Love Handmade?

Of course you do, silly. And I do too. More specifically, I'm excited about the brand-spanking new craft market I'm heading to this Saturday. This actually wasn't on the agenda for my weekend until a couple of hours ago -- I missed the deadline for this one because I kept thinking I'll-Have-A-Closer-Look-At-That-Intriguing-Poster-When-I-Walk-Past-It-Again-Tomorrow until it was too late. In atonement and for your information:


I applied for next month's Love Handmade and got a reply more or less at once -- there was a cancellation for this Saturday, and was I interested? Since the only thing written on the calender from 9 til 12 on Saturday was 'clean oven' (albeit with exclamation points and circled in red), I said yes, certainly, wouldn't miss it for the world.

And I wouldn't.

BYO

I've been thinking about this for ages, trying to decide if it's a really great idea, or a really bad idea.


BYO. Bind Your Own. Coptic Book Binding Kits.


It's hardly the world's newest idea, but mine is a wee bit different because you don't get a set of instructions and bind a blank pile of paper; you get a set of instructions and that's what you bind. So instead of a blank book, you bind a reference text which tells you how to bind more books. Smart, no? I got the idea from library books on book binding -- not from the books themselves, but the way you have to give them back.


To go with this kit is a diary kit. As in, a 2010 diary with dates in it.


Dates and sushi! Sushi Funtime!

The cute sushi is an idea that I've been playing with for a while. To wit: That Anne Girl threw a costume party with the theme being the letter 'B'. I went as a bento box, with soy sauce bottle earrings and a plastic sushi container on my head. Lest that not be cute enough, I made all the sushi kawaii. Kawaii, meaning super-cute.


In retrospect I kind of look more like I've snapped and dumped my lunch over my head than anything else.

I made the diary how I like it -- week to view, extra space for the weekends. Dotted throughout there are pictures of sushi.


'What on earth is wrong with you?' said my Dearly Beloved, who evidently thinks drawing pictures of mutilated sushi is amoral but eating the flesh of chickens for dinner is not.


Speaking of dinner... Not all the pictures are like this -- just the ones I took photos of in the finished book. They're my favorites.

What, you have a problem with that, Sushi on the Left?

So, the whole shebang is up on Etsy (you can see them in the sidebar), and will follow on Toggle once I've caught my breath.

Speaking of exciting developments -- there's a new craft fair in town! It's called Crafternoon Tea, and I'll be there, Saturday 21st of November from 10am-2pm.

In the Swing of Things

One of the best things about making crafts is playing with the materials. It may not be the playdoh and mudpies of my ill-spent yoof, but leather and paper are great fun anyway.

I've had a couple of commissions lately (hooray!), and they've pushed me back to my leather store and into the swing of things. Heck, I've even updated my Etsy store for the first time in ages. This maroon leather was so yummy I had to make it into a book.

I just love that colour. It gives me a the conundrums: I want to use it, but I don't want to use it up. Of all the conundrums to have, that's got to be about the most delicious. While I was digging through my supplies, I found some books blocks that only needed covers.

Better yet, they were recipe keepers!


And all this time I've been thinking about making more. It's like my past self heard me, made some book blocks, blogged about it, then sent them through time and space to join me here in the future. By which of course I mean I got disracted and forgot about them.

'How could you get half way through making a book and then loose it?' asked my Dearly Beloved. The subtext was how could you loose anything in a house with the square footage of a shoebox, but he didn't bother saying that because we both know I could loose a haystack under a needle.
I was too busy with my glue and leather to answer.


Um, pink leather? Highly textured thick pink leather? Oh yes.

And the winner (finally) is...

Merry! Congrats -- your prize will (finally) be on its way soon.

So, where have I been? Well, Life showed up.

"I notice you haven't been updating your blog much lately," said Life.
"I blame you," I said. "What, finding me a new job and everything."
"You wouldn't stop whining about your old one! Blah blah, it's so dull, blah blah."
"I do not sound like that!"
Life paused. "Maybe your problem is that you personify everything."
I didn't say anything.
"I'm sorry," said Life, "I didn't mean it. Personifying me isn't necessarily a bad thing."
"I guess I should update more frequently."
"Or more regularly."
"Or at all."

And I will. I've been busy lately in one of those vague ways which is difficult to define. I will try hardly, although I may have to finally concede defeat and admit that uploading regularly is for now an impossible dream. I will keep reading all of your blogs (even though I'm rubbish at commenting), and you know when I do post it will pop up in your reader -- and you can always send me emails through that nifty Contact Me button. Believe me, although it may not always seem like it, I'm not going anywhere.

Mending Aunty Alison

This is my first cook book. It's the Big Red Book, and while it's not quite as much an institution as the Edmond's Book, I'd say it's a pretty close second.


This book means a lot to me -- I cooked my first full meal from it (Lazy Lasagna -- no precooking required! Sure, it involves mashing raw mince into a tin of tomato soup, but what did I know about deliciousness? I was eleven). Most of the recipes I've never tried, and I dare say never will.


Lambs Tongues with Orange? Nom nom nom.

This next meal you can cook entirely in the microwave! Amazing, this new fangled technology. Amazing, that we have a set of that exact dinner plate. Looking at this picture is like looking at a bizarre parallel universe where I cooked an entire meal in the microwave.


This next one is my personal favorite Meal I Hope I Never Eat.


Brain. Puffs.

There are several things wrong here. First, you lie to your children, Alison? No wonder your son Simon writes such fine vegetarian cook books. I have a dread of meals with out proper names -- not because of this dish, but because one my mother likes called "It's Sort of a Curry". Which means burnt lentils. If there's anything that can make Brain Puffs sound nice It's Sort of a Curry will do it.

