This Blog is Moving!

This blog can now be found at caveofcraftedwonders.blogspot.com.

If you want to know how bad croissants are for you, make your own...

When I started off this blog the intention was for it to be a blog about my knitting projects. However, that seems to be giving way lately to my culinary endeavours. Although I am knitting a lot and have added a few bits to my Etsy and Misi shops this week, I don't feel particularly inspired to write about it. I do , however, feel inspired to write about how homemade croissants require you to take an entire 250g block of butter, smack it with a rolling pin, and then fold it into the middle of a ball of pastry. I know nobody thinks that croissants are the healthiest thing in the world, but I seriously wouldn't have believed the amount of butter that's in them had I not taken them out of the oven and gasped in disbelief at them swimming in it.

I don't mean this as any kind of a negative thing. They taste the way they do for a reason, and if there was less butter in them, they would probably taste a lot less awesome. Also, I obviously didn't care that much as I went on to add chocolate to mine. They were yummy :-)

And speaking of butter, we made our own for the first time last week! Tesco had a load of double cream reduced to 45p for 600ml, so we thought we'd give it a go and it's SO easy, and ridiculously nice. Yes, we are very proud of ourselves.

When making butter, for those who haven't made it themselves, you get lots of buttermilk which is basically the liquid part of the cream, and with this we made awesome buttermilk scones, and even if you never make your own butter, you should make the scones because they are great. So great, in fact, that we ate them before I remembered to take a photo!

Finally on the 'I made it myself' front, I made lemon curd for the first time this week as well. Again, takes ages (croissants take like, twelve hours.Literally. Lemon curd is nowhere near as long but just a lot of 'simmering in a bowl over a pan of hot water and occasionally stirring it to see if it's thick enough yet'), but so worth it in the end. Especially if you are a special kind of mad person who makes their own croissants as well and then you can dip the croissants in the lemon curd and it's just all kinds of awesome.

There's loads else I want to talk about (like the fact that I gave away 25 of our 30 tomato plants via Freecycle today and gentleman who took the last lot away brought me 2 bunches of tulips in return. Sweet), but mostly this book:

I bought about 30 books from eBay a while back all featuring various crafts and related activities and this is pretty much my favourite I think, primarily for this page:

My disgusting photography skills mean you probably can't really see it, so I'll tell you it's a page full of sweet recipes. Amazing. I will probably be making these all at some point over the next few weeks, so watch this space!

On the knitting related front, I am currently knitting a Christmas stocking. Yes, I know it's April, but what can I say? Sometimes the fancy takes hold and there's nothing I can do. I did finish a turtle mobile today though. You can find it here, and it's pretty cute if I do say so myself!

The Most Exciting Earnings Ever!

Today started off a little stressfully to be honest. I had a meeting at work to talk about what will happen when I go back after maternity leave - it won't happen till September so thankfully I still have some time to wrap my head around the idea of not being home with a small gorgeous baby all day! After that I came home, hung out with aforementioned baby and hubby for a while, and thought I'd check my email quickly before heading out to do some more househunting. I checked my email, and literally started shrieking because......today (after pretty much giving up on ever selling anything) I had my first Etsy sale!

 

I honestly don't think I've been as excited to have earned money since I was a kid, and although I love my (previously mentioned) 'proper job', this is the first money I've made in a loooooong time from the work of my own hands and it feels amazingly rewarding to know that somebody thought something I made was good enough to spend their own hard earned money on! I spent the evening packing it up for postage tomorrow so now I just have to wait with baited breath and hope that my first ever customer loves her purchase as much as I do. I am literally on tenterhooks, and now I'm off to rush about the house and shriek some more.

 

And because I'm not one to miss an opportunity for shameless self-promotion, if you think he looks adorable, I can make you your own, just click here!

Vegetarian Victory!

I have been knitting recently, but not as much as I'd like to have been. I currently have Mum and Dad duck minus their eyes and the unseamed, unstuffed body of one duckling. My jumper has a front and the cuff of one sleeve. So in lieu of knitting, I'm going to post about a new initiative in our household. 

We are (especially me) really quite into the idea of self-sufficiency. Eventually I want to grow my own fruit, veg, and herbs, and have chickens for eggs and probably also meat. Currently we live in a flat with a garden which is communal and maintained by an outside gardening company, so at the moment I'm dreaming. To compensate we are trying to buy as much local produce as we possibly can and grow herbs and some veg on our windowsills and also shop on a budget with a meal plan each week and reduce our food wastage as much as possible. This week we discovered the wealth of farm shops there are in our surrounding area and at the risk of sounding like a total geek, it is so much fun to shop there!

Anyway, I digress. The new initiative is that hubby and I have recently decided it would be a good idea to make Saturday nights 'veggie night' in an attempt to eat less meat. Tonight we had an epic success and I wanted to share because we're ridiculously proud of ourselves! 

This was the main course - a weird mixture of Spanish and Japanese food that ended up working really well! Using a load of the veg we brought from our various trips to various farm shops, we made our first attempt at tempura and it worked surprisingly well. We also made my all - time favourite tapas dish, patatas bravas, to accompany the veg. We still have leftovers and we're both stuffed! 

We had an egg white left over from making the tempura batter which only uses the yolk, so Rhys mad a couple of meringues, and earlier in the day we'd made a lemon and raspberry tart using locally made lemon curd and raspberry curd. This was pudding:

Ridiculously successful and hugely fun dinner. I'm currently in the middle of reading The River Cottage Cookbook (and yes, it does need to be read not flipped through. The thing is like a huge foodie reference book. It's amazing) and he keeps talking about how every meal should be fun. I know there are days when I just so don't want to cook and can't be bothered, but on days like today I really feel like forcing myself to be enthusiastic is worth it. My mum always used to tell me to pretend to be happy when I was sad because after a while I wouldn't be pretending anymore, and it turns out the same is true of my cooking enthusiasm :-) 

First Jumper!

