National Pie Week

As it's National Pie Week what better excuse do I need to make a lovely, comforting veggie pie and as I type it's just come out of the oven & smells delish!

I will link you across to Shaheen's lovely blog where I've taken the pie from and you can find all the details of the pie as mine has been adapted a bit. Thanks Shaheen, I can't wait to have it for tea tonight.

http://allotment2kitchen.blogspot.com/2012/03/caerphilly-cheese-leek-and-potato-pie.html

The pie is Caerphilly cheese, leek & potato.

I've had to adapt the pie with what I had in the house due to not being able to find any Caerphilly cheese in Driffield. I went as close to the south west as I could with Gloucester!

Whilst the potatoes were cooking I chopped the onions, leeks & garlic.

Cooked down the oniony things and once they are cool I added the cheese and cooled potatoes & things.

This is where I've had to cheat, didn't have time to make pastry. As some of you know I also have problems with the oven not being as hot as it should be so there was no way I could do a proper pie with pastry all around as it wouldn't cook.

So, I've opted for a pot pie with just a pastry lid. Here they are naked.

And, ta dah! Here they are all cooked up and waiting to be eaten! I'm curious how they would be if I actually had the Caerphilly so as I'm in York tomorrow I will seek out the LoveCheese shop if there's time and see if they've got some.

Totally unrelated but Shaheen if you see this, here is my pottery class bird bath. the robins wouldn't pose in it,! It's a bit grubby now but still does the job and it's nice and deep for the birds to swim in!

Farewell to our 70's vintage Scandi fire, by George Ciancimino

I decided to do a post about our midcentury modern family heirloom, which is now for sale, in order to record it for posterity.


The item in question is the wonderful and aptly named WEDGE fire (above) designed back in the mid 70's by designer George Ciancimino. A polished stainless steel open fire, stylish and with a great heat output.

My dad ordered this fire after seeing it at the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1976, he was very impressed with how it looked and it's energy performance and decided we must have one for the family home, a 1960's bungalow which he built.


I remember back in 1977 how fantastic the fire looked in our lounge against a raw brick wall, all polished steel and space agey. The heat output was so good that we'd often have the windows open.
The fire has been there for 35 years, the classic, angular Scandinavian styling has never dated and people still find it an unusual piece when they set eyes on it. In fact I've struggled to find information on it in my web searches so I think it is quite unique.

So to bring this up to date and full circle, once my parents got into their late 70's they began thinking about replacing it for the convenience of a gas fire and that is what they did just before last winter.


When the fire was removed I was horrified to hear someone had offered them a few quid for the scrap value to take it away. At that point I stepped in to rescue it, this fire is an important design icon of modern times and it needs preserving and a bit of work to give it a new lease of life.
It would look fab in a retro bungalow or an uber modern eco house like the people at Rural Design create.


http://ruraldesign.co.uk/


The fire is for sale and has been featured in the current e-newsletter by the wonderful MidCentury Magazine. I hope to secure a sale and pass on the funds to my parents to soften the blow of their winter gas bill!
Lets hope it finds a new home and someone else can enjoy it as much as our family have.


http://www.midcenturymagazine.co.uk/

Robin latest and some makes

After a sharp frost this morning it has been quite spring like and things are starting to happen with the animals outside, namely the rabbits are doing mad chasing each other stuff and wait for it, my little friend Robbie the robin has a lady friend! I'm calling her Ruby, they've been flying & tweeting together for about a week but I find it difficult to get a photo of both together as they seem to come down for food in turns.


But here we have some evidence, not a great photo but they both wait on the gate for me to put seeds out. Sometimes first thing in a morning they are so peckish that they fly up to the window when they see the curtain opening as if to ask me to come down and feed them.

This was the best shot I could get, Robbie is on the top step, he seems to eat first and then calls his lady over.... I wouldn't put up with that sexist attitude but she seems happy to take her turn!
They're fun to watch though.

Not been a bad day, quite productive in fact.
I had a lovely little package from a friend this morning consisting of some vintage floral postcards which I believe are Swiss and a pretty cotton flower motif.

I have also had chance for a few 'makes' in between work.


These are some brooches I'm just finishing off using my Welsh woven fabric, need to embellish a few beads on.

I love making pin cushions and here's a new one in a Victorian, Suffolk puff style with some heart fabric I picked up quite cheaply in a local shop yesterday.
I quite like this style so think I'll do some for my Folksy shop.

Bob the Bunnys latest travels

The nice thing about being self employed is having the freedom to make last minute executive decisions to take the day off. Yesterday was such a day, work was as up to date as could be, weather looked reasonable and Bob was all spruced up with a new bow tie!


