Giuchie, Giuchie, ya ya dada...

This time last year, I wrote about making marmalade from windfall oranges. In fact, I made two batches, and the five jars on the left, below, are all that remain. Last Sunday, a friend who is partial to my particular recipe came to lunch, and in way of a large hint, brought with him a carrier bag full of blood oranges. This time they had been picked from the tree rather than the floor, so the need to process them quickly was not so pressing.

The next time I went shopping I bought sugar. I was lucky in that instead of the usual €1.20 it was on offer at 89¢, so I bought 6 kilos. Just in case you fancy making some, here is a quick run down of my method, a combination of an old Kenwood recipe and an M&S pressure cookery book recipe.

Wash a shopping bag full of oranges (the oranges, not the shopping bag) and then weigh them. Depending on what type of oranges you have, either cut them in quarters if they are not too pippy, or leave them whole if they are proper bitter marmalade oranges that usually have lots of pips. Measure out a litre of water for each kilo of oranges, and use as much of this as you need to cook the oranges in the pressure cooker until they are soft. I usually do about 20 minutes at full weight, but my weight has a lump missing, so I gave them half an hour. If you are cooking in batches, you can use the same water/juice. Meanwhile put the remaining water in your preserving pan with the sugar. It should be double the weight of oranges, but I don't like sweet marmy, I like it tangy, so I used a little less; 5 kilos of sugar to 3.5 kilos of fruit. I then put my pan on top of the log burner, but you can put it on a very low light and let the sugar slowly dissolve in the water. This cuts out the add the sugar to the fruit and stir until the sugar dissolves stage. When your oranges are soft, drain them and add the juice to the preserving pan, and move the pan to a higher heat. If you have already cut your fruit into quarters, have a quick rummage through it looking for any stray pips. If you have left your oranges whole, you will need to let them cool a little until you can handle them, or tackle them with a knife and fork; cut them into quarters and flick out any pips that you find. Set up your mincer, hand or machine, with the larger holed plate in position, and push the oranges through. Check that all the sugar has dissolved in the water and juice and add the orange mush to it. Bring it up to a rolling boil and check fairly quickly for a set. Because the pith is loaded with pectin, and because you have only used half of the quantity of water you would need if you didn't use the pressure cooker, it will set in no time at all. I put my jars and lids through a dishwasher cycle so they are both warm and clean. Pot up and label. I can highly recommend Lakeland preserve labels. I have jars that have been going through the dishwasher since the early '90s and the labels are still intact. I just cross out the year and substitute the current one! The problem this time was that I had a sort out in the kitchen a couple of months ago, and I couldn't find them, so the jars without labels already on them now have ordinary stationery labels instead.

So here you have it...19 assorted jars of Bloody Marmalised 2010.

Not Craft ...

...exactly, but art of a kind; it is Three Kings Day here, a National holiday, and the cafes were full of people enjoying a late breakfast, or just coffee and a portion of Rosco de Reyes. Our waiter takes pride in his work, and rushed as he was, he still found time to add the finishing touch...

A Little Stitching

I've not felt like stitching the picture on the big slate frame, so have been working on a series of small things either in a small frame or held un-stretched in my hand. At the moment I am working on Wildflower Hearts, a freebie from Caron Threads. The original was worked in Caron Wildflower, an overdyed thread that comes in a series of beautiful colour combinations; I can't stretch the budget that far, but have adapted what I have in stash. A dark terracotta and a dark forest green matte stranded cotton, both overdyed with a red and a yellow fabric marker to give a subtle variation in tone, rather than the pronounced variation of the original.


The Rhodes stitch hearts are worked with two threads, as is the reverse faggot stitch of the surrounding square. I have used a single strand for the back stitch, and to save fastening off and fastening on for the rice stitch squares, I have made each stitch twice with a single strand. When I have finished the square, I think I shall surround it with the remains of the fabric I used as backing for these postcards. The colours are quite a good match, despite what the camera says, and I think it would make a cushion for somebody.

