Howling at the Moon

 Every now and then I make some piece of clothing, mostly for my daughters. The finishing touch for me is to sew on the leather label with my name. I order the custom made labels on line, but find them quite expensive, so I am looking for an alternative for a while now and thought about pyrography. So I ordered a pyrography pen, that arrived yesterday. The only thing I have to find now is inexpensive leather to cut little labels from. To practice a bit, I tried my best on this charcuterie board, that I already had.  Not that bad, for a first attempt, but I will use another wood variety next time. This board is made of bamboo and I guess pine will do better because of its softer consistency.     ~*~ My Apple Sauce with Fresh Ginger & Pumpkin Spices was featured by All Things Kitchen !      

   In the context of Baby Presents for Expecting Colleagues I made this dinosaur this week.      Pattern : Rex the Dinosaur from Amigurumi Treasures by Erinna Lee Yarn : various colors by Ricorumi   ~*~   Another baby present, Daisy-Mae the Pig , was featured this week by Pieced Pastimes and Oombawka Design !         

 One of my favorite delicacies with apples (after Dutch Apple Pie) is apple sauce. Especially when it's ice cold and there's fresh ginger and pumpkin spices in it. Today I found a couple of apples in my fruit bowl that were starting to get some wrinkles so it was about time to eat them or to use them for something else, so I made apple sauce. What you need 4 apples 50cc water ginger and/or pumpkin spices, if you like What to do Peel the apples and remove the core Cut the apples in little pieces Bring to a boil with the water Let cook for about ten minutes at medium heat Add ginger and spices and mash all ingredients Let cool off in the fridge Eat ice cold ~*~ The Swiss Roll with Mango and Mascarpone that I made a couple of weeks ago was featured by Slices of Life !     

  And here's another one in the series "Pregnant Colleagues': Daisy-Mae the Pig! This one is for a colleague who's expecting a little girl.     Pattern: Daisy-Mae the Pig from Amigurumi Treasures by Erinna Lee (good news: Amigurumi Treasures 2 is in the making! Love it!)  Yarn: various colors by Panduro     ~*~   My King's Day decorations were featured by Creative Jewish Mom and French Ethereal !      My Scrunchies were featured by Oombawka Design !

  Stash Buster 11   My daughters (11 and 13) had vacation a couple of weeks ago and before the pandemic started, my idea was to go to Finland this vacation for my dream holiday: a sledge dog tour. I'm not really into dogs, to be honest, but there's something about huskies (huskies more than malamutes, because of the shorter hair) that I really like. Maybe it's their ever smiling face or their enthusiasm, but I realize these are features lots of dog breeds have. Maybe it's because they so much look like wolves, which are my favorite animals. I'm not that spiritual, but when someone says 'totem animal', I think wolf. Anyway, due to known circumstances there was no sledge dog tour this year, but I wanted my daughters to have a nice vacation anyway, within the limits of pandemic measures. In our country that means, among some other things, no more than one visitor in your house at a time. So my oldest asked her friend to stay over for a couple of n...

Stash Buster 10 The country I live in (The Netherlands) has a monarchy and the 27th of April the whole country celebrates the king's Birthday. Under normal circumstances most of the country's nationals migrate to the capital city (Amsterdam) on that day but the lockdown measures make it impossible to gather, especially in large amounts of people. The urgently advice is even not to welcome more than one person in your house.  Last year we were also in lockdown on King's Day, so we tried to make it a festive day for ourselves. And honestly, I think it was one of the better King's Day Celebrations of the last years. In the morning I made 'tompoucen' with my daughters ( a typical Dutch delicacy, that is popular year round, but especially on King's Day). In the afternoon we did Old Dutch games and watched movies and after that we had a BBQ. Perfect day.  I don't know yet what we will do this year. I bought ingredients and coloring (the colors of the flag, wh...

 One of my friends asked me to crochet a little baby blanket that she wants to give as a baby present to someone else. I showed her two pictues of blankets I made recently to choose from, but she wasn't sure which one she liked the most. I offered to crochet both blankets for her so she could see them for real to make the choosing easier. The one she doesn't choose I can give to one of my expecting colleagues. Here's the first blanket.   I made this blanket two times before in mint and dusky pink (see here and here ). This one is in baby pink with an ecru edge.     Pattern : Chill & Chunky Blanket from KOEL Magazine Issue #6 Yarn : Julia Baby Pink by Zeeman    

  One of the things my youngest daughter and I love to do together is bake. This weekend we made this Spring Swiss Roll together.     What you need 5 eggs 150 grams sugar flour 110 grams cornstarch 35 grams fresh mango 4 spoons whipped crea 200 grans mascarpone 50 grams sugar vanille essence 1 mango decorations     What to do Preheat oven at 170 degrees Celsius Mix the eggs with the sugar for ten minutes Sift flour and cornstarch and mix with the eggs  Cover a baking tray (size 30x50cm) with baking paper Divide the mix over the tray Bake for 12 minutes (or until light brown and spongy) Let the cake cool off a bit  Sprinkle a bit of icing sugar over the cake and roll up with help of the baking paper Let cool down in the fridge   Mix mascarpone and cream with the sugar Cut the mango in thin slices Take the cake from the fridge and roll out Spread the mascarpone out over the cake Cover with mango slices Roll the cake up again Decorate with whatever y...

  As told before there are lots of colleagues expecting so I'm busy to crochet baby presents. One of my colleagues has a little black cat, so I thought it would be nice to make her cat for her baby. She's expecting a girl, so it had to be a girl cat with  a little dress and flower hair band and all.   Pattern : Ming the Kittin from Amigurumi Treasures by Erinna Lee   Yarn : various colors by Katia and Scheepjes   I made this one before, as a present for my youngest daughter's teachter at the end of the school year. You can find that post here .    ~*~   My Delft Blue Crochet Vase was featured by Our Hopeful Home !