Anyone got any paintings they want Christmassed?

So, remember yesterday?  When I decided to 'enhance' my Mexican Sugar skull cross stitch thingies?  And how I suddenly realised I was surrounded by MORE pictures that I could also 'enhance'?

Well, after publishing that last post, I went to town.  And then I came back and started searching for images.  I didn't really go to town but as I was typing it I thought it was a really odd phrase for just getting on with something.

Anyway, I had a look at some of the pictures we have and decided which ones I wanted to embellish.  I chose these (the photos are taken at a slight angle to reduce light reflection):

This is a very big print that hangs above our sofa.

This is a gorgeous medium sized original watercolour of nearby Peaslake Woods in autumn that I got from a local Art Society exhibition.

 This is a large signed print of a beach in Scotland.

This is an original pen and ink drawing of Albi in France that hangs above my piano.

Finally this is a framed poster we got when we visited Interlaken, Murren and Grindelwald in Switzerland a few summers back.  It hangs just outside our kitchen door.

I managed to find Christmassy themes for all of them and printed out suitable images, cut them out and stuck them on the glass with bluetack (all the pictures have glass in the frames and I stick the images to the glass).

The first one, I felt, was perfect for a snowman in the field and Santa's sleigh passing overhead:

The woodland scene needed a decorated Christmas tree in there:

The seascape called for Three Ships coming sailing by:

The pen and ink drawing already looked vaguely Middle Eastern to me so what could be more appropriate than a star and a camel:

And finally the Alpine cows just needed the requisite headgear and the odd false Santa beard - oh, and some kids tobogganing down the glacier:

I think I shall actually be quite sad to peel all these off after Christmas, but I've more pictures upstairs that I can adulterate so my childish glee isn't quite over yet!!

Time for a more cheering post, I think....

Thank you for your kind words, people, both those left on the blog and sent by email.  I am, of course, absolutely fine now although I am aware that there is still some underlying emotional fragility hanging about; if I start to think about the things that were upsetting me so much on Friday night/Saturday morning, I can still feel myself choking and my eyes welling up with tears so I'm just being sensible and not dwelling on any of that and letting it overpower me.  Last Friday night/Saturday morning I was completely incapable of controlling it but now I am so that's progress, I suppose.  I'm not looking forward to any more future episodes, though.

Who'd be a woman, eh?

Anyway, time for a more cheering post, I think.

If you recall, at the end of November I finished off and framed a set of four Mexican Sugar Skulls that I had cross stitched over the previous month:

A couple of days ago I decided that they needed to join in with the Christmas festivities.  Rather than just wrap some tinsel around the frames, I felt they would look more jolly wearing hats and such like.

An hour or so searching Google images resulted in this:

And finally all together:

I'm thinking I may give them a summer wardrobe as well, although it'll mostly be sunglasses and straw hats.

As I was posting these pictures, it's just dawned on me that we have a lot of pictures on our walls, mostly of landscapes, and I'm thinking some of them could be enhanced with images of Santa and his sleigh in the sky and a snowman in the field.... 

And I also have a couple of seascapes which could do with three ships going sailing by....

And a woodland scene that's just begging to have a christmas tree with baubles added....

Guess I worked out what I'm going to be up to today!!

Don't panic - I'm still here

I wasn't sure that I was going to post about this, and I still may not press 'post' at the end but I'm just going to write about it anyway.

Last Friday night was interesting.  In a way I could have done without.  I would have much preferred that it had involved lots of wine, good food, friends and laughing so much I nearly pee.  What I ended up with was my brain trying to kill me.

It's the fucking menopause again.

I thought I'd managed to avoid the pathetic crying at stupid sentimental schlock this month but, once again, it crept up on me throughout Thursday and Friday, albeit not as bad as in previous months.  It was fine, honestly.  Didn't stop me doing what needed to get done in preparation for our visit back to TLH's native homeland on Saturday to visit his mum.  She'd phoned us on the Thursday with a list of things she wanted us to do/bring with us and I decided I might as well get them during the day on Friday so we didn't have to stop anywhere on the journey to see her.  Good thinking, huh?  I was feeling quite proud of myself for deciding to do this off my own bat, and thought TLH would be pleased that I'd saved him a job or two.  Plus I'd also started doing some of the Christmas food shopping (especially Christmas morning breakfast stuff) which I was feeling very pleased about.

Unfortunately, TLH wasn't exactly in a receptive frame of mind when he got home at 7.15pm.  Then we had a stupid misunderstanding involving the mishearing of bellini/blini and eventually he decided he might as well go to bed.  On his own.  At 8.30pm. *sigh*.

