Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day to all.
Weather you love it or hate it, go eat some cake - that will sort you out.

The Yarn Cake

The Mr and I took Flo to see my cousins, aunties and uncles in Scotland last weekend. We had a great time seeing everyone and enjoying the lovely weekend of weather which was a bit of a surprise to everyone in Glasgow I think!

One day we took the bus into town and Flo fell asleep, thanks to the rather late night of partying the night before at my cousin's birthday party. It was the midnight lego session that did her in I suspect. So we decided to try and fit in some of the 'grown up' things we wanted to do while she snoozed. For me, this meant YARN!

A quick search on the iPhone bought up a short list of Glaswegian yarn shops but one caught my eye as I'd seen it advertised in Knitting Magazine and remembered the name for an obvious reason. The Yarn Cake is situated on Queen Margaret Drive in Glasgow and is a tiny oasis of knitting heaven. The shop is miniature but has literally everything you could need or want in a yarn shop; great selection of yarn, needles, notions and books. A cafe stocked with any tea, coffee and exquisite hot chocolate you can think of as well as some simply irresistible cakes! It's a wonder that they can fit in seating, tables and even a loo, which is essential for the long stay any visitor will clearly be making in order to sample everything the Yarn Cake has to offer.

The Mr and I shared a pot of Rooibos tea and a slice of the Rhubarb meringue cake. Yummy!

The service was excellent despite the two ladies in the shop having a great big order to unpack as I visited. The atmosphere was also lovely. The two groups of customers that came in to knit, drink, eat and browse while we were there all struck up conversations with us as we sat. For me it was everything a yarn shop experience should be.

While checking out the yarn selection I found some locally sourced yarn called New Lanark Mills. The red colour really popped out of me and it was instantly earmarked for my good friend and photographer James who really does deserve something knitted from me by now!

The trip was rounded off nicely with Flo waking up in time to meet some local knitted Nessies She was then given a little windmill by one of the lovely staff. It kept her quiet enough for us to finish our tea and pay for my yarn.

A final plug for the shop is that they are running the Glasgow School of Yarn on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th October. There will be workshops, a market place, book signings and of course tea and cake. If you're in the area, I urge you to check out the website and go!

Bunting, Cakes and Corgis

Although we're all sick of the Jubilee by now I thought I'd share a nice little idea that I had during the celebrations:

Flo just LOVEs to paint. She regularly comes home from nursery covered head to toe in the stuff and so I decided to buy some for her to use at home, along with some protective matting! Just before the Jubilee weekend we had a (heavily supervised) session of painting with Flo producing five large works of art. 

Now, however much you love your child you are never going to have enough space to keep all of their 'art' and frankly you most likely want to get rid of some of it. But as this was our first time painting at home I felt quite bad about shoving the pages straight into the bin. So I held onto them wondering what to do with them until the swathes of bunting weighing down our local streets gave me an idea. I simply cut the painting up into triangles and strung them together with masking tape to make our very own Jubilee decorations!

It was a really lovely way to involve Flo in the celebrations and could be repeated for other celebrations such as birthdays, the Olympics, Mothers Day?

As a side note, I also made lots and lots of mini cup cakes and used a cute cupcake stand that I bought on sale for 99p last year after the royal wedding. 

And I bought Flo this Happy Land Queen set from Early Learning Centre. I went a bit Jubilee crazy didn't I?

Jubilee Market

Here's this weekend's Wood Street Indoor Market in photos. A fabulous day out well worth a visit any time.

A bit of British Institution to get you started 

 Animaux Circus provided original sketches of Da Queen

Lady V's little shop selling bespoke teas and providing vintage tableware hire.

I bought some Rooibos loose leaf tea... yum! And Lady V herself is lovely!

They do tea tastings at the shop on Thursdays so go get your fill of lapsang souchong.

Erm... Red, white and Blue doughnuts? YES PLEASE! 

Naturally Flo wanted the blue one i.e. the one that is most likely to stain

Flowers from Because Or Just Because. 

We were the first customers of the day and the Mr bought be a lovely bunch! 

Craft Guerrilla providing an alternative Jubilee cup cake and animal prints.

Significant Seams. Keeping it stitchy.

Please do come again!

