Monthly Archives: August 2012

A Pinboard for a New Term…

I don’t think it matters how long ago it is since you left school, the approach of September always feels much more like the beginning of a new year than the actual one in dreary old January!  And it’s so much more full of hope and possibility, we could have an ‘Indian Summer’ to make up for the lack of a British one, the evenings are still light, and it just feels like an optimistic new start.  So this has been a good time to get my little office up and running efficiently with pinboards, graphs and flow charts (pause to snort with derisive laughter!)  and slowly, slowly get on top of the teetering piles of paperwork.   It also means I can reclaim the studio space from being a dumping ground/spare room (thank goodness it was only Tim and I trying to shoehorn ourselves into the sofa bed!)   It now looks too tidy to use, even Higgins is surprised…

Miniature dachshund on a crochet cusion

…and here it is, I had to record it because it won’t last!

crochet throw on sofa

and in this one you can see the office at the end, it’s not ready for close inspection yet!

You might have noticed the old pinboard in the first photo, so full of stuff which had been there forever.

Very uninspiring, and in need of a makeover to celebrate the new look.  It was even more uninspiring once I’d taken off all the tatty bits and pieces…

You can see just how long some things had languished there by the interesting shadow effects!

So this is how the transformation took place, a quick and easy project as it only took a couple of hours.  All it took was some grey emulsion paint, I used a sample pot, and some white, I had plenty around as we’d been painting the studio.  Fabric and Bondaweb the size of the board, ribbon and glue and a few buttons.

After giving the board a wipe I painted the frame with the grey emulsion…

Once it dried I gave it a coat of white.  It doesn’t have to cover completely, just make sure that the brush strokes follow the shape of the frame.  Once it was dry I sanded it lightly to reveal some of the grey undercoat and polished it with beeswax.

I then cut a piece of Bondaweb to the size of the cork area of the pinboard and ironed to the back of my chosen fabric, in this case some jolly red and pink spotty Ikea fabric, peeled off the back of the Bondaweb and ironed the fabric directly on to the cork area…

To cover the raw edges I used a woven ribbon…

..and found just the right buttons to trim the corners.

Did you notice the Dove Christmas decoration on the old pinboard? That got a new lease of life…

…and the pinboard was ready to use…

Trouble is, it’s far too pretty to fill with Post-It notes, receipts and appointments, isn’t it?  So for now it looks like this…

 pinboard full of prettiness

…and I’ll probably have to buy another pinboard to use in the office!  Ho hum…

 

Remembering the Memory Doll

It’s been a really hectic week here on Planet Penny as at last we found a quiet time to make me an office out of the storage room adjoining the studio.  When the Studio block was built three years ago I already had designs on this little room as you can see from this post but it’s taken until now to find the time to make the big push.  There was so much to clear out of the store, and now I’m having to find all the office related stuff in the studio to move it across and I’m unearthing all sorts of memories and forgotten projects!  So as I haven’t got a new Handmade Monday project I though I’d share the Memory Doll with you, who has resurfaced from a box of bits and pieces.

rag doll

She was designed to use up little fragments of pretty things which had some significance which might otherwise might have been put in a box and forgotten.  (The irony of this does not escape me!)

So here she is, with her little cape made from my first (and last) attempt at traditional crochet.  A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this small piece which would never have grown enough to be used elsewhere.  The dress is made from an old dress from happy days, and the satin covered buttons came from a blouse I had as a teenager.  The flower was on a box of toiletries from a long ago birthday, and the pantaloons which you can just see here…

rag doll

were made from remnants left over from a baby dress of my daughters.

I shall make sure she doesn’t go back in a box, but has pride of place on the dresser from now on!

rag doll

I’ve been wondering if a tutorial for this might be interesting to anyone?  Do let me know what you think…

This is I’m afraid a short post as I’ve been away and it’s nearly time to visit Clovis the Mad French Cat to give him his pill.  I will post an up to date bulletin in the next few days when I hope to have good news about his progress.  It’s taking a long, long time, but we’re getting there!

I shall leave you with the usual Sunday link to Handmade Monday over on Handmade Harbour where you will find plenty more to see, and I’ll be back soon ….x

Courgette Lemon Drizzle Cake

Well it’s official, I’ve failed again in the Veg Garden, and I started this year so well!  I’ll tell you all the disasters another time, but in amongst the blighted potatoes and skeletal sprouting broccoli the Courgettes and Runner Beans are magnificent!  

