Sunday 10th December - Makes and bakes for the second week in Advent!

 Here we go;

The knitted teddy bear glove/finger puppets might take a bit of 'trial and error' depending on the yarn you are using, and the size of hand/finger your are making them for. 

A complete teddy finger puppet took me a day, the glove puppet two days. So if you are looking to use up some scrap yarn and make a small present, this might work for you.   

The papercraft  has to be  the simplest booklet ever - at least, I hope you find it so! A single sheet of A4 paper and a pair of scissors should see you through. Then, the contents are up to you. A little story for a child, pictures, drawings...

And two recipes for cheese biscuits. I've just listened to an audio book by Miss Read, 'Winter at Thrush Green' (I find her books perfect night-time reading and listening - I used to read them when life was threatening to become 'all a bit much' and needed to totally switch off and wind down). They continually have little sherry parties in each other's houses, and I think these little biscuits might have been the sort of thing they served beside the sherry (and whisky for the men, of course!). 

One, the cheesy feet is suitable for Everyone, the other, with mustard, pepper and cayenne, has a bit more of a 'kick'.  

Sunday 10th December - Advent 2 Craft - knitting bears

Glove/finger puppet bears

The instructions are going to be a bit approximate, so please 'bear' with me (apologies!)

Here the are, all four-and-a-half of them;

The brown and pale blue bears were given to me many years ago to use when teaching piano. They came into their own when I was teaching younger children on zoom. I would put the puppets on, and I could just about play , so that I could really show exactly what each hand was doing.

It takes me about a day, off and on, to knit half a bear.

 

Firstly I had a good look at the original bears, measured them, and tried to count stitches and rows.

This is a summary of my notes; the measurements are roughly right, but I doubt if you could work out the instructions in any detail.

I felt that my first go at knitting a bear, that's the dark blue one with the red scarf, came out a bit short, and a bit fat, especially for a child.

The 'half bear' was knitted using the same yarn and needles, and I think he'll be about right. You need two pieces, front and back.

Using aran yarn, and 6.5mm needles (because that's what I had to hand) cast on 12 stitches.

Knit until you have 12 ridges on each side. That's about 24 rows.

Arms

Cast on 7 stitches at the end of a row (I used knitted, or cable, cast-on) 19 stitches total. Make a note to your self which arm you have just created. Use a stitch marker, or just make sure you know which side the tail from the original cast-on is.

Knit back across all 19 stitches, and cast on 7 stitches at the end of the row. 26 Stitches in total.

Knit 3 rows or so; 

The important thing is that you are now about to cast off 7 stitches at the beginning of the row, and you want this to be the same arm as the one you started with. Otherwise teddy is going to have one very fat arm and one thin arm.

If this is the correct row, cast off 7 stitches (19 left in total, one of the RH needle and 18 on the LH needle - took me a while to work this out!)

Knit the rest of the row.

Next row, cast off 7 stitches (you should be back to 12 in total)

Head

Knit about 10 ridges - roughly 20 rows.

Bind off. 

Sew up, leaving the bottom open for your hand.

Ears

Sew across a diagonal and pull tight to bunch up the corner. Secure the thread without letting it work slack. It takes quite a chunk of the corner to get a decent sized ear - check before you secure the end in case you want to alter it.

Face - using some dark yarn, sew the eyes, nose and ears. Check the picture at the top for placement. Make sure you don't sew the back and the front together (very annoying), and also, if your bear is made from lighter yarn, try and avoid the stitches showing through to the front when you go from one feature to the next.

Scarf; cast on enough stitches of yarn (depends on yarn and needles, but 60 stitches of double knitting would be about right), knit a couple of rows - 5 for dk - and bind off. 

Secure scarf  with matching yarn at the cross over. The original bears had the overlap stitched down, and a few stitches securing the scarf to the body just a little way along the neck, either side of the button.

Finger puppet

Thickish double knitting, or maybe thinnish aran, 5mm needles.

Try casting on 9 stitches, knitting 9 ridges. Arms had 5 stitches each, and were about 4 rows thick.

Head was 6 ridges.      

