Lemony update

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

The lemon curd was good.  In fact good doesn’t come close to doing it justice, it was sharp and tangy and rich and silky and everything you’d want a lemon curd to be.  It was so good I will have to restrict myself on how often I can make it.

As well as filling and covering Gary’s birthday cake I had enough left to make a lemon curd cheesecake and a sort of Eton mess.

The cheesecake was dead easy – crush up a pack of ginger nut biscuits for the base and hold together with melted butter.  While that’s chilling whip a large tub of double cream until thick.  Take one tub of marscapone and stir in about 5 tablespoons of lemon curd.  Then stir that into the cream.  Taste and add caster sugar until it’s as sweet as you want it (I like it sharp so only a couple of spoonfulls were needed).  Pile the creamy cheesey lemony mix on top of the biscuit base and squish down.  Keep in the fridge until you are ready to eat.  Easy and yummy!  When I make it again I might add vanilla or melted white chocolate to the marscapone instead and use the lemon curd to make a swirl through the cheesecake instead of blending it in.  Couldn’t taste much better but I think it would be pretty.

The Eton mess was also dead simple – crumble up some meringue nests (I bought them cos I was feeling lazy but you can make your own if you are more of a domestic goddess), whip a small tub of cream, stir together – add blueberries and lemon curd towards the end so they are stirred through but not fully mixed in.  Delicious!

Monster Misadventure

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Oh dear.  My attempts at making the monster dice bag have so far been disastrous.

It started ok – I worked out my plan of attack, found fur fabric and red and white felt, cut them to the appropriate sizes, got some googly eyes I’d purchased from ebay and was all set to go.  It should be a fairly straight forward make, just sandwich white felt teeth between the fur and the red felt lining. Sew that together then seam the whole lot into a tube, close the fur end and most of the felt end, turn right side out and add in the eyes and a tube for the drawstring – should be done in half an hour.  I’d even worked out plans for a removable tongue that would double as a mini pouch for pencils or special dice.  Looking good.

Gary dug out the sewing machine for me from where it had been stashed when we moved here over a year ago (How can it have been so long?) and that’s where the problems started.

First step should have been to wind a bobbin of appropriately coloured thread – but when I removed the housing there was no bobbin in the machine.  And of course the box of accessories was nowhere to be found.  So we jumped in the car and drove to the nearest haberdashery which had exactly one pack of bobbins on sale.  So I bought those, some velcro, some snap fasteners and some cord and toggles and we came home again – only to find that the bobbins were the wrong size so we hadn’t solved the problem at all.

I then tried plan B which was to try and borrow one.  Dawn had a couple lurking in the depths of her sewing box which turned out to be a reasonable fit so all was looking good – until I’d threaded the damn machine at which point I realised the foot was missing so it wouldn’t work anyway. Gah!

I’ve ordered replacement bobbins and foot from ebay – hopefully they will be here in a day or two and we can try again.  For now though I’m just making chainmail

Lemony

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Tomorrow is Gary’s birthday, and since he is a wonderful husband I figured it only fair that he should get cake.  So when he went out to work this evening I got busy and made a gin and lemon cake.  (Just a basic sponge but using gin and lemon juice in place of water).

Then I decided it needed a lemony filling so I had my first ever attempt at making lemon curd.  I didn’t have a recipe so had to improvise based on what I’d seen on TV programmes like masterchef.

I had half a bottle of lemon juice to which I added 2 eggs, a cup of caster sugar and about a third a block of butter.  All very approximate as I didn’t have a recipe.

I whisked everything other than the butter together first then cooked it until it had thickened and then melted in the butter before whisking again.

curd

It looks ok, but I guess I’ll find out for sure whether it’s worked when it’s cooled down enough to taste 🙂

New project – furry monster dice bags

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

I am going to have a try at making furry monster dice bags.  Gary wants one and if I make a couple one can be donated to the raffle at Contraption to help the lovely Chris buy Raspberry Pis for the school that Jack goes to.

I don’t have a pattern so will be making it up as I go along.  It should be easy enough though, just a simple drawstring bag, fur on the outside, red on the inside, teeth around the edge.  Maybe with a tongue to loll around inside.

How hard can it be?

Book!

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

I woke up this morning to find the pdf galley for Mythologically Torqued in my email inbox.  It looks really good.  I’ve read through some of the other stories and thoroughly enjoyed them so I feel my little tale is in good company 🙂

mythologicallytorqued cover

I’ve had stories published in anthologies before, but it is still a huge thrill to see it all coming together.  It makes me feel like a ‘proper writer’.  I will be grinning like a loon all day.

