Life lately...

Merry Christmas!

Hello! Long-time no see!

Life has been a mad whirlwind of activity since September and today is the first day in an absolute age when I've felt free to sit down and reacquaint myself with the sofa and do nothing.  (Well, almost. I'm bottling some sloe gin for a Secret Santa but that's hardly work.)

Make yourself a cuppa, pull up a chair and let's catch up a little.

In October I became an auntie again!  My brother and sister-in-law welcomed baby Zander into the world and I made him a gorgeously snuggly quilt (and began my new obsession with quilting.)  Isn't he scrumptious?  Lucas is thrilled to have a boy cousin at last, but I think he'll have to wait for a few years before Zander will want to play Godzilla v Mothra...

The Covent Garden tree was immense!

November saw me popping up to London for a fabulously decadent and boozy weekend with my lovely friend Kate.  We began with cocktails at brunch in Canary Wharf on Saturday and carried on with that winning combination all weekend.  In our defence, the weather was particularly dire so sheltering indoors was an absolute necessity. And if our shelter happened to include a friendly barman, then that was purely by accident!

We did manage to pop to the National Portrait Gallery, wander around Covent Garden, see the (disappointing) lights on Regent Street and best of all, Liberty!  I've always wanted to go there and I was not disappointed even though we could barely move in their Christmas Shop. The Narnia-esque wood panel lift put the biggest smile on my face before we even got upstairs! So many beautiful things, I nearly popped with excitement!  I managed to restrain myself and come away with just an Alice in Wonderland tea towel.  It says, "We're all mad here," which is absolutely spot on for our household!

Everyone needs a Gangsta Octopus tile in their life...

On the WI front, I've been really busy preparing for our first charity choir concert and also making beautiful things for our stall at a local Handmade Market.  I went a little crazy and crocheted thread snowflakes for a Frozen-inspired wreath as well as making sparkly snowflake garlands.

Here's our fab choir singing our favourite song, "Rhythm of Life"!


We'll be at The Royal Albert Hall in a few years, mark my words!

On the home front, we finally got the Christmas tree up last weekend and showered it with lots of gorgeously shiny baubles. The house feels so cosy with the tree lights twinkling away and all our Christmassy treasures out on show.  School finishes on Friday and I'm really looking forward to (bravely) making a gingerbread house with Lucas next week!  I may even light it...

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Get Your Knit On!

This week is National Knitting Week (6-12 October), a celebration of snuggly jumpers, woolly hats, and that thing with one too many arms (or legs) that your Grandma once made you.  The official soundtrack is the rhythmic click-clack of knitting needles.

By way of celebration I've dived into the odds and ends of yarn at the bottom of my knitting basket and started knitting little hats for the Innocent Big Knit.  It's really nice to work on a small project that gives almost immediate gratification for once--I'm still beavering away at my quilt bur the quilting design I went for feels absolutely endless.

If you haven't heard of the Innocent Big Knit, then here's a handy video for you:



I love seeing all the little be-hatted bottles on the shelves and it's much more fun than if Innocent were just to donate to AgeUK.  Plus, there are apparently collectors out there, who pay insane prices for the hats on eBay!!

I've been working my way through lots of the fantastic patterns on Jo's Big Knit and stretching my design muscles a little.  The three 'cake hats' in front are my own designs--I might have been craving cake when I came up with the carrot cake!  Thinking of things to turn into hats has been such a lot of fun.  I might try doing a jar of jam next and embroidering the label.  First though, I need to make a cup of tea to go with the cakes!

As I'm particularly pleased with my Viccy Sponge hat, I thought I'd leave my pattern for it, in case anyone else fancies making one (or improving upon it).  French knots aren't my thing, so I'm certain that yours will be better than mine!!

