March Stitch Along

I’ve been leading the March Stitch Along over on Feeling Stitchy this month and we had a fantastic pattern set from Corvus Tristis to work with. You can see the final Feeling Stitchy post here, where I’ve rounded up everyone’s great work.

Personally, for the stitch along, I made a bag, the Everything Tote from Heather Ross’ Weekend Sewing.

I used a rather appropriate lining fabric I think, as it reminded me a little of seaweed (fabric from Liberty).

The actual embroidery was fine, although a little tricky in places (mainly with getting the pattern transferred correctly for the applique – I was the only person mad enough to do that – but I like trying to challenge myself) and all that satin stitching for the letters was fun.

The bag was easy enough to put together , however unfortunately after all that I don’t think it’s a very practical bag. It has box corners and consequently it’s fine and nice and roomy when you’re carrying it on your shoulder but as soon as you put it down on the floor, say whilst you’re waiting at a bus stop, the bag flops completely open and your shopping spills everywhere (can you tell I’m speaking from experience here?). I think that’s due to a combination of the bag’s boxed corners and the wide top of the bag. I’m not sure even putting a catch on top of the bag would particularly help, as the bag’s mouth is just so wide. However I do doggedly try and use stuff I make, so I will use this bag, I think it may be useful for gym kit, gym kit being less likely to roll all over the floor like groceries. But I am now also thinking of trying this design on a T-shirt, just no applique and no satin stitching this time!

And all I wanted to do was some gardening . . .

I am beginning to realise that it’s getting to that time of year when suddenly the allotment goes from “I’ll do it when I’ve got some spare time” to “I have to do it first and then fit everything else in my life around it”. Unfortunately the aforementioned ‘everything else’ part is currently quite large. I’ve been aware that I was beginning to miss some planting deadlines, so I decided on Sunday that Monday I WAS going to go down the allotment, however it had already been planned that I was going to take Boy Lacer to see my friend* first thing Monday morning, however I thought, it won’t take long, I can fit in both and I could have done, easily, however I needed some more plant labels and before I knew it I’d ‘popped’ into town for most of the day, sigh. But I thought, “never mind, I can go tomorrow, straight after I drop the kids off at school”, but then Mr. Lacer (who’d got home before me and the kids, as me and the kids were having ANOTHER trip into town) rings me up “When you left, was the water ok?” he goes. I have immediate visions of me having done something stupid and there was now a cascade of water in the bathroom or something, as it turns out it was quite the opposite, there was no cold water in the bathroom at all. I immediately put two and two together and come up with ‘upstairs have a plumber in, it’ll be something they’ve done’. Some consultations with the neighbours later and it turns out they are replacing their boiler and that old water tank in the roof they don’t need any more has been turned off, now hang on a minute, we need it, as we’re connected to the same water tank. Cue an evening of having to flush the toilet with a bucket and brushing your teeth with a mug of water from the kitchen and out goes my plans to go to the allotment first thing, as I need to talk to their plumber.

Tuesday rolls round and I have words with their plumber, emphasising the fact that we kinda need that water tank to be a) switched back on and b) stay exactly where it is (upstairs wanted to remove it). Lots of blustered surprise from the plumber and both me and (I could tell) Mrs. Upstairs (we have fairly thin ceilings) were having to consult husbands (which feels so 1950s that, I think there’s a very fine line between working as a team with your partner and having to run all decisions past the ‘man of the house’). And in the end the two men of the house ended up calling each other direct, but I’d already been sweet talked by the plumber that if he connected our bathroom to the mains supply, it would be ‘good for our boiler’ (hmmmm) and we’d have better water pressure so our shower would be actually usable (ok! where do I sign up?).

So, all very civil but not quite, being kept from my allotment day I decided I could at least go and plant some seeds in some pots in the garden (catching up with some of those planting deadlines), I start work at the table on my patio, I can hear drilling from upstairs but they’ve been doing that all morning, so I think nothing of it. Suddenly the drilling noise gets louder and bits of masonry, some bits not that much smaller than my fist, are pinging their way around my garden. First time I’ve ever had to run from my garden in literal fear of getting injured. I point this out when the plumber comes down from the upstairs flat a few moments later, apparently he ‘didn’t see me’, hmmmmm.

