My weekend in numbers

Wow - what a weekend.

• candles blown out - 17
• sandwiches made - about 42
• balloons blown up - 12
• balloons later popped - 12
• exciting middle of the night text messages recieved - 2
• new nephews born - 1
• bottles of cider drunk - 1 large one
• tombstone cakes baked and iced - 1
• cupcakes baked and iced - 16
• amount of chocolate consumed by my children - I just dread to think
• times we sang Happy Birthday - 2
• party bags given out - 11
• black bin bags filled with paper plates, wrapping paper and half eaten biscuits - 3
• hugs and kisses - loads
  

The Year of the Cushion

2009 has been the Year of the Cushion here. I've been sewing cushions for loved ones all year, and getting steadily better at it the more I do. I started with this orange and blue log-cabin one for G, back in the spring.

Because every man needs a log cabin cushion with a watery-fruity theme, no?

And then I made a summery, flowery one for my Mum's birthday which I blogged about here. That one was all about using the vintage French doily I bought in the summer and my love of suffolk puffs.

And this week I've made two more. These ones are also embroidered, which just seems to me the perfect meeting of two crafts which I enjoy doing. I don't know why I didn't think of doing this before.

The pink one is for O's 7th birthday - just a week away now - and the blue one is for a dear friend who has recently moved to the other end of the country to start a new life with her man. Both a birthday and the beginning of a new family life seemed to warrant some labelling of the cushions.

For O's cushion I used some fabric from two of her all time favourite skirts which she really can't fit into any more - no matter how much she tries. Both skirts - a Boden strawberry patterned one, and an H&M pink, paisley one - were very faded. But this meant that both fabrics are also beautifully soft and I think will hold memories for O for years to come. I cut around one of the gathered pockets in the H&M skirt and used that piece as one of the panels. I just know that when O is given the cushion that little, tiny pocket will immediately be filled with secret, random 7-year old treasures like marbles, Barbie shoes, stickers, go-gos and hair bobbles.

My friend Janine's cushion is embroidered with all the names of her new, enlarged family. And I sneaked in a teeny-tiny satin-stitched heart as well. Because I'm sentimental like that.

For each cushion I pieced the top, then pressed it and embroidered it, and finally sewed the back pieces onto the top to finish the cushion cover. Using, as always, the envelope back method from Sew It Up, which has revolutionised cushion cover construction for me.

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Each of these cushions was made - from start to embroidered, photographed finish - in a day. Which is very pleasing. The family had better watch out - I may have just discovered a quick and easy, handmade answer to presents.

Far Eastern colour in the East End of London

On a wet, gloomy, autumn weekend in East London, what better way to brighten things up than with a trip to the Asian ribbon shop at Walthamstow market?


I was extremely (and quite uncharacteristically) restrained and merely came away with four metres of ribbon, a spool of silk embroidery thread and an armful of brown ricrac.

And I spent less than four pounds.

I am now looking around for some plain denim or linen to embellish with these happy, vibrant colours. Just the thing to brighten up autumn a little bit.

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Thank you all so much for your wonderful suggestions regarding American food in the comments on my last post. How could I have forgotten the fish I ate in America? The soft-shelled crabs, the clam chowder, the shrimp! All so very good.

There's more to American food than corn dogs

It all started with corn dogs. C had been reading the Wimpy Kid books and wanted to know what corn dogs were. I described them and told him that they used to serve them sometimes at the cafeteria at the college I went to in America. He thought they sounded like his kind of food.

He went to look through my American cookbooks, and was very disappointed to find out that not one of them had a recipe for corn dogs. Not even the fabulous White Trash Cooking. Undeterred, he went onto Google and found me a wide selection of recipes for corn dogs. But all involved deep frying and ingredients hard to source in the East End of London.

"I SO want to go to America," he said plaintively. "I would LOVE American junk food."

No doubt he would.

"But there is so much more to American food than junk food!" I exclaimed.
He rolled his eyes.
"Yeah - I know. You tell us that ALL the time."

A small exaggeration.

But it made me think I should cook more American recipes. The year I spent at college there, and the business trips I took there, all have so many good food memories for me. And I know I bang on about it to the children all the time, but there is so much more to great American cooking than hamburgers - very good though they are. I've loved watching the new series of Jamie Oliver's cullinary adventures. The episode where he travelled through the southern states brought back so many good memories - recipes for buttermilk biscuits, collard greens, proper barbequed pork and grits all had me shouting excitedly at the tele. I remember those!

So Friday night's supper became an American supper.

