I haven’t done much crafting over the last couple of days; I did make a lovely Shepherd’s Pie (what my Down Under friends would call a Cottage Pie), which all three of us enjoyed:
Here it is after supper:
. . . and that’s before Mum had any (she eats later than her sister)! I found a recipe at Simply Recipes, then (of course) made a few changes, some deliberate LOL. I had planned a meatloaf, so the extra lean ground beef was already in a bowl with breadcrumbs, eggs, garlic salt, white pepper and poultry seasoning (’cause I like it, that’s why!). Plan altered, I went ahead and mixed it all up. Melted a bit of butter in the cast iron skillet (at medium heat) then sauteed finely chopped onion ’til it began to brown and added about 2/3 of the meatloaf mixture, breaking it up with our smallest wooden spoon. Meanwhile, I set the oven to 450 to pre-heat and buttered an oval casserole dish. When the meat was browned, but still soft, I turned it into the dish. More butter melted in the pan, then the remaining meatloaf mixture was added and broken up. Next I added a cup and a half of frozen mixed veggies (I’m more adventurous when cooking only for myself, so use what you like in the way of veggies. I stirred from time to time. Then I read skimmed the recipe! I recommend reading the recipe first, but I myself usually skim it, often, as now, when halfway through and working from hazy memory . . . Anyway . . . beef broth was called for! We never buy it, but do keep chicken broth powder on hand. Good thing I’d added the poultry seasoning, eh? So I added a heaping teaspoon to a cup of boiling water, then poured a bit more than half into the skillet to simmer with the veg and meat mix. It reduced fairly quickly and I dumped spooned the whole thing over the meat and onions and stirred it all up. I poured the rest of the broth over the mix and stirred some more.
Back up a bit here: as the first set of meat cooked, I took the leftover mashed potatoes from the fridge. Someone had been using them for suppers past! Only about a cup was left . . . too late to peel and cook more . . . what to do? Easy solution: I ‘baked’ two large potatoes, scooped out the insides (I ate the peels; YUM!!) and added that to the mashed in the bowl; a bit of butter and a dash or two of canned milk (use what moves you); then I beat ’em up with a fork! When the lumps were gone, I used a large spoon to make little mounds, spaced out, all over the meat/veg mixture. After smoothing it out so the meat was completely covered, I used the fork to shape lines and peaks all over (because they are so decorative after baking, when the tips of the peaks and ridges have browned a bit).
Popped the dish into the oven, turned the oven down to 400F and set the timer for 30 min so it would bake, bubble and brown . . .
15 min later, I could tell it was bubbling; a distinct smoky scent was drifting into the living room, where I was stitching on my pillow. I hastened to the kitchen, checked the oven for flames (none!) and formed a makeshift tray from aluminium foil. Slid that between the two oven racks and returned to my stitching.
15 minutes more and it was done. There wasn’t much ‘drip’ on the foil, so I brushed that off, turned it over and voila! the drip tray became a cover . . .
We all enjoyed ‘pie’ for supper 🙂
Then it was back to crafting:
A couple of days ago, I dumped one of the button cylinders into a small dish my CF kindly gave me
and picked out all the green buttons that were
(a) one of a kind and
(b) the right size
I don’t know why, but I changed my mind here and instead picked out buttons that somewhat matched the variety of colours on the batik side. I chose seven I liked and started sewing:
I had planned to use satin ‘rat-tail’ to form button-loops, but all the store had was white. So I bought two hanks of embroidery floss (different greens) and cut three long pieces to braid. After a couple of inches I saw that it was too thin and, anyway, would take too long. But I had a crochet hook in my bag of tricks . . . I chained the whole length in no time, then began sewing it on:
I began to wonder if the chain was long enough, but resigned myself to making a second if needed (passing lightly over the question of making a decent join). Somewhere the sun was shining, though:
that’s the last button, my friends, and you can see that the chain is just long enough, and enough ‘tail’ left over to tuck inside and secure with a few more stitches . . . resulting in this:
another FO!!
Here’s the pillow on my cousin’s forest green recliner:
Here is the final patch; see the dark square in the centre? When I was done, I felt it was TOO dark, so I unpicked the stitches and replaced it with a lighter block: 
Better, right? And here’s all nine pieces laid out on the floor: 
and from the other direction: 
They won’t be assembled in that order. First I need to buy some plain brown cotton fabric for sashing (separating the pieces with strips of another colour). There will be three rows, each with a square, a medium length and a long piece, but not in the same order. I’m not sure when I’ll get the fabric; the finished top may not happen ’til June or later. But I’ll share pictures once it’s done. 
A Random Harvest 