A Fabulous Five on Friday

This week I thought I would share five finished projects from my year two City and Guilds students, with whom I was working last weekend. They are nearly at the end of their course and have all worked so hard to produce some amazing items.

1. Ann made this beautiful lace bag using a set of vintage handles that she picked up at a bring and buy sale. The body of the bag combines bought lace combined with free machine embroidery.

2. Scilla spent hours designing and constructing this wonderful tea light lantern which has been stitched onto a dissolvable fabric in order to construct the lace like panels. When she started the course, one of Scilla's ambitions was to be able to design her own projects and she has achieved this with considerable skill and flourish.

3. Tracey devised her own method of stitching onto tin foil to create the amazing panels on her bag. The design is based on tree bark and she has called it "No more tears" in memory of her Mum.

4. Each student has to complete one project using the automatic patterns on their machines and Jane has constructed this fabulous elegant cushion from woven strips of silk. It takes a lot of skill to make something look so simple and elegant as this.

5. Last but not least, Anne made this fun and quirky fish box with three separate compartments, which also uses the automatic patterns on her machine.

 

I love to see how each student progresses through the course and develops their own individual style. Fantastic work ladies!

Joining in with Amy for Five on Friday.

Spring has sprung!

Having spent two back to back weekends away teaching I find it always takes a few days to get back to normal... Whatever normal may be! I'd still not finished unpacking all my teaching stuff from the weekend before I was packing another bag ready for class on Tuesday. As it was the last class this term there were some treats too...

It has become something of a tradition that I bring cake at the end of term, so these little Easter cupcakes seemed to fit nicely with our end of term project... Little quirky spring birds.

These were some of the birds finished by my students yesterday. 

 

 

Today I've still not unpacked those bags but managed to spend a few hours pottering in the garden doing some much needed tidying up out there instead.  Much nicer tidying in the garden than in the house! And despite the threat of a cold wet weekend to come there is a feeling of spring in the air.

 

I think the little birds look quite at home in amongst the spring blossom!

As I've ended up making a few of these I thought I could give one away. Leave me a comment by Sunday and one of these little chaps could be flying your way in time for Easter.

Five on Friday...

From my kitchen over the past couple of weeks there have been....

 

1. Chocolate coffee fudge cake bites

From the Comic Relief Bake Off book. A bit like brownies but not quite as good according to my team of tasters. Not that they lasted very long!

 

 

2. Florentines

Taken as a gift to a friend. Recipe was from Nigella Lawson's Demestic Goddess book.

3. Mixed seed loaf

Just to show it is not all cake in this house a mixed seed loaf, that has become the only bread I bake lately. It has a tablespoon of honey in it which gives a subtle sweetness. But having watched the BBC programme last night about sugar, which seems to be the latest evil in our diets, I'm thinking I ought to start monitoring our sugar consumption!

 

 

4. Cabbage and Rice salad

A rather fabulous winter salad made with cabbage, walnuts, dried cranberries and red camargue rice with a nutty tahini dressing. See... I can do healthy! The recipe was in April's Good Food magazine.

 

 

5. Flapjacks

And because I was feeling so virtuous after all that salad... Flapjacks. I'm constantly on the quest for a perfect flapjack and will tweak and play around with recipes ad infinitum. These were pretty good but you've got to keep trying haven't you? But all that sugar again...

Linking up with Amy for Five on Friday.

 

Knitting Mitts

Thank you so much for the kind words and messages about the wall hanging left in the comments on my last post. I have tried to say thank you to as many of you as possible, but some of you are no-reply bloggers and I still can't get my head around replying in the comment box... So THANK YOU!. It has made me realise that although it is not my usual style, I am starting to appreciate the quilt. And I hope by the time I attend the launch part next month I will at least, have come to like it a little bit! That is if I can attend the party... They are having to change the date because it clashes with a day I'm teaching.

I would like to tell you that since its delivery I have done all sorts of lovely leisurely things but no. I'm teaching again this coming weekend and two consecutive weekends away with another teaching day in between is just a recipe for packing and unpacking and putting stuff away... And I haven't even put everything away since last weekend yet! So with absolutely nothing to say for myself, rather than go another week and a bit without blogging, I'll just show you some knitting I've finished over the past couple of weeks.

Yes, I know, just as we are coming into spring and hopefully some warmer weather, I have made three pairs of mitts. At least I'll be well prepared for next winter.

 

I'd been hankering after some green mitts for a while... I know... They are magenta... I'm not colour blind! It is just that the pattern I had picked... Fetching Mitts... Required Aran weight yarn and Alison of the fabulous company Yarnscape, who was at Textiles in Focus last month didn't have Aran weight in green when I was there. So I bought "Blackcurrant" instead and knitted these up in a couple of evenings. But having made these I decided it would be easy enough to adapt the pattern for the green (Sherwood) double knitting weight wool that I also happened to buy!

I didn't have to make them any wider, but added an extra row of cables to make them longer.

 

Then at this point, my Mum saw what I was knitting and declared she would like some mitts too. This time I bought the recommended Debbie Bliss cashmerino Aran, made them longer on the wrist and hand because Mum has got big hands... And a third pair were made!

 

I still have enough green yarn to make another pair but think I'm all mittened out for now!

