creating

(First photo Sophie and the amazing cake she made for sports relief, isn't it pretty???). Life in the house is suprisingly busy of late, I've got a comission for 100m of bunting for a friends wedding (they had bunting on the invitations so we are trying to match that, the main colours are candy pink, a mintish green and a sort of fawn/cream. When I first got the colour scheme I was immediately reminded of neopolitan ice cream but the bride to be wants all the different materials to have a vintage/pattern theme). So with the brief firmly in place (and written down so I didn't get carried away) we set off for Mason's (I took Jam with me as he is really good at matching colours, not many people know that!). It took a while but we have now selected three different materials for the flags (we also managed to get 2 rolls of bias binding but that's only 50m so the other two are on order), we also bought a rolly cutter as I didn't fancy cutting all those flags out by hand! While I was crocheting the other night (more on that shortly) Jam cut all the material so now I just have the task of hemming it and measuring/attaching to the bias binding (this is only going to be single sided bunting, as its going on the sides of a barn). I'm thinking this might be best all done at once over a weekend. Sadly (or not) that won't be this weekend as my friends Zoe and Steve are coming to visit and we are all heading off to a gin and literature (Zoe picked it, honestly) talk at Oxford Literary Festival, hopefully preceeded by a lovely lunch.

There are two other works in progress at the moment, one which deserves a post of its own (and is nowhere near finished so I think I'll hold off blogging for the mo, although to give you a clue its chicken themed) and the other is this blanket.

My violin tutor has just become a dad for the first time and a week ago was searching for possible names for his new baby girl. Knowing his wife is a native Quebecian, I suggested Aimee (with accents) which has french roots and means 'beloved' which I though was lovely, and the more british Clara (I didn't know the meaning, I just liked the name, but apprently it means bright/famous and has latin origins). I added a note at the end that they were just the names I liked and I'm sure they would receive many other suggestions. To my delight I received an email back this week saying they had chosen Emmaline as a first name but Clara as a middle name! So I thought in the absence of cuddling her I'd make her a blanket. I bought the wool (originally I wanted purple or a yellow, but there were no colours in this super soft yarn that I liked). I know blue, cream and brown are maybe though of as boys colours because of the blue but I'm sure Emmaline can carry it off. I'm still a bit undecided about the pattern though, originally I had my heart set on this wave pattern but now 1 repeat in its starting to curl like crazy (I don't know if that's my fault for crocheting too tight or if there just isn't enough yarn there to weigh it down yet). I'm tempted to rip it back and just do a straight blanket (there being time pressures as well). What do you think?     

Sophie's Birthday cakes

This year my work team gained a new member, I was more involved that usual interviewing and training our new recuit. But fantastically she is awesome and a keen baker. So for her birthday I decided to bake for her.

 I went for death by chocolate (pictured being held by the birthday girl). Sophie had also had a bake (she is experimenting with different flavourings/colours as we have an inter-work cake tournament happening in a couple of weeks. She came up with several varients on the Blackberry, Pomegranite & Raspberry theme and cupcakes was the name of the game.

They were delicious and they looked so awesome (the blackberry definitely added to the colour as well as the flavour and some red dye added some wow factor as well. (here I one cut open how lush is that?)

Good work Sophie, Happy Birthday to you!

Group 2012 and a breadstick experiment

I've got a bit of a confession to make. I've been attending a writing class for the last two months. I didn't post about the first meet because it was all very new (and quite scary) and I wasn't sure I had the nerve to go back (I still don't really think of myself as a 'proper writer', which may be part of the problem). This time I had dutch courage (in the form of a single malt before I set out) so let me introduce you Group 2012.

Set up as a joint venture between Blackwells, the Oxford Editors and Hersilia Press the group aims to support its members by inviting published authors to give talks and advice and supporting work in progress by offering feedback and advice. The first session was a mixed meet and greet where the aims were put in place. The second meeting we had the quite wonderful James Attlee talking about his latest book Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight (and offering copies up for a very reasonable price, alas I didn't go via the cashpoint on the way but I will be buying a copy of Nocturne for my dad's birthday & a copy for myself if my bookcases can bear any extra strain). The talk itself was fascinating, James describing how he had followed stories and images of the moon through time and cultures ending up with a kind of distilled essence from which the book flowed.

We had the opportunity to quiz him after he had finished and I asked about his top tips for writing when you have a job as well (as he does, good man). He told me that you have to train your brain into the habit. He had written lots of stuff on the train to and from work in what would have usually been dead time & he now knew this was writing time so it was easy to stick to.

 Certainly food for thought as my rewrites don't seem to be going anywhere quickly at the moment. The rest of the meet was given over to socialising and attempting a critique with something already published as real critiques are due to be happening at the next meet (my friend Ali will also be talking about his newish book the man who rained, which I ranted about on here already) so lots to look forward to there. You can follow the progress of the group on their blog here (I believe there is an official post being written about the Feb meet at some point).
The second bit of this blog title refers to a connected but quite different part of the event. We had been told to bring a bottle and treats to share. I decided as I'm in a bit of a bread phase to take some homemade breadsticks. I made them in 3 flavours Parmesan, salt and chili. They turned out wonderfully (the Parmesan and salt being particularly good).

I then discovered (to my horror) that the meet was not on the Monday as I had it in my diary but on the Wed. Homemade breadsticks do not keep (and these indeed went v.mushy) and even the chickens refused to eat them, so I ended up taking these.

Honestly the best laid plans...

Bread with Claire

Claire and I have been friends since about the age of 12, when we kind of fell in with each other (and never really fell out, despite the time she pushed me in the mud, but that's a different tale...). We were together all through high school, but then college came and we were seperated & uni followed and then our jobs and loves took us further apart still (me to the bright lights of London & Claire to Barry Island). Thankfully world balance has now been restored as Claire and her husband Simon have just moved to Guilford, a mere hour away from me! We decided to take full advantage of this geographical closeness and meet up for a break baking day and here are the results. First up we gave Claire's bread making machine a go, I think somewhere something went a little wrong as the resulting loaf was a bit too 'interesting' to photograph or eat (think large pile of soggy crumbs you are probably nearly there).

Our latter two efforts however worked out really well. We tried focaccia from Dan the bakers River Cottage handbook (I got this for Christmas and have to say it's brilliant, all the recipes look amazing, there is loads of other useful bready information and just like Delia so far all the recipes I've tried have worked (result!)). Our second batch was a bit of experimentation, Claire had been given a batch of tiger paste so we thought we'd make tiger bread rolls. S hockingly Dan the baker didn't have a recipe so we used this one, if anyone else tries it could you let me know how you get on? Ours turned out really wet meaning we had to add quite a bit more flour than was called for in the ingredients. Still the resulting rolls were really tasty. We are planning another meet up for a food day soon, the next subject of our experiments cupcakes and biscuits. Yum.

Many many cakes

We had a birthday to celebrate this week as well as Christmas calories to consume, Jam turned 28 (or as he prefers to think about it 18 &10) so I made him a chocolate birthday cake filled with chocolate chips and complete with chocolate icing. The night of his actual birthday we went out for a meal at his local restaurant so no cake was required but the cake got eaten later that week   

Yet again I had problems with my icing lettering but it did work out okay in the end. My cake skills however pale into comparison next to our neighbour (and former landlady) Trisha. Trish has made 2 wedding cakes this year and with time and icing on her hands got to work on this lot. This was the cake she made for her family

 

Whereas these three were all presents. 

I got to choose one and it had to be this guy, the snowman (how cute is he!) 

Just to put it into perspective here is an undecorated one.

What a lady!