Knitted Slippers with Roses

Now when the days are getting colder and we get closer to the winter it is nice to warm up cold feet in warm slippers. I found these cuties on DropsDesignStudio (click here to go to the free pattern) and now my feet can be warm all winter! These slippers are very easy to knit, basically you just need to know how to do garter stitch and decrease. I crocheted two flowers, same pattern as I used in this post, to make the slippers a bit more girly. I had both pink and purple yarn at home at the time and since I LOVE these colors it was a natural color choice :)

Happy knitting!

Drawing Maleficent (Angelina Jolie)

The Walt Disney Pictures movie Maleficent is one of the latest Disney movies that I really enjoyed. Click here to learn more about this movie on IMDb. I think the story of this movie is a great twist to the old fairytale Cinderella when the witch is the bad guy and you never really know why. But in this movie you get to know her and even feel sympathy for her.
I think Angelina Jolie is a great actress and even if she is not my favourite I think she is giving this character full life.  

I made this drawing on ordinary sketch paper using lead pencils. I am not very fancy when it comes to lead pencils, I often use a bright pencil like B or F to do the contours at the first stages, fill them in with something in the middle like 2B or 3B to get the details and when I am done with that I get crazy with the black and use a 5B or 6B to color the real dark areas. When I started drawing many years ago I never dared to use the dark pencils because I was scared I would destroy the drawing I was happy with. That often resulted in pale motifs without the "wow-effect" - yes quite boring. Today I know that shadows and dark areas are the only true things that makes a drawing come to life! The goal I have with my drawings is to make the viewer feel invited to look at it more than just one time and I think I pulled it off quite good this time because of the shadows and her interesting eyes.

I almost always look at a real photo of the character I am drawing because I am not very good at seeing the person in my head. There are people who are amazing with the photograhic memory and I am deeply impressed with them, I can't understand how they do it. Anyway, I like using photographs because I get to really study the person's lines and characteristics in their faces. For instance, you look at a picture of Angelina Jolie and at first sight you think she must have a very straight and sharp nose or the lips and eyes have the same shape on both left and right side if you would divide her face in the middle. But no. There are many differences in her face and I if I had not payed attention to them I most definately would not had suceeded to make my drawing look like her. So my advice, if you would like any, is to look at the details and trust the differences you see, because if you just make assumptions without really looking you will fail with your work. I have made that mistake countless times.

Syrup Bread

The household economy in my home is getting a bit strained since I recently lost my beloved job (as a result of an unexpected reorganization in the company) and now it is the time to think smart and economic and make priorities.

I have realized that buying bread in the store is actually very expensive if you compare the price to how much it costs to bake the bread at home. Two loaves of bread with basically same ingredients as the bread I will show you today would probably cost about 50 Swedish crowns here in Sweden (= 6,46 USD or 4 British Pounds). However, when I bake two loaves I only pay about 12 Swedish crowns (= 1,29 USD or 0,8 British Pounds). It may sound like I am poking in pennies here but when you buy eight loaves each month it is a big difference between 480 Swedish crowns (51,7 USD or 32 British Pounds) for buying bread and 96 Swedish crowns (10,3 USD or 6,4 British Pounds) for baking your own.

I am sure you are thinking "Sure, I could bake if I wanted to but it is often so time consuming...!" Yes, you are right in some way beacuse many types of bread can take a long time to make, but this recipe I will show you today is not one of those long term baking experiences you fear, this is a little joy :)

This recipe comes from the book "Bröd: från bagels till tunnbröd" by Göran Söderin och George Strachal. Here you can find the book on the Swedish online book store Adlibris.

Syrup Bread

25 grams of fresh yeast

3 deciliter room temperatured water

10 grams room temperatured butter

1 deciliter dark syrup

5 grams salt

450 grams sifted rye flour with wheat

150 grams wheat flour

Put your oven to 200 Celsius.

Dissolve the yeast in the water.

Add the butter and stirr it into the yeast mixture together with the syrup.

Mix the two types of flour and the salt in a seperate bowl and then add it little by little while you work it into the yeast/water mixture. 

Work the dough with your hands until it feels smooth. 

Let the dough rest for 30 minutes. (excellent time to walk the dog or check your Instagram/Facebook ;) )

Divide the dough in two  and put them into two bread baking pans (1,5 L or 2 L) and let them rise under a towel until they double in size (approximately 1 hour)

Bake for 20 minutes or until the inner temperature (use a digital termometer) is 98 Celcius.

Dark Green Baby Socks

It was quite a long time ago I knitted something and last week I felt I really wanted to start a new project. Since my inspiration was low and I had not much time I thought I would try to knit baby socks because they are small and easy. Once again I fell in love with knitting as soon as I started and I could not stop until they were finished. It is a big mystery why I think it is so much fun but that is how it is.

This pattern is easy to understand and you don't have to know all kinds of techniques.  Here you can find the link to the free pattern at Drops Designstudio's homepage. If you would like to read the pattern in a different language you can choose your language in the flag menu at left side just below the picture.