Victoria Sponge knitted hat

Victoria Sponge

light brown DK yarn (a sponge brown)
red DK yarn (suitably jam coloured)
cream DK yarn
4mm knitting needles
3.50mm crochet hook
wool needle

With the brown yarn cast on 28 stitches.
Purl one row.
Knit one row.
Starting with a knit row, stocking stitch (ss) 4 rows.
Join in the red yarn and knit one row.  Cut off the red yarn leaving a tail to work in at the end to secure the stitches.
Join in the cream yarn and purl one row.  Cut off the cream yarn leaving a tail.
Resume working with the brown yarn and ss 4 more rows.

Shaping top of cake: 
Purl one row
Knit one row (this creates a handy ridge for you to sew the icing to)
Starting with a knit row ss 2 rows
(K2, K2tog) repeat to end
Purl one row
(K1, K2tog) repeat to end
Purl one row
(K2tog) repeat to end.
Cut the yarn leaving a long tail enough to sew up the hat.  Thread a yarn needle and run the tail through the remaining stitches, pull up tightly and secure.  Sew hat up from the wrong side by oversewing row ends.  Work in the loose ends from creating the filling.  Turn right side out.

Crochet the icing (US crochet terms)
The icing is worked in continuous rounds until the very end, as shown in the pattern.  I use a paperclip as a stitch marker (I keep losing the proper ones!)

NB. If you wanted daintier icing, you could use 4ply yarn with a smaller hook. Thanks for the suggestion, Julia!

With cream yarn make a magic loop:

Round 1: 6 sc into loop. (6 sc)
Round 2: 2 sc in each st around. (12 sc)
Round 3: (2 sc in next st, sc in next st) 6 times. (18 sc)
Round 4: (2 sc in next st, sc in each of next 2 sts) 6 times. (24 sc)
Round 5: (2 sc in next st, sc in each of next 3 sts) 6 times. (30 sc)
Round 6: 3 sc in each st around, sl st in next st to join, fasten off, weave in the short end from the magic loop and leave the long end to sew onto the cake.

Assembly
With red yarn sew a ring of French knots around the top of the icing, as shown in the picture.  Fasten securely.

Sew the decorated icing piece to the top of the cake.  I found it easiest to put the cake onto an empty smoothie bottle, pin the icing on, and then sew from just behind the frill of the icing down into the ridged row at the beginning of the shaping.

Book Benches around London

This is another one of those woefully overdue posts.  We went up to London at the end of August for the weekend as an end-of-summer treat for Lucas.  One of the big draws for me was the Books About Town book bench art trail around the city and we decided to combine tracking down benches with seeing some of the sights I've somehow managed to miss on my previous eleventy-million (slight exaggeration) visits to London.

I love these art trails which are all the rage these days.  Gromit Unleashed was the highlight of our summer last year and as I love books even more than Gromit, I was all set to absolutely adore this one.

The trail is now over, however, the benches are all congregating for one last hurrah prior to the auction on the 7th of October.  For this weekend (4-5 October, 2014) you can visit all of the benches at Gordon Square Garden WC1.

St Paul's Cathedral

We found our first three book benches in the shadow of St Paul's.  I had really wanted to walk around the cathedral and visit the Whispering Gallery but oh my god, the price.  I'm still struggling with the concept of paying to go into a church, even more with the idea of spending almost £100 for a family of three.  Still, there was plenty of gorgeous architecture for me to admire from the outside and once I'd had my fill, we went book bench hunting.

Mary Poppins

Our first bench was Mary Poppins.  I almost wish we'd seen another one first, as this was such a disappointment to me.  She looks wrong and nice.  I appreciate that it's highly stylised--check out the cherry trees--but it just felt wrong for the book.  Lucas wasn't very impressed, either.

Still, things picked up dramatically with Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch just a few steps along the square.

Fever Pitch

And I cooed over the Peter Pan bench for ages before I got dragged off to see the rest of The City.

Peter Pan bench

Isn't it perfect?  So whimsical and the watercolours are perfect for the book.  I love the gilt-edged pages and Peter's shadow is sword-fighting on the back!

