know what that means.

It's wet and miserable here, which suits me.  I'm going to light a fire and then I'm going to crack open another cupboard.

Does this count?

Pilates yesterday was tough going.    It's our last class for 4 week. FOUR weeks!    That's not good.

I'm limping along on my creative challenge.    I managed to cut out the back and sleeves for a top (I cut the front out a week or so ago) while SMall Person and DH were at the Allotment;  I pinned the bust darts and shoulder datrts on said top as well.

We made cheats lemon curd in Thermy.   It's not as luscious as proper lemon curd... but it took 7 minutes in Thermy instead of 45 minutes of me stirring over the hob, and that was a trade off I was happy to make.  I'll definitely make it again and I'll probably double the recipe next time.     That counts towards my creative challenge, doesn't it?

 I was trying to teach Small Person how to use a potato peeler to get zest off a lemon.  She managed, but I couldn't quite teach her the knack.  I might get her to use a grater next time... but I'd really like her to learn to do it 'properly'.  I might have to buy a different sort of peeler for her to use.

Raymondo's new AeroVac bin arrived.  I fitted it and set him off to work straight away.  It's much quieter than the old bin.   It seems to work really well,  so that's good. And a relief.   After testing him, I installed a new side brush.  I can't remember when I last did that.

It's going to be a tough week this week and I'm not feeling very resiliant.

Raymondo's new lease of life

Ten years ago, give or take a couple of weeks,  we bought our first robot vacuum cleaner. He was the top spec Roomba when we bought him, and we spent ages watching him work (and trying to confuse him).    Once the novelty wore off, we set him up to go cleaning overnight, and we'd take things off the floor before we went to bed.

Raymondo has worked hard over the ten years.  He's very battle scarred, because he's taller than he realises.  Mostly, the two-tone "Uh-oh" means he's managed to get wedged under something.

He's had a couple of  (3 maybe?) new batteries in that time,  and when we bought the second replacemwent battery we bought some additional bits (newly designed brushes) which effectively upgraded him to  higher spec model.

I've also replaced the front wheel, because it got damaged with years of pulling it out of its socket with a skewer.

He isn't, and hasn't ever been,  our only vacuum cleaner. For the past few years we've kept him upstairs where he does an outstanding job of picking up all the cat hair. 

Recently, and quite suddenly,  his battery became useless.   I had always tried to make sure the battery discharged fully each time I put him to work, so the NiCad didn't "learn".  Bit I may  have messed up, or maybe it was just worn out.    We tried a few things to rejuvenate the battery, but no luck.

He's also lost a bit of his bin,  so I needed to replace part of that.    We discussed what to do.  DH suggested getting a newer model... I knew how much they cost and said I wasn't sure I wanted to spend that much.    DH didn't know the latest price,  looked online, and then agreed with me. 

We decided to buy Raymondo a Lithium battery.  It arrived a few days  ago and today I put him to work for the first time.    He did upstairs and downstairs, and still had a bit of puff left.  Now that I can see it was definitely a battery issue, I've ordered him a new, upgraded,  bin and spare filters.   An upgrade all over again.

He's not quite like Trigger's broom... but he's still mainly the original Raymondo. 

Head Butter

Small Person visited.  I picked her up from her Drama class on Saturday afternoon, and she stayed until lunchtime on Sunday.  A rare treat as she's usually picked up at 9am to go riding.

This Saturday I needed to make butter, so she helped.  I explained the butter making process and it all went swimmingly.  I showed her how to pot up the salted butter,  and she did that while I got on with the rest of the process.  I now have two bowls for Bernie (the Bosch Mixer),  and so the process was remarkably smooth.

I churned 4 litres of cream, then washed the butter in the churn.  I divided the butter into two, one in each of Bernie's bowls.  First bowl was salted and put on to mix.   When it was mixed,  Small Person started potting, and I put the second salted bowl on to mix.   Meanwhile, I got on and churned the second lot of 4 litres.  

We watched Paddington 2 in the evening, and all went to bed at about 10pm.

