Weekends are fun

Yep, weekends are fun and kinda hilarious.

When there are egg whites

Make meringues! My freezer is full of egg whites at the moment, courtesy of the fun we're having with the new icecream maker I got for Christmas. My standby (and the laziest) recipe calls for 4 eggs yolks (and 1/3 cup sugar, vanilla, 200mls cream, 200mls milk) , so I carefully separate the eggs and put the whites away in the freezer - in pairs.

We did a little casual BBQ-ing today which was the perfect occasion to reduce the egg white supply. It was also a perfect occasion to test out my piping skills, which I'm quite pleased with.

It was also the perfect occasion to give the three tiered vintage cake stand a whirl.

And because it had three tiers and I had two types of meringue (fairy and plain) a tier of white chocolate, almond blondies was required. Shame about that. Good gawd those things are awfully delicious.



The stand was hiding away, flat, in my Mum's cupboard because it was missing the piece that screws the bottom layer into the stand and holds the thing together. She'd had it for years and apparently it was my Uncles' Mums', but she didn't want it anymore. I just visited the hardware shop where the helpful man opened about 15 little packets of screws before finding one that fit.

And now we can have 3 tiers of cake. And a tupperware container full of left over meringues and blondies. Lucky us.

On Comments

Argh. I'm cranky. Have you commented on my blog lately? Been greeted by the annoying JS Kit comments system? Sorry about that. You see a few years ago I uploaded the Haloscan comments system to my blog. It was free, simple, stable and allowed me to reply to people by email. It really was the perfect commenting system for a craft blog - at a time when blogger didn't attribute email addresses to profiles.

Last year Haloscan was bought out by JS Kit who recently decided to lay Haloscan to rest - without any consultation of their users. They gave little warning, no useful way to import existing comments into blogger and therefore no real options other than to sign up to their paid (and lousy) JS Kit service - or lose all comments from your blog. Nice huh.

I've always hated commenting on blogs with JS Kit, I found it clunky and annoying.

But, faced with the possibility of having no historical comments on my blog or paying for a service I hate, I've chosen the service I hate. When I started this blog I did so for me, as a way to keep track of my crafty pursuits, projects tried, failures and fun. That's all, just for me. But some lovely people have dropped by over the years (PS did you know my blog is....GASP...5 years old this year!) and left some nice comments and well I don't want to lose that history - and ahem ego boost.

So, I'm desperately sorry for subjecting you to the shyte that is JS Kit. I am holding out in hope that the community comes up with a fix for loading comments into blogger. If you hear of anything, let me know.

Now I'm off to cheer myself up by making some banana icecream, meringues, falafel, beef kofta, hommus and tabbouleh for a BBQ tomorrow.

For me

It's been stinking hot with humidity here lately. It's just the usual February stuff, but I'm not a fan of feeling wet all day, so I complain. And today I made a dress. It's been on my to sew list for months. Two rectangles of fine cotton gingham; lined with a handy combo of white cotton and medium red gingham; lines of shirring at the top; re-enforced; then side seams overlocked together and then re-enforced again.

A couple of those pesky lines of shirring popped out of their re-re-enforced seams, so a bit of make-it-up-as-you-go sewing complete with profanities and feet stomping ensued.

The end product is a dress I can wear on hot days, especially when I get home from work and want to step into as little as possible, but still appear decent just in case the neighbours cop an eyeful while I'm hanging the washing on the line. Works well sans bra too, but that's just for me and the neighbours to see, sorry.

The Smurf took it upon himself to sneak into the photos and copy my pose. He appeared just after this one with his bike too. Little tiger.

A Long Time Ago

I made a little plan. Look at the date on that link, seriously that was a long time ago for fabric - cut and interfaced - to sit waiting for attention. Finally, I found the love and overcame my self-imposed concern about how to actually put the thing together.

I know, I know I could have just bought a pattern, or checked the information super highway for free tutorials, but I like the thrill of trying to figure stuff out, okay.

So, I finally figured it out and I've got to say I'm in love with this little backpack, and The Smurf is too. He wants to cram all his worldly possessions in there (other than his harmonica and lollipop, of course), note to self use heavier interfacing next time to accommodate the resident book worm and his many books.

The Three Bears fabric was from RetroMummy (bought in early 2008) and the lining a simple cotton. You can see the pattern pieces here - just a drawing. It was all very straight forward.

Next time, of yes there will be a next time, I'll add some elastic to the edges of the side pockets, an internal zip pocket and will line it a little differently. Just saying that here so I remember when I try another one.

Playing with Vinyl a tutorial.

New school adventures - for the nephew, not the Smurf and excitement levels are, apparently, at absolute fever pitch. It was certainly time for him to venture a little further from the nest and embark on the school adventure. I thought I'd aid him in his adventure with a pencil case with his name on it.

It went down a treat. I felt like a bit of a fraud; the whole thing was deceptively easy. That fear I'd been holding on to of sewing with vinyl - needles snapping, machine munching vinyl, stitches slipping - was completely unfounded. The project took 30 minutes from go to woe.

So, go try it yourself:

You need vinyl, a zip, scissors, sewing machine

1. Cut out 2 matching rectangles of vinyl for the outside of your pencil case. Make the longest edge slightly longer than your zip. These will be the sides of the pencil case.

2. Trace your letters onto the back of vinyl scraps or small pieces, I just used a felt tip pen. Remember to reverse the letters. I used the letter templates in this Beeper Bebe project by the very talented Holly.

3. Cut the letters out and arrange them on one of the large rectangles. Play around with the placement until you are happy. Starting with the first letter, carefully hold it in place (don't pin) and using a zigzag stitch sew to the rectangle. Repeat with each letter.



4. Using a zipper foot and with right sides facing sew one side of your zip to the top edge of your rectangle. Repeat with the other side of your zip and other rectangle. Here's a good zipper tutorial if you're scared of zippers, it's OK I once was too!

5. On the right side, of each rectangle top stitch your zipper seam.

5. With rights sides of your rectangles facing, sew the remaining three sides together (see that tutorial up there in point 4 if your not sure how to do this).

6. Using pinking shears, trim the excess. Trim diagonally across each corner, being careful not to snip the seams. If you don't have pinking shears, use an edging stitch to sew around the edge of the three sides you just sewed.

7. Turn your pencil case right side out, poke the corners out well. And you're ready for some fancy pants new pencils to put in that case.