~~ originally posted on grownstuff.co.uk ~~

When I planted these bulbs last year I wasn’t sure whether they’d come up let alone survive the rabbits and wind if they did. Well, the addition of rabbit fencing has curtailed the number of critters getting in and even in the severe gales of late they’ve proven remarkably robust, in spite of their height. In fact, I’ve only had one damaged by the wind, with a flower head snapped off … I just had to rescue it …

high quality images are available to buy by clicking on the image

I’ve not been completely idle since my last post on here, what feels like an age ago.  Mostly I’ve not been making stuff, but with budgets tightening we have been looking to cut costs wherever we can, not least of all in terms food, anyway, it turns out that flour and yeast is significantly cheaper than shop-bought bread, so I’ve been making bread (and scones, more of which later) if nothing else.

The bread I’ve been making is based on a recipe by Jamie Oliver, except that recipe makes a loaf so salty as to be entirely inedible, with a reduction in salt and addition of a couple of other ingredients I’ve been making something far more palatable, here’s what you’ll need:

• 2lb strong flour
• three satchets of fast action yeast
• 1 table spoon of salt
• 3 table spoons of sugar
• 1 pt tepid water
• 2 table spoons of olive oil
• fresh ground pepper

And what you need to do:

1.  Sieve the flour into a large bowl

2.  Make a large well in the flour

3.  Put salt, sugar, yeast and pepper into the well

4.  add a little of the water

5.  gradually mix the ingredients together maintaining the well for as long as possible and gradually adding the water (you may not need all of it), it will become porridgey in constitency:

6.  Once the well has collapsed empty the bowl onto a clean work surface and begin gently kneading the dough and catching up any remaining dry ingredients, feel free to add extra water, to create a firm dry dough.

7.  Knead the dough for about five minutes or until smooth and stretchy

8.  Return the dough to bowl and cover for 30 minutes, this is the first proving.  Leave the bowl somewhere warm and dry – I’ve been using the top of the stove or the poly-tunnel depending on the weather.  This is what it looked like when I started:

and after 30 minutes:

9.  Once the dough has risen, turn it out of the bowl and knock the air out.  Divide the dough into two and place in two loaf tins, cover and allow to prove for a further 30 minutes.  After patting and before proving it look like this:

I can never get them to be exactly the same size and on this occasion one of them was hideously deformed when I put it in the tin, t’is all good though!  After 30 mins they had risen to this:

10.  Once the bread has risen place in a pre-heated oven at about 180C or 160C in a fan oven.

11.  Bake for 25 minutes, you may need to add another five minutes depending on your own oven.  The loaf should have turned a mid-brown colour and sound hollow if you knock on the bottom.

12.  Leave to cool on a rack, like these two marvellous loaves here:

13.  I like to cut off an end and ‘test’ it with butter while it’s still warm – yum.

14.  Slice and use as you will … or take some arty-farty pictures of them:

We’ll be in Leadhills Village Hall tomorrow and would love to see loads of folks there, just so you all know the roads are clear, the M74 is clear and despite the rest of the country being under several feet of snow Leadhills has (for once) got off fairly lightly!  No excuses then!!  We’re expecting this to be our last fair for a while, we have no serious plans for doing many – if any – next year.  So we would dearly love to see folks before we go into our ‘retreat’ for the next while.

We were at Penicuik High School last week and whilst it was quiet we ended up having a really good day, one of our best for some time actually, of course the fabulous ginger-bread men went down a storm again.  It was actually rather reassuring given how much some of the other stall holders were whinging about the foot-fall and poor takings, still we weren’t the only ones who did well and I must say I found the whole affair was rather well organised despite the lack of advertising.  The School kids (young adults really) were really good, polite, and helpful and I must wish them all the best in their appeal to raise funds for their Malawi exchange trip.  My only real critisicm of the day was the people who started clearing away about 45 minutes before the official end time, always a poor show in my opinion even if you are having the most appalling day.

I bought myself a wee belated birthday present while I was there, I big clock from Ember Furniture who had brought along a number of her smaller items.  We’ve actually bought a couple of nice pieces in the last few months and I really must get some pics up so you can see some of the beautiful work people are producing.

Anyway, we’ll see you on Saturday unless, you know, you’re off sledging or something!

Jolene’s been busy laying about with her feet up, well, in fairness she’s been resting her ankle following an operation to remove the steel work that was put in when she broke it a few years ago.  She hasn’t been entirely idle though, she was commissioned at the Morningside Makers Market to customise a pair of Christmas stockings for a lady who was going to New Zealand to visit her grand-children over the festive period.

It was all a bit last minute, but Jolene relined the stocking uppers to the customers specifications and embroidered ‘Daisy’ and ‘Hamish’ onto the top before despatching them, post haste.

