Apple Picking and Cider Making

 

 I am very lucky that the house I rent has an established apple tree in the garden and this year it didn't disappoint! The variety of apple is 'James Grieve', a beautiful yellow and red apple with a good tangy flavour and suitable for cider making!

 

We picked over 30lb of apples (a massive crop this year) and encountered some beasties along the way! 

All the apples had damage, like bruising or coddling moth holes cut away and then we smashed them up using a large piece of wood.

 If you prefer you can freeze them before pressing to soften the apples but we didn't have enough freezer space to do that.

 We bought a lovely shiny new 18L fruit press, which was great fun and a lot easier to use, especially considering in previous years I have hand pressed apple pulp! I should think it will coming in handy again next year too.

When you have finished pressing and have a large amount of juice its a good idea to check the gravity with a hydrometer. This allows you to check the sugar content of your juice. Our juices' gravity was at 1.050, which is the top end of the starting range.

 

All the juice was divided between glass demi-johns, with 200g of sugar and a small amount of white wine yeast added to each. With an air-lock on the top of each demi-john, they have been left to settle, bubble and they should eventually clear.

This should take about three months, so just in time for Christmas/Winter Solstice celebrations!

Making cider is pretty easy if you have the right equipment and willing to spend you weekend picking and processing apples! If you are not lucky enough to have a fruit press then you can usually hire them or get a local cider/apple farm to press you apples for you.

In a few months time I shall share with you what will hopefully be a drinkable home made cider.

I've made a Denim Sock Monkey!

So my love of denim up-cycling and sock monkey making has finally collided and I have created (as far as I can tell by googling and searching on Pintrest) the first denim 'sock' monkey!

Here he is sitting next to the purple Nemesia in my garden. 

 He was made in a doll fashion using an old pair of jeans.

 

I have cut out three more to make as the first on worked so well!


 

He and the other are available to buy on the Etsy - The Violet Pincushion shop now!

Are you a Crafty Forager?

Last Christmas I carefully collected as many pieces of gold ribbon as I could off the table after the cracker bonanza. I was asked what I planned to do with it... well i didn't know but why let good ribbon just go in the bin? Surely it will come in handy? I mean doesn't everyone have a jam jar or two of ribbons? Oh just me then!?

This got me thinking about foraging crafting bits and pieces. I carefully remove all the ribbon from clothes I buy, from gifts, wrapped stuff etc... I keep hold of broken beaded jewelery, old jeans and coloured paper envelopes.

What do you guys keep hold of? Or smuggle away so no one knows your hoarding?

I used the gold ribbon to tie up these glass purple pinecone decorations my mum gave me.
See it did come in handy!

Sock Creature Experiements

Hey everyone! I have recently shared a few pictures on my Facebook page of a couple of sock creatures I designed and made myself, thought I would share my designs and a few other pictures with you! Taking some inspiration from the wonderful 'Stupid Sock Creatures' by John Murphy here are my original concept drawings...

 They didn't exactly turn out as I originally planned, but then that's part of the experiment!

 I am rather a fan of this guys big red tongue, he can lick passersby and they won't know whats hit them!

This guy has lovely big green eyes and chunky face to match his big stripes!

I still haven't got round to making the one with the big mustache, but of course its on a long to do list!

Fancy experimenting yourself? Well dig through your sock draw and pull out the 'old and interesting' socks as I call them and give it a go!

Malmesbury Hub Craft Market

Afternoon everyone, I hope you are having a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon?

I just wanted to share with you some of the pictures I took yesterday of the Violet Pincushion stand yesterday at the Malmesbury Hub Craft Market in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. This is the 4th time we have had a stand at this fledgling craft market and it went really well! As an added bonus to the weekend we also reached 50 likes on Facebook today, may the page only continue to grow!

Here is my lovely mum, Gaby, manning the stall

Look at all the lovely monkeys, a few of them got to go to new homes. Lets hope they get lots of love <3

 

 All mum's lovely felt creations including a gorgeous new purple butterfly, were presented hanging on an open metal screen

Definitely going for a black, red and white theme here, on a newly painted little corner shelf mum found a few months back

The stand was fully of plenty of rainbow colour two, with vintage lace bags full of rose or lavender, felt kitties also filled with lavender and a tower of baby sock monkeys!

We are next at the Malmesbury Hub on the 19th July (we are doing it alternate months).

If you are interested in buying anything before then, just comment on here, TheVioletPincushion or pop along to the Etsy Shop!

Giant Upcycled Denim Floor Cushion - The Result

 As promised (some time ago I know) here is the finished giant denim cushion. The case is fully removable and washable!

 Pocket side up

 Stripy!

Since finishing the giant monster of a cushion cover I have made a more normal sized version. Its 16x16 inches, and has a lovely squishy insert, I had planned to sell it in the Etsy shop but my other half was rather taken with it, so its on our sofa now. Hopefully I will find the time to make a few more of these over the next couple of months as I do want to get some up-cycled denim into the shop!

Here are a few pictures I took while making it.

Big Project 1 - Giant Upcycled Denim Floor Cushion

I have called this post 'Big Project 1' as this is something I have wanted to do for nearly ten years now... and as part of my crafting resolution for 2014, I planned to start and more importantly finish projects I had always meant to start!

Here is just a small amount of the large collection of old jeans in my crafty room so I had plenty of material to work with.

Selecting several pairs of jeans I cut the pockets off, and ignoring the front and legs for now. 

Slowly but surely I sewed them all together to make the first side of my cushion cover.

So that was the first side completed, a little wonky, but I was happy with the different blues and blacks I used.

For the other side I decided on a diagonal stripe, corner to corner. For this I would use the pieces of leg I had put aside earlier.

The easiest way to do this was to cut open each piece of denim leg and lay it flat. I measured strips about 7-8 inches deep and as long as possible. Each leg resulted in about 7 or 8 strips of denim.

 

The giant cushion is 100 x 100 cm, so a single strip wasn't going to go corner to corner. So I sewed matching strips together initially and then lined them up to start sewing them together.

I tried to randomise the colour of denim as much as I could and line up the join in the middle.

 

So here is the second side of the cushion cover!

I am super happy with it, looks pretty effective and I think would make great smaller cushion covers to sell in the shop. All I need to do is sew them together now, think I am going to use the jeans buttons to fasten it on one side but I haven't decided yet.

So there you go my mega denim up-cycled cushion cover, think I used less than ten pairs, will have to get stuck into some covers for the shop now to make more of a dent in my old jeans collection!

Crafting Resolution

Happy new year everyone!

I am not a big fan of resolutions, as I don't work well under personal goal pressure, but the last few months have been pretty dire for finding time to actually do the things I want to do. Those brilliant project ideas you had five years ago, you collected together everything you needed, but never started and ever worse the half finished projects that stare at you every time you walk past... so this is my resolution, to find the time to craft everything that I want to.

A pretty simple resolution that starts with me tidying up the dumping ground that is my craft room. 

At least I have been collecting some inspiration; 

 

sew a little love 

Anazard.

Tinywhitedaisies

Dutch-blue

check out more on my Pinterest board The Perfect Craft Room.
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