 

Sunday 10th December - Advent 2 Bake - Cheesy biscuits

 Since these recipes took no experimentation on my part (unlike speculaas last week!) I've just set them out here.

The first one from what I laughingly refer to as my 'recipe file' - more a jumble of paper in along with all the other bits of useful information - comes from the the Guardian Newspaper in 2007

Guardian Newspaper,Cheese Biscuits

and as usual I recommend following the link, although the recipe summary is

for about 24 biscuits

100g very cold butter

100g plain flour

pinch of salt, pinch of cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon mustard powder

50g finely grated mature cheddar

50g finely grated Parmesan, 

more finely grated Parmesan for sprinkling and a beaten egg for sprinkling - I didn't do this.

Put everything except the extra Parmesan and the beaten egg into a food processor, whizz until it becomes pastry.

Tip it out and knead into a dough, form into a sausage shape about 4-5 cm thick, wrap in cling film and chill for 30 mins.

Slice into thin rounds with sharp knife dipped in hot water, place on a greased baking tray about 2 cm apart. Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with Parmesan.

Bake 10 mins in oven pre-heated to 180, gas 4. Cool on a rack. You will probably need 2 trays.

I confess; I sliced four rounds off the unchilled biscuit log and put them in the air fryer with no sprinkling. Here they are after 10 mins at 180; and after 15 mins there were none left. Sprinkling stuff on biscuits etc is a non-starter in our air fryer and it all flies about and gets stuck to the element.

  

The other biscuits are Nigella's Cheesy Feet Once again, I suggest you visit the site!

100g grated cheddar

25g soft butter

50g plain flower

1/4 teas baking powder.

Whizz everything in a food processor until it comes together. Wrap in cling film and chill 15 mins.

She rolls it thinly to roughly 3mm thickness, and cuts out feet shape with cookie cutters. I, guess what, make a sausage shape and cut off slices!

Bake in preheated oven on a lined baking sheet for 10-12 mins at 200/gas 6, depending on the size of your feet. The biscuits continue to crisp as they cool, so lift them off the bakig sheet while they are still  little soft in the middle.(10-12 mins in the air fryer at 190 would probably be just as good!)

I have made these before and they were equally delicious. 

They are also made in a food processor; I wonder if these recipes would work if you don't have a food processor, if you froze the butter, and grated it into the other ingredients, like Delia Smith's Quick Flaky Pastry I have made this pastry, from her 'Christmas Book' which went with the TV series Oh so long ago, and it is very good.

Sunday 10th December - Advent 2 papercraft - mini booklet

 I've gone for this one, as it is astonishingly easy. I used to make these with the children (aged 5 to 8) in my Junior Church group - what used to be called 'Sunday School'. We would then add pictures to do with Bible stories or whatever else we were learning at the time.

All you need is a sheet of paper - A4 is good - and a pair of scissors. If all goes well, you should end up with a booklet with 8 pages, one-eighth of the size of your original piece of paper.

Fold your paper exactly in half length ways, creasing it well, open it out and fold it across the other way, again creasing it and opening it out.

Now fold the shorter sides exactly to the middle crease, and opening it out. You can see in the picture that I have drawn dotted lines along all the creases (you don't that!) to show you, and also marked a red line in the centre.  

Fold the paper across the middle, and cut along the middle line just where the scissors are. Only cut as far as the next crease, and open it out again, so it looks like the second picture below.

  Arrange the creases to match the picture; 'valley' folds at the sides and a 'mountain fold across the top.

Fold in half length ways, and push the LH and RH sides together, making the slit open wide;

Keep pushing, and you will get a star shape.

 Hooray! This is your book! Just fold it up and lay it flat;

If you number the pages; Front Cover, 1, 2, 3 4, 5, 6, Back Cover, you can open it out and see how the fit together;

So when I was thinking about making a Christmas Booklet on decorating the Christmas Tree, I knew which pictures had to be upside down;

Good luck! Once you've got the hang of this, it's a good way to entertain the troops over the Christmas Holidays. There's no reason why you shouldn't make a reversible book as the other side of the paper is completely hidden.