Making the Seasons: October

Can I just start by saying a heartfelt thank you for your comments on my last post. As always I am bolstered and warmed by your friendship, support, encouragement and interest. Thank you.

Ok, it's time for the final Making the Seasons post, the end of the most wonderful year long partnership between myself and my friend Lucy of Attic24. The initial aim of Making the Seasons - to find a little time and space in a busy life to spend on something creative and seasonal - has never felt as relevant to me as it does at the moment, as I juggle work, family life, blogging, friendships, housework, cooking and craft. Oh, and the whippet. Focusing on the seasons brings me so much happiness, whether it's getting out my crocheted pumpkins to put on the mantel in the autumn, making Christmas presents, or bringing bulbs and greenery into the house in the new year. I find it grounds me somehow, connects me to the month we're in, to what's going on outside, the weather. 

This month's project is a wall hanging, woven on a small loom that I bought about a year ago. I don't know that there's anything particularly October-ish about this project, but I do know that as the weather gets colder and the days shorter, I find I want to work with yarn more and needle and thread less. I was a little apprehensive when I finally unpacked the loom, opened the book I bought over the summer holidays and actually engaged with it all, but once I got going there was no stopping me. I cannot recommend this craft highly enough, I think it is just a wonderful way to create something unique and personal. 

Once you've purchased (or made) your loom, it is a very thrifty craft and a fabulous way to use up yarn scraps, especially very small amounts of nice, expensive yarn that you don't want to throw away but don't know what to do with. I didn't buy any yarn for this project, but just used a mixture of cream acrylic DK, cream aran weight, and leftover chunky yarn in mustard, pink and cream, and a very small amount of roving wool that I bought some time ago.

Providing you are making your wall hanging this size, and you are using a fair amount of chunky yarn in with your DK, it's very quick to create. I started and made the whole thing in just two evenings, although it did seem to take a while to darn in all those ends on the back.

It's also exceptionally easy. There is a reason why looms are often aimed at children - all you have to do is weave over and under the warp (vertical) threads and tie the odd knot.

The most fun part was hanging the weaving on a small piece of wooden dowel and cutting the long threads at the bottom. Sooo satisfying. Snip snip.

I've hung it in the living room for now, and I like the way it adds texture and warmth to an otherwise stark white wall 

I bought this loom which I think it sometimes called a "lap loom" since it's about 30 cm x 40 cm so can sit on your lap while you work, although I found it much easier to sit at a table to weave. The area of woven work is slightly smaller but you can make the finished piece as long as you want by adding tassels. I would very much like to make a large wall hanging, and am toying with the idea of turning an old picture frame into a loom by removing the glass and banging nails into the top and bottom of the frame. 

The overall size is 24 cm wide by 52 cm long, but at least half that length is the tassels. 

There are many books on weaving out there, but after a long browse in Foyles in London, I bought Modern Weaving and thought it was very good. There is a lot of inspiration, and it's not just wall hangings but all kinds of other projects like cushions, mats, coasters, bags and phone cases. I didn't follow any one pattern to the letter and made up my own wall hanging as I went along, but I think the instructions on how to prepare, start and finish your project, as well as different types of stitches, are very clear.

I absolutely love it. It's very soft and tactile, and I love the imperfections and the way the different types of yarn are so distinct. I am already planning two more like this, as gifts, and then I might pluck up the courage to make my own large weaving. 

I really hope you've enjoyed these posts. I know I've loved the challenge of creating something each month, whether is sewing or dyeing or gardening, or weaving. Please do pop over to lovely Lucy's blog to see her final Making the Seasons post. 

Making the Seasons: September

Two clothing posts in a row! Most unlike me, but all house pottering and crafting is on hold while the endless home renovations continue. We now have new flooring in the hall and living room and it's looking fabulous, I will show you soon. But enough of that, welcome to September's Making the Seasons post. As always with these posts, I am trying to make a little time and space in a busy life for some kind of crafting. It can be anything and if you look at my Making the Seasons label on the right hand side of my blog you can see the other things I've done over the last ten months, but this month was sewing.

