Just a quick post on this Benjamin Bunny I recently stitched up. I chose a brown backing to match the brown of his waistcoat. I think Peter Rabbit looks slightly better, maybe I rushed Benjamin Bunny? The pair do look good together hanging on my curtain rails.
Just a quick little post to say Happy Father’s Day to my Dad and to show off the card I made for him (which hopefully my mum has given to him today!). The pattern is from issue 279 of Cross Stitcher. As soon as the magazine came through my door I stitched the design up so it would be ready for when I left to go on holiday. I love the cartoon-style typography and bold colours.
HAPPY FATHER’S DAY DAD!
As promised here is my review of Una McGovern’s Lost Crafts which I received from my boyfriend’s parents for my birthday.
“Once upon a time an ordinary day might have started with milking the house cow and sweeping down your front step with a besom broom. After making a trip to the wheelwright for a quick repair, you might have visited a nearby copse, under horsepower, to pick up and deliver a cartload of bodged chair legs, tied down with handmade rope. A lunch of homemade cheese, jam and pickles, and honey from your own bees, might have preceded a sneaky visits to the river for some illicit trout guddling. Failing that, you could have skinned and cooked a rabbit to supplement the harvest from your kitchen garden. Twilight might have found you sitting with a friend outside a local inn, whittling and drinking a pint of ale (brewed on the premises and poured from a wooden cask made last year) while the rushlights burned low.”
This is the opening quote from the Introduction to this amazing guide to traditional crafts and perfectly sums up its tone and style. For me, this book read a bit like a history book; a history of traditional crafts and ways to rediscover them. It paints such an idyllic picture of pre-Industrialised Britain.
The book itself is split into six sections; farming, hunting and gathering, food and drink, home and garde, practical crafts, and decorative crafts. Each chapter then discusses a number of crafts which all vary in their applicability to modern life (In my eyes anyway! There are some crafts which seem fairly feasible to try out and others which I think I would never try out, such as tanning leather.)
For each craft McGovern gives a short history and informs the reader of regional variations as well as different uses for the craft. The practical information on how to undertake most crafts is brief and more of an introduction rather than and in-depth guide. As such McGovern ends each craft with where to go for more information such as guidebooks and courses. I would definitely recommend this book as a starting point if you are interested in traditional crafts and skills.
Some of the crafts I would definitely like to try out are…
As an additional note, if you are interested in traditional crafts and skills of the past I suggest you check out a TV series called Edwardian Farm (there are also several others from different time periods which are also really good!) which you can find on Youtube.
I had a sudden urge to bake the other day so I whipped up these little guys! Not as tasty as my mum’s recipe but still pretty good. A really simple recipe with good results from the BBC website.
This is another recipe from my New York Cult Recipes book. As soon as I saw this recipe I knew I had to cook up some of these muffins. The only part of the recipe I deviated from was the lemon glaze as I thought they were moist enough and didn’t need it.
Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
Dry Ingredients
Wet Ingredients
Fruit
Glaze
Preheat the oven to 190C. Combine all the dry ingredients together. Beat together the wet ingredients. Combine the two mixtures and fold in the fruit.
Spoon the batter into a greased 12-hole muffin tin (I used paper cases) and bake for about 25 minutes until the muffins are golden brown and a skewer comes out clean. Cool.
Mix all of the glaze ingredients in a bowl until combined. Plunge the head of each muffin into the mixture, allow the excess to drip back into the bowl, then place the muffins on a rack, top side up and allow glaze to set.
At last! I have finally finished all the stitching on my welcome banner. After about a year and a half of stitching it is finally finished! This post is entitled ‘on-going’ rather than ‘finished’ because it is yet to be framed and hung in place. I am so pleased that I have finished the banner before I went away; it was touch and go for a while. I also really wanted to get it done in time for my mum’s birthday and I am really happy with the result.
Over the summer I am going travelling around the USA with my boyfriend and I thought it might be a nice idea to bring a couple of cross stitch projects along with me, mainly so that I have something to do on the long bus rides we will be taking. I decided on two designs from my book of American cross stitch patterns. Both are food-themed ; an apple pie, and a burger and soda picture.
This gift came free with issue 277 of Cross Stitcher magazine. I love sewing on different canvases other than aida or evenweave. it was incredibly easy to stitch and I know I will find a good use for this book.
This kitsch floral keyring kit came free with February’s issue of Cross Stitcher. The kit shows you how to use fusible web in your cross stitching and I can already think of several projects in which this material would be useful. Instead of making it into a brooch I stuck it to the front of a blank card and gave it to my mum for Mother’s Day.
This is April’s recipe from the Great British Bake Off calendar. I cooked it up for part of a family meal as the dessert. It was really easy to bake especially as I measured out all of the ingredients before hand so it was just a case of adding each step by step. The photos do not do this pudding justice however. Although it did burn a tiny bit it was so delicious, moist and gooey.
Chocolate Fudge Hot-Pot Pudding
For the sauce
1 baking dish (about 1.7 litres), greased with butter
Preheat the oven to 180C. Put the butter into a mixing bowl and beat with a wooden spoon or electric mixer until creamy. Beat in the sugar and vanilla, then continue beating until the mixture looks paler and is fluffy in texture.
Gradually add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Add a tbsp of the measured flour with the last portion of egg – the mixture will curdle but don’t worry.
Sift the rest of the flour and the cocoa into the bowl and fold in using a large metal spoon. When thoroughly combined stir in the chopped chocolate and the milk. Transfer the soft mixture to the prepared dish and spread evenly.
To make the sauce, sift the cocoa and sugar into a heatproof bowl with a lip, or a wide-necked jug, and stir or whisk in the hot water to make a smooth, thin sauce. Pour evenly over the pudding mixture.
Bake immediately for 30-35 minutes or until the sponge is just firm to the touch and the sauce is bubbling. Serve straight away, with vanilla ice cream.
crossstitchandkeepsakes 