Latest makes

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been doing a bit of knitting.

dolls

They’re based on the Rufus the Leprechaun pattern which I found online.  I changed the colours, lost the beard and added a skirt, wings and hair for the fairy and big ears and a pointy hat for the elf.

I had a terrible time with the scalloped edging to the fairy skirt, but I got there in the end by mingling together various different patterns I’d seen online.  It sort of works if you don’t look too closely.

Anyway, they are off to their new owners tonight (a young brother and sister I know through my part time job) so hopefully they will get lots of loving and no picking over the details.

First week of the craftworks course

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Well that was a long morning.  We spent absolutely ages doing paperwork, all of it dull to the extreme.  Pages and pages of it.

Eventually though we got to do something a bit more fun.  We were all given journals and loads of different scrapbooking materials which we had free reign to use to decorate said journal.

I would post a picture but I went a bit crazy with the glitter glue so mine is still drying and I won’t bring it home until next week.

It was an interesting bunch of people.  I don’t think any of them are really that interested in making stuff to sell.  Most seemed to just be looking for a social morning.  It was all female, mostly over 50 and I think most of the others already know each other from the WI and suchlike.  Still, the course sounds like it will cover all the stuff I need to learn so it’s worth going.

And the crafts?

~ DMWCarol ~ 2 Comments

I like making things.  I’m lucky enough that I can usually manage to make whatever I set my mind to reasonably adequately.  I can visualise things in 3d which helps and am reasonably good about attention to detail.  I used to be better, but I have a dodgy right hand these days so my fine motor control isn’t what it used to be and I can’t keep working for hours on end.  I get by though.

I knit, usually chainmail but with wool too on occasion.  I made my hubby a Dr Who scarf which he is very proud of.  That was my biggest project so far, it took an absolute age to make but mostly because I left it for weeks and weeks between doing any.  I mostly make chainmail jewelry rather than armour for reasons of hand.  I make normal beady type jewelry too, that’s quick and easy so great for when the pain levels are high but the itch to make something won’t go away.

I sometimes make costumes and props for games and random ‘stuff and things’ for friends or particular occasions. The last thing I made was a cross stitch sampler for a friends wedding, current project is a pair of knitted dolls for another friend.

I have an etsy shop and a folksy shop but haven’t yet gotten around to populating them.  To be honest I am absolutely dreadful at selling stuff.  Giving it away is much easier and I like seeing people wearing things I have made.  I wish I was better at the selling bit, I think the stuff I make is good enough to sell I just don’t have those skills.

I’ve just signed up for a crafts course that is supposed to include advice on how to make and sell so here’s hoping it makes a difference.

My to do list craftwise is currently dominated by ‘learn to crochet’ it looks a lot more portable than knitting and seems to be faster which can only be a good thing.

So where are we starting from – the writer

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

I’m a writer.  It’s just something I do.  I’ve had quite a few pieces of erotica published over the years but most of what I’ve written has never been read by anyone but me, or has been posted online somewhere, pretty much ignored, and long since forgotten.  I’d almost stopped doing it except for personal use, I just wasn’t finding the time between working and my roleplaying obsession.

This year I’m trying to do things a bit differently.  I’ve started looking at calls for submission and writing stories to fit.  I’ve sent things to publishers rather than just posting them online.  As a result my story Brisingamen has been accepted by Torquere Press for their Mythologically Torqued anthology and I have just spent today editing it to send back for final review.

I’ve also signed up with Great Content – a website that pays you to write content for other people’s websites and have written a few short pieces for them.  It’s not much but it is being paid to be a writer on a day to day basis which feels kinda good (but not as good as the actual having a story in a book thing obviously).

I’d really like to get some game related writing published that’s top of my wish list, and maybe some fantasy type stories, but the most important thing is to actually write.  I want to be not just a writer but a successful writer with something to show for it.

Hello world!

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

So people keep telling me I should try blogging.  I’m not entirely sure what I’ll write about – probably my various dabblings with crafts and recipes and writing and whatnot. I’m not promising to be interesting or different.

I’m hoping having a blog will inspire me to actually be more creative and give me a way to connect with other people who have similar interests to my own.

If you happen to drop by, please do leave me a comment, it would be nice to know who reads and what you think.