I sat stewing on the sofa, laptop on, er, lap, cat snuggled up next to me and rubbish on the telly until about 11pm, when I decided I might as well call it a day.  I went to the spare bedroom so that I could read a bit without disturbing TLH.  A few pages were read, the light was put out and I went to sleep.

I woke with a start some time later and thought it might have been about 5am, which is, more or less, the time we stir in this house during the week.  I was horrified then to see that it was 2am.  I'd been asleep for all of three hours.  I rolled over, closed my eyes, and tried to find my way back to the Land of Nod.

And that's when the little voice in my head started up.  The nasty, insidious, hateful little voice that tells lies wrapped in a veneer of truth.  Except that at that time in the morning, and in my menopausal-hormone filled mind, it's all truth.  It was telling me what an idiot I was for thinking anyone would appreciate me.  It was telling me how nobody cared and no-one truly loved me except for Sylvester the cat and he's 15 years old and will probably die soon so then there'll be no-one.  It was reminding me that I don't have many friends and those that I do don't really give that much of a toss because they never call me, never suggest I go round and hang out.  My brother has his own life and family so there's no reason why he should be even the slightest bit interested in my life.

Lies, all of it, but wrapped in the thinnest veneer of truth, and it wouldn't. shut. the. fuck. up.  And I was getting more and more upset.  Rolling over and trying to think of other things didn't help, as my brain just roiled around and returned to the same thought over and over.  No-one would notice if you were gone, so why don't you just disappear.

I knew this was complete bollocks but turning the voice off was not happening.  It was a proper long, dark night of the soul.  I figured there was nothing for it but to just get up again, and beat the voice into submission with a cup of tea and a wander around the backwaters of the interweb, in the hope that I could distract myself enough to feel sleepy and away from the razor blades and/or paracetamol (don't worry, that was never going to happen).  But I just managed to give myself a headache on top of it all because I'd been crying into my pillow so much and didn't manage to feel sleepy.

TLH came downstairs at about 6am and was astonished  to see that I'd, pretty much, been up all night.  And I felt like shit, understandably.  But at least I hadn't killed myself, right?

I survived the following day in Wales pretty well, considering.  I had a couple of weird turns that were rectified with coffee and cake, and I managed to grab a few Zs in the car on the way there and back (yes, we went for the day, so there was at least 5 hours of driving in total).

And today, Sunday, I've been fine, and I'm typing this while chortling along to 'Elf' on the telly.  But I can't help thinking that the approaching menopause is to blame for self-loathing and suicidal thoughts of Friday night/Saturday morning and if that's the case, it's a most unwelcome development.  I did plan to try and get through this oncoming change of life without medical intervention as best as I can, but if this is going to become a common occurrence then I might seriously have to consider talking to the doctor about investigating HRT.

You know what?  To hell with it, I'm going to publish this post.  It's part of my life and others reading it may understand what the fuck was going on and can understand.

But, don't worry, folks, I have no plans on going anywhere just yet so no need to panic!

Update on The Archers

If you recall, one of my recent posts was relating some shenanigans going on at my allotment site. 

There was a meeting last Monday of the allotment holders which, unfortunately, I was unable to attend but the site steward has just sent out a mass email to report on what was discussed.  From what I can make out, H (the seeming cause of all the problems) is no longer a steward as, in the email, he was given formal thanks for the work that he'd done (and he had done some good things) and two new deputy stewards were introduced.  Hmm, I wonder if he jumped or was pushed?  Doesn't really matter though, as long as he's no longer in a position of being able to wield any sort of power over the rest of us and just gets on with growing his veggies, and leaving the rest of us alone, then I'm happy.  I'm assuming he still has his plot though.  Again, I don't really care as long as he stops interfering.

Discussion also covered the stubborn bugger who has a red ex-Royal Mail van that he parks on the street AS CLOSE AS HE POSSIBLY CAN to the entrance to the site, making it as absolutely as difficult as possible for vehicles to get to the site.  It's astonishing that his wing hasn't been taken off yet.  It also successfully blocks off vision for those emerging from the site into the road.  Luckily it's a relatively quiet council estate road and not a main road but even so.

I live in walking distance of the site so very rarely need to drive there (when I'm carting bags of compost, or delivering/collecting large/heavy loads) so, in all honesty, it doesn't really affect me directly but there are plotholders who need to drive there all the time and they have to deal with it all the time.  At the meeting it was decided that the council was going to be contacted and also the police.  I think this is a good idea but I don't think it will come to anything as I suspect he's completely within his rights and as long as he doesn't actually obstruct the entrance itself (he parks millimetre close to the bit on the kerb where it drops down, if know what I mean) then there's nothing anyone can do.

