Nutty Cookies with Hazelnuts and Almonds

Hi everyone!
This cookie is one of my childhood baking things I want to remember. My grandmother on my mother's side baked these cookies, or a cookie close to this cookie, and I imagine it was one of her favourites because they are very easy to bake and also very delicious. And that is also my favourite combination ;) If it was exactly this recipe I don't know but I think they taste like my grandmother's cookies.

Nutty Cookies with hazelnuts and almonds (40 cookies)
100 grams of hazelnuts without the shell
100 grams of almonds
2 deciliter sugar
1 tablespoon potato flour
2 eggs

Garnish
Hazelnuts
100 grams of baking chocolate

How to...
1. Put the oven to 200 Celsius (175 Celsius for convection oven)
2. Grind the nuts in a almond grinder and put them in bowl.
3. Add sugar, potato flour and eggs to the bowl and stirr it all together until you get a firm batter.
4. Use your fingers to portion out small balls on baking plates (use baking paper or grease the pan!)
5. Push one hazelnut in the middle of each ball, if the almonds are very big you can divide them in two.

6. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 8 minutes.

7. The cookies are easily getting stuck on the paper so remove them from the paper before they cool.

8. Tempering 50 grams of baking chocolate over water bath (melt and heat to 45 Celsius, add the rest of the chocolate and let it cool to 25 Celsius, then heat it to 30 Celsius - done!)

9. Dip the bottom of the cookies into the chocolate and lay them with the up side down to solidify.

Happy baking everyone! :)
 

Shark Fin Mittens

When the winter time is here it is neccessary to have great mittens to warm your frozen hands during the chilly evening walk with the dog, or bear, or whatever... If you are going to have mittens, why don't you spice them up with some cool shark fins! :) Well, that was the question I asked myself and then I came up with these cuties!

The pattern for these mittens is actually a combination of two patterns which is a bit strange, well... that is the way I am really... mixing and matching freely between patterns to make my "own thing". I don't know why I can't just let it be, it happens only sometimes when I really like a full pattern and then I can use is like crazy haha! The patterns is from Drops Design Studio's website where you can find many many free patterns - a treasure of creativity!

The idea with the sharkfins is my own idea, I have not seen it anywere else. Since I think it it terribly hard to work intarsia knitting I decided to sew these shark fins with stitches after I finished the mittens so it will look like I have knitted them :) Why make things the hard way when you can make it the easy way, right?

Happy knitting everyone!

Drawing Best Friends

Usually when I choose faces to draw they are all serious looking with no visual teeth or smiles. The reason is naturally because it is easier to draw something plain without special edges and curves. This time I tried something different. I found a great photo of my sister in law Liselotte and her friend making funny faces, and I started drawing right away because of the inspiration and the challenge!

I used lead pencils to make this drawing and the range of softness lies between F to 6B. I used a stomp to make the shadows. 

If I would point out one thing I am the most satisfied with in this drawing, it would be how the tongue turned out because that part was really tricky! 

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Icing and Coconut

This cake is very common on the Swedish "fika" table when we drink coffee or tea while we sometimes eat pastries or just a little biscuit. This cake is usually baked in a large oven pan with high edges (about 3-5 centimeters) and that is mentioned in the recipe below, but this time I tried using an ordinary baking pan with removable rim (diameter approximately 24 cm), which works equally great.

I admit that I am not a fan of coconut (not the texture nor the taste), however, this cake is the only cake with coconut that actually works fine with me :)

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Icing and Coconut
150 grams of butter or margarine
2 eggs
3 deciliter sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa
4 1/2 deciliter flour (wheat)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 deciliter milk

Icing
75 grams of butter or margarine
1-2 tablespoons cold coffee
1 tablespoon cocoa
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
3 1/2 dl icing sugar

Garnish
Coconut flakes

How to...
1. Put the oven for 175 degrees Celsius.
2. Melt the butter and let it cool down. 
3. Whisk the eggs and the sugar until it becomes a white and fluffy texure.
4. Mix the flour, vanilla sugar, baking powder and cocoa and add this mixture alternately with the melted butter into the egg mixture. 
5. Pour the batter into a greased oven pan (about 30*40 centimeters) covered in bread crumbles.
6. Bake in the lower part of the oven for about 15 minutes.
7. Let the cake cool.
8. Melt the butter for the icing into a sauce pan and then add the rest av the ingredients into the sauce pan while stirring.
9. Spread the icing on top of the cake and spread the coconut flakes over. Work fast because it will harden quite fast. 
10. Cut the cake in squares.

