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.

Folksy Friday

Just a quick post..being hassled to cook dinner. In honor of Halloween and the orange and black gloves that I''m making at the moment, here is an orange and black folksy friday..nothing specifically halloweenish but some great picks..

First an orange! When I saw the thumbnail of this  I thought it was a real one, beautifully simple yet perfect.

View this here

On to one of my favourite categories for gifts for me..hint hint..This lovely bag just jumped out at me. It would make a great knitting bag. You can visit the shop here

And the last orange which begins with z hooray for zeds and zebras. A really beautiful picture which would brighten up any room.

 View this item here

Now on to the blacks, I was looking for something unusual and this brilliant book came along. Very novel (sorry, no pun intended) at least I've never seen anything like it. This would make a lovely present for someone especially a fan of 'Black Books"...lol.

Look for the details of this item here

Finally some jewellery. These sweet delicate earrings are very tempting..no..I don't need any more jewellery..no..no..they remind me of a ginkgo leaf which is one of my favourite shapes.

If you want to buy them go here

And on to a quirky ring, my daughters love lego and funny lego jewellery.

So if anyone you know is like them you can make them happy by going to this shop

That's all for now..enjoy shopping and have a lovely weekend.