We have just got back from a lovely relaxing week in France with the Lizzys,  we had fun crafting, board gaming, day tripping and sitting by the pool. There will be a multitude of blog posts about our creations and first up is this delicious clafloutis.

Apricots are in season in France and on a whim we decided to make a clafloutis, I’ve done this only once before but luckily we had a plethora of French cookbooks to enlighten us on the recipe.

So this is essentially just; eggs (lots of), sugar, a bit of flour and milk, a sort of apricot toad-in-the-hole, there are loads of recipes online, apparently you traditionally make it with cherries and leave the stones in… not for me. It’s really lovely and quite a light dessert too, serve with crème anglais, definitely recommended.

My little sister Amber has been teacher trianing and her very own class this year for the first time. She is teaching Year 6 (I think) so there is much craft we are investing in to make her class the most fun and pretty and handmade!

First up is this amazing counting bunting, we made this one afternoon when she treated me like some sort of slave, locking me in the back room with a crap sewing machine until it was finished.

We cut all the triangles out of leftover fabric scraps and a few shirts and pillowcases so it’s all recycled/reused, I ironed and hemmed the edges whils Amber cut out the numbers. We then used wonderweb to stick them onto the bunting.

Amber bought some bias binding this week and sewed them all together over the tops. Aren’t they pretty? Wouldn’t you LOVE them if you were a small child? This is the first of many ‘classroom crafts’, in fact I predict so many I’m creating a new category for them

Coming up in ‘classroom craft’:

• Class name sign
• Birthday train
• Amber has requested I make her a ‘Miss Harwood’s Quiet Book’ similar to this - I may not have time for this but I shall aspire to it.

Delicious!

I found this on the Joy of Baking website, genius in that it includes cup AND weight measurements, simple enough but most sites don’t bother, and I don’t have cups. I didn’t bother with the glaze, I CBA with glazes in general so I just squeezed lemon juice over the top and dusted with caster sugar. Just as good and 5% of the effort.

Also I took these photos on my new iPhone 4,  I’ve finally upgraded from ‘my first nokia’ to a real phone, so exciting! I need to do some work on my photography in general but I understand there are some convincing apps to assist me now I’ve joined the iPhone club. Watch this space.

So I must admit that you were all right, it only took me the evening to finish it, I guess I should have just got on with it in the first place.

I gave him some embroidered blue eyes rather than buttons, if it were going to be for a baby (which it’s not!) I think that would be safer. I also like that it turned out a bit evil, that’s how it makes me feel.

It’s alright, but not great, not great at all. The shell is definitely too big, maybe I overstuffed it, the neck is too wobbly and the head is weird. Also not great photos as I took them indoors at night. Definitely for the ‘ugh’ pile.

My friend from school, Graham, and his wife are having a baby very soon, they have decided not to find out the sex of the baby (selfish, from my point of view) and so in order to knit them a gift I had to go for something unisex, booties are boring and fairly useless so I thought I’d go for a stuffed toy instead and found this cute little turtle on ravelry. He won’t take long, I thought…

So I knitted the main body fairly quickly, it’s a little head-heavy but this is how it looks in the picture too so I reserved my judgement…

I then knitted the shell top, (which I enjoyed), shell bottom and shell attachment panel, at this point I was already getting annoyed at the, in my opinion, over complication of the pattern. I knitted the legs and finally came to the sewing up.

Now when I had finished the shell pieces I had my misgivings, it looked way too big for the body but my gauge was right so I stuck with it. However, once I had stuffed the shell it looked absurd. Desperate and determined to finish it I continued with the crochet edging (!) and started on the icord attachment method for the bottom section. What a joke. Seriously it looked awful, just awful. I had to rip it back twice as  thought I was doing it wrong but it turns out it’s just pointless.

I’m not even sewing it up, the legs are too big too

There is no way I can give this as a gift for a dog let alone a small child, they would think I hated them, or worse, that I was crap at knitting. No, sadly this one will be retiring to the ‘ugh!’ pile. What a waste of my time.

PS Not that I’m blaming the pattern but I notice that it is the designer’s ‘first published pattern’ – I wonder if she published any more…

I made this for my friend who punches me in the face (at Jitsu obviously – duh), she sneakily left it until the last minute to tell me it was her birthday this week leaving me little time for crafting. However, I like a deadline! So I have made her this lovely tote. Apologies for the poor photography (even poorer than usual!) I was in a rush to wrap him up and get him ready to go.

Now stop right there, I hear you say, this looks remarkably like another tote bag I’ve seen on this blog. Well you’d be right, and wrong. This bag is slightly bigger, I measured by eye rather than ‘suggested measurements’. It has shorter handles (mainly because I was running out of fabric) and I have added a handy little pocket to keep your oyster card and phone in, or anything else you find it difficult to put your hand on in a cavernous bag. Alternatively if using it to carry crafts it would serve equally well to house crochet hooks, scissors and the like.

I know I bemoaned the timescales given on the previous bag but this one was actually very speedy, I cut and ironed all the pieces one night after netball and then did all the sewing and was finished before Simon got home from work on the Friday – bosh! Thoroughly recommended for a last minute gift.

My mum recently bought a new book called ‘The Camping Cookbook’ with the idea that we might be able to come up with some new recipes for cub camp, where I make 6 meals a day for 30-40 people on an open fire. If you are also buying it for this purpose you will be disappointed. It IS however an excellent BBQ and picnic cook book, it comes in a handy wipe clean plastic case and contains delicious and easy recipes, seasonings and marinades, I tried the smothered french beans on Simon and Dad -  they were a hit.

It also has a good selection of things you can make in advance (in a decent kitchen) and take with you to any idyllic outdoor scene. This cake is one of them.

Now if you are on a diet or even remotely concerned about your waistline, seriously don’t bother, this cake contains: 7 egg yolks, caster sugar, icing sugar, a whole pat of butter plus half a jar of jam. Brilliant! I had a rather unfortunate accident as my oven broke as I was making this but I didn’t realise until it had been in the oven for THREE HOURS! Fortunately I have a double oven and 45 mins later it was done, what a nightmare. However, this did make it slightly more gooey on the inside than I imagine is usual and not as crispy on top as I would have liked but it tasted delicious (why wouldn’t it? See ingredients above).

This was my treat after Simon and I spent a mammoth Sunday spring cleaning the house, we needed to replenish those calories, and did, by about twentyfold.

I do like the alliteration of that title.

It’s taken 5 months (thanks to Ravelry I’ve actually kept track!) and heaps more yarn than I originally envisioned but it’s so lovely. I decided to do the colours ‘randomly’ and I think it worked out pretty well, I read somewhere or someone told me to always know the next three colours you’re going to do (like the next three shots in snooker) which was good advice and I really enjoyed putting all the different colours together.

I also saw someone else had left yarn at either side of the blanket and left them as tassels which I really like the idea of (as I HATED sewing in those ends) but the general consensus was that this was lazy and would look rubbish, sigh.

This pattern is great because it’s so simple, you don’t have to pay attention or count or have the pattern with you, ideal for watching, tennis, detective dramas and the like. I have also inspired my friend who hasn’t crocheted for AGES to make one of these too, it’s addictive!

The blanket actually turned out smaller than I had in my head but it’s a perfect cot size so I just need a freshly born baby to appreciate it – any takers?