Christmas 2013

Oh dear, I haven't done well with posting - it's been so long.
The Christmas break is nearly over and I will be back at work on Monday.  If has gone by so quickly, we had my mum staying for the first week and while she was here paid a visit to my brother in Norwich.  All the photos that I took while there are out of focus apart from a few of my nephews gang of toys!  (slightly strange)  I don't know if it is the gloomy light that has dominated recently or if I just can't work the camera  but the photos I have taken have been very disappointing.

Rob did a fantastic job icing the Christmas cake that I had made back at the end of October.  Most of the cake has now been eaten.

I managed to do some carding, I had planned to call this one 'Copper Penny' but on reflection there doesn't seem to be enough copper in the resulting yarn.  The batts were made from black and rust merino and gold angelina.  All from World of Wool.

here it is being spun.  I am just about to ply it.
I also created these batts that I intend to spin as singles using the Westbury wheel.  I seem to be returning to the Westbury.  For reasons unknown to me I seem to be overspinning and creating yarn with too much twist on the Louet.

I have just ordered a big batch of fibre to dye up from World of Wool, it might get here before the end of the weekend in which case I will have a dyeing session.

Tea dyed paper 

While I have been on holiday I have been watching craft videos on Youtube, it is surprising what you come across, normally I keep to soaping videos but recently when browsing came across a bizarre rendition of the 12 days of Christmas from a firm in the North of England who produce Epoxy Resin. 

I also came across a paper artist The PaperAddiction who has some lovely videos for paper crafts. 

Armed with old tea bags I set about distressing some paper this morning.  Here are the results. 

Initial selection of paper, the Christmas wrapping paper was too thin. 

Teabag bath 

Results 

I am quite pleased with how this came out, although I am not at all sure what I am going to do with any of it.

Happy New Year everyone!

Valentine's Cake

I am so lucky to have a husband who can cook and make delicious cakes - the cake he has made for (late) Valentine's day celebration is from Nigella Lawson's 'Feast' cookbook (the chocolate cake section), Chocolate Malteser cake -  it is a kind of malted chocolate cake.

I would say that this cake is a delicious, popular and reliable celebration cake and he has made it a number of times, not just for me but for friends as well.  Todays cake was certainly the tallest one he has made! 

I was pondering the cake and the fact that the recipe for the cake part doesn't have a lot of fat in it - so if you wanted a low fat celebration pudding it would work quite well using fresh fruit and reduced fat creme fraiche for the filling instead of the malted icing (which is where most of the fat content comes from!)  

This should be the last cake we make before Easter - but we will see..... 

I am trying to finish off spinning a two ply that I have been making with Polworth in very spring like Easter colours.  I have been doing this on the Westbury wheel, she is much slower than the Louet giving me time to think.  They are both very different wheels and I like them both. 

I am still struggling with the border of the Ashton shawlette, it takes forever to do a row and I have to concentrate so hard that I can only work on it at the weekend.  I am determined to finish it (with all its mistakes!)

Wingham Wool Sampling Day

The Lavenham Guild of Spinners and Weavers along with Wingham Wool put on a sampling day last weekend, if ever you get the opportunity to go to one of these days then go, the idea is that you take your wheel and are free to sample spin any of the fibres that Wingham bring along; so armed with my wheel I went along. There was a huge amount of fiber to choose from and I came away with a skein of wool that I had spun throughout the day along with some purchases.

Here is my finished skein

It includes cashmere, purple alpaca mixed with sari silk, dyed merino in a variety of colours, a red merino and  silk mix, some pink merino with fluffy bits in it, merino and linen mix, red mohair with gold angelina, bottle tops  and crab. I am not entirely sure what I will do with the skein, but I did enjoy the sampling. 

I came home with some grey merino to mix with red mohair 

here it is carded up ready to spin 

Also, some purple alpaca to mix with sari silk and sparkly stuff and some green and red merino mixes for Christmas wools. 

I have started to spin up the grey merino with the mohair today after finishing a mix of cream alpaca and pale green and brown - I don't have a picture of this at the moment. 

Today was also spent making of the Christmas cake, (the oven seems to have been on for hours) I like the ritual of making this cake every year. I make Deila's rich fruit cake although there was a year when I deviated from this and made a Nigel Slater fruit cake, which although it was very tasty just didn't seem the same.

The cake is out of the oven cooling and will now be stored and fed until a week or so before Christmas when my husband will ice it (he is so much better at this than me).