Terracotta, Orange, Cassia and Cedarwood

This week has been a frantic rush, with everything, seemingly, close to near-disaster. Things have broken down, animals have cut themselves on glass, children are tired and race for the crayons and the paper when they get home to unwind from all that Christmas Fun, which is so headlong that we get no chance to stand and look at anything.

I miss looking at things when the pace is such that I cannot. I miss looking at my favourite four trees on the walk I take to the supermarket. I miss snail shells and lichen – because it’s hard to see them for all the giant Father Christmasses and twinkly lights. Who knows.

But I do like it when I finally get my children home for christmas, and all the cooking is done, and the Last Big Shop has been shopped. (The Last Big Shop is on Thursday. Last Christmas I forgot coal and milk, this Christmas I am hoping the forgetting has already been done, since I turned up dutifully at our bus stop to collect my children, having forgotten they were watching Snow White with the school and were not returning for another two hours).

I have been making gifts for teachers, and some to sell. They defy description, really. Dangly nick-nacks is perhaps the best I can do, and I make them every year. Last year I made them with Suffolk Puffs, lots of bay leaves, and raffia. The year before that I made them with coarse brown string, bay leaves and vintage buttons. This year I made them with terracotta stars, and dried orange slices, cinnamon sticks and dried chillis. And bay leaves, of course. I used wire to thread them, which made things easier, although I missed the twineyness of the string, and I added some brownish glass beads, because I found some in my box, and they gleamed nicely at me.

One of the advantages of making things year on year is that you can troubleshoot. I’ve always left these to dry in a box with orris root before, and used cloves and star anise somewhere in the mixture to give them a warm, herby scent. This year I used Cedarwood and Orange Essential oils on the terracotta stars, and this worked beautifully with the slight smell of Bay.

Now they are waiting to be packaged and wrapped and given, and I can take care of the first two by the fire, tonight. Tomorrow there are two dundee cakes and some fudge to be made.

Stockings, buttons and beads.

the Well, I finally got a batch of one-off, handmade Christmas Stockings sewn, pressed, finished and trimmed. Which is good, because I can send them off to their respective owners and get back to Other Things (making two dundee cakes, designing a funky hat, and I really want to make myself some yummy long mittens). I will post a link to my Christmas Stocking pattern and sewing instructions from the ‘techniques’ page in due course. There’s a link to the easy fudge recipe up on there now, too.

But the stockings. Three are made in a cool cotton tartan that I found in a charity shop, and trimmed variously with wire/beaded crochet, a hand-felted bead (sewn with glass bugles) and a (my favourite) bright swiss-roll felt bead. I want to make some more of the swiss roll felt beads, and perhaps sew them onto hair clips, or something like that. Any ideas with what to do with them would be very welcome.

Two stockings are in a Christmas Cat craft fabric (again new, but sourced from a secondhand shop). I’ve kept the trimmings simple on those, with just vintage buttons front and a small bead inside.

The sixth stocking is a rather lovely Rose and Hubble pink remaindered square, trimmed with green ribbon and another mother-of-pearl vintage button. This one’s my favourite – it’s something about the pink and green that I like.

What news? Well, Christmas is in full joyous flow, with two fetes, a party, a special assembly, a play and a Victorian Market in the past week alone. The Victorian Market was more like a Victorian Puddle, but I picked up some goodies, and will post about them soon. And we had mince pies, with brandy butter (oh, the loveliness of Brandy Butter), and mulled wine. I want to buy one of those spikey old-fashioned umberellas just for the fun of rainy day fetes.

Introducing the Semolina Twins…

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No, not Vanilla and Oatmeal, of course - Cous-cous and Halva. But we’ll come to them later. They should be first, but the picture of the Halva isn’t as nice as the ones of the soap, and I couldn’t ask my five-year old to wait before eating it until Natural Light Came Out.

So, moving swiftly forward, as well as the lovely Semolina, I also flirted with her cereally sister, Oatmeal, making Vanilla and Oatmeal soap to give as Christmas Presents. Soap-making the easy way is fun. For this, I used opaque pure soap base, melted in a double boiler, and added cocoa butter, apricot kernel oil, vanilla extract and oatmeal. The yellow bits are calendula (that’s English Marigold to thee and me) petals – purely for show in this instance. If you’ve got dry skin, then this soap is really rich and moisturising. I use it as a face soap – it lathers beautifully, and it smells gorgeously wholesome but warm, too.

Now for that Semolina shout-out. Cous-cous is one of our teatime staples, but Halva I tried tonight for the first time – in search of a starchy pudding to warm up the children after a hard day at school and a long walk from the bus. It was a resounding success. A bit over-sweet and cloying for my taste – next time I’ll cut down on the sugar a bit – but the rosewater and cinnamon stick provided a really delicate combination of flavours which complimented each other perfectly. I may try popping a Vanilla pod in with the cinnamon stick next time.

The recipe, should you so desire to make Halva (it is very easy, and requires little more than sugar, milk, semolina and butter), I shall include on the recipes page (which is going to get awfully long, but I shall try to think of an alternative – I’m still building my website, but I could always stick the recipes up there in a ‘holding’ capacity, perhaps?)

The rest of my travails have been reasonably successful, too, which makes me sound like Ms McSmuggery Horrid, but usually at least 1 in every 10 of my travails ends in disaster, so be reassured. To the left is a sneaky peek of a work-in-progress – Christmas Stockings.

Unsurprisingly I make a lot of these at this time of year, but I’m particularly pleased with these two. I’ll post proper pictures of my latest batch when I’ve trimmed them with vintage buttons and shiny satin ribbons. I’m taking orders for next year, would you believe?

Also the Turkish Delight, although not perfect (have you ever tried whisking boiling sugar syrup into stiff cornflour-paste mixture?), is at least an approximation of delightful. And very pink. I shall blog about it when I’ve photographed it, and decided where to put all these recipes. Which people are reading. I know this because WordPress, in all its wisdom, has a Useful Stats Page. Aha.