1. 365:1 Bearded Lady wip, 2. 365:2 Sew Lovely Smile for the Camera WIP, 3. 365:3 Malted chocolate cake, 4. 356:4 Man from another era, 5. 365:5 Broken Hazard Tape, 6. 365:6 Sew Lovely Smile for the camera WIP, 7. 365:7 Another Sew Lovely Smile For The Camera WIP, 8. 365:8 Apple pie, 9. 365:9 More Sew Lovely Smile for the camera WIP, 10. 365:10 Smile for the Camera WIP, 11. 365:11 Smile for the camera WIP, 12. 365:12 Dragon WIP, 13. 365:13 My Hoop Up 2012 inspiration piece, 14. 365:14 Sew Lovely Mermaid Softie, 15. 365:15 Sunday night embroidering, 16. 365:16 Sour cranberry bakewell, 17. 365:17 More Elsa Mora WIP, 18. 365:18 More Elsa Mora, 19. 365:19 Embroidery at the end of a long day, 20. 365:20 Embroidery +science doc = bliss, 21. 365:21 Subversive cross stitch WIP, 22. 365: 22 Cushion Making Day, 23. 365:23 Hipster WIP, 24. 365:24 Subversive stitching WIP, 25. 365:25 Bad pic too knackered to take another, 26. 365:26 More Subversive WIP, 27. 365:27 More Subversive WIP, 28. 365:28 Hipsters use back door wip, 29. 365:29 I Dig you the most, 30. 365: 30 january

I’ve flirted with Crafting 365 before and not got very far but I’m trying again and I’ve got a good feeling about it this time, it’s not that I wasn’t crafting every day before, I probably was, it was always the taking the photos and posting them that got me but it’s much easier now with an iPhone and the Flickr app.

Anyway I’m going to post the pics here in roughly monthly blocks, I say roughly because it’s a bit difficult to do a mosaic on a whole month when there’s 31 days in it, so it’ll be in groups of 30 instead. So here’s January’s output and oooh it’s looking a little grey (with some splashes of red and yellow), here’s hoping next month’s output is a little more colourful!

(Going back to Crafting 365 was inspired by my massive pile of unfinished objects that never see the light of day on this blog or on Flickr, so Crafting 365 isn’t necessarily about finishing those UFOs but more about letting them get a little daylight time )

I should note that I may not always explain the meaning behind a particular piece in this project, but I’m happy to explain this one, on 4th January I had a small, minor procedure on my right wrist, I clumsily took the photo I based this pattern on, a few days after and I should point out that at that point blood was not dripping down my wrist! The blood drop is more metaphorical, as I did loose quite a lot of blood in the procedure, as you would if someone was performing minor surgery right at the point where you’d want to slit your wrists if you were so inclined. I had a local anaesthetic during the procedure but I could still literally feel blood welling up and dripping down my wrist, it wasn’t pleasant (sorry if that last line made anyone’s toes curl!). Anyway, I could barely use my hand at all for the rest of the day, could barely use it the day after, did manage to get some embroidery done the day after that (I’m right handed), the embroidery actually helped, if I didn’t over do it, with stopping my hand cramping. In total it took a couple of weeks for it to stop hurting like hell and even now it can still be a little tender and I still have some really interesting bruises. So that was my January, getting my hand back up to scratch again. I will probably need more work on my wrist, so don’t be surprised if more months in this project are various angles of my hand, if I’m still capable of embroidering them that is, fingers crossed (or maybe not, ouch!).

But anyway, considering embroidery is so important to me and I’ve started this year being at least temporarily restricted in doing it, I thought embroidering my limitations was apt . . .

The red cabbage was delicious, with a thick coating of sugar and red wine vinegar and of course the bacon, it was yum. The champ was a simplified version from the book, or put it this way, by the time I got to the final stage where I had to add the watercress I was loosing the will to cook / space in my tiny kitchen to go and prepare yet another ingredient (even though I was clearing as I went when I had a chance), but even without the watercress and the herbs, it was still nice, although maybe not as pretty looking as in the book. Girl Lacer loved the champ and disliked the red cabbage, Boy Lacer loved the red cabbage and disliked the champ, I had suspected that would happen, am I going to have to cook two sides more often?

