Roll With It

I'm teaching an evening class at the moment. It's called Family Cake Decorating, although sometimes I think it should be "Messing About With Icing" as mess is a pretty substantial part of the process. It's the 4th year I've taught this particular course and by the time it ends at 7pm I still find I'm glazed like a doughnut from all the icing sugar I've been handling. Not being messy is a skill I've yet to acquire.

I love teaching people new skills.  I get such a kick out of helping someone try something they've never had a go at before. Often all it takes is a little guidance and boom! they've made something marvellous. That grin of "look what a fab thing I did" from people in my class is one of my favourite parts of the week.

I usually bake many, many cupcakes to give my class of 12 plenty of stuff to decorate.  This time, however, I'm not. Taking in 3 or 4 dozen cupcakes each week gets expensive. The school subsidises the class but I do want to keep the ingredients costs from getting too high. It occurred to me that as long as my students had a surface to decorate, to didn't really matter what that surface was. A cupcake or a biscuit can work equally well as their canvas, and with a biscuit I can make bigger batches, so they get more goes. I'll still do a couple of cupcake weeks but so far the biscuits are going down very well.

Just a fraction of a week's biscuits

Several people in my class asked for my gingerbread recipe as last week's gingerbread men were a hit with their families.  I'm putting it here as well in case anyone fancies a go.  It's a pretty nice one, although the dough can be a pain to handle when the kitchen gets hot. However, there's an easy way around that. 

Gingerbread biscuits

180g butter

125g caster sugar

1 egg

125g treacle

420g flour

2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp bicarb

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale. Add the egg and treacle and combine thoroughly.  Sift the flour, spices and bicarb together and add to the mixture. Mix with a wooden spoon or by hand to bring it into a sticky dough - don’t overwork or knead the dough or the biscuits will be tough.

Ideally chill the dough for a while - the treacle can make it messy to handle when too warm. Roll out and cut into shapes, leaving room for the biscuits to spread slightly on the baking tray. Bake at 180 (170 fan) for 8-12 minutes depending on the thickness of your biscuits.

A NOTE ON ROLLING OUT DOUGH:

The more flour you add to a dough the tougher it will be. When rolling out biscuits dough - and especially pastry dough, where the thinner you can roll it the better- this can make the difference between a great result and a poor one.

You can avoid it sticking without adding flour by placing your dough between two sheets of clingfilm. Roll across the clingfilm until the dough is your preferred thickness (very thin for pastry, a pound coin thickness for most biscuits), peel of the top sheet, cut into shapes fitting them as close together as possible. Then lift up the bottom sheet of clingfilm and peel off the shape/disc and place it on the baking sheet or tart tin. 
 I can just hear Mary Berry congratulating you on the nicely baked tart without any hint of a soggy bottom. Paul Hollywood will tell you it's a nice thin pastry and a good bake overall.  Award yourself Star Baker and a smug grin.

Not So Fearless, Really

When I started this blog my idea was to challenge myself to do more, to explain to anyone interested how I did it (and the mistakes I made) and above all to get back in the habit of writing. I love to write. It's enormous fun.
I've written a fair few tutorial things and had a super time doing it. But I've only done one thing that scared me - applying for Women in Radio -  and that went so well my whole view of my future changed.

Perhaps it is time to step up and do more.

Believing that most things are better when you have a list, I'd better get organised. There are things I don't like, things I am scared of, stuff I truly believe I can't do, things I had a bad experience of when I was younger and never returned to, things I'd love to do but think I'd fail at, things that seem too hard - or awkward, or just plain un-fun - for me.

Here goes:

JAY'S LIST OF TRICKY STUFF

• Reading Lord of the Flies
• Reading any Russian novels
• Reading William Gibson and knowing what on earth it means
• Eating anything aniseedy
• Eating meat
• Keeping my opinion to myself (!!)
• Watching a scary film
• Playing a video game
• Having a driving lesson
• Taking guitar lessons
• Learning to quilt
• Knitting something other than a scarf
• Making something I could wear
• Writing a will
• Giving up wine
• Finding an exercise I don't hate
• Losing weight
• Keeping the house clean - actually CLEAN - for more than 12 hours
• Doing daily exercise for a month
• Having more than a handful of friends read my blog (although I am very grateful to you all!)
• Saying No to a favour without prevaricating
• Trying a singing lesson
• Writing an essay
• Writing a short story, even if I never show it to anyone
• Travelling to somewhere other than the First World
• Going somewhere I don't speak even a smidge of the language
• Go fishing - I'd love to do this but I am also squeamish of the aftermath

Hmm. Not quite the fearless woman I like to pretend to be.

Some of those things won't happen: too expensive, too difficult or taking more time than I currently have spare. I'm unlikely to take up driving just now because we don't have the cash. Snap for foreign travel. And a scary film... I get nightmares. Shocking ones. I wake up sobbing and terrified like a small child. I'm not sure I'm up to a scary film.

