Craft for Christmas, Easter or anytime.
Here we collect various historical and contemporary crafts.
Good luck with the craft!
Hairstyles, confectionery and the caramel sugar baker's specialty
A sugar baker here lives in the city… We all recognize the song about the sugar baker who bakes cakes most of the day. Sugar baker is the older name for confectioner and no one can say with certainty how old the sugar bakery is in the Nordics and especially in Sweden. Sugar is not mentioned at all in Sweden until the end of the 1300th century. The first Swedish sugar factory was established in Stockholm in 1647. The sugar bakers' business flourished at the major festivals when even the less well-off considered themselves to be able to afford something extra in return. The sugar baker eventually became indispensable and formed his own guild. The most common pastries of sugar bakers in the late 1700th century were: confectionery, berry syrup, jams, ice cream, almond spirit, almond chips, biscuits, almond molds, almond squares, almond cakes, almond matram, croquettes, almond mussels, fresh and dry meringues, meringue almond pastries etc.
During the first decades of the 1800th century, the sugar bakery shops were small and insignificant. Confectionery, in paper, intricate candies and pastries etc. were usually stored in different boxes. On the counter was also a box with a glass on which "neighbor confectionery" was stored. The confectionery consisted of different varieties of so-called baked almond confectionery, roasted almonds, tossed almonds, candies that contained whole almonds, candies in granular paper, twisted ginger candies, drawn vanilla candies and candied cinnamon and orange sticks with breast sugar-like crystals. During the middle of the 1800th century, the old sugar bakers' shops were transformed into patisseries
Facts:
The sugar baker was a tradesman, who made confectionery, caramels, jams, juices, ice creams, croquettes and pastries (the latter, however, without yeast and butter). They kept these items for sale or received orders in a regular small stall, where no serving took place.
The confectioner was the same kind of tradesman as the sugar baker, but with a larger, neater room, where coffee, chocolate, tea, ice cream, lemonade, etc. were also served.
Swiss was almost the same practitioner as the confectioner with the exception of confectionery production. On the other hand, his pastries were extended to yeast products, meat, lobster and fish pies and the serving was expanded with a variety of soft, cold or hot, even spirits, etc. In recent times, serving of sandwiches, beer and spirits was also introduced.
Source: The confectionery profession in Sweden by Editor C.-E Mellerstedt
Make Christmas candy as before-to put up in the Christmas tree and eat up at the Christmas tree looting
Ice styles:
You need:
- Icing sugar, eggs, lemon or vinegar, caramel color for the icing
- Electric whisk, spirit and baking paper
- Bookmark, glitter, sequins for the decorations
- Thread for the suspension
Mix together 4 dl icing sugar, 1 egg white, 1 teaspoon vinegar or lemon juice and 1 tablespoon water in a bowl. Stir quickly with an electric whisk. If you want to color the icing, you can divide the batter into different bowls. Whisk the icing for a few minutes with the electric whisk until hard and fluffy. Dilute with water if necessary, note! take a little water at a time.
Fill the sprinkler with icing and sprinkle a bottom that corresponds to the size of the bookmark. Cut a hanging wire and place it in the icing plate. Bookmark the icing and then decorate with the help of splashes and different colored icing, glitter and sequins.
Let the icing dry until everything has set.
Crackers
You need:
- Tissue paper x 2 in dimensions 20 x 25 cm
- Paper in any color 10 x 10 cm
- Tape and / or paper glue
- Bookmark, ribbons etc. for decorations
- Thread for the suspension
Cut into two tissue papers in size 20 x 25 cm. Fold the papers on the long side in accordion fold in 0,5 cm deep folds until there is about 3 cm of unfolded tissue paper left. Cut the folded edges 0,3 cm wide and stop when the unfolded part starts.
Cut the paper to size 10 x 10 cm and roll it into a roll measuring approximately 1,5-2 cm in diameter. Tape or glue together so that the roll is stable.
Roll up the two lengths of tissue paper so that the diameter fits into the cavity of the paper roll. Apply some glue around the unfolded part and place the two rolls of tissue paper in the paper holes.
Decorate the toffee with bookmarks and ribbons to your liking!
Literature tips:
- The Neighbor Tree by Maria Flinck
- Christmas decorations: ornaments for the Christmas tree to make yourself by Lena Nilsson and Maria Svedberg
Anna-Karin Jobs Arnberg
2020-12-05
With the historic potato holiday as a starting point, we are inspired by Nygårdsgården in Bingsjö, which has a vestibule with fantastic stencil prints from the 1860s. We use the old patterns to make our own potato prints. But what exactly is a potato holiday?
