The Crafty Kitty

Organic Cotton Sewing Thread…

thecraftykitty — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:48:53 +0000

…[coming soon!]

I am very excited because I am currently just calculating postage and packaging (ok so that bit isn’t so exciting!) for the first items that will be going in my new etsy shop! I have bought a limited stock of 100% organic cotton sewing thread! I currently have just 11 colours, but the full range is 34 colours. These 11 are a trial run and if they sell well then I will purchase larger quantities and of all the colours!

The thread is GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certified and is available in 300 yard (275m) as well as a larger 5000m spool, which I think could be great for using with a serger/overlocker! To begin with I have the following colours available in the 300 yard (275m) option:

5 natural shades ranging from white, to grey.

and 6 bright shades ranging from a golden yellow to black.

Vintage wood is used to create the environmentally friendly spools of these wonderful threads! I will update this post with links as well as have an announcement post when my shop is up and running! If you want to pre-order/register your interest in buying any of these 11 shades you can either leave a comment below or contact me via email. I am more than happy to set aside threads and create a custom listing for you, once my etsy shop is up and running. Please also let me know if you want to order any of the other colours that I don’t yet have in stock, or if you would be interested in ordering any of the 5000m spools.

I have long been annoyed at having to sew my organic fabric projects with non-organic thread and I cannot wait to get started with these beautiful organic threads!

Vegan Food Gifts: S’mores Brownies

thecraftykitty — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:01:54 +0000

Chocolate brownies, chocolate chips, marshmallows and Graham crackers… sounds good and it is!

Here are the unadulterated s’more brownies… I used plamil fairtrade organic alternative to milk chocolate drops and Sweet and Sara Marshmallows. This is my first time using Sweet and Sara Marshmallows. I ordered them from Scrumptious Sweets along with a Sweet and Sara Smore to try. The Smore was nice, but they are so expensive 1.5x as much as it is to buy in the states. The marshmallows are over twice as much as it is to buy in the states. So whilst they were awesome and toasted really nicely on the brownies, and I wish we had some of the mini ones so I could have put them in our hot chocolate today…. not a chance they are going to be regularly bought. It really is a shame as the other brands I have tried that are made over here are nice but no where near as nice as these ones! I guess I am just gonna have to try my hand at making my own instead!

Last night we tried the brownies with Swedish Glace Vanilla Ice cream (thumbs up!) and today I made a batch of rad whip and I tried piping some on the brownie (pretty!) and I can give you two thumbs up on that account! I now have to try really hard to give away the rest of the brownies (another nine) before we eat them. You are probably gonna have to wrench them out of my hands!

Sugar Free Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes

thecraftykitty — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:44:23 +0000

Over Christmas we had a lot of family visiting and I wanted to make some goodies that we could all enjoy, so vegan for me and sugar free for my father-in-law. I made two batches of sugar free vegan cupcakes one chocolate and one lemon poppyseed. Annoyingly I completely forgot to take some pics at the time. I decided to make another batch of the chocolate this weekend and thought it was the perfect chance to try out my new icing piping bag.

The sugar free frosting isn’t really meant to be used for piping, but I thought what the heck! It’s all practice anyway! I would like to say that my shoddy sugar craft skills were entirely due to Lily helping me, but well she only helped with one of them and then it was all about eating the chocolate cake for her.

Here she is gingerly picking up her finished cupcake, oh she helped actually make the cupcakes and the frosting as well. My little baker in the making!

She certainly seemed very proud of her attempts! The recipes for both cupcake and frosting are from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which is currently looking a little worse for wear as Lily spilt soya milk all over the counter and subsequently the pages stuck together-Doh! I am also trying to convince myself that being sugar free and dairy free etc. these cupcakes contain no calories what so ever! *sigh* no not even I am convinced!

Vegan Food Gifts: Spinach Artichoke Walnut Pesto

thecraftykitty — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:07:32 +0000

Homemade vegan pesto has to be one of the nicest and easiest things to whip up and compared to the store-bought versions I’ve tried: much tastier! This pesto is designed to be canned and then gifted, but well after the fiasco I had last time I decided just to make a smaller batch for us to eat instead!

The pesto was beautifully creamy and delicious, we actually had it for dinner last night with linguine but it was so nice that in fact Lily and I had it for lunch again today on some penne. I actually got my husband to make this one, which just goes to show how easy it is to make!

Hello Dolly!

thecraftykitty — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:58:09 +0000

I’m a little late with this post as it was actually a Christmas present I made for my nephew, and also the very first doll I’ve ever made. This is in fact more my excuse than a celebration of having attempted something new!

The doll and clothes were made using the little amigo cloth doll pattern from Growing up Sew Liberated, although I also have Making Waldorf Dolls, which I used as a back up reference book. I would say generally I was quite pleased, but it certainly didn’t turn out as perfect as I would like. I’m convinced the arms are too long, whether from overstuffing or from the pattern design, I’m not entirely certain. I struggled with making a neat eye with satin stitch so I changed to doing a more simple embroidered eye instead. I also struggled with understanding how to sew on the hair and it took reading the sections in both books several times before I twigged.

To make the doll I used an organic skin tone interlock (from Little Oke Dolls) for the body, Organic British Wool for the hair and the stuffing is made from recycled plastic fibres from a mill in England.

The clothes were much easier and more within my comfort zone. The shirt is made from “Anemone”, which is part of an old Cloud9 organic cotton collection called Beyond the Sea, which I had hanging around my fabric stash still. The dungarees are made from a pair of donated trousers from both Lily and my nephew’s Nanny Lynn.

