Sunday 17th December - Crafts for Third Week of Advent and etc

Yesterday turned into chaos as I tried to get ready to post this week's crafts, which are some very traditional puff pastry recipes, wrist warmers (have you noticed a 'garter stitch' theme? I hate doing purl!) and a magic paper flexagon.

I was testing the puff pastry recipes for this week at the same time as trying out a new and interesting microwave 'mug cake' recipe, when an old friend, dating back from when our families lived next door to each other back in about 1957 (!) - we were toddlers then - telephoned.

It made for a hectic half an hour as I juggled microwave, air fryer and telephone; but it was lovely to catch up and share news of our families. I was bridesmaid at her wedding, and god mother to one of her girls, and she is god mother to our son and we have always kept in touch for over 60 years.

The mug cake recipe needs thinking about. It probably didn't appear at its best, as microwave cakes need to be eaten immediately or they become stodgy and tough and rubbery and I was enjoying our phone conversation too much to eat cake. I shall give the recipe another go...      

The wrist warmers were also not without incident - regular readers of this blog have no doubt sussed that I'm just as incapable of following instructions exactly, as I am of producing a blog post without typos. My excuse for the typos this time is that my laptop computer, which I was actually using as a laptop instead sitting comfortable at a table, suddenly gave me a 'battery low' warning and I needed to finish the posts in  hurry.

Re the wrist warmers; I discovered I had miscalculated the amount of yarn in the ball. It looked as though they would work out anyway (such an optimist) and so it proved. As with the pigs-in-blanket and cranberry sauce puff pastry puffs, where I had neither cranberry sauce nor pigs-in-blankets. 

I suppose that is the difference between gourmet fine dining, and couture clothes construction, and what I manage to make using what I have.

The Christmas wreath which I constructed this morning is a case in point. The 'spring wreath' has been hanging on the outside of the shed door all Summer and Autumn. I took it down, wrapped the the holly garland from last year around on top of the leaves and spring flowers, added tinsel and finally a couple of poinsettias which must be decades old now.

I shall probably have another go at that trailing bit of holly in the next day or so - it was time for lunch and I was getting cold anyway. But I'm quite happy with the result - what can you expect for 15 minutes of wreath wrangling?

   

Sunday 17 December - Advent 3 Papercrafts - Flexagon

This might be a bit fiddly, but bear with me - I did make these with my Sunday School class of 5-9 year olds. The older children helped the younger ones, and the adult helpers marvelled at their achievement.

It comes from this book which has given me a lot of pleasure 

You need a strip of paper cut in the ratio 1:7, so 1 inch wide and 7 inches long will do. You will end up with a magic hexagon this size;

Magic? It has three faces!

You also need scissors and a glue stick.

At the top of the picture is my strip. It's one I folded earlier, which is why it is creased. Take the LH edge, and fold it over at an angle of 30 degrees - you can do this by eye. What you are after is folding a series of equilateral (all the sides the same length) triangles. The angle is slightly less than half of the right angled corner.

Fold a series of equilateral triangles, accordian, or zig zag, style following the pattern of creases on the middle strip. This means that the words 'fold this edge' wil line up UNDERNEATH the words 'to here'. 

You end up with this springy thing. Open it out - you don't have to number the triangles but I've just done it to show you. Cut off the red areas, once you have made sure that you have 10 triangles!

Fold it back up again, and just open it a bit like a book so the two ends are on the left an the right. Put the glue on as shown, and fold it closed, like the top of the next photograph.

As you try and unfold it, you will find that you can ease it into the form of a hexagon!

Now here's the thing; should you decorate one side (I coloured it blue) and the other side (I coloured it red), you can bring the points to the middle and open it out to reveal a white, uncoloured side!

So there you have it. A piece of paper with three surfaces.

What can you do with it? I have no idea. They make a good fidget toy, or some kind of magic trick. 

Sunday 17th December - Advent 3 Knit - wrist warmers

 This came as a free download from the Ravelry 'all things yarn' website. If you haven't tried browsing the website and you like knitting/crochet/weaving there are hundreds, thousands, millions? of patterns and many of them free. People add their advice wen they try making up the patterns as well.  

This is what you get if you download the the pattern;

This is an American pattern, so to translate; about 50g aran yarn and 5mm needles.

Cast on 35 stitches, knit every row until you have 31 ridges on each side.

Sew it up so that the ridges run from top to bottom, but you need to make a gap for the thumb. This means sewing up about 4 inches, leaving a gap of around 1.75 inches and sewing up the remaining 1.5 inches.   

I sort of followed the instructions until I found I was going to run out of yarn before I had knitted 31 ridges! I was using something or other from the stash and should have weighed the ball before I started.

My wrist warmers came out with a mere 23 ridges wide; here are my notes;

Now, a Very Handy Hint; if you can contrive it so that the start tail and final tail are on opposite sides, as in the lower piece, you will have a tail at each end to sew it up with. Much easier.

 I sewed up the bottom 4.5 inches, left 1.5 inches and sewed the remaining 1.5 inches.

In spite of not having enough yarn to knit all the ridges, the fit is fine - with a larger piece the fit would be more relaxed which might be better. 

