Lemon Victoria Sponge with Strawberries

June - Half Way through the calendar cooking challenge

For those joining me for the first time on my new Website. This blog is usually about crochet, but its also my outlet for anything else. I do the occasional Folksy Friday here and this challenge. I received my free Christmas calendar from Good Food Magazine and I was so taken with the theme which was all about baking, my favourite cooking, that I decided to try and make every recipe in the month they were pictured at. Also to add to the challenge aspect I decided to try as much as possible to follow the recipe exactly. Usually I tweak and twist every recipe until sometimes they are unrecognisable, so restricing myself to doing them exactly was definitely a challenge.

I would say this is my best one yet..I still can't get my sponges to rise as much as in the pics. I've read loads of books and taken lots of advice, but this certainly tasted delicious and looked good.

 The trouble is I don't really like the sound of next  months recipe so I don't know if i want to cook it. But a challenge is a challenge even if its one I've set myself and no one else cares how I bake. Well apart from my guinea pigs, sorry family..lol..

Folksy Friday

Its high time I got round to this again. So in honor of the change in the weather here is a summer theme, just a few picks but I hope you enjoy. Clicking on the picture should take you to the shop.

Calendar Cooking Challenge April/May

Well I have been slow at keeping this up. So bad that I've had to do two months in one. So here is April's recipe.

This was the original recipe, so I followed it to the letter, well except for a few mistakes..  It was quite good, infact I've had a few requests to do it again, and now I know the mistakes I made I can hopefully do it better. Trouble is my fussier and fussier vegetarian daughter has finally realised she can't really eat Marsh Mallows, and my other daughter doesn't like nuts or raisins in it. That actually only leaves maltersers. Not too interesting to me, so these probably won't be making a reappearance.

This is my finished one.

So that was April. This is May's recipe

I've actually never succeeded in making muffins so this time, before beginning I turned to google and looked up how to make muffins. I sort of knew the secret was in not over mixing, but I saw one piece of advice that said to mix it with only three strokes. So I tried that, wow there were completely dry bits and liquid bits yet...it worked my best muffins ever. They were still a bit rubbery, sigh so this whole muffin thing needs even more refining. Actually I may not bother at all. I've ended up eating them all out of loyalty (that's my excuse) so maybe no more muffins.

NOW...I had this brilliant plan involoving photographing my new crochet coffee cosy with my homemade muffins. I was so pleased when they all came together and I spent all morning on my photo shoot. Trouble is I'm not too happy about the finished product. Still here is a first peek at the photo.

I'm pleased with the photo styling. I think I'm definitely getting better at taking photos. Shame about the crochet...and muffins..lol.

Crochet time

Its about time I posted some crochet pics. I think that was what this blog was supposed to be about...lol..

And some news and even some musings. First here's some sneaky pics of the dress I made for the daughter of a friend. Its the first actual garment that I designed and made. I hope it fits, she hasn't actually tried it on. That's why I haven't listed it. Also I would like some pics of the girl wearing it, how else to display it?... I don't want to invest in childs dummy, and its probably too heavy to hang and photo...

 This dress is worked totally in the round and uses Rowan 4ply pure wool and Rowan Kid Silk Haze. It really looks gorgeous at the moment, just hope it fits and without too many adjustments. I'll keep everyone posted as to its progress. Eventually I intend to list it as a custom item and offer the pattern for sale as well. May take a long time.

CLASSES

I'm working towards offering learn crochet workshops, I've written a pattern for a granny square and Hubby's taken the pics so that I can add them. Then I need to book some room at work and do a trial run. Once I know how easy/hard it is, how long it takes to teach to  x many people, and have some nice looking pics of a workshop in progress then i can move to the next phase. After that I want to approach knitting shops in my area and offer them the workshop. I really did think that there was a gap in the market. Shops near me offer expensive workshops or courses in knitting but in crochet they only ever offer beginners crochet and I think a granny square is easier to learn than back and forth crochet and also gives yous something finished to take home. After that I would work on more advanced workshops, either more things to do with granny squares ie mittens, cushions, etc, and/or my kits as workshops. As I said I did think that till I got a revised list from my nearest shop with all the crochet workshops dropped!!!! Does that mean no one was interested in learning crochet or that they had no one to do it. I'm afraid to ask... I will also offer one to one tuition, need to make some adverts to put up locally. Anyway if anyone has any thoughts on these ideas please leave a comment.  TTFN and catch you all later.

2012 CALENDER RECIPE CHALLENGE - March

Well folks its March already, where does it go. It feels like only yesterday when I made my last blog post about this challenge. Mind you it was only a few weeks ago.

This months recipe was for sultana tea loaf. The making went alright although when I poured the tea over the sultanas, mixed peel, and sugar it wasn't made clear how much it should have been stirred. When I went to pour it into the flour and eggs, the next day, all the sugar and mixed peel was still sticking to the bottom of the bowl. To be fair you were supposed to add the flour and eggs to the fruit but even if I had done that there would still have been loads of undissolved sugar at the bottom.