• Maple roast chicken from Nigella Express
• Corn on the cob
• Home fries
• Freshly baked buttermilk biscuits to mop up all the good maple syrup gravy from the chicken.

Buttermilk biscuits are a plain, savoury scone, made with buttermilk, and served as an accompaniment to savoury dishes. They are the perfect match to a plateful of gravy! The recipe I use is from Sheila Lukin's USA Cookbook.

Sheila Lukin's Buttermilk Biscuits

• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons vegetable shortening (I use Trex)
• 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
• 1 cup buttermilk (I usually use half a cup of plain yogurt mixed with half a cup of milk)

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Cut the butter and shortening into small pieces and add to the bowl. Rub the fat into the flour with your fingers until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Pour in the buttermilk and toss the ingredients together with your fingers until they can be gathered up into a ball.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead very briefly (not more than 12 strokes). Pat the dough out to about 2cm thick. Using a sharp, round biscuit cutter cut out rounds, gathering up the scraps and re-patting out as necessary. You should get between 8 and 12 biscuits, depending on the size of your cutter. Put on a baking sheet and bake at Gas 7 for 10 to 12 minutes. Serve hot, split open and slathered with good butter or dunked in some gravy.

And for some more inspiration, these are the American cookbooks I own. I recommend them all.

• From Anna's Kitchen (Plain and Fancy Vegetarian Menus) by Anna Thomas
• White Trash Cooking by Ernest Matthew Mickler
• Around the American Table by Michael Krondl
• Jim Fobel's Old Fashioned Baking Book
• Sheila Lukin's USA Cookbook
• Jamie's America
• Many of Nigella Lawson's books have some good American recipes in them.

We also love to eat blueberry pancakes, sloppy joe, burritos and homemade burgers. What American dishes or cookbooks do you enjoy? I'd love to get some more ideas. But maybe not corn dogs.

Sewing presents and labelling

Last week I made a last minute drawstring bag (like these ones) and put a copy of a favourite book in it, as a birthday present for one of O's friends.

The little girl's mother came up to me yesterday and thanked me for the present saying that the best thing about it by far was the label I had sewn onto the bag with her daughter's name on it. I could completely understand this. There is something so satisfying about labelling things with your name - saying 'this is mine!' to everybody who sees it and telling everyone that the labelled item (and presumably what is in it) is yours.

So I've made two more, as a birthday present for another friend of O, and for my nephew. Labelling all the way.

For my niece I've made a Letter Satchel from SouleMama's new book Handmade Home.

To make the letter satchel I had to turn the house upside down to find lightweight fusible interfacing. I knew I had some somewhere, but it took a while to find because I rarely use interfacing in my sewing. I usually find it easier to sew with an extra layer of fabric instead, but I had a feeling the letter satchel would look much better with the crispness of interfacing. And indeed it did.

I loved this project - even the interfacing - and am going to be making so many more of them.

The final thing I managed to get round to this week was sewing two little taggie blankets for the two nephews-to-be. This was entirely a diversionary tactic because the last few centimetres of the first Baby Kicking Bag are taking FOREVER. When will it end??

Possibly when I stop sewing and get back to the knitting.

Seen on the Tube

The Central Line - South Woodford to St Paul's
Three iPod listeners and a newspaper reader

• I am sitting opposite a man with fleshy, dissatisfied lips and an untrimmed beard over a pale, spotty face. He is carrying an old black, leather bag with mud crusted onto the bottom of it. He is listening to music on big, green, expensive looking headphones.
• A large lady, in her late 50s, wearing a well-cut linen trouser suit and a sparkly breast cancer pin badge, has very shouty rock music leaking from her ear buds.
• The man next to me has an iPhone that he doesn't want to put down. He is fiddling endlessly with it. Playing games, putting a playlist together, checking emails and going back to another game. I want to tell him to calm down and read a book instead.
• The young woman on the other side of me smells very strongly of bleach and is frowning as she reads the Wall St. Journal.

After my errands I bought a large cup of coffee and a croissant and sat in the churchyard at St Paul's Cathedral to admire the roses.

I don't miss work at all, but I do miss seeing the City in the sunshine.

Overheard

Whilst tidying up O's bedroom this morning....


"Dear God! That fairy's blind drunk again! Who mixed the punch? Was it you Merlin?"


Sylvanian Mouse whispers to Sylvanian Squirrel:
"This is the most embarrassing wedding reception I've ever been to. The groom is chatting up that tarty blonde in the orange dress and the bride's done her back in again. I just don't know where to look!"


