Nayu's Craft Time #237 A season of illness hopefully over

I've been quiet the last few months as I kept getting ill, more than usual. It was very annoying and I still have an ongoing situation I can't talk about that affects everything too. I haven't done much craft, I'm slowly doing a little more although on a few project I can't show in public for a long time, but I am doing some craft which helps distract me. I'm gaming a fair bit too! Needed to take life slower than normal but truly hoping I'm over the worst for now. 

I recently got a Hobby Craft kit for a guinea pig, which is super cute and very appropriate since I have two, Tulip and Snow. This one looks more like Tulilp, and with a plastic needle was definitely for a younger age group but was fun to make over a few hours. The stuffing puffed up so much from the vacuum packed bag. The felt was easy to work with and I'm hoping to maybe create one for Snow one day. The back was just plain orange (for some reason the photo file was huge, no idea why so not including it). The front orange stripes were meant to be black but that looked too much like their droppings (and therefore odd) so I switched it to orange and almost ran out of orange thread as a result but had just enough to finish up. It's so cute! Hope you've all had a healther autumn/winter season than me.

Over on Nayu's Reading Corner #35 Review Fae Farm (Nintendo Switch, 6/10)

 Yes I'm making you go to my other blog to find out the link to my review of Fae Farm but it's just another click so it's not that much effort for you (^u^)

Nayu's Craft Time #236 Fresh naan & plushie laundry!

cooked vs raw

 

It's been a week and a bit of stuff going on, some I can't share but I'm about to share what I can. So I managed to make naan bread! I'd wanted to try it, and found a bread friendly recipe. Unfortunately mine ended up drier than it should be and overkneaded (4 times...) due to not realising it was meant to be a wet dough. I used some shredded coconut as a flavour, to make it a little like peshwari naan. I managed to get the shapes how I buy them in the supermarket which I was pleased about. 

 They took time to fry and I was exhausted by the end, took more than a day to recover but I feel they came out really well. I've frozen most of them (had a nice stack) so I won't have to do that for a long time. The taste is worth it but might try oven cooking next time, or bribe my family to use their air fryer. 

 

These caused a few tears

 

Next up in the baking department was the easiest dish. I got my family to chop a load of onions, I coated them in a tiny bit of olive and vegetable oil (price of pure olive oil is a little eye watering), popped them in the slow cooker and cooked on a mix of medium then high heat for around 11 hours. They t
20.urned out as wonderful caramalised onions that I'm slowly dividing and freezing in large and small chunks so I can throw them in curries and stirfries. 

So tasty!!!

The other productive activity was taking advantage of a final heatwave before autumn and washing my most used plushies! I try and do it once a year - apparently plushies can get mishapen and damaged in a wash but thankfully all mine remained in tact, fluffy and held their shape ok. It was quite amusing washing them, I just used the quick wash feature, I guess I could have used the handwash one too. It looked like a toy shop carousel by the time I'd done the 3 loads! 

Plushies and clothes ready to get wet!

I'm busy with a review game so not done much craft but the next post will be an update on my current projects, so stay tuned! 

Drying time!

Over On Nayu's Reading Corner #34 Review Creative Embroidery and Beyond (Non-fiction, 8/10E)

 

 Hop on over to Nayu's Reading Corner see the full design of this embroidered planets and cup that I put onto a headscarf as part of an embroidery book review!

Over On Nayu's Reading Corner #33 Zero Water 12 Cup 2.8L Ready-Read Jug review

 

 Check out what I think about this Zero Water water jug on my other blog here!

Nayu's Project Progress #43 Coming soon!

 

I have done much more of this Attic24 Cupcake blanket! Will share updated pic soon

I'm sorry for not posting for so long! Life keeps happening, and it's irritating to me, trust me! But I've been busy working on various projects including a babIy blanket. 

Felt 2 towels for £12 was a bargain in this kit

Yesterday two fun new kits arrived. I found some sweet Hello Kitty cross stitch hand towels, and as I need more than one guest towel (I have Winx Club hand towel and thankfully don't have guests often so can easily wash it but I've wanted to have more cute ones) I took the offer which was 40% off. I think you can agree they are adorable! Unfortunately the adorable matching toilet roll holder is unavailable except for a hideously high price but I reckon I can figure out the design from the picture with graph paper so can still have that cuteness in my life as it's so adorable. 

