Dragon Rambles

On Boxing Day, Laura at Quokka Quilts set us the challenge to build our own cordinating fabric bundle from all the fabric available at the fat quarter shop. You can read about it here.

Well, this was fun. Especially as I’ve had an idea in my head to do a quilt in a limited colour palette. The very one I’m about to show you actually. You had to pick 12 prints and 3 solids. Now, some of you will know that I’m a little more traditional in the print department prefering textures and prints like Jinny Beyer’s that are used for shading. So I’m not sure if my choices properly fit in with the rules. But there ARE just 3 solids here. So here’s my selection that I’m considering putting together for a very eye catching (in my humble opinion) quilt.

They are (left to right, top to bottom)
1. Little Gatherings raven tendril
2. Calypso Swing grey
3. Black Tuxedo Batiks raven iron gate
4. Nature Elements charcoal
5. Kona coal
6. Michael Miller Silver Fairy Frost
7. Palladium gray gridlock
8. Calypso Swing pink shadows
9. Together mauve dotted plaid
10. Michael Miller eggplant krystal
11. Kona eggplant
12. Moda bella solids aubergine
13. Nature Elements orchid bloom
14. Oval Elements juicy grape
15. Moda Marbles cranberry

Of course, as luck would have it, I can’t actually put this bundle together. Because between the time of me downloading my large number of fabric pics, and finally narrowing them down into a bundle, one is no longer available and one is marked down. Must be a discontinued line. These would of course be the calypso fabrics. None of the others on my original list have that right mix of black and grey to replace the one, or the mix of the three colours to replace the other. So this will require much more research. But I have until the 10th when the challenge closes. And for now, I like my first choices too much to go looking for their replacements, so I’ll leave them in.

I haven’t forgotten I was going to share my xmas feast and recipes with you all, but I’ve been out all day and just come home. I’ll share the cupcakes with you today and come back tomorrow for the rest.

I’ve made these cupcakes twice: once with blueberries and once with boysenberries and strawberries. You can use whatever you want. The first time I made a cream cheese frosting, but the second time I had no cream cheese in the house so made a buttercream one instead. I’ll give you info to make both so you can choose which you want to prepare. If you use metric cup measurements, this’ll make about 18 cupcakes, otherwise (if you’re using american cups) it’ll make 12. Either way, the quantities as read, but if you’re using the metric cups, make the teaspoon of baking powder a rounded one instead of a flat one.

Berry puree

First step is to make a berry puree. For the blueberry cupcakes I used two punnets (400g in total), for the boysenberry-strawberry cupcakes I used one cup of boysenberries and three of strawberries.

Put your berries (fresh or frozen) into a pot and cook over a low heat (stirring occasionally) until berries have become mush and then reduced down so that most of the liquid has been removed. This should end up a nice thick consistency, but still easily pourable. Cool slightly then put through a blender. You’ll still end up with berry bits, go with it, these are nice to have in your cupcake. You will want to have 1.25 – 1.5 cups of puree for each batch of cupcakes.

Oh and if you’re using blueberries, your wooden spoon will be stained purple, the other mix I made turned it wine red. I’m thinking I should dye all my wooden spoons this way

Cupcakes

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup of baking margerine (or butter, but the veg fat makes for lighter cupcakes, use the sort from a tub rather than from a brick)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup berry puree
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add one egg at a time, beating just until incorporated.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. In a small bowl, mix the milk, berry puree and vanilla.

Add half the dry ingredients, then all the wet, then the other half of the dry to the butter mixture. Mix just until incorporated after each addition. Do not overbeat!

Spoon into lined muffin trays. Put a dollop of puree on the top of each cupcake and swirl. Bake at 175C (350F) for 20-25min, until cooked through. Cool for 10min in tin before moving to wire racks. Cool completely before icing.

Cream cheese frosting

225g cream cheese, room temperature
90g butter, room temperature
1/2 cup berry puree
3 cups icing sugar, sifted

Beat the cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy. Mix in the berry puree until just combined. Add the icing sugar gradually and beat until smooth and spreadable.

