Creativity has continued, but slowed since those first weeks. Parenting, exercising and working have taken a front seat more often than not. Still, we’ve been busy, individually and collectively.
Baking has definitely continued to be a major part of life, both pragmatically and for culinary delight. Bread a couple of times a week means some form of cinnamon roll, or pesto roll or pizza alongside the bread. Various cakes for birthdays and just because…
No knitting or crochet, though the yarn keeps peeking at me, especially when we rearranged all the furniture the other day which involved unpacking and reorganising all the fabric and yarn stash…
Lots of ‘art’ with chalks and stamps and paints. We’ve even lured the Tall one into our creativity…sometimes protesting gently that he’ll just sit and watch, but almost always unable to resist the temptation to get involved. Just today we’ve tried out making some white clay to imprint flowers.
Sewing though, little bits here and there and a pair of cobbled together dungarees – no printer = no pattern. They work though, and I know what I’ll change for next time. There’ll be a next time!
All links to any recipes or instructions or patterns at the end of the post.
Baking fun – continuing with Jamie Oliver’s easy bread recipe, making it up as I go along for the variations. Small one asked for a bread snail, so we have a snail, this week a turtle and a hedgehog (no image). Experimented with cinnamon rolls in a muffin tin, latest is smaller ones into a 20cm sponge tin – works brilliantly! Definitely best with some lemon drizzle icing … yum! We’ve made flatbreads regularly (also a Jamie recipe) and also made sopapillas (CBeebies My World Kitchen is a great programme).
Small one thought Granny would like virtual strawberry cakes for her birthday. Experimenting with beetroot and chocolate cake (no eggs) recipe. Discovered “fork” biscuit recipe which we’ve done as standard, chocolate, salted chocolate and almond/coconut sugar (really caramel tasting!). A fling together, make it up as you go along apple cake – dense as a dense thing, it won’t be repeated 🤣. Another no egg biscuit recipe yesterday, cut out with rabbit shapes, why not? And decorated with lemon icing. Not my finest decorative moment 😆 Virtual birthday cakes no. 2 for Small one’s best friend’s birthday – small one thought bestie would like chocolate icing best… Then finally her own birthday bake, one I am inordinately proud of for the icing – I’ve never managed to do such a job before. She asked for chocolate and strawberries, so that’s what she got! After I had to dash to the neighbours to nab some cocoa powder when I realised there was only 25g left in our cupboard 🤦🏼♀️. Small one was pleased. 😍
Paper based creativity – making a paper rainbow for granny, Small one practicing her writing. Paper tape crafts – birthday cards for friends and relatives. More binoculars which you can see at the end are now on version 2.0. We’ve had some happy hours of colouring together. Using stamps to be creative (Tall one did some too!). Small one was given paint sticks for her birthday last week – like a small tube of lip balm but solid paint, dries really quickly, limited mess! She’s made all her thank you notes using them.
