Shoshiplatypus

What’s On Your Workdesk this Wednesday?

Give-away reminder

Just to remind you all that I am offering the final needle book as a giveaway to a WOYWW member, to celebrate WOYWW’s 600th week, and I shall be announcing the winner at our Zoom session on 5th December. If anyone isn’t already aware of this and would like to be included, please indicate as much in the comments. You can see full details here.

Nearly finished the final needle book!

I finished embroidering both tiny carpets, and the surrounding black, in readiness for making up the cover of the needle book.

From the outset, I planned this cover to have a few more black stitches between the two tiny carpets, to create a bigger spine. This was with a view to including the lining with the pockets, which was too fat for the first two needle books.

Making up the cover didn’t take as long because I had already prepared the padding stuck on the pelmet Vylene when I made the first two, so it was just a question of assembling it. I was glad I put the full instructions on my blog because I was able to refer back to that post, and make sure I didn’t do anything wrong.

Here is the cover completed.

Time to add the needle book pages. As before, I had to trim them down a bit because they stuck out beyond the cover.

I also added a small popper to keep the book closed. I am really pleased that with this one, I was able to incorporate the pockets inside the front and back covers, to keep extra needles still in their cases. The only thing remaining to be done is to make a red cord to attach around the spine.

Bereavement card

I made a card for our sister-in-law and my hubby took it over last week. Having 3-D flowers on it, it wasn’t possible to post it and it was nice for him to be able to give it to her in person anyway. I used one of my mandala designs that I made some time back, and some paper flowers and a butterfly from my stash, most of which came out of one of my “flower factory” extravaganzas! They were stuck down with hot glue. I made a card liner which was lightly coloured with Distress Inks using my Inkylicious Ink Dusters, in Peacock Feathers and Spun Sugar. She was very thrilled with it.

I added a bit of texture to the turquoise base card by spraying some glitter spray. I think the nozzle may be slightly blocked because I couldn’t get it to spray evenly but only in blobs but I liked the effect in my experiments, so decided to run with that. I layered some of the flowers and added some Stickles glitter glue to the butterfly to complement that on the flowers.

A busy week

Sorry I was so useless at visiting people last week. I seem to have been busier than ever lately, partly because everything seemed to be running out in the freezer and I had to do a lot of cooking – this is ongoing. When I get to the end of a batch of anything, I always try to replace it straight away so I know I shan’t run out – not just our favourite pre-prepared meals but batches of rice, chickpeas, beans etc. On Monday I made another batch of millet – this comes out lovely and fluffy, and because you toast the grains first, it has a gorgeous nutty flavour.

I also made a big batch of granola.

Recipe of the Week

Super Easy Oven Granola

I got this from a YouTube video – a lovely channel I follow, of a young Canadian man and his girlfriend who eat vegan and do recipes and cover various lifestyle topics. They are very enthusiastic, upbeat and fun, and he is super-fit!

I chop the seeds and coconut flakes for this recipe because they are a bit too big otherwise. The other thing I have changed is that I make a double quantity. The original recipe doesn’t make enough even to fill one Mason jar, and it’s not that much trouble to make twice as much. It keeps really well in the pantry, and I get through quite a bit of it anyway, having it on my breakfast oatmeal every morning.

I particularly like this recipe because it has no added sugar (most granola recipes include either honey or maple syrup, if not actual sugar, but it’s all metabolised as glucose in the end), and the sweetness comes from the medjool dates, which are the sweetest, juiciest variety, which I featured a few weeks ago. You blend the dates and vanilla paste with some water, and stir this liquid into the mixed dry ingredients before baking. The natural fruit sugar in the dates is combined with plenty of fibre so it isn’t metabolised by the body so quickly.

I featured another granola recipe – Almond Pulp Superfood Granola – in my blog post on 1st July. I’m always on the lookout for recipes that use up almond pulp because I generate a lot, making my own almond milk. This time, I decided to try adding almond pulp to the Super Easy Oven Granola. Unfortunately it made the whole thing a bit wet, and it took a LOT more cooking to crisp it up, and I ended up almost burning it – it’s OK, very nice and crunchy, but most of the delicious flavour has been lost. I am going to attempt this again, and to prevent it being so wet, I shall try halving the amount of water to counteract the moistness of the almond pulp.

Fun bread recipes

I’ve been leafing through my beautiful hardback bread machine recipe book and earmarked a few I want to try. I haven’t been able to make them so far because I didn’t have all the ingredients, but I’ve just had a large wholefoods order delivered, and I am now free to experiment. I ordered rye and spelt flours, and some molasses. My new bread maker has lots of programmes for artisan and sourdough breads and I’m keen to try my hand at these.

Since getting the new bread making machine, I have been making bulgur bread and we both enjoy this very much. It is made with a mixture of wholemeal and white bread flour with the addition of some bulgur wheat which gives a gorgeous gritty crunch, and I also add my usual mix of sunflower and pumpkin seeds in the special seed dispenser which releases them into the dough at the appropriate time in the cycle. The recipe also calls for buttermilk, which I don’t have, but I use a vegan alternative if I’ve got it – the whey which comes from straining my home-made soya yoghurt, full of protein and probiotics. If I don’t happen to have any on hand, I use a mixture of almond milk and water.

