Free £5 credit when you join GiffGaff for your mobile lifestyle

GiffGaff will give you £5 free credit when you top up a new SIM with £10 or more. You can get a SIM here:- giffgaff.com/orders/affiliate/julieshort

Review: Sirdar Jewelspun Yarn

I have used this yarn in place of Moda Bouvardia to craft a hooded jacket.

The yarn is described as trying to represent a hand spun effect. As someone who has spun their own yarn in the past, I can confirm that this yarn does have this effect. However, it may not suit everyone's requirements as a consequence.

As you can see in the image above, some sections are over spun, while others are under spun. This is easy enough to remedy by making an invisible join, but becomes irritating when there are many sections like this. Also it is not a consistent (persistent) fault. 

. 

Another annoyance is the appearance of knots, sometimes only a short way into a new ball, and again seemingly random in regularity and frequency. Again resolved by an invisible join, but I don't feel that I should have to keep doing this, particularly when it does create a slightly thicker area in the item being crocheted. 

 

I would point out that there are a lot of images of Sirdar Jewelspun online and based on these I would never have used the yarn. I was lucky enough to be able to see some in real life (although the store did not have enough for my project) and went on to order some online as a consequence. It is definitely a more attractive yarn when you can see it for yourself. 

This is the exact yarn that I bought :- 

 

I have been wearing my completed coat for some time now and it is so lovely to wrap around myself. I really like it and am glad that I picked Jewelspun to make it with. 

Winding a yarn ball

This is me winding a whole ball of yarn on my winder...

Crow Tree Lane - the beginning

We have been looking for a permanent place in the landscape for Crow Tree Lane since before 2016, but more seriously and intently since then. We wanted the place of our 'mind's eye', our dream place - or as close as possible.

Things didn't go as we hoped (a bit of gazumping, for want of a better word, took place), so continuing in the day job was needed and we succumbed to a place on the edge of a town close by the place of work to make life a bit easier.

While work continued to keep an income coming in, renovations on the 'new place' were under way. Some things needed tradesmen, such as electricity consumer unit and wood burning stove installation, but the rest was mostly done by Mr CTL with a bit of input from me.

After 18 months of continuous upgrading to the 'new place', we had had enough of this lifestyle and knew we needed to go to the final stage of our life together. The property went on the market and we had hopes of moving forward. Life could start down the track we wanted. 

Then Coronavirus struck and we were in limbo!

Move forward to December 2020 and our buyers (the last of many pseudo buyers) actually went to the finishing line and we were being pushed to move out as soon as possible.

Finding a property to rent (with a dog) was an almost impossible task under normal circumstances, but with coronavirus-covid-19 in the mix, property to rent with pet permissions was like finding a shooting star in a hay barn!

A likely bungalow in a nearby village seemed an ideal choice, especially as pets were allowed, but the owners picked the other applicants and we were left back in limbo land.

As close to Christmas lockdown as you could get, we managed to find a flat in town that we believed would allow us to bring our dog with us. And thankfully, it turned out that the landlord was persuaded. Getting all the paperwork completed with furlough in place was not an easy task though and we still didn't know if we would be able to collect the keys when we needed.

We stuck our necks out and agreed a completion date with our buyers, keeping our fingers crossed behind our backs that we wouldn't end up homeless. 

A to-ing and fro-ing with the letting agents continued and finally we were able toget confirmation that the dates were all in alignment. 

To say that information on what needed to happen with the rental was on a 'drag it out of me if you  must' basis is not an understatement. But it all happened as it should. 

Mr CTL managed the move out end and I managed the move in end. And we managed to get everything out of the 'quite roomy' house into the 1 bedroom flat! 

Crochet Hooded Coat

For this coat, I started on the small size of the pattern, then tried medium and eventually settled on the large size. The sizing differences were probably due to using a smaller hook size and a very different yarn. 

Moda Vera Bouvardia is a discontinued yarn, however I wanted a look as similar to the image on the pattern as possible and finding a perfect match proved impossible. 

Sirdar Jewelspun is designed to be like handspun yarn, which means that it does have inconsistencies in thickness of thread which in some instances is very pronounced, this had an impact on the way the garment worked up. 

Carpet bag

This bag started out as an accessory to an outfit for World Book Day.

I needed to dress up as a character from a book and was going to be Professor Trelawny from the Harry Potter books.