The back of the Peter Pan bench

There turned out to be quite a few book benches near St Paul's.  I bought the unofficial app as we strolled along to make sure we didn't miss any along the way.

Usborne's That's not my...Bench

Lucas grew up with the Usborne "That's not my..." books so we all went a bit gaga over this bench.  His crazy-obsessive meerkat phase may be be over, but he still does a great meerkat impression.  Simples!

We crossed the Millennium Bridge--did you know it was in the Guardians of the Galaxy film?--and headed towards The Globe.  Another place I've never been to before!

Shakespeare's London

From The Globe, we walked down the Thames Path, enjoying the sunshine and the hunt.

Great Expectations

Lucas was pretty damn excited to find the Paddington Bear bench.  Unsurprisingly it was really, really popular.  There was actually a queue to take photographs!

Please look after this bear

Another super-popular bench was Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's From Scarecrows to The Gruffalo.  It even had my favourite--Room on the Broom!

From Scarecrows to The Gruffalo

It was such a lovely walk.  I've never seen the Square Mile from the Southbank so I was happily fascinated all the way.  I didn't realise until the next day just how far we'd walked in our quest for the book benches!!

Such a great view!

After a pit-stop in Leon for lunch we started our quest again.  Just outside the restaurant was the War Horse bench.  I've never read the book or seen the play, but the bench was certainly very poignant.  Stark, simple and beautiful.

War Horse

Here's my favourite bench of them all.  The Librarian of Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork.  He seems to have the same approach to filing books as me.  Stack 'em high!

The Librarian 

There was a bit of a cluster of benches around City Hall...

Through the Looking Glass

Dr Seuss

How To Train Your Dragon

None of us had any idea that the How To Train Your Dragon movies came from a book!  I was really surprised when I googled and found that there were loads and loads of them!

Clarice Bean

I'm not familiar at all with Clarice Bean--I thought she was Lola from Charlie and Lola--but I agree with the sentiment.

On Sunday we intended to track down loads more lovely book benches, but just after we'd found our first two in Russell Square it started to rain.  Honestly, it was like the beginning of monsoon season.  So there we were, the three of us sheltering under a not-very-big tree with one very small umbrella, no coats, and the rain absolutely soaking my back.  We gave up on the benches right then and squelched off to Costa.  There's a slight possibility that we might be fair-weather adventurers!

So here are our last two.

Double-0-Lucas

Lucas and Dave loved this bench so much.  It's so wonderfully old-school Bond and super-cool.

Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly

Our last bench was Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly.  This was an early short story which got expanded by Agatha into Dead Man's Folly and the Miss Marple short story Grenshaw's Folly.  I'd love to read the original work at some point for fun!

I really wish that I could go up to London and see the benches all laid out together.  Hopefully a blogger or two will visit and take some beautiful pictures!

Catch of the day!

Meet Bob, the bass.

I made Bob--I have no idea why I named a fish--for my father-in-law's combined birthday and retirement in July.  After years of hard graft he's looking forward to spending his days fishing, so I thought I'd start him off with an easy catch!

This is a bit of a make-ahead cake.  The bulrushes need to be made a few days ahead so that they can dry out and (fingers crossed) stick to the skewers.  You can also make the fish head in advance, too.

I'm afraid that I didn't take many pictures of the cake process--sticky hands and cameras aren't a good combination--but for the rushes I mixed 50:50 flower paste and fondant and coloured about half dark brown and the rest holly green.  Getting the fondant to stick to the skewers for the bulrushes was a bit of a mission: I tried dampening the skewers by soaking them, brushing with sugar glue, and (of all things) some jam.  I wedged the skewers into a polystyrene box insert that was lying around so that they could dry without resting on a flat surface and then draped the leaves over the rest of the skewers to give them the right shape.  Once dried out the bulrush heads stayed in place (thank God) and the extra leaves I made were easy to stick straight into the cake for a nice pond scene.