There’s been a lot of stitching these past weeks…starting with a no-stitch project. Turning a donated chunk of jersey into an infinity scarf and headband for the Small one. We’ve made a set of feather head dresses (from a delightful book called Sew Adorable – just beautiful and vintage inspired makes for age 1-4. Six bean bags from some upcycled linen (didn’t end up cooking those dried canellini beans which were going to help bridge the gaps between food deliveries 🤣). Whipped up some bunting to jolly the house for VE Day – Small one made her own from the off-cuts and was very proud. They are now adorning the garden shed! Then some birthday makes, the aforementioned dungarees from this ace book – Wild Things to Make. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to work out how to design the pattern based on viewing the unprintable PDFs…and finally some birthday crowns to wear on the day. Small one enjoyed hanging out and observing, making her own ‘patterns’ and ‘cutting’ her ‘fabric’ ❤️
Finally finding some chalk has enabled some outside art…all the neighbourhood children joining in on VE Day and our own little doodles (including Tall one’s contributions) on the driveway and in the back garden. An attempt at two different giant bubble recipes…heart shape biscuit cutters make excellent bubble blowers! Small one enjoys taking pictures with both her toy camera and with our phones, some of them are even pretty great! Today we tried making white bicarbonate of soda and cornflour clay, tomorrow we’ll try painting it. It’s very delicate, so next time we’re going to do standard salt dough I think. We enjoyed collecting some delicate flowers and leaves on the morning walk and from the garden to use.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten something along the way, but if I have the spirit of it is here in this collection. I’m loving that Small one talks about ‘doing craft’ and that she wants to do her own sewing and knitting. Our favoured quiet time activity is watching the Sewing Bee or Bake-Off. She just doesn’t understand why someone always has to go home…
Things are changing up again, within the next two weeks we will, perhaps, know how soon we will both be back to work and pre-Covid life…mixed feelings about this as I for one have finally settled into a happy groove of working, family adventuring and creating. Just being…
These are indeed strange times we are all living through just now. I’m sure there are more eloquent voices than mine chronicling our collective and individual journeys through this, however, it felt like the ideal time to revive my blog, as isolation has brought with it time to create. Creativity as necessity – food and grocery shopping being a challenging experience, but also as stress relief for me and active engagement for an vivacious pre-schooler.
To start this is just a collection point for all the things we’ve done so far, in no particular order. Going forward I have an idea to try to post every few days, we’ll see.
Baking has been our primary occupation I think. Comforting body to comfort mind. Also, Jamie Oliver has put out there so many straight forward and inspirational ideas, it seems rude to ignore him! Around Christmas time I was asked to bake a Camembert Christmas tree (yes, Jamie’s influence on my cheese obsessed husband!) so tried to get to grips with making yeasted bread, something I’ve not baked in over a decade…it did not go well, but laid the foundations of a desire to get it right. Queue plenty of time at home, a pre-schooler to occupy and Jamie on the telly box showing just how easy it could be. Bread abounds in our house – with the new favourite being a cinnamon roll created from my own imagination. Just too yummy. Too yummy when you’re still hitting up the slimming world group via Zoom every Friday 😜 Bread has also been baked in the form of flatbreads to go with soup at lunchtimes and turned into lunchtime pizza.
Original cinnamon rolls – white flour. Simply the BEST!Using up the wholemeal flour so half and half, not quite as tasty…Deep pan ‘pizza’ Lunchtime thin and crispy
I’ve made several other new to me recipes in the past four weeks, curry veg fill pie (thanks BBC Good Food for the inspiration), what turned out to be epic quantities of Jamie’s (yes, him again, sorry) baked beans from the Veg book, a deep pan ‘pizza’ from his ‘Keep Cooking and Carry On’ series (soooooo good, especially with added mushrooms) and tonight getting thrown in the oven will be spicy roasted chickpeas as a snack. This new situation having driven me to finally get to grips with how to cook beams successfully from scratch. Note to self – slightly less time than the BBC Good Food site says for chick peas next time.
Filo curry potato and rice pie
Then there’s the cake and flapjack baking. To be fair, flapjacks happen whatever the situation but they still deserve a mention. we had to bake a cake in honour of Grandad as we couldn’t see him personally for his birthday, doesn’t stop us having cake for him! Small girl required both strawberry and rhubarb jam to be added to the middle of the Swiss roll. I mean, why not? It certainly tasted good… finally yesterday a rather good all-in-one chocolate beetroot cake recipe. Definitely counts as one of your five-a-day, even in cake, yes? It’s also completely delicious. Thank you once more BBC Good Food.
Birthday rhubarb and strawberry Swiss rollFlapjack (Nigella Lawson recipe) with added fat raisins from our local packaging free shopChocolate beetroot cake with cinnamon chocolate drizzle
There’s also been non-food related crafting. The trend for creating rainbows to show our thanks for keyworkers we’ve embraced. Creative coloured paper and sticking, we have no paint at home; followed by a crochet rainbow from me. That one’s just waiting for some wire to help it be a little more rigid for hanging.
