Blogger making me sad.......

Blogger is currently not letting me load the pictures for my tea I prepared for today. I have all the text ready and had part of the photos loaded and poof! no more ability to load photos. I tried a new post and same problem. I will try again in an hour. Please come back then.
Sandi

A little Irish Tea! The Project..........

Before we get to March's project, I wanted to give a little update on the project from February. I shared a little sketch called "Time for Tea". Here it is partially finished so that you can see what I have done here. I colored parts of the design with colored pencils (more on that in a minute), then added embroidery stitches. I do the coloring then iron the design which supposedly heat-sets the color. Will this withstand being laundered? I don't know as I have never used it on a piece that I planned to wash on a regular basis. It does work well for small pieces for wall quilts or items to be framed. I like the colored pencils better than crayons as you can get a softer look and so many more colors.

If you double-click on the photo above, you can see that I colored all the little flowers surrounding the heart and the tea cup and saucer. You will also see how awful my stitching looks on the words. I used three strands of floss and do not like it at all. I decided not to rip it out. This piece will become a "teaching tool" on when "choosing how many strands of floss to use when embroidering". LOL!! :-) Three strands of floss worked well on the heart, though.

In this photo, the piece is finished. In addition, to coloring each little flower, I also traced around each petal with an 005 purple Micron pen. Black French knots give me just the look of black-eyed Susan's that I wanted. I used just one strand of floss for all the tea cup embroidery and I am liking the tea cup design so much that I want to find some really nice fabric and embroider the design on dinner napkins. The fabric used here is 100% cotton but I think I might need to look for a poly-cotton blend that might not require so much ironing. I am going to color a tea cup on fabric, then wash it and see if the color remains. I'll let you know the results.

In this photo above, you can see the tools I use when sketching a design and then coloring the piece. My clipboard is clear and so I can place it over my lightbox and trace designs very easily. If I am doing a design in Redwork, I trace the entire design in 005 Red Micron pen. I have multiple Micron pens in various points and colors that I use to trace my designs and for finalizing sketches. The colored pencils I use are Prismacolor Watercolor pencils. Sometimes I color softly with them and other times, I wet the tip on a damp paper towel to get more vibrant color when using the pencils. I also have several other brands of colored pencils but find that the more expensive the colored pencil, the better the results. I love my dollar store purchases but this is one time they do not work.

And here is the design for March........just a little touch of shamrocks. As I sketched the little bouquet, I thought that surely "An Irish Blessing" must have been said many a time by those long ago ancestors of mine. I am glad to know my heritage and share a wee bit of it with you.

This design can be embroidered or you could cut the shamrock shapes from cotton fabric backed with fusible web and then do the rest of the design in embroidery. I am going to work on mine this Sunday afternoon after church. I'll finish it and post it here on St. Patrick's Day. Till then, have a great day!

Tea and Stitches ...........

will be posted next Wednesday, March 11th so that I may bring you a little Irish Teatime just a few days before St. Patrick's Day. Then on St. Patrick's Day, March 17 I will post again with a bit of wee surprise for those of you that follow my Tea and Stitches blog.

Til then, I share my favorite Irish blessing.....

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face;

the rains fall soft upon your fields

and, until we meet again,

may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

A sweet tea to warm your heart...............

Happy Valentines Day! I know it's a week away but I let hearts be the theme of my day today. And here is what I enjoyed this afternoon.........a much needed break from a busy day!!

I decided to have a cup of Twinings Irish Breakfast Tea because I never ate breakfast this morning. I added a twist to it by putting two teaspoons of Nestle Hazelnut Creamora in the tea. I love Hazlenut flavored coffee so thought it would taste good in my tea. It was very tasty and I will try this more often. I had been rather busy today so my first delight with my tea was one of my favorite biscuits. I used those heart shaped cookie cutters and after they were baked, I scooped out the center heart so I could fill it with butter and jam. You already know it tasted really good!! Yum! Then I topped it off with a cookie, two actually. I didn't like the ones with the frosting. I am not crazy about frosting unless it's real chocolate fudge frosting. Everything tastes better with chocolate so I popped a kiss and finished off my tea and headed to the computer to share it all with you. I placed a couple of my favorite Valentine items on my old sewing machine. The little cross stitch piece is one of three that I did in the 80's. My cross stitch period was very short. My daughter picked it up though and so I have passed on most of my supplies and books to her. I have this thing about being "number-challenged" so any hobby with counting in it, is not one that I will excell at. The little bear is holding a tiny valentine that I did in my years of making miniatures. I need to share some pics of my mini scenes and will do that before Valentines Day.
Hope you enjoyed this stop for "Tea Time". I'll be back the first Wednesday in March! See you then.....
Sandi

And just one more thing........the cookie recipe that follows originated in this little gem of a cookbook and as you will read in the recipe, I combined it with one in the Rumford Common Sense Cookbook. Actually, "common sense" should have told me that it might not be wise to mix two without doing a trial run first. Anway, read on and enjoy my "Cookie Recipe" post. :-)

Cookie recipe

In January, my little goodie for "Tea Time" was a plate full of Coconut Snowball mini cupcakes. My recipe was not a recipe as I followed the ingredients on the Pillsbury box. So, I thought this month, I would bring you something made from "scratch". This proved to be interesting........Here we go........