I don't actually like it..lol..too many sultanas but I think hubby likes it, with any luck most of it should be gone before it goes off.

2012 CALENDER RECIPE CHALLENGE

And now for a complete change of subject. As well as knitting and crochet I also enjoy cooking and of course eating. So this year I thought I would try a little fun baking with a bit of a challenge. I received my free Good Food calender in the last magazine of the year. In it were 12 tasty looking baking recipes so I decided to cook each one in the appropriate month.

I've already tried January's but I thought it would be nice to document my attempts on this blog. So I'm starting with February. Unfortunately I can't find this recipe online so there is only a scan,  One of the things about the way I cook and bake is that I tend to tweak every recipe, actually its much the same with crochet and knit patterns, adding a bit there or leaving out ingredients that I don't have or don't like. So this time I decided to try to stick to the letter of the recipe if I could. So this is February's recipe for Passion fruit cupcakes.

And these pics show my effort. For me who has almost never done piping I think they were pretty good. Very tasty if very rich. I don't think I would do the apricot jam bit, it makes them just tip over the edge of being too sweet, and coming from me that means they were really sweet. Also there is no information about how to prepare the passion fruit. They were hard to get hold of and when I followed Delia's instruction for preparing the fruit I tried to sieve them to get rid of most of the seeds. Doing that produced passion juice, still I used the juice and the recipe worked.

Altogether a fun project, just pop back in March for month two

Folksy Friday - February Fruitcakes

Hi anybody..just some picks from the daily listing club I'm on on Folksy. I've joined pinterest now and I noticed that someone did their folksy Friday on there. I'm not sure is this a good idea or not. The trouble is I pinned a lot of stuff that I wanted on this blog. So if I make a board from those items they'll be repeated.

Anyway that's for me to sort out. These lovely items have all been picked over the last few weeks. All on the theme of purple, well it is my favourite colour so naturally it was the dominant colour theme when I searched through my favourites.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to one and all. January, my least favourite month, in spite of (or because of?) it being the month of my Birthday. Mind you I got a fancy smancy camera for my birthday so no excuses for bad pics from now on. I don't know how to use it yet, well not for the stuff I wanted it for.

I was also given a new bag for Xmas from my sort of Mother in Law. It was leopard print fun fur and I loved it but as soon as I started using it the lining started to tear and has now almost completely shredded. So thinking about bags and wishing I had a new one gave me inspiration for the first Folksy Friday of the year. So on to the pics, hope you enjoy this selection, clicking on the pics will take you to the shop. Hopefully..

 

Folksy Friday - November Nexus 18th Nov

Well here's my second November Nexus blog. I had a great theme all worked out but then some of my best pics went and got sold!! Honestly how inconsiderate, you're not supposed to sell things on Folksy...lol..

Well I managed to find a few other lovely things to add to my list

So here is the Black and White ball, think icy sparkling stars in an inky black sky.

Thats all folks, remember, support your handmade crafts, we may become an endangered species

Folksy Friday - November Nexus

Hi, well after a few months break I've decided to join this months daily listing club. It really is hard work making and posting something every day. Particulary with the day job and the nights drawing in, so its hard to photo things.

But enough of my moaning the reason I'm here now is to do a new Folksy Friday featuring my fellow Nexians...? That's not a word...but then nor is Folksians..lol

So here are some lovley items that I found while browsing and clicking on the November Nexus thread.  They are also linked by being fabric based. I'm gonna be brave and try for linking through the pic, so if this works please click on each pic to go through to the shop:

Folksy Friday

Well there I was at Westfield Stratford City, London's newest and most crowded shopping centre. We got as far as M+S when I started to feel faint and very strange. Luckily as soon as I got to the open air I felt much better. It must be the air, I did find myself wondering how they keep fresh air circulating through the whole place. (obviously badly..) When we passed Mucky Ds the smell was particularly ghastly. Anyway enough waffling, the thing I wanted to say was that we were looking for a cake tin to put the freshly made Christmas cake when my daughter remembered that we were going to get a table runner or some nice place mats or napkins for the Christmas table. That was when I started to feel ill so we never got round to looking at M+S. But of course I had forgotten Folksy, that handy resource for all things handmade, original and much better than some mass produced item from a chain store.

I've found 9 items so far and when I looked back on them I realised I wanted to feature all of them today, so I will just be showing the pics with a link to the shops. I tried getting the pics to be the links a few times ago but it didn't work very well....so pics and not much writing. Except to say this, the hand knitted and the hand crocheted table cloths, guys!! you are way undercharging for those, I know how much work must have gone into those, I would never attempt either of them, and the workmanship on these items them is just superb.

So without further ado and not in any order of preference:

 Click here for the shop above

 Click Here for the shop above.

 Click here for the shop above.

 Click here for the shop above.

 Click here for the shop above.

 Click here for the shop above.

 Click here for the shop above

 Click here for the shop above.

And click here for this shop. Happy shopping.