A Christmas present!!

Hi!!!! I´m back!!!

I wanted to do something for my nephew E.P but I didn´t know what! I found some patterns for knitted baby clothes but not the one I wanted so I knitted bites of different designs! But the collar was the hardest because it is overlapped...it´s difficult to explain! But it looks like this...

I have knitted little things before so I'm not the best knitter ... I've lost count of how many times I had to redo it and start all over again!! I took a few deep breaths .. counted to 10 ... And maybe some bad words;o) 

This is the back!

This is the front!

When I first read the chart for the pattern ... I thought that I'd never get it but it wasn´t so hard when i got started .. but I had to keep count of each lap/ row,

otherwise it would have been impossible to remember where to do what!

An arm!

I couldn´t make the collar as in the picture so I had to rethink and make something else with what i had:o)






Good thing I played with dolls when I was younger!

I had a big doll that I put the sweater on after I had put the pieces together. .=( Then I saw that I made ​​the collar too low in the front! I had to redo it but it went pretty fast to do.


And this is the end product!!!!!It may not be perfect but but I like it .... I just hope he can wear it :o/

                                                   

I´m have some ideas about other things i want to do.....but that´s a story for another day;oP

Elly 

Speedy Danish when unexpected guests call and say they are 15 min away!

I was at a dinner last week and for dessert we got Danish pastry ..... Really good! But they weren´t real Danish pastry ... they were made out of puff pastry! That you buy in the store! I was just had to try to make some!
The store had a box of puff pastry with 10 squares (10 by 10 cm), Perfect!,,I got 2:o)

I filled 10 with cream cheese filling with a few teaspoons of blackberry jam, but most of the jam leaked out:o/....So next time i will try to do it differently.. I made them in to claws!!

　
I found a cream cheese filling (but I lost where I got it from :o(..)
100g cream cheese
1 egg yolk
2 Tbs. caster sugar
2 tsp. plain flour
2 tsp. lemon zest
1. Gently whisk together all ingredients in a small bowl. . Refridgerate until ready to use.
(You may need to make more filling, I made some more directly but i got some left)
　

The other was with (thick vanilla) custard! In Sweden we have a vanilla powder mix that you just mix with milk and you get vanilla sauce or..custard..or What ever you call it!  You need to make it thicker then sauce. I had some custard left from the other day so maybe 1½ bags of mix(Swe mix!!) for 10 pastries... I didn´t check the amount but mabye 2..3 cups..Soooo.... Better make more and eat the left overs.. than wish you had more (My motto in life!)




I made these round but you can do them however you want!



I'm not sure the amount of custard, but maybe two tablespoons for each?

I had some black currant juice in the icing sugar for flavor and color on the claws!

 

Bakers would probably get mad if I call them Danish pastry or Danish, and yes.. they doesn´t  taste exactly the same but it is close! And it takes..like..20 min,depending on what you do! You can find recipes on the Internet in your language and how hot your oven should be and so on..In Sweden: about

200-225c, it said 10 min but i had them in for longer..They should be golden brown.

Give it a try!

I said: No more cheesecakes! ... Least for a while!

But when my sister in-law asked if I could make a cheesecake for her niece's naming .. for the little guy who couldn´t eat eggs ... I said: Yes, of course I can. It turned out that I was doing four cakes, for 50 people!!!! This is where i freak out!! ..........Weeks I tried different cakes to see what that tasted like a cheesecake with eggs and that was easy to make! Finally I found one that was good...i hope!

2 days i  worked under the motto: Shut up and just do it! So i did...until they were picked up ... and I told him about the cat!...When will I to learn to be quiet...

Dark chocolate crust!



With a white chocolate / lemon filling!



 with a Crème fraiche topping!

I couldn´t get hold of fresh berries, so I took frozen and made jelly of it..



Raspberries, blueberries and pineapple..



4 egg-free cheesecakes! You can´t even see where the cat landed when it jumped into the cheesecake (front, right &  there was a towel over the pan so the cat never touched the cake directly! but left 2 holes from the front paws!!) :O)

Rhubarb is not just good in pie .. you can decorate the garden with it too!

I felt like doing something to have in the garden, so I went and bought some cement.

There is, in Sweden anyway, bags of cement that you can buy and mix yourself,it is fairly simple...





 I took a rhubarb leaf and placed it on a pile of sand ... then I put the cement on top... then i put a leaf on top of it all.



Then to to keep the leaf in place, I had sand on top of it.







 

Mom had cement in a baking pan! She put grass and flowers on top to get a pattern.

This is Mom´s baking pan...thing..



 I also made a small leaf:o)

Abracadabra! (+ A few days of waiting), I have a bird bath!





Now I just have to find a good place for them!







A magical night!!! Part 2!!!!

Sooo.....How did it go???? Did you dream about somebody special? 
Apparently, I will marry Nicholas Jr...he is a Saint!!
I dreamed of a man with dark hair..(or i think it was dark..).. who had reindeer!! So either ... I moving to Lapland or he comes and starts to breed reindeers here ....or.... I will marry Saint Nicholas Jr aka Santa´s son (at least i hope it´s the son!)
                                                        BUT He was cute:o)

A magical night!!!

I found this description of Midsummer.....it sounded very magical!!

**In peasant society, folklore was a midsummer night of the year's most magical nights, when the natural flow of forces. The boundary between human world and the supernatural realm was believed to be thinnerthan usual and there are many stories about the amazing things that could happen this night.

