So I am still stitching along, and have even been picking this up daily. I have managed to to finish weeks 15 to 19 now with only weeks 20, 21 and 22 (which is this current week) to go to fully catch up. I should be able to make my goal of being all caught up by the end of November is I keep at it.
This is about 2.5 pages possibly a little more and by the time I have fully caught up I think the third page will be polished off with a little done on page 4. I suspect I got lost in my stitch count a long the way with all the frogging I have had to do this week (unfortunately the shadow of some frogging is still visible on the piece but should be covered up with the stitching that is to go back in that area). According to my little tracker though I am at just over 25% none too shabby in my opinion… I might even hit 50% by Christmas.

Since starting my wip reduction plan I’ve been pretty good with keeping new starts under control for a while now.. and even my stash purchasing has been somewhat restrained. This however may tip me over the edge. It is an expensive project ($35US per month over a number of months) but oh so pretty. So far I have managed to resist but in all honesty i am not sure that will last. It is being offered by the ladies associated with the 17th century jacket project at Plimoth plantation and the needlecase is done in the elaborate style of the Stuart era.

For those of you that haven’t been following the wonderful work done on the 17th century jacket project obsessively since it started should really really head over and check out the blog. Not long now until the big reveal of the completed Jacket and outfit. I can’t wait to see the finished project it is bound to be breathtaking and I am so jealous of all the stitchers that have had the opportunity to work on this project as well as the people that will get to see this beautiful piece in person.

After a restart and a couple of years I have finally finished the hug me tight shrug I started back in Brisbane probably two years ago.

I decided to rip it back and restrat it as a short sleeved version which is also going to be handy to have in Melbourne’s changeable spring and autumn months.
The shrug does still need to be stitched up and have the ends woven in .. but at this point I can’t find my wool tapestry needle, think it will be a quick trip to lincraft on the way home form work this week. This project knitted up super fast taking only two weeks worth of train rides to and from work and the occasional lunch hour.

Next up…. something a little differnt. This week will be full steam ahead on the costumes for the Sci-Fi party at the end of november. The fabric selection is just a little out of the ordinary for the usual colour choices and fabric types found around here 😛

So on the week where Melbourne weather tried to do its best to emulate Brisbane I had plans for another extravagant cake attempt. This time 3 dozen cupcakes all sitting on a cupcake tower with a cutting cake/ centerpiece style thing at the top.
Didn’t seem like it would be much of a problem until the humidity hit and the last thing you want when dealing with fondant is heat and humidity. One of the reasons I hadn’t tried any real cake decorating until moving south.
Oh well I was sure going to learn a lot from this and charged forth regardless. 🙂

All in all excluding a midnight fondant disaster on Friday night and an emergency stop off for more fondant on Saturday I think it held together quite well. The request from the birthday girl was butterflies and dinosaurs and a garden … tall order but I had the idea to do a dinosaur in the midst of a bee and butterfly filled garden with the garden being made up by the cupcakes. The bees had to be in there as having made some for a lady at work I thought they were so cute and wanted to do a few more.
All the toppers were made from sugar paste and sat atop a mixture of vanilla or chocolate cupcakes with vanilla butter cream tinted green to match the larger cake. The pink ones were vanilla cake with a raspberry butter cream that had been flavoured (and coloured) with the addition of pureed raspberries.
The cutting cake on top was a mud cake with a layer of chocolate ganache and covered in fondant (a nightmare to try and keep from bubbling or melting in the weather.. and I hope it survived long enough for the party).
The dinosaur was hand moulded from gum paste with the main body area being formed from a mound of LCM bars (rice crispie treats) This actually worked really well and was quite durable considering – and Nic yes this was done on the fly with no instructions ( I actually surprised myself with this actually working from concept to final product).

So Happy Birthday Clare, I hope you loved your cake as much as I enjoyed making it.

Believe it or not I have already done one of my goals for this month.
Jan’s RR is currently winging its way across the Tasman on its way home. I actually finished this Monday night but had to wait until yesterday to send it due to the cray Melbourne Cup holiday thing they have here in Melbourne.

