Elizabeth Craig's Thimble Tea

A recent post on a favourite blog Shelf Appeal featured the illustrator Herry Perry in Elizabeth Craig's book on Entertaining.  I just had see more and found a reasonably priced copy on ebay.  What a delight!  Published in 1933 it's full of advice for "The Modern Hostess", whether entertaining "with the help of one maid, of a staff of servants, or single handed"!

 There are dozens of entertaining occasions covered by Elizabeth, from "A Bride's First Dinner" to "Tea for Two in Wintertime" and everything else in between.  But my very favourite has to be "Just a Thimble Tea".  Here is just some of Elizabeth's advice:

"Every little while I give a Thimble Tea, to which I ask a few chosen friends.  In the summer-time we sometimes hold it in the garden.  In winter it is held in the cosiest corner of the room close to the fire with ship logs ablaze in blue and purple and fiery red........If you want to start Thimble Teas first count over your friends who are interested in needlework, whether it be simple knitting or embroidery, or fine sewing.  It matters not what their taste is so long as they are of the Sister Susie sisterhood (I've tried to look up what this means with no success).  Then send out invitations to come to tea and bring their work along with them.  I would not invite more that half a dozen at a time.  For a Thimble Tea I usually write "from 2.30 to 6 pm" on my invitations..........As this is a Thimble Tea she (the hostess) must produce her daintiest tea cloth, doilys and tea serviettes.  If she has a hand-worked tea cosy it is a good idea to have a teapot rest to match - a strip of knitted wool stuffed firmly with cotton wool and sewn lengthwise to form a woollen roly-poly.  This must be invisibly joined at the ends to form a circular roll which in turn must be firmly sewn to two rounds of plain knitting with a round of stiff cardboard slipped between to form a stiff base for the nest.......... Boil the water for the tea at table with the aid of an electric kettle or a spriit lamp, have your tea caddy ready beside the teapot and a little plate containing slices of lemon in case some guests wish their tea a la Russe.  Have milk as well as cream for lots of people do not care for cream in tea (too right - yuk!).  Then arrange little plates of dainty sandwiches, shortbread fingers, or jam-jams, almond or coconut macaroons, spiced rock cakes, and anything else you care to have within reach of all.  Provide at least one muffin dish of hot scones and have what is the very latest idea, a plate of tiny canapes of bread rounds the size of crown pieces spread with savoury paste and kept carefully out of sight till everyone has finished with cake, and then brought out and offered as a savoury finish......

.......No matter your menu, tea over have food cleared away if teaing in the sewing room and settle down again to work and gossip.  In the summer-time serve tea when possible in the garden.  If raining have it indoors with the fire lit.  Decorate the room with glowing plants.  In winter-time decorate your room with red flowers or berries and red or white candles, serving tea when possible in a different room to that in which you work or in a room opening off your working room."

Phew, I haven't done that much copy typing in a long time!  Good job I proof read it!  I'd not heard of jam-jams before but there are lots of recipes on line.  Here's a nice one.

And this is Elizabeth's 1933 recipe:

Rub 4oz butter in 7oz flour, stir in 4oz castor sugar, half teaspoon baking powder, half teaspoon ground cinnamon and moisten to a rollable dough with yolk of egg.  Roll out on a lightly floured pastry board, cut into rounds with the top of a wineglass or a fancy cutter, bake till crisp and golden and if by any chance through incorrect management of the oven the cakes spread out of shape you can recut them again with the same cutter as soon as you take them out of the oven.  But don't wait till they cool at all or they will break in the cutting.  Put two rounds together with jam then sprinkle with castor sugar.  Apricot or raspberry jam is best for jam-jams.  If liked you can use ground Ginger for flavouring instead of cinnamon. 

Of course there were no oven temperature gauges then - today bake at 190C (375F) for about 12-14 mins.

Lastly, these are Elizabeth's suggested Tea Menus:

SUMMER THIMBLE TEA

Bread and Butter

Cucumber Sandwiches

Layer Cake, Strawberry Filling

Strawberries and Cream

Petits Fours

AUTUMN THIMBLE TEA

Raisin and Nut Bread

Cheese and Pimento Sandwiches

Hot Buttered Tea-Cakes

Spiced Fruit Cake

Iced German Biscuits

WINTER THIMBLE TEA

Bloater Cream Sandwiches 

Ham and Cress Rolls

Buttered Crumpets

Chocolate Eclairs

Tangerine Layer Cake

Tea

Note - Make Bloater Cream Sandwiches with brown bread.  Use bridge rolls, split for Ham and Cress sandwiches.  Hot buttered teacakes can be substituted for Crumpets and Cream Buns for Chocolate Eclairs.  Fill Tangerine Layer Cake with tangerine honey and cover with tangerine icing.

If you enjoyed this I might share a few more gems in future posts.  What about "Tea in Heather Time" or "A Scramble Party" ?

Gloomy November?