Purple Wool Kilt

This year I wanted to make something of my own to wear on Christmas Eve (that is the big celebrating day in Sweden) and it turned out to be one of my favourite garments - the kilt. I made another pink squared kilt last summer in the same style but this one is made of wool fabric and in a more traditional fashion where the pleating is narrower and the fabric is darker in color.
I really like this fabric, it is heavy and have colors of red, black, purple, yellow and green which makes it easy to match with other garments in other colors. I bought a couple of meters extra of this fabric, so maybe it will be a dress or a jacket in the future too :) However, I will never wear them at the same time as this kilt ;)

 The pattern is home made by my mother. She made me several kilts of this kind when I was a  teenager so I have used my old kilts to make my new ones. I have decided to make and wear more kilts in the future because it is such a nice and cool garment, especially when it is modernised and made in a more feminine way like this one.

Blue/Green Baby Hat

Hello and welcome to a new year of creativity! I think the best way to start the new year of 2016 is a cool, colorful and fun baby hat for those chilly winterdays :)

This pattern is from Drops Design Studio's website and I can really recomend their patterns, they have a lot of baby patterns and they are all free. If you are lucky you can even find a video tutorial on their website for your garment, or at least get technique tips from their videos. The link I attached in this post for the pattern is in swedish but if you would like other laguages than swedish you can easily change the language in the bar to the left under the picture in the pattern. Isn't it neat?! ;)

For this hat I used a green/blue acrylic yarn from RedHeart. I really like the color and the thickness is great for me, I think the result is getting smooth and nice.

Happy knitting everyone!

Soft Pink Teddy Bear

It is teddy bear time!
As I was browsing trough my patterns I found this very cute teddy bear, and since I got a lot of fur fabric in different colors from my husband for my birthday I finally found what I was going to do with it (beacuse I wanted to make something really nice). For this bear I chose a pale pink fur fabric and since the fabric was about 1,5 m long I only used about 30 cm width! That means that I have almost 1,5 meter width left ready to be used for something else.

The whole body is one piece, the only separate pieces are the nose and the ears which I have sewn by hand. The instructions were not easy to follow when it came to the nose area since the pictures were very dark and authors used dark brown fabric. In the end I just got a bit frustrated and I made some own decisions and it came out good. I usually is quite impatient with patterns and if I don't understand right away I just do my own thing and hope for the best. However, this time I really pushed myself to understand for a long time but it didn't work out. I think the result is good and I will stick to my own routines if I do more bears of this model. The pattern I found for this bear is coming from the same book I used for the Soft Toy Elephant.

Happy sewing everyone!

  

Purple Knitted Mittens

In Sweden we are starting to get closer to winter time, and this morning we had -11 degrees Celsius. It is the perfect time to curl up in the armchair under a cozy warm blanket and knit mittens.
This model is borrowed from Drops Design Studio's homepage and you can choose your language in the menu at the right under the picture in the pattern.

If the thought of making your own mittens have crossed your mind once or twice my advise is "Go for it!", because it really is easy once you understand the pattern instructions and it really feels great to put the finished mittens on your hands and be able to say "I made these" to all of your friends and family :) Maybe you even surprise someone with a great homemade christmas gift <3

Since I always do "my own thing" with patterns I find, I just made stocking stitch for these mittens and used two purple colors to lighten things up a bit. I really like the type of ending in the top, it turned out very good. I hope my friend feels warm this winter when she gets this gift :)
Happy knitting everyone!

Ink Drawing Susy

As I told you in the post when I draw my sister in law Liselotte I have really started to like the ink pencils I bought some time ago. This drawing of my friend Susy took about six hours which is quite long time but I was really satisfied with the result. This time I tried to use the light colors more and be careful with the dark brown color in the hair. I think I nailed her eyes and those are very important to make it look like her, so I think this one turned out pretty great. 
I start with a light lead pencil to make all the details and then I use the ink to fill it with color. It is fun but a little scary to use ink because you can easily make a mistake and then it is hard to fix it. 

  

Knitted Orange and Brown Wrist Warmers

I am very into knitting right now, probably since I got large amounts of yarns for my birthday but also because it is getting colder and soon it will be winter here in Sweden. I found a very nice and simple pattern for these wrist warmers on Drops Design Studio homepage, and you can easily change the language right under the picture to the left in the pattern :)

I will definately save this pattern for the future because it is great for both wrist warmers and ordinary mittens. The thumb increase is easy to understand and the only thing you do differently to use it as a pattern for mittens you don't bind off the stitches for the thumb, just saving them on a piece of yarn for later to make the thumb.

Happy knitting! :)

 

Ink Drawing Liselotte

The last couple of days I have had thoughts of starting to draw pictures agian. I really love drawing, especially human faces because of all the opportunities faces give, and I looked into my boxes with pencils and other drawing eqipment I have. I bought some Indian ink pencils in beige and brown colors a year ago but somehow I never used them. Today I used them for the veryfirst time and this drawing is my first attempt to make a Indian ink drawing. I made the first contours with ordinary lead pencils and then I just used my feelingshow it should be and colored as I went.