Small Person was very tired, she slept until about 9.30 Sunday morning.    After she's made pancakes (using buttermilk), she got dressed and helped me put some covers on the sides of the Cubes to try and protect the chooks from the vicious wind.   She also made snow angels, so she got soaked and had to get changed before going out again.

I'm looking forward to the Easter holidays

So close

I made a top!

I haven't made one for ages - my time has been spent on leggings for Small Person and then leggings for me - and I was struggling to remember the construction steps.     It came together very quickly though, and I even managed to hem it.

A minor disaster struck when I was putting the sleeves in.  I managed to have an overlocker steering malfunction.   I cursed a bit.      The top is still sort of wearable, but it wasn't suitable for it's intended purpose.  It's still sitting on the kitchen table waiting for me to cut out and apply the neck binding, and I really ought to do it otherwise it'll just become another UFO (unfinished object). 

So what was the intended purpose? I was making it to wear to the Sewing show at the NEC.   I

I wasn't going as a visitor, I was going to be helping out on one of the stands!    I decided I couldn't risk wearing it because I was afraid people would look at my top, and judge the product I was representing by my shoddy workmanship. So I wore shop bought clothes.

I had a really enjoyable day.      I found it tough at first, because I don't like encouraging people to spend their money (even though I thoroughly endorse the product I was representing).  Luckily the lady I was representing was not interested in making people buy her product at the show,  she was happy for them to find out about it and go away and maybe buy it later.    

I settled into it when I talked with people about what the system was and why it might help them.  I usually started the same way Do you make your own clothes?  Do you use a commercial pattern?  How did you find the fit?  And then we could talk about the system and whether it might help them.  There were some people where the system wouldn't help them and I was honest with them about that.
I guess it helped that I am a customer of the system, not an employee.

If I hadn't already had other commitments, I would have gone back to do a second day.

I'm looking forward to finding out how the remaining 3 days went

Bittersweet

When I bought my latest lovely sewing machine,  I sold my previous one along with the myriad of feet I had accumulated.  I was sorry to see them go, most of them were unused, just waiting for me to find a project to use them.

I resolved that I would not buy lots of additional feet for my new machine.  I would only buy feet that I was (reasonably) sure I would use.  (Unless I saw one at a bargain price, of course) .

I kept to that.  I did buy some additional feet, but the feet I bought have been in frequent use. Mostly.

When making my duvet cover recently,  I needed a "stitch in the ditch" foot.  I could swear I had one.  I looked through the myriad of feet that came with the machine,  and the feet I had bought. Couldn't find it.  Then I loaded my spreadsheet and realised that I'd had such a foot with a previous machine,  I hadn't bought one for this machine.

I did a quick search and saw one on Ebay at a really good price.  It was too late for my duvet cover, but it would be rude not to buy it.    I bid and, as usual, I had a look at the sellers other items, just in case.  She was selling quite a few feet and other sewing bits.   I decided to break my rule and bid on several of the feet which I didn't have.  I resisted bidding on some of her other items,  and I didn't bid on all the feet. 

I won some, and I didn't win others.    I messaged her to ask about combined postage,  and found that she was a really lovely older lady.     I realised from her messages that she was me in the future.  Lots of feet, unused and still in their packaging.  She was obviously downsizing  and getting rid of the paraphernalia from a once loved hobby.

It choked me up a bit.

Ta Daaa!

Finished, at last!

I wish I'd thought to take a picture when it was pristine: newly finished, newly ironed, and newly on the bed. 

I've ended up with puckering and not straight stitching, but I'm not too bothered.  I spent so long measuring, marking, sewing in lines before I started cutting; I finished my raw edges before I started working,   I measured and basted everything before sewing,  then I sewed.  I've sewn hidden seams, folded hems, I've done all sorts.  At some point I stopped taking out the basting stitches, partly because I'd reached the "I don't really care anymore" stage,  and once because I realised I hadn't done a proper stitch afterwards. Oops.

