During my pregnancy I made a some knitting projects to welcome my baby with the most sentimental pieces. One of those pieces was this baby jumpsuit from petite knits, the Teddy Pants.
Of all the projects I made for my baby, this baby jumpsuit was the one I wanted to finish the most! Not because I was sick of it but because I really wanted to be able to contemplate the dimensions. I couldn’t believe how, at only 3 months old (I made the Teddy Pants in size 3 months), we are already so grown up.
It’s amazing how making a project by hand, with the commitment of a mom to be, can give us even small glimpses into the preciousness of life and its perfect design. Today, my son has outgrown these baby jumpsuit Teddy Pants. I will treasure them to remind me, later in lide, of how big, or small, he once was.
Plus, I also made the bonnet and the socks. I will approach both on a different post.
The wool of the Teddy Pants baby jumpsuit
This time, chose to work with the wool Merino – Knitting For Olive for my baby jumpsuit. I bought it at my local yarn shop, Ovelha Negra. It was the first time I used this wool and I loved the result. I find it not only suitable for this baby jumpsuit, but I foresee it being great for other Jersey projects that don’t need to be too thick. I used cotton thread from my amigurumi projects to embroider the eyes and the snout but you can also use other wool or even perle embroidery thread, for example. My advice is not to tighten the stitch too much and be consistent in filling the eyes. If you want to give them some volume, you can start by making horizontal filling stitches and only then make a layer of vertical stitches on top.
Snaps or velcro?
I used snaps to tighten the straps of this baby jumpsuit. But velcro (if you can find it in the right colour) is also a good option! Honestly, I’ve found that snaps on baby clothes are a scourge that I can’t understand these days. They’re too time-consuming for babies’ and parents’ patience and require a precision that their movements don’t allow either. Today there’s nothing like a zip to me!
There are few things as comfortable and meaningful as a lit candle. As I mentioned in one of my last posts, we are expecting a baby soon. Until a few months ago the feelings were mainly of excitement for the novelty, preparation and enjoying the pregnancy. Now the greatest feelings are patient waiting, fear and expectation. It is a feeling that seems precisely like the flame of a candle that is kept alight, fragile, waiting. Coincidence or not, this period coincides with winter, a time that encourages us to slow down, stop and wait, clinging to a small flame in the darkness of the season.
Enjoying a candle light
A few years ago I would have been the first to want to get through these cold grey months quickly. But since a couple years ago, I’ve learned to enthusiastically embrace the comforts of the season. I let myself be enveloped by the atmospheres and crafts I associate with winter. The winter kitchen, the cold walks, the moments catching the rare sun that peeks through, the knitting evenings, the series and movies to catch up on, the piles of books to read, the candles lit at dusk. All these things propel me into a state of hibernation with very particular aromas, light and textures. All of those seem to be captured throughout history, as shown in films, books and stories.
In an attempt to honour this feeling that seems to extend over time, I decided to make some candles. The easiest, but also the most beautiful, I have ever tried: beeswax sheet candles.
Beeswax candles
To make the beeswax candles you only need:
beeswax sheet
wick
a hair dryer
First, cut the beeswax sheet to the size of the candle you want to make. I used the width of an A4 sheet for the lenght of my candle and the whole length of the A4 sheet for the thickness of my candle. Any measurements will work. I don’t recommend making a very thick candle though because it creates tunneling effect. This is when the inside of the candle melts but the outside doesn’t follow along.
Then cut the wick about 2cm longer than the height of your candle. Overlap the wick over one end of the beeswax sheet equal to the height of your candle.
Using the hair dryer, slightly heat the end of the beeswax sheet that the wick is on until it is soft enough to be shaped. Start rolling the beeswax sheet over the wick paying attention not to break the wax sheet. You can heat it a little more to prevent it from breaking. Continue the heating and rolling process until the beeswax sheet is runs out.
Cut the wick about 1cm from the end to be lit and close to the wax at the bottom end of the candle. And that’s it! You have the candle with the perfect colour, light and scent to embrace the last month of winter accompanied by a book, a cup of tea and under a blanket!
Before Christmas goes, I wanted to share with you a quick recipe for Biscoff chocolates. I made them just yesterday because I needed to wait to make them as fresh as I could before I gifted them. After tasting these Biscoff chocolates I though I couldn’t wait to share it with you. It’s the perfect Christmas card for you right on Christmas Eve!
This year…
This year, my major efforts during Christmas time have been preparing a handmade home for our coming baby. Because of that, I didn’t share many ideas for Christmas gifts. But you can find a lot of Christmas crafts here. Lately I have been making efforts to offer consumable handmade Christmas. A baked good or other type of handmade goodie is the best idea for that!
Biscoff chocolates recipe
I adapted my recipe from the one from Madeleine although I didn’t use vegan chocolate. If you use vegan chocolate, this Biscoff chocolates are 100% vegan since both biscoff biscuits and the spread are vegan.
