Merry Christmas!

Lately I have been so busy at work that now all the Christmas preparations for this year have to be postponed till... next year! Or at least till couple of days just before Christmas. Luckily we are going to spend more time this year with our families and they have already started cooking and baking!
As for the presents... o well, I did not have enough time for all I wanted to make, but hopefully it is still not too late :-D

And because I will rather not have time to play with my  computer until the end of this month I would love to wish everyone now

Very Happy Christmas!

And there is no better Christmas card for me then J's drawing - Christmas Eve. I hope he won't mind that I will use it here :-)

Open-top winter hat

It is getting cooler and I always have problem with sinuses so I have to wear a hat! Anyway- I love wearing hats and anyone will do, so I have many of them. But this time needed to do something more functional. I often wear high bun, and it never fits in any hats, so I made an OPEN-TOP winter hat :-)

It is just right - a knitted hat with a crocheted drawstring and some burgundy pom-pons to finish it off and to tight it if I do not want it open-top :-D. 

The yarn is light and fluffy - just pleasure to wear. Good for a high ponytail as well :-D

More craft,more colour and the lost kitten

I should really do some updates more systematically, so I would not spend the whole day in front of the computer... for pleasure.
Well, I am not really moaning, because at the end of the day it is great to have a look at our photo album every now and again :-)
I made pillowcases couple of weeks ago but never had time to take some photographs. Again could not decided if I preferred colour...

 there are some J's drawings on the wall

or grey mouse...

And when I do crafting J does some drawing...

Our neighbours accidentally left a small kitten outside - Lilly [they have two of them; beautiful little creatures with no green eyes at all! They are honey coloured! I thought that all cats have green eyes?!]
I went to the garden and heard Lilly crying. First I thought it was a seagull, so I looked for that noises in the sky. Then I realised that the cry for help was coming from below the ankle high! Good she knew me already so she was not scared. She explored our house in few seconds before I handed her back to her owners. O, by the way- on her nose- it is just some dirt :-D

Mushroom picking - second attempt.

Yesterday the weather was just perfect, so we went out and wondered around different forests for the whole day :-D
Our friend actually took us to some picturesque places for some mushroom picking. There was not much mushroom to pick but the views were stunning!

And we did managed to find something at our last stop.

Not much, but enough for a tasty [ I know, I only talk about food, but this is the most important subject in our house!] scrambled eggs with some garlic and wild mushroom. And still plenty left for "uszka" with wild mushroom [ a kind of pasta filled with mushroom]- perfect companion for clear beetroot borsch.

In the mean time...

I have been either busy or... too lazy lately... My irregular work pattern does not help crafting either. Luckily there are some lovely and sunny days to boost my energy :-D. More of theses days please [-> if anyone is listening?!].

Long evenings are good for crocheting and some new purses/make-up bags got to see the daylight.

But mainly I got crazy with the Great British Bake Off! Really like it! maybe I will try to take part in the next one? But J says they would get rid of me after the first part, as I never follow any recipes! Anyway... there is nothing like a home-baked bread with home-made butter for... any time of the day. I will soon update my cooking blog with all the recipes I tried [butchered? = reinvented!]. I even got a book by Paul Hollywood "100 Great Breads" [for my approaching nameday] and wanted to try ALL recipes from the book to master the bread baking. But, to be honest, I am not capable of following someone else's guidelines. I need to try to make things my way... ALWAYS! Also all the recipes in the book are based on yeast. I use sourdough starter, as I think it tastes better, keeps for longer and... it is more difficult to master :-D

But overall - great book, wonderful inspiration! Fantastic recipes and Paul Hollywood is the real master of bread making. 

I even made his famous 8 plaited loaf [sadly not in the book, but certainly somewhere on the Internet] - fun! Mine was with olive oil and oregano...

I even got an offer of selling my breads already! Not sure if it is going to happen though, because then it will not be so much fun.

And because it is getting cooler and cooler, not only bread but also potatoes are now in our kitchen! Blini or rather, as we call it, potato pancakes are something I can not resist at any time. It does not matter sweet or savory- all taste divine... yum!

 In the garden our last year Christmas tree got some decorations already :-)

Knitted Hippie Pillows

Gloomy days... where I am anyway, so just to make myself and everyone happy - knitted pillowcases.
Now available on ETSY.

Have a sunny day :-D

More cats & dogs and a grape bread.

I am still enjoying sunshine [or anything that resembles it] and do not want the wintery weather too soon, but I had to start thinking of Christmas presents, if I want to make them all on time.
This time two glasses cases - one for a cat lover and the other for a dog lover.

J, seeing the cat, said that it does not look like a cat but resembles him Misiu!  And then, to show me how the cat should look like, he drew one:

early morning sun in the kitchen...

 ... and in the room...

As a treat I decided to bake some Grape Bread.
It came quite big [1 kg of flour used!], so, not to get bored with it, some of the bread I turned into Grape Biscotti! It worked really well. More about it HERE.

Buckles - Cat means trouble!

I have to update the Buckles fun-club page with a very lengthy story this time. Mostly Metro dose not publish Buckles stories in series, but this one started couple of weeks and and it is still going! 

I do not think I have the very beginning of it, as I missed couple of issues of Metro, so for anyone interested how it started go HERE, because it is probably somewhere there.

Anyway, a world of introduction for this story-  Scrappy, the squirrel, steals bird's seedlings from the peach tree, and Jill decided to get a cat to protect the seedlings from the squirrel.

And here it comes the rest:

I hope tomorrow metro will publish the conclusion. We will see...

Autumn in the garden

Two redheads I made some time ago and forgot about them. 

  

 

Garden seems to be still at it's best :-D. We also still get some tomatoes!

Some great, very autumnal,  food - Kopytka [something like gnocchi, as this name is possibly more familiar outside of Poland] with pork escallops and sauerkraut full of herbs. Although I made quite a lot it was gone in seconds [almost]. Too yummy to keep for longer.

 And, of course cake and long hours in the garden! This time Polenta& Almond cake with Apples. So good...

Mushroom picking - first attempt!

I grew up surrounded by forests and can not imagine any autumn passing by without mushroom picking! It is a must - Nature calls me at that time [Mother Nature calls me out at any time, to be honest, because I am not an indoor person type].
So we went this morning to the forest [well, it is a park... and not too big either, but it has some trees and wild mushroom grow there, so it counts].
It was very pretty, but we only took pictures of anything we could find - nothing edible :-D

J's new drawing and last tomatoes

Always the best day for me is when I come home and... there is a new art piece done by J :-)
This one - soft drawing pencil on wood.

Maybe this year is not the warmest to grow sweet toatoes, but somehow we still get a reasonable amount of crop.

For anyone with a sweet tooth - Orange & Lemon Polenta & Almond Cake

And of course our neighbours cats [ it is actually three of them! Same breed] - they not only get comfortable in our garden but also in the house!