To make sure that it all stays in place, I was going to coverstitch it.  This worked really well for one of the four sides.  Then it just wasn't working.  My little Bernina Coverstitch machine has a tiny space to the right of the needles,  and I was trying to feed a superking sized duvet cover through that space.  It just wasn't working. 

So,  I decided to top stitch all the way round using a decorative stitch.  My thinking was that my decorative stitch would also stitch down the folded seam underneath,  if I did it a particular way I'd also topstitch the very edge of the panel down,  and a decorative stitch  would cover my decidedly wonky seam (and basting) stitching.  I chose to do it in a colour which wouldn't show up too much.  

I chose a cat shaped stitch.

I then spent forever holding a superking quilt over my shoulder and across my arm while trying to keep the seam straight.  It takes a surprisingly long time for the machine to sew a cat shape (complete with whiskers).  I thought it was never going to end.    When my arm and leg started to ache, I tried disassociating myself from the task.  That was OK, but did cause a wonky stitch line.

When it was all done,  I whipped up a couple of extra large pillow cases.  We have lovely wool pillows, but they are a bit too big to fit comfortably inside normal sized cases.  I'm really pleased with them.  I was cream crackered when I started them,  but I really wanted to get the bed made.  The picture doesn't so them justice.

I know that not doing this project  (and knowing I should  do it) has been a contributory factor to the loss of my Sewjo.  I'm hoping that having completed it, it may come back.

We'll see.

Working on it.

I was going to send my mum some flowers for Mothers Day,  I just had no enthusiasm for embroidery. Then I saw a really simple design on merylmakes.com.   Meryl is a friend of mine in real life,  I love her embroidery designs.     I decided to do it.  So, I did.

I still had the clamp frame attached to Bertha.  I faffed about choosing colours,  rethreading the machine,  changing the colour selections, blah blah blah and cutting the upholstery fabric I was going to stitch on.      I centred the design, did several tracings  (getting the machine to pretend to stitch the design so I can check it isn't going to hit the frame),  and then I decided to add a border.   I faffed around doing that, and then I was ready.

I decided to get the border stitched first, as this would help keep. the fabric and stabiliser taut.  It's lucky I did.  It's also lucky I didn't walk away  There was an almighty crunch, as the needle hit the frame.  When I added the border, I hadn't repositioned the design.   The frame was scratched, the needle snapped,  the fabric chewed... but all survived.

New needle.  Rethread.  Recut fabric.  Try again. 

The fabric was fraying like mad, so I ended up using the sewing machine to stitch an additional hidden border.   I just did a straigh stitch, which wasn't enough - that will only stop the fraying once the ffraying has reached the stitch.  next time I'll probably do an overedge stitch.

 I hope Mum likes it as much as I do.

I've also been making progress on my duvet cover. More about that another time.  Maybe.

Oh, and I handmade enriched bread for hot dog rolls lasrt night.   They were good, but no better than breadmaker made. 

Lambiness

Lamb butchery at Shirley's on Monday.

She's right, it's very very different to pig butchery.     With a pigm, the carcass is halved and you work on a half carcass.    WIth a lamb, the carcass isn't halved,  and you don't halve it to butcher it.   That means you butcher the whole carcass as you go.

Our lamby requiremens are quite simple, so I don't know how much butchery there will be for us to do next time.  From Shirley's point of view, it's actually easier for her to cut it for us than it is for her to cut it into pieces for us to butcher further.  Unless we wanted a rack of lamb -  which we don't. 

Made some amazing-smelling lamb stock from the bones yesterday.  We've got lamb chops today,  and Im making with boulangere potatoes.  It was going to be dauphinoise,  but we don't have any cream.

Slippery

My fab new slippers arrived in the post today.

I was hesitant about buying them because often these sort of slippers are too tight for my poor feet.

They seem OK.    They are so lovely that I'd probably wear them regardless.

Old Farts

Old age creeps up and catches me unawares.  Example: one day, I could suddenly see that those llift out chairs (HSL advertise quite heavily) might actually be a good idea, one day.   If only they weren't so darned ugly!

