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).

I made apple pie (from Boy Lacer’s Cookery Book for Boys) with the kids today. Girl Lacer did the chopping, Boy Lacer did the flavourings (ginger and cinnamon, quite a bit on the floor) and both did the thumb prints and the brushing with milk / sprinkling with sugar.

It was not the most exciting, original apple pie I’ve ever eaten (last apple pie I think I made was a Jamie Oliver recipe where you make up the pastry instead of getting ready made and you can really tell the difference) but it was still pretty delicious and it definitely beat the last few apple pies I’ve eaten hands down (they were shop bought ones from the mother-in-law).

Written and directed by JJ Abrams (already a good sign for me), Super 8 was produced by (amongst others) Steven Spielburg and that’s what really made the movie for me, as it was such a homage to the peak of Spielburg’s movie making, set in the 70s  (tick), in small town America (tick), kids (tick), disfunctional families (tick), monster (tick). Super 8 tells the story of a group of kids making their own movie (I suspect I know what JJ Abrams was doing in the 70s) and inadvertently filming the most OTT train crash in the history of movies ever. The military (as in all good movies of this type) are instantly all over it and not telling the good old sherrif’s deputy (the recently widowed father of one of the movie making kids) a thing about it. People and objects start disappearing  and as in all good movies of this type (again) we only at first see glimpses and shadows of the monster behind it (far more scary that way).

The mainly child cast in this are fantastic, there are some great supporting characters (both adult and child) and all aided by fantastic script and direction, there’s some brilliant one-liners and it’s one of those movies where there’s always stuff you don’t want to miss going on in the background to.

Definitely my new favourite JJ Abrams movie and it could quite easily be my favourite movie of I’ve seen of 2012 (even though I only saw it on January 6th).

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To Boy and Girl Lacer, birthdays = cake + Pizza Express, not just for their respective birthdays but for everyone’s birthday. But the kids didn’t notice till lunch time that today there was no prospect of cake and pizza, Girl Lacer was about to go off and be a cowgirl but they were both insistent there should at least be cake, even if I had to buy one. So whilst Girl Lacer, was it turns out, not being a cowgirl but something equally dramatic instead, me and Boy Lacer went shopping and we popped into the posh French patisserie which I hadn’t dared go in during the months it’s been open (which turned out to be not so posh once we went in) and we bought a bretzel (which looked like a pretzel to me) (for Boy Lacer), two raisin escargots (for Girl and Mr. Lacer) and a raspberry macaroon for me. I didn’t think we had time to make a cake but I stocked up on cooking chocolate and brown sugars when we went to the supermarket anyway and my little proto-cook was very insistent he was going to make something. So when we got home Boy Lacer, with a little help and supervision from me, made the malted chocolate cake from the Peyton and Byrne book and it was very yummy and not too chocolatey (as we had to substitute the mix of dark and milk chocolate for just milk chocolate) and you could really taste the malt (in our case Ovaltine Light).