Cake and Crafty things

On Thursday I made one fruit cake, one batch of red velvet cupcakes, one batch of chocolate brownies, chicken enchiladas and three greetings cards.

On Friday I made one fruit cake, one lemon drizzle cake, the icing for one batch of red velvet cupcakes, the icing for one batch of chocolate brownies, one round of shortbread and a piece of vorticist art.

On Saturday I tok them all to a tent on the village playing fields and H took me for a paninni and a nice green leaf salad for lunch and after that I felt lot better.


Distinct shades of the Very Hungry Caterpillar around here as I got ready for the village show, only exacerbated by the fact that the kitchen is still covered in cake, only now it's cooked and neatly displayed on plates instead of splattered over, well, pretty much everywhere (I am NOT a tidy cook).

A few hours later and the results were in:

In the Kitchen:


Third for lemon drizzle cake - from Annie Bell's beautiful cakes book, in a Nordicware cake tin with lemons on the top. I had a few wobbles with the cooking time but it turned out damp and delicious - I will be making this again soon. 


Third for decorated cupcakes.  My cupcakes are "Somewhere over the rainbow" - ruby red velvet slippers cake in a yellow paper case and on a yellow plate with sky blue icing, fluffy clouds and rainbows.  The First and Second cupcakes were neat swirls of buttercream with sprinkles and a flake (2nd) or silver balls and a sprig of lavendar (1st).  Next time I'll scrap the concept and practice my buttercream piping.

Not placed - Fruit cake (understandable as I added the cherries too soon on the second do over cake and the food processor chopped them too small to be identifiable - tastes nice though), shortbread, chocolate brownies and quince jelly.

Last year I only got a third in Gingerbread so this is progress.

Handmade:


First - Oopsie in 'a 3D item', with the comment 'a baby would love this'. She does.

Second - Solomon, also in 'a 3D item'.


Highly commended - my Phoenix socks


Highly commended - a handmade Good Luck card.  In my personal taste I did not like the card that came first in this category but for future reference, it was a Christmas card again so next yer Christmas cards it will be.

Sadly disqualified - I'm still a bit grumpy about this. The handicrafts category has a size limit of 2 foot on it.  In previous years this has been read as 'don't take up more than 2' display space' and things folded up have been fine - I won a third for my Swan lake wrap which is way over 2'. This year I entered Kitty's Alice Starmore baby blanket and my flowing river shawl and both came back saying they were fabulous and impressive pieces of work but sadly more than 2'.  Wave bye bye to two places I could have had.  I wasn't the only one caught out, a couple of small quilts fell foul too but it does really limit what I can enter in future; it will have to be socks or baby cardies because any piece of lace, or jumper, or anything knitted or quilted is going to be too big.  Maybe I should start petitioning for a category for big things!

Not placed - my Bohus wristlets, two greetings cards, a bracelet and my piece of art:

Started on Thursday and finished on Friday, it's called 'Breakers' and it's supposed to be an early cubist impression of a wave crashing on a beach.  Vortecisim just preceeded cubism, and when we went to Peggy Guggenheim in Venice there was a special collection of the Vortecists work, Edward Wadsworth being my favourite example. I suspect the idea have been floating around and when push came to shove to have something to enter I thought I'd play with it.  Full acknowledgements to H for this one though for giving me materials and trying to teach me how to paint in under 24 hours.

We like it, it's an acquired taste though and by the gentle watercolour of village life that won I think I'm a few years ahead of myself in terms of show entries.

So not a bad year all in all. H sometimes struggles to understand why I'd put so much time and effort into a show, only to get a few little cards and tuppence ha'penny in prize money, but I love it, I love getting little cards, I don't mind about prize money (and I tend to donate it back to the show as the entry is free anyway).  I suspect part of me, well lets admit it, a big part of me, loves to show off what I really love to spend my time doing, I mean, isn't part of a blog shouting to the world "Look what I made! I love it! You could make one too!"

And of course, at the end of it all - there's a kitchen full of cake!