The autumn holidays mean holidays, reading, pumpkins and sweets. But that has not always been the case. During the end of the 1800th century and until about 1950, the school holidays were there for the children to help with the potato harvest. The potato holiday was during the autumn, different in time depending on where in the country you were, and when the children's efforts were most important. The holiday could be from a couple of days and up to two weeks.
Since it came to Sweden, potatoes have been a very important raw material in agriculture. Boiled potatoes accounted for a large part of the diet, and the potatoes were also used as animal feed, and for the production of spirits. As agriculture declined, the need for children's help declined, and in 1959 the state-regulated potato holiday was abolished. A new autumn holiday was introduced in the 1970s, and during the 80s and 90s it developed into the autumn holiday we have today. An opportunity for the teachers to have time for competence development, and for the children to take a break from school for a week. The holiday is now associated with All Saints' Day and is often called the reading holiday.
Potato picking. The photo was taken in 1936. Photographer Anders Forsström.
Nygårdsgården
At Nygårdsgården in Bingsjö, there is a vestibule with fantastic stencil prints from the 1860s, almost in new condition. Read more about Nygårdsgården in Dalarnas hembygdsförbunds tidning The daily work, on p. 4-5:
Here we get inspiration from the beautiful walls in the hall:
Combine the historic potato holiday, with the stencil paintings from Bingsjö, and make your own prints with potatoes! All that is needed is potatoes, a small sharp knife, paint and paper. Then just push loose. Use the stencil pattern as inspiration, or make your own patterns.
Have a nice potato holiday!
And if you want to see more of Nygårdsgården in Bingsjö, search for "Nygårdsgården" at:
Digital Museum.
Work is currently underway to set up the building antiquarians' documentation.
Another word for tassel is duska. Making tassels as decoration has been common in Dalarna's popular costume. You see the tassels on skirt bags, as a finish on ribbons or as decoration on gloves etc. See picture of the skirt bag from Boda.
You need:
- Wool yarn, not with a synthetic mixture because then the tassel does not tangle
- Book or other sturdy material to wrap the yarn around
- Strong binding thread, type bear thread
- Sax
- Saucepan
Do this:
- Wrap the yarn many turns around the book, about 60-100 turns depending on the thickness of the yarn. In the picture, it is a two-thread wool yarn and the number of twisted yarn turns is 80. If you want multicolored tassels, wrap yarn in different colors around the book.
- Cut to approx. 50 cm long twine. Fold the binding thread in the middle and make a snare around the wool yarn with the binding thread which you then pull as hard as you can. Lock the binding thread with a hard knot. Tie at regular intervals, approx. 3-4 cm, around the wool yarn with the strong binding thread. .
- Cut the wool threads between the binding threads. Note, make sure you do not cut the twine, they are then used to hang the tassels in the Easter crisis.
- Boil water in a saucepan and place in the tassels. Let them cook for about 5 minutes.
- Turn off the water and let the tassels cool down a bit. Lift the tassels in the binding thread and spin them, like a lasso, so that excess water is centrifuged away.
- Hang the tassels to dry.
- Trim the tassels with scissors at will and hang up in the Easter crisis.
Click on the image to download the pdf. Print and color.
You need:
- Daily newspaper
- Steel wire or stick
- Finer paper, such as old wallpaper
- Bottle
- Lim
- Sax
- Seeds
- Earth
- Cut long rectangles out of wallpaper or other paper. The cat is not needed, but is a nice employee.
- Fold the rectangles in half Cut a feather shape in double paper. feel free to let the top sit together
- Open the spring form. Glue and place steel wire or stick on one part of the spring. Glue the parts together.
- Cut lashes at the edges. Feel free to use a small thin pair of scissors.
- Take a whole page from a newspaper page and cut in the middle so that there are two parts. Fold one of them as shown in the picture.
- Fold down the upper part as shown in the picture.
- Take a small bottle or similar. The wider fold down. Let some of the paper stick below the bottle. Wrap the bottle, fold in protruding paper during the journey.
- Pull out the bottle, knead to the bottom of the paper pot.
- Fold the upper edge inwards so that the pot is stable.
- Fill the pot with soil and press down, for example, seeds for marjoram pea, sweet pea, cress or any other sticky plant. When the plant has come up, the whole pot can be planted in the ground. NOTE. Swedish newspapers do not contain toxic paint !!
- You can also put a small birch twig in a vase together with the plant support. Maybe there will be some small mouse ears on the stem what it suffers.
