Christmas is coming…

School term is finished for the year, as is ‘In The Stitch Zone’, my lovely weekly stitching group. As today is the last guaranteed posting day before Christmas, things are quiet in my Etsy shop and the bricks and mortar stockists of my jewellery.

So there has been Christmas cooking – this is Chinese spiced beef which I make every year. I use a kilo of uncut shin which is slow cooked in a broth of soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, garlic, ginger, whole peppercorns, coriander seeds, cinnamon sticks and star anise. After about five hours I put it into a close fitting plastic container and press it under cans of tinned tomatoes in the fridge, like I would a tongue. It comes out as a dark, tender aromatic block which you can slice thinly and have in sandwiches or as part of the buffet lunches we love this time of year and the cooking liquor makes incredible stock for soup. I wish the photo had smell attached!

I’m also marzipanning my Christmas cakes today – quite a lot later than I did last year. They were made just after October half term and as we have no sherry in the house but somehow have ended up with an abundance of mead, they have been well fed with mead this year. The smell as I opened the box was pretty potent!

Lastly, the Christmas puddings which were made back in November to a recipe that has come down through my mum’s side of the family and we believe came from the Radio Times just after the war. It has a lot of grated carrot to reduce the sugar content and a mountain of breadcrumbs instead of flour and is always moist, light and delicious. I’m not sorry that none of the children like it (more for us!), although it does mean that sadly the family recipe won’t be passed on.

Quite a bit of supply work in the last week has meant limited stitching again, although I do have a little piece of Bayeux stitch embroidery to show. It’s a miniature version of one of the buildings in the Bayeux Tapestry – this one is part of Harold’s palace and famously has Halley’s Comet over the top.

I thought the open sections were interesting and a nice comparison to the heavier areas of Bayeux stitch. I’m not entirely sure how they have been worked, but I used blanket stitch.

As I was working very small I also decided not to include the two coloured section under the turrets. I had a bit of an experiment but the thickness of the wool on such a small scale, even though it is fine crewel wool, would have made it far too clunky.

A ‘thumb-for-scale’ photo.

As ever at this time of year I hope that all the jobs will get done soon and I can finally spend some quality time stitching. Wishing all of you the best Christmas you can have in these continuing very testing times. Take care and stay safe.