Ingredients for a happy birthday

First, you need to wrestle with the knotty problem

of whether to throw a party or not

If the answer is YES! Then you need to work out ALL the details,

such as how to make things look festive

suitable party activities*,

how to smuggle in the party food and accessories...

make some bunting,

string up some fairy lights

post the invitation

and settle back to enjoy the party,

maybe even have a bit of a dance.

On the morning of the Actual Birthday (which by lucky chance is an INSET day)

there's the unwrapping of some fabulous presents

and the emergency dash to the supermarket with pyjamas under jeans to buy blueberries so that the Birthday Girl can bake the cake recipe she's spent three days researching and refining (but forgot to check she had blueberries in the freezer to make it)

And finally, you can admit that yes - polenta and almond and lemon and blueberry and mascarpone is a VERY good combination and no, Mummy hasn't lost her marbles putting polenta in a cake, and yes, please may I have seconds. 

Lemon & Blueberry Polenta Cake

250g soft butter

250g caster sugar

3 eggs

100g polenta**

200g ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp almond extract

2 lemons - zest of both, juice of one

200g blueberries

• Beat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy, then beat in the eggs one by one with the almond extract
• Sprinkle over the baking powder, then fold in the polenta, almonds, zest and juice
• Spread into a buttered 23cm springform tin, with baking parchment on the bottom.
• Sprinkle the blueberries on top, and poke them in
• Bake 150C (fan oven) or 160C normal oven for 1 hour, test with skewer
• Leave to cool in tin for a few minutes, then turn out carefully onto a rack - line it with kitchen towel to soak up some of the buttery juices.

This is a very moist, very buttery delicious confection - wonderful served warm with a dollop of mascarpone.  I haven't a clue what it is like when cold, because we just got stuck right in...I'll let you know!

* Luckily the Best Dress competition was cancelled - I wouldn't have stood a chance because I ended up attending the party wearing my dog-walking trousers.

**I used coarse polenta, because that's what I had.  Fine or medium may be less gritty, but there's been no complaints so far...

Good in parts

I never did like the expression "a bit of a curate's egg - good in parts" but that's what this week has been so there we go.

The not-so-good parts in no particular order:

1. I shrank a cashmere jumper in a mixed wash.  It was from the charity shop, like all my other clothes, but it was cashmere for goodness sake!  It thought it was machine-washable.  It wasn't.
2. Mr Gonecycling's cycling shorts came out of the machine with fuzzy bits of wool stuck on them
3. Someone sold one of my little keyrings for less than half the price it should have been
4. Someone sold one of my bags on the last day of the exhibition.  A good thing, surely?  Not if it had already been sold on the first day of the exhibition, but just not collected.  Luckily we knew the lady who had bought it.  Unluckily I had to try and explain to her what had happened, even though I didn't really understand how it could have happened, red dots and all...
5. I used three sheets of Transfer Artists Paper to make Mr Gonecycling's birthday present.  First I forgot to flip the image before printing ("doh!") then I ironed it for too long onto canvas, which scorched and smelled like peanut butter.  Mr G hates peanut butter.  Third time lucky...
6. There is definitely an "atmosphere" within the embroidery group I exhibited with and I am seriously considering my options
7. I don't know what my options are
8. I need to get on with my own work and not worry about anyone else but I still haven't worked out what my own work "is".  Sigh
9. I'm growing out my hair.  It's very curly and it always seems a shame to cut off the curls.  But it's reached the stage where it's just sticking out over my ears and looks absolutely dreadful, but it's still too short for any hair accessories.  Apart from alice bands, which make me look about 12 years old, or a full scale head-scarf which makes me look twice my actual age, or a bandana which makes me look like Bruce Springsteen.  Double sigh.



The good parts

1.   The Whippet has a new luxury set of felted cashmere PJs:

2.   The exhibition was hugely popular, and I did very well.  I'm still a bit fazed by it all.  I met some lovely people who came to collect three (three!) pieces yesterday, one of which is going to their daughter in California.

3.  I'm saving money by not having to fork out for haircuts every six weeks

4.  The birthday present worked in the end, thanks to one of my students for her handout on how to bind edges!

It's hard to know what to make (a) when what you "do" is sewing and embroidery and the person you are making something for is male, and (b) when said male insists that he doesn't "need" anything.