May Round Up

I’ve been rushed off my feet lately so have been sadly neglecting the blog. But the Jubilee weekend is giving me the chance to regroup, so here’s a little round up of what’s been going on for Purl Princess.

It was my birthday and I got some lovely presents. Best of all was an amazing ceramic bowl by artist Anette Bugansky. She uses hand knitting to print onto the fine porcelain clay and make cups, tea lights vases and bowls. It was a lovely gift and I’ll be keeping it as far away from the mucky little destructive hands in our house as possible!

I’m still working on the baby blanket for my sister in law, which has been crawling along due to me being so busy for the last month. I started the inside border and decided that it was too ‘old’ looking and that the blanket didn’t really need it (plus it was taking ages to make so I thought I’d save my self some work, ahem!). So then I started the outer boarder which is much more modern looking (and easier to knit, ahem!).

Pompom magazine popped through my door last week and I like it. It’s small but perfectly formed with a couple of interesting articles to read along with an embroidery project, bellini cocktail recipe and 5 knitting patterns to choose from. I like to try and support new knitting ventures so was happy to pay the £9.50 (plus postage) for the magazine, but am not sure if I’ll be able to afford it every quarter. I might pop into stockists Loop or Ray Stitch, both in Islington, next time to have a little browse before buying next time.

I have been branching out into bread making and made this Scandinavian tea ring. It reminded me of something you used to be able to get in all the supermarkets and bakers when we were kids. We called it a bun round and it was like lots of little round iced buns that your tore off. The centre one always had a cherry on top and I would always fight with my brothers over who got it. Do you remember them? As they don’t seem to exist anymore I tried this recipe and although it was much more like a Danish pastry in texture and flavour it was really good to get to grips with making the dough, kneading it and leaving it to rise etc. and it bought back a few memories too.

Here come the terrible...

Happy Birthday to our Daughter Florence who turned two this weekend.

We had a lovely party with lots and lots of presents and I made her cake in the shape of a strawberry by her request. We had to sing Happy Birthday twice!

I had meant to do the decoration on the cake slightly differently but ran out of time and so made do with a bit of ribbon and some pins - no one knew the difference. The mixture was a super light Mary Berry christening cake recipe with cream swirled with jam in the middle. It was yummy.

Reflecting on 2011

Kicked off the year in Burnham on Crouch with good friends and little Flo.

Me and Brooke got to the final on Pointless

Started going to the NCT Redbridge knitters and made some lovely knitting mum mates

Flo turned 1

Flo broke her arm

Got kicked out of our flat and moved in with my parents for 5 months

We had a couple of sunny seaside trips to Southend and Leigh on sea

Flo learned to walk during the Royal wedding

Went Crafternooning at the Creative Biscuit with local mates

Went back to work after maternity leave to one of the most pointless jobs I’ve ever done

Flo started nursery

Karaoke, fish pedicure (eww) and Michelin starred dinner for my Birthday

Day out in Greenwich

Rex Manning day

Bought our first house

Got broken into 2 weeks after moving in

Decorated Flo’s bedroom

Started a new job which was MUCH better than the previous one

Brett passed his driving test

Visited Kew

10 year anniversary of being together with Brett

Brett turned 30 and had a ‘surprise’ party, which he tired to sabotage

Shan and Marc’s wedding

Centre Parcs

Digs continued to record our lives in photography

Filmed Brett and Flo for a Dad documentary at work

I dressed as a Smurf, and then Mick Hucknall

Held a kids Halloween party and kids Christmas party

Made a lot of cake

Knitted the following:

Hap Blanket

Stripey cardi for Inez

Blue lacey top

Flo crochet dress

Isla’s camo pants

Nola Jane

Free Rapunzel

Custard pants

Leaf scarf

Cardi for Milan

Christmas Bolero

And I made 2 quilts


Excellent 2011. Bring on 2012.

Quilt and cake

So the Christmas quilt got finished just as the tree was put up last weekend and now the flat now feels very festive indeed. I am really happy with how the quilt came out and in the end I'm glad that I hand quilted it instead of doing it by machine. It really gives it a bit more of a home made feel and spending so much time on it actually makes it feel like more of an heirloom than if I'd done it all on the machine. 