So, anyway, worried that more holes may be drilled through walls any moment and I wouldn’t be ‘seen’ again, I retreat to one of my favourite and far more safe spots in my garden, the back doorstep, I carry on planting my seeds. A little while later someone upstairs throws a bucket of water out of their back door, right over me. God I screamed (and it wasn’t a girly scream either by the way, it was more a scream of “I have just about had enough of this!”). But luckily it was all getting a bit too much like a 60s slapstick comedy, Carry on Plumbing or something, so I could see the light side of it. Needless to say though, I was now totally banished from my garden by our upstairs neighbours and although I never ever normally do this, I potted my seeds in the living room instead, having to sweep and Dettol everything afterwards, as I’m a messy gardener and I always get soil everywhere.

I’ve planted peppers, aubergine, two types of squash and because I am a rampant chilli seedling murderer, more chilli seeds (Boy Lacer took one of the chilli seedlings to school and it was adopted by school, lucky chilli seedling, it’s gone to a kinder place).

I then, now negotiations had been completed for the moment, managed to sneak up the allotment for an hour before pick up. I’ve been so busy I hadn’t been for a while (as you could tell from the amount of weeds), but there were some more pleasant surprises to (although something had found my first flowering tulip before me).

And not a very good photo (I only had my iPhone with me) but look, apple blossom buds! Hopefully all those buds will equal apples later. I have no idea how good that apple tree is, as when I inherited the plot in late August, the tree wasn’t looking too good and there was one moth eaten apple hanging from it. Maybe this year it’s feeling happier.

(I’ll be bringing my proper camera to the allotment next time).

There were some more confusing sights to though, now I’m not totally sure this is all salad . . .

(I can’t remember if I said or not, but my salad seedling planting did not go well, I think a mix of my Nigel Slater planting technique and some frost).

Anyway, I didn’t remotely have enough time to do all I wanted / needed to do, but I had just enough time to dig over the area where I wanted to plant apple tree no. 2 (when I got the plot I asked the kids what they wanted to plant there and Boy Lacer had very specifically said an apple tree).

I then went straight to school to pick up Boy Lacer, came home for a little bit, learnt that all our water was about to be turned off and then went out again to pick Girl Lacer up from choir, we then all went straight back to the allotment to plant the apple tree. As it was Boy Lacer’s tree, Boy Lacer dug the hole and together we all filled it in again. We then planted a butterfly mix around it’s base (I know, probably, that I should keep the space around the tree clear but that would be impossible with my plot and I figured some flowers may be better than some invasive weeds). The kids then mucked around with the kid fork and spade set I’d bought the other day, whilst I sat contentedly watching them. A blissful way to spend the afternoon after school, I can see us doing that more often, now the clocks have changed.

*My friend is a speech therapist and she very kindly agreed to assess Boy Lacer for me and chase up his actual speech therapist, after the school professed some concern. My friend did the assessment and for pretty much the first time someone actually sat down and explained what exactly was the problem with Boy Lacer’s speech. He is apparently doing cluster reduction, which is missing out the second sound in words, so snake is sake, snow is sow, etc. etc., he also has trouble with s, sh, ch, j, basically sounds with the similar mouth shapes. My friend suggested things we can do to help with the cluster reduction and the actual speech therapist is coming to the school tomorrow!

Thank you card and Joel Dewberry’s Sewn Spaces

I bought alot of craft books over Christmas and my birthday and I haven’t really mentioned them here because, well, I bought so many it’s a bit embarrassing (I have such a craft book habit). Anyway, so I decided I was only going to blog about each book I bought if I made something from it first and as I have been so busy with tutoring recently, my crafting time is alarmingly slim, so not much crafting and not much using my lovely new books. However today I needed to make a thank you card to go with a small pot plant I’m going to give to a friend tomorrow (my friend is going to do a massive favour for me and Boy Lacer tomorrow, so she deserves a little something) and I remembered the thank you card in the Joel Dewberry book.

Cue thank you card I’m not particularly satisfied with.

For someone with a craft book habit I pride myself that I can follow and understand most craft book instructions (as long as it’s not knitting or crochet) but this one stumped me a bit as to why you needed two pieces of card and how exactly you were meant to fold them. So I just used one piece of card and folded it as how it looked in the picture as opposed to what the instructions were telling me to do.

However one instruction I should have followed is using some spray adhesive, I didn’t have any, hence the puckering you can see on the top left hand corner of the card.