For dessert we had jammy coconut sponge, which as far as I’m concerned is classic school pudding territory (although according to the kids their school dinner puddings aren’t like that – probably healthier).

And it was delicious, Boy Lacer was asking for seconds before he’d even finished the first slice, Girl Lacer didn’t like the coconut though. The jam on the sponge was meant to be exclusively blackberry but I didn’t have enough, so I added some raspberries from the freezer to, consequently the jam was more raspberry flavoured that blackberry, even though I’d still added more blackberries than raspberries, I guess raspberries have a stronger flavour, or at least frozen raspberries have a stronger flavour than out of season, shipped from god knows where, blackberries.

Anyway, I will definitely be making the red cabbage and the sponge pudding again, the red cabbage was a bit of a palaver but the sponge was sooooo simple to make yet tasted a million dollars.

Anyway, I’ve just written a round up post of Valentine’s Day patterns over on Feeling Stitchy and I stitched up one of the patterns I featured.

The pattern is by Sew Lovely and I think it’s lovely and particularly apt for me, in theory anyway, if like I actually get my butt down the allotment, start wearing my contact lenses like more than never and wear my hair more than once in a plait in like the last ten years (actually the plait wearing incident was fairly recent).

I have to admit though I principally stitched this up so I could feature this on Feeling Stitchy (I tend to only like to feature patterns that have been actually embroidered, as it shows that the pattern works but I’ll only stitch it if I actually want to stitch the pattern myself, don’t worry, as much as I love writing for Feeling Stitchy, I’m not that devoted to the cause).  Mr. Lacer is not a pink, hearts and flowers, cute, vintage person, however having said that I have just hidden this in one of his drawers (as I’ve stuffed it with lavender), so it is still for him, whether it’s a surprise or not depends on whether he opens the drawer before he opens his Google Reader next, as he does follow this blog (although he admits he skims through the embroidery and book posts and ummm I’d probably guess the food posts to).

Some cushions were saved, principally this (well, actually that was brought in from my craft area due to cushion shortage, I now sit on one of the old grey cushions that really needs throwing out when I sew), this and this (if you click on the links you’ll see the common denominator between all three is patchwork in bold colours), I think my new sofa is a very patchwork (in bold colours) kind of sofa. As for the other cushions, I don’t think any of them actually got chucked (despite my intentions), some were returned to the sofa because we couldn’t cope with just three cushions, some were clung to, by tooth and nail by the kids (our tatty floor cushions that spend most of the time on the sofa) as they were too attached to them (I’m planning on buying new floor cushions at some point, as the current ones have already been recovered once and are very lumpy) and other cushions have somehow, mysteriously made their way onto the kids bed. But anyway, I need to make cushions.

It took me about a month of thinking to decide exactly what cushions I’d go for, I didn’t want a mish-mash like last time and I wanted something to go more with the colour of the sofa and the ‘theme’ (if you can call it that) of the room (with the giant New York picture behind the sofa, which we’ve had for years). I also wanted cushions everyone would like, so anything too floral and cutesy is out. Me and Girl Lacer actually did a reccy of the cushion department in John Lewis the other weekend and we both decided we really liked the strong graphic prints and appliques, we particularly fell in love with this cushion (searching for that link just now I also found this one to, which I think is lovely). But I rarely actually buy cushions these days as they’re so expensive compared to me making a cushion myself.

Anyway, so with all this precise, military-esque sofa cushion planning, of course the first cushion I finish since we bought the sofa does not really fit the theme at all.

It’s actually one cushion not two, I wanted to stitch both of these gorgeous Elsa Mora designs and they felt like they should both be on the same cushion. They’re not too bold and graphic-y are they? But at least they’re patchwork (wonky patchwork, don’t look too closely) and most importantly I love them, goes to show you can’t stick too closely to a theme (And in my defence these were started in September and I didn’t have my new sofa then, they turned into very heavy going patterns – but worth it). And anyway, I think they look sort of gentleman’s club like, so that goes with the whole masculine vibe thing anyway.