And as it's SUCH  beautiful day today - the high winds of yesterday having blown themselves out - I think I may pop down there to see if my shed's still standing and do more covering up of the plot which will make weeding next spring much easier.

Have a lovely weekend, y'all, and stay warm!

White Chocolate and Raspberry Trifle

TLH and I don't tend to give dinner parties, or even have friends over to eat very often.  In fact, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times we've done it living in this house - and we've been here very nearly 16 years!  I'm not too sure why this is but it doesn't help that our kitchen is so teeny tiny that it will only comfortably fit one human and one furry overlord at a time, and the dining area bit of our living space can barely fit a table that will seat four people, and one of them has to sit uncomfortably close to a wall.  There's just not enough space for properly comfortable entertaining.
But even though good friends of ours moved into a house literally opposite us in the close last November, we've seen nothing of them since about June this year so we figured it was time to get them over and food is always a good reason to socialise!

I decided that I would make Butternut Squash and Coconut milk soup to start with, using one of my last remaining homegrown Butternet Squashes; main course would be Pan Fried Chicken in a Cream and Oyster Mushroom sauce with mashed potates, broccoli, green beans and carrots; dessert to be White Chocolate and Raspberry Trifle.

The trifle is awesome and is so rich and substantial that I only make it when there are more than 2 people to eat it.  This means it's a brilliant thing to make for Christmas, so if you fancy something other than traditional Christmas pudding or a bog-standard Sherry Trifle, then I can absolutely recommend this.  There's no cooking, it's all just assembly and it's best to make it a day before you need to eat it so the flavours can sink into the sponge.  It's up to you how much you want to spend on ingredients but I've made this with the cheapest swiss roll and white chocolate and ready made custard I could fine, and it still tastes fabulous.

So, here we go then, with pictures and everything:


WHITE CHOCOLATE AND RASPBERRY TRIFLE
(Serves at least 6, depending on portion size)

Ingredients:

300g Raspberries (frozen is fine)
juice of 1/2 lime
1 tablespoon of kirsch or vodka
2 tablespoons of icing sugar
1 vanilla swiss roll (not chocolate).  Get a big one, or 2 smaller ones.
120g white chocolate
150g double cream or whipping cream (this is actually optional but you need at least a tablespoon)
2 x 500ml ready made custard

 

The necessary ingredients.  As I'd got a bottle or two of Raspberry infused vodka that I made back in 2010 kicking around, I thought I'd use that.  And I also misread my own ingredients list and bought both double and whipping cream (you only need one kind!).

1.  Place 1/3 (i.e., 100g) of the raspberries in a sieve over a bowl.  Push through with a spoon until only the pips remain.  I'll be honest, this is a bit of a pain in the bum to do as it takes quite a long time.  Apparently you can now buy readymade raspberry coulis and if I'd known about it, I would definitely have used that instead.

 

 The puree you end up with.  You need to keep scraping the puree off the underside of the sieve.


 2.  To the puree, add the icing sugar:

And the juice of 1/2 a lime and the tablespoon of kirsch or vodka:

 The bottle of Raspberry Vodka I used.  Why, yes, of course I sampled it.  And massively yum it was too.




 3.  Slice the swiss roll(s) into 1cm slices and use most of them to cover the sides and base of a bowl in a single layer:

 

 4.  Moisten the slices with most of the raspberry puree, and scatter in another 1/3 (100g) of the raspberries:

5.  Set aside a few squares of the chocolate for grating later, and break up the rest of the choc into small pieces.

6.  Place the chocolate in a bowl and melt over a pan of boiling water, ensuring the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl.  Do not overheat or the chocolate will start to go gritty.  Stir until melted:

7.  When melted, take off heat and stir into it one tablespoon of the double/whipping cream, then stir in both cartons of custard:

8.  Pour/ladle half the custard over the swiss roll in the bowl and lay over it the remaining swiss roll slices, like some fabulous lasagne:

9.  Dribble the remaining raspberry sauce over the slices and scatter over most of the remaining raspberries:

10.  Completely cover with the rest of the custard:

View from the side.

There are now a few options.  You can whip the cream until stiff and spread over the top of the custard, or you can pipe it on decoratively.  I hadn't decided what I was going to do and feared that if I did this now, the raspberries on top might leak colour into the cream.  So I left mine unadorned and popped it into the fridge overnight.