The yarn I am using is Read Heart Soft Baby Steps 100% acrylic. I like acrylic yarn because the colors are so intensive and the yarn shines very pretty. 

Happy knitting everyone!

Blueberry Pie

Is there anything better than pie and vanilla custard a sunny autumn afternoon with a cup of coffee or tea to warmen you up? No, I don't think so, especially blueberry pie. Blueberries are one of the forest's finest treasures, both tasty and healthy, and they are so useful for many things.
This recipe is easy and it does not need too much preperations, the total amount of time is about one hour so it is a perfect pie to make after breakfast on Saturday morning to get freshly baked pie to the eleven o'clock coffee break (at least in Sweden coffee at eleven o'clock is a general phenomenon).

Blueberry Pie

Crust
2,5 deciliter flour
1 deciliter sugar
0,5 teaspoon baking powder
150 grams margarine or butter 
2 tablespoons of water

Filling
4 deciliter blueberries(frozen or fresh)
1/2 deciliter sugar 

Put your oven to 175 Cecius. 

Mix flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl. Add the margarine in little cubes. Use your fingers to form a dough and then add the water to make the dough not crumble. 
When finished put the dough in a plastic bag in the fridge for about 20 minutes, or the freezer for about 10 minutes, to cool it a bit (it is easier to work with it if is is a bit cool).

Divide the dough in two and distribute one of them into a pie dish (approximately 26 centimeter in diameter) by pushing the dough with your palm and fingers to cover the whole bottom of the dish. Bake it in the oven for 8 minutes. 

Put the dish out of the oven and sprinkle the blueberries over the crust so you get it totally filled. Then add the sugar on top of the blueberries.

Now take the second and final part of the dough and by using your fingers take small pieces at the time and spread them over the blueberries until they are almost covered. The dough is containing baking powder so the little pieces will swell a bit while baking in the oven.

Put the pie into the oven at 175 Celcius for about 25 minutes or until the crust is getting a nice golden color. 

Salt dough accessories

As a child my mother and I sometimes made small trinkets in salt dough and let them harden in the oven. That was a very long time ago and I asked myself yesterday why things you do as a child tend to be labled as childish and therefore you don't do it as an adult. I did not have a good answer to that question so today I decided to make some dough and just go crazy! Well... Or at least I did some small things I can use as accessories for hair clips or why not a brooch :)
I used superglue to fix the things to the hair clips.

Salt dough
1 deciliter salt
1 1/2 deciliter water
1 1/2 teaspoon oil
180 grams (3 deciliter) flour

Mix salt and water in a bowl and let the salt solve into the water for about 30 minutes.
Add the oil and then the flour while you stirr with a spoon. The dough will soon be easy to form with your hands and if you feel the doug to be a little sticky you can add more flour.

When you don't use the dough you can store it in a plastic bag in the fridge.

When you have made some nice things with the dough and you want to keep them and maybe color them you need to put them on a oven plate covered with baking paper and let them dry in the oven in 80 Celcius for at least an hour (but the time depends on how large things you have made and how thick they are). 

You can color your things when they are hard and cooled. I used acrylic paint to color my things, but perhaps you can find other suitable paint in your craft store or on the internet :)

 

Candy cake filled with strawberry jam, banana and vanilla cream

It was my birthday a week ago and my husband's birthday is next week so we did what we always do this time of  year. 1 birthday + 1 birthday = One cake and one birthday party! This year we made a candy cake with NonStop chocolate lentils and sweet jelly raspberrys. I really like how the chocolate lentils make the cake sparkle of colors!
Inside this cake of happiness we find three soft sponge cake bases holding up layers of thinly slices of banana, vanilla cream and strawberry jam.

Sponge cake bases
4 eggs
2 deciliter white sugar
1 deciliter flour
3/4 deciliter potato flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Put the oven to 175 Celcius.
Grease and bread a baking pan approximately 26 centimeter in diameter.
Whip the eggs together with sugar until you get a white fluffy mixture.
Mix flour, baking powder and potato flour and pour the flourmixture into the egg/sugar mix. Be careful and be sure to turn the flour gently into the egg/sugar mixture. It is important that the fluffy texture is maintained.
Pour the finished batter into the bakinf pan and bake it in the lower part of the oven for about 40 minutes.
When the cake is baked you need to take it out of the baking pan and let it cool on a oven rack.
When the cake is room temperature you divide it with a knife into three layers.

 Topping
2 deciliter whipped cream to cover the sides and the top
Non Stop chocolate lentils
Sweet jelly raspberrys

Filling
2,5 deciliter vanilla cream you can whip
2 bananas
2 deciliter strawberry jam

See the little picture at the right.
The darker yellow parts represents the sponge cake layers.
The red area is only strawberry jam.
The light yellow area is whipped vanilla cream
(approx 1 cm thick) + a layer of very thin slices banana.