The girl in the picture is my sister in law Liselotte. She has a very unique face with strong details so it was fun to try to make the drawing look like her. I think I nailed some parts but for next time I will try to dare more with the colors around the cheeks and the nose because then I think the similarities with the original will be better :) I am really overwhelmed with these ink pencils and I will keep on using them in the future. For this drawing I only used four pencils: one black marker, and three ink pencils in light sand, dark beige and brown. I will buy some new colors, maybe some grey colors and white to get more possibilities. 

Raspberry and Blueberry Muffins

On a grey Monday afternoon a batch of lovely berry myffins can make the sun shine! 
I found this recipe in the golden "Swedish cakes and Cookies", a Swedish classic baking book. If you would like to buy this book you can find the swedish edition here and the english edition here!

Happy baking!

12 Raspberry and Blueberry Muffins
100 grams of margarine or butter
1 1/2 dl sugar
4 eggs
5 deciliter flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar powder
1 deciliter milk
1,5 deciliter frozen berries, I chose raspberry- and blueberry mix

How to...
1. Put the oven to 175 Celcius.
2. Stirr the room temperatured margarine with the sugar until you get a white and homogeneous mixture. 
3. Add one egg at the time and stirr carefully. 
4. Mix bakingpowder, vanilla sugar powder and flour in a bowl.
5. Alternate between adding flour mixture and milk to the margarin/sugar/egg mixture little by little while stirring carefully until you have the final smooth batter.
6. Distribute the batter into the paper baking cups.
7. Use your fingers or a spoon to poke down the berries deep into each cup with batter. Make sure to spread the berries.
8. Bake in the middle of the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Blue Knitted Mittens

I took a glance into my basket of yarns and found some unfinished business. A half-finished sad little mitten was hanging around with the yarn balls thinking about if it ever would be a real mitten someday. Actually that mitten has been laying around ever since last winter when I thought it would be nice to knit mittens for my husband for Chrismas. However, I had too little time back then and I decided to give him something else.
Well now the half-finished mitten is finished and so is his brother :)

I combined two patterns for these mittens and that is because I started making a model were every finger is individual but I found that it was too hard for me so I found a pattern with only the individual thumb. Here is the free pattern for mittens with individual fingers and here you find the free pattern for the mittens with only individual thumb.

The yarn I used is acrylic and it has its positive and negative features for sure. The positive features are the strong bright colors that is not very common in cotton yarns or wool, at least not where I live. The negative features are that the garment you make will almost always get uneven on the knitted surface unlike wool or cotton who will stay firm amd smooth.

Crocheted Wrist Warmers

This weekend I found some really cute wrist warmers to make in the sofa while watching television. I was looking for a easy project and something I could really use.
I am a true beginner when it comes to crocheting so I was very pleased when I found this video tutorial for these wrist warmers on Drops Design Studio's homepage. The video is really easy to follow (no sound, only visual) and you work with both the video and the free pattern at he same time. When you get the hang on the pattern routine you don't have to look so much in the pattern description and it turns out quite fun when the fingers just go with the flow :) Oh, and you can change the pattern language in the menu just below the picture!

Since I had these yarns I really wanted to use (because I love how they shine in the sunlight) the thickness of the yarns doesn't match the thickness recomended in the pattern and the final result of the hand warmers is not very graceful and smooth like the pictures in the pattern. However, I don't really mind, I think that the colors turns the roughness to look quite charming so I am proud to put them on anyway :)

This type of garment is not ideal for my own use because my fingers gets very cold easily. These wrist warmers cover basically the whole hand except the fingers so if it is a bit cold outside it is better for me to use knitted gloves. These wrist warmers will however be good to use between autumn and winter when it is not too warm but not too cold either.   

Soft Toy Elephant

As you probably already know by now I like making toys and last month when I found a book about making soft toys I knew I had to start planning for some serious toy making! The book is from the 70's but these models doesn't get out of fashion which is great.

The pattern pieces for these toys were drawn in miniature size on squared paper in the book and I had to do my own squared paper were each square was 2,5 cm *2,5 cm to get the natural size. Then I tried to copy the drawings of all pattern pieces the best I could on my own natural sized squared paper.
It was a new way for me to get the pattern ready, I have only used Burda patterns before and there you don't have to re-size anything or draw by hand, so this was exciting and fun!

I chose the elephant pattern because I thought it was so very cute. I calculated how big the final toy would be and thought it might get too big so I chose to make my squares 1,5 cm instead of 2,5 cm. That resulted in the little elephant you see in the pictures. It was a little tricky to sew and then turn the fabric inside out, especially around the trunk area, so I decided to make one more elephant in the original size which resulted in the big elephant in the pictures. I think they both turned out good and I am pleased with them both. The filling is a white fluffy 100% polyester fuzz, but according to the book small pieces of cloths is good to use too.