But I thought that a book cover for little moleskine notebooks would be useful and inspiring:

And I even added some Shakespeare on the bookmark:

And finally,

5.  Birthdays mean cake and cake means chocolate.  Every year I ask "ridiculous and pointless" questions about the quantity of chocolate buttercream required.

Apparently this year I got it about right.

NB.  The cakes were a bit "under-tinned" and threatened to escape.  Luckily they rose like souffles and held themselves together, but it did result in a rather large construction overall.  No complaints, mind.

Marking time

Here 'tis then, my 100th post! 

To celebrate I wanted to do a little giveaway. 

After mounting all my Art Trail work on canvases, I had lots of little pieces of wood left over.  I think they're supposed to go in the corners of the stretcher bars to stretch the canvas.  I started to bung them all in, then didn't think I needed them so I took them all out.  I have loads now, littering my desk.  I wanted to do something creative with them and I wanted to make something for my giveaway.

One idea was to wrap the little bit of wood in fabric and thread and beaded wire and use my new toy*  to attach a brooch back:

 (*glue gun! hot dribbles of gluey stuff! the Girl is also mightily excited by its arrival)

It looks huge in this photo, it wasn't.  Past tense - it has been dismantled, after it was deemed too strange and lumpy, and because it didn't hang properly on a Tshirt but just looked odd.

So then I tried this (sorry about the lack of focus - story of my life):

A flatter piece of embellisher felt/embroidery stuck on to a black-painted small piece of wood, with brooch back attached (hot glue!).  But again, it didn't hang properly - it sorted of wobbled over to one side.  So now it's on my bag strap.

At this point I gave up.  Anyone got any bright ideas on how to use up lots of little rectangles of wood?  (They were pointy, but I hacksawed the ends off and sanded them smooth.  Almost DIY).

SO after all that, my giveaway is now going to be one of my little books! 

A tiny little handmade book, with lining paper pages.  The pages can be removed when they are full and either replaced with something similar, or you could then use the cover as a credit card holder - there are little pockets inside each cover which hold the pages in place, which could then hold credit or business cards or whatever you wish.  The cord just wraps around and the beaded ends can be looped through to fasten.

To win yourself a little book, just leave me a comment on what else I could try to do with all my little pieces of wood!  I'll ask the Birthday Boy to pick a name by pointing with his needle-nose:

One doggy birthday cake, two candles.  Please can i eat it now mum i'm drooling all over the mat.

Special mince and carrot doggy cake with yoghurt icing and bacon sprinkles.  Yum!

NEXT on the agenda, I've been nominated for one of these awards!

Thank you Bee!  In return I would like to nominate Emma, up there on the island of my ancestors, Chloe and her birdies and last but not least Linda - I am in awe of anyone who can stick at anything for 34 years, but especially teaching!

MEANWHILE, here are a few photos of the Art Trail bits that didn't get their close up before:

The books sold really well, bestselling item at 36%.  Pictures/hangings came in at 29%, but I didn't sell as many as I would have liked.  But then again, I'm not sure anyone else at our venue sold anything much.  I could be wrong there.  We had a fair number of visitors, but not as many as I would have hoped for.  However, I had very positive feedback and everyone said they loved my work, so that was a massive boost to the self-confidence!  And as a direct result I've already got four people enrolled in my course for next term, and the brochure's only been out a week!

Here are some of my brooches - these came in at 11%, the same as bookmarks:

I sold loads of these, and had to make more mid-week.  They're laminated paper and sheers, with machine stitch and an embroidered/beaded cord.  I worked out that eight of these takes about the same time as one brooch, and the money is the same - swings and roundabouts.  I only sold a few brooches, but that's the same as quite a lot of bookmarks...

And I really enjoyed making these cards, but people seemed to prefer the bookmarks:

Cards were only 9%.

The remaining 4% was a bag, made a year or so ago, found in a drawer mid-week and added to the display, sold at 4pm on the last day!

So all in all, it was a hugely tiring week but very good to do - I made a lot of new contacts, my course is almost certainly going to run in September now, and I made a bit of dosh for my holiday spending money - (except I've already spent some of it on my new gluey gun!).  It took two days to tidy my desk and the end of the table, but I finally closed the doors of my desk/cupboard yesterday.  Only to open them again to help the Girl make a Button Babe and a Birdie brooch for her teacher and teaching assistant:

Phew!  Time for a sit down.  But don't forget to enter the giveaway first!