They are long enough to run quite a way into the cuff of your jacket. I shall definitely be wearing mine, 

even if I'm not that fond of the colours.

 I find that keeping my wrists warm goes a long way towards keeping my fingers warm. 

 

 

Sunday 17th December - Advent 3 Bake - Puff Pastry

 Oh, these are golden oldies....

Using ready rolled puff pastry, you can make sausage rolls with almost no fuss, and delicious palmier biscuits, sweet or savoury.

Just a few Sausage and Chutney Rolls

I used 4 chipolata sausages and a tablespoon of apple chutney made by a friend last August!

Cut the puff pastry sheet in half, and put half away. Now cut the remaining pastry into 4 pieces each big enough for a chipolata. Put a thin line of chutney along the pastry, lay a chipolata on top, and roll up with the seam underneath. Carry on to make 4 sausage rolls. 

Of course, you can go ahead and use the whole piece of pastry and all the chipolatas and make 8 sausage rolls...

Place on a lined baking sheet, brush with beaten egg and cook in a preheated oven at 200 for 25 -30 minutes or in a preheated air fryer for12-15 mi nutes;

There were eight... we had them for supper with some bits of salad. 

What I HAD been intending to make was this; Pigs-in-blankets with Cranberry Sauce Turnovers from the website www.lavenderandlovage.com.

Ah well. Too late I discovered we had no bacon and no cranberry sauce, so the sausage rolls above were an improvisation, and one I will repeat often.

So these turnovers;

you need 8-12 pigs in blankets, bought or home-made, and 8-12 teaspooons of decent cranberry sauce. A beaten egg for egg-wash and grated parmesan cheese.

Cut the pastry in squares, put a teaspoon of cranberry sauce in the middle, and put a pig-in-blanket diagonally on top. Take one corner of the square and lift it over the 'pig', brush some egg onto the point. Lift the opposite corner up and glue it on top. Brush all the exposed pastry with egg and sprinkle a little parmesan on top.   

Bake in a preheated oven at 200 on a line baking sheet for 20-25 minutes, or in a preheated air fryer for 10-12 minutes.
      

Palmiers

The are golden, sweet, puff pastry biscuit., and probably the simplest ever!

Unroll your pastry (I used the other half from the sausage rolls) and sprinkle quite thoroughly with caster sugar. I keep a couple of vanilla pods in the jar with my caster sugar, which adds a touch of vanilla flavour. I might be tempted to add some cinnamon another time.

There are two approaches to the next step;

1) fold the side closest to you to the middle, and then the other side to meet it. Press down firmly with your hands. Do this again, and again if you can, and then fold it in half.

or

2) roll up one side firmly to the middle, and then the other side to the middle. That's what I did; see photograph below.

Wrap and chill for 30 mins.

Slice off biscuits, and you will see that they are all folded inside.

Bake in  on a lined baking tray in a preheated oven at 200 for 18 - 20 minutes until golden brown, in a preheated air fryer for 10-12 minutes.

     Thicker palmiers take longer...

You can use demerara sugar for a bigger crunch.

Savoury palmiers are made the same way - spread with pesto or tapenade, or just parmesan cheese. 

Saturday 16th December - the ta-da list

 No, not a typo, something I read today.

It was an article about housework or decluttering or getting ready for Christmas - I can't remember exactly what.

Anyway the writer was suggesting that instead of making a to-do list at the beginning of the day and then berating herself for all the missed items, she now makes an

'Ta-da! 

list at the end of the day, where she can list everything she did get done.

Now that's an idea I can get behind!

My ta-da! list is huge today. I'm not going to write it all down as you'll read all the extra posts tomorrow concerning puff pastry, wrist warmers and flexagons...

I was let off present-wrapping today as we ran out of Christmas paper after just a few presents. Himself nipped off to the shops to buy more, and also dropped off three more bags of Christmas bric-a-brac at the Charity Shop while he was out and about. 

So all in all a fair lot got done today.

Surprising what a diffference good night's sleep makes. 

Friday 15th December - a fairly static day

 I woke early this morning, toooo early, like 4.30 am. The milkman? Maybe. I don't remember hearing him, but our bedroom is at the front of the house, and he stops outside our window to deliver to the neighbours on either side as well as ourselves.

We could get our milk much more cheaply from the supermarket,  but while we can we'll keep Gary the milkman (I've never once seen him in all the years he's been delivering here!) going. It's not just about us; I think he provides a very important service to the many older people who live in this road.

Anyway, having woken up so early I was feeling pretty droopy today. I did manage to sort through various boxes and bags in which I had stashed, and then forgotten about, earlier Christmas present purchases. 

After that I spent most of the rest of the day lying about on the settee. Hence a meagre 500 steps on the step counter so far, and it's unlikely to climb much higher before bed time.

Ah well, it's not as though I had some high powered or important job to do!

I finished a bit of knitting for this coming week's crafts, and have given some consideration to which paper craft I'll post. As for baking, I thought I had chosen the recipes, but then I tripped across a really interesting idea, which I shall try out tomorrow!

This evening I completed all the written cards; the writing, addressing and stamping al ready to go.

I did catch myself putting a card into an envelope and beginning to stick the flap BEFORE I'd written the greeting; I hope that was the only time!