In the picture you can see an old cookbook. It's one of several that I bought at Wit's End Antique Shop last summer. Rumford was a company that made baking powder. There is no date on the cookbook and no copyright. It's just a little book that was probably a promotion to get the ladies to buy Rumford for their baked goods. I found a cookie recipe that sounded good. I also found one in the Sprye cookbook pictured above. I decided I would sort of "combine them" to make a really good cookie. I experiment all the time and usually the results are tasty. I expected the same ........

The recipe is as follows........

1/2 cup butter (or butter flavor shortening)

3/4 cup sugar

2 large eggs, well beaten

1 tsp. vanilla

2 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

Cream butter and sugar, then add beaten egg. Mix in vanilla. Set aside. Mix dry ingredients. Add half dry ingredients to butter/sugar mixture. Then add remaining dry ingredients and blend thoroughly. Drop by teaspoonful on cookie sheet or roll dough balls in sugar and bake. You may flatten dough with glass for a flatter cookie. Bake at 375 degrees for 8 minutes. Cool, frost and decorate if desired.

That's the recipe I came up with so I began to mix. I creamed the butter and sugar.


Then I added the beaten egg ....................

...........and the vanilla and mixed well.

I set the liquid mix aside and prepared the dry ingredients. Blended them well, then added half the dry ingredients to the butter/egg mixture. Then I added the remaining dry ingredients and blended the dough thorouhly.

The dough was stiff and a bit sticky .........................

..........but I rolled it into balls by "flouring" my hands so I would not have more dough on my fingers than in the cookie balls.

I placed the cookie balls on the ungreased cookie sheet. And here, I must apologize for when I saw the close-up photo of my cookie sheet my first thought was.........gee, they're going to think they'll have to take up a collection and send me new cookie sheets! Guess these have been around awhile. I will make them look like new for next cookie bake. :-)

So, with the cookies ready to bake, I popped them into the oven (yes, I preheated it and it was ready to go) and they looked like this when they finished baking............

Hmmmmmmmmmm........I thought they would flatten a bit when they were baked. Not at all what I was expecting. I had plans to imprint a heart on each flattened cookie (the little one in the lower left of the photo) and fill the heart with red sugar sprinkles. It didn't work. Instead, I just sprinkled red sugar all over the top of the whole tray of cookies. I ate one and it was interesting. Very vanilly flavored and.........

So, I tried another tray of cookies. This time, I flattened the cookies with a glass. I remembered that one of the two recipes I was using had done this. And here's what they looked like this time...............

The cookies were flatter but still not as flat as I thought they might be. I pressed the hearts, tried my red sprinkles idea and stopped at one done.

The rest of the cookies got frosting stars. Much easier although not as bright as the red hearts would have been.

The cookies baked up nice and even, round ones and flat ones and they reminded me of something...............they were kind of dry - maybe too much flour? - and strangely they were crisp - actually "hard as a rock" on the outside but kinda crumbly on the inside. So when I made my tea today, I knew exactly what I would do........ I would dunk those little puppies in my tea. That's just what I did and they were really tasty. And that's when I realized that I hadn't made cookies after all..........I made Biscotti and didn't even know it!! :-)

Now just so you know.......I am a really good "cookie, cake and sweet things maker" but every once in a while my concoctions don't work out quite like I think they will. Someday, I'll tell you about the pizza-flavored chocolate cake I made for my quilt retreat friends. :-)

Hope you enjoyed your visit and a good cup of tea.

Sandi

A "Time for Tea" Stitchery!

Well, it's about time you're thinking. Right? Where has she been. She said tea was at 4:00 and here it is an hour later. Some things came up. I didn't get to my tea until 4:30 and then I had pictures to take, then load and finally here I am. I'll get to the actual tea and goodies in a minute but want you to know that I have a new project for you. Last month I shared my Snowman couple design with you. Here's how far I am on my stitching..............

I was hoping I would get it finished by today but now I will be happy if I finish it by Valentines Day!!

Now since this little blog chapter is all about "Tea and Stitches", I thought it would be fun to stitch up a little piece that would be a reminder to show up here the first Wednesday evening of each month. That's right, you might as well stop by in the evening because then it will be posted on time. :-) Yesterday, this little design popped into my head so I quickly sketched it up and finalized it earlier today.
I am going to trace the design on muslin, then color it with colored pencils, iron it (to set the colors) and add outline embroidery stitches and embellishments. Then I will put it in a frame and you will see it finished - promise - in the tea picture in March. :-)
So, now I have to load the photos for my tea for February. Back in a jif.......
Sandi

Time for Tea!!

