Sunday Brunch Jacket in progress

Jacket for Hazel, originally uploaded by Ansis68.

Despite the fact this was a few items down on the list of sewing projects, I started cutting it out the other day when I needed something I could do in fits and starts. Of course, once it was cut out I just had to start sewing it! Plus I tell myself that it's now seemingly spring about a month early and Hazel needs a lighter jacket - in this case out of denim.

The pattern is the Sunday Brunch Jacket from Oliver + S and I've really been enjoying putting it together. I don't know if it's the pattern, or just kid's clothes in general, but it's so fast! I got this done last night and it just needs the sleeves, side seams, hem and buttons done. Very satisfying!

I've also cut out a hat for me which will be the next thing, it's time to stop fooling myself that the UV index isn't through the roof during winter too and start setting a good hat-wearing example for Hazel.

Oh yeah, and I did some stunning bias binding so my bias mojo is back - such as it ever was!

An inspirational fashion collection

I'm really loving the clothes designed by Milli over at In My Shoes (In My Shoes: Fall collection in progress). Not only are they the kind of thing that Hazel would love, but it's nothing short of an inspired idea and I'd really like to give something similar a go this summer. I have no idea what kind of clothes Hazel would draw, she's never shown much inclination and most of them at the moment are of dinosaurs, cats, fish and mermaids; but I'm sure by the time she comes to start school in a year we will be at the stage creatively (both of us) that we can try one or two items!

Hazel's paper "dolls"

The other day I cut out the little girl and her clothes on the front of a couple of my Oliver + S patterns and Hazel was really taken with the idea of making some paper "dolls" for herself. I gave her a stack of 250gsm paper and let her loose. When she was done she came back and I did the cutting out for her - at just 4 she's very keen on the scissors but not quite accurate enough to satisfy herself when it comes to delicate operations like this! I eyeballed where the centre of balance would be and from that where the 'ground' was for each of them. I cut that straight with an extra flange off to each side with a vertical cut from the bottom to half way through it to slot the stand into. It was all pretty much by the seat of my pants but with a bit of thought about where the base would go I got them all balanced quite nicely, even the big guy in the back.



The stand was simply a length of paper trimmed off one side of the sheet so there was at least one straight edge on it (my cutting skills are sometimes lacking in this direction!). I folded them in half and made corresponding vertical cuts, starting from the top this time.



She was delighted with the whole exercise and I must admit they're pretty charming as a group! There's something about seeing your art in '3-D' that is very appealing. I have visions of a chess set made this way, or a really big one made out of cardboard - say a tracing around a child stood upright with a big triangular wedge like they do for those ones of film stars in video shops.



The one in the foreground here is a self-portrait of her as a mermaid - I'm loving those lips! The rest are dinosaurs I think, I know the one on the far right in the top photo is a Parasaurolophus, and the other two in the back look pretty dinosaurish, though the chap centre front up there looks vaguely octopusish so who knows. I need to get her to tell me again!

The Great Napkin Debacle

In the spirit of public confession and baring it all so popular these days, I have to admit I just sewed two of the worst napkins the world has ever seen. Never has bias binding been so screwed up in application. Never have mitred corners looked less mitred. The sewing was wonky, the stitches uneven and I don't know if I'll be able to face using them! LOL. I'll try and post a couple photos tomorrow before I attempt to fix them. I seriously have no idea what went wrong, or why it kept going wrong - perhaps the linen is just too wrong for these napkins (I had trouble with it last time too), perhaps the bias binding I bought was too narrow, perhaps I should have been concentrating less on Facebook where I was engaged in a debate on the literary merits (or lack thereof) of The Da Vinci Code and whether it was Foucalt's Pendulum for dummies. Considering I enjoyed the former much more than the latter (pretentious twaddle) I was somewhat distracted perhaps. BUT. The napkins really do suck.