Another month and another charming image from Children Month by Month.  We don't often have foggy weather here - except when the clouds are low on the hills and we have to travel through them.  However it really doesn't seem like November - I can still walk out without a coat and the garden really doesn't know what season it is......

The hollies think its already the festive season and are covered in bright red berries.........

but underneath there are fragrant pink sweet peas still flowering!

The leaves on the young maple are coloured ready to drop.............

but there are still alpine strawberries everywhere if you look carefully - and still some flowers!

But there's no escaping the long shadows mid afternoon and dusk by teatime when lights need switching on and the curtains have to be drawn.  Oh well, I'll just enjoy the last signs of summer and get on with my Christmas crafting!

October already.....

.........just where did September go!!  Two posts today as I want to fit in the October children from Children Month by Month, the old book I wrote about at the beginning of September.

Now children, please don't try burning leaves on the garden path yourselves.... this looks a very dangerous occupation and I'm sure this illustration would not be published in a children's book today!  The book comes from the stock of an old publishing house being sold on that well-known on-line auction site recently and is in mint condition. I was interested to see a printing error on this page. The stick or poker the boy is holding isn't there! Probably why the book didn't get to a book or toy shop - bad for the publishers but good for me.  Look out for the next page on 1st November - it will be here before you know it!

We've had another glorious day here in the UK. I spent most of the morning making this mobile, which I want to enter for the Papertrey Ink Make-it-Monday challenge.

That clever Erin Lincoln made some lovely chipboard accents using cutting dies and cereal packet cardboard recently and this week's challenge is to make a project using the same technique. Now I was hoping my September release goodies would have arrived by today as I had an idea for a Christmas mobile - but they haven't dropped on the doormat yet so I decided to make an Autumn mobile instead - after all it is only October!

So here it is - I've used leaf and fruit dies, 5 layers of cereal box cardboard and stamped cardstock for the fronts and backs. I found a suitable stick in the garden and tied it all together with hairy twine. I'll hang it in the window tomorrow.

Oh, and does anybody need any cooking apples! Free to a good home but must be collected - any takers!!

Stamps: Papertrey Ink's Leaf Prints, Fruit Fusion Apple and Pear plus the matching dies.
Cardboard courtesy of Dorset Cereals!

The Fashion Harvest

I'd like to introduce to you a brand new blog created by my talented (and beautiful) niece Faye. If you like fashion, vintage, thrifting and making, you will like this. And if, like me, you are no longer a Dedicated Follower of Fashion, you probably know someone who is. So hop over to The Fashion Harvest and take a look. I'm amazed at how fast Faye has become an expert blogger and she has already picked up a band of Followers - I'm jealous!

Faye is just 16 and has her eyes set on a career in fashion journalism. I think she's already on her way! And looking back at my 16 year old self I can see Faye and I would have had a lot in common. It was 1964 - I'd just started a college course in fashion and textile and spent hours drawing, cutting and stitching clothes using any fabric I could get my hands on. Of course there were no charity (thrift) shops then but we did recycle our clothes. I featured my favourite recycler Capable Kate here last year and many of you seemed to enjoy her then, so I give you three more pages from her notebook today.

Ahhh, those were the days! I loved the drawings of Moira Macgregor - the creator of Capable Kate in Honey magazine, and based my own drawing style on hers. I devoured all the teenage fashion magazines of the time - Honey, 19, Petticoat - and idolised the new designers, Mary Quant, Ossie Clarke, Barbara Hulanicki at Biba, Foale & Tuffin and others. And of course we all wanted to be Twiggy or Patti Boyd or any of the other iconic magazine models of the day.

You have no idea how flipping through my small collection of those old magazines takes me back to that time. They say smells are a memory jogger - and of course they are, but every page brings back such a strong memory I can almost believe I'm 16 again and wearing my op-art black and white dress!!!!! Yes, I'm afraid only half of me was caught in this photo - but I quite like it that way.....

I'm having blogger issues today and have reverted back to the old interface as I've lost this post three times! Shame - the new version has some excellent features.

September

This pretty children's book illustration is from a small picture book titled Children Month by Month, published by Birn Bros Ltd in, I would think, the 1940s or early 50s.  Its perfect for posting this first day of September, which has been absolutely glorious here in the UK. Perfect because there is so much fruit on the apple trees this year the branches are bowed down with the weight and I'm wishing I had a little apple store shed like this in which to keep them. I'll be trying to keep as many as I can to use over the Autumn and Winter but I expect the garden wildlife will be feasting on windfalls over the next few months. So I never fret that they are going to waste because they won't be.

The other months in this book are just as charmingly illustrated and I thought I'd try to post one each first day of the month if I can remember. They'd make a lovely nostalgic calendar.

It seems Blogger has had a bit of a makeover and I'm trying to get to grips with it here - it looks like we can post LARGE photos now. And there's a preview screen - which is a big improvement too.