Things were slightly held-up as the customer wished to pay be cheque and we had to wait until we received it before despatching the items, typically we wait for cheques to clear before dispatch, and encourage shoppers to use paypal for payment, particularly if they are in a hurry.

We had a good day at Hillhead Library yesterday meeting lots and lots of nice people, and one or two horrible individuals too.  Fortunately the latter were heavily outnumbered by the former, but I would like to say to the women who said, in a rather obnoxious tone, that the sock creatures were ugly:

hell mrs, have you looked in a mirror recently?

Anyway, such unpleasantness aside it really was a nice day albeit long day made all the better by the very nice shoppers we met, the lovely stall holders and the very nice cafe across the road that kept us in coffee!  I was slightly surprised by the venue that was smaller and slightly more dated than I expected – 70′s eye-bending style carpet, peculiar gilted wallpaper and some rather dodgy lamps, this however belied a pleasant atmosphere although I did feel for the parent with prams who would’ve struggled with the stairs up to the hall.

Our best seller’s on the day were the mini gingerbread men which seemed to fly off the table, inciting not just comment, but sales and murmurs about waist-lines!!  I have to admit it was a peculiar day in terms of sale with the tried and trusted items remaining on the table whilst some of the newer or generally less popular products selling surprisingly well … all very odd!

Anyway, next up is Penicuik High School which is holding a craft fair in aid of an exchange trip with Malawi.  See our events page for details.

OK, so I previewed these in my previous post however I finally managed to source some ribbon I was happy with and I’ve got them finished and pictured:

available from coriandr and etsy

Regular readers may remember a post I made a few weeks ago, Trial by Clay, in which I featured a rough attempt at a clay bird, I’ve since refined the notion and have been merrily creating a range of slightly smaller free standing birds with a simplified design in red and white, the scheme works well with the copper legs and necks that I’ve been giving them, recycled from our on-going rewiring project.

Available from Etsy and Coriandr

As well as the free-standing birds I’ve also been busy making hanging birds for use as Christmas decor, their not quite finished yet since I need to source some nice ribbon for the hangers and I just haven’t seen any that I think is suitable yet, bit of a WIP in that respect, although I’ll hopefully have them in the shops soon.

Well we had our first fair in the run-up to Christmas yesterday, and whilst most people are avoiding the ‘C’ word in polite company there’s no doubt that it’s on people’s minds and that it emerges from unguarded lips, whispered in hushed tones as decisions are made as to whether little Jimmy would like this or perhaps Aunty May would appreciate that.  For our part we think that all mention of the ‘C’ word should be banned until November at the earliest.

Our last fair at this venue was disappointing, although this time around we were pleased to see a much greater foot-fall and far more people taking an active interest with a view to buying, to be honest though I’m as happy to stand and have a blether about what we do as I am if some nice shopper decides to make a purchase!

We had gone armed to this fair with a heap of chocolate dipped ginger bread men that we spent the previous evening making, a sample of a product aimed specifically at ‘C’ time.  They seemed to go down well, although they were free and were mostly eaten by the kiddie-winkles who, let’s face it, are generally delighted by anything with so much as trace elements of sweetie-ness!

Again the fair had a pleasant atmosphere with an interesting mix of crafters and shoppers alike.  We even made a purchase ourselves, something we generally try and avoid, although it turns out that when it can’t be avoided it costs us our day’s takings and the rest, still, it’s difficult to put a value on a piece of original artwork.  I’ll be posting those images at a later date though, hopefully as part of a featured artist post.

In the meantime we’d like to thank everyone who managed to get along to the fair and also the other stall-holders who were a bit fab.

It’s been a wee while since I finished these off and I’m afraid they’ve been lying around gathering dust until I managed to find some time to take some photo’s of them.

As ever, each Poke has been created using a combination of power-carving, hand-carving, sanding, pyrography and oiling to protect the wood from the elements.  Although initially conceived as a little something to accompany pot plants there’s no reason why these little chaps couldn’t be equally as at home in a garden border or bed.

Available to buy in the shop

Regular readers will realise that there has been something of a focus on gardening, growing, polytunnels and stuff on this blog over the last few months … in fact some might say there has been a general focus on grown stuff, given that I have decided to launch a new site focusing purely on this grown stuff, so much so that I’ve decided to call it GrownStuff.

GrownStuff.co.uk will be the repository for all my gardening posts from now on whilst MadeStuff will continue to focus on the arts and crafts, that’s not to say there isn’t an overlap though, photography remains an important part of what I do and the garden offers a wealth of photographic opportunities that interest me.  So in that vain at least I will continue to post images here that I deem ‘pretty enough’, such as this pair:

Clicking either image will take you to the new post.
See, now you get the pretty pictures without the ‘boring’ back story!