Buttercrean frosting

140g butter
300g icing sugar, sifted
1/2 cup berry puree

Beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add the icing sugar gradually and beat until smooth. Add puree and beat until smooth and spreadable, but don’t overbeat.

And voila, enjoy! These can be refridgerated or frozen, just serve them at room temp.

But a word of warning. Be prepared to serve them in pairs like shown above, because you’re going to want more than one.

Yep, I know I was going to pop in yesterday to post feast photos and recipes, but I’ve been distracted. I got a great ball of yarn for xmas from Granny. And since I was planning on starting my first pair of socks this xmas, it seemed kismet. So this first sock was cast on xmas day after I’d finished feasting, and I finished knitting it last night. Grafted the toe closed today, and voila, I show you what has kept me distracted the last couple if days.

Now to make the second one

ETA: What WAS I doing with my foot?! It looks very oddly shaped. I assure you, my foot is really quite normal

Did I say that with the leftovers from Mon’s buffet that I had my xmas lunch and wouldn’t need to cook anything extra? Yeah, well, I may have changed my mind…

I’ve been in the kitchen today since 10am and am taking a quick break for lunch. I’m getting everything done today so that all that needs doing tomorrow is reheating or popping things into the oven.

So far I’ve made a root veg soup, which I figure will make a nice starter before or after those finger food leftovers. I’m putting together a potato gratin, and cheese and spinach flan. And probably another dish but I haven’t yet decided what. And since one dessert is just so last century, I’ve made some boysenberry-strawberry cupcakes to go with the chocolate mousse. And depending on how I feel later, and what ideas I have, combined with what ingredients I have in the house, I may make a third dessert.

Now, how many people am I feeding?, you may ask. Just me . So this will keep me fed for a week, but with enough variety that I’m not having the same thing every day. Just think of all that crafting I can do when I don’t have to stop and cook meals

I’ll be back in blogland on Boxing Day to share photos of my xmas feast. And hopefully a pic of xmas day knitting (I’m wanting to knit my first sock). But until then….

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I hope you all have a great day, whatever you end up doing.

Ok, so maybe my plan for the weekend was a little ambitious. I finished everything for our xmas lunch today with 5 min to spare! And the fudge is still waiting to be cut up.

But everyone enjoyed the food so it was all worthwhile. And despite all our best efforts, there are leftovers.

Which are now in the freezer, that’s xmas lunch sorted Oh, and I decided to change those vegemite scrolls to a chilli relish one instead. Very yummy.

There was only a little dessert left over, as what we didn’t gobble down ourselves, I pimped off to others in the building. But I saved myself a blueberry cupcake, since I hadn’t had one at lunch. And those belgium biscuits were a welcome leftover too.

My kitchen and dining table are war zones but I have every intention of leaving it alone for tonight. Instead, I’m enjoying cheese and crackers for dinner, and I’m going to start putting a dent in that extra choc mousse (I made single serves so there is of course WAY more left).

Tonight, I should really be cutting up the fudge and making that softie that I ran out of time to do this weekend. Both jobs should really have been done LAST weekend, but you know how it goes… You get lazy and you just can’t be bothered

So am I doing them tonight? Nope. I need to have them ready for Wed, so I’ll do them tomorrow. Of course, tomorrow night I’ll be cursing myself, but for tonight I’m going to sit down to Sabrina (the Audrey Hepburn version), with my choc mousse and a skein that I need to wind as I’d like to knit some socks on xmas day. Or at least one of a pair.

So fingers crossed, I’ll return here on Wed with photos of the softie all made. In the meantime, happy xmas prep to you all. Oh, and those who commented on yesterday’s post… I’ll email you tomorrow.