My SIL had her hip done (or it might have been her knee, I can't remember now.  Another bit of old age creep) .   My brother bought her a single motor Riser Recliner chair, advertised locally to him on Gumtree.     It worked really well for the intended purpose.  I vaguely looked at them, but DH wasn't interested (we already have electric recliners in the sofas) and I didn't bother.

Time moved on.  A couple of weeks ago,  my brother bought a better riser recliner. It was in tip top condition,  was  a petite model,  and had a dual motor.  It was much better made than the other one,  and he was singing its praises.  So much so, that he went and got another one for himself.

The other day we popped over to see them, and he was keen that we tried the new chairs just to see why they were so good.  I sat in one and it was surprisingly comfortable.    I got DH to try it.  He wasn't too keen, but 'had a go' to be polite.   He really liked it.

And so, I did some research,  looked around to see what was available, and found a bargain of a Sheborne leather chair in the next town,  and  a top of the range HSL fabric chair near that.  We arranged to see both.

We went along to see the leather chair first,  and had agreed a code phrase before hand just in case  it wasn't possible for us to signal to each other if we didn't like it.   It was immaculate,  used for a month, and very comfortable.  It was on Gumtree, and we decided to buy it immediately.  I messaged my brother to let him know we'd joined the Old Farts Chair club.

The second chair was on Ebay, and the auction was still running.  We wanted to see it to see whether to bid or not.       It was another immaculate chair, and this one hadn't been used.    We decided we'd bid and see if we won.

At home with the first chair, we had nowhere to put it without rearranging everything,  and no point in rearranging until we knew whether we had to fit in one or two chairs.  Luckily the auction was a short one,  we won, and we braved the snow to collect it.  I told my brother we now had two Old Farts Chairs, and he started to guffaw.

We then spent hours trying to rearrange the furniture to fit them in. We knew that something had to go, either one of the two seaters, or our lovely Gravity chair.   Currently, the Gravity chair has been relocated, and we're seeing how it goes.  The living room looks a bit like an Old Folks Home sitting room,  like an assortment of chairs has been dropped in at random.

We've had to do some artful arrangement to try and make it look a bit more considered, and this means we've lost all our hidden storage (the space behind the sofas). We have a pile of stuff that needs to be reviewed and stored, donated, or chucked.

My brother turned up to look at the chairs.  He's always so enthusiastic, even if they'd been a disaster he would have found something positive to say.   He liked both of them.    We sat in the living room and chatted,  and the new furniture arrangement made this much better than the old arrangement. 

Usually we end up in the kitchen,  but maybe we'll socialise more in the living room now?

The cats have been exploring everything, and are completely confused about where they are allowed to sit.

When we put the chairs in the room, before we started arranging, Izzy got up in the same place whereshe usually gets up... only now it was a single chair, and there's no nice fluffy cat bed.   She did look surprisingly comfortable though, and she was most put out when I made her get off. 

  


We've got to sort out the side tables next, but we need to know whether we're staying like this or whether one of the sofas is going.  The room looks so...so...full of furniture right now.

We'll give it a day or so, and see how it beds down.

Bread head

Long and difficult day yesterday, might write about it some other time.

Today DH, my brithers, sister in law, and I went on a Nordic Breadmaking course at the lovely Willow Bakery in Shepperton.      Willow Bakery is a home bakery, open one day a week.

I don't make many sweet breads, so this was  really interesting.   In addition to the Pulla (Finland), Cinnamon and Cardamom knots, we made some Swedish rolls and a Danish Rye Bread.   it was a jam packed course, only possible because Nicky had weighed out most of the ingredients in advance.

Of course we have double of everything. One of the Pulla loaves will be sliced and frozen;  we've frozen all the uncooked Knots, we can bake them from frozen as we need them.  We'll start eating the Rye in a couple of days when it has had time to mature.  The rolls are waiting to be eaten.