ETA: here's proof (clicky for larger)

Actually they didn't look quite so heinous in the gentle light of day, but damn they're still not great! :))

I finally made croissants

I'm not doing anything crafty that I can take photos of yet so to fill in the space I'm giving you photos of the croissants I made this weekend! I've been talking about doing this for ages and ages and finally took the plunge. I was motivated by my essential cheapness that forbids me from buying them very often because they're so expensive and the feeling that "I could do that" for much cheaper.

I made them on Saturday night and the recipe said I could put them in the fridge to prove overnight. When I took them out in the morning not only had they not risen, they'd dried out on top. So I brushed them with milk to soften them and put them in a slightly warmed oven where they did their thing slowly and came out looking slightly dodgy from expanding while being slightly dry on the surface. Still, they look like croissants don't they!


(I salvaged the extra bits of dough and made little rolls with them which is why some don't look particularly croissanty.)

The oven was supposed to be at 200C which proved to be much too hot and I almost burned them, luckily I realised in time, turned it down, and they only came out moderately brown.



They were perfectly acceptable croissants and with a few adjustments in the recipe and technique I think I might achieve pretty damn good croissants. It's labour-intensive but instead of paying $2.50 a croissant I'm guessing these cost at most 20 cents. My plan is to make a couple of batches and freeze them prior to the second rising, then just pull them out as needed. Imagine having a freezer-ful of pain au chocolate or almond croissants as well as plain ones!

ETA: The recipe I used comes from Alison and Simon Holst's Bread Book but there are lots of recipes online too. I'd be a bit reluctant to post the recipe up anyways, but you need all the diagrams to show you how to fold everything and there is no way I'm drawing all those out!

At the beach

This morning I asked Hazel what she wanted to do on such a glorious sunny morning and she said "go to the beach!" At first I was a bit reluctant because it's about a 3/4 hour drive, but then I thought stuff it! and off we went. We headed to Muriwai Beach on the West Coast which is where we mostly seem to go. First we stopped at Maori Bay because usually it's fun to potter around the big rocks there but the tide was higher than I'd expected so we just stayed up on top and watched the surfers and gannets for a bit


(all photos and video from my phone camera unfortunately!)

and then we walked around to the viewing platform to see what the gannets were up to at their nesting site. They're at the nest-building stage it would seem.



Then we walked down the other side of the promontory to Muriwai proper and braved the big waves washing across the bottom of these stairs much to Hazel's horror once we were actually doing it. It was actually quite safe!



That effectively killed her desire to be at the beach when there was a tide - any kind of tide, low, high, inbetween, clearly a tide was not to be trusted because it makes the sea move! Aieee! , I think she was convinced we were all about to be washed away if it got any higher. Little landlubber! So we went inland for icecreams.







It truly was a beautiful morning. :)

I have a crush...

...on Sweden. Does everyone have a country they secretly think they could live in but know for practical reasons that it's unlikely? Well mine's Sweden. I've always been quite keen to visit Scandinavia as a whole, I think dating back to when I was a kid and read a book about Norwegian kids during WWII who were part of the resistance movement. Don't laugh, every love affair has to start somewhere! I had the opportunity to go to Sweden a couple years ago for a Easter Island Foundation conference held on Gotland and I totally fell in love with the country. I'm keen on the handicrafts, the landscape, the cities, the archaeology, the people, the food... I suspect I could be unfaithful with Norway and Denmark too but don't tell Sweden. I've actually been to Denmark many years ago with my parents but remember very little except topless beaches and the Little Mermaid. Hey, I was 10! Oh, and Elsinore. I was reliving the memories as I looked through my photos and I came across some macro photos I'd taken of plant communities in a field near a major archaeological site Uggarde Rojr , a giant Bronze Age stone cairn. I'd intended to use them as screen savers so did a bit of work on them removing some pesky out of focus grasses, and sized them up for my computer.



They're sized at 1440x900 and available over at Flickr if they take anyone's fancy.



I swear it's a coincidence that there's a rock in the top left corner of both! I took them (and several others) because the diversity of plant species, even late in the summer, really intrigued me. You just wouldn't see that here in NZ.