I’m so bored of saying this, but I’m ill, AGAIN! Just a cough and a cold, no doubt brought home from one of the hundreds of children who came to take part in activities at the museum over half term. But as a result, there has been a great deal of languishing on the sofa, and a need for some extremely simple knitting. So, I used up some leftovers of sock yarn and made these teen-tiny newborn sized baby socks!
When they were done I still had a little bit of yarn left over, so I improvised a pattern for some matching mittens. They’re so cute, I might have to start knitting baby socks with all of my leftover sock yarn! And even though I was looking for easy knitting, I still managed to learn something – these little socks have my first ever short-row heels. I don’t think I managed to close up all the holes very neatly, and I didn’t wrap the stitches, but I know that once these socks have been through the wash a few times, any little irregularities will disappear.
This afternoon I had a little bit of a play with some salt dough, which is currently waiting to go in the oven. I tried two recipes, both of which I’d found on Pinterest, but one was significantly better than the other. These are made from my usual combination of 2 parts flour to one part salt, but with the addition of a small amount of cornflour. This made the dough feel extremely smooth, and it certainly picked up the detail from the leaf cutters (designed for fondant icing) very well.
The second recipe… well, that just made a great big mess. It called for cornflour and bicarbonate of soda, but while the proportions of the recipe were provided, there were no instructions. I knew the split second I’d added too much water because I didn’t have dough so much as this…
I’ve made cornflour gloop with the toddlers enough times to know that I was never going to make anything useful out of it, and I don’t know why I didn’t realise sooner that this is what would happen! Perhaps the state to be aiming for with this recipe is something more like damp sand rather than actual dough. Although I don’t know whether that would hold together enough to cut shapes out of it. (It does work for bath bombs though, so perhaps it would be okay.)
The reason I’m mucking about with salt dough is that I’m looking for an alternative to polymer clay. I did an experiment several years ago using essential oils to scent Fimo, but now I think I want to use something a bit more natural as my base material. I’ve had limited success with papier mache, so I’m thinking that air drying clay might be my next best option. We’ll see. If these little leaves and flowers survive their baking and a little bit of paint, perhaps salt dough will be fine!