I don't know whether it was the recent Frida Kahlo effect, with all those floral headbands I kept seeing everywhere, or just summer, but for the last few months I have really wanted to cover a plain white shirt with some fabulously over the top, Mexican style embroidery. You know the sort of thing, huge flowers and lush green leaves, heavy with satin stitch. I even bought a couple of lovely tops - a large cotton shirt from Gap and a gorgeous silk blouse in the sale at The White Company - but couldn't settle on a design or find the time for that amount of time-consuming stitching.

And then I remembered applique, something I used to do a lot when the children were younger, brightening up a plain supermarket t-shirt or bag with some fabric and thread. It's a quick way to achieve the same effect of colour and shape without hours of careful hand sewing. So I dusted off my Bondaweb (fusible interfacing) and found some linen and felt scraps, and just cut out a few shapes, arranging them on the t-shirt as I went. The top I used is a plain striped long-sleeved t-shirt from Gap, a shop I like a lot because their clothes seem to fit my body shape well and they always wash well and last a long time. 

It took an hour to cut and iron on the petals and leaves, and then I spent maybe an hour each night this week securing the fabric to the t-shirt with stitches around the edge, then adding a little embellishment and extra detail. The fusible interfacing secures the fabric for a little while, but you need the stitching to make sure it's really going to last. I like how it came out, especially the way it looks a bit like a necklace, and the colours are summery but faded, a nice crossover into autumn. It was a fun project and a welcome distraction from endless decorating, and a seasonal end-of-summer thing to create, although I'm afraid I've packed away my Saltwaters for another year and dusted off my boots. 

Next month, the last one in this Making the Season's project I'm sharing with my friend Lucy at Attic24, I am planning on learning a totally new skill and trying my hand a something I've never done before: weaving on a small loom. I am very excited! But for now, please pop over to Lucy's beautiful, colourful blog and read her September post. She's been extremely busy with Yarndale so I am amazed that she has had time to do anything else. 

Making the Seasons: August

Each month, when I introduce my Making the Seasons post, I waffle on a bit about how important it is for me to make time - even when I'm stupidly busy - to do something crafty and creative, about how good that is for my mental health and general well being, and it's absolutely true. I really do think that and never have I felt it so much as this month. I'm up to my eyeballs in dust and renovations (which, ahem, may have slightly slipped from my control...) and about to go back to work next week, and feeling a little overwhelmed by life if I'm honest. 

I had plans this week of a day sewing quietly with Radio 4 on in the background, perhaps making my dress, then doing some baking, maybe a little yoga...instead I am right in the middle of ripping up flooring and general mess and so I decided that what I would love to do would be to hand stamp some fabric and make a new peg bag and ironing board cover. I don't know why but it did, and still does, seem like a good idea.

The idea came about when I was distracted in IKEA last week by the fabric section. I had been looking for something to replace my horrible burnt, stained ironing board cover (I have a really bad habit of leaving the iron face down on the fabric while moving the clothes around, rather than moving it to the rack at the end, if that makes sense) but couldn't see anything just right. So, remembering I had half a jar of fabric paint left over from Angus's blind, I bought two metres of plain white cotton and decided to do some more potato stamping.

I love these lines of semi circles and the potatoes give the perfect amount of irregularity to the rows. With this paint, you simply iron the paint onto the fabric to seal it, and then it's good to be used and washed. Remember to put scrap fabric under and on top of your freshly stamped piece to avoid the paint seeping into your ironing board cover or staining your iron while you seal it. 

To make the cover, I just cut the fabric into an approximate ironing board shape plus a generous seam allowance and sewed a deep hem all the way around leaving a gap at the top for the elastic. Then, once the elastic is inserted into the hem with a safety pin, you pull it tight and knot it, simple as that. 

I fancied a smaller print for the peg bag so I used a pen lid and deodorant lid as my tools and just stamped them into an ink pad, and stamped away on the fabric.

I played around with a mixture of rows, interlocking circles and dots, and then heat sealed with the iron in the same way as the paint.