Back of the quilt - made of scraps

This and the quilt I made for Shan's wedding have to be my biggest crafting achievement this year. Most of all I am glad that I managed to get it finished before the season was over. The Mr and I have been happily snuggled under it for the last week and I have been constantly bundling Flo up in it as she has a horrible cold at the moment.

She won't thank me for this photo

The finished quilt and tree going up called for some mini mince pie making and so I bought out the trusty Nigella recipe from her Christmas cookbook. Although it takes a bit of extra time to make these following her recipe I loved the outcome of flaky pasty. But the 36 I made really didn't last that long as they're so small you can just pop them in the mouth and they're gone!

I also made a batch of cupcakes for the local NCT group party. My piping skills weren't that great but I got to use my Christmas cupcake cases and edible snowflakes again.

Festive YUM

To top it all off they are repeating the episodes of Pointless that I was on earlier this year with my sister in law. We're on again tonight 5.15pm BBC1. Catch up on iPlayer if you fancy seeing me embarrass myself on TV.

It's here!

I haven't got the tree up yet, I think it's a tad early for that but I did receive my first Christmas card and make some Christmas cup cakes; two batches, ahem!
Got the cute edible snow flakes from Lakeland and Christmassy cases too, so I had to test them out.

Now, back to all the crafting I have to do!

Yumming Bird

 

So last week I discovered that I work around the corner from the Hummingbird Bakery. I’ve been working my way through the recipes in their most recent book called Cake Days over the last few months and love pretty much every recipe! So I thought that I’d pop in to see what the shop had to offer.

Needless to say it was a lovely little shop with the most beautifully iced cakes on display.  I of course had to buy something and went for a Carrot cupcake. The best thing about it was that they packaged my cupcake up in it’s own little box with a handle! So I skipped back to the office with perfect cupcake box dangling from my hand and straight to the coffee bar for an accompanying Latté. Yes, my office has a proper coffee bar with barista and everything – I am totally jammy in this respect. YUM delicious!

The cake was totally scrumptious and I enjoyed every bite however £2.50 for a cupcake is horrific. Knowing that I could make a batch of 12 for about the same price is sure to keep me out of the shop and in the kitchen. I just need to work on my icing skills.

We're in... Let knitting commence!

Yay! We moved! We’re now in our new flat and I have my hands back on my precious stash! Flo has been running about like a crazy nut, enjoying all of her old toys (although she’d forgotten all about them so she thinks they’re all new anyway) and generally really loving her new home, which is a relief.  I managed to bake my first cake using the new oven and it was lovely. I even handed some round to the neighbours, who seemed to really appreciate the gesture.

Amongst it all I’ve managed to do a bit of knitting. I finished the Lacey Blue top – woooo!!! But have yet to take a picture of it in all its glory. As soon as I do I’ll post it up for you.

I’ve been working on a couple of secret projects but one of them I feel like I must blog about. Knit With Attitude have this great offer every few weeks called Yarn of the Week. Owner MayaB gives you 15% off of a different selected yarn every two weeks, simply to encourage you to try her lovely environmentally friendly and ethically produced yarns. As she puts it:

“It can seem risky and scary moving out of one’s own comfort zone, trying out new fibres and brands you haven’t used before, and that’s why I came up with Yarn of the week, to encourage you to try something new!”

I really liked the idea, and you know I love a bargain! So I gave it a bash and a few weeks ago tried the yarn of the week which was Mirasol Hacho. I don’t tend to go for variegated yarns as I usually make clothes rather than accessories and don’t really like the idea of colour pooling on my garments. However after looking on Ravelry at a few patterns and project knitted in the yarn, I found one that liked and decided to give it a go.

I’m making a pattern called Kanko Pants which is basically little knitted trousers for my friend Startitis’s baby. I’m doing them without the stitch pattern as I don’t think it would show up nicely on the variegated yarn. My theory on this is that people will tend to knit babies cardigans, jumpers and blankets, but what kind of crazy fool knits babies trousers? Me, that’s who!

I’m calling them camo pants as they colours make them look a bit like camouflage. The colour pooling is an acquired taste but as the project is going on I like them more and more. Let’s just hope Startitis likes them when they’re finished!

Guerrilla Crafternoon

Last Friday me and my friend/ almost sister in law, Dawn, went along to Craft Guerrilla’s Crafternoon at the Creative Biscuit and had an amazing night of tea, cake, craft and chat. It’s a brilliant alternative to your usual Friday night activities and I highly recommend it!

