My husband the turtle

For all the wrong reasons I bought a Katmandu baby carrier last week. Tori had I had been kicking around in a home made Ergo baby carrier, but she was getting a little too big and it was time to upgrade. The crunch time came when she drooled down the back of my neck ...

The backpack carrier has enough room below it for nappy bag stuff and more. The seat is adjustable for Tori and it has a cute little sun shade thing that you can pop out! But it was cold today so Tori is wearing a vintage coif from Circa Vintage on her head. I was reluctant to send her out with her woollen beanie ... if it falls off it is a bit of a drama to put it back on. I have taken a pattern from it and I am hoping to make a larger one for her to wear, as the light blue one is just about too small for her.

Music Monday

I thought I might do this every Monday, share a CD that I have come to love or one that holds special memories for me.

Image via Amazon

So why don't I start with Radiohead OK Computer. I have two memories with this album, the first is that it was a dear friend that recommended the album to me, Michael who lives in London. We see him every few years when he returns to Australia or when we go over to Europe. We used to spend lots of time with him and his friends and red wine down at his grandparents beach house on the back beach of Rye, looking out over the ocean. Many good memories.

The second memory is that it was one of the CD's (yes I had a discman then) that I took with me when I went to Japan with NEC on an Education Schools tour many moons ago. I remember listening to the album while zipping along in a Japanese bullet train, Paranoid Android blaring in my ears ... watching a foreign land zip past me. The last time I was in Japan was when I was 5 months pregant with Tori, visiting my brother on his first Japan teaching contract.

OK Computer is one of those albums that you need to listen to in order (I believe). It just doesn't seem to work on random and when one song pops up on iTunes, I always feel the need to listen to the album from the start. Some interesting versions of the album are floating around the net ... OKX: A tribute to OK Computer is an interesting one to start with. Enjoy!

Cinnamon Treats

Adding yet another cooking to my repertoire .. I introduce to you Cinnamon Treats ... displayed oh so lovely in one of my vintage Noritake cookie dishes (courtesy of my Mum!).

Ingredients: makes 50 ....

250g of plain flour
1/2 tea spoon of salt
2 tsp of ground cinnamon
225g of unsalted butter at room temperature
225g of caster sugar (you can use normal sugar but it will be a bit grainy)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence.

Process

I use my benchtop mixer for these, but you can do it by hand if you wish

1. Put oven on at 180/190 degrees
   
2. Cream the butter and sugar until white light and fluffy.
3. Add the vanilla essence and egg to the fluffy mixture.
4. Combine all dry ingredients together and then add to the wet mixture one spoonful at a time.
5. Split the mixture up into 4 equal parts.
   
6. With floured hands, mould the mixture into round logs, cover in foil and then into the freezer to harden.
7. This mixture is really hard to work with unless it is partly frozen- yes I have tried!
   
8. Once it is hard, bring out of the freezer and slice into 5mm slices and then onto a baking tray. The cookies will spread when cooked in the oven, so leave plenty of space around them. This recipe is about 4 trays worth of cookies (yum!)
9. When cooked nice and golden, onto a drying rack with a spatula.
10. Make cup of coffee
11. Eat slightly warm cookies!

Ideas for improvements

• Add some currants
  
• Add some orange zest
• Add christmas flavours like nutmeg
• You could also mould it into a flat pan and cut the mixture into squares once it is cooked (just like you would shortbread)
  

Sisters Stash

I am waiting for cookie dough to harden in the freezer, so I thought I had better do a post about the Sisters Market yesterday. The day was quieter than I have ever seen the market, but I did ok, especially since it was the middle of winter!

I had a rack to put things on, but there was no space either side, so the rack went behind and was used as a storage device. I put a few bags on the table for people to look at and tried to display things behind the stall.

The most popular product of the day was .... pirate baby bibs .. go figure. They walked out the door. So I might have to do more bibs and some pirate screen printed tops for the kids for the next market.

The lovely Jay had a stall opposite me, knitting away and selling lots of stuff. Beky and Jennie visited to say hello and when Andreas came in for my lunch break, I managed to do the rounds and buy a few treasures.

Firstly a gorgeous illustration that we will frame and maybe put in Tori's room by Elise Hurst, I got some fabric from the lovely PippiJoe and a lovely crafty necklace from Lauren Williams. Overall a good experience, the next market is Made n Thornbury and after that Northside Makers in Northcote (Beky has blogged about it).

Friday Finds: Geek Stuff

I'm in a geeky mood at the moment, I have been making cute little things with computer robot fabric for my market stall on Saturday.

If you know me, you will know that I am an IT teacher and was pretty active in the teachers association for a few years, contributred to a Year 12 book and have done a stack of "other" stuff. In the last year or so, I sometimes I feel I have lost part of my geekery as my attention span for programming and general futzing around on the computer just isn't there anymore. Over the last week I have been busy preparing a poster for a "special project" I am working on, so I am feeling quite geeky again ....

... so my friday finds for this week are all of the wonderful geek inspired handmade stuff on etsy.