The fish head was moulded from rice krispy treats, covered in fondant, and then I spent an hour smoothing the surface and adding details.  Despite having a box of fancy tools in the cupboard, sometimes you can't beat a cocktail stick and your fingers for fiddly work!  This tutorial was very helpful, too.  I painted it the next day with food colourings mixed with lustre dusts and vodka.  A dab of piping gel made the eye nice and glossy for that freshly caught look.  (This was my first time using piping gel and it is weird but very wonderful stuff--it made fantastic ripples on top of the cake as well as a shiny glaze for the pebbles. Totes amaze!)

For the cake itself I turned to my new favourite recipe: Lindy Smith's Madeira cake.  It makes a fabulously deep cake with a lovely flat top, so there's hardly any waste.  It's really tasty, too, which is the main thing!  It's easily split into three layers and looks really impressive when cut.

Bob went down a storm with my father-in-law.  He couldn't bear to cut into Bob so, like a real fish, he's been stashed away in the freezer.  We did eat the rest of the cake, though!!

Book review: The Goldfinch

When we set off for Cornwall back in August, I carefully selected--well, loaded onto the Kindle--several books that I'd been really looking forward to reading.  And wouldn't you know it?  When I snuggled into the corner of the sofa, mug of coffee in hand after a lovely day of wandering around little villages, none of them appealed to me.

I started, and quickly closed, several books, frustration levels rising with every book that wasn't quite right for the mood I was in.  Tell me I'm not alone in this!  It's bloody miserable not being able to settle into a book.

After utterly wasting half an hour, I headed over to my Amazon wishlist and treated myself to The Goldfinch in the hopes that it would manage to hold my attention for at least five pages.

It held my attention for the next five days.

Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.


The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.

Whist it was a definite page-turner I felt let down by Donna Tartt's writing.  The book is proudly proclaimed (on the cover) to be a Pulitzer Prize winning book and I expected a lot more from it than I actually received.

Don't get me wrong, it's a decent yarn.  I got caught up quite quickly in Theo's story, rolling my eyes as he did particularly stupid thing, and cheering him on when he was making something of himself.  (I spent rather a lot of the latter stages of the book wanting to throttle him, though.)  I loved both Andy and Boris, such total opposites but providing perfect foils for Theo's state of mind and age at the time we encounter them.  And Hobie!  A fantastic character and vividly portrayed.

Tartt does a fantastic job of capturing people and the minutiae of everyday life, but the book does rather get bogged down in long-winded descriptions of almost every piece of furniture encountered in the second and third acts, and other such little things.  Like Tolkein and J.K. Rowling, a bolder editor would have been a good friend to her...

Overall, the book is a coming of age story, with an interesting plot and about 100 pages of needless and paper-thin philosophy tacked onto the end.  I've encountered deeper and more meaningful philosophy in Terry Pratchett books, which he deftly inserts throughout the narrative, so I didn't feel overly impressed by afterthought tacked onto the end.  It felt very much as though Tartt suddenly remembered that she was writing "The Great American Novel" which must be philosophical and life-altering, so she tacked a bit on the end.

Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed The Goldfinch--I kept sneaking off to read more of it after all--I just didn't feel that it deserved all of the accolades that have been heaped upon it.  My advice is to take it out of the library and make up your own mind!

Memories of Cornwall: Chapel Porth Beach

© Kathryn Yengel

I'm not much of a beach person.  They have great scenery and I love pretty scenery, but I find sand is best viewed from afar as it always, always ends up somewhere you don't want it to (if you know what I mean).  However, it appears that I'm the only one in my family who thinks it is totally okay, nay normal, to rock up at a beach and buy an ice-cream--even if it is the best ice-cream in The World--and then drive away again without setting toe on the sand.

And that is how I found myself perching awkwardly on a blanket on the sands at Chapel Porth beach, awaiting ice-cream o'clock.  Three o'clock on the dot, if you please!