With the lettering I wrote the words out in pencil beforehand, used a pin to prick holes for my stitching, rubbed out the pencil, then stitched. I should not have tried to write so neatly because consequently my handwriting looks awful. My handwriting is normally better than that if I’m not thinking about it. Really I should have got Girl Lacer to write thank you for me, as her handwriting (thanks to being taught cursive from the word go) is absolutely beautiful. Either way the resulting lettering is probably neater than if I had done as the book suggested and just stitched the words without creating guiding pin pricks first.

I also can’t cut a straight square to save my life and it shows.

Anyway, onto the rest of the book. Sewn Spaces is largely, as the name suggests, about items you can make for the home, although there is also some clothing (an embellished T-shirt that looks quite cool and is something I keep meaning to do and the ubiquitous pair of pyjama pants, why do all craft books have pjs in these days? I know why, obviously, it’s because they’re fairly easy to sew.) There’s also a yoga mat bag which I might make (guess who’s also just started yoga?) and a farmer’s market tote which looks good to.

Of the home decor items, there’s a teddy bear with a storage pocket, fabric collaged letters, glass etched frames, bird sachets, an appliqued sparrow pillow, a patchwork duvet cover with pillowcases you can make to match and a pocket memo board that all look cool and if I ever want to upholster a vintage chair I know where to look. There are other projects but not ones I’m desperate to do (and the journal cover project which is cute, disappointingly requires you to have an embroidery machine and have purchased the featured machine embroidery pattern separately, although I’m sure hand embroiders could adapt the project).

Overall I bought this book because I love Joel Dewberry fabrics (although incidentally the fabric I used in the thank you card was Tanya Whelan) and although there are some interesting looking projects (the glass etching in particular is new to me), this book comes nowhere near some of the other craft books I’ve bought recently and not so recently and the confusion with the instructions for the thank you card has not been a good start.

And now for the far more prettier part of the thank you present.

Spiced butternut and coconut soup

Another Levi Roots recipe, I love butternut squash soup and this one was ok, very, very spicy and nowhere near as thick as I normally like my butternut soup (I like it with an almost baby food constituency). But the combination of spices (chilli, allspice, cumin and coriander should have been in there to, but I didn’t have any) with butternut was a new one for me and I definitely think I’ll be playing round with the liquid volumes and the spice quantities, to make my own version of spicy butternut squash soup in the future.

Chicken kebabs

Another Levi Roots recipe, this one using his Fiery Guava Dipping Sauce, straight out of the bottle and which is, I think, the nicest part of the whole recipe.

Cooking this I remembered why I don’t like making kebabs, I’m possibly a bit over cautious (read: paranoid) about making sure meat is cooked properly and I think it’s trickier to do that with kebabs, also I normally end up burning the kebab skewers, although this time I made sure I soaked them for an hour beforehand, so that didn’t happen. I think overall though, nice as this was, it would have been nicer is the chicken breast had been griddled whole with a coating of the sauce and the pepper and the pineapple, also with the sauce, griddled along side.

Coriander Butter

I did aqua aerobics for the first time yesterday (great fun), so I thought I’d undo all my good work for tea. This is coriander butter, inspired by the peppercorn steak and coriander butter from Levi Roots Sunshine Food app (oh yes, I have way more than just the Jamie food app on my phone, I’m beginning to think recipe apps are the way to go, instead of traditional cookbooks, they take up less physical space for a start!). I would have made the whole recipe but when shopping for steak online I noticed that Ocado were selling peppercorn steaks for cheaper than buying the ingredients and making it myself, so it was Waitrose peppercorn steak with a coriander butter made by mashing together some squeezy garlic and some frozen coriander (I am also, as you have probably guessed by now, a big fan of having my herbs and flavourings either frozen or in little tubes, they’re always on hand and they don’t go off, well they don’t go off so quickly anyway). As it turns out most of the coating of the peppercorn steaks ended up on the (non-stick) pan instead of in our tummies, so that may have been karmas way of saying I should have made it from scratch anyway, but it was still nice and the butter was (literally) plate licking good.

(The Levi Roots app by the way is excellent, bright, colourful, a great selection of dishes, shopping list and menu planning features and a nice way of guiding you through each recipe complete with reggae music and kitchen timers for when you need them. I’ve cooked some Levi Roots recipes before and so far I haven’t found a single dud one, each recipe is full of flavour, so expect some more Levi Roots food popping up here over the next week or two).

Bloom

One of the ‘joys’ of earning more money is that I need to go to the bank more often, which is a drag if I have no other reason to go into town, so today I made a reason, I took my camera with me on the walk there.

As you can see, my walk to the bank wasn’t too bad after all . . .