We arrived and paid our £5 door charge which includes a drink and cake. There was a choice between bottomless tea in vintage china, a cup of coffee or a Bellini cocktail. It just had to be bottomless tea. Every time my cup got low, it was topped up again with a fresh steaming hot brew. We were also faced with the choice of strawberry cupcakes, gorgeous brownies, flapjacks and pastries. Oh the agony!  I had to go for the cupcake and Dawn had the brownie. We were both in a blissful cake-coma after consumption.

Once we’d stuffed our face with cake it was time for some crafting. The ladies from Craft Guerrilla had laid out all the projects you could buy and there were just too many cute little projects to choose from. Almost all of the projects could be completed within the evening and had clear instructions as well as help on hand from the Guerrilla’s themselves. I eventually chose the rolled paper necklace (£5) and Dawn went for the fabric hair bow (£4).

The kits were packaged up like little presents which all added to the excitement as we took out our equipment and got ready to craft. Both projects were super easy and it was great to have all of the bits and pieces you needed in your craft pack. The pliers for bending the jewellery wires were just on loan though! There was also an iron and ironing board on hand for the fabric projects.

We both finished our projects before the end of the night and Dawn even went back for more in the shape of a embroidered tote bag kit, which she took home to make. We had a really great evening bopping along to the retro tunes, sipping tea from our vintage cups and getting crafty with a lovely bunch of people. The Crafternoon runs on the last Friday of every month, so come down next time and craft the evening away!

Rolled paper necklace

Dawn's beautiful bow

Bank Holiday Fun

Another lovely weekend with the family. We celebrated the Royal wedding with a cream tea in the garden, a lot of flag waving and independent walking from Florence. Won’t be long until she’s running away from us I suspect.

I crudely made her a paper crown encrusted with wrapping paper jewels. She didn’t’ seem too impressed but did manage to keep it on for a few photos.

Films were like busses this weekend. I haven’t been to the cinema in ages and then went twice! I saw a preview of Water For Elephants with my film reviewing friend Coconutboots. I really enjoyed it and there was even a scene where Reese Witherspoon was working on some embroidery. Shame it wasn’t knitting. My favourite elements of the film were the animals, in particular the amazing elephant Rosie, and the fabulous sets and clothing which were beautiful. Witherspoon wears some lovely 30’s frocks and as always Pattinson looks pretty hot, especially when he’s a bit beaten up and bloody towards the end of the film wearing a brown leather jacket... yum.

I also went to see Thor which also has some Phwoar to it. The movie over all was a great bank holiday blockbuster with lots of action, lots of fun and a good few laughs too. Chris Hemsworth ticked all the boxes as the Nordic god of thunder although the romance between him and Natalie Portman was paper thin. Not that I really cared once he’d whipped his tee-shirt off a few times and stared into the camera with those baby blues.

I’ve been plodding on with the lacy blue top I’m making for the summer. It feels like it’s not growing much despite knitting row after row of the same lace. I now long for the end of this body section so I can get into the more interested parts of the pattern, but know that I have at least 10cm left to do. I just hope it will still be summer by the time I finish it.

Happy Easter!

We had a lovely few days which included a trip to Upshire where we saw a heard of deer, a trip to the seaside and Flo’s first taste of chocolate!

It was so lovely going to the beach in the super sunshine we had this weekend. It felt like a proper family outing with sticky sun cream all over, sand between the toes and 99 Flakes to finish off. Flo absolutely loved the beach. I sort of expected her to find it strange and maybe a bit scary at first but she couldn’t get enough of having her toes in the lapping waves and crawling around in the sand. She managed to eat just one mouthful of sand which I thought was pretty good.

On Easter Sunday Flo put on her Sunday best and went to Easter mass where all the kids got Cadbury’s Creme Eggs at the end of the service. Before we’d even managed to get back to our seat she’d managed to eat at bit of the egg through the foil wrapper.

On Bank holiday Monday my Mum went a bit baking crazy and made two amazing cakes/ deserts. There was a towering Victoria sponge with fresh cream and strawberries and a raspberry and chocolate tart. Mmmmmmm! For quality control I had to sample both of course.