We packed up all of the family (and some sandwiches, too) and got to the beach around 11 after hauling ass across across Cornwall to the north coast.  When we got there, the car park was nearly empty which left me bewildered...last year the car park was rammed, with people double-parking all over the place!  As it turned out...it was high tide.  You can tell I don't go to the beach very often...I never even thought to check tide times!!

Dave's Dad reckoned that the tide would go out pretty quickly so we set up our blankets and tent on the sandiest part of the beach that we could find--that fishing tent may be the best investment ever--and let the kids loose amongst the pebbles and shingle for a while.

The cove was popular with belly-boarders and surfers.  There were loads of kids bobbing out just beyond the cresting waves and then riding them into shore with lots of whooping.  Later we found out that The World Bellyboarding Champsionships are held there, which explains why most of the people who rocked up had boards!

The kids followed the sea as it went down the beach, building sandcastles with other kids and having fun paddling in the sea with Nanny.  The mere mention of Weaver fish put me right off the idea of paddling.  I don't remember these from my childhood when I paddled fearlessly...although, perhaps the frigid water in the far north of Scotland was too much for them?

Leila had fun washing pebbles in her bucket and making a rock castle, proudly crowned with a feather I found and guarded by a still-bendy crab leg that her Mummy found.

Pretend her eyes are open...

Lucas and Maria explored one of the caves revealed when the tide went out.  It was all very idyllic and a bit Famous Five until they came out complaining that the cave was smelly!!  Julian and George were made of much sterner stuff.

Finally ice-cream o'clock rolled round.  I will confess that I had a little bit of fun, okay a lot, but I did spring up like a gazelle at the mention of ice-cream time!

No trip to Chapel Porth is complete without a Hedgehog from their beach cafe!  It's little sister, the pure and simple (but naked by comparison) Cornish ice-cream is divine but the Hedgehog is really something special.  By far the coolest National Trust cafe in the country.  They introduced a gorgeous range of local fruit ice-lollies this summer, too.  Leila had a strawberry one which was amazing.

The best part of the day was that the kids all slept like angels after tiring themselves out at the beach!  It seems like an absolute age since we were in Cornwall but really, it's just been a smidge over a month.  Clearly we need to go back again very soon...

Adventures in quilting

I've been bitten by the quilting bug. Hard. When Dave suggested I buy a sewing machine a few months ago, I never thought I'd find myself making quilts. Turning up a few hems maybe, darning holes in Lucas's school trousers...but a quilt? No way!

I finished my first quilt last week, which I will eventually post about once it's been gifted, and almost immediately I found myself back at the fabric shop for supplies for my second. And then I popped into Hobbycraft for a lint brush to clean out my sewing machine--I had no idea that they needed to be cleaned!--and came out with this pretty 'jelly roll' of fabric... I clearly can't be trusted near fabric at the moment.

The world of fabric is a bit bewildering at first. There are a slew of new terms and a dizzying array of fabric types. I always thought cotton was just, well, cotton, but no. There's cotton drill, lawn, poplins and probably more!! There are also pre-cut fabric packs available, like the jelly roll which is made up of 40 x 2.5" coordinating strips and perfect for turning into a quilt.

I found an easy sounding pattern online and cut the entire thing into 6.5" strips and then tried to randomly put them together into blocks of three strips.

This should have resulted in 6.5" square blocks when sewn together and pressed, but either my seams were too wide or the fabric shrank a bit with the steam when I pressed as I now have rectangles. 

My grand adventure is temporarily stalled while I slice the finished blocks down to 5.5" square. This is every bit as tedious as you can imagine!! 

(I'm actually waiting for my car to be fixed at the garage rather than walking home and trimming the blocks!)

So that's what I've been up to of late. Hopefully I'll have a very pretty quilt top to show you in a few days!

