Carved Bird Box

 I made a fun project on Friday for a future article - I carved a little bird box for a house sparrow. 

It's nice as the woodworking project around it is really simple, and the relief carving is fairly simple as well. 

Make Your Own Bootjack

 I'm getting older (I'm in my 40s now) so bending down becomes more of an effort! Lol. So I decided it was time to make a bootjack for the house. 

I wanted one that looked nice and had a bit of grip for the other boot. That made the production of it quite fun as a bit of something extra to work out. 

As usual I filmed the production process, so you can watch the video below. 

A simple project that shouldn't take more than a few hours to make and be useful for many years to come! 

Maybe I need to make a shoe horn next! 

Emergency Cake Stand

 The week before last I had a semi panicked phone call on the Thursday, from my friend who was getting married on the Saturday. 

The person making her cake stand had let her down all of a sudden and couldn't do it. Leave it with me, I said. 

Luckily a month or so before I'd been given an old table. Well two old tables, but one had some very interestingly turned legs. I thought they'd do nicely. 

Rye Sourdough Bread

 It's fair to say I bake a lot of bread these days. We don't buy any. I do love baking though. 

One I bake occasionally is rye sourdough, only me and my middle daughter eat it, but it's just so wholesome and filling, it's also dead easy to make. 

I use 100g of active sourdough starter, mixed the night before. The next morning I add 200g rye flour (light or dark, I'm not fussy), a teaspoon of salt, 15g of black treacle, a tablespoon of caraway seeds (both my daughter and I love caraway seeds in our bread), plus 150g of water. 

It's so simple, mix this together in a bowl, I use a silicone spatula as this is a very sticky dough. Then when well combined together put in a 1/2lb loaf tin, I normally line mine with greased baking parchment as it's not the best tin in the world. Dust the top with a little more rye flour, because as the loaf rises in the oven this cracks and makes it very photogenic! 

Leave this on the side for 3 to 5 hours to prove. Fire up the oven to 200 degrees, then pop it in with steam (boiling water on a shallow tray in the oven). Cook for about 40 minutes, take it out and check the bottom is cooked, if not turn the loaf over and cook for another 10 minutes. 

This bread is one of those rare exceptions where it's better eaten the next day, so try to leave it before you cut it. I tend to slice up the whole loaf and pop it in the freezer. My daughter will often come home from school and have this as a snack, she'll get two slices from the freezer, toast them and have it with a big lump of goats butter on top. Perfect. 

Who else loves a rye loaf?

Making A National Super From Scratch

 A part of beekeeping that really excites me is making a lot of the things I need from scratch. Last week I got my new router table organised and I thought I'd have a mess around with it.

The first thing I made was a super for a national hive. This is the box you put on the hive when it's producing lots of honey. Hopefully I'll need lots of them!