Are socks your favourite, favourite clothes?

My photoshop is still down *le sigh*
But hey, look what I made! Dobby Socks Earrings!
(If you don't know which socks I am talking about, shame on you (and your cow)! Go back and read GoF)

Crocheted with sewing thread and a 0.4mm crochet hook! 8D
They're available at my etsy store if, you know, you need a present for the Harry Potter fan in your life or something.


Remember how I won a fabric design contest? Well, I got the fabric and it's absolutely adorable! The pattern is a bit larger than I thought it would be, but I really don't mind.
I want to get the most out of it, so I'm going to make a simple blanket, without cutting anything and then maybe quilt a few of the skulls :)

Skullskullskulls

Hey!
Long time no see!
Is it my fault? Well, only a bit.
Is it my Photoshop's fault? You can bet it is!
It's not like I don't want to post. I have tons of things I want to share!
My Photoshop just decided to die a horrible, horrible death, leaving me 'quickly-making-pictures-pretty'-less.
And I refuse to post pictures straight from the camera, now that I have witnessed the power of Photoshop Actions.

Aaanyway, I have news!
I won something!
/pause while I do a victory lap around a chair
So, I entered a skull-themed design competition at stoff'n, a site where you can upload any design/pattern/image you want and they'll print you some lovely fabric.
First place (ME!!) got 80€ (100$) to spend, which, I won't lie, won't get you very far, but I'm absolutely excited none the less.
(If you're wondering, I spent my money on 2m (about 2yd) of the cheapest fabric, 3 teeny tiny test pieces and shipment)

Now, winning is already awesome, but the second part is that now my 3 designs in the top 20 (mine were on #1, #3 and #20) can be bought! And every time someones buys a piece (ranging from 20cm to fat quarters, to meters), I earn a little bit of money!
Which is rather brilliant, if you ask me.

Probably making an apron out of my Chefskull fabric, we'll see :D

ChefSkull

SkullCluster

Skullphabet

On another, more serious note, it pains me to tell you that the little lemony tentacle monster did not survive. Rest in peace, little wiggle.

The lemon is in play

For the longest time, I have wanted a lemon tree. Because of reasons.
The only problem: they can be insanely expensive. Or maybe they just seem insanely expensive to a poor person like myself.
So last year, IKEA had lemon trees! Now picture me dancing through the plant isles, chanting 'LEMONS! LEMONS!' at the top of my lungs.
That wasn't my actual reaction, but it would have been, if there hadn't been any people around. No, I just did a quick little happy dance on the spot.
I paid for my lemon tree (full of happiness), I drove him home (full of happiness), I named him Richardson (full of happiness), I gave him his own little space on my desk (full of happiness).
And how does he repay me?
By almost dying!
I actually blame IKEA. Why? Because they sold lemon trees in the middle of winter! And apparently Richardson thought the two minute walk from IKEA to the car was enough time to freeze to death.
Thankfully after lots of care, the finest citrus fertiliser money can buy (actually, it was the only one and it was quite cheap) and a playlist full of Korean pop songs, he recovered.
When I bought Richardson (named after Douglas Richardson of Cabin Pressure), he had two huge (and I mean huge) lemons dangling from a branch. I left them on the tree until they decided to jump off themselves (almost gave me a heart attack). After that, I couldn't get myself to throw them away, they were so pretty!
(You're probably asking yourself why I didn't eat them. Because the sticker on the pot said I shouldn't. Who knows what kind of chemicals they spray on there...I would probably have grown an extra arm if I had eaten them! But next time the tree grows some fruit, you can bet I will devour them with glee.)
So the lemons just lay around, chilling in the living room, then chilling in the kitchen.
Until, after about half a year of chilling, my father brutally murdered them.
Yesterday he cut them in half, for reasons still unknown to me. And you know what he discovered?
NEW LIFE!
Praise cheeses!
I'm not yet sure if they are lemon trees or tiny tentacle monsters which inhabit abandoned lemons, but whatever they'll grow up to be, I'll keep you updated.
(That is, if they reach adulthood. Let me get my K-pop songs)

Cookie Time

I bought Black Treacle for the first time last year (main reason being the awesome Halloween tins it came in), and haven't done much with it since.
So because I don't want it to go bad (can treacle even go bad?), I made some cookies!
And they are SO DELICIOUS.