I just typed out reasons not to do most of the things on that list, actually, but deleted them. Of course I have many reasons not to do them - they are the things I shy away from. I've spent years justifying why I shouldn't do them. But that's hardly in keeping with my goal to try stuff.

So, what now? Where should I start?

Getting in at the ground floor

Hello webby mates,

How are you all? Have you had a nice weekend? Did you spend it doing chores, or having fun, or just relaxing? I hope it was full of sunshine and good thoughts.

One of the truly great films that I can watch endlessly is Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life. James Stewart is one of the most delightful actors there ever was. I can almost quote the whole film from memory.

There's a bit where George is offered the chance to invest in his friend Sam Wainwright's new business - plastics. "You can get in at the ground floor" is Sam's refrain, but George has more pressing matters to mind - the most heartbreaking and tormented proposals of marriage I've ever seen.

Because of that scene, Sam's telephone chatter of 'Getting in at the ground floor" has snagged in my mind. Although he meant it in a capitalist, money-making way I only associate it with being there at the start of something big.

I took the chance to be there at the start of something big on Saturday. I went to the Yarndale event in Skipton. It was one of the most inspiring things I've seen in a good long time.

The story of its creation is on the Yarndale Blog. In a nutshell, a Skipton Knit and Natter group were chatting about how great it would be to have a yarn festival nearby, and then, over the course of 18 months, they created one.  This weekend, September 28th and 29th, saw the first ever Yarndale festival, and I ran away from my familial responsibilities to spend a day there.

It was HUGE. The roads into Skipton were moving at a slow crawl, the 1000 space car park was full long before noon and the trains were bursting at the seams.  Bright crocheted triangles of bunting covered the route to the Auction Mart, which was heaving. No one could quite believe the sheer number of people.

The entrance lead to an exhibition hall showing knitted picnics and crocheted blankets from all over the place. I'd never seen anything like it. While for me a picnic-you-can-eat is infinitely superior to one made out of wool - especially in a venue unable to cope with the demand for coffees and lunch - the skill and the humour shown in these displays was just astonishingly.

Then it was in to the main hall.  Wow. Over 160 exhibitors dazzled me with different colours, materials and textures. There were crafts I've never hear of, equipment that amazed me, examples of work(wo)manship that dazzled me. Women outnumbered men by about 25 to one. We all chatted, mingled, ooo'd and ahh'd at each other's purchases.  It was so nice to be amongst a huge crowd of warm and friendly people who were so enthusiastic about making things.

I met a woman who wove fabric on a wooden loom to the design of those used by Romans, Tudors and beyond. I'd never quite managed to picture how the threads of the weft stopped getting tangled but after watching for a few seconds it all made perfect sense. Her looms were as beautiful pieces of craftmanship as the fabrics she wove on them.

I saw people who spin yarn, dyed it, people who made astonishingly beautiful items of clothing and lovely works of art. So many were from this region that it gave me a glow of pride that I get to be a Yorkshire-woman too. I also met some of the beautiful originators of  a very soft and beautiful yarn - Alpacas. They had alpacas. Mark is tense, waiting for me to wander home one day soon leading a brace of them to live in the garden.

I will love him and hug him and call him George

The Yarndale celebrity, the lovely Lucy of the fantastic Attic24 blog, was swamped all day by people wanting to meet her, take a photo, tell her how much her blog inspired them to attempt crafts. I was no different - a total groupie.

Happy groupie and tired but friendly Lucy

I didn't buy any yard to knit or crochet with in the end. Instead I bought stuff for crafts I'd never tried before. The first was a little octagon of slitted card - a braid wheel - with a leaflet and a few bits of wool for £1 from the Braid Society (there is an actual Society for braiding. I love this country. So eccentric). My daughter and her cousin are now enthusiastically braiding book marks and friendship bracelets for each other. Brilliant.

My other purchases? Tune in in a few days and I'll show you. I'm having a LOT of fun.

Easy Friendship Bracelets:

Cut a square of card approximately 5 - 8cm (3 - 4 inches) wide. (I used a cereal box) . Cut off the corners to make an octagon. (That's a stop sign, if you are explaining this to a little kid). Cut a slit about 1cm deep in the middle of each side and punch a hole in the centre of the shape.  That's your braid wheel.
Take 7 pieces of yarn/string/ribbon/embroidery thread etc about 20cm long.  Tie them together with a knot and drop the knot through your braid wheel's central hole. Tuck one piece of yarn in each of the slits.
You now have 7 slits holding yarn and one empty one. Count up from the empty slit three threads and move that thread to the empty slit.  Repeat. That's it.

If you are right handed you'll probably count up anti-clockwise from the bottom, and we lefties are more likely to do it clockwise. It doesn't matter at all as long as you stick to whichever way you started. Keep the empty slit facing you at all times so you don't lose track, mix and match colours and textures as much as you like, and perhaps thread little beads onto the yarns occasionally if you fancy.

It's easy, cheap and rather soothing to do. It certainly kept a trio of kids silent for a good while!