I’m not sure I will be making another limbed Waldorf doll again any time soon but who knows perhaps a sack Waldorf doll would be more within the reach of my doll making skills!

Vegan Food Gifts: Chocolate Chip Pancake Mix

thecraftykitty — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 11:09:34 +0000

Great big fluffy vegan pancakes… Count me in! Don’t think I’m putting this in a jar to give to someone though, it has Saturday morning breakfast written all over it! We made 2 different types of pancakes, blueberry pancakes for littlest one…

Nom Nom Nom says littlest…

and chocolate chip pancakes for the rest of us…

I drizzled mine with maple syrup but I think we added too many chocolate chips so the maple syrup was overkill for me. I’m thinking some good old plain soya yogurt might be a better accompaniment.

Toddler approved!

It didn’t take me long to work my through a stack of 3 pancakes. I really enjoyed having a thicker fluffier pancake, but something about the taste just wasn’t quite as good as our usual pancake recipe. I’m not sure if it was too many chocolate chips (we didn’t measure) or maybe it was just a tad saltier than usual. They were nice, but without further experimentation I don’t think they will be replacing our usual breakfast pancakes!

Sticks, Stones and Pinecones…

thecraftykitty — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:28:00 +0000

When they say it’s the simple things in life… they weren’t wrong! Our days are now filled with adventures in the forest… We run… We jump in muddy puddles… We often get muddy gloves! We find orienteering posts… and all sorts of natural treasures like pinecones. Sometimes the stones that are collected are thrown into a pond, much to the bewilderment of Poppy, who would rather we threw a ball for her, but preferably not into the water thank you very much!

We have been really lucky lately that despite it being Winter we have had some wonderful sunny (if a little chilly) walks! Generally Isaac watches the world go by and then dozes for a while, whilst Lily likes to run amongst the trees and bushes and gets frustrated that Poppy doesn’t usually want to stay with her.

It’s really lovely to watch that toddler sense of adventure let loose and hopefully we will be able to nurture Lily’s and Isaac’s love of the great outdoors as they get older. Where we live there are so many wonderful woods, parks and moors within a short distance.

What’s your favourite place to explore?

Here are some ideas to inspire your nature exploration…

Four Seasons Discovery Bottles by Sun Hats and Wellie Boots

Source: sunhatswellieboots.blogspot.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

Outdoor Concocotion Kitchen by The Imagination Tree

Source: theimaginationtree.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

Love Nature Heart Collage by Word Play House

Source: wordplayhouse.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

Nature Explorer Bag Tutorial by Chez Beeper Bebe/p>

Source: chezbeeperbebe.blogspot.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

Searching for buried treasure

thecraftykitty — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:23:55 +0000

A certain little somebody is rather into pirates and gold doubloons at the moment. Needless to say when walking back from the play ground at Alice Holt Forest, when she came across some mole hills, she decided it was buried treasure. So when we got home, husband emptied the sand from our sand pit into a tub, hid some pennies and equipped Lily with tools to uncover the treasure.

We started off finding the coins and putting them into a pot, but before long Lily decided she just wanted to just play with the sand, and that the treasure had to remain buried!! Still it kept her occupied for a full hour!

As we aren’t really using the sand pit in the garden at the moment, I think we will keep the sand in the tub for the moment and maybe try hiding some other objects. We also have a vehicle set from IKEA that has a digger in, that could be fun to add into the mix!

An unintended absence and a whole heap of goodies!

thecraftykitty — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:43:56 +0000

Oh dear it’s been rather a long time again since I last posted. Quite unintentional I assure you. Just the usual excuses, Christmas presents to make, baking to do, oh and of course kiddies to look after. I am going to try my hardest to catch up on my blogging this month, so there will probably be some back dating of a few posts that need sneaking in. You never know I might even be able to fit in a few NEW posts from this month *shocking*! All in all expect January to be a rather quiet month, whilst I attempt to balance the finer points of family life!

It’s definitely their fault! But anyway back to all the baking I did over Christmas! Here are all the lovely gifts I made from Vegan Food Gifts:

Lemon Coolers

Red Wine Hot Fudge Sauce (Sadly, did not get to create my vegan doughnut sundae with this stuff, we sort of did, had half a homemade doughnut each with some ice cream and sauce, but light was poor etc so no photos!)

“Twigs and Berries” or if you can’t find pretzel sticks then “Snowflakes and Berries” yummy mix of snacks covered in chocolate/peanut butter/icing sugar.

Chocolate dipped Candied Citrus Peels

Undipped Candied Citrus Peels

Choconut Mounds

Lavender Lemon Curd

So you can see there is no wonder I had no time for blogging when I was practically chained to the stove baking up a storm! I am still testing my way through a whole heap of recipes for the Vegan Food Gifts book, so you can expect more detailed posts on any future ones I try!

Vegan Food Gifts: Blueberry Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix

thecraftykitty — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:43:15 +0000

I have seen a couple of different folks offering cookie mixes in jars for sale and I think it makes a great gift! The original recipe used blueberries and chocolate chips and made two dozen cookies. I decided to halve the ingredients and make two batches, plus use cranberries instead of blueberries and then white chocolate chips instead of chocolate chips.

Here is my blueberry chocolate chip batch…

… and here is the cranberry and white chocolate chip batch. The layers didn’t come out very well defined, which I think was mostly due to the fact that I used smaller quantities. It takes hardly any time at all to put these together. In fact I spent way more time making my own label to attach the recipe to. I was quite pleased with how they turn out but thankfully Joni is lining up a wonderful Vegan illustrator to make lovely gift tags and other goods for the book. I’ve seen some sneak peaks and they look really cool, so hopefully it will be the same illustrator when the book gets published!