Creating | 1000 Fields of Roses

Weaving Our Lessons Together

I’ve been wanting to get the boys to do some weaving for a while. I’ve put it off, though, because I didn’t have the materials to build a “proper” loom. We had lots of cardboard around… so we built “adequate” looms. 🙂

Little Bean’s, nearly finished, with the cardboard shuttle. The loom is a strip of cardboard with slits cut at the ends to wind the warp around.

Biggest Boy’s – we needed something to push the weft closer together, but all I had was a nit comb…

Finished! 🙂
Next time we’ll allow a bit more room at the ends – it was a bit fiddly to tie the threads together. I think it worked well, though!

Published in:

on August 18, 2015 at 8:55 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: weaving

Pie, Tie-Dye And Yorkshire Pudding

It’s been a productive couple of days, with a couple of projects being finished off.
Dinner tonight was a bacon, potato, onion and cheese pie, made by the boys…

…with a try at Yorkshire pudding to follow.

It didn’t quite work out – perhaps there wasn’t enough air for it to puff up. It came out like a baked pancake, but was still nice with honey and cream. 🙂

Today, Littlest Bean finished his wooden raft.

He was very pleased (it actually floats!) His last raft was made of scrap metal, cardboard and tape. That didn’t do too well in water… He’s done a good job this time with sawing and putting all the bits of wood together.

Today we finished tie-dyeing out t-shirts, which we began yesterday. We met up with a homeschool group to learn about how to tie-dye, and this is how it went.

I didn’t use gloves…

Our shirts, twisted and dyed.

Biggest Boy wanted his shirt to look like gunshot wounds… I think he may have missed the peace, love and hippy vibe of the project.

Little Bean and I did spiral rainbows.

Lots of fun, and something I wouldn’t mind trying again! 🙂

Published in:

on August 12, 2015 at 8:04 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: tie dye

It’s The End Of The Week As We Know It

A while back I wrote about a game called “Exquisite Corpse”, where different people take it in turns to do a round robin of drawing or writing, on the same piece of paper, without seeing the work of the previous person.
They tend to be quite funny in the end…
Today, we did another writing piece – here it is! 😉

I was walking down the lane on a cold and windy morning. I was unhappy, for the sun did not shine down on me as I would have liked it to. Cupcakes are very sweet, so I think everyone should have a chance to try them. My thoughts turn towards partying and celebration – perhaps there should be fireworks?
At the very least, a great bouquet of sunflowers! After all they were his favourite food. Of course he could always eat a bunch of grass. It is obvious that he had a strange diet. He would drive to the shopping centre to get some milk for breakfast the next morning.
He ran into an old friend who was waiting for the New Year. There are some that consider that a party is not a party without a karaoke machine but I, myself, would prefer cake, coffee and lots of chocolate. With the possibility of a tiara for each guest, and lots of sparkles.
Bat-a-bing bat-a-boom – we had a party. Everyone was required to have a pompadour and bring a plate of food. I should have been more specific because I said to “bring a plate”. Unfortunately this meant that most people just brought a plate.
Suddenly the cake exploded. In a rush I decided to go and explore space. The question was, where do I start? I could explore Mars. I could explore Jupiter. I could explore the planet of the chickens or just stay on Earth and play video games, but I am more for adventure so why don’t I go to space or I could even dance the tango, or perform a slow, sedate pavane. Waltzing is optional, but everyone must employ their fans frequently in a complicated series of signals and responses.
Also, there should be lemonade. But that had probably been blown up too. It was a great mess I had gotten myself into but I was happy to have gotten out of it.
Well, I’m off to find some beer.

Published in:

on July 31, 2015 at 4:23 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: exquisite corpse, having fun :), writing exercises

The Cases Are In!

🙂

The boys finished the bookcases before term finished, but it’s taken this long to get them in place because our house is… not exactly level…
They measured exactly – but just on one side of the shelf the bookcases were going under. The shelf (or perhaps the floor?) is not as level as we thought. No problem – Dad to the rescue! He deconstructed the tops and shave a few mm off. 🙂
Here they are. I’ve relocated some of our most used books, and will fine tune the redistribution soon…

Published in:

on July 8, 2015 at 11:48 pm Leave a Comment

Pie!

Again!

Wednesday’s contribution – a bacon/potato/onion pie

and a strawberry/apple pie.