Years ago in my original bread maker, I used to make cornmeal bread, using golden, coarse-ground cornmeal. There is some confusion over the words “cornmeal,” “cornflour” and “cornstarch” – in the USA, cornstarch is the equivalent of UK cornflour. This is not the same as cornmeal, which is yellow and more coarsely ground, and used to make polenta. To add to the confusion, this cornmeal is also known as polenta! Polenta is a porridge-like dish made from cornmeal. Anyway, added to white bread dough in the form of polenta, you end up with a gorgeous soft yellow bread. I’ve got cornmeal in this wholefoods order too, and will be making this in due course. In recent years I haven’t been very adventurous with machine-made bread and got into a bit of a rut, just making my half-and-half wholemeal and white loaf with added seeds.

New furniture

Our new sitting room furniture is due to arrive later this morning. Yesterday two men from a company which works in association with the shop came to collect our old suite; they have arrangements for recycling as much as possible, to avoid furniture ending up in landfill. I was hoping to have donated it to the British Heart Foundation which also work in association with the supplier, and they would have taken it away free of charge, but because of Covid restrictions, they are not offering this service at present, which is a shame. The two men were very efficient and took the furniture apart, and were soon loading it into their van. I asked them to take the spare (non-recliner) chair out of the flat, and to move my hubby’s recliner chair in there to replace it, and they were happy to do this. Musical chairs! We bought this large three-piece suite when we moved to our old house and had a much larger sitting room. Our current room wouldn’t take all three pieces so we put the second chair in the flat. It was very useful when my hubby broke his leg; he sat in there all the time as it is a sunnier room, he had the dining table beside him for all his stuff, and also the kitties were quite small and were living in the flat at the time – they were company for my hubby and vice versa! It would have been nice for him to have had the recliner at that time but he had to make do with a footstool. The three-seater settee occupied one whole wall of our sitting room and dominated the room, so it will be nice to have a two-seater instead. Both ends incorporate an electric recliner, as does my hubby’s new chair. We have chosen charcoal grey fabric this time instead of the red leather and we are already thinking about how we are going to prevent the kitties from scratching it!!

We were told that they would come and collect the old furniture within a twelve hour time slot. Why they can’t narrow it down to at least either morning or afternoon, I don’t know, but fortunately they came mid-morning so we were able to get back to some kind of normality fairly quickly! The kitties were confused by my hubby carrying their tray of breakfast upstairs instead of putting it on the floor in the flat sitting room as normal, and even more bemused when he proceeded to put their loo up in the bedroom too!! Their confinement wasn’t for too long, though, and they were soon out in the garden playing until after lunch. Until the new furniture arrives, they can just be shut in the flat and they won’t be confused by that – this happens every week when my grocery delivery is due, so that they can’t escape onto the road through the front door.

To tide us over, my hubby brought in a couple of chairs for us to sit on. The sitting room is looking extremely bleak without the furniture, and it’s all rather echoey in there as well! At least it’s less than 24 hours before we get the new stuff in, and we can be comfortable again.

(I won’t show you the other side of the room – it’s a tip, with all the stuff – mostly mine lol – stacked up!)

After having to get up so early yesterday, and then deal with a Tesco delivery, not to mention the arrival of my usual ultra-heavy box of wholefoods, after lunch I was exhausted! I had washed the fruit and veg and done some veg prep but decided to forego my planned cooking and have a rest. No recliner to rest on so I went to bed!! Snuggled up with a hot water bottle I was able to have a bit of a sleep and then do some stuff on the laptop, and make up my freezer and store cupboard list after putting the new wholefoods away safely. I buy in bulk and there isn’t room in the pantry to keep it all, so I have commandeered a few cupboards in the flat kitchen for overflow storage.

Throws for the new furniture

I have already got the pattern for the Persian Tiles crochet throw, which I am going to make for the settee. This will be worked in reds, black and grey, inspired by an idea I saw on Pinterest, which I thought would look stylish in our room.

A few weeks ago I decided that once I’d finished the tiny carpets needle books project, I would make my hubby a throw for his new chair. He doesn’t know anything about this yet, and if possible I’d like to get it finished in time for Christmas but I think that’s probably a bit optimistic! I’ve found several patterns on Pinterest for squares incorporating fun cats and I am currently sorting through my yarns and winding several strands of thinner yarns together to make the equivalent of double knitting yarn, in various monochrome shades from black through grey to white, with a few beiges and browns and maybe a bit of dark red and pink thrown in. There will be more about this in the coming weeks. I should be able to work on it with him in the room because he knows I’m making a throw for the settee anyway and he’ll probably think I’m working on that, especially if I am just working on background squares with no cats in sight.

Kitties

Not a lot of kitty input this week I’m afraid – nothing much going on! Just to give any addicts a fix, here’s an old photo of the girlies, taken during their wool box phase. The blanket was my hubby’s idea – to make the knobbly cones and balls of yarn a bit more comfortable to lie on!

New-old box

Many, many years ago – sometime in the last century literally! – we were living in Plymouth at the time and on a visit to Ikea (can’t even remember where – we had no Ikea locally then) – I bought a flat pack Ottoman-style box. It stayed as a flat pack in its cardboard box and went with us on two subsequent house moves, because I never got round to making it up! In this house, it was propped up against the wall in my hubby’s study for ages after he’d brought it down from the loft for some reason or other. Then, today, he suddenly decided to make it! It is now on the landing and it’s brilliant. I think my original idea was to keep blankets in it, and then I thought I might keep wools in it – and I think this is probably what I shall do, because hefting those banana boxes down from a top shelf in my studio isn’t much fun, which is why they always seem to be on the floor cluttering the place up. Also my original plan was to paint the box, and I might yet do this. We have two rather battered cabinets beside it and these are definitely candidates for renovation.

Although I said there was no kitty activity to speak of, Lily, of course, had to have a look at the new box. Neither of them jumped inside, probably because they were more interested in tea at that point.

Have a great creative week, everyone.