Obviously after being so slack for so long there were no June goals for me to recap,but things are (hopefully) changing around here so lets see what crazy ideas I think I can come up with for July. First things first, I am going to divide up my goals into stitching , knitting and… nah I will leave out cooking as I am trying to get back to the diet thing (really I should set goals for that too but no one wants to hear about my failure to shrink, hehe.)

July Goals Stitching

1. Finish page 3 of St Nick (this will be a tough one but I really need to pull my finger out with this)
2. 2 lengths of DMC (that’s 12 strands) into Sea Beacon
3. Keep up with my 20sts/day SAL – this has been great so far as I do it at work each day during my lunch break.

July Knitting Goals

1. 20 more rows of my jacket
2. Start the fingerless gloves from here <— ravelry link (because Nancy had one that looked so nice I need to try it too)
3. 2 repeats on my falling water lace scarf

Other than my crazy St Nick goal I am trying to keep things pretty calm in the goals stake this month. Things are going to be busy around here in July, with planned visits to the Zoo, the Pompeii and Dali exhibits, craft shows, markets and fun at the observatory it will be all go go go. Should be interesting to see how I went come the end of July.

Well as promised I have a stitchy update post,my first weeks progress on The Bramble and The Rose.

The last stitching session I added in the nosegay to see how it would work for the flowers and all seems good. So far so good with the colours, even though I keep referring to the nosegays as ink and not purple. Really it is the lightest two in the spool that makes me think of it as a pink (though yes in all honesty it is more lavender than pink).

That’s all the stitchy pictures I have for now though, I am waiting until the half way mark I think on this page for St Nick before posting another update…hopefully it will not be too long but working all those browns and detail stitches can be a battle some days. I am thinking interspersing stitching it with Sea Beacon which is just solid areas of black again at the moment may make me feel like I am making progress on something instead of just stalling. Maybe I will try to get a single length of black into sea beacon each night before tackling St Nick… we shall see.

Had a lovely weekend catching up with Nancy and Sharon again, plotting starts and threads and all the usual stuffs, looking forward to the end of July when we all plan to go spend money we shouldn’t at the craft and quilt fair 😀

I have more baking / cooking posts too and believe it or not not everything I made this week was cake! I’ll probably load them up over the next few days. This week is looking as though it will be a busy one, including a meeting with a mortgage broker to discuss grown up things like buying a house *boggle*

So yep I have been baking again and there is more to come this weekend too (really I just can’t help myself ). I promise the next post will have stitching pics though.
It was a friends birthday last week and we had an impromptu celebration dinner… that of course means cake! So about 3pm on the Saturday with a few hours to go before people were turning up I had the bright idea to make mud cake. Yep, that’s me always making grand plans without adequate time to see it through.

The other catch… I didn’t actually have a mud cake recipe. Thankfully Mr B’s brother is a great chef and I have very fond memories of his delicious mud cakes. A quick phone call later and I had an email overflowing with all sorts of cheffy recipes.. ie sometimes a little light on the details. The mud cake recipe however seemed easy enough to follow and I set to putting it all together.

Did I mention that I never can follow a recipe exactly and that I had decided Turkish delight mud cake was the flavour of choice for the particular person I was making it for, and  what better way to make something all gooey and decadent than 4 Turkish delight bars chopped up and dispersed through your cake (this may have been a little overkill)

Things went well though, and after over an hour and a half in the oven we had cake.. big, rich and incredibly deadly cake. No worries about calories though as birthday calories are magical and don’t count, this being a birthday cake it was declared perfectly healthy ( I wouldn’t recommend this for a non birthday occasion of you are worried about how evil baked goods are to your waistline).

A bit eager to get eating we didn’t let the cake cool completely before slathering it in a thick layer of chocolate ganache, this means that the centre was still somewhat gooey and fudgey when we cut (the Turkish delight chunks also seemed to congregate in the centre 😉

A couple of quick notes before heading on to the recipe. This makes a BIG cake. The photo showing the batter being poured in, when cooked the cake was almost to the top of the paper and it made two mini cakes as well ( not that mini actually but made in those cute little spring form tins… I need more little tins, they are so cute). Also I cooked this in a water bath (not such a great idea in the spring form but you get that) and transferred it from the water bath after about an hour. The top does dry out so it is best to cover the cake during cooking in a similar way to when baking fruitcakes.

** The gooeyness of the cake did set once it had cooled completely though some of the softness could be attributed to moisture getting in from the water bath I used initially.

