Making Soft Toys

Only one of my three sons ever really took to soft toys. By "took to them" I mean took to hoarding them, sleeping with them, shoving them into random cupboards and nooks around the house. Since he's my youngest, I've only recently taken a stab at learning how to make them myself. Above is an example that shows you how, ahem, adept I am at this craft. To be fair, this was my first effort at a proper three dimensional animal (I've made much simpler soft toys to better results, as I've posted about before here), and therefore not too bad. And anyway, in spite of the very wobbly neck and imperfect stitching, Michael loves this guy. He's made from an old sweater of mine, and hypoallergenic poly fill. Michael didn't want button eyes but drew on the facial features himself. Unlike many of his other soft toys, I know where this one was made and what's inside him. So he's kind of perfect. 

The pattern came from this book, which I found in the corner of a thrift shop several months ago:

These toys in Sue Quinn's "The Creative Book of Soft Toys" are a little dated, and I prefer linen, wool and other natural fabrics over the fake fur called for in most of these patterns. Also, the included patterns had to be enlarged before use, which is a bit of a drag.

This book arrived in the mail today. Rob Merrett's "Make Your Own Soft Toys" is filled with projects that are a little more to my taste, including a section on making some lovely dolls, which at the moment I have no use for. It also demonstrates mixing up fabric types to whimsical effect, and the included patterns are all full sized and ready to use. 

I'll post any projects I complete in the near future, and would love to see or hear about any soft toys you've made for the little people in your life. 

The Fungus Among Us

I'm trying a new thing when I walk in the woods these days, to help me slow down and look a little more mindfully at all that crazy beauty around me. At least once a week, I now pick one thing to focus on as I go, and paradoxically, I see a lot more of everything that's out there. It doesn't make for a very brisk walk, but it seems to be working some other kind of muscle, because I always come home feeling really good afterwards.

Two days ago I chose wild mushrooms. Henry has some crazy scheme in the works to start growing our own edible wild mushrooms out in the woods, and I've been instructed not to touch the pack of spores currently sitting on the top shelf of the fridge. I'll keep you posted of course, on how that project pans out.

In the meantime, here are a few (seriously, there were a lot more), of the wild mushrooms of Bruern wood:

I Went to the Animal Fair

Around here, tis the season for village fetes, harvest festivals and agricultural shows large and small. Last year I posted about a a day we spent at one of the local village fetes, in that case, the Wychwood Fair. This year I want to share images from a similar affair called the Moreton Show. It's bigger (though not necessarily better) than Wychwood, and is focused more on agriculture than on artisans. Alas, there was also a proliferation of solicitor (law firms) and real estate agent tents, and merchants selling kind of crappy tweed jackets. 

I love the Moreton Show for the huge variety of farm animal breeds on display, particularly in the poultry tent, which I sadly walked away from empty handed. But I saw some otherworldly looking chickens, as well as some familiar breeds, in additional to a smattering of turkeys and geese. Here are a few.

The wool tent was also amazing. There were bins of wool from various breeds of sheep, and I loved that my kids and I were allowed to touch it. We came out of there with very soft hands. Nearby I saw a woman doing a spinning demonstration using the same Ashford wheel I have at home, though my wheel is still in pieces in the box so not nearly as effective as hers. Turns out she lives very nearby, and gives spinning lessons. I'm going to call you, Sarah!

We also spent a few minutes watching a blacksmithing demonstration. My boys were mesmerized, especially Charlie, who later came home and found a hammer with which he flattened one of my teaspoons and also smashed apart the stone ledge outside of the kitchen window. So we had two blacksmithing demos that day. 

The Gloucestershire Young Farmers Club had a tent on site, though I was a little disappointed that they couldn't rustle up a live animal for their hands on milking demonstration. I mean, I didn't really need to leave Brooklyn for my kids to milk wooden cows. But we put our names on their email list anyhow. 

Have you been to any county fairs lately? If so, I'd love to see your pics, so please share links in the comments section below. 

Canning Is Not My Strong Suit

In an effort to build up our winter stores with locally grown, seasonal produce that I'm trying not to buy out of season anymore, I've started canning. As Alana Chernila writes in my new favorite book, The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making: "Like so many other useful skills, canning was once just something that people knew how to do...It wasn't so much a craft or a choice-was simply necessary". Its meant to be pretty simple. And yet I find that, like baking, I just can't seem to get the hang of it.

For instance.

Don't these pickles look amazing? I spent a decade living in Brooklyn, so I think I assumed that artisanal pickle making would be second nature to me. I was so wrong. Though I followed the recipe to the letter (sort of; I couldn't find the cucumbers suggested in the book, and was warned against substitutions) something went wrong. One setback was in my water bath, wherein only one of my jars sealed properly. The rest I put into the refrigerator, with plans to eat them in the coming weeks. My kids love pickles, so I think this shouldn't be a problem. After a week of letting them cure, I opened a jar, tasted one pickle, then pulled the rest out and put them in the pig food bucket. They were not delicious, but rather tasted of bad vinegar. 

 Perhaps the fact that I lacked a proper canning rack to put my jars in played a part? Since I had a hard time finding one, I looked online and took someone's suggestion that a dishtowel at the bottom of the pot would work. But it didn't for me, as the water just never really came to a roiling boil this way.

 My next project was fig jam. My sister in law has a fig tree which she kindly allows me to pillage whenever I like, which lately has been a lot. After my tea towel in the pot debacle I managed to find a round cake cooling rack, and used that instead. It worked pretty well, though my jars still didn't produce that satisfying ping sound which indicated the vacuum seal has been formed. Again, that only means the jam had to be refrigerated and eaten within the next few weeks. I gave the first jar to my sister in law, who loved it. This recipe came from another book I'm trying out right now: Marisa McClellan's Food in Jars.

 I also attempted, but didn't photograph, oven canning, which a whole bunch of online canners swore by. This is where you sterilize and seal your jars in a hot oven rather that in a water bath. It was a disaster. I had the heat up a little too high, and the jam bubbled out of the jars and oozed all down the sides. So those weren't sealed at all. Now I have a LOT of fig jam that needs eating in the next few weeks. Luckily I love it, so I might succeed.

Smaller jars are better than super big ones, like the pint jars of green gage jam I made (see top photo). Even if the seal doesn't work out (and I'm sure for those less culinary challenged folks the seal isn't such a problem), a small jar of jam can be eaten in short order without fear of spoiling.

My final Pete Tong moment was with the aforementioned green gage jam, which is so unbelievably sweet and cloying that even I can't eat it. I used a type of sugar that read "Jam Sugar" on the bag, and the crystals were gigantic. Since I don't know one type of sugar from the next I figured it was the right kind, but I think as its so chunky I could've used half the amount called for in the recipe.

Before I abandon canning completely, I still have a lot of beets, french beans and cabbage that I need to do something with. Pickled beets with ginger, dilly beans and kimchi are all on my wish list of foods to make.

 On a more optimistic note, I have learned to make homemade pop tarts with a fair degree of success. This recipe, also from The Homemade Pantry, was pretty foolproof. The problem with the pop tarts is that, like so many delicious things made from scratch, they take too long to make relative to how long it takes to eat them. Fortunately, pop tarts are already a food I no longer buy. But its good to know how to make them, and how to make lots of other basic but delicious stuff like butter, fruit roll ups and "car snacks", aka yummy cereal bars.

The truth about the pop tarts is that only one of my kids actually really likes them, and its not the one shown here. Which just means more for me.