Also finished off today (I’ve spent much of the day sewing cushions, I’m pretty busy at the moment and although I can still squeeze in embroidery time, it’s hard to find sewing time, so I’ve got to grab it whilst I can) was *ahem* a Christmas present for Boy Lacer, also a cushion ( we are a family of cushion addicts), this is from Wild Olive’s solar system pattern. (Please excuse the terrible photos, like I say, I finished late and although I suppose I could wait for better light tomorrow, it’s January, what better light, anyway the first photo, which is particularly bad, is just to show the cushion overall, as it is one big cushion).

(I particularly love the Earth pattern, that was fun to do)

Anyway, this cushion isn’t for the sofa, Boy Lacer will drag it round all over the place and then it’ll probably end up under something but he did like it when I gave it to him and that’s what counts.

I had planned to make this yesterday, to go with our roast dinner but I had some problems with the ingredients, so I had to postpone making it until today. The recipe is from Jamie’s Great Britain (which is really good for baking), you can see the episode the recipe is from here but I think you’ll need to buy the book if you want the exact recipe.

Anyway, I’m normally a stir it altogether at once and bung it in the oven girl, so making this was quite different for me and it took ages, with lots of different steps. I was really pleased with how the pastry went (Jamie can do no wrong with pastry recipes if I remember correctly) and the cranberry jam filling was delicious (soooo sour, like a really good sour sweet) but I wasn’t too sure about the frangipane, I don’t think it went wrong (other than me overcooking it a little, darn you oven – my oven, although a fan oven, always under cooks cakes, so I tend to always leave it at normal oven temperature instead of fan oven temperature when baking and I did the same with this recipe, I guess I shouldn’t have, still I managed to get it just before it burnt, it was just very brown), I just didn’t like the frangipane very much. I think there was too much of it (and I didn’t use all of it either) and there could have been more of the cranberry jam instead, although that may have been too sour for some people’s tastes (me and Mr. Lacer are at polar opposites with this recipe, he really likes the frangipane but thought the jam a bit too rich, whereas I loved the jam and thought the frangipane, which is made with walnuts in this case was too nutty for me).

Anyway, I try and think of baking like this as a learning curve, this sort of baking, as opposed to bung it all together in a bowl and stir baking, to me is more of a hobby thing, whereas bung in a bowl making is more of a day to day cooking thing. I always do like, with hobbies, to feel like I’m learning something and pushing myself.  Me and Mr. Lacer have been watching the Sport Relief Celebrity Bake Off and I’d forgotten how much I love (the normal version of) the show, you would never ever catch me on Master Chef, oh god, the stress and the fancy food, no way (plus those presenters really annoy me) and you’re probably never going to catch me on Bake Off either but if someone held me at gun point and made me choose it would definitely be The Great British Bake Off, worrying about soggy bottoms seems far less taxing and Mary Berry’s sweet. So now whenever I do a complicated piece of baking, I always imagine Paul and Mary judging me, I think they’d have had a moan about my oven temperature / timings and also my pastry case shrunk a little too much when I was blind baking, but other than that it was ok.

(This is also a recipe I would never have been able to make before I bought my Kenwood Triblade last month, you certainly couldn’t make this recipe without a food processor and although the Triblade isn’t quite a full sized food processor, it’s just about big enough, whereas the little blender things that come with other handheld blenders I’ve owned, would never have been big enough).

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(Not exactly going to win any awards for food photography or clean cooker hobs that one)

Living in a nerd nest (that’s my new favourite phrase at the moment, I should explain that Mr. Lacer is a geek and both children are thoroughly taking after him), weekends can be a little boring if you’re not the type who’s happy to spend the entire time in front of a screen. So I’ve decided I’m going to cook a bit more at the weekends, as I certainly don’t have much time during the week. So today I made Jamie Oliver’s Empire Roast Chicken and Bombay potatoes (recipe here). It’s basically roast chicken with a spicy yoghurt marinade (which burns black, so you have to flake it off afterwards) and roast, spicy new potatoes.

