A heat dragon and a baby heat dragon

So, yet another dragon. Anyone notice how I keep saying "I'm currently working on three dragons"? Well, I keep having to make more so that number never seems to go down.
Well, that is at an end! As of yesterday there is one more on the go - that I'm super excited about - and then me and dragons are done (for a while at least)

I was asked to make another hot dragon for someone, so here she is.

I say "she", as this dragon has a baby.  (And yes, I know it could be a single dad and all that, but dragons aren't so good at that, boy dragons are mostly too busy hoarding treasure)

 

Okay, the lighting isn't too good on this one, but I was taking pictures in a rush.

The story behind this is the person for whom I was making the neck dragon wondered if it would be possible to modify it to make it suitable to be wrapped around the knee as well. But the neck heat pack is quite big and, I thought would be too heavy for a knee, so I made a little mini one for the occasion, seeing as I had spare material left and all.

Another cuddly dragon

I have three more dragons on the go (in varying media) but I decided against waiting until I'd finished them all to do one dragon-heavy post and post this little chap now. This is basically the same design as Dilly the dragon but I like this one more. I like that the material used for inside the wings/ears holds its shape better than Dilly's. I bought a cushion last year, reduced to £2.50 because it had a slight mark on it. The cushion pad alone would normally have cost £4 or £5 plus I got a small amount of lovely material, sort of micro-suede. It feels nice to touch. I used that for the inside wings.

So here is Rhaegel, or Puff, or... perhaps I will let his new owner name him. (Falcor would also work)

 As usual, the fur was way too long for what I needed so I spent most of the weekend trimming it. I have fluff everywhere. Still, at least it is masking the purple fluff all over my clothes.

 

Actually, all the time I spent making him I was watching Due South (yey!) so I think if he was mine I would probably call him Diefenbaker.

Fuzzy bag and some food

So, I made a purple fuzzy bag. He is sort of Animal-esque but not totally. He is a step-brother to the Beaker bag.

The inside lining, the reinforced strap and the back of the bag are made of a sort of mauvey pink cotton

He looks sort of sad here, but it is just the way the fluff is going.

In other news, I spent most of my 4 day weekend baking. Did you know you can freeze home made hummus? So I made loads and froze in individual portions for work lunches. Obviously you need crudites with that, but what about when you don't have lots of spare carrots? So I made (about) 80 bread sticks, with a bit of garlic salt sprinkled on top. As you can see, they are not exactly all the same length, but that is fine. They, too, are in the freezer for quick lunches. The roll you see was glazed in balsamic vinegar and was very nice!

So, for the chili festival I made chili infused toffee and chocolate on nachos with candied chili sprinkles. I didn't get a picture of the finished article but I can say it was tasty - like a spicy dime bar, weirdly.  However, I do have this, of the pre chopped sprinkles, and my chili themed fingernails.

I've often though it would be nice to do a tutorial, but nothing I do is particularly hard to work out and it isn't like I work from a template or anything, usually just wing it.  So, just for you, here is the secret to making candied chili sprinkles.

Candied chili sprinkles

• Get your jalapenos/chilis/whatever you use (preferably half red and half green). Have a look around the kitchen to see if you have anything you can use to rough up the surfaces a tiny bit. Something with a sort of pumice stone roughness about it would be perfect. If you can't find anything like that, a gentle bash with the fine side of your grater, or a couple of soft slashes with a knife would work. Note this stage is optional, it is just nice to give the sugar to cling to when we get to that stage. Don't worry if you can't find anything appropriate.
• Cut the chilis into slices of around half a centimetre. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the seeds. 
• Mix 1 part water to 4 parts sugar and heat in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to a boil then carefully add the chili slices. 
• Turn the heat down to a simmer and allow to bubble away for about 4 minutes. The sugar water does little bubbly geysers up inside the chili rounds. It is kind of fun.
• Take off heat and remove chilis, leave for a few minutes to drain while preparing the sugar. 
• Take a cup of sugar and separate it into two bowls (I used ramekins, but I'm classy like that) In one add a couple of drops of green food colouring and in the other, red colouring. 
• Now dip your chilis in one by one and coat in sugar. Shake off any excess. Obviously the red chilis go in the red dye and the green in the green. 
• place them on greaseproof paper on a baking tray. If you have two baking trays, it  might be good to separate the colours, as the dyed sugar does tend to spread a little bit.
• Bake in a medium heat oven for about 10 minutes, though you will want to keep an eye out from 5 minutes. Take your sprinkles out of the oven and leave uncovered for the sugar to dry out. 
• Once dry take scissors and chop them up into iddy biddy bits, and sprinkle on whatever you fancy.

Hostile 17 embroidery hoop

Little Spike humour for you. I tried to find a youtube clip of the kitten poker, but failed. Oh well, you either know what I am talking about or you don't.

(The phrase isn't mine, there's a lot of tshirts and things with it written on but I am not sure who came up with it originally.)

It is currently 9.30, by the way, and I am trying to decide to watch the lastest ever Angel episode or something cheery before going to bed. Sigh.

Also, I mentioned I deleted my pictures of the cheshire cat cake I made? Well someone did get some pictures, but after it had been sitting out in the sun and poked and generally got a lot messier. So, these aren't great, but nevermind.

This is why I had to sort out my mini marshmallows into pink and white that time.