"Yes, this recession is biting hard. I've had to turn the ice cream parlour into a bookshop and we've got a teenage runaway sleeping rough on the floor. I'm hoping the re-vamped garden will bring more customers in."


"EEEEEEEEEEKKKKK!!! Daddy! There's a great big dinosaur on the balcony!"

"I do wish this child would tidy her room more often. It would give her Mum more time to lounge about knitting."

Storage sacks

I'm not sure when I'll ever be able to resist my children asking me to sew or knit something for them. I suppose I have a hunch that there may come a time when homemade is not what they dream of. So now, if they ask me for something, of course I will give it a go.

On Saturday O was getting her dance things ready for a new term of ballet lessons and trying in vain to stuff everything into her little pink ballet bag. I think part of the reason she loves ballet so much is the vast amount of kit she has to have:

• one pair of ballet shoes,
• two pairs of ballet socks,
• one pair of character shoes,
• one circular character skirt,
• one leotard,
• one matching waist band,
• one (large) make-up bag full of hair accessories,
• a hairbrush
• and a pink cross-over cardigan.

She sat on her bedroom floor with piles of this stuff around her, and declared, "I need a new ballet bag. Can you make me one?"

For a while now, I have been meaning to make a few of the drawstring travel bags from Heather Ross's Weekend Sewing book. I decided the largest one would work well as a ballet bag.

It was very quick to make. I used the last remnant of the IKEA fabric I made O's bedroom curtains from when I was pregnant with her! The pink phase is becoming more dilute as she gets older and I love this fabric for being girly without sacharine. And I always love gingham.

I used pink polka dot grosgrain ribbon for the drawstring and embroidered a simple label using a scrap of leftover Clothkits fabric. I think it may be jazzed up further in the next day or two with a couple of suffolk puffs in a red fabric - perhaps a red polka dot.


Yesterday I was helping C tidying up his bedroom, and getting very tired of treading on marbles. Almost as bad as treading on lego. "I need a bigger marble bag," he sighed. "Maybe you could make one as big as O's ballet bag?"

No further encouragement needed! I whipped up another drawstring bag for his marbles. Not as big as O's ballet bag, but much larger than the tiny little bag that he had before. I cut his old marble bag in half and used it as a patch label on the new bag.



I've had a few goes at making drawstring bags before and have never been very happy with the finish around the top - where the drawstring is. This Heather Ross pattern is excellent for giving such a neat finish with absolutely no fiddling or swearing involved. The casing is sewn with no gap in it, but after reinforcing the seams with a small, tight zigzag, part of the stitching is then unpicked to make the entrance to the casing.

I love the way they look.

And I love the way they keep the marbles and the ballet kit neatly (but prettily) tucked away.

Nephew knitting

Something that we are all VERY much looking forward to around here is the arrival, this autumn, of two new nephews in the family. My brother and his wife are expecting their third baby later this month and G's brother and his wife are expecting their first baby around Christmas time.

There are so many things that I want to sew and knit for these two new nephews. I always think that boys get something of a raw deal when it comes to pretty or hand crafted gifts. Gifts, toys and especially clothes for small boys tend to be a little bit too functional and in depressingly drab colours. But little boys like soft, bright, tactile, colourful things just as much as little girls do (and so do their parents!).

So I am knitting the first of two Baby Kicking Bags at the moment. This one is made in a Kaffe Fassett Regia sock yarn in a madly vivid peacock blue/green shade (that I can't do justice to with my camera). SouleMama made one of these last year, and I have been looking for an excuse (baby) to knit one for ever since.

The pattern is free on Ravelry. It has a little bit of very simple cabling in the rib, and after that is just stocking stitch all the way. Very easy and satisfying.


And look! There is plenty more bright sock yarn and baby cashmerino in my wool basket so there will be a Baby Kicking Bag for my other nephew and I think some little hats and bootees for both of them as well.

Packing up and moving on

August into September is much more of a New Year for me than December into January. It is a time for the end of the long summer holidays and the beginning of a new academic year; I make new resolutions and turn over new leaves; we pack away the old and start unwrapping the new.

In the last week we've said goodbye to the summer holidays.


G finished six months of training and his first half-ironman race.


And I left work.



The children have started in new classes at school; C's comes with a whole new playground and extra responsibilities. O has a strict teacher.

We're beginning to find our way with an entirely new and unfamiliar family routine. I can pick up the children from school every day now, but we've said goodbye to the childminder who helped me look after C and O for the last five years. We all cried. C is still crying actually.

But also we're enjoying the late summer sunshine, and some of the plum jam I made for our breakfast toast through the winter.

I think it will be a good year.