Making Something Useful

Hello webby mates!
Sorry for the 3 week gap. I've been on holiday for a fortnight with extended family, then spent this last week getting the remaining school stuff ready and doing all the unpacking and other post holiday chores. I thought I was looking forward to returning home to my garden and pets. However, with low temperatures, rain, one important pet death, 2 hens going broody, the rats peeing all over my favourite sweater and dress and my (formerly) favourite cat having diarrhoea in the laundry hamper I felt less than thrilled to be home.

On the bright side I have LOADS of chillies on the chilli pepper plants in the poly tunnel, the other hens are laying well, the apples, raspberries and plums are ripening and Joss Whedon has a new TV show starting this months. That's all worth being home for.

The most significant event this week - aside from the death of Slinky the skink - was my lovely 11 year old son starting high school.  He was so keen to make a good impression he got up super early to have a shower and get dressed in his shirt, jumper and blazer. He wanted everything to be just right. Unfortunately this translated to a certain pickiness when it came to a school bag, lunch bag and pencil case. We found the first two eventually but all the pencil cases he saw were girly or babyish. Come on, stationery suppliers, please stock less gendered stuff!

I thought I could make something myself that might do. I am trying VERY hard not to spend any money this month (beyond the essentials. I'm not making the kids fast or anything. Yet.) so I hoped to use things I already had.

I found a spare 10 inch zipper in my sewing box.  I'd bought it for a project last winter I ended up using buttons on instead. Then I had a good rummage in my fabric bins. I have two of those Tuff Crates you can get from Costco stacked next to my sewing machine desk. In theory everything I own for sewing would fit inside them. In practice they are bulging with fabric, batting, interfacing and so on, there's a huge stack on top of them in addition to 2 shelves full of books, thread spools and other haberdashery notions.  I LOVE an excuse to furtle about in the fabric bins. It gets me all inspired for projects. It's so hard to stay focussed when I'm there.

Anyway, I had several pairs of old jeans the kids had grown out of as well. Denim is a nice hard wearing fabric that would do a decent job as a pencil case. I chose one of Z's own pairs as I thought that would be more cool for him.

The lower part of the leg looked to me the most suitable. Well, easiest, anyway. I trimmed off the tatty hem and measured enough to make a roomy pencil case. This meant using the rather worn knee section of the jeans. I could either cut out a rectangle from the back of each jean leg or keep the nice side seam as part of the pencil case's look and reinforce it some way. I really liked the idea of the finished item looking as 'jeansy' as possible so I stuck to using that once leg. Plus, as a lazy wench I was happy to take the option that left me with one fewer seam to sew.

My next step was to cut the tube of denim open and trim off the unwanted second side seam. The legs tapered in so I also used my metre stick and my handy dandy rotary cutter to make it a more even rectangle.

To resolve the issue of the worn knees I remembered Z's Scout Camp badges. They kick about on bookshelves or in drawers being unloved clutter but too important to him to throw away. I stitched them across the worn bit and across a small stain.  Incidentally, I don't know why that photo is upside down. I've reformatted it several times but it just keeps flipping back.

  Next up, installing a zip. Here goes the "Do what I say not what I do" bit of the post.

Line up the wrong side edge of the zip with the right side of the fabric. Pin  and then tack into place. Tacking is the bit I forget. It holds the zip and jean edge more securely while I'm faffing about getting the presser and needle in the right position. As my zip is slip-sliding about I always think Drat! I meant to tack this in place.

Sew them together at a consistent gap from the teeth of the zip - you'll probably find the ridge the teeth make force your sewing machine foot a certain distance away.  As you get near to the zip itself - you know, the bit you pull to do it up - stop sewing.  Leave your needle in the fabric, lift your presser foot up and ease the zip past it to a part you've already sewn.  This bit is VERY IMPORTANT (and I forgot this too). If you try to sew past the zip pull its width will make your nice straight line in to a nice straight line with a blooming great swerve in it. Like, for example, the left hand side of the zip in the picture. 

As you see I went a bit wrong. I sewed a second line nice and evenly after that. It's on the inside of a pencil case; no one is going to see it. Except you guys, and I trust you not to point it out to my lad. 

Oh yeah, if you did the tacking that I forgot - dumb me - pull out the tacking stitches once you've finished. Their mission is complete. 

I did the same with the other side of the zip so I had a tube of denim with a zip running down its length. I then undid the zip about halfway so I'd have a nice easy way to turning it the right side out.

I drew a line across each open end of my pencil case from the end of the zip teeth down to the fold at the bottom. I am a firm believer in drawing lines to guide my sewing. I make a pig's ear of attempting straight lines without some guide to help keep me on track.

To prevent the denim fraying inside the case, I sewed a zigzag stitch right alongside my seam. I trimmed the excess denim as close to the zigzag as I could without actually cutting any of the stitches. I did a quick once-over checking for untrimmed threads then turned the finished pencil case the right way out.

There we go - a customised pencil case cobbled together in about half an hour from bits already in my house. My lovely 11 year old was delighted, I stuck to my promise of not spending any cash and I had a nice time doing it.