Well everyone else has except where I work, although by the looks of the people walking around town that day, work was a safer place to be… so many scary dresses!

I think this is it now for RR stitching… well ok I do have a section to finish on miss fudgey’s RR because I only go tit half done before passing it on. She will come visit me again before she heads for her final trip home I think.

I did cheat a little with this one though as I didn’t want to hold her up any longer than I had to so I just did one of the little sections. My plan was to stitch an additional one if time permitted, but well an 8 day visit from my father and his partner really put paid to that idea.

The chart is  morning rose (I  think) by Linda Ravenscroft and is a retired design from HAED.  Stitched 1×1 of 25ct and sectioned up by the incredibly talented Nancy, who I think did the sectioning on most of the RRs for this one hehe.

Phew ! With the Halloween posts mostly done for now I can get my goals set down before the first week of November has been and gone.

November!!! This year has just zoomed past I’m sure someone has been stealing hours from my days and days from my weeks.

Ok onto those goals summaries.

October Goals

Stitching

• 5 Hours on Cirques Sure did (probably a little more than that too)
  
• Start the Pinn stitch kit Yep though only just I will try and get a picture of this up byt the end of the coming weekend.
• Finish page 3 of St Nick (sound like a broken record with this one) Arrrgh
• 6 strands into Sea Beacon no problems with this one
  

Knitting

20 More rows into the Jacket – This is a sort of yes, I got the roes done but made an error in the shaping so I had to rip them all back out again. I put this project to the side for now and managed to finish my falling water lace scarf in stead.

All in all no too bad when you ad din the madness of Halloween and the crazy baking that went along with it. I realised that my knitting projects aren’t listed on my wip reduction plan so my finish this month won’t count towards it but I am still happy to have one less project hanging around.
November is going to be crazy again with a trip to Brisbane for Mr B’s 40th Birthday bash, another little girls birthday cake (have started the fondant decorations fo rhtis one at least) costumes for the party, decorations and interstate planning. Add to that work is nuts and there always seems to be something else to get done and I am not so sure sleep will be on the agenda for November.

Regardless of all that though I am determined to set some goals and see how I go.

November Goals

Stitching

• Finish stitching in all the 939 on Sea Beacon
• Stitch my section of Jan’s RR and get it sent out before the end of the first week of November.
• 5 Hours on cirque
• Finish page 3 of St Nick – please!!!
• At least three lengths into the PINN stitch kit
• Post bramble updates each week and try to be completely caught up by the end of November
• Do the finishing on the Lesley and Colin trees

Knitting

• Signed up for the Nov KAL on the beginning lace knitters group on Ravelry. So start and make progress on the woodland lace shawl.
• Frog bak my diamond lace shawl wip and restart as the short sleeved version

Other

• Costumes for the sci-fi party
• Sci-fi cake
• Fairy dinosaur, butterfly garden cake

WIP project tallies (4 months since project Start)
WIPs: 28
Finishes This Month: 1 ( knitting project not listed on tally)
Finishes since project start: 2 (+1 knitting)
Items for finishing : 6
New Starts: 1
Planned Starts: 2

Wish me luck 😀

Well another year and another Halloween has been and gone. Last year we missed out doing much to celebrate as we were madly in the throws of getting ready to move to Melbourne. In fact, we were in Melbourne just days before Halloween trying to find somewhere to live. This year it wasn’t looking good for a big celebration either. Things have just been so busy trying to find time to get everything done just wasn’t going to happen.

I still have two sci-fi based costumes to get ready before the end of October not to mention cake decorating, party planning etc etc. The plan was keep it simple. A few friends, no costumes some food, drinks games and just a quiet night in.. maybe pull out a few of the decorations…

Well this is what resulted:

There was also dungeon wallpaper down the hallway and a glow in the dark room with black light in the TV room. The low key decorations somehow managed an upgrade along the way. In my defence Halloween is my favourite holiday of the year and I LOVE pulling out all the candles and decorations and this was the first chance to try things out in the new house.

