Baby Biscornu

Here's another little design from "Floss Box". There's one of my hand-made glass buttons in the middle, which seemed to fit perfectly...

And the winner is - Ranae

Ranae's name was selected by the "Random.Org" randomizer. Congrats!

Key Lime Squares

This week's adventure in baking was inspired by a challenge on "The Wagon" BB. One of the members there has challenged all of the members to make a lemon square recipe. I'd found a couple of recipes I'd wanted to try that were close to the lemon square recipe that the member shared - one for Pink Grapefruit Squares, and one for Key Lime Squares. I have a meeting tonight for which I'm bringing treats, so I thought I'd try the Key Lime Squares. The original recipe called for white chocolate whipped cream, but I was running out of time tonight, and I only had time to make regular whipped cream. I thought the little slices of lime were a great addition to the top of the lime bars.

Ornament #3

This is "Be Merry" from My Mark Designs. I stitched it using the recommended DMC on white fabric I'm planning to finish it using the tutorial that Monique, who designed the ornament, has on her blog.

Thanks for all of your good wishes on feeling better - I think my neck has almost completely healed, but I've missed a few exercise classes, and want to catch up this week.

Blog candy is on until Wednesday - please comment on Saturday's post to enter.

Christmas Ornament 2

This is a mini-biscornu, stitched from a freebie at the "Floss Box" blog. It's on the same red mystery fabric as the ornament I stitched earlier in the week. I stitched a simple border on the biscornu, as I thought it would be too hard to stitch into a biscornu if it wasn't a little bigger. The small button in the middle is vintage from a collection I got at a craft sale.

Don't forget that the blog candy draw is open until Wednesday!

Blog Candy - At Long Last

I've finished the last of the Pay-It-Forward/Blog Candy gifts that I offered out back in....um.... January, and thought I'd celebrate with a little blog candy. The blog candy is for 12 handmade glass flowers, plus 6 glass beads. The glass is all Bullseye odd-lots, which is handmade in the US. These glass colours are outside of their normal range, so there are not that many of these beads running around.

To give away the beads, I'll make a drawing from all of the people who comment on this post. It doesn't matter if this is your first visit or you are a regular reader - just leave a comment and I'll throw your name into the hat.

The Blog Candy closes Wednesday, October 29th - so please comment before then.

New Ornament

I've been trying to complete an ornament for the longest time. I finally got my hands on the JCS Ornament issue for the year and found quite a few that I wanted to do. This is the Cat's Whisker's Design Studio ornament - in the issue, it's quite colourful, but I stitched it on red fabric with white DMC and Delica silky rainbow beads. It's quite sparkly with all of the beads on it.

St Pete's Progress

This is about half way through the second section of St. Petersburg.

Ouch....

I woke up this morning with the *worst* neckache. I thought I'd pulled a muscle in my shoulder last night, but I thought it would get better with a little bit of rest. I woke up this morning and everything in my neck and shoulders hurt. Pulling my head up and off the pillow was just terrible, and yawning wasn't fun either. It's a bit better this evening, or I would have been off to the doctors to make sure nothing was wrong.

Its also hard to stitch or to clean (which is what I really should be doing instead of stitching). I'll try and get a little bit of both stitching and cleaning in tonight though.

Dessert - Week 2

This is croissant-banana bread pudding with southern comfort sauce,again from "Cuisine at Home" magazine. This will be tonight's dessert.

Egyptian Garden Progress

I got my order of Bullseye odd-lots today - Peach Glaze, Wild Mulburry, Sand Dune, Neo-Berry Shift, Dark Blue Adventurine (sparkly), and Pebble. Glass colours are almost as much fun as hand-dyed fabric and threads.

St. Petersburg Update

Here's the cross stitching in Part 1 of St. Petersburg.

Catching Up....

Questions and comments:

To MissyAnn - thanks for letting me know you bought your first peyote stitch kit - hope you enjoy it!