Great Bloggers Bake Off: Baked Alaska edition

Lemon & Lime Baked Alaska

After "Bingate" I couldn't resist making a Baked Alaska for the Great Bloggers Bake Off.  I used to make one every year for Dave's birthday but once I discovered the wonderful world of cake decorating, they fell by the wayside.  Which is a shame, because a Baked Alaska done right is a cracking dessert!  (Not at all 'nasty'  or 'embarrassingly retro' as Ruby Tandoh said in The Guardian!!)

With the benefit of hindsight, I bet Iain wishes that he'd saved the very centre of the ice-cream and a bit of sponge...he could have done a mini Alaska for them to taste.  Mind you, both Mary and Paul seemed highly unsympathetic to his ice-cream being left out.  Last year, after Custardgate, they tossed out the baker who'd used the other competitor's custard.  At any rate, now that Diana's had to drop out due to ill health--losing your sense of smell and taste is just horrible, I hope it comes back in time--I am willing to bet that Iain will be back in the tent tomorrow night to make up numbers...

Enough of Bingate, and back to my own baking!  I had intended to just do a small one, since it was just the three of us, but it turns out that I don't do small.  As I poured ice-cream mix into the lined bowl I did wonder if it was perhaps a bit big, but carried on regardless.  Dave and Lucas ended up providing a Baked Alaska Home Delivery service to the family!!  Next time I make one, I'll throw a Baked Alaska party...

Dave asked for a citrus ice-cream, so I obliged with Lemon and Lime and I also added a thin layer of mandarin orange slices underneath for a Citrus Extravaganza.  If you're baking for adults only, then you could soak the sponge with Cointreau or Grand Marnier rather than fruit juice.  The slight bitterness of the liqueur would nicely offset the intense sweetness of the meringue and ice-cream.

We don't have a blowtorch at home--and I call myself a foodie--as I get a bit twitchy about something full of fuel hanging around in the drawer, so I made a French meringue and shoved it into the oven.  I thought about sitting on the kitchen floor Bake Off style and talking nervously to camera, but leaning on the counter drinking a cocktail seemed much more fun.

Eight minutes later I pulled a beautifully browned Baked Alaska out of the oven.  The meringue was gorgeously crispy on the outside and just-cooked inside so that it was marshmallow-like in texture.  It did its job really well, as the ice-cream was only just starting to melt on the outside.  Because I didn't have enough meringue to completely cover the cake layer, the bare edges got all toasty which turned out to be awesome.  Such a great textural contrast and toasted sponge tastes so, so good.

My only regret is that I didn't put together the Baked Alaska earlier in the day.  The dark evenings made photographing it a nightmare!  (Maybe I should have dyed the ice-cream a bright green for contrast?)

Lucas, who had never eaten Baked Alaska before, loved it.  For Dave and I it was a nice citrusy trip down memory lane.  I'm pondering doing it again, but using little pudding basins to give individual Baked Alaskas that could happily live in the freezer for a few weeks as emergency "I Need Sugar!" desserts.

If the trials and tribulations of the GBBO contestants have put you off making your own Baked Alaska, think again!  You can do so much in advance, and you absolutely don't have to make your own sponge or ice-cream--Mary Berry's recipe uses a bought sponge and jam--if you don't want to.  Give it a go!

Lemon and lime no-churn ice-cream

2 lemons
2 limes
175g icing sugar
568ml tub double cream

Zest and juice the fruit into a large bowl (your mixer bowl is ideal for this), making sure to remove all the pips!  Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.  Add the cream and whisk on a medium speed until soft peaks form.

Line a pyrex or pudding bowl with a couple of layers of clingfilm and carefully fill it to the top with the ice-cream mixture.  Press a layer of clingfilm over the top and seal.  Freeze until hard.  This took about six hours.  Overnight (or longer) is fine.

Sponge cake

110g caster sugar
110g unsalted butter, room temperature
110g self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon milk

Preheat oven to 180C (160C fan oven).  Grease a loose-bottomed 8" sandwich tin with butter.  Set aside.

