Tarnished Silver Plated Cutlery & The Pear and Almond Cake

So who knows how to get rid of tarnish on my lovely cake forks in a clean non-chemical way?

I found this suggestion here; does this work? I have no idea if my forks are epns; does this make a difference?  All I know is they are silver plated something!

 And so to the cake! I adapted Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe here; I found the cooking times to be totally off for my oven at least, I had to add on an extra 30 or 40 mins! I used normal flour rather than wholemeal and I think next time I will cut down on the butter too, it tastes far too buttery, totally unnecessary for this cake. And where he says 'add all the juices from the pan on top of the cake' I would say just dribble a tablespoon's worth and no more! This is why it took so so long to cook I think. . . too much juice. Anyway, the result was tasty so thats all that matters.

Mood Board with Nature

mood board - great colours that are about now.

by the way, check out this

ribbons and threads

the heather pinks are less pink and more um....heathery than the photo! bit darker than they look on a pc screen. i'll upload a finished pot holder later on, if the light lasts long enough!

heart uses

you could string through them to make a garland like this but better!

p.s in town i saw xmas decorations - all hearts in red and natural, some wooden some sewn fabric either single (like your stuffed hearts) or 3 hanging below each other on a string. also i have 2 little antique bells if you wanted to put them on the bottom of a decoration? would look good with gingam.
please send me photos of the ribbon you got, ill post mine in a sec
jo xxx

Handmade Hearts

What you think>?

Enamel Pan Love

This is the cutest little enamel pan i've ever seen!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/54267149/dansk-kobenstyle-ihq-yellow-enamel-sauce

housewifery - it IS a word!

this lady is funny...
jo xxx

from sheep and oysters

Using my sister's handmade felt for more variations on the Josephine Necklace. The felt makes a completely different kind of necklace; the discs twist into a chunky chain hiding and revealing the glass pearl beads; less dainty, more dramatic.





Love the moody shades of grey and jasper red, but currently being threaded is a beautiful daffodil. It makes it easier to climb out of my own ideas and push into doing something new when given the felt in colours Abi chose. I would not have chosen to use yellow felt or fabric for these pieces, but it looks great with the pearls.

saw this blog and thought you would like it

http://belleandburger.blogspot.com/- lots of fabric scrap based tutorials - nice!

Welcome to Darning the Divide

So my sister and I like to make. 
We like to stitch, knit, felt, weave, grow things, bake, and be housewifey (thats a new word I made up). Although we wish we lived round the corner from each other, so that we could pop into each others houses for tea, we live miles apart. So instead we have set up Darning the Divide. 
This is our ongoing letterbook to each other and to anyone else who happens to be tuning in. It is for our inspirations, for our WIP's, for our celebrations and our "I saw this and thought of you" moments. 
So to start; this is what I baked yesterday:

2 cooking apples

1 apple corer (given to me by Jo)

a few shakes of caster sugar

few drops of lemon juice

handful of chopped pecans

roughly 50g plain flour - - - roughly because I never measure when it comes to crumble - sorry!

roughly 65g cold chopped butter

handful of oats

heat oven to gas mark 4 or equiv

---core and chop apples; place in greased dish; cover in lemon juice and caster sugar

---place flour, butter and chopped nuts in bowl and, using your hands, rub like pastry until you get breadcrumb texture; don't run too long, you want crumble not cake!

---add sugar and oats to the crumble mix and stir together

---sprinkle crumble mix on top of the apples

---bake in oven for 30 mins

---serve with custard

Yum!
Abi ----- xxx