Recipe Bits

Mississipi Mud Cake

500g Butter
300g Dark Chocolate ( I used 50:50 dark and milk as the person I was baking this for is not a big dark chocolate fan)
4 Cups of Sugar
2 Cups Hot Water
2/3 cup of whisky (or in my case Scotch)
2 Tbs Instant Coffee
3 Cups Plain Flour
1/2 Cup Self Raising Flour
1/2 Cup Cocoa
4 eggs lightly beaten

** I added 4 chopped Fry’s Turkish delight bars to the batter and mixed through before pouring into the cake tin.

Place the Butter,chocolate, sugar, hot water, whisky in a bowl and heat over a double boiler until everything is melted and combined. Set the chocolate mixture to the side to cool.
Once the mixture has cooled to room temperature add the dry ingredients to the chocolate mixture. Gradually add the eggs and mix until all the ingredients are combined and there are no lumps.
Bake in a 180*C oven until cake is set in the centre. Mine took about 1.5hrs

Not in a bad way.. just a mind explodey, not enough time, not enough skill but I’ll try anyway kind of a way.
I finally managed to collect a package from Nic today (I had to get it diverted to a different post office etc etc so I could pick it up from work seeing as Australia Post refuses to keep hours that mean I can get to them outside of working hours), the package is a wonderful birthday present and I feel very lucky indeed.. it’s just she was right in her not when she I would be cursing her before I started and every step along the way lol. 

What is it she sent me that I am rabbiting on about so cryptically??  This (warning there are some gorgeous lace patterns here if you are tempted by such things look away now.. you have been warned) Now I love all things historical costume related, with a particular love of 17th/18th century and also Victorian era pieces. This is a replica of a shawl from the late 1800s and I have always wanted to try my hand at Shetland lace.. it’s just it looks so hard! Thankfully Nic was considerate enough to send an easier pattern but I am debating if I am up to the task. It is knitted in cobweb with cobweb weight yarn, of which I have been wonderfully provisioned with two types (enough to make the shawl twice if I wish) and in black too!

As much as I want to dive in and start this straight away I think I am going to hold off until I finish at least one of the knitting projects I have on the go. I will be the first to admit that me desire to lovingly construct hand made pretties often stretches beyond my meagre abilities to do so, but that has never stopped me from giving it a try anyway 😉 So… I will give myself time to get a few more completed knitting projects under my belt before casting on with this one.

Thank you Nic, I still need to email you but it is a wonderful wonderful present and as carefully thought out as all the gifts you give are *hugs*

P.S. I will put up a pic of the beautiful; kit Nic put together for me once I get home, though it will have to likely wait until morning for some sunlight to get a decent pic by.

Eeep this will make three post sin one week *boggle* (lets just say I am not sure I will be able to keep up the pace so don’t get too used to it LOL.

The evil enabling pixies that are Fudgey and Sharon have me playing along with their latest crazy idea. (Ok so there was not a great deal of arm twisting involved… it has been a long time since I had a new start). The chart in question is The Bramble and The Rose by ink circles (June 2009 issue of The Gift of Stitching)

Last night after all the cooking I started pulling out fabrics and threads to have a play. I am not sure about stitching this for myself as there are other ink circles designs I prefer more for myself, but I can think of three people at least that this would make a good present for. My colour choices in this case were not “typical” me colours (no black or purple to be seen), so far I think I am going with Candy apple fabric from silkweavers, with Old Maid of the forest for the ‘brambles’ and a variegated nosegay for the flowery ‘rose’ bits (both Vikki Clayton silks). The colours are inspired largely from the bramble rose itself which is often a magenta/pinky/purple (though I think it also comes in white).

The SAL is only 20 stitches a day… even I should be able to manage that if I can decide if this is the final colour choice I am willing to go with by Saturday that is.

In other news I have been knitting.  This jacket was started over Easter and got about 80 rows done before I made a stupid mistake. A few abortive attempts at correcting said mistake so that it wasn’t noticeable in the fisherman’s rib and I finally conceeded that it would need to be ripped back. The ripping back I did while away for the long weekend recently, curled up in front of a fire, drinking port. It helped to soften the blow ;).

As of last night though I have finally managed to get the project back to where it was before I had to restart, and about 10 extra rows to boot *squee*.  I don’t think this will be finished in time for winter this year by any stretch of the imagination but it should all ready to snuggle in to the next time winter rolls around. Nancy and Sharon can both attest to the fact that the wool is not actually black. It is in fact a very deep purple with more of a rich brown tint than black.

