Trawl through 'Saved for Later'

By the time you're reading this, I will be on my honeymoon!  I've queued up two posts to cover the two weeks I'll be away, I've got lots of craft and thrift related reading and projects planned for my holidays so I'll be back with a vengeance!



I know it's ridiculously early but I'm starting to think about Christmas.  Specifically, what presents am I going to attempt to make and what baking projects I'm going to trial.  I've done pretty well in the past year for not taking on more than I can manage but there are definitely a few things I want to make before the festive season, either for me or as presents.

1. I've just bought an overlocker (more on that when I'm back!) so some simple projects to master the machine would be super useful.  This piece from Veronica Darling inspired me to make some placemats and what better reason than for the holidays.  Create-Enjoy made some tie-dyed napkins that were pretty cool, I'd probably just use stash fabric but would be a great little project to practice the art of overlocking!


2. A Beautiful Mess had a round up of 20 favourite holiday recipes in December last year, some of which would be perfect to practice in autumn, before serving to family at Christmas.  The truffles especially caught my eye...


3. For our American brethren, this adorable card from Laura Berger would be perfect for Thanksgiving.  We have one of her prints (A Tiny Visitor) and it is adorable.  I would buy up most of her shop in a heartbeat.


4. I'm not planning on crafting too many presents, since I always take on too much and it stresses me out in the run up to Christmas.  Last year was a nice balance of handmade and bought gifts and I plan to repeat that again this year.  I want to knit an Owlet from Kate Davies for my god child, partly because it's adorable and easy, partly because I made one for myself and we could be MATCHING!  So much cute.


5. These aren't specifically for Christmas but are definitely autumnal, Whisky Cinnamon Rolls from A Beautiful Mess.  I love cinnamon rolls so much and the addition of whisky would be amazing, especially after a chilly dog walk.  I'm imagining the fire on, hot chocolate on the stove and warm, boozy rolls straight from the oven.  Perfect for Christmas Day morning.

So many plans!  I love this time of year, autumn and the run up to the holidays are definitely my favourite times.

You can see my previous trawl over here.

Still Light jumper dress frankenjumper

Gosh, what a title.  This jumper started life as Still Light Tunic by Veera Välimäki (you can see an in-progress post over on Second Fiddle from February and it was last Wednesday's Work in Progress but I actually started this project almost exactly 1 year ago!) and gradually mutated into the jumper you see before you today.  I started the tunic with high hopes, but realised when it came to increasing for the front folds/pockets that the style wasn't going to suit me.  So, rather than take it all out and start again with a different pattern, I decided to go off road and turn it into a basic, plain sweater, the type you can pull on over a vest or shirt without having to worry about the colour or neckline or length of sleeve.  I don't have enough of those, I have a lot of multi-coloured fairisle that's difficult to match or thrifted sweaters that are too big.  I actually just consigned a few of these to the 'to be altered/felted' box, leaving me with very few sweaters to get through the winter!



I'm really pleased with the finished sweater, back nipples aside, which I'm told may vanish once it's blocked.  I'll be honest, I didn't block it before taking these photos, I just wanted to wear the bloody thing after a year in the making!



The yarn is an unknown tealy-green that Andrew's dad bought me from the Inverness car boot sale.  Classy, right?  He paid a princely £2 for it and I've still got at least half left.  Matching sweaters ahoy!  No, not another year of knitting with 4 ply...the horror...



I had several buttons in my stash that I wanted to use but the button hole is actually pretty small, so I was limited.  I like this tartan fabric covered button though, no clue how it came to be in my stash.  I think my buttons are breeding. At the very least, they're not using protection.




All in, it's been a productive weekend on the creativity front. I also made sushi for the first time (and ate it in the bath with the fifth Game of Thrones book, so decadent!)...



...and made prawn cocktail with the leftover prawns.  I heart food.

Kirstie Allsopp enjoys sausage

Ohemgee, the last episode of Kirstie Allsopp's Homestyle was HILARIOUS!!  I was slightly on the fence about whether or not Kirstie and I would get on in the real world (I adore her, but am slightly intimidated by her jolly-hockeysticks-competitive-head-girl demeanour, as the nerdy kid of the class I think she would have ignored me at school), but no more I say!



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After this episode, which saw me almost crying with laughter while she made sausages, I'm sure we'd be firm friends in no time.  As soon as they introduced the 'making sausages' segment of the programme, my brain erupted in a flurry of inappropriate jokes for that time of night before the watershed.  I mean, come on, you can't use words like 'meat', 'length', 'girth' without attracting some raised eyebrows.  Or in my case, mischievous, school girl giggling.  Watching Kirstie attempt to squeeze sauasage meat (tee hee) into long, girthy tubes of pig intestine (hahaha) whilst simultaneously trying to keep her hair out of her face, her cheeks going pink with the effort of holding in the laughter....HAHAHAHA, I can't keep it in, even as I type this!

Ahem.  Rearranges self.



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There were some lovely recipes in this episode.  The Christmas Ham is definitely one I'm going to try as soon as possible, no way am I waiting for Christmas to cook that bad boy.  Sure, I'm going to try a smaller scale, less expensive version for 2 people instead of 12 but my mouth is watering even as we speak, thinking about it.



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I'd also love to try the mulled cider recipe from this episode.  Especially if I can make it outside over a camp stove "like a witch" in the lovely lady's own words.  This would be perfect for autumn, there's already a nip in the air after all.  I had my first port of the season this weekend...any excuse for a tipple to be honest.