At first I wanted something quick and easy to produce, but as I got into my research and designing, it became something more. I decided to make the bag that I always wanted, that would fit in everything and be styled like a carpet bag.

I made it from the fabric of a sofa cushion, so that it would be durable and hard-wearing. That meant that I had to purchase a special sewing awl that enabled me to work the thread from both sides of the fabric:

 

Over its construction it evolved to have extras such as a pocket on the front and a shoulder strap to compliment the carrying handles.

It is something that I really enjoyed making in 2018 and today it is still my favourite bag for everything.

Crochet project

Soon I will start posting updates on my crochet crafting.

I finished my Hooded Jacket crocheted using Sirdar Jewelspun on 9 August 2020 and will share the details with you soon, I hope 😀

KitchenAid Stand Mixer - REVIEW

Yoghurt pot cake in the making

We received our KitchenAid Artisan 5KSM175PS Stand Mixer on Thursday 6 December 2018, purchased via eCookShop (part of Dawsons Department Store).

Once I received the mixer I made sure to register it with KitchenAid. Make sure to do the same, then you gain access to their recipe section. Here you can find recipes for every season, such as dried cherry pistachio and Szechuan biscotti, vanilla bean cheesecake, the perfect Manhattan cheesecake and New York cheesecake among many others. Can you tell that I like the sweet things in life!

Of course we tested it straight away by baking a loaf, croissants and since then more loaves. But we had problems with them not raising enough to produce anything remotely like we wanted. A change of flour and a tweak of the height of the mixing head and things changed immensely.

We have made a large number of loaves and sweet things since then and so far it has performed very well. It really speeds up the preparation of the raw batters for cakes and biscuits a great deal. The first time I made biscuit dough in it, I marvelled at how much quicker, smoother and easier it was to produce a really lovely dough. I used a kidney shaped silicon scraper to pull the residual dough off the sides of the mixing bowl onto my wrapping film and it formed a lovely ball, ready for chilling in the refrigerator.

Once our bread dough was made we then shaped it to whatever we were going to bake:- pizza, French baton, artisan basket loaf, flatbread, etc. Then it went into a proving box until risen and on to the oven for baking. Please note that for ‘we’ you should substitute my husband, as I do not do food items (in the main) due to the tendency to wander off and forget what I was doing!

It does whisk eggs very well and it mixes cakes quite well. It does bounce around a bit and the knob for the accessories on the front will come undone if you don't check it periodically.

A point to note about the height of the mixing head, it may have been set at the factory, but you do still need to check it to ensure that it is at the correct height once you start using it in the home. The instruction booklet does mention this so it is not unexpected.

We did have an issue with the dough hook, which shed a small area of its finish and had to be replaced under warranty for us. Another good reason to make sure that you register your new machine.

 

Overall, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the KitchenAid Artisan 5KSM175PS Stand Mixer to someone who wants to start making their own bread, cakes and dough. It is currently at a very reasonable price (from Amazon UK) and consistently produces quality breads, cakes and dough.

Score 8/10

Three charts to help with converting recipes

I can never remember what weights convert to, nor what temperature different types of ovens cook at. In my life I have used conventional and fan ovens as well as gas ovens, so one recipe I may know for a gas oven, but now I use a fan oven, so I need to convert the recipe. I always end up having to look things up, so decided to keep all my conversion charts in one place. And now I'm sharing...

Yeast

Fresh yeast	Original dry yeast	Quick yeast
3g	1.5g	1g
6g	3g	2g
10g	4g	3g
12g	6g	4g
17g	7g	5g
34g	14g	10g
68g	28g	20g

Imperial and Metric

Ounces	Grams
1/2 oz	10g
3/4 oz	20g
1 oz	25g
1 1/2 oz	40g
2 oz	50g
2 1/2 oz	60g
3 oz	75g
4 oz	110g
4 1/2 oz	125g
5 oz	150g
6 oz	175g
7 oz	200g
8 oz	225g
9 oz	250g
10 oz	275g
12 oz	350g
1 lb	450g
1 lb 8 oz	700g
2 lb	900g
3 lb	1.35kg

Oven temperatures

Gas	°F	°C	Fan (°C)
1	275	140	120
2	300	150	130
3	325	170	150
4	350	180	160
5	375	190	170
6	400	200	180
7	425	220	200
8	450	230	210
9	475	240	220

Do let me know if you find them useful. What other charts should I be adding?