Not all the decorations moved with us interstate so it was an adventures seeing what we had kept and them wondering why we got rid of some of the things we did.  The food… well it was themed of course and the recipes for the things I made follow below. Most of them were adapted / pillaged from the internet and largely this year inspirations was provided by  Martha Stewart’s website (as well as templates for the bats and rats used for decorations). The menu included:

• Shrunken head pies
• Bloodied Brain cupcakes (oodles of places have listed instructions for these)
• Brain pannacotta (as inspired by Not quite Nigella)
• Witches hands
• Puff pasty pumpkins
• Creature chips and dips
• then a variety of cookies, treats and standard nibbles.

It was quite the spread for the 5 of us … I am still working on my tendency to over cater but I loved the way everything turned out.

On to the recipes!

Creature Chips

The creature chips were the simplest to make and were a lot nicer to be nibbling on with dips and cheeses than standard fatty salty chips (don’t get me wrong I am a lover of fatty salty chips but there was more than enough of both to go around that more was not required).

Simply take your favourite Hallloween cookie cutters – I have over 40 to choose from thanks to a great barrel full of cutters provided by the wonderful adma a few Halloweens ago- using purchased tortillas in a variety of types if you can find them. I used wholegrain and plain cut out the shapes with your cookie cutters, spray lightly with canola or olive oil spray (the olive oil with garlic is really tasty) sprinkle with a little salt and bake in the oven for about 5-10 mins at ~190°C, basically until they just start to colour.

Place the chips on a cooling rack until completely cool and crisp, store in an airtight container. These are best made no more than about 24hours before your event. They will also work with any type of flat bread such as mountain bread and lavash breads. For Halloween I tried to choose good shapes for dipping that wouldn’t have small pieces that broke off, these were: bats, ghosts, coffins, devil heads and Frankensteins.

Puff Pastry Pumpkins
The recipe for these was pilfered from Marthastewart.com and is another simple but effective treat.

You will need:

Butter puff pastry
Gruyere cheese (~ 100gish. 1.5 cups)
Parmesan Cheese (1cup)
Paprika
Butter for melting
Djon Mustard
and a pumpkin cookie cutter

Mix the grated parmesan and gruyere (I also ground in a little fresh black pepper) and set aside.
Spread a thin layer of djon mustard on one sheet of the puff pasty (I used the pampas packet of butter puff pastry that comes with 3 sheets and managed to get over 12 pumpkins form that, you would get more if you re rolled the scraps and cut again). Sprinkle a good layer of the chees mixture over the mustard and lay a second sheet of pastry across the top, encasing the cheese. With a rolling pin roll the sheets together a little so the stick.

Cut your shapes and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper, then place the whole tray in the fridge to chill for ~5-10mins. Melt ~tablespoon of butter and add a teaspoon of paprika (more if you prefer a stronger floavour). Remove the pastry from the fridge and brush with the melted butter and paprika mixture. Place in a preheated 190°C oven and cook for 7-10 minutes until pastry is golden brown. You can serve these hot or cold and they reheat well in the oven.

Shrunken Head Pies

These pies were just a basic mince meat pie filling baked in a skull pan such as this one.
for the filling you will need:

• onion (diced)
• 1kg (you could halve this and just use 500g for less pies)
• 125g bacon diced nice and small
• tomato paste
• Beef stock
• gravy powder

Saute off the bacon and onion in a pan before adding the mince and browning it off. Throw in ~1/4 cup of tomato paste and a cup of beef stock. I usually add some instant gravy powder to help thicken the mix and enrich the flavour. I usually to this to taste and add some tabasco, worcestershire sauce, black pepper and salt. Simmer the mixture until it is thick but not dry, then set aside to cool.
Line the baking tray with shortcrust pastry ( I usually just use packaged shortcrust pastry for parties to cut down on prep time, add to that pastry and I often don’t agree when I make it from scratch this is a low stress alternative) add filling then place a pastry ‘lid’ onto each of the pies and brush with egg wash. I cooked mine at 190°C for about 15-20 minutes until the pastry was lovely and crisp and golden. Let the pies cool in the tray for 5mins before turning out onto a cooling rack.

