On making soap

It's been a VERY long time between soap making adventures. I've lived here for 5 years and been with TheHusband for 7 years and I've not made soap in that time.

I haven't needed to buy soap though (though I do sometimes cause I love handmade soap!) because I used to make a lot of soap.

But on Friday I had some lovely women friends come over and watch me make soap. It was all kinds of fun! And I could feel that inner mental housekeeper walking into long-closed rooms, tossing aside the dusty curtains, pulling back the cover cloths from stylish furniture and saying words like "triglyceride" and "saponification" for the first time in a llloooooonnnnnnggggg time.

I also made a lotion. It was so easy and it is a gorgeous rose-scented one. I used a rose hydrosol though rather than essential oils and now I'm all an-itch to buy more essential oils and hydrosols and oils!

DIY kind of weekend

I bought some white rice paper lantern shades for some lights in our house when we moved in here in January, but didn't really consider that our teeny house is actually not the one with the vaulted ceilings I imagine and the previous owners for some reason put pendulum lights underneath the fans in various rooms and lo! you have yo watch yourself underneath them when the fans are on and you are more than 6' tall.

So these huge lanterns were just not going to work on the bare lights around the place. I bought some paper punch shapes - pond leaves and butterflies apparently - and glued them on with PVA.

So much fun.

Branching out into a new form of expression

Yesterday I dropped the car off at the mechanic and walked home with Sally on my back. I had packed my camera into my bag as I left the house - it was a minimal bag with no baby stuff, my keys/wallet/mobile triad, water, sunglasses. camera.

 

I took my time and wended my way through the suburbs back to my house. It was a short walk (3-4km perhaps?) and lovely mild Spring weather.

Sally went to sleep on my back pretty quickly and so I was even less inclined to hurry home. We'd had a pretty ordinary night as she's cutting another tooth and going through a brain growth phase. At just less than 6 months she is now adept at rolling over back-->front and is mobile. Not crawling or creeping but enough so she can move and throw up on my boot this afternoon though.

I took the opportunity to use my camera (which is just a point and shoot Sony DSC-W180) and test out its marco function.

I love taking photos and this week I bought a "new" camera which has upgraded me from "I take photos" to "maybe I'm a photographer". I bought a second hand Nikon D40 from a professional photographer with an extra two batteries, 18-55 Nikkor lens, charger, strap and a UV filter.

I want to be knowledgeable about photography and cameras and so forth but I also want to just explore an artform. I'm not artistic at all. I'm crafty and creative but art, not so much. Is photography an artform? Not prepared to open that can o' worms right here but is this the artform that I've been looking for?

Oh yeah, back to the photographs. This one above is awesome - I loved the dew and didn't realise it had a bug in it as well but I will get into Lightroom and see how much I can blow it up.

So for giftmas this year, expect photographs from me :). And yes please for photography tips, or suggestions of equipment or things to photograph. I like little things, and flowers because of their colours. And rainbows. I'm not brave enough to get into photographing people yet but I want to!

Project list!

So for at least the next 4 months we are living quite close to the bone money-wise, which means that I in particular need to watch my pennies. But entertainment is rarely free, so I am having to look for ways to amuse myself around baby wrangling.

On Ravelry, I signed up for the "shop the stash" thread, so that I am committing not so much to not buying yarn (zomg! don't tell me I can't do something!!!) but that I'm going to use what I have to hand. Which is hard when I really want to knit a Rose Red beret in a bright green but instead I am knitting it in a purpley-pink because I don't have any green.

A good thing that I love dyeing yarn, and have some amazing stuff to use up still. This one in a wool/alpaca blend and is a smooshy but loosely plied yarn which will be awesome in the cable and lace pattern planned.

In an effort to be more frugal and to get some $$ on the inwards side of our ledger, I am also going to list the craft that I have things in the cupboard with which to do and haven't had the time. I have some more of that time now, so I plan on using it.

