The perfect size of hot water bottle...

...is not too small and not too big but somewhere in between.



I'm a big fan of hot water bottles, particularly now that central heating oil is 58p/litre. They're so much hotter than those wheat-filled bags (and are less prone to being seen as food source for any visiting mice).

I was pleased last year to find a smart cream-coloured one as a change from traditional bright ones (strangely, unbeknown to either of us, my Mum bought an identical one 200 miles away the same week). But the trouble with normal ones is that they use a whole kettle of water (I don't go for the wishy-washy approach of using hot tap water), taking time to boil and leaving none spare for a cuppa.

I'd only ever seen 'normal' sized ones, but a good discovery was that they now make 0.5 litre ones and I picked up a pair a pound shop. These seemed great - you can fill one or two and still make a drink. They are great, but not for long - sadly they're too small to hold their heat well.

Best of all are middle sized ones that I bought for £1.50 each in a shop in Diss last weekend - one for me and one for my Mum. These hold a litre, which proves to be the perfect size. It stays hot for ages and is a good size for defrosting fingers when wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa hoping that the lounge will warm up soon. (A neighbour's suggestion of running a fan at the top of the stairs to drive the warm air back downstairs actually works surprisingly well and helps a lot.)

What I really fancy is an electric hot water bottle that you could just plug in instead of having to pour out nearly boiling water. I looked in vain a few years ago and remembered the idea recently so tried again. I found a whole website devoted to hot water bottles, which showed one but it's no longer available. Some similar ones were on ebay but I was a bit nervous about buying this type of thing from there and the Technomage flatly refused to have it in the house anyway. Even if I ever do ever get something like that I'll certainly want to use one of my excellent Masterplug countdown timers to provide some extra reassurance in case it forgets to cut out....(they're recommended for use on the iron too).

At last, a use for all those little jugs

I've accumulated quite a few nice jugs over the years from craft stalls, car boot sales and charity shops. Most get very little use, mainly coming out when guests are staying and we want to be posh and avoid serving milk straight from the bottle.

So I've been very pleased to find that there are lots of little tasks for jugs when using a shiny new espresso machine. The machine was a Christmas pressie, picked by us - we eventually opted for a De Longhi EC270, chosen as it seemed robust and takes ground coffee as opposed to pods (but has the option of using generic ESE pods, which will allow us to keep a few sealed sachets of decaff in for visitors). We're enjoying the output - it's working really well (and will provide even better coffee once we've finished using up very-out-of-date supplies).

A jug from my Denby Manor Green collection is ideal for topping up the water tank and running water through the milk frother arm after use; the milk jug from an old metal teapot set is just the right size for heating the milk (though the handle gets very hot); and an adorable little rounded pale green jug is proving just right for collecting the coffee if the mug it's destined for is too tall.



An 1980s set of black hexagonal cups and saucers (the set also includes a useful jug) has also been dug out from the back of the cupboard and is being used for the first time in years.



Sadly I've yet to find a role for a particularly sweet and well-proportioned little brown jug from my collection of miniature objects....

Pasta now, polymer clay next

Our new pasta machine - kindly chosen by parents as a raffle prize as they knew I was looking for one - has at last had an outing. Making the pasta dough was very easy - 300g of Tesco pasta flour (which proved to be a lovely yellowey, grainy flour), mixed with three eggs.

We then ran a lump of it several times through the adjustable roller



and used the slicey attachment to turn some of it into tagliatelli (good)/spaghetti (less successful).





We also made some raviolli by putting lumps of cheese on some of the flat sheets.



Cooking times involved intermittent tasting to check for the al-dente-ness - seemed to be about seven minutes in our case, though our sheets may have been a bit thick.



But although the results were pretty good, we're only planning on a couple more goes before I get custody of the machine. I'd long been on the look-out for a secondhand pasta machine - not to make pasta, but to try covering little tins in sheets of patterned Fimo modelling clay. I know I won't be very good at it, but on several occasions in recent years I've bought some fantastic things as pressies or for myself from a very talented polymer clay artist called Angela, and would love to have a go. Her Etsy shop is called Polymer Clay Creations and I particularly love things made using the coloured floral pattern that's her shop banner. So now I'm planning on buying some unbaked floral canes from her as the basis for my attempts, as I know there isn't a chance of me making such intricate things myself.