We used the recipe for the pastry, but the fillings were a bit more freeform…
The strawberry was supposed to have fresh ginger in it, but we didn’t have any. I forgot to add rosewater, as well. Still very nice. 🙂

Published in:

on May 30, 2015 at 6:10 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: bacon potato pie, strawberry pie

Exquisite Corpse

Well… that’s a title to catch the attention! 😉

“Exquisite Corpse” is the name of a game played by the Surrealists in the 1920s (although it has similarities to earlier parlour games). Each person in turn adds to something that has been written or drawn, but that they are not able to see – the previous person only provides enough clues on the visible paper for the next to continue.
Much hilarity ensues…
We’ve had a few goes at drawing the exquisite corpse, and it’s been fun. Today we tried writing. Still fun. It can be difficult to read it out loud after (giggling can get in the way). We played fairly fast, which is probably reflected in the story. Here’s our effort…
Try to figure out who wrote what! 🙂

Nobody knows what happened, on that dark, cold day in September. The wind was howling, the leaves were dropping, and Gerald trudged on, neither noticing nor caring what was happening in the street. Gerald did not know how things could get worse…
He had a sister who was so likeable that his friends deserted him to go and play with her. She played in the sun with a friend whose face was that of a rose and she was a laser shooting dog-bot with a tail made of marshmallows and happiness who blasted him to the end of time and space. While there he saved the world from space alien lizard people who wanted to scuff the leaves with his shoes. He thought it might rain. It was always raining!
How could this happen? Why? One minute the plan was proceeding smoothly, the next it had fallen in a heap. Perhaps he wasn’t cut out to be a lion-tamer. Why care about the collapse of a childhood dream? Because it is so unbelievably dreadful and you should care very much if your childhood dream collapses around you, yes you must care about these things if they suddenly happen.
What do you think? “I think you have a very large bottom.”
He then proceeded to use his large bottom to expel gas and fly back to Earth. After crash landing in the middle of a park (with some curious stares) he decided to learn to deep sea dive instead. After all, it was the sense of adventure he was after. His mother had suggested teaching beading and jewellery making classes at the local college, as he was quite proficient in the art, but that didn’t quite seem to fill the void in his heart. He sighed, as something suddenly fell from the sky and landed on her head. She cried out in pain and sank to her knees and saw an apple and a pear.
She pondered for a while then she went for the chicken and ate it whole.
And the world was saved from aliens and chickens alike.

Published in:

on May 22, 2015 at 2:08 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: exquisite corpse

Back To Baking

Wednesday again! Pizza day today…

We made up a very quick and easy dough.

We were a bit worried about the dough being able to rise, but it wasn’t overly cold today.

Each of the boys had their own dough to prepare. The recipe said to roll it out, so one of the pizzas was rolled and shaped into a circle. It turned out thin and crispy.
I used to make this recipe fairly often, but I didn’t have a rolling pin – I would just stretch and shape it with my hands. The other pizza was shaped like this – it was a bit thicker and more springy.

Ready to go in the oven 🙂
The sauce on the base is roasted tomato and bacon (pasta sauce, I think). They were topped with steak fried with garlic, bacon, onion and ricotta.

Yum! 🙂

Published in:

on May 20, 2015 at 3:45 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: pizza

Clanger Pie

Baking day again!

We decided to make a pie today, but couldn’t decide which one to do. A few days ago, we watched an episode of River Cottage, where they made a Bedfordshire dish called a “Clanger”. It’s a bit like a pasty (or “elongated suet crust dumpling”…) but with a different filling at each end. The original pasty had savoury at one end and sweet at the other – a meal in one package… We were making a savoury meal, but why not use the same concept for a pie?
So was born the Clanger Pie! 😉

Waiting to be covered – one side cheese and onion pie, one side “shepherd’s” pie (although nothing to do with a shepherd, since it’s beef and bacon…)

Covered with pastry one side, potato the other, with an egg wash.

Cooked!

…and ready to eat! 🙂

Published in:

on May 13, 2015 at 7:20 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: baking, bedfordshire clanger, river cottage

Rising To The Occasion

Bread again today!
We made focaccia – quicker than the bread we made a couple of weeks ago, so we were able to have it with lunch…
We’ve been having trouble with it rising, since the temperature has been a bit cooler lately. Today was warmer anyway, and we put the dough out in the sun, under a teatowel. We used cheese, onion and rosemary for the topping. Here’s the result 🙂

Published in:

on May 6, 2015 at 4:54 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: baking, bread, focaccia

Lazy Loaf

Baking again today! 🙂
We decided to do some more bread, but chose Nigella Lawson’s Lazy Loaf recipe. It’s a sort of non-sweet fruit loaf, and meant to be mixed and then just left in the oven at varying temperatures…

Yum!!

Here’s the basic recipe –

Lazy Loaf

200g muesli (we didn’t have any, so just combined rolled oats with sultanas)
325g wholewheat bread flour
1 sachet (6g) instant yeast
1 tsp salt (we use Himalayan)
250ml milk
250ml water

Mix dry ingredients, then mix in wet ingredients. It will look like a thick porridge.
Pour into greased loaf tin.
Place into a cold oven, then turn on to 110*C. Leave for 45 minutes. Then turn up to 180*C, leave for one hour. Tip out and tap base of loaf – if it sounds hollow, it’s cooked. If not, put in the oven for about 10 minutes more. Cool on a rack.
Eat warm with lots of butter 🙂

We had some issues with our oven, and didn’t have a loaf tin (we used a steep-sided casserole dish), so our loaf took longer than it should have. Still worth cooking!