Card Swap reminder (post by Friday), ++ stuff I baked

I have received my first card swap card! Not even the one from my swap partner, which is still to come, a lovely bonus card! Here it is,

Isn't that pretty? I love it. I'm worried mine are too phallic

and it’s from Emma of Emma’s Crazy Days who you may remember was the winner of the lavender bag giveaway. Thank you very much, Emma, it’s a lovely card and it’s actually our first Christmas card. Hooray! So, Christmas starts here. Just a quick reminder about the card swap, the deadline for posting is this Friday, and I shall be posting my own effort tomorrow (barring snow, floods or other natural disasters. Actually our post office is 100 yards away so I will probably be ok). Thank you to those of you who’ve let me know they’ve posted theirs already ;-), and for the rest of us, we have two days! It’s all fine. And then we can see the finished cards appearing in the blogosphere and it will be exciting. Also, my mother will stop worrying about the card she is sending and we will be able to worry about something else.

One card has got there already – Erin at Gradschoolknitter made these cards which I thought were lovely and unusual (and Erin, I applaud your going down the minimalist route there, it is very effective and I wish I had thought of it), and one has been received by Marushka at It Might Be A Metaphor. Cards! Swapped! Go us! I am also enjoying the various references to making of cards which I keep seeing on everyone’s blogs – if I’ve missed anyone who’s got a card from their swappee, please let me know, because I do miss things as my computer is very slow and repeatedly gets crashed by Blogger. Then I have to swear, restart it, and go and look out of the window, furiously. And I do not like to miss things, you can imagine. So do let me know so I can link and we can all have a look!

When Baking meets Origami everyone's a winner

Despite Denise’s wildly iconoclastic views on Christmas cake in the comments on my previous post (Denise, you’ll be telling me no-one eats Christmas pudding and mince pies in America next, and then I’ll have to have a lie down in a darkened room because of the shock), I have made my Christmas cake today. It took me longer to line the baking tin with baking parchment and wrap it up in brown paper than it did to make the cake. Never let it be said I am not hardcore. The cake will be taken out shortly after I have finished this blog post, having been baked for 4 and 3/4, yes, that’s 4  3/4, hours, and then I will put it in my special big Tupperware and feed it brandy until Christmas (insert joke about, I wish someone would put me in a Tupperware and feed me brandy, etc etc).

Or I could just have injected sugar straight into a vein

When I had put the cake in I felt the need for something a bit more short term in the baking department. So I made some of the Sparkled Ginger Cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance. And then I ate quite a few, because wrapping the baking tin in brown paper had quite taken it out of me. I know they look a bit unpromising, but they were quite delicious ;-).