Sunday 29 May 2011

lemon drizzle cake

Found this easy straight forward recipe here while looking for mixtures for 2lb loaf tins.

Note added 30/ 5/ 2011. Here's a link to a conversion chart for grams into ounces, hope this helps converting from the metric into imperial. Click here.

Ingredients

225g softened butter
225g Castor sugar
4 eggs
225g self raising flour
finely grated zest 1 lemon

For the topping
85g Castor sugar
juice of 1 and a half lemons

Method
  1. Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Beat together the butter and sugar until pale and creamy, then add the eggs, one at a time, slowly mixing through. Sift in the flour, then add the lemon zest and mix until well combined. Line a loaf tin (8 x 21cm) with greaseproof paper, then spoon in the mixture and level the top with a spoon.
  2. Bake for 45-50 mins until a thin skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. While the cake is cooling in its tin, mix together the lemon juice and sugar to make the drizzle. Prick the warm cake all over with a skewer or fork, then pour over the drizzle - the juice will sink in and the sugar will form a lovely, crisp topping. Leave in the tin until completely cool, then remove and serve. Will keep in an airtight container for 3-4 days, or freeze for up to 1 month.

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Hand Spun Cheviot Wool Blanket

After quite a long break from doing any spinning I pulled this project out of it's hibernation bag for another go at finishing. There's just over 1kg of cheviot wool roving for this blanket. It's intended to be uneven in texture and so far approximately 130 grams is producing about 124m of hand spun knitting yarn. I'm knitting as the yarn is produced and just about keeping ahead of myself using the drop spindle. There are 145 stitches on the size 7 mm circular needles (not using in the round) and the pattern is a combination of moss stitch with rows of knit stitch with extra wraps to make the open texture and hopefully gain extra length more quickly.






Saturday 7 May 2011

Turquoise Grey and Raspberry Colour Scheme

A small crochet garland (started back in April here ) is finished and now decorates the bedroom wall in the cabin. The motif's are a combination of circles and squares turned on edge. For the circles I used this pattern from Attic 24 as the base and for the squares I used 'Willow' from Jan Eaton's book 200 crochet blocks but omitted the final two rounds. I used a mixture of cotton and wool yarns as follows;

Turquoise = Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino #340031
Grey = Kon Tiki Cotton DK slate #1456
White /cream = Kon Tiki Ivory Cream #1443



Embroidered bed linen from a well know Swedish furniture shop.

The crochet Granny Square throw just about covers the bed - details about this here.

Monday 2 May 2011

Summer Issue UK Handmade Magazine


Just a quick post to mention this latest magazine issue. Click on the picture to view the Summer 2011 edition. Included are lots of features and an article about social media and creativity by Anna Stassen pages 36-37 with reference to the Creature Round Robin which Hand Knitted Things participated in last year and mentioned in more detail here.


Keeping Busy

Been busy over at 'one point one hectares'......click here to see.