I'm really excited because not only did I acquire a lot of new patterns this week, but I found a pattern for a really pretty jumper that I really like. I've been looking around in shops for jumpers for a while as no matter how many I buy I always seem to have a deficiency and after ages of finding things that weren't quite the right colour, shape, or style, I thought why not just make it myself? so that's what I'm doing. Despite the pattern being from the 1983 Womans Weekly Knitting Book, it's really simple and fairly elegant and just looks comfy really. I'm knitting it with a 50% wool 50% acryllic DK yarn I bought from Kemps (who are quickly becoming one of my favourite places to shop for yarn - so cheap! such fast delivery!)

This is the pattern, and I'm knitting it in dark purple yarn. The thing I love most about knitting is that it creates such a sense of accomplishment. I'm now at the stage of pretty much being able to do all the basic things on straight needles, but I have yet to overcome DPNs and circular needles. Early on I realised that if I only knit patterns where I could already do everything before I started, I'd be knitting scarves for the rest of my life, and so now I just find things I want to knit and figure the rest out as I go. So far I've managed to overcome every hurdle and when something is finished it just gives me a feeling of immense accomplishment that I don't really get from any other aspect of my life except being a parent. 

I have a problem with getting majorly overexcited about new projects and then they tend to snowball and get out of control and then after a while I move on to something else. I have noticed this problem becoming less as I get older (for example, my book blog which I started on a whim after moving across the country has now been going strong for over two years), and I'm hoping that crafting in general will survive the lulls! I would really like to start learning to crochet and to quilt this year, as I have a really nice sewing machine I have never used! 

Anyway, you can see that my thoughts go round in circles and I've got totally off topic already! I've nearly finished the front of the jumper and I love the fact that it's pretty much just knit in panels, so there's not too much complicated making up to deal with, which is perfect for me as my stitching is basic to say the least! The only thing which annoys me and my tangentional attention span slightly is that because it's by far the biggest project I've undertaken to date, I am focusing all my attention on it and haven't been able to start any other little projects. This makes me slightly antsy as my Etsy shop is still woefully understocked, and I'm working on a couple of patterns which are hovering at being about half finished at the moment. Ideally, I'd like to get this jumper finished as soon as possible so that I can get on with something else, but at the same time I don't want to rush it and ruin it! 

I'll keep updating as I go and hopefully it won't be too long before I have pictures of the finished article!

Starfish and Fish and Snakes, Oh My!

I've been concentrating on trying to stock up my brand new Etsy shop this week and I'm very excited about it. So far I'm focusing mostly on toys and items for baby nurseries, and my favourite thing I've made this week is this gorgeous little guy:

He's so colourful and cheeky and I have to admit to being really proud of him! Obviously I've been combining my love of books with my love of crafts this week and reading The Handmade Marketplace by Kari Chapin. I have a little problem with book acquistion which is well documented over on my book blog, so I've committed myself to a year long book buying ban. This just means that I'm having to order all my books about selling crafts and making crafts and suchlike from the library, which I guess is kind of good in a way as it means I don't end up stockpiling huge numbers of books, but also bad because it means I'm taking notes like a crazy person as I know there's loads of the info I'll need at a later date!

Although I've been knitting randomly (gifts, stuff for my son Benji and suchlike) for a couple of years now, I find that having this Etsy shop has provided me with tons of motivation to come up with new ideas for patterns and things. I've actually never written a pattern before this week, but I'm currently working on something which will hopefully be all worked out and finished up in the next couple of weeks and I think it'll be brilliant!

I'm also casting on for my first adult sized jumper in the next few days. I've ordered my gorgeous yarn this morning and it should arrive in the next five days or so (in case you're interested, it's Mode DK in Grape) and I'm really excited about it. I bought a load of craft books from eBay (craft books don't count as part of the buying ban!), because somebody was having a clearout and there were a couple of knitting books among them which have some lovely patterns in there, and this is one of them. Isn't it great? I've also been round to my Grandma's this week as we're visiting family and had a rifle through some of her toy patterns.

I say 'some' but I think I've pretty much nicked most of the knitting ones! It brought back loads of memories, as in the folder I found the pattern for the Humpty Dumpties she used to make for me when I ran stalls for Charities Day at my primary school, patterns for Rupert Bear and Bill Badger which she made for my twin sisters, and loads of other stuff! Knitted toys were such a part of my childhood I can't imagine them not being part of Benji's!

I think there's probably too much going on in this post, but I have a lot to ramble about and I kind of feel like if I don't just get it out there this blog will never get its' feet off the ground!! More coherent posts will follow, I promise! 

Hello!

It's been so long since I started a blog that I've totally forgotten how to go about it! So, hello! I'm Bex, some of you may know me from my other blog, An Armchair by the Sea, where I've been talking about books and such related things for a couple of years now. I decided to start another blog for my crafts as I'm getting more ambitious and I feel like I need a place to talk about that!

I've also just opened an Etsy shop, the link to which you can find in the sidebar --> It's really brand new at the moment and there are a few major flaws with it, mainly that it doesn't yet have a banner and my photography skills need some definite improvement, but I'll get there!

My baby is just about to be four months old and I kind of feel like I need a bit of a reinvention in my life, as I'm enjoying being at home a huge amount more than I thought I would - I guess the domestic woman in me is finally coming out! Anyway, I feel like the craft community is going to be a great place to be, and I look forward to sharing my projects and experiences! :-)