What else have I done lately? Not a lot, as we seem to have been on a merry-go-round of nurse-doctor-hospital-nurse-doctor-hospital, but hopefully now we are out of the loop again until halfway through January, and I can get back into my usual routine of total idleness interspersed with gentle bouts of finger twiddling.

A Little Bit Over the Top...

...but what the commissioner wanted... fancy Christmas cards to make up for the fact that they are getting M&S hampers rather than individual presents....She told me exactly what she wanted to say, and where, so the labels have computer generated messages in a dark colour picked from the backing papers. It doesn't show so well in the photo, but the ribbons are brown, coffee and cream on this one, and there is a discrete amount of glitter dabbed onto the backgrounds.



The second card has the same papers in a different colour-way, and a different type of ribbon. The papers are from Artylicious. These are both Easel cards, in case you are thinking that they look a little strange; the camera angle doesn't make it obvious. As usual, I can't do a job without making a mistake; I got the gold labels mixed up and the yellowy gold ended up on the red card instead of the gold card. As you can see, it doesn't match the peel-off colour like the other one would have done...

Friendship Heart

I stitched for Pam for her birthday. As usual, in my rush to send it off in time, I forgot to take a photo, but this is the one she posted to the Group, so I have snagged it...

Get Well Soon...

...card made for a friend to send to her daughter. It is an easel card, and this is the first time I have made one. The background paper is Artylicious, run through the Textile Cuttlebug folder, the sentiment is cut and embossed with Nestabilities, then sponged with a little Colour Box Chalk. Flowers and ferns punched from scraps of paper with a little added bling. The butterfly was part of the remit, and is a layer of embossed plain over a layer of patterned paper, glammed up with gold peel-off.


I considered adding more flowers and bling to the base layer, but thought better of it; after all, it does have to be posted....

Try not to notice the apparent curve on the card as it is just an illusion caused by the close-up setting on the camera.

Felt Like...

...Christmas postcards made for a swap on AWM. The colours in the photograph are not true to life; what appears to be a magenta background is in fact a dark burgundy red, and the bottom left background is shades of green without any blue. The dark green holly leaves are FME'ed with sparkly green Sulky, the berries and background with red sparkly Sulky.

These were made mainly from re purposed fabrics. The background cotton was left over from converting a duvet cover into two dog bed covers for a neighbour, the felt was left over from a fancy dress costume made for the child of another neighbour, and the reverse fabric was from a sample book. Even the Sulky was inherited from my friend Dot. The only thing bought on purpose for postcard making was the interfacing in the sandwich, so the most expensive bit of these is going to be the postage; 78¢ each if I am lucky and they weigh in at under 20gms, €1.38 if they are over!

A Rare Sight...

...as it is not often that I feel the urge to bake, but last week a friend gave me a lemon that he had picked up from beneath his lemon tree after a stormy night; and what a lemon it was, as it yielded the 4 fl.oz. of juice needed for a lemon meringue pie, not to mention acres of peel for grating into the gloopy bottom layer. I can't show you a picture of the inside because it has all gone. Mention in passing that you have made a lemon meringue pie, and the gannets start to arrive...

Christmas is coming...

...and the Christmas card making season has come round again. I'm just not one of those organised people who start their Christmas cards in January. Here is a group made with Pink Petticoat papers from the 'Tis the Season set, Magnolia and Polly Craft images, 2Peas Block font greetings and assorted punched and cut-out embellies.

A few Postcards....

....have been made and sent this past week. They were for three separate ArtWeMail swaps, but they all went to Indiana. It seems that the Indianapolis girls have been recruiting new members in their neighbourhood...I would give you a sneek peek, but Blogger is being Bolshie and won't let me upload. I'll edit when it has calmed down.....
Edit; Mea Culpa...I hadn't noticed that I have to tick a box now before I can hit upload...