The pies can be made beforehand and kept in the fridge / freezer, just reheat in the oven before serving.

Dulce De Leche Bat Cookies (From Martha Stewart)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1 large egg plus 1 large egg yolk
• 4 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dulce de leche ( I made my Dulce De Leche in the oven in the same way as Not Quite Nigella, this is easier than babysitting a pot of boiling caramel)

Whisk together flour, cocoa, salt, and baking powder. Beat butter and sugars with a mixer on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg, yolk, chocolate, and vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture, and beat until just combined. Shape into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate 1 hour.
On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut out 36 rounds with a 2-inch cutter, and space 1 inch apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. Using an aspic cutter set, cut a triangle, point side up, in the center of half the cookies, and then use the half-moon cutter to make one “wing” on each side of the triangle. Refrigerate 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 375. Bake until set, 7 to 9 minutes. Let cool. Top each uncut cookie with 1 teaspoon dulce de leche and a cutout cookie.

With the last weekend of October being Halloween and my love of all things spooky… it is no wonder I am a bit late with my update this month. I have been trying to fit some stitching in when I can though and while there are no pieces to remove from my wip list this month I am happy with the way things are progressing.

First up is Sea Beacon, I have been working on her on the trains to and from work. I just section off a block of 939 then spend the train trip filling in as much of that space as possible. This strategy has worked really well and seen me finish a few thousand stitches in her in October. I am almost out of 939 on this page though and should see the last of it this month. At this point I don’t know which project will work best for this strategy in the following months but Violet Sometimes may yet see the light of day once more.

Next up a little bit of Bramble. I have been trying to work on this as much as I can and have managed to catch up on weeks 9-15 worth of stitching. This still leaves me about a month behind in ‘days of stitching’ but I am determined to catch up this month so that I can be on track for December. I have managed to catch up a few more days since this picture was taken and hope to be back to weekly updates on this soon. This is very close to page 1 and 4 being complete. (Reminder of details: Design by Ink Circles, The Bramble and The Rose released in the June Issue of The Gift of Stitching- also now available from Tracey Horner as a Chart- stitched 1×1 on green apple 32ct opalescent lugana from Silkweavers using Vikki Clayton silks in a custom variegated nosegay and old maid of the forest).

That leaves my other main focus for this month which was Cirque. I have been taking it along to the Stitch and Bitch at Morris and Sons in town each week. The reactions it has been getting I find really odd for a store that actually stocks needlework supplies. Mind you they are mostly focused in the DMC range I guess, but still.. the gasps and questions about where I find patterns like that etc are somewhat surprising it is not like Ink Circles charts can’t be found at a number of the stalls often at the craft markets every few months. I have been spreading the word about Sampler cove and Ink circles and the like though… and Vikkis silks, so maybe there will be a few more converts out there in not too long. Most of the S&B people are knitters though with a few ladies doing surface embroidery and the like. I tend to alternate between knitting and stitching from week to week depending on how I feel. Cirque has benefited from the attention though and I am now determined to try and see this completed before the year is out. It will be fantastic to have a larger long time wip actually completed. No idea what I’ll do with it when it is done though… probably just throw it in a drawer. Lol.

The top right hand circle is in the process of being frogged. I missed the last intersecting circle on that row and only realised when I went to infill and none of the smaller circles would fit… I had though it looked funny and kept checking the pattern but for some reason never noticed I was one intersection short. Next time I pick this up in my lunch break I will finish the frogging and set things right. I am probably going to outline all of the remaining circles (except the small infill ones) and the border before heading back to do all the fill designs. I think it will help in seeing progress and inspire me to to get it finished all the faster.

You may of noticed there is a piece lacking from my update… Dear old St Nick is still languishing on page three. I think that page is cursed.. or I am. I also haven’t taken a picture yet of the new start I had with the PINN stitch kit. Hopefully I will have an update of both of those soon but the progress is minimal enough to not warrant a picture at this point.

Phew … long update and I still have two more to write. thanks to anyone who stuck around to the end, it seems not updating for a while has left me in the mood to ramble. Next up Halloween baking update and my goals round up / new goals for November.