The Bath Crafting Cranny

Oh blimey!

Hehehe!

Knitting, nappies and poo :)

Alison Blenkinsop recently got in touch wih some interesting and unusual knitted crafts. She helps mums with breastfeeding and have found a knitted breast is ideal for explaining attachment and hand expression. 

 

She has also designed and knitted a set of nappies with splodges in various colours to represent the baby's first five days of feeding, to show mums how the poo changes - and also to make them laugh!

 

She's mentioned these items in a fun book about breastfeeding called 'Fit to Bust', which was written to raise awareness of the importance of breastfeeding, raise funds for Baby Milk Action and raise a laugh. You can get its details here. 

Weird and weirder

A colleague recently had the luck to go to Iceland to attend a conference and spotted this wool shop (left). Nothing untoward here, I suppose. Much like any other yarn shop, said us.

Ah...yes... but here is another angle of the window display (right).

Please note the two-headed lamb. Hmm.

Oh, and the skeleton. Assumingly, that scarf takes a long time to knit...

Keep discovering those hidden gems of crafty wonderfulness

In the crafting world this is certainly holds true, doesn't it?

Speaking of which: check out these lunchboxes for Asda by Emma Smart (left)! (Brought to my attention by the great Design is Mine.)

Cheery Saturday

It's Saturday, it's sunny, I'm making Eirlys' chutney, friends are coming for dinner, I'm planning what I'm going to knit today and I've been browsing and giggling at this site: I love this t-shirt, this one and this one.

It's going to be a good weekend here - hope you have a nice one too!

Apple-icious chutney

Faced with a collapsed, fully-laden cooking apple tree in her garden in August, a Bath Crafting Cranny reader and self-confessed thrift fanatic decided not to cast her windfall of apples on the compost heap but to roll up her sleeves and get chutney-making. 
 
These straitened economic times called for a little make-do-and-mend mentality, she thought. So she stuck on a pristine pinny (possibly, but not actually, this one) and set about slow-cooking apples, onions, garlic, ginger, sultanas, brown sugar, cider vinegar and pickling spices until they reduced to a dark, syrupy deliciousness. The result – a particularly good partner to ham, strong cheddar and stilton – was such a hit with her family and friends (and, indeed, the famously cheese-loving editor of this blog) that it seemed a good idea to offer the chutney further afield.
 
The chutney is only being produced in painfully small batches of 6-8 jars,so availability is sadly limited. However, if you are lucky enough to live in the Bath area, you can purchase a jar now for £3.50. 10% of proceeds will go to the Home Farm Trust: a charity supporting adults with learning disabilities (more details are here).

The compulsively thrifty theme has been continued by making use of other rescued materials: re-used jars (where possible); obsolete computer-paper labels; pretty scrap fabric lid tops. If you have any spare, unwanted materials that you think might be helpful in this plucky enterprise, do please get in touch.
 
For more details, email Scrapiana (aka Eirlys Penn).

--------------
 
And for those who want to make their very own, Eirlys has kindly given us the recipe:

Apple Chutney*

Ingredients:

3 lbs/1.4 kg apples, peeled and finely chopped
1 lb/450 g onions, finely chopped
1 1/2 lbs/700 g brown sugar
8 oz/225 g sultanas (though raisins will do)
1/2 pint/300 ml vinegar (I prefer cider, though white malt is fine)
4 tsps/20 ml salt
A good pinch of cayenne pepper
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tsps/10 ml pickling spice (if you don't know what goes in this, it can be a combo of any of the following that you can muster: cinnamon, mustard seed, ginger, allspice berries, peppercorns, cloves, dill seeds, coriander seeds, mace, bay leaves, red chilli)
1 piece of root ginger (that's nice and specific, isn't it? Common sense required there, alas.)

Method:

Put apples, onions, sugar, sultanas, vinegar, salt, cayenne pepper and garlic into the slow cooker (or heavy saucepan).  Tie spices and root ginger into a muslin bag and add to the pot.  Stir thoroughly until the sugar is dissolved.  Cook for 8-9 hours or overnight (or longer, if you like it really treacly). Stir well every now and again to stop it sticking and burning...
Remove bag of spices, stir well, and pour into heated jars/cover etc. This should fill about 6-8 average-sized jam jars. You will also have an eye-tinglingly chutney-scented kitchen for some little while (worth considering if you happen to be entertaining subsequently).

Best left a month or so to mature before enjoying alongside the cheese of your friendly cheese-monger's recommendation.

* From a Tower Slo-cooker recipe/instruction book of about 20 years ago...

Christmas crafting inspiration

Sad as it sounds: it is nearly that time of year again...planning and starting your Christmas knits/crafty gift list. The ever increasing list of Xmas Socks To Do. Yikes. Eirlys reminded me that inspiration for crafty gifts can be gleaned from the American Museum's courses (thanks Eirlys!) - don't they look great? I may join up for the 'Knitted Christmas Ornaments with Pauline Bayne' on Saturday 29 November - I'll keep you posted!

Don't forget...

…about the Vintage Fashion and Textiles Fair this Sunday! (Assembly Rooms from 10am-5pm.) Eirlys and I will be there in the afternoon if anyone wants to join us… :0)