Make: Carrot Cake

Carrot Cake, Carrot Cake, have ye any nuts?

Yes, in fact this carrot cake has plenty!

I've never made a carrot cake before, but I thought I'd rise to the challenge when the boyf asked for one for his birthday. Well, after my initial reaction of, "What!? Not a dinosaur-shaped sponge!?"

Om nom nom! Thanks for the help, Mary Berry!

Amend: Acid Yellow Dress

I recently bought a small army of £15-and-under from Dorothy Perkins, with the idea of keeping just two of them. I love colour, so had quite a range of dresses, one of which was in acid yellow... So... Not a colour I'd usually pick out... But there was something about the dress that caught my eye.

The straps were unfortunately a little too long, but I liked the dress enough that I decided to shorten them. I unpicked what I though would be maybe two lines of stitching holding them in place... This turned out to be more like FIVE! Needless to say, I had to be very precise with the unpicker.

 

After working out how much needed to come off each side, I chopped the excess fabric and overlocked the raw edges. I then slipped the straps back inside the fabric envelopes and stitched them into place, first by hand and then with the sewing machine.

 

The top of the zip seemed to want to come down by itself, so when I just happened to find some yellow elastic lurking in my sewing box, I added a quick button and loop for some security.

I also had to do a bit of a fix on the beaded waistband, where some of the pewter-coloured beads were looking a bit loose. This was tricky, as I was trying to pull tight the original threads, which weren't very long and didn't give me much to play with.

 

I had the idea of wearing this dress to my friend, Jen's, hen-do - however, then I found out it was 1920s themed. Turns out, they didn't really wear that much acid yellow polyester in the 1920s... But they did wear lots of fringing! And I just happen to have leftover from a previous prohibition-era party! Of course.

I machined some fringing to the neckline and hand-stitched some around the bottom.

 

And to finish off the 1920s theme, I cut those annoying coat-hanger ribbons off each side, plaited them with a black ribbon and added some elastic to the back, to make a headband!

 

It was a really fun hen-do and everyone pulled out all the stops to form a troupe of fantastic flapper-girls. Happy Hen-Do, Mrs Shepherd-To-Be!

 

 

Make: Fleecy Turtle Blanket

I'm not the only member of my family who loves a blanket - my sister is also a blanket fan. This is perhaps unsurprising given she is at uni in Scotland, which is Northern and cold...

In a Deramores sale I found this James C. Brett Fluffy Chunky yarn for about £2 for each 50g ball. A search on Ravelry for a chunky crochet blanket and I came across this turtle-design baby blanket, which I thought was very cute! I've never crocheted hexagons before, so this would be a good challenge.

Although I used the pattern as inspiration, I didn't follow the complicated hexagon pattern described, mainly because the fluffiness of the yarn meant you couldn't even see individual stitches, let alone if it was a "DC" or a "DCBP"... Instead, I used pairs of double crochet with one chain between each nodule. Each hexagon has two rounds of green, one round of blue, then uses a flat-braid join in white as a border and to join the hexagons together.

The neat mathematical part of my brain really loves the way they tessellate so neatly together! I made 63 hexagons in total to form the body of the turtle. Then using the green, I added some legs, a head and a tiny tail at the bottom - to make a pretty good turtle, if you ask me!

 

In total, I used two balls of white, three of blue and five of green. £20 of yarn to make a very warm, very snuggly, very special one-off blanket for a very special sister. Happy Birthday Schwesterchen!

 

Mend Weekend

I've been working on a medium-term project for a while, which I'll update on next week. But this weekend, I also finally got round to mending a few things that have been needing a bit of TLC.

My combat trousers that I fixed in November were in need of a bit more attention, though less serious this time in that it was just the button that had come off. It's an odd button, as it attaches on with a wide band, rather than with holes for thread.

I'd fixed it before with some green ribbon, which hadn't lasted too long. So this time, I triple reinforced it...

Then there were my fluffy slippers, bought from Accessorize only in September. The pom-poms on one side had come off, so I used some yarn and a darning needle to do a swift repair.

All while sitting on the floor in the spare room, exercising our fat little guinea piglets... It's not much, but it's a start!

Make: Table Runner

I had some rainbow yarn left over from my Rainbow Gauntlets, but not quite enough for a real project. I searched online for some more of the same YarnArt "Dancing Baby", and managed to find some being sold in Turkey (I love the Internet!)

However, when it turned up, it was of a much poorer quality than the original yarn, especially the dye quality, so I couldn't really mix the two as planned.

I crocheted it up into five big squares anyway, and decided that the slightly chunkier yarn would be quite heatproof, so I decided to make them into a table runner.

I joined them using the Flat Zipper method described here. This method was not the fastest way to join crochet squares but I quite like the effect!

Now I just need a dining table to put it on...

Make: Baked Lemon Cheesecake

It's the first episode of my 2015 dessert-making resolution and, since we had three lemons left over from the cocktail party, a baked lemon cheesecake seemed like a good way to start!

Stage 1: make the base - using bashed up ginger biscuits and some melted butter, pressing the mixture into a 20cm tin, then chilling... With a cup of tea, while the base sets in the fridge.

Stage 2: make the cheesecake batter - whisk up a mix of ricotta, eggs, yoghurt, sugar & cornflour until smooth

De-zest the three lemons and then de-juice them - apparently 11secs in the microwave makes them easier to squeeze...

Add the zest and juice to the batter and pour it onto the base (this bit was really satisfying!)

Stage 3: the bake. The recipe recommended 40-45mins in the oven, but it was very hard to tell when it was actually done, so we gave it an extra 5-10mins to bake, just to make sure it wouldn't slosh everywhere when we took it out the tin.

Ta-daaa! And with just a short battle using a tin, two skewers, and with one expletive, we got it off of the base and safely onto the plate! I cracked out some icing sugar stencils (thank you, Lidl!) for some final decoration.

Not too shabby an effort, I think!

And the reviews? "Very light, very creamy" and "mmmmm, good..." which I would call a success!

2015 - A Happy New Year

My New Year's Resolution from 2014 was to finish all the half-started projects that I had lurking around my house. As is evidenced in this blog, I have managed to finish some projects - I've now got several dresses back in my wardrobe and ready to wear again, others that now fit me a lot better and my mending pile is a mite smaller. So those are some successes!

I've also started and finished several new projects, mostly blankets. I've taught myself to crochet and made a giant granny square blanket and also an epic patchwork Tetris blanket. I've made things for me, as well as presents for others.

That said, I've still got a way to go when it comes to projects to finish. University posters, photo books, a few more dresses, a few more blankets. A half knitted bias-knit jumper. An owl door-stop. Four balls of sparkly cream wool destined for a shrug.

So while these will give me something to "get my teeth into" in 2015, my actual NY resolution is less of a "make" and more of a "bake" - I'm going to learn how to make a selection of delicious puddings! I've never made cheesecake from scratch before, so I think that'll be my first one...

Of course, this won't stop my conventional making, mending and amending - but will help to expand my creative repertoire!