Cake Off and One Last Drawing.

It has been a while and a lot has happened in the last few weeks. Well, not really, just in the last week. Everything I needed to start working has come through and my first shift as a staff nurse is tomorrow (NEED to remember not to answer the phone student nurse). Other than that I have been a lazy bum. Each day I have the days programming all planned out. This is not healthy! Thank goodness I start working tomorrow.

One of the things that happened over the last few weeks is that I made it back to my knitting group. My sister started her creative writing classes which clashes with the life drawing (and I certainly wasn't going myself). On the plus side I got to see some of my crafting friends and caught up with what they were up to before I disappear into the wards.

One of the things we did was celebrate the end of Bake Off by having our own Cake Off event. We baked and raised £80 for the Beatson while we were at it. Not too shabby and the cake was tasty. You can read more about the evening on the knitting group blog.

I planned on making my banana bread which went down well.  I wasn't going to add anything to it this time. I thought plain old banana bread would make a nice change. However, a few packs of chocolate chips fell out the cupboard and I decided to try it with that. I think it could have used a wee bit more of the chips otherwise I was pleasantly surprised.

My attempt at a jaffa cake style Swiss roll didn't quite work as I thought it would. It tasted good but you couldn't tell that there was orange curd in there. It just tasted like the chocolate butter icing was orangey. I maybe spread the chocolate on too thickly.

Do you think Mary Berry would have approved of the swirl? I'm not so sure. To be honest I wasn't thinking when I rolled this and once I did it it was too late. Next time I might attempt a basic Swiss roll and pay attention to the swirl.

Speaking of Bake Off, I loved it this year. I was very happy with the end result. I feel bad for Nancy that there are many people out there who claim she didn't deserve it. In my humble opinion they all deserved it. This years talent far surpassed last years AND they were all nice to each other. Nancy did better on the day and congrats to her.

I have also been working on this. I had so many other plans. Like getting started on my Christmas makes. Attempting to make bread. Have a gut out (I at least started that one). Oh and I had a few blog post ideas too. Instead I have been plonked in front of the tv making these square. But look how pretty they are.

I also made this which sadly doesn't count as preparing for Christmas. It came free with this months Cross Stitcher magazine. It's supposed to be a broach but it is much too large for that so I attached ribbon instead and then handed it over to my mum.

Now though I am off to chill before tomorrow and I may start my sister's birthday socks.

For not though I leave you with my last sketch from the life drawing club. I did this in charcoal and it has become one of my favourites.