While I am loving the absence of colour here (so quiet! so calm!) I do feel that this peg bag is a little blah and would be enormously improved by a bright yellow or pink ribbon trim along the opening, but I didn't have any to hand. I may yet buy some and hand sew it on. That's if Ziggy doesn't grab it off the washing line and chew it to pieces first, like he did the last one. 

I am enjoying this suggestion of domestic bliss in the form of these everyday, utilitarian objects, all clean and new.

I am also enjoying the benefits of a closely cropped image, because when you zoom out...

...it's still a building site, and there's still a big pile of ironing to do and a never ending amount of washing to peg out on the line.

Please do pop along to Lucy's beautiful blog, Attic24, and read her Making the Seasons post. I am so enjoying this monthly project and can't believe this is the tenth post! 

Making the Seasons: July

Welcome to July's Making the Seasons post, the summer fruits edition. As always with these posts, my intention is to make time for some kind of seasonal and creative activity, be that sewing, dyeing, crochet, gardening or in this case cooking. I'm doing this with my friend Lucy of Attic24 and our hope was that you might feel inspired to do something similar too. The heat has meant that I've felt no inclination to bake over the last few weeks, but I have still enjoyed pottering in the kitchen, always one of my favourite places to retreat to when life gets busy.

In our garden we have one redcurrant and two blackcurrant bushes. I know nothing about growing fruit but I do realise how totally low maintenance these plants are, to the point where I forget all about them and am surprised when I see their stalks hanging with fruit. The blackcurrants are a joy but I do have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the redcurrants. I always feel that I should appreciate and enjoy them more, do something with them other than pick them and put them in the freezer, because they're not my favourite fruit. It's not the tartness, but the texture and the seeds that get stuck in your teeth. With any other fruit that I had stashed in the freezer, I would quickly use it up by throwing it in with apples into a crumble, but I never want to do that with redcurrants. So this year I decided to really go to town with my soft fruit harvest and enjoy every currant that grew on those bushes.

The first thing I did to use up last year's frozen harvest was make a few jars of redcurrant jelly using this recipe, which I would really recommend. And Delia's right, homemade redcurrant jelly is a world away from shop bought jars. Some I turned into a sweet chilli dipping sauce, the rest will get used up later, probably at Christmas. I also made the happy discovery that warmed redcurrant jelly is pretty amazing poured over vanilla ice cream, with the combination of creamy, sweet and tart flavours.

The fresh currants were used in Summer Pudding, a very traditional English seasonal dessert which I'd never made before, probably because I was put off by the redcurrants. You line a bowl with white bread, crust removed, then fill the bowl with stewed redcurrants, strawberries and raspberries, before placing a bread "lid" on top then covering the bowl with a weighted plate and refrigerating overnight. All the juice soaks into the bread so by the time you turn out the dessert and eat, you can slice it and the bread is soft and delicious. 

I wasn't sure how much of this we wanted to eat though, so made four individual ones, which were much bigger and more filling than they looked.

Served with whipped cream they were summer on a plate, although as predicted the children found the redcurrants too "bitty".

Next, blackcurrants, and what to do with the kilo of fruit I picked from my two bushes. I love these berries (providing they are sweetened!) and could have made everything; gin, crumbles, fools, cordial, jelly, sorbet...the possibilities are endless. Eventually I decided upon jam, compote and ice cream.

I've never made blackcurrant jam before and so I followed a recipe rather than just making it up using half fruit/half sugar as I usually do. This recipe suggested simmering the fruit before adding the sugar to soften the currant skins, which I thought was a good idea, and it worked. I love making jam. I love the way the fruit changes throughout the cooking process, the way the liquid becomes glassy when the sugar is added, then thick and sticky at the end, and I find it one of the most mindful and absorbing types of cooking. 

Doubling the recipe gave me three and a half jars of jam, and the half jar went straight into the fridge where I ate some on top of toasted sourdough for breakfast the next day.

Compote (you know I love a fruit compote) is the best way to use up a small amount of fruit, especially the kind which benefits from a little sugar, and I eat it over yogurt, porridge, overnight oats or pancakes. No recipe needed, just throw in a pan over a low heat, add sugar to taste and cook for a while.

