Day 23

Baking day. On the left my version of an English style fruitcake with raisins, apricots, cranberries and almonds. On the right "Snow Queen's Spicy Cake" with cardamom and lemon, waiting for the icing sugar dusting.

Ginger, cloves ...

...allspice and cinnamon. Can you smell the Christmas baking?

Can you now?

Tour de Fibre 2013 - Finale

The Tour is over for this year, and I managed to get one project finished during the three week period of watching TV and sewing. It is the Peek-a-Boo Street quilt.

 

 

Let's walk around this neighbourhood but maybe we can take a cup of coffee with cake in the café first? There is a café in both corners of this first street, and between them a fabric store and a shop that sells both sewing notions and silks for fly-tyers.

Around the corner is something for babies in two shops, yet another café (!), and a yarn shop.

 

The Lavender Shop sells herbs and spices, the next one is a music shop. The shop with the yellow roof is specialised in mushrooms, wild berries and such. I had to think hard to find a suitable product for the shop with my sun-dyed leaf fabric before I had an excelent idea: In Finnish we can use the same word, lehti, for a leaf and a newspaper or magazine, so this is a newsstand.

Along the last street runs a little brook. There is a plant nursery (because they have a very big backyard up here), the first house for flowering plants and the second for trees. Next is a place where you can buy treasure maps and all kinds of equipment you might need for adventures, and the last one is a fishing gear shop. Test fishing is possible in the brook.

 

Thank you, Stephanie for the pattern! This quilt will go to the nursing home where Mr. K's father spent his last years. It will keep someone warm when they go out in wheelchairs, or whenever their old bones feel like they need to be kept warm. This quilt is also for my Cratft Olympics, my second thimble for the New projects category.

 

Scandinavian Snowball Fun is now my main project:

 

 

And this is the secret project I started and finished during the Tour, now arrived and taken into use. It is my version of Kaffee-Momente stitcheries by Diana.

 

 

To celebrate the end of the100th Tour de France I baked a cake and had an Oops experience:

 

 

 

With a fairly liquid inside the cake collapsed, but the taste was still nice. Next time I'll need to bake longer and test more than one spot!

 

The July stitcheries of Happy Scrappy Spring are also finished and I'm putting the row together between other projects.

Sorry I'm late ...

... but I have been baking:

Can you smell cinnamon, ginger, allspice and cloves? Not yet?

Now? I added raisins, melted butter and sour milk. I baked two cakes. My sister P will take one along tomorrow when she drives to spend Christmas Eve with our mother.

It has been a very busy day, and I hope it will make tomorrow more peaceful. Don't rush, sit down for a moment and take some time for yourself. I'll be back tomorrow to wish you all a Merry Christmas!

Christmas baking

Yesterday I baked the first Christmas baking of the year, traditional star shaped tarts filled with plum marmalade. Traditionally, I bake them using ready made puff pastry and ready made plum marmalade, so they are the easiest ever. I cut the stars this way so the points will not be too long and burn easily.

After baking, I sprinkled them with icing sugar, packed in a tin and took them to the sewing class. We always bring something for the last class before Christmas, and I brought the pastries this time.

We had some hot glögi, gingerbread and chocolates too, and a little less sewing.