I'm in need of a new knitting project... Or perhaps I should just finish off an old one... Or two!

 

Or better still, unpack some of the bags I keep tripping over when I go into my studio!

Memories

Well hello... Yet again I've been gone a while being busy with other things but it has been a good week. The sun has shone, I've dried washing outside, planted up some pots with primroses, been for walks... But best of all I have finished my big commission which feels like it has been hanging over me for weeks... Literally... it is a very large wall hanging!

Back at the end of November, I met with some of the residents of Edward House, a residential home in Cambridge. The ladies, whose ages ranged from 87 to 101 chatted to me about their memories and my brief was to convert them into a wall hanging. It was very exciting!

 

I knew I wanted it to be a type of quilt with a lot of text... I was inspired by Tracey Emin's blankets.... But without the profanities! I decided to use old table cloths as my background and started with a memory from Bernice, who at 101 remembered her Dad giving her 2d to clean his boots when she was a girl.

 

Several of the women remembered having to wear Liberty bodices... Some with suspenders attached to hold up their woollen stockings.

We spoke about playground games, shopping, washing, rationing.... So much that it was a problem knowing what to include and what to leave out.

 

 

But it has taken so much longer than I anticipated and over the past couple of months I've come to really dislike it. I'm not sure why really.. it's not my usual colour palette nor really my style. Also because it is mostly linen it looks awfully creased and crumpled... although it's not nearly as bad as it looks in the photos! Everytime I thought it might be nice to spend some time in the garden or read a magazine or something similar, I've had to stop and think no, better spend another hour or so on the quilt. It has taken hours and hours, so instead of feeling like a pleasure it has become a chore. 

I kept thinking that if I had the time and money I would have liked to have started all over again... although I'm not sure what I would have done instead!

 

But on Tuesday I finally finished it and this afternoon with anticipation and a certain amount of anxiety and dread, I delivered it to Edward House... I was convinced they wouldn't like it either.

But the staff and ladies absolutely loved it... they loved the colours and the details and I got a spontaneous round of applause! I still don't like it but it was huge relief to hear their excitement. Especially hearing the ladies as they were reading out parts that they remembered. And Bernice was especially excited to see it today as it was her 102nd birthday!

And it is also a huge relief to have it out of my house allowing me to get on with some other things

Although not until after this weekend... I'm off teaching at Missenden Abbey again tomorrow. Bad planning to be teaching over the weekend on Mother's Day but never mind. Hope you have a lovely weekend... And if you are a Mum, hope you get thoroughly spoiled.

The Year in Books - March

My Year in Books choice for February was H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald and I absolutely loved it. 

It is not a book I would have automatically been drawn to and if you told me it was a memoir about falconry I would probably never have picked it up. But it is our village book group choice for this month and I always try to read the choices if possible as I am often pleasantly surprised and this was a case in point. It is part memoir, part biography about the training of a Goshawk but it is also a study of coming to terms with grief, relationships and life, set against the most beautiful writing about nature and wildlife. I can definitely recommend it.

I also read Room by Emma Donoghue which was one of my Christmas presents. It is the story of five year old Jack, who lives in a single locked room with his mother, told through his eyes. At first I thought I wasn't going to enjoy it and it isn't a comfortable read but I found it powerful, heart breaking, uplifting and compelling all at once. It was difficult to put down.

 

For March I have chosen The Foundling Boy by Michel Deon. Translated from French, it is about the life of a baby abandonded on the doorstep of Albert and Jeanne Arnaud. It is set in Normandy between the two World Wars and it is also a village book club choice. I'm only two chapters in and at the moment I'm not warming to it but I often struggle with translations, plus I'm reading it on my Kindle and I always seem to take a few chapters to get used to the Kindle again... I still prefer to have a real book in my hands. So I'm optimistic it will improve... And I'll report back next month!

Have you read any of these? What did you think? Or can you recommend something you've read this month? Would love to hear from you.

Joining in The Year in Books with Laura at A Circle of Pine Trees

I Baked a Brick!

I had all sorts of ideas for using up the passion fruit curd... Swirling it through ice cream, using it to top a cheesecake or maybe a lemon tart... But I opted for cake. I was going to make a tried and tested almond sponge and sandwich it together with a marscapone cream and the curd. But in looking for different ideas I came across a recipe for passion fruit cake. A buttery batter swirled though with the curd before baking. Sounded just what I was looking for.

 

Maybe I baked it too long because it didn't seem cooked after the allotted time so I gave it an extra 10 minutes... But it came out very dense, heavy and rather dry. A bit like a round brick really. Not one of my better efforts! So in the end I cut it in half and sandwiched it with the cream and curd anyway it an attempt to moisten it. 

 

It looks a lot better than it tasted!

 

Actually, to be fair the taste was okay... Mostly because the curd tastes so good, but the texture left a lot to be desired. Not that there is much left... With the three eldest boys all home plus my Mum here for lunch on Saturday, they didn't leave much. In fact it's gone... every last little crumb!

 

 

But I wish I'd stuck to my original idea... Or better still, made the cheesecake. But I'll know next time.

At least the cookies that I made to take with us on a visit to my youngest son on Sunday were a success! And it has been good to have a weekend of family time.