Place all ingredients, except for the milk, into your food processor.  Blend until a cake batter forms.  Slowly pour in the milk, pulsing the mixture.

Scrape all the cake batter into the prepared tin. Level the surface.  Bake for about 25 minutes until the top springs back when pressed.

Cool in the tin, on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then turn the cake out of the tin and leave to cool completely.

To finish

3 large egg whites
175g caster sugar
Fruit of your choice, sliced as necessary (optional)
Liqueur to sprinkle the sponge base with (optional)

Preheat the oven to 200C.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place the sponge layer on top.

In a mixing bowl whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form.  Slowly add the sugar to the egg whites and keep whisking until glossy and the peaks are very stiff.

Sprinkle the sponge with fruit juice or liqueur and arrange a thin layer of fruit on top of the sponge.  I used tinned mandarin oranges and kept the layer as thin as possible.  Remove the ice-cream from the bowl--it should come out easily if you lined it with clingfilm--and place on top of the fruit.  Make sure you remove all the clingfilm!

Working quickly cover the ice-cream with the meringue, bringing it down to the cake and make sure there are no gaps.  The meringue insulates the ice-cream, so gappage means melty ice-cream!

Bake for 8-10 minutes, slide onto a serving plate and serve immediately in thick slices!

Welcome to The Cornershop

After several weeks of tripping over the box in the hallway, I finally unpacked my sewing machine and within hours I was in the grip of a torrid affair with it.  (Lucas brought me a square of chocolate and it sat beside me for a good hour before I noticed.  That's how intense it's been!)  I think I've sewn something every day since.  It is positively addictive, as evidenced by my shiny new loyalty card for the local fabric shop.  (And the lack of posts recently--sorry!)

Given my new stitchy love, I thought today would be a good time to write about The Cornershop art installation in Bethnal Green, London.  We popped in a couple of weekends ago when we were up in the Smoke.

Meet Lucy Sparrow, an urban textile artist.  The Cornershop is her brainchild (and source of RSI).  I have sympathy pains in my wrists from just thinking about all that sewing.

It started with an idea.  Then there was a Kickstarter, followed by arts grants, and now after seven months of sewing we have a wonderfully fuzzy corner shop to explore, complete with 'dodgy geezers' and 'local drunks' for local colour.  It's an amazing achievement!  

From the outside, The Cornershop looks like any old corner shop.  An unsuspecting shopper could nip in for a pint of milk without realising that they were surrounded by felt shop stock.  And in fact, this has happened!  Lucy said that it was her proudest moment when someone brought a two-pinter of milk up to the counter before doing a double-take!  Some of the felt goodies are very convincing indeed!  Particularly the sweeties at the counter...

The shelves are packed with everything you could possibly want in a corner shop.  There's a fine selection of biscuits--loved the HobNobs--bin bags, toothpaste, soups, and jam.  And beer!  Loads of beer!  In the chiller cabinet there's the usual milk, butter and sandwiches, and the freezer has loads of ice-creams and oven chips.  It's just a shame that you can't eat any of it!

As you can see, they stock all the essentials...

The combination of machine embroidery, hand stitching, and appliqué is incredibly effective.  Everything looks pretty damn real from a distance, and each object only gets more impressive when you bend in and take a really good look.  Even if you're the sort of person who doesn't see the point of this sort of thing, you have to admire the sheer level of skill and creativity on display!

Unsurprisingly, I had to buy something.  After lots of thought, I went for a tub of Cadbury's Hot Chocolate powder.  (I really, really wanted a newspaper, but £150 is a bit too rich for my blood.)  I can't wait for it to wend its fuzzy way to me in September once the installation ends.  I think it should take pride of place in my new sewing corner.

The most amazing till! 

Hurry!  The Cornershop closes its doors on the 31st of August!  

The Cornershop

19 Wellington Row

London

E2 7BB

Online sales at: http://www.thecornershoponline.com/