We did all the kneading by hand, which was a lot of work because these particular doughs are very wet - and two of them were enriched with butter.    Nicky is building a workshop in the garden to house the bakery,  and this will enable her to provide mixers for at least one of the doughs in future.
I'll certainly be using a mixer when I make these at home.  Now I know what texture I am looking for, it will be easy to tell when the mixer has done it's job

I have no pictures.  I just didn't think to take any. 

It was good to spend the afternoon laughing and concentrating on other stuff.

Sew Pleased!

Half term week.

We looked after Small Person for 3 days.  She spent one and a half days playing on my starter sewing machine, with mixed success.  She did well at sewing fairly straight lines (at least as well as I would do, without my trusty guide foot).     She did well at turning corners, with practice.     She did well at inventing stitched together bits and pieces,  but couldn't grasp the need to sew right sides together and then turn out.  Maybe next time.

She's a bit of a butterfly, so I was surprised (and impressed) that she stuck at it for such a long time.   I'll be interested to see if she wants to do more another time.

We had a day on our own, which we mostly spent faffing about.  Then the Twins arrived.  Their parents left them here for the afternoon and went off on a long walk (much longer than they meant to). 
Twin S spent the afternoon with her grandfather, learning how to use a 3D printer (she printed a cat shaped phone stand), and then how to build a motor from scratch. 

Twin G spent the afternoon with me,  learning how to work with stretch fabric and, specifically, how to make leggings.   She had brought her sewing machine from home, and made two pairs of leggings.  She wore one of the pairs out to dinner.
Saturday morning,  Twin S and Granddad finished building the motor,  and Twin G used the cardboard template we made to cut out fabric for 2 more pairs of leggings to make when she got home.

That makes up for my lack of creative makes for the  month so far, I think.

Faster Pasta

I have a few kitchen gadgets,  and I don't ever buy gadgets on impulse.

As a young adult, I would be swayed by demos at my first couple of Ideal Home Shows.   When I got home, often the gadget just didn't work the way it seemed to when demoed

As I started to move into more expensive, often electrical, gadgets,  I learned to look at the gadget more critically, and really see what the flaws were.  Would it really do somethng better than I could do myself, or an existing gadget could do?  Would the cleaning routine really be worth the effort?

If I'm interested in a gadget,  I look at it critically, research it,  and (usually) I walk away from it. In these internet days, I store my research in folders, just in case I decide to look again.  Often the itch goes away. Sometimes it doesn't.   Sometimes it goes away for ages and then comes back....

A while ago, I heard about an electric pasta maker made by Philips.  It looked.... surprisingly good.   I read about it, but decided against buying one.  We have pasta rollers for our Kitchen Aid, and these work really well.

A few things then happened.

My KitchenAid has recently been supplanted by a different mixer.  I didn't sell the KA, I put it in the loft.     I did, however, decide to sell the pasta attachments. 

While thinking about selling them,  I looked again at the Philips Pasta Maker.    They now had two sorts,  a big one and a small one.  A Facebook group related to one of my machines had a discussion about them, and one chap had both sorts.  I quizzed him a bit.        More people bought one or other of the machines, more raved about it.  

I couldn't justify the expense, but I did set up an Ebay and Gumtree alert.  A machine came up at an inexpensive price. The seller  had gone gluten free, so wasn't making pasta any more.  One part of the machine was cracked,  so I googled to see how much a replacement piece would be.

My googling revealed some interesting things.   A better-loaded model, not available in the UK,  was available from Amazon in Germany at relatively low price.   That same model was more expensive - a lot more expensive - on all the other European Amazon sites that I visited.     I couldn't understand why it would be so 'cheap'.  Even with shipping, it was cheaper than the small version, and this one came with lots of extra dies,  it had integrated scales.....      When I looked at the second hand model I was considering,  added in the cost of the extra dies and the cost of a replacement lid,  there wasn't much in it.

I ordered it.

