homemade & crafts

I was up early yesterday – washed, dressed, breakfast eaten and dishes washed before making my way to the craft room. I was determined that I was going to finish the tablemats – well two of them – as I need to buy more interfacing for the other two. For new readers these mats are made from a tea towel pack from Sainsbury’s. The striped tea towel was cut in half and is backed by the plain grey with a heavy weight firm interfacing between the two layers.

Of course no sooner had I started than the first interruption arrived in the form of my daughter, son in law and baby Freddie. Although I am always delighted to see them I also wanted to get my sewing done while the light was good and it was not exactly a social visit – she wanted to go over the Christening arrangements with me.

Now, my daughter (who is probably just like me) never does anything by halves so we spent the best part of seven hours, with a small interlude for lunch and a cuddle or two with Freddie, going over the food to order, the food to make ourselves, the quantities we would need, the invitations, the decorations and the size of the tables and how we would cover them.

Did we forget anything?

In and amongst the discussions I finally managed to finish the tablemats and here is the photo to prove it.

I am quite pleased with how they turned out and they are a big improvement on our old ones. This is part of my drive to ‘beautify’ little areas in my house.

I had such a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment I only hope today is just as productive then I will be happy.

On today’s list is more sewing – I am going to attempt to finish the little jumper for Sweetie. I think it will be too small for her now so I will have to see if it is any use for little Freddie and if not I will donate it to one of the stalls at our Crisis coffee morning.

If there is any time left over I am also going to sew together this lovely snuggly cushion cover that my dear old mum knitted for me about two years ago and it has sat in my project basket ever since. I think it is moss stitch (you knitters out there will know better than me) and it will be a great addition to my winter cushion collection.

She has even stopped asking me if I have got it finished so she will be delighted if she sees it completed and on our sofa when she comes for her pre Christmas visit in a few weeks time, and I will be delighted to have another task crossed off the list.

I often wonder to myself why it is that so many projects in this house fail to reach completion – is it poor time management, taking on too much or maybe I need to push myself more.

Often in hindsight I would do things differently. The marathon last week going to Scotland, then to see mum and then taking out the grandchildren – one obligation after another was a bit much. It was so tiring with all the long journey’s that it has taken me the best part of this week to recover.

I have everything unpacked now and the washing done ready to repack for our visit back to North Yorkshire at the end of next week for Sweetie’s birthday celebration. It must have been so much easier years ago when families lived closer to one another.

Anyway, enough of my moaning I need to get on with the sewing and before that I have mushroom soup to make and prep the winter salad for tea which we will be having with those old favourites….baked potatoes.

Looking outside this morning it is glorious sunshine and so I might get a chance to plant the cyclamens and I still have a few mixed tulip bulbs to go in.

DH cut the holes in the pantry ceiling yesterday for the downlights (which was another reason for daughter’s visit as our SIL brought the hole cutter). He managed a mist coat on the ceiling to seal the new plaster and hopefully today will get another coat or two done.

Things are moving on here at last. x

Yes, I know it is really rainy days and Mondays in the lyrics of the song but today suits the song very well. What else do you do on such a wet weekend but grab your camera and go outside and take photos. Such an abundance of raindrops, dripping from every leaf and berry and glistening like tiny jewels.

Inside, is a different story – dry and cosy but oh so dismal. I spent an hour or so switching over beach pebbles and shells for a few discreet pieces of autumn decor. One or two pine cones, a few little dried pumpkins, my favourite seasonal cushions and pictures and before I finished I replenished all the tea lights and candles in the holders. I have some lovely wooden candle holders which add a nice warmth to the room this time of year.

Whilst taking these pictures I smile to myself …. just out of shot is absolute chaos in our house – we may be doing the pantry conversion from the smallest room in the house, the downstairs cloakroom, but every room in the house is now upset. To get more lighting and sockets fitted DH had to pull back the carpet in the bedroom above….I could have guessed…have been here before – so all the furniture had to be taken out and temporarily put where we can.

Despite all the mess – I made more, and have been crafting over the weekend – remember this knitting….

With the help of this book I found called Simple Knitting by Erika Knight I finally manage to finish the knitting part of this little hooded jumper and have only to sew the seams together now. Whether it will fit little Sweetie is another matter – I rather think it might be passed straight on to little Freddie – do you think the colours too girly? I can’t decide.

The four teatowels below came in a pack from Sainsbury’s in the sale. They are a good weight of cotton with a slight linen slub or waffle and my idea is to turn them into place mats. Two tea towels will cut down to make 2 place mats. So the striped grey will be backed with the plain grey and the dashed white backed with the plain white. We only need two mats most of the time being on our own now, so they will do us fine. I will need to buy some heavier vilene interfacing to sandwich between the two layers so they keep a good shape – but it is shopping day tomorrow so I can get some in town. Next time you see these I hope they will be made and on my table.

I have also been having a bit of a play around with ideas for Christmas presents and cards. So out came the sketch pad and pencil – had to dust it off a bit! In April I bought 5 of these calendars on stands for around £2 each, from Sainsbury’s clearance sale, with the intention of designing and printing my own calendar pages for 2020 and switching them over.

The original calendars had some quite nice little line drawings so I had thought about doing a simple lino cut print reflecting each of the months but time might be short now and twelve is a lot of designs to work on and print.

– so I decided to look through my sketch book for drawings that could be adapted.

This is still an idea in the making and I will have to do a few mock ups first to see what might work. I am no artist but some of the sketches will pass….I think. Whilst I had the sketch book handy I scanned in a few pages of drawings – these were mostly done in the days when we had more time and well before the grandchildren arrived on the scene!!

I keep intending to try to get in the habit of doing a sketch each day so that I might improve, but am not sure how I would fit it in.

And what better to occupy my time on a cold and miserable day than trying out a new recipe. I have been wanting to try this recipe for a long time – I think it is from Good Housekeeping magazine. I didn’t quite have all the right ingredients so had to improvise.

I just happened to have chestnut and ordinary mushrooms but no dried ones and I used a vegetable stock cube rather than the yeast extract, but it still tasted fine – in fact it was really delicious – but be warned I made two strudels from the mixture – the second one was much smaller but there is ample filling.

Mine doesn’t look quite as good as their picture – the cooking time seemed rather long and the crumpled filo pastry that you lay on top caught a bit whilst in the oven…. and the sesame seeds didn’t seem to want to stay on top. I might do this bit slightly differently next time or even use a different pastry, puff pastry perhaps.

I will add the recipe to the list in a day or two. For now I will have to close – it is my brother’s birthday today and I need to go and surprise him with a card – then I have a big mess to clean up.

Hope you all had a brilliant weekend despite the rain. x