Well, here it is the first Wednesday in January and so, it's time for Tea. Wherever you are take time for tea. It can be very relaxing to just sit down and relax with a warm cup in your hands. And,okay, if you are not a fan of tea, it will be okay if you enjoy a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. The important thing is to relax...............and isn't the scene below relaxing? It may be January but bits of Christmas are still all around the house. Surrounding the house on the outside is lots of snow and cold. So, with that in mind, I decided to make something warm and delicious to go with my tea................little Coconut Snowball Cupcakes!! They disappear in one bite!!

I chose Twinings Earl Gray for my tea this afternoon. Yes, I have already had my tea and because of a number of interruptions, I am only just now writing about it. And so it goes... :-) Perhaps I need a maid. Oh, what a silly thought.........let me get on with what you see in the vignette above........ the tea cup, saucer and plate are one of two place settings that my daughter, Collette, gave me for Christmas two years ago. Her thought was that we would have a special luncheon, just the two of us and use them. We haven't done that yet but we're going to soon. The teapot filled with greenery was a thrift shop find last fall and it was only $2.99 and that was because it was missing the lid. So it became a decorative teapot unless one day I find a lid. There's a pretty little bell pin that I stuck in the candle in the brass holder. It belonged to my mother and is from the 1950's. She can remember giving it to me although all I can remember is that I have had it for years. When I took it off at Christmas, on a whim I stuck it in the candle and realized it looked pretty so left it there. And the last little piece in the vignette is the Snowman couple. My mother used to have a ceramics shop and those are pieces I made and painted in the mid 1980's. I keep them out through Valentine's Day. The project for today also features a snowman couple. More on that in a minute........first.............if you want to know how to bake up a batch of the little Snowball cupcakes, here's how..............


I love a good cake mix. I've already shared a recipe or two on my Legacy of Stitches blog and Betty Crocker was often there! This time, I called on the Pillsbury Doughboy. To make the little cupcakes you will need......

One Pillsbury Moist Supreme Classic White Cake Mix

One container Pillsbury Creamy Frosting Vanilla

Package of Flaked Coconut

Mini muffin tins (to make 24 muffins)

Now I realize that not all of you are in the States so if you can't get a Pillsbury cake mix, just mix up a white cake mix. Yellow cake mix will not do as these are snowballs, remember. Back to baking.........Prepare cake batter by following package directions. Spray mini muffin tins with cooking spray, then fill each cupcake well two-thirds full. You will have enough cake batter left to make twelve regular size cupcakes or one 9 x 9" cake. I made cupcakes and dipped them in sprinkles because that's what my husband prefers instead of coconut. Bake the cupcakes about ten minutes or til lightly golden (see photo).

To frost the cupcakes, place half the container of frosting in a glass bowl and then microwave for 15 seconds, no longer. You just want to soften it, not liquidate it. :-) Put some coconut in a small bowl and get ready to dip.

This proved to be an interesting photo op as I have the camera in my right hand and I am dipping with my left-hand. I am not left-handed so this was a challenge in coordination.

Dip each cupcake in the frosting, then dip into the coconut and place on a pretty plate. If the frosting begins to stiffen, just stir with a spoon. In just a few minutes, you will have a whole plate full of little Cupcake Snowballs! If you like coconut, you will really like these. It was kind of like eating a little bite of coconut pie! Yum!!

So who will eat all of these because I surely don't need them. Well, my friend Carolyn is celebrating her 95th birthday this Saturday and I think I will stop by with them on Friday and bring her a card, too.

So, now you have an idea for tea and goodies, what about a project. To keep with the winter theme, I have another Snowman design for you. This one is a design I drew for some notecards in 1994. I was working for a computer company at the time and my co-workers liked the sketches I would draw and encouraged me to print them as notecards. The design was pretty detailed so I scanned it in, then enlarged it and redesigned it without so much detail.

In the photo, you can see the notecard in black and white. The pattern for the design is shown below. (E-mail me if you need the PDF.) I have traced it with a red Micron pen onto white Kona cotton because I plan to stitch the design in Redwork. Last year I completed two series of blocks - one snowmen and one angels - and both in Redwork. I love the look. My favorite red floss color is DMC 498 but you can choose whatever color you prefer. I use two strands of floss for a delicate outline. I also use two pieces of fabric so that knots and threads do not show through. I will be using a stem/outline stitch for most area and French knots in areas such as the mouth, on the scarf, etc. As I begin to work on the piece, I will post a couple of photos so you can see the stitches.

So, are you ready to relax? Then make that cup of tea and if you don't want to bake, then grab a cookie or cracker from the cupboard. Too busy to start this project? Then work on one that is already in progress. Remember, the important thing is to relax.

Til next time,

Blessings for a lovely day!

Sandi