Now I’m not that into cooking roasts (specially as the kids used to be a lot more fussy than they are now) but it did look nice when Jamie cooked it on TV, so I thought I’d have a go. It certainly was an interesting way of cooking the chicken, as you have to put the marinated chicken on the bars of your oven shelf and then put the baking tray underneath containing some onion, stock and various delicious smelling flavourings. The contents of the baking tray were to make a gravy but I think the steam coming from the tray helped make the chicken so break apart tender it was delicious. And unusually for me when I flavour a roast chicken with something, it actually tasted of the marinade.

I was a little restricted when making this because the lovely Mr. Lacer had cleaned out the kitchen cupboards last week and thrown out all the out of date stuff, which included most of my spices and when menu planning this I hadn’t thought to check whether I actually still had the spices needed. But even so, with what I did have, it was, like I say, delicious and considering the kids were eating it I didn’t want it too spicy anyway (one thing I still need to work on them is curries).

The potatoes were ok but I think suffered more from me missing a few of the spices / restricting the spicyness anyway. The gravy was delicious but most of it had boiled off and I had to add more water.

Overall I liked it, Mr. Lacer (a very fussy chicken eater) liked it, Girl Lacer liked the potatoes but not the chicken, although she ate a bit (she’s not a great meat eater, unless it’s bacon) and Boy Lacer loved it, including the gravy (me and Boy Lacer are the token gravy eaters in this household, Girl Lacer can’t stand gravy and Mr. Lacer is not keen). However, much as this recipe worked I spent the whole time cooking it thinking pasta (what we normally eat at the weekends) is a hell of a lot easier, so I won’t be cooking this again in a hurry but if the urge hits me to cook up a hunk of meat again, I will definitely go for this over any other roast chicken recipe I’ve tried, if anything just to flood the flat again with the gorgeous, gorgeous smell of it cooking.

(Yes I know my bathroom is in a bit of a state, I drastically need a new one)

I’ve been eagerly checking the Hoop Up Swap pool over on Flickr, ooh since I finished my last Hoop Up Swap last year, so I was really pleased that sign ups for a new swap opened a few days ago. In Hoop Up you pick a theme and people in your group embroider a piece for you based on that theme (on fabric that you sent out to them), I think I’ve had the next theme I wanted to do in my head since the last swap, accuse me of watching too much Merlin if you will, but I knew my theme was going to be Arthurian Legend.

One of the things I really like about Merlin on TV is the embroidered banners and patches on their clothes, I think I remember a few nice embroidered cushions to. I am obviously not just watching for the embroidery but I always like it and I’ve been itching to stitch a dragon similar to one of the embroidered castle banners for ages. I couldn’t find a picture of one of the banners, but here is the dragons on the knights clothes.

I couldn’t get a good enough close up of the emblem and besides I think the dragon on the castle banners, although in a similar style, was in a different position, so instead I adapted a pattern from Urban Threads. The Urban Threads dragon comes complete with roses, which I didn’t want, so I adapted the pattern to get rid of them. As the roses in the original pattern obscured quite a bit of the dragon, I had to fill in those bits by freehand and I made a couple of mistakes, which I didn’t think would matter because I was using one of my trusted Frixiron pens and the ink from those disappears when you iron it. Oh no, not this time, instead it left bleached white marks I have to admit this was the first time I used the pens on this particular fabric, well I’ve learnt my lesson. I still like the piece and I’m proud of it as a good inspiration piece but for something that only looks half decent in a dim light where you can’t really see the bleach marks, ummmmmm.

I made the Rainbow Salad from Jamie’s Great Britain today but because I was making it for 4 instead of 8 I had to miss some of the ingredients out so there was an over predominance of purple. It was the first time I’d used my new Kenwood Triblade, which I’d treated myself to before Christmas, I tend to go through hand blenders almost like water because I’ve always bought budget versions, so in an attempt to end that false economy (and now that I’m working), I bought the Triblade and so far (on first use) it’s lovely. It feels a lot more ‘solid’ than my previous hand blenders and very important for me, is multi-speed. Also the blender bowl is much bigger, so it’s the closest thing I’ll get to an actual food processor in this flat (and to be honest even the Triblade is a little big for the storage round here). Anyway, the salad was ok but just ok and there are so many good salads out there, there’s not much point repeating your salad making on a salad that’s just ok (besides the kids didn’t think much of it and they will usually eat salads these days).