To make myself feel less bad about what was almost an impulse buy,  I sold my Kitchen Aid pasta rollers and I also sold my lovely food processor.  It was fab processor - I just don't need to use it anymore.  Last time I tried to sell it, I wrote the ad and it made me not want to sell it.  The same thing nearly happened this time,  but I made  myself go through with it.    The money I made almost covered the cost of the pasta machine.

It arrived quickly, and we had pasta that same night.  It was amazing!

Now, it's not at all the same as making pasta by hand.  You don't atually make a dough at all.  You put the flour (or semonlina, or combination) into the machine,  you add the egg and water (or just water),  it mixes it to something like breadcrumbs and then a few minutes later, it extrudes it through a die into your chosen pasta shape.

The resulting pasta looks crumblier than conventional home pressed pasta.  It cooks beautifully and tastes wonderful.  We've had pasta about four times since we bought it.      It takes just a few minutes from putting in the ingredients to having pasta ready to cook.  We can have pasta on the table within 15 minutes of deciding to have pasta for dinner.

We can also make noodles, we just haven't tried that yet.


It is a big machine. The little Philips Viva is much more compact and (by all accounts) works just as well


I'm really pleased we went for the all-singing model.  We put in the dry ingredients, press a button, and it tells us how much liquid to add.  No guessing. 
It's here if you are interested (this is not an affiliate link)  https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01HH5N1VA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1


What's your position on gadgets?

Personal space

Poppy laid her first egg (since moulting) yesterday.     That means that 3, possibly 4, of them have now laid at some point in the last week.     Nest Box Wars have broken out,  each Girl is very vocal when she finds the nestbox already occupied.

We have 5 hens and 4 nestboxes.  Each nest box is big.  Big enough for 2 hens to sit end to end with a big gap in the middle  3 of the could sit side by side.

They all, however, have to use the same nest box.  They all have to have it to themselves.  And they all like to take their time about it.

I'm surprised the neighbours haven't complained about the racket.

Does this count?

Last night I decided I would DEFINITELY do something creative today.
I bought the last of the patterns I wanted to get printed,  organised them into a flder ready to upload, and noticed that one was missing.  I contacted the designer, using their web contact form,  immediately.

This morning, I hadn't had a response, so I emailed them.  They are a US company so should have had time to look at my query yesterday.   If I don't get this sent off soon, I won't get the printed patterns back in time to sew a top for Small Person at the beginning of next week

It was distracting me from my planned task.  I printed out the instructions for several of my existing patterns, including the two I was dithering between making.  I recognised the instructions for one of them, I've obviously printed them before.  So,  I decided to bind the instructions into a booklet and, of course,  I had to print the instructions for the other patterns i've already got so that they could go in as well.

I moved to clear the cutting table, still undecided about which pattern to make.  One of the items to be cleared was a book about sewing jersey with a sewing machine (a birthday present for my sewing grand-daughter, who is coming at the end of next week to learn to make leggings.  It reminded me that I had meant to order some ballpoint needles for her sewing machine,   so I went and ordered those before I forgot again.

And then while I was in Ebay,  I saw those aluminium flat pieces that I'd toyed with getting to help me mark and press long seams.    I thought about the duvet cover upstairs and decided that today I'd order them.  When I had several of varying widths in my basket, free postage,  I realised that I'd get them cheaper if I went direct.  So I did.

So I've been doing stuff which will enable me to be creative.

Does that count?

Spoke too soon

I was feeling very pleased with myself after sticking to my creative goals in January.

So how come it's now 6th February, and I have done NOTHING?  Not even for my best friend's birthday!

I've really not been in a creative frame of mind.

I've spent a lot  of time= looking at downloadable patterns, which I don't need as I have ny Surefit Designs body blueprint and I can use that.  And I can use thechildrens kit for Small Person.

A while ago I bought some patterns which I planned to get printed on A0.  I've done this before, it's fab.  I wanted to get them printed,.  The main cost of printing is postage, which is the same whether I have 1xA0 pattern piece of 20 A0 pattern pieces.  I decided to finally buy those one or two that I keep looking at -  they were children's ones, which included options for raglan sleeves,  hoodies, cowls and all sorts,  so it was a reasonable purchase.  Smnall Person is here next week and I want to try making her some tops,  which will help me learn how to do these techniques.   