1. Floppy Disk pen holder by Geek Gear. I have a box of floppy's sitting there, thinking should I bother transfering the information onto a CD or just chuck?

2. Tetris Cufflinks by Pixel Party. I love these ... nice and subtle.

3. Ms. Pacman Pillow Set by Modernality ... these guys also have a star trek pillow, but I like the pacman ones better. I can imagine these on my back couch.

4. Space invaders mini messenger bag by 16Bit. Nice, simple but geeky!

5. Twitter Jewelry .."follow me" by Punky Jane. I liked the idea of this, social networking slipping into reality and everyday life. It worries me that our PM has a twitter account, as it probably is not him entering in the twits ...

Old music re-discovered

I've taken to listening to the iPod again in the car. I have one of the ultra trendy third generation pods that my students refer to as "the brick" .... Normally I have a definite musical need when I plug in the iPod, but today I pressed "shuffle" and she took me on a musical adventure with an artist I had not listened to in a while. So I thought I would share.

We discovered Metisse (Irish/African Soul/Electronica band) when we first discovered Dead Like Me many, many moons ago. When we originally discovered them, their first few songs were downloadable for free from their web site. I liked the eclectic style and the vocals are quite haunting.



Here is a video of one of their songs to some Dead Like Me Footage (here is the link if it doesn't load). There seems to be a whole lot of Boom Boom Ba alternative video's on youtube. It looks like a teacher might have used it as a media exercise. Sadness is another one of their songs on Youtube. If you go to the MetisseMusic web site you can listen to their new album. Enjoy!

Embroidery Threads

I have been having battles with my beloved embroidery machine. I have a Janome Memory Craft 350E that I just love, but lately we have been having challenges. It is not the needle or the fact that it sits in a layer of dust and offcuts, but rather I have been using inferior embroidery threads.

One piece of advice that they gave me when I purchased my baby last year was to use good quality threads ... always. But sometimes that is not possible and a few weeks back when I desperately needed white thread to do some embroidery for my lovely friend Jennie, my only option was buying a three pack of QA 100% polyester Embroidery Thread. I was in Spotlight and as per usual they had run out of the Birch Viscose Rayon Embroidery Thread that I usually buy and the QA value pack promised "value".

The culpret ... crappy product, guilty as charged.

The first lot of embroidery went well, only two breakages .... then the next job was worse, 3 or 4 breakages .... then last night I tried to make some labels and it kept on breaking every 30 seconds.. grr. When the polyester thread breaks it goes all fuzzy and you have to carefully trim it away, take the machine back 30 or so stitches, re-thread and try again. Sometimes I can get away with it, but I don't like my embroidery looking crappy ...

The job that I was doing last night was my labels. Yes I am crazy for doing my labels ... but I like the effect that I get with the viscose rayon on the cotton heading tape.

My baby in action, heading tape is thick enough to go in the hoop without interfacing.

The only thing stopping me from being more productive last night was my labels. Consequently I changed my construction method on my Lunch Bags to accommodate my lack of labels.

The dodgy labels, the third from the bottom is with Silco Thread...
which ended up being too thick.

Running out of time before heading off to work at lunchtime, I rang around the spotlight stores to find my Birch thread, South Melbourne Spotlight had it. So I rang my hubby who works in Port Melbourne to pick them up. I have already done about 10 labels since I have gotten home - yeah!

My only decision now is what do I do with the QA threads? I am tempted to take them back to Spotlight and let them know that they are selling crappy products. Or do I send them back to QA with a nice letter letting them know that their product did not live upto the "value" standard I had hoped for?

Lunch Bags (or mini toes)

Most of what I do comes out a need in our household. I make something and think, what a good idea, I'll make a handful for the Sisters Market.

The little Lunch Bag or mini tote is an example of this ... when my hubby goes off to work he generally takes a plastic bag with left overs, fruit and sometimes a can of something. Inevitably the plastic bag finds it's way into the bin and the plastic containers tend not to find their way home. So I made him a black lunch bag with Chilli fabric (I thought it looked manly).

It is a three panel tote with Cotton Drill on the outside and high quality cotton full lining so it sits quite square when there is nothing in it. But it is not too stiff. And the thing I like about them is that they are washable. So if you spill something in them, chuck them in the wash with your jeans.

My daughter yesterday quite liked the size and wandered around with it on her shoulder and put her teddies into it ... so I thought I would make a few for Saturday's market.

I'm ready to go Mum

My daughter is starting to get so independent. She is approaching two in September, and over the last month her comprehension and communication skills have exploded.

The other morning as I was putting on her coat, I explained to her that we were going in the car .... 5 minutes later she was in the hall ready to go in the car ...

Wearing a vintage 1950's bonnet and tracksuit pants ... so classy!

Ribbit Free Knitting Pattern

Ribbit Free Knitting Pattern via Spud & Chloe

My daughter just loves Frogs. I came across this free knitting pattern for such a cute little frog .. now if only could knit!