Off we go, destination Dalby Forest, this is the visitor centre.

Plants and trees just starting to bud, found some lovely dried teazles but Bob got stuck to them and I had to prize him free.

After a little walk it was time for a snack, we went into the cafe and had a rather nice caramel slice with a pot of tea as the coffee is nasty tasting over frothed, dark roasted stuff.

I had taken a craft magazine to browse whilst Bob looked out of the window.

Now I don't normally do toilet shots on my blog but the toilet doors at Dalby were rather interesting, the visitor centre is quite eco friendly and a lot of the gifts in the shop are recycled. So it came as no big surprise to find the toilet doors were made from recycled cartons and things, as you can see they are rather groovy.

That was a nice half day spent in the forest, the weather dulled up a bit so not a huge amount of photos.


Late afternoon and we finished the day with a trip to York to partake in some delicious coffee from this year's Northern Barista champ, Gordon, who has The Attic at Harlequin. Here's the view out of the Attic window, there was a a girl perched reading on a window ledge across the street!

The coffee arrived, a flat white.

Bob gave the latte art a good look....

Done to perfection and good to go, Bob say's drink and enjoy. I certainly did, it's always good to have a natter with Gordon over an excellent coffee.
A lovely end to the day.

Happy St. David's Day

I'm a bit late saying it but Happy St. Davids Day to all my Welsh friends.


I've been out and about most of the day between Hornsea & Beverley and the weather was so lovely I didn't feel compelled to rush back. Look at the lovely blue sky over Hornsea Museum.
I had a mooch around Hornsea but didn't find anything interesting in the charity shops on this occasion.

Back to St. David and I gather he was a vegetarian. I am pasting a link below to a wonderful blog which is full of veggie recipes and Shaheen who writes the blog is Welsh and she has some fantastic Welsh culinary treats like Red Dragon Pie.

http://allotment2kitchen.blogspot.com/2012/03/welsh-dragon-pastry-pie.html

An extra day to blog!

Happy Leap Year everyone, there's a cute froggy image on Google today.
This is my first leap year since starting the blog so it gives me an extra day to show you something new.


This week I've had printed samples back from one of my latest Spoonflower fabric designs. It is a retro look fabric which I've created in a collage style using my old stamp collection and some antique magazines, postcards and books.
At the moment this is only available to buy on Spoonflower, it may appear in my Folksy shop at a later date.

Whilst on the subject of old magazines, here are a couple of lovely examples which were charity shop finds. I love the advertising designs inside, the typography and the illustration style.

There are some lavishly illustrated pictures inside, the colour reproduction is excellent and has remained vibrant over 50 yrs later.

Who knows, there may be another fabric design lurking in the pages of these mags!

Hearts & devils

A strange blog post title but my weekend has been spent finishing the Mother's Day fabric hearts & doing some digital artwork of a devil.


I embroidered the fronts of my fabric hearts and stitched a bit of chopped up vintage linen on them too.

I stitched them up with some pretty rose fabric for the back and attached a small pouch of lavender on the outside. For these hearts I wanted the lavender on the outside so that it is easy to refresh and dab with lavender oil on the back so as it doesn't affect the embroidery threads on the front.

These are the finished hearts which are lightly stuffed with polyester filling.
Next step, list in Folksy shop.

The devil I'm working on is none other than the little Stonegate Devil of York, or as he is also known 'The Printer's Devil' (a nasty little rascal who would mix up and misspell type when this shop was a printers). Here's a work in progress with the devil photo I'm working from underneath.
This is part of a series of posters I'm working on with a York theme.

http://www.york360.co.uk/gallery6/little-devil-in-stonegate.htm

New book & hearts in progress

The week seems to have flown past, maybe because it's been a bit milder and it's helped me power into action and get some things done.
I was the lucky recipient of a belated birthday pressie this week in the form of a Cath Kidston book from my friend.


It's the PATCH one.

It comes with a lovely packet of fabric pieces to make the project on the front which can either be a bag or cushion.

I've not done much patchwork so just had myself a nice Bolivian coffee and sat and flicked through it to show you a couple of pages. I think my latte art is a bit bubbly because I've used semi-skimmed.

I think this is my favourite project in the book, the Boudoir Cushion, although typically it looks the most complicated!

Much easier and also very pretty is this idea which is something I've already dabbled with and that's chopping up vintage linens to use the embroidered bits.

In fact I have some works in progress were I've been snipping up old tablecloths and then I need to do some hand embroidery on. If these are finished in time they will be Mother's Day lavender hearts to go in my Folksy shop.
Happy weekend one and all! x