It snowballed a bit.


I'm embarrassed and a little ashamed.

I know it's a distraction thing.  No time to sew because I've been looking at these patterns.  I've been  rigorous in my evaluation (mostly).     

It's done now.  I'm not buying any more, and I'm going to send these off tomorrow. I'd send them off now, but one of the designs where I was expecting an A0 pattern didn't come with one.  I've contacted the designer, but I guess it might take her a little while to get back to me.

On the plus side,   Small Person surprised me by saying she wanted to try sewing next week.    I'm thining a tote bag or a pencil case to get her started.

Holy Smoke!

The loins and the lardons were ready to come out of their cure.  We decided to smoke 1 piece and ost of the lardons, leaving the other 2 pieces unsmoked.

It's been a while since we last cold smoked anything.  We went through a cold smoke phase a couple of years ago, it was surprisingly easy to do. We'd got a range of smoking dusts, and it was interesting to try the same sort of food smoked with different dusts.

We liked things with a hint of smoke, rather than really smoked.  Smoking stuff ourselves enabled us to control just how smoky things were.

Hot smoking, which cooks the food as well as smoking it,  has never really appealed to either of us, so our inexpensive and reliable ProQ Eco has been ideal.


After some headscratching, we retrieved theProQ Eco smoker box from Myshed.  I remembered that it retained the smoky smell, so we knew it wouldn't be in the loft with the  smoke generator and sawdust.  Instead of trying to remember where I put it,   I imagined that it was in front of me and needed putting away; where was the most sensible place?  I find that technique qorks well for most things..

Anyway, I digress.

We sniffed the open packets of smoking sawdust  (apple, oak, beech) and decided that, unsurprisingly,  they'd lost their aroma. We opened a new packet of apple, as  Apple would go really well with the cider/apple cure.

And off we went.

DH went out to check on it after about ten minutes,  and again after half an hour;  it's just as well he did.

I've now placed an order for a Thuros smoker.   This one also does hot smoking and I think we might try to hot smoke some sausages.   It's too late to smoke the remaining bacon.

It's a compact size,  it's got a lot more adjustability,  it can be used for both cold and hot smoking, and it's not horrendously expensive in the scheme of things - £159 vs about £30 for the cardboard Eco.   And it's  metal.   We may well have decided to upgrade to this anyway,  recent events just brought the purchase forward a bit.


We also had to replace the smoke generator,  so I ended up buying the Deal
from AngusAndOink.  It was a bit cheaper anyway  than buying the two items, plus it had some sawdyust, chips, and BBQ dust included.   I'd never heard of Angus and Oink before:  they hadn't come up when I was googling,   I found them through their YouTube video of them using the Thuros.  

I noticed that a lot of places were out of stock of the Thuros,  so I messaged Angus and Oink to check if they had any in.  Luckily for me they did,  so one will be with me soon.

Birthday

I've managed to complete January and I've done something creative (or related) almost every day.  Of course my definition of "something creative" is a bit elastic: I've included butter making, pork butchery,  fiddling around with the embroidery machine.... but I'm happy enough.

My last make for January was another card

I had several attempts at this.  The first one used a Westie-dog fabric, which had the Westies so far apart I had to cut and stitch them together first (and I didn't like the result).


The clamp frame works really well,  but the design of it means the amount of  embroidery space is really limited.  I had originally added a built-in thin border around the design (the better borders were too big to fit) but it started to unravel after I'd removed everything from the embroidery frame, and I had to unpick it all.

I quite like the "linen" fabric look - it makes a change from my usual felt - but it really does fray! Next time I'll have to shrink the design more and use a bugger, solid,  border and trim to that.

All good learning.

For February I'm going to try and do some clothes related sewing rather than embroidery machine stuff.  I'm not sure I'll manage something creative almost every day.... but we'll see.