I’ve been absent for almost two weeks. Sorry about that. Been busy job hunting and had a lot less craft time than I’d like. This weekend I’m busy making my yearly chocolate offering. This year I decided on fudge, instead of the usual chocolate truffles. Because it’s faster. All of the fudge I’m making has chocolate in it, be it dark, milk or white. On the list is: choc-walnut, rum and raisin, rocky road, peppermint, white-choc pistachio, cherry-coconut, and choc-caramel. Two have been made, I’m just waiting for my grocery order to be delivered, because when I was stocking up on Monday night, I forgot to get butter!

I’m also busy preparing food for our group’s xmas lunch at work tomorrow. Normally we just head to the local pub and have burgers or such, this year I thought it’d be fun to cater for it myself, as I haven’t done that since I moved here. I’m going for a finger food buffet. So I’ve got cheese and spinach filos, mushroom quiches, mini pizzas, vol au vents, vegemite scrolls, rosemary and cheese biscuits, cheese and cracker platter, and a fresh veg platter (celery, carrot, cucumber) with homemade french onion dip. I figure that should be enough savouries. On the dessert side, I’ve got eclairs (going to try my hand at chiox pastry for the first time), belgian cookies, date and pecan pinwheels, something chocolate (either choc mousse or little choc cakes), and something fruity (haven’t decided what but I have both blueberries and strawberries in the freezer so hopefully I’ll think of something).

And I also need to try and make a softie. Never made one of those before, so this should be interesting. So, today will be busy, although there’s onlu so much food prep and cooking I can do today, the rest will have to be done tomorrow morning.

On the craft front, I showed you my first colourwork mitt, well I didn’t wait until the next weekend to start the second mitt, in fact I was finished last Thurs and had already started wearing them to work before last weekend.

Not a great photo, and please ignore the mess on the floor, but here they are.

Since I spent a week of knitting time on these, by cardi was ignored. But I picked up Hazeline last weekend, and it was then sitting just two rows short of finished until yesterday evening, when I finished it. It still needs to have the top grafted together and then be blocked, but here it is.

So, there is me all caught up. I hope you’ve all been well. I’ve been slowly catching up with everyone’s blogs from my blogland absence, but there were a lot so any comments I left were rather short. Sorry about that. Ok, back to food prep. Everyone enjoy the rest of your weekend.

I’ve been bit by the colourwork bug lately. Over the last couple of months I’ve been adding really cool colourwork projects to my ravelry queue and favourites. Mostly jumpers and socks. Only thing is, I’ve never done any colourwork before. Or knitted socks. So when Lilith suggested a colourwork knit-a-long for Dec for the OMA group on ravelry, I thought it a great way to ease in. Only thing is, the project was for mitts, and I’ve never knitted mitts before. Or used double pointed needles. Hang on, did I say ease in? Obviously I meant dive in!

So, I cast on Sat night and managed to get quite a bit done before I went to bed.

Then, on Sunday, my original plan was to do the housework and sew a softie. But I didn’t want to do the housework, and my material hadn’t arrived for the softie. So I spent the day knitting instead. And finished the first mitt.

I was thinking of waiting until the weekend to start the next one. But as I write this on the way to work, my hands feel like they’re going to fall off. And since I can’t type on the pad while keeping my hands in my pockets, or while wearing my normal gloves, I should get this pair finished so I can start using it.

That means it’s time to have a look at November’s craftiness. Not as much as I’d like, but December should be better, especially with time off over xmas. Although, there will be less time available on weekends what with Dec treats to make and job applications to write. For now, here’s what I managed to get done this last month.

I got quite a bit more done on my cardigan. If I’d done any knitting these last two nights I could have shown you it all ready to sew up. Should get there by the end of the week though, then it’ll be on to adding the large collar.

I was hoping to finish Hazeline. But there was a delay where I had to wait for needles to arrive to start the hem. Plus there was all the time I knit on my cardy instead. But it’s progressing.

On the sewing front I did 4 more FWQ blocks.

And made another dinoPad.

So not a huge amount achieved, but not too shabby either. And as usual, I’m linking up to Fresh Sewing Day at Lily’s Quilts.