I followed all her instructions, but just adapted a little bit the ingredients and the quantities. For my recipe I used:
– 250g Biscoff biscuits (it is an easier amount since it corresponds to a whole package of Biscoff biscuits)
– 200g plus 10-50g of Biscoff spread. You can go further and add as much as 250g of spread but I find that the best idea is to add the last 50g carefully to adjust the dough to the right consistency. I find that, here in Portugal, the best result is around 220g of Spread in winter. In the summer I will just add 200-210g. This prevents the chocolates to melt too much after coming out of the fridge. The important thing is that the dough is moldable by hand. That is the sweet spot!
– 200g of good dark chocolate. I used culinary chocolate because we do have one or two good culinary chocolate brands here in Portugal. If I am not able to find one of those, I will opt for a the best dark regular chocolate I can find. If you want to make this Biscoff chocolates vegan just use vegan chocolate.
Then I followed Madeleine’s instructions and voila! The easiest chocolates in the world that are soft and spicy. A very festive recipe to try and to gift.
I hope you have the best Christmas in 2022! Thanks for keep following!
I have tried a number of sourdough bread recipes with success (sometimes more, sometimes less success) and the thing I noticed, is that all have some degree of flexibility to meet the characteristics of our starter, our time to make bread, our know how, and our nutritional and flavor goals.
My starter goes especially well with a recipe that was adapted from a set of other recipes. A step from one, a different time from other one, a particular proportion of ingredients, etc. In the end I found myself with a very distinctive recipe and procedure that I recommend you try. But again, it is the recipe that works best for me, which can vary greatly from person to person. I confess that it was enough to do it in another place and at a different time of year to have different results. But with a few adjustments, by the second time, I got my usual sourdough bread.
With these particularities aside, the recipe itself is very simple. It requires a bit of planning and is a bit time consuming, as are all sourdough bread recipes (that’s part of it: if you want a super quick bread, you don’t want to venture into sourdough, it’s as simple as that!) But it’s actually a recipe made up of short, simple steps interspersed with waiting times, and it works every single time. Overall it’s very rewarding and, surprise surprise: no kneading required!
Get ready!
The planning part is actually very simple: we have to have an active starter to begin. That forces us to feed our starter about 8-12 hours before we start making sourdough bread. Depending on the temperature conditions, the flour used in the feeding, etc somewhere during this period of time the starter will grow and start to shrink. This is when it is active and ready to be used.
Mix and rise
To start making this sourdough bread simply add all the ingredients in a bowl except the salt. Mix until uniform and let it rest for 30 min. Add the salt by wrapping it in the dough with a series of “stretch and fold. That means stretch the dough with one hand, fold it over on itself, turn the bowl 90 degrees and repeat the process about 10 times. Let it rest for 30 min. Repeat the “stretch and fold” series and rest time another 3-4 times, every 30 min.
Shape the sourdough bread for the final rising. Place the dough on a smooth surface dusted with flour. Stretch the dough a little with your fingers to form a rectangle, circle or square and fold the corners over the center to form a ball. Turn the “seam” formed by the corners downward. Bring the loaf towards you by dragging the dough with your hands or with the help of a spatula. Repeat until the surface of the dough is very smooth and small bubbles start to appear. In a bowl lined with a clean cloth dusted with flour (you can use a banneton) place the dough with the “seam” facing up and cover it with the edges of the cloth. Let rise about 4 hours at room temperature or overnight in the refrigerator.
Bake
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celsius. Chose the baking pan you will use and place it in the oven: it can be a “pyrex” pan, a “dutch oven” or a simple tray. If you use a tray, I advise you to add a container of water underneath to create steam inside the oven. Pyrex pans or the dutch oven don’t need it because they can be covered with the lid to trap the steam from the dough.
Turn the dough with the seam side down onto a sheet of parchment paper. Sprinkle with a little flour and, using a razor blade or a very, very sharp knife, score the dough. Scoring is making cuts in the surface of the dough that allow for steam to release and growth during baking. I recommend making a long, deep cut (1 cm deep) and, if you wish, other shallow decorative cuts.
With the help of the baking paper place your dough immediately in the oven, inside the pans (don’t forget to put the lid on) or on the tray. Lower the oven temperature to 195-200 degrees.
Bake your sourdough bread covered (or with the water container if you are baking on a tray) for about 30 minutes. After this period the bread should have risen almost completely. Remove the lid from the pan or your container of water and bake until the sourdough bread is golden brown (about 20-30 min). Remove the bread from the oven and let cool. When removing it from the oven, the base of the sourdough bread should be firm and have a hollow sound when tapped with the hand.
Timings
Now I share my favorite timings for making this bread! On friday morning, before going to work I feed my starter (if I have kept it inactive in the fridge I try to reactivate it a few days earlier). When I get home, while I’m making, eating and packing up dinner, I put the ingredients together and do the stretch and fold sessions every 30 minutes. Then, before sleep I shape my sourdough bread for the final rising and leave it to rise overnight in the refrigerator.
On Saturday morning I score my sourdough bread immediately after taking the dough out of the refrigerator (the dough is firmer and the blade works much better!) and bake the bread in a very hot oven!