Black Treacle Cookies
(from allrecipes.co.uk)
155g (⅔ cup + 1 tsp) butter
200g (¾ cup + 2 tbsp) sugar
 60g (4 tbsp) black treacle
1 egg
250g (1¼ cup) flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground cloves

1 pinch salt

additional sugar

*

Melt the butter and set aside to cool.

Add sugar, egg and treacle, beat well.

Sieve together dry ingredients, then add to the mixture and stir until combined.
Chill for three hours or over night.

Preheat oven to 190°C.
Form dough into walnut sized balls, roll them in the additional sugar and place on parchment lined baking trays.
Bake for 8-10 minutes.

Don't worry if they come out a bit crispier than you like, just store them in an air tight container, and they'll be chewy and delicious the next day!

*the original recipe also calls for ½ tsp ground ginger, if that's your thing

Cupcakes, cupcakes, more cupcakes!

One of my mother's friends apparently likes my cupcakes! Oh yeah!
She asked if I could bake 20, so of course I said yes and baked 70.
I see your raised eyebrow, and raise you another.
Yes, I can get carried away sometimes, but my dad told me to make some for us as well, and 50 sounds about right for four people, right? Right?

I tried two new recipes, Ultimate Marble Cupcakes and Homemade Lemon Cupcakes, both by Sally's Baking Addiction.
The marble cupcakes are so pretty and delicious (even though the frosting is a bit too sweet for my taste), I almost don't want to eat them! Almost. I already had three.
The lemon ones aren't my favourite lemon cupcakes, but they're not bad and my parents both think they're delicious.
Other than that I also made my go-to chocolate cupcake with my go-to frosting, raspberry whipped cream.

 From left to right: Ultimate Marble Cupcakes, Homemade Lemon Cupcakes (used a different frosting) and Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Whipped Cream

 LOOK AT THOSE PRETTY SWIRLS

I love how currants come in different colours :D (am I the only one who thinks that cupcake has a major derp face?)

RED

Cherries, raspberries, red currants, strawberries - all red, and absolutely delicious!

Sour Cherry Cake (from our sour cherry tree - they were SO juicy, the cake took forever to bake)

Raspberry Pudding Tart (there are four different kinds of raspberries on there, all from our garden :) the super ripe looking ones are actually a dark variety we bought last year, delicious!)

 Japanische Weinbeere (no idea what those are called in English, a direct translation would be 'Japanese Wine Berry'. From our neighbour, look like raspberries, feel like the things they put on socks so you won't slip, taste a bit sour, but not bad!)

Woodland Strawberries are the BEST strawberries. Sometimes they're teeny tiny like this one, but still they have ten times the flavour of strawberries you can buy at a store.

My grandma sent quite a lot of these little guys over, together with the red currants. Isn't he adorable? (please ignore that my fingers look like I just murdered someone, I was making red currant jam...honest!)

 Another tiny fellow

 A bucket full of red currants going through my 'Flotte Lotte' (which was quite a workout) -

 - to make 1,8kg pure, sour, yummy sauce, to which I then added sugar and made delicious jam!

I dubbed these sandwiches 'blood puddle' :D (the picture doesn't do the red justice)

I usually like cherries...

Our neighbour has a big cherry tree, and was nice enough to give us a quite a lot of cherries.
The only problem: maggots in every single one of them...
Now, if you're like our neighbour, you just shrug and are happy about the extra nutrients. Yeah, well, I'm not really fond of creepy crawlies in my cake, but maybe that's just me.
My mum suggested to throw the cherries into hot water for a bit, because, according to her, the maggots would flee the cherries and I could just fish them out.
Tried it, and ended up with well done maggots...still inside the cherries. Oh well.
Thankfully I'm not squeamish, so I just cut open every single cherry and discarded the pit and eventual inhabitants. (Unless of course the cherry looked really unappealing inside or housed an entire family)

Apart from taking ages, it was actually kind of fun, because my kitchen looked like a scene from a horror movie. Red cherry juice splatters everywhere!
I made a yogurt-cup cake (you can find the recipe HERE), which is already half gone, so yay.

Next I'll probably  bake something red currant-y, because our garden is full of them! Unless, of course, I eat them all before that. Red currants with sugar~~~~~ *Q*