A Quick Little Project

I wasn't sure whether to share this, as it is something that I'm considering to create for presents, but it was such a lovely project to complete, and so quick I thought I should.

Some crochet covered coat hangers.  Yarn bombing on a small scale!

I organised a little craft evening, where everyone was bringing a project to work on and shortly before my guests were going to arrive I had a sudden panic - I didn't have a project to work on!  Oops.

I grabbed some sweetie style colours (at least that is what the remind me of) and a coat hanger that had been hanging around (pun intended) for ages waiting a restyle.  I had read a couple of tutorials and they all seem to go about this in the same way - create a rectangle of fabric and then sew together once you've made one big enough to go round the hanger.

I dislike sewing lots of stripes together, I've done it before it takes me ages and ages and ages and ages.  You get the picture.  So after one row I decided this would be a project best worked in the round, and it didn't really matter if it didn't work because I was just experimenting.

Obviously this technique is much easier before you get to the hook part, you can work it up off the hanger.  Once I got to the hook I simply kept the cover on the hanger and crocheted around and around.  It did take significantly longer to do the second half (twice as long maybe), and the hook seemed to get in the way a lot for the first few rounds, but soon I got into the rhythm and then it was finished.  My daughter loved it straight away and my son requested one for him too.  

I bought these hangers pre-padded, but I'm trying to work out whether I could fancy up some less pretty ones.  A project for another day.

Vinegar

I'm a fan of all things vinegar.  I don't know when that happened it just did.  One day I was looking in my kitchen cupboards and I discovered that I had about nine bottles of the stuff.  All different types. And actually weirdly, none of it the malt vinegar I had always considered to be the only kind of vinegar there was.

I use white vinegar a lot for cleaning.  I also use vinegar a lot as a salad dressing, a touch of balsamic over an avocado and tomato salad is delicious.  I use vinegar in sauces, especially if I don't have an open bottle of wine to hand.  There are a couple of places that I never really expected to use vinegar.  Firstly I never expected to make a drink out of it, but a year or so ago someone told me about a way to make alcohol free Pimms.  Even though the ingredients sounded a little crazy I had to have a go.  All you need is a drop of balsamic vinegar and some lemonade. I add a dribble of vinegar to the glass first, just enough to cover the bottom of a tall glass and then add the lemonade on top.

In my mind, what make s a Pimms delicious is all the trimmings, particularly the mint.  I love to add a few leaves of fresh mint, a slice or two of cucumber and some citrus-y fruit.  It even looks like you're drinking Pimms.  Sounds weird I know, but totally worth a go.

So when I saw a Pin for Vinegar Pie I just had to have a try.  I made a pie crust, and then added the filling.  I only used 3 cups of water, and I didn't have any maple extract, so I used vanilla and no cinnamon.  Also I couldn't find my whisk, so I just used a fork. Oh, and I'm lazy and couldn't be bothered to wash up the sieve that would be needed to strain the mixture, so I just hoped for the best and poured it into the crust.  Also, I got a bit bored about 5 minutes into the boiling process, and the mixture was definitely coating my spoon, I decided enough was enough and my arm was hurting anyway!

It looked way too liquid-y as I poured, and I figured that I had probably just wasted a load of time, ingredients and energy.  Very frustrating.  I put the whole thing in the fridge and hoped that time would work its magic.

And it did!  It tastes like a custard pie and even managed to hold together my very dodgy pie crust.  Result.  Another win for vinegar related recipes.  The Husband enjoyed his pie, but the kids refused to eat it.  Some guests and one of their children did enjoy it (hopefully they weren't just saying that) too.

Flapjack Recipe

A few years ago I found a recipe on the MSE forums for Hob Nob Biscuits.  I wrote it down and I've used it ever since.  Sadly I can't remember the name of the poster, but needless to say I'm very grateful for this recipe as it works for me every time and I nearly always have the ingredients available.

Recipe:

8oz Butter
2 tbsp hot water
2 tbsp golden syrup (I've used honey in the past if I've run out of golden syrup)
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

I melt the butter in a pan, and add the golden syrup and hot water, when it is all melted together I add the bicarbonate of soda.  It froths up quite a lot.  

While it is melting I get the dry ingredients ready:

8oz Porridge Oats
8oz Self Raising Flour
5oz Sugar (the original recipe suggests 8oz, but I find 5oz is plenty)

Once the pan of melted ingredients is ready I add it to the dry mixture, stir until combined and then I put the delicious (you've been warned) uncooked mixture spread out onto a fairly high sided baking tray and bake at about 180 degrees for about 10 minutes until golden on top.  Let it cool for while and then cut into flapjack slices (the original recipe suggests making this into individual biscuits, but I find this easier).

This recipe is delicious as it is, but I do like to try and add fruit/other good stuff to as many of the sweet recipes that I can, so I've made a number of variations to this recipe that I think work very well.  Below are some Chocolate Orange Flapjacks:

• Chocolate Orange - swap 1oz of Self Raising flour for cocoa powder and use orange juice instead of hot water
• Raisins - I've found you can just add these into the mixture, up to about 2-3oz or a couple of handfuls without it affecting the recipe at all.
• Seeded Flapjacks - again I've discovered you can pretty much add whatever seeds you have to the mixture without it having an impact on the structure of the flapjack
• Chocolate Cranberry - swap 1oz of self raising flour for cocoa powder and add dried cranberries to the mixture
• Spiced Orange - add a tsp-ish of mixed spice to the dry ingredients and the zest of 1 orange to the melted ingredients, this is my current favourite.
• Ginger - add a tsp+ ground ginger to the dry ingredients
• Lemon, Poppy Seed and Coconut - add the zest of a lemon, swap the hot water for the juice of a lemon and add 2+tbsp of poppy seeds and 2tbsp of dessicated coconut.

Here are the Lemon, Poppy Seed and Coconut Flapjacks:

A while ago I can remember seeing a coconut mocha combination somewhere and thinking I must have a try of those flavours together someday.  I'm sure nuts would work well too, ground, chopped or I think you'd get away with peanut butter instead of the syrup, but I use these for packed lunches a lot and due to allergies in school you can't have anything with nuts in a packed lunch.

And here are some Orange Spiced Flapjacks with the Lemon Poppy Seed and Coconut Flapjacks:

Yum.

And just because Valentines Day is coming up, here is a simple little heart craft too.  Draw a heart (I drew around a cookie cutter) and then use the eraser on the end of a pencil to stamp on the circles.  I used a variety of ink pads I had hanging around.

You can see I was still in orange, red and pink mode after making my Mixed Stitch Cushion Cover.