Tearing and sticking. Brightening a windowCrochet creating from an idea to a rainbow
The crochet rainbow came about after making a bunch of Easter eggs for our own little garden hunt. A lovely little pattern which was so simple and only involved around 14 rows. I’d also made some small felt ones (not shown here) out of bright green felt and bright blue thread. Some were delivered to neighbours but most were used for the hunt. This year that really came alive for our small peep, she really got into it. She also enjoyed delivering the egg gifts to the neighbours in her ostrich chick suit.
Crochet eggs. Using up leftover yarn at lastLittle chick ready to make deliveries
Knitting has had a look in too – I made a pair of mittens late last year to keep little hands warm, one was lost on Christmas Day. It’s taken isolation for me to find the motivation to finally make a replacement.
Almost there – pattern from Purl Soho NY
One morning of inspiration while the small peep ate breakfast – and 20 minutes later a pair of ‘binoculars’, she’s been almost inseparable from them since. They come on every dog walk and most scooting exercise outings. She regularly pauses, lifts them up and takes a look to see what she can see.
An abortive attempt to make egg bunting for Easter – not pictured here but eggs of varying sizes on various patterned paper. They didn’t quite look right in the hanging so will get put away for recreation next year. There’s been gardening too, and doing our faces as Harry Potter for a virtual birthday party and singing and dancing and Cosmic Kids Yoga. Making silly faces on video calling with family and friends. All these things I count as creative. We’re creating the most healthy environment we can, both for us as adults and for our small peep who is missing her friends so much.
On Twitter, Instagram and Facebook I’ve been using #covidbaking #covidcraft #covidcreative by all means jump on in.
All sorts today as a friend came over for an afternoon of chat and crafting!
Before she arrived I had started cutting out the shorts I planned a little while ago.
As we were chatting the sewing machine was out of bounds…so I finally got around to stitching this piece of crochet to the neckline of the top I made a couple of months ago.
Then I messed around with the necklace pattern, thinking adding shells to the final row could look good.
I’m not sure, I think it should all be longer to hang lower, I might mess with it a little more…
When she’d left I felt the urge to start stitching the shorts (I’d meant to leave it until another day, but couldn’t help myself) and if I didn’t think about the introductions too deeply they made perfect sense! I placed a deadline on myself though and decided to stop for dinner, I’ll get back to them tomorrow 🙂
I may need a different colour zip though…this could be a contrast too far!
More crochet this evening, a bird…a little different to the challenging one before! This one shall have two matching sides which will be crocheted together and stuffed. The recipe calls for four birds in varying combinations of colour, then hung for a mobile. Not sure I’ll get around to four, may just stick with one – may make a nice little gift for the small girl I shall be seeing on Friday with her mum for coffee 🙂
Finished knitting the matching hat today. Crocheted seams on the outside, little bit ‘tough’ looking for a small boy 🙂 The straight seam should form ‘ears’ once on a small bod’s head
I used an adult recipe as my inspiration, just smaller yarn and needles and a whole lot shorter! It’s a simple rectangle or 2×2 rib, slightly smaller needles for first 4 rows so a little tighter, then 4 row stripes. The yarn is Rico creative cotton Aran, it comes in gorgeous colours and is really reasonable!
A friend saw the booties I’d been making and commissioned me to make a pair for her new great-nephew, so here they are. She’s asked for a matching hat, so I picked up the knitting needles and made a start – should be finished tomorrow 🙂
I’ve had a splendid day, making this morning, lunch with friends followed by afternoon tea with another friend. Just made it home in time to fling some dinner in the oven (fingers crossed it’s cooked in time) before heading out to the cinema with folks. That’s a pretty great Saturday I reckon…
acknowledging the importance of creativity in my daily life
#creative365 