10 Days To Go - The Empty Stocking

If there's two things I love in this world (apart from knitting and dogs and cats and all that other stuff I love), it's Christmas and books! So when my Dad decided to write a Christmas book I was pretty excited! When I found out Rebecca Cobb was going to illustrate it I was just  a little bit more excited and when I found out it was my job to make a cake for the launch party I was pretty much over the moon. 

I may be a tiny bit bias what with it being written by my Dad and the fact that I would pretty much love any book if it had a sparkly Christmas tree on the front, but the book is very good! It's about two twins at Christmas and I'm not going to give away the ending up it does end very happily (can you imagine a kids book with a sad ending!). Anyway the story is very good, the illustrations are amazing and if you are buying a present for a child this Christmas I would most definitely recommend (or you could just pretend you were buying it for a child and buy it for yourself!)

I made the cake a few weeks ago when the book came out and we all carried it down to our lovely local book shop (Lutyens and Rubinstein) and ate the cake while reading the book! I would love to say I hand carved the cake myself but that would be a lie, I had a book shaped cake mould (please don't ask why, I honestly have no idea!) which you can buy here. I made a plain white cake and covered it with jam and white fondant icing. Then I used cake pens (if you don't own these already, please ask for some in your stocking!) to draw the illustrations and writing on the cake. My favourite bit was the pages on the sides I think, and the lopsided tree! You can see more pictures below. 

Here is the link to the book on amazon however if you do get the chance to buy it in a book shop please do! Because book shops are amazing and amazon isn't! 

I hope everyone is having a lovely Christmassy weekend and enjoying the weather. 

Lots of Love Scarly x

12 Days To Go - Baker Ross Christmas Activity Pack!

A few weeks ago the lovely people at Baker Ross (an awesome kids arts and craft supplies shop) got in touch with me and asked if I would like to create a recipe for their Christmas Activity Pack eBook. I, of course, said yes and after much pondering I decided to create an extremely easy but extremely tasty recipe for Celebration Chocolate Rocky Road. In case the title doesn't give it away it's basically rocky road with a whole box of chopped up celebrations thrown in, and it's very yummy!

The eBook is free and contains lots of other fun crafty activities and recipes. If you have kids, if you are a kid or if you still think your a kid I would definitely recommend downloading it!

You can download it by clicking HERE.

And in case you weren't already sold, here's a picture of the rocky road...

Lots of love Scarly!

15 Days To Go - Black Forest Gateau

Hello! I'm back. And I know I've missed a few days of my calendar. But apparently there's this thing called English coursework and it's just a tiny bit more important than knitting... and no where near as fun. But I did bake a black forest gateau, and it was pretty awesome and very easy to make and I think probably very alchoholic due to the mountain of kirche cherries. Unfortunately I didn't even get to try it because I made it for a dinner party of my mum's and when I came down stairs there was not a crumb left! So I'm guessing it was nice... or horrible... and they threw it in the bin. One can't be sure. 

I found the recipe here and it was very good and easy to follow, it was also good because you didn't need an electric mixer to make it! 

It's 15 days till Christmas and I'm more excited than I thought I'd be... and I thought I'd be pretty excited. I'm dressing up as Father Christmas tomorrow for the lower school which I feel may be my future career. 

I hope everyone else is getting Christmassy and remember to send me photos of your Twit-Knit's ! 

Love Scarlett x

21 Days to Go - D.I.Y. Mistletoe Hat

Yesterday I showed you my kind of Christmas headwear and today I want to share with you my brothers idea of a Christmas hat. I like to think I'm the crafty one in the family but when my 15 year old brother came running up to me to ask me to make this for him I couldn't help but be impressed. 

The basic concept of the mistletoe hat is that you sew a piece of mistletoe onto a hat and walk around all day making people kiss you. I know, it's genius, I'm extremely jealous it wasn't my idea. 

To sew the mistletoe onto the hat I used a large yarn needle and a pice of green yarn. Make sure you do at least one loop on the little branchy things that come out of the main one as it won't slip out. The good thing about using yarn is that it's thick so you can just snip it off whenever you're done kissing. 

Happy Christmas!
Love Scarly x

22 Days to Go - D.I.Y. Holly Headband

You probably already know this but I love a good headband. I'm not talking Blair Waldorf preppy headband I'm talking full on comic  head band. At Easter I wear bunny ears, on my birthday I wear Deely Boppers and I wear a headband with cat ears on pretty much every other day of the year. But of all the festive headbands, Christmas headbands are my favourites. I made this holly headband after watching Nativity 2 (on the first day it came out, OBVIOUSLY) which featured an extremely enviable supply of Christmassy headbands. This holly headband is very easy to make and is guarenteed to turn heads (okay fine, maybe not for the right reasons, but let's just pretend okay!)

You will need:

- a hard headband

- green felt

- red felt

- glue gun

Step One: Cut 2 leaves and 2 berry's out of the felt. Follow the pictures above as a guide. 

Step Two: Glue the 2 leaves onto the headband using your glue gun and then glue to the 2 berries on. 

Step Three: Wear your headband with confidence and style!

Merry Christmas! 

Love Scarly x

23 Days to Go - Knit Relief Posting Tips

Hello! Today something very exciting happened. Something very exciting indeed. I received a package in the mail. And inside this package was my first Twit-knit scarf piece. And I was so excited that I did a little dance around the hallway. And my brother thought I was going crazy. But I wasn't. I was just EXTREMELY happy. Not only was the piece, knitting by the extremely talented @mdhilary, very beautiful but it also came with a Christmas stamp AND a little Christmas card. So it was basically like getting an early visit from Father Christmas except it was even better because it included knitting. 

The package from Hilary was so perfect that it reminded me of a few tips to give everyone for when they are posting their scarf pieces. I haven't posted yet as I'm still busy knitting (it turned out coursework was actually just the tiniest bit more important than knitting, although I'm not sure why!) but I hope lots of people have begun sending off their pieces.

Here are a few tips for sending your pieces (inspired by Hilary)

1. Tie up the ends, don't sew them in - when it comes to sewing our scarves together it's going to be so much easier if we can just use the casted on and off ends. Also this saves you the hastle of sewing them in yourself. As you can see Hilary tied hers up into lovely little bows and make sure you leave a long trailing bit of yarn as you cast off.

2. Include a sticky label with your address on - this was also Hilary's idea, and it's very clever! 

3. Don't stress about it! - If you're anything like me you will already be getting into a panic about how to send them, where the post office is, if the pieces are good enough and where on earth you left your pen! But just remember - it's Christmas, we are knitting, everything is great! 

I hope these tips have helped and remember to email or tweet me any pictures of your scarves/pieces!

Lots of Love Scarly x