And finally - I saved the best for last here - blackcurrant and liquorice ice cream. I've wanted to make this for a while but never got around to it but now I know how easy it is, I will be making this every summer, forever.

The recipe, from the book Simply Nigella, is a no-churn ice cream so very easy, it's just a question of mixing ingredients and putting it in the freezer. I can't see the recipe online but this one is very similar, just without the addition of liquorice.

I bought my liquorice syrup from here and found that, for me, the ice cream needed a little more on serving, but I really do love liquorice.

I feel like I've really made the most of the seasonal fruit this year, and now that the soft fruits are coming to an end I'm thinking about the blackberries I'm seeing in the hedgerows (bramble jelly! crumble and custard!) and the apples and pears ripening on the trees. Before we know it it'll be time for pumpkins and squashes and my favourite time of year. Summer is whizzing by and I want to make the most of every delicious moment.

Please do pop over to Lucy's blog and read her July Making the Seasons post which is just full of summery goodness. 

Making the Seasons: June

Welcome to my Making the Seasons post for June. Everyone ok? We are all good here but hot, tired and busy. We are of course enjoying the beautifully warm weather but also clinging on until the end of term in three weeks. I feel that, at home and at work, we're reaching that point in the school year where each day feels incrementally busier than the one before, until we reach a final week crescendo of lists, gifts, performances, things to remember, things to do, places to be. It's the same each year and my daily dog walks are a welcome escape when life gets like this. I never really want to take Ziggy out until I'm out, and then I always wish I could walk further and for longer. The heat has meant that I've been going out much earlier in the morning and later in the evening than I usually would, and as I walk I have been noticing all the wild flowers that are growing on the paths around us. I am always confused by the difference between a wild flower and a weed but am happy to appreciate them both. 

Some crafting based around wildflowers seemed like a nice idea for this month's Making the Seasons post, which is a monthly project my friend Lucy of Attic24 are enjoying. There's no real point or end result to it other than just trying to make some time in our busy lives to focus on small and seasonal creative projects, activities which are achievable yet fulfilling, and in tune with the months of the year. I have a lot of crochet on the go at the moment (blankets) and so a small embroidery project seemed like a refreshing change.

One morning this week I picked a selection of flowers and greenery from our local area and brought it home. My rules around picking wildflowers are that I pick very sparingly and only where something is growing abundantly and what I've picked won't show. 

I found some ferns and grasses, daisies (possibly oxeye), an umbellifer of some kind, purple toadflax and a pretty little yellow flowered plant that I couldn't find in my Observer pocket guide. 

I love all those different shapes and textures together, the varying heights and colours, and think they look especially lovely in this old earthenware pot. The umbellifer was quickly removed as I was worried it might be poisonous and also it smelled of wee. 

A few weeks ago I'd purchased this miniature embroidery hoop necklace kit but couldn't decide what to stitch, so it had been sitting in my craft basket, but suddenly a tiny wildflower design seemed like the perfect use for it. Remembering this cross stitch and how good the flowers looked against a black background, I found some black cotton in my stash and decided to use that. 

I roughly sketched out a design on paper then copied it onto the fabric, before putting it in a larger hoop as the 4cm is just too small to work with. 

Working on something this small is quite fiddly, but not so much as to make it impossible. I actually quite enjoyed the challenge of trying to make my stitches as small and neat as possible, and the whole thing only took a couple of hours from start to finish. 

When you're happy with your design, you cut the fabric roughly to size and place it over the central disc of wood and then fit the hoop edge around that, then you glue the fabric to the back of the disc. 

Next you cover the messy back of the work by gluing down the back board....

before finally screwing in the bolts and tightening.

I quite like how it came out. It reminds me a little of a botanical illustration, although not a very accurate one, and the colours really pop against the dark fabric. 

But more importantly, the whole process - the walking, picking and arranging the flowers, sewing the tiny stitches - gave me a chance to pause and appreciate the beauty that is around us in midsummer.

Do pop over to Lucy's blog and say hello and read her Making the Seasons post for June. If you'd like to read some of my other ones (we started last October) just click on the Making the Seasons label on the right hand side of my page.