The only problem with courgettes is that 50% of the household (well, 75% if you count Henry and Higgins) don’t actually like them!  But they are sooo easy to grow, take up loads of space so it makes the garden look very productive, and have such pretty flowers…

but then over night, this happens…

…and there’s a limit to how many you can slip into Shepherds Pie, Curry or Lasagne before protests are made.  I went off to consult  Delia, Jamie, Nigella and Nigel et al for suggestions and this time the wonderful Nigella inspired me to come up with my own take on a Courgette Cake.   The acid test was persuading my horrified cousin to try it and he actually came back for ‘seconds’. (His small son was angling for ‘thirds’!)

So in the interest of helping anyone else with a ‘courgette mountain’ to contend with I’m passing on this version based on Nigella Lawson’s recipe in her book ‘How to be a Domestic Goddess’.

250g courgettes

2 large eggs

125ml vegetable oil

150g caster sugar

225 SR Flour

½ tspn bicarbonate of soda

½ tspn baking powder

Juice of 1 ½ lemons

100g Caster sugar

24cm square tin, greased and lined

Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas mark 4.  (Fan oven 170°C)

Grate the wiped, but not peeled, courgettes with a coarse grater then turn into a strainer over the sink to drain off any excess liquid.

Put the eggs, sugar and oil into a bowl and beat until creamy.  Then sieve in the flour, bicarb and baking powder and beat slowly to mix completely.  Stir in the grated courgette.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 40-45 minutes until the cake is slightly brown and firm to the touch and an inserted cake tester comes out clean.

While the cake is cooking put the lemon juice and sugar into a small saucepan and heat slowly until the sugar has dissolved.

As soon as the cake is out of the oven, prick all over the top with a fine skewer, (I use the cake tester as it makes really fine holes)  and spoon the hot lemon syrup evenly over the top of the cake.  Leave in the tin until absolutely cold before removing it or it will collapse into crumbs and you will be forced to eat it warm with icecream…

This is a moist and delicious cake prettily flecked with green which will keep people guessing if you are coy about the secret ingredient!

Ocean Blue and Buttons…

Hello again…don’t the weeks come round quickly!  It’s been very busy on Planet Penny over the last few days as we’re in the process of turning a storage area into an office, so having moved everything out for Tim to work on it my studio is CHAOS!  It’ll be so good when it’s finished, I might be able to find things more easily (pause for hollow laughter!) but the main perk will be having the printer/scanner in the same room that I’m working in, instead of several rooms and a fight of stairs away.  I suppose the exercise is good for me, but it makes things take twice as long!  In the meantime I’ve been needlefelting and playing with Ocean Blue dye, and little flowery buttons…

Remember the little robins of last week?  I had a cunning plan for their use, and it worked out very well.  I found some pretty natural and red woven ribbon, just enough to make five of these…

needlefelt robin in a twig wreath

three needlefelt robins in twig rings

…and put them on the Planet Penny Facebook page to see what the reaction would be.  Despite several of you telling me off for mentioning the dreaded ‘C’ word (!!) I sold three before I even put them on Etsy, where there is now just one left!  Don’t despair however, there will be more, but they’ll be just a little different.  I don’t do mass production I’m afraid!

I have also completed a variation on the the Love Birds as I couldn’t source the straw wreath straight away, the latest ones have natural colour lambswool hearts…

needlefelt Love Bird in a lambswool heart

Blue needlefelt Love Bird in a lambswool heart

…and three of these have made it as far as the Etsy shop!

And my other creative project the week has involved a spot of dyeing!  I have such problems finding clothes I like, that fit, that are long enough, and I rarely find all that and in a colour I like.  So when I found a tunic top in Cotton Trader’s sale which ticked all the boxes bar the colour one I snapped it up and went off to the local supermarket for a packet of dye…

Take one shirt like this…

…in a cotton linen mix, and add a packet of this…

and a few pretty buttons..and you end up with this…

I’ve ordered two more!

(This might amuse you: Having decided to change the basic white buttons to something more original I carefully sorted an interesting selection of colours snipped off the white ones and replaced them with the pretty flower ones  – I hate sewing on buttons, don’t you?  I had just finished ironing it and had hung it on a hanger to admire when my beloved OH came in.  “Yes,” he said, “That looks really good.  Now all you have to do is change the buttons…”

I say nothing!) 

There was lots of interest last week about Higgins’ ‘Thundershirt’.  He’s actually wearing it at the moment as a storm has just passed by and it does seem to calm him down a lot.  He usually goes and sits on the back doormat and trembles but this time I wrapped him in the shirt and popped him into bed where he snuggled down and look reasonable relaxed.  It was only a small storm so more testing will need to be done, but so far the signs are good.

I must finish this and go and administer tea to the worker in my little ‘soon-to-be’ office, it’s not the weather to be sawing wood!  I’ll leave you with the usual link to ‘Handmade Monday’ over on Handmade Harbour.

Have a lovely week and I’ll be back soon…x