Medicinal Plants was said to be especially powerful, and were therefore under the midsummer night. Midsummer dew was also sought after, they went barefoot in the would stay strong and healthy throughout the year. The dew were also used to cure diseases and to get bread and beer to ferment properly during the year. Medicinal Plants was said to be especially powerful, and were therefore under the midsummer night. Midsummer dew was also sought after, they went barefoot in the would stay strong and healthy throughout the year. The dew were also used to cure diseases and to get bread and beer to ferment properly during the year. In some places you will also visit special midsummer sources and drank of the water in them to get health and strength.

Midsummer was also an appropriate time for the treasure hunter. It was said that enchanted treasures then step out of the earth and was visible to humans. If you managed to be quiet, you could get hold of them - broke the silence disappeared, however for good.

Fortune telling and notice were common in peasant society. The major festivals during the year was considered particularly suitable for predicting the future. Midsummer was the love feast and wantedto know whom to live with this was the right time.

Love Fortune telling was probably mostly playful pursuits, but there was still an ounce of seriousness in them. A form of midsummer magic still exists today: to pick flowers to put under your pillow to dream of the man should marry. The flowers were picked according to tradition, in silence - breaking the magic was also broken. Just silence is a common feature of peasant society magical thinking, an indication that it is a rite performed.

The number of flowers that were picked are varied, but the most common numbers are seven or nine. Uneven numbers are perceived as magical in many cultures, perhaps because people see even numbers as more balanced and therefore more "normal". Sometimes it also says the tradition of the track to climb over as many fences as she picks flowers. This can be seen as a symbolic border-crossing between the ordinary world and the supernatural.**

 

I have picked flowers many times and put under my pillow ... but I can´t remember that I dreamed of someone special. One time when my aunt was here and she just got divorced, I dreamed that my aunt fell in love with her neighbor who was single dad ..... maybe she needed some extra magic so they gave her my magic..

But what the h-ll ....I´m going to pick some flowers today and put them under my pillow!! Will you? If you do and dream about someone special...come back and tell me!

Happy Midsummer everyone! Happy midzomer iedereen! Bawb canol haf Hapus!
      Happy Jónsmessunótt allir! Счастливые каждый середине лета!

 

                                                            Glad Midsommar alla!

Faking it.

I love Jennifer Crusie´s books. I've re-read her books several times ... some of the books are about to fall apart:o)
This time it´s Faking it that is by my bed. Faking it is about the Goodnights and Davy Dempsey ( you meet the Dempseys  in the book Welcome to Temptation....*where do i have that one:o/*.... you can read that first so you know who the Dempseys and Clea are but that´s up to you:o) )

We have Gwen Goodnight, the head of the family, who is bored with life and entertains herself with crossword puzzles and drinks, the oldest daughter,Eve....or Louise (identity issues!!), who works at a club...well.. Louise works there and we have Nadine, Evs´s daughter, a girl that walks her own...weard.. path. Gwen´s youngest daughter, Tilda, takes care of them all and works hard to save the family business,the Goodnight Gallery. And they all try to keep the secret of their past locked in the basement but one day... Tilda has to steal back a painting that should have stayed in the basement.
And Davy is having a small problem..Clea has Davy´s 3 million and he wants them back! And who do you think has Tilda's painting? So...one night....


**Breaking into Mason Phipps house had been a bad idea, but Tilda hadn’t been able to think of a better one. Now, creeping through the Mason’s halls in the dark, she was reconsidering. She really wasn’t cut out for this kind of work. She was a retired art forger, not a thief. Plus, the place was deserted except for a caterer in the kitchen and Gwennie’s Dinner Party From Hell in the dining room, and it was spooking her out. “Drama Queen,” her dad would have said, but she had reason to be spooked. She’d searched an empty billiard room, an empty library, and an empty conservatory, and now she stood in the barren hall, thinking, I’m knocking over a Clue game. Miss Scarlet in the hall with an inhaler. Those were the days, the Golden Age, when men were men and women didn’t have to do their own second story work. What she needed was one of those old-fashioned guys who rescued women and stole things for them.
Oh, pull yourself together, she told herself and crept upstairs and opened the doors to one empty room after another until she found a bedroom full of silky things tossed everywhere, perfume scenting the air, the kind of room that fit the kind of woman that Tilda would never be. For one thing, she’d never have enough money.
Something glowed on a desk. Tilda squinted at it through her glasses and realized it was the edge of a laptop computer. Clea Lewis had closed her laptop without shutting it down. Careless, Tilda thought, looking around at everything the woman had and didn’t take care of. Really, she didn’t deserve to own a Scarlet.
Downstairs, a phone rang, and Tilda picked up speed, making a circuit of the room in the dim streetlight that filtered through the curtains, checking behind furniture and under the bed, feeling her way when the shadows were too deep to see. The Scarlet wasn’t that small, she thought as she turned to the quartet of paneled closet doors along one wall. Where the hell had Clea stashed it?
She opened the first two doors and shoved the clothes apart to search the back of the closet.
A man**

Faking it is funny, smart,sexy and nuts....i love the family! i love that the girls are a bit... nuts but sooooo funny and all the men that come in to their lifes...con men, FBI, killers...but who is FBI? How deadly is the killer?.... What a family!!