Stitching, Baking and Colouring

 

Thank you my lovely readers for your suggestions on fabric tray motifs (see my last post). I think I'm going to go with Anja's suggestion of a strawberry - not least because it should be quite easy to sew! I am still on the fabric tray kick and this week as a variation made this little patchwork coaster set I found in Rashida Coleman-Hale's lovely book I (HEART) Patchwork. Quite time consuming but a lovely gift idea - I'm going to give these to my sister for a house-warming gift as she is moving home (and country) soon.

This week I also tried Mary Berry's recipe for Mini Apple and Almond cakes - it looked so simple on her TV programme last month. I had to buy some baking rings though and stupidly bought the wrong size so though the recipe should make 6 cakes I only got 4. At this time of year there are no cooking apples from the garden so I bought a couple of whoppers from the supermarket - enough for about 20 cakes!!!

I didn't have any flaked almonds for the topping but found a bag of ratafias on the cupboard and crushed them over the tops instead. Yummy with Greek yoghurt or Creme Fraiche!

And it had to happen didn't it! I'm such a sucker for the latest craze in the papercrafting world and THE latest must haves are the Kuretake Clean Colour Pens. Yes, I've started a small collection. I toyed with the idea of getting them from Japan as they are cheaper over there of course but there is that long long wait for them to arrive.  However I ended up buying them from my favourite on-line pen store Cult Pens, which has a really good price with free postage if you spend over £10 - and they usually arrive the next day.

So I can build up a collection slowly by purchasing a few every couple of weeks or so.  There are plenty of reviews on line if you are curious to know what this craze is all about.  I recommend Jennifer Mcguire's blog posts and videos here  and apologise if you catch the craze watching them!!!