 

Anyway....the other kit I got was what I call embroidery. I know cross stitch is embroidery too, but I mean all the other embroidery stitches. I wanted something nice, and saw this beautiful cushion. I adore African Violet flowers, and the colours really spoke to me. Felt so overwhelmed when I opened the kit as I've never done a large scale project, it looked quite complex and has stitches I've never done (long and short) and another I can't recall. The long and short is simple and effective way to create realistic looking petals, I hate not being uniform so I will copy the long and short from the picture so that I'm still working to something as I can see where they do the long and short stitches (If you do embroidery you'll understand what I'm talking about, if you don't, well, it's hard to explain). The other new stitch is absolutely gorgeous and makes up the white scroll effect. So this is a daunting project and it will take take me absolutely ages to finish but will be totally worth it and is exactly what I've wanted. 

 I will keep you updated on these and other projects very soon! 

Nayu's Project Progress #42 Gorjuss Winter Friend

 

Previous progress

It's been a long week and a bit of me still recovering from the cold that started 2 weekends ago. I haven't fully got rid of it, i cough throughout the day and I can tell the germs haven't left yet. So I am resting lots, mostly gaming but I have done some cross stitch and the polar bear now has an outline! 

 

It's coming along nicely and is going to look so cute when it's finished.

 

The weather is sunnier than it has been for a long time which is a mood lifter. Lately my rose bush has begun to bloom and i love opening my back door as I instantly smell the traditional rose scent which is just lovely and makes me smile. It's the little things which can make quite a difference. 

Over on Nayu's Reading Corner #32 Review Rita Wants a Dragon by Maire Zepf and Mr Ando (Children's, Picture book, 10/10E)

 

Check out my latest book review which is about a frustrated girl and her emotions being a dragon in Rita Wants A Dragon

Nayu's Craft Tme #235 Medical Mayhem

 

Mikuru from Aikatsu! anime

Feeling sleepy today(nothing new)  so not quite in the mood to take pics of my latest craft projects so I will do that in the next post but wanted to do a little catch up. 

The other week I had a routine hospital appointment for my contact lenses. Upon arrival I was a bit a anxious as the waiting area for the covid screening was busy and almost everyone in front of me was given a pager to wait. Thankfully I wasn't. I was instructed to go to the purple waiting area. Usually it's the green area, so I double checked in green and yes they were full so it was purple. Off I went to the pretty coloured chairs in purple. I waited a while, nothing new there. My phone rang, I felt bad I had turned it off but it turned out that was a good thing: the caller was the hospital reception asking where I was as they were searching everyone for me. I had become a missing person!!! 

Madoka from Aikatsu looking horrified

It turns out there were two purple waiting areas in that section of the hospital. How stupid!!! I apologised, and all was fine they were just relieved I was ok as the doctor knows I'm super reliable and don't usually wander off without letting someone know. If i'm directed to a different coloured section I will double check I'm in the correct. 

Mizuki collapsed in Aikatsu 

 

 

The second medical drama was far less pleasant and partly my fault. I'm not naming the provider who I get my medication from, but the short version is due to the app not having an automated system to catch double orders I was without my opiate medication for almost a week. It was extremely unpleasant and I felt awful. I thought the situation was sorted, until the Saturday I got a message and of course it was a bank holiday weekend so I had to wait until the Tuesday to sort it out. I thankfully had a few tablets spare so simply halved them as half was better than nothing, although a quarter of my usual dose made an unpleasant few days. I have been recovering from that drama, medication arrived safely, and life is back to what counts as normal for me. Going to be playing a lot of the new Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom once it releases tomorrow but plan another post next week with craft updates so be sure to tune in then! 

Sora from Aikatsu

Over on Nayu's Reading Corner #31 Getting there slowly

Tiffany, Sakura's friend from Cardcaptor Sakura (French ver)

Head over to my other blog to find out where I've been the past few months. I am doing a lot of  craft, will have some posts soon!