Baking and sewing

After a brilliant start to summer the rain has settled in so what better time is there to bake? This is my mother-in-law's variation on a coconut chocolate slice. It's one of those very simple melt the butter and add the dry ingredients recipes. It was one of her morning tea staples back in the day when she baked for the shearing gang when they worked on the family farm. It has become a family favourite and my mother-in-law called it Ross's Special after one of the shearers who loved it so much.
Here's the recipe so you might get to love it too.
125 gms of butter
1/2 cup of sugar
1 cup of flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 crushed Weet Bix
2 tbsp cocoa
1/2 tsp vanilla
Mix dry ingredients together. Melt the butter, add vanilla and stir into the dry ingredients with a fork. The mixture is fairly dry. Tip into a tin* lined with baking paper and press the mixture down to fit the pan. Bake at 180 C (350 F) for about 15 mins. Ice with chocolate icing while it's still hot. Leave to cool before cutting into bars or squares.
*I use a square tin 19cm x 19cm.



Last week - when it was sunny - I finished these napkins. I'm especially proud of the mitred corners.

The gift of the gift tag

I'm loving making cards. These martial arts gift tags are the outcome of my latest adventure with spray glue. Only problem is: can you give gift tags as a gift?

Tea towel project #1

This tea towel was a gift and too nice to use to dry dishes. Immediately on receiving it I decided it would make a great apron. Three years later ...

This is such a quick and easy project as the tea towel is already hemmed. Using an old apron as a template, I simply cut the top corners diagonally to form a bib, hemmed the cut edges and attached the ties that I made from calico.

However, unless you're really tiny you do need a larger than average tea towel. This one was a generous 53cm x 72cm from the Edward and Son artists' fair - on again this year on Saturday, December 11.

A little boy needs a warm sweater for a cold English winter.

I just finished knitting this chunky sweater for my nephew's baby son. It's been a while in the making but I'm pleased with the result. I love knitting cable patterns. It's a bit like magic how they turn out.
The pattern is from an old knitting book by Shepherd yarns and I used a machine washable wool.

Treasures from the library book sale

Our library has a book sale twice a year and there are indeed treasures to be found. With Xmas coming up, I was looking specifically for books with images I could use to make cards and gift tags.

The cards I made are quite small (11.5 cm x 7 cm) but I had some old tracing paper see-through envelopes that were the perfect size to match. Once I decided how I wanted the cards to look, they were quite easy to make - cut out picture, glue onto card, trim and round the corners.

• I recently bought a corner punch so the cards had to have rounded corners.

• I also used aerosol spray glue for the first time and it is the best thing ever.

I think I'll keep some of the cards for myself and gift some as notecard sets.


These pages are from 'Wild flowers of Britain' - also from the library book sale - but I can't bring myself to cut the pages. The photographs are just too fascinating and too beautiful.

Not that 'Looking after cage birds' isn't also a nice book ...

Happy Movember!

Sadly the drips are lingering in the developmental phase - forever. I still have a few design issues to sort out.
But, because it's November, and I love this guy's moustache, I'm going to share one of my experiments with you. Enjoy Movember.

Pink

Pink food,

pink champagne,

pink blossoms!

We had our own little hanami last weekend under our blossom trees. They are in full bloom - laden with pink blossoms - and looking beautiful and amazingly like a magic garden.