Happy, Happy Mail

It is the sweetest sound, you know when the postie tries shoving something through the letter box. And fails. So you get a knock on the door. Then when you answer it a parcel is thrust at you and off they stomp.(you can almost hear them thinking "that's 2 minutes lost forever")

Well it happened here this morning.

Look at what was in my package.

A hand made card, a not so little thank you for reading and visiting the blog, Poppy Patchwork. 

From one green fingered gardener to another, some glorious future colour. The Sweet Pea seeds are already in to soak, I will get them into some compost after 48 hours soaking.

Some chocolate, sadly the Malteser Bunny is no more.

The other one is in the wings waiting for his turn.

Last, but by no means least were these fat quarters, sewing and knitting fabrics. I will carefully consider what to make with them.

HUMBUG.

The sewing fabric will be the front panel of a new sewing machine cover. I will look at it almost every day when I sit down to sew.

The knitting fabric will become the main focal fabric of a project  bag. I want to work out a pattern for a sock bag with a divider and loops to thread my yarn through. I hate a tangled mess and use 2 small bags now. I will share these with you as soon as I make a start.

I am delighted and surprised, even though I did get the message telling me that a small parcel was on it,s way. I had no idea what was coming but never dreamt that it would be so much and so perfect for me.

  

Thank you so much Marlene, both for the gifts and for the inspiration on the weaving front. I am perusing through a selection of books and once I get a better idea of what my goals will be I will be shopping. 

Note to self nothing on my wish list bar weaving things.

On the craft front it has been a bit slow today, I had a bit of a cleaning frenzy downstairs and went through a couple of kitchen drawers and cupboards. A few things are heading to the CS and a large thing has landed in the kitchen.

I finally got around to replacing the Mini Oven that dies last year, or was it the year before. I have been using the combi oven but it is not ideal, a bit too small really. 

I did think about replacing that but on thinking it over realised that a mini oven was the better option, and the most economical by a very long shot.

Now you know that I have a 1 in, 2 out rule. Yes I have parted with several small things but as far as space goes they do not begin to cover it.

So..... my air fryer will be going. I do not use it for frying now, just for jacket potatoes. After 5 minutes in the microwave they cook and crisp up in 30 minutes in the air fryer.

But, it is an ugly cumbersome thing and lives on the bottom shelf of the pantry. So it is hard work to lift it out and then I invariably have to spend time shuffling things around to make room for it.

The new gadget fits neatly in the corner, looking a bit like an extra from Star Trek, and besides making perfect jacket potatoes will bake a cake, a loaf of bread and any thing else that I care to put in it.

It is not huge, I rejected the bigger ones as being too big. There are only the 2 of us most of the time and I can get a small roast dinner in there if I want to. It will bake a pie and cook the veg on the bottom shelf, in fact when my old one was working I hardly used the big oven at all.

I think know that I will save the cost very quickly as they are far more economical to run.

I am now looking very carefully at my bread maker, I love it, it saves me the work of kneading but it does not save me time. It takes up a huge amount of space and at most I use it 2 times a week. I can get 3 large loaves in my main oven and they would last a fortnight, for 45 minutes oven time. I can let the dough prove overnight, knock it back and shape first thing and have the loaves out and cooling before walking the dogs.

Food for thought.

On the subject of food, it is Shrove Tuesday so we are having pancakes tonight, filled with left over pork, mushrooms and other veggy delights then baked under a mushroom and cheese sauce (in the new oven). Better get cracking, pun intended. You can't make a pancake without cracking an egg. Well you can, and I can, but not today.

                    TTFN                                        Pam