But didn't I hear somewhere that brains can contain dangerously high levels of mercury? Moving on, what is a set of lambs' brains? Left and right hemispheres? Where do you get them? If they are not organic and free range the butcher won't have them, and the supermarket only does mince. Do you need to kill a lambie to make this dish? Because there are more delicious parts of little lambies to eat, Alison.

Finally -- a hit with the preschoolers? Can't you just see the darling wee things in their pinafores with forks a-waving, chanting: Brains! Braaaaaains!

But enough. I have used this cook book a lot, and I still use it. I've mainly made the cakes out of it though, for some reason.


That's cocoa, I swear.

One very nice cake from this book is "Crazy Cake". Why crazy? Well, it has no eggs, milk or butter! Crazy! It also doubles very well, makes good muffins, and freezes fine. I won't post the recipe, but Google knows where to find it. Sure, it's not the best cake ever, but that's not really the point. It's marvelous for when you have nothing in the house but a cup of flour and some vinegar and people coming round. Wherein lies the beauty of the Big Red Book -- it's where you turn when you have preschoolers and nothing to feed them on but lambs' brains.

My sister nicked it when she went flatting, many a year ago now.

It came back a little worse for wear.


I'm only going to take responsibility for the cocoa.

Luckily, it was well bound to begin with, so while the cover had more or less disintegrated, the book block was still in good shape.


Some of the preciousness of a book comes from use. You can tell by looking at my copy of The Big Red Book what sorts of cakes I like (chocolate), and that someone once nicked it and took it flatting because the recipes cost about ten cents each to make. I didn't want to take that away from the book with too many fancy-pants repairs.

If this had been my grandmother's recipe book I might have done something different. But it's mine, and I wanted a functional and strong repair. If I ever have grandchildren, they can suck it.

So: a layer of Japanese tissue, a layer of brown paper, and we were done.


Now you can barely tell it from the shelf above. Perfect.

In other non-brains news, Ooty is giving away some very lovely earrings! Guys, this is so cool, go check it out. You can also still enter my giveaway -- check out my last post for details.

Giveaway!

First of all, thank you for your kind comments about my nuptuals. We've been married a month now, and I'm still enjoying it which must be a good sign. Now the celebrations are out of the way, I mean to stick my head back in the internets!

You guys are amazing. You really are. Here I am, still nattering away, and you just keep coming back. I never would have made it to the one hundred post mark with out your love and support. There are fifty of you now, and you're all so great, I want to show it with a random prize draw.

I'm going to give away the subject of my very first post -- Liquorish Allsort Books!


Teeny-tiny books that look like candy.


That's a little bigger than actual size there. Each one is made of a single sheet of A4 paper, cut down to make a shade over two hundred eensy-weensy pages. Since they're folded and sewn in signatures, they do function as miniature books and will open flat.


Best of all, they are effectively a limited edition because frankly I don't have that much time on my hands anymore.



The giveaway is for a set of Liquorish Allsorts in a jar. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment, and make sure I have some way of getting hold of you. Followers get two entries -- just make sure you mention you follow in your comment, and if you don't already follow you can still sign up. I'll ship anywhere in the world. I'll draw the grand prize on Saturday the fifteenth (my time).

And thanks again, all of you!

I'm Back!

Did you miss me? I missed you, dear reader.

Now, hopefully without boring you all silly, here's what I did on my holiday.

First, I got married to my Dearly Beloved.


Do you like my frock? I think it's so great. A good friend of mine made it,and That Anne Girl made the fascinator! She's got mad skills.

We had cupcakes! That Anne Girl's (other) best friend (and therefore my best friend, once removed) made them. Isn't the cake lovely too? The top half is a fruitcake (which she should have in her freezer: I should check), and the bottom half is polystyrene! It's just iced to look like a cake, and it had a small slit we 'cut' before pigging out on nommy cupcakes.


And there's the guest book I made in the foreground, so technically this post is still on topic. Albeit just barely.

Next, we took a honeymoon. We went to Queenstown. Neither of us have ever been before, but we're going to go again sometime. If I had to say one thing about Queenstown, I'd say it was picturesque. It was almost a little weird. All the pretty views seemed kind of flat and unreal, like a film set.


See what I mean? Queenstown was pretty much the set of LoTR, though. Guys, none of the scenery in those movies was faked. The photo above was just the first view we saw that day -- it got even more picturesque later on. Those mountains? They're called the Remarkables. Isn't that just the coolest name?

You could see them from the hotel.


It was actually a much bigger view than that: that's zoomed in.

We went for a walk half way up a mountain, which was a highlight.


The views were quite dramatic.


That's my Dearly Beloved...


And that's me. For years, years I tell you, I've been wondering why anyone would go for a walk in a frock coat. Why, why, Caspar David Friedrich, why? Now I know the answer: they had just spent a small fortune on a wedding and didn't want to buy a new coat.

After Queenstown, we went to Tutakaka. "You're joking!" said someone, and burst out laughing. Someone is a recent immigrant who apparently is only play-acting at having assimilated.
"No..." we said. "We got engaged there, so it'll be nice to go back there for a honeymoon. It's no cruise ship, but..."
"No," said someone through his giggles. "The name. It's not real."
"It's real," we said. Everyone else nodded.
"But... Kaka means poop, and Tuta kinda sounds like doody, which is poop..." Someone trailed off.
Everyone smiled indulgently.


It's a real place. Perhaps slightly less picturesque than Queenstown, but a real place none the less.

But now I'm back at the coalface of real life, this blog included. Another big shout out to my guest bloggers who helped me out, and for you lot for reading again after my absence.

Tune in later this week, and we'll have a giveaway, yay! Guys, it's good to be back.