The next morning I decided that, actually, there was enough risk of cardiac failure from eating this without adding more cream so just grated the set aside squares of chocolate over the top and added the rest of the raspberries.

Inexpensive, easy and your family will think it's one of the best things EVER.  I guarantee it.

Cross Stitch Ta-Daa!

This Autumn I rediscovered cross stitch.  I used to do a bit of it in my late teens, just simple stuff - I wonder what happened to the things I made?  Oh well, lost in one of my many house moves, no doubt.

I can't remember what sent me off looking for patterns, but I recall reading an article somewhere about Dame Judy Dench who starts a piece of some kind of needlework - embroidery? needlepoint? can't remember - every time she begins a new play or film, that she presents to the director at the end, and it always has the word 'fuck' worked into it in an elaborate font somewhere.  I remember thinking what a brilliant idea that was.  Then I came across 'Subversive Cross Stitch' (which does exactly what it says on the tin) and discovered their website where you can buy kits.

Going there just now to find and post the link, I see they have a whole lot of new Christmas kits, and this one made me hoot with laughter, as it's how I generally view the season:

There are ones you can get that are just rude phrases stitched in a modern typography which is fine, but I also really like ones that look like old fashioned cross stitch designs but say something unexpected (and not necessarily rude) like this one which has a sentiment I think we can all agree with:

And I've just discovered this one which I rather like and shall add to my future projects file:

Then there's ones like this which are more Scandinavian in style and use a single colour (like the one above):

And how about quotes from Charlie Sheen.  This one is magnificent and so totally sums up my life:

Hmm - seems I'm going to have to add ALL these to my queue.

However, I wanted to show you the ones that I HAVE actually finished.  While searching for patterns on Etsy, I came across quite a few that tickled my fancy.  So I bought a few and got started.  You get a .pdf file sent electronically that you print out that give you the graph and also lists the colours of DMC embroidery thread that you'll need.  You'll also need to get a size 24 needle (or at least a big one with a large eye), some Aida fabric (14 holes to the inch is the standard size) and although I didn't use one for this design, an embroidery hoop is a good idea (I used one for the others I did).

This was a very simple one to start with, only using about a dozen colours.  I got the pattern from Steotch's store on Etsy - check some of their other patterns out, they're brilliant.  I've not got round to framing this one yet.

Then while I was wandering around on Etsy looking for other patterns, I found Bombastitch's shop, and instantly fell in love with the Mexican Sugar Skull designs there.  I selected four of them.  The designs are more complex and I love them all.  And I've just seen from going to her page that there are a couple more designs there that weren't there before!  But I think I'll leave them there, I've enough crafty things (including some crochet owls, birds and christmas stars) in my project queue as it is, without adding any more.

I also decided I wanted to frame them in a suitably black, gothic and ornate frame - sleek and contemporary wasn't quite right for these, I felt.  Searching on the intertubes brought me to Ayers and Graces who do fantastic mirrors and picture frames, and who had exactly what I was looking for and at a ludicrously affordable price as well.

Each one took a week to do and kept me busy while sitting in front of the gogglebox.  I framed them myself.  I got that really thick card stuff that are used to make 'mats', i.e., the inner flat frame that you put over pictures before putting them in a proper frame (does that make sense?) and cut it to size.  Then I used double sided sellotape to secure the finished cross stitch to the front of the mat, and then on the other side to stick the overlaps down and keep them in place - the traditional way to do this is to lace the overlaps together on the back to keep it in place; I tried this with the first one but it took ages and was unbelievably fiddly.  Double sided tape works just as well and is infinitely quicker.

So let's have a look, shall we.  This is what one of the charts looks like:

And this is the finished product:

And in its 8x10 inch frame:

The frames are all identical.  Sorry I couldn't get the picture of the frame any clearer but the flash just reflected back off the glass so these were taken without flash, but hopefully you can click on the picture and see more detail.

These are the others:

Then we had the dilemma of where to hang them.  I wanted originally to put them together in a square but the logistics of trying to get them to hang accurately, butting up against each other, was more than we could cope with.  So then I thought about hanging them in a long vertical line but couldn't think of a suitable place in the house.

Then The Lovely Husband suggested the perfect spot - the little bit of space between our bathroom door and the wall, and that's where I've put them.  The bottom one seems a bit low down but you see them as you're coming up the stairs, so you start to view them from the bottom up as you ascend anyway, so it's all gravy!

I hope you like them as much as I do!