To Trixie - I think making beads is pretty easy, but I have to admit that I wasn't thrilled with the beads from my first attempt. I was lucky that I had some good resources and teachers when I first started out. Beads like the bracelet beads, which are pretty much just small even beads are actually pretty easy to make.

The Recipe:

Apple Pie a la Easy

Caramel Sauce:
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
2 T. Corn Syrup
Pinch of Salt
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 T. Dark Rum
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1 t. vanilla extract

Pie Crust:
1 round purchased pie dough
1 T. butter, melted
2 T. coarse sugar, such as Sugar in the Raw

Apple Filling:
1 T. unsalted butter
2 Braeburn Apples, peeled, cored, thin sliced
1 Granny Smith Apples, peeled, cored, thinly sliced
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/4 t. cinnamon
pinch of salt
1/2 cup of apple juice or cider

To assemble:
Vanilla Ice Cream

For Caramel Sauce:
Boil sugar, water, corn syrup and salt in a saucepan over medium-high heat, swirling occasionally. Cook until caramel is the colour of iced tea, 10 minutes. Add cream and rum, whisking to combine. Off heat, whisk in butter and vanilla. Transfer sauce to a bowl to cool.

For Pie Crust:
Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees; line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Unroll pie dough onto prepared baking sheet, brush with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar. Using a pastry wheel, cut dough into 12 wedges and bake until golden and crisp, about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.

For Apple filling:
Melt butter in a non-stick skillet over medium heat, add apples, raisins, cinnamon, salt and saute until apples begin to soften, about 4 minutes. Add juice, simmer until nearly evapourated, then add 3/4 cup caramel. Reduce heat to low and keep apple mixture warm.

To Assemble:
Arrange 1 crust wedge on each of 6 plates, then top with 2 small scoops of ice cream and a spoonful of apples and caramel sauce. Place a second wedge on top with more ice cream and apple mixture. Serve immediatley.

Thanksgiving Dessert

This is Cuisine at Home's "Apple Pie a la Easy", which I made for Thanksgiving dinner on Monday. The pie crust is cut into wedges and baked, and the apples are pan-fried with apple juice, raisins and caramel sauce. All in all, it was easy - I only had to peel 3 apples, and I didn't have to fuss with trying to make sure that the pie crust wasn't soggy.

St. Petersburg progress

This is about 2/3 the way through the first of 12 sections. It doesn't show up much in the pictures, but it's going to be really sparkly.

The Weekend

Its been nice to be home for 4 whole days. Today is a public holiday in Canada, and I took Friday off from work. And I've pretty much done nothing this weekend except stitch, cook, eat and go to the gym. It's been a busy year - I feel like I've continually been in an airport or in a meeting since about January, and it's nice to have a couple of days to get the tightly wound springs in my life unwound a bit.

I did manage to:
- Get my hair cut
- Have 2 Thanksgiving Dinners
- Watch an entire season (Season 4) of Grey's Anatomy
- Go to 3 spinning classes, which will go a little way into making sure that some of the calories from the dinners get burnt off
- Stitch on Egyptian Garden and St. Petersburg
- Re-arrange the blog layout

Updates and Turkey Day

Here's where I'm at with Egyptian Garden and Le Epoche Nouveau. I'm quite enjoying both, and am glad that the long weekend has provided some stitching time. To everyone celebrating this weekend - Happy Thanksgiving

There and back again....

It's been quite a couple of weeks! Along with everything else that's going on in my life - I decided to take the jewellery class again, and I finished up a bracelet that I was working on last year. It still needs to be polished, but I'm happy with the way that it turned out. I made all of the small beads, plus the 4 metal charms and the chain on the bracelet, so it ended up being quite a bit of work. On the other hand, I like the fact that I know how to make chain and clasps now.

Thanks for all of your kind comments on my blog - it's nice to know that I have some readers around, even if I post less than I would like too!