I have a love of steamed puddings and I don’t care that they are old fashioned and outdated. They are a supreme comfort food and remind me of my granny and her old pudding basin, tying the string just right so the greaseproof paper and foil was secure and left you with a little handle to gt the pudding out again. I have very fond memories of the smell of my granny’s golden syrup pudding steaming for hours on the stove and the anticipation of having to wait until after dinner to get any.

So… while trying to think of something I could cook that was all winter warmy and wouldn’t take up space in my oven as there was going to be a lasagne baking in there I came across this recipe for a steamed syrup sponge in Nigella Lawson’s “How to be a Domestic Goddess” ( a recent purchase).  All those memories came rushing back and I knew I was going to have to get this onto the stove as soon as I got home.

It may be all time consuming to cook but really the set up doesn’t take long.  I got this going as soon as I got home and after the rather long process of putting my lasagne together, by the time we were done eating dinner the pudding was perfectly done.
Well worth the effort and so very rich and decadent with all thatgolden syrup.. Yum!

On to the recipe, because warm gooey comfort is a good thing to share 🙂

Ingredients

175g soft unsalted butter
175g self-raising flour
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
zest and juice of 1 lemon (I used limes as I am still trying to get through the box of limes I got at the markets recently)
3 tablespoons of milk

for the syrup

250g golden syrup
juice of 1/2 a lemon (lime)

The Nigella recipe just says to basically throw everything in together and mix. While I am sure this works out of habit I did it in the more traditional way:

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy, and eggs one at a time making sure each egg is incorporated before adding the next. Mix in the lemon (lime) juice and zest, add flour and milk, mix until combined making sure not to over mix and toughen the batter. The batter should be a thick pouring consistency.

With the batter prepared mix lemon juice and golden syrup together then pour into the bottom of a pudding basin (1.5L should be fine). Gently pour in the batter over the top of the golden syrup mixture and cover the basin. If you have a basin with a plastic lid woot! for you, just remember to grease it.

I used pleated baking paper over the pudding basin then aluminium foil. The “lid” was then tied on with string remembering to make a little handle so it can be fished out of the boiling water later.

Lower the basin onto a pot of boiling water so that the water comes 2/3 of the way up the sides of the basin. place the lid on the saucepan and allow the pudding to cook for 2hrs. The water should be kept at a gentle boil the entire time. Cooking time should be at least 2hrs but it is not a drama if it is longer.

Once it is done turn the pudding out onto a plate (make sure it has a rime so the syrupy sauce doesn’t run everywhere). Serve with all the usual suspects, custard, ice cream , cream etc.

Ta Da!  comfort food extraordinaire.

So it was pointed out to me a few times of late that I have let my blog fall to the wayside. There is no denying it, in fact many things have fallen to the wayside and stitching has been one of those for the most part.

So what have I been doing??

Most everybody will know already that I packed up all my belongings and moved to Melbourne toward the end of 2008. It has now been six months since that move and Melbourne has treated me well. On my numerous trips to Melbourne I have always loved the feel of the city and since moving here on a more permanent basis that has not changed… Melbourne “fits” or perhaps it is more that I fit well with Melbourne.

I finally submitted my PhD thesis (over 3 months ago now) and I am awaiting the markers reports to see how well things have gone, there is no telling when they will come through though so it is a matter of trying not to think about it while I enjoy life without the thesis cloud over my head.

I’ve started a new job at Melbourne University and while the atmosphere is a little different to what I am used to and there are the ever present self doubts about how well I will actually do at this job, things are ticking along. Besides it is just nice having an income again (yes that has meant more stash).

All in all life has been busy, but good and getting to spend time chatting about stitchy stuff with Nancy and Sharon once a month has been loads of fun, even if we all take a few days to recover from the lack of sleep because we stay up way too late :p

My blog has languished, largely through not knowing what to do with it, but there are ideas floating about so we shall see what is to come. I really want to change the look / theme a bit and toy with some layout options over time. First thing on the agenda though is posting more regularly. I have updated my wips listings and a few of the pictures too. This still needs some work and I have a few more projects to add in and take pictures of but I thought if anyone was still reading this thing then a few updated pictures was in order.

I think I will go back to monthly goals and summaries starting in July to get the ball rolling on posting again. There was a brief consideration about starting another blog mainly a baking / cooking blog but rather than add all the extra work I might just post more of my forays into baking here, especially seeing as I have a new shiny Kitchenaid mixer that was part of my birthday goodies *squee*

So here we go… a blog restart, I wonder if anyone still realises this little part of the interwebs exists 🙂