Projects on the plan:

• Central Park Hoodie - yes, I'm amazingly far behind the 8-ball in getting excited about this. Kate at Craftastrophies gifted me some amazingly smooshie possum-merino The Knittery (sadly now defunct) yarn last year as a wedding gift and it's now going to be turned into an awesome cardigan. I actually wound a ball this morning, discovering in the process that each of the 3 smooshy skeins that I have is actually 3 skeins, so there is a lot of ball winding in my future. Will swatch today I think.
• Rose Red beret as above.
• Duck Soup to finish. Seriously - it's got 1 and a bit sleeves to do. It's a baby garment so that is NOT a lot of knitting. I should just finish it.
  
• Moderne Baby Blanket from Mason Dixon Knitting.
• At least 2 baby hats.
• Plus a heap of other hats that I've traded things with other lovely mamas.
  
• Quilts/play mats - 8 I think. I have tie-dyed some of the fabric and just need to get sewing. Next week. And photos of the fabric as well cause it is AWESOME.
• Framing of various things.
• Cards to make.
• Beading to do.
• Books to read.
• Postcards (awaiting delivery) to send!
• Sell my tshirt collection cause now that I have awesome cleavage care of breastfeeding, my tshirts don't fit. Some of them are AWESOME and it's hard to part with them*.
  

So it's not like I don't have things to do. But perhaps frugality comes with a dose of stepping away from the shopping and into what is to hand. This is not even touching on the cooking that I could do, the libraries to go to, the people to visit with and letters to write.

* Kate and I had a big chat about this on the weekend when we went for a long drive to see a rather underwhelming alpaca show. It's a catch-22 situation to have a lot of (things - let's say tshirts). I open my drawer and think "Wow I have a lot of tshirts I will wear this one!" and I put it on, and it's too small. Or smells odd. Or has a stain. Or the arms don't sit right. So I either wear it and fidget with it all day, or I take it off and put it back in the drawer. Because I have a lot of tshirts and it's a Good Shirt so I don't want to reject it out of hand. But if I actually tried them all on, my huge pile of shirts turns (turned actually) into a set of maybe 6 that fit and are in good condition. Which gets me thinking about why I keep the ones that don't and aren't. Some of them I adore because they're cute and funky and retro, just like me. Others I keep because I feel that I should own a black one, or a white one. But there is no point in having clutter, which is what defunct tshirts and sweaters and shoes and so on are.

Moths in the stash... and the cupboard... and the ugg boots

I had a friend ask me what to do about moths:

The little green sweater I have on here has been eaten by moths. Just about everything in our house that’s woollen has. It’s really getting out of control. At the moment only things that have been on or near the floor, like clothes in bags in the wardrobe or under the bed and uggboots and slippers so I think they were in the house when we came here, not brought in. I noticed a couple of holes in a woollen skivi last year but just thought I had snagged it on something. That must have been when it started and they’ve reproduced a lot over summer. It’s terrible. I had a beautiful little woollen bag that was made for me by my Japanese grandmother when I stayed there for two weeks back in 2002 and they ate through it completely! Normally moths seem to pop in, have a bit of a munch and then disappear and you find the evidence of them a few months later. This time they were crawling all over it and on the floor where it was sitting! They ate holes in the first jumper I ever knitted too. Anyway…this is my long winded way of asking if you have any tips for getting rid of moths. I kind of want to avoid moth balls cause they’re horribly toxic and Myles is getting into everything. They seem to be everywhere though and spreading so fast. I’ve never seen anything like it. They swarm! They seem to prefer wool over cotton and silk at the moment but I figure it wont take them long. The thought of going through everything and discovering all the things they may or may not have eaten is a little depressing. Oh I don’t even like to think about my poor wool stash!

And I replied:

The moths sound terrible! The non-chemical ways I can think is to get everything you can find that is woolly, and put it in dark plastic garbage bags, and leave them in the sun for a week or so. Leave it outside in fact as the alternating cold and heat will kill them. Little things can go into the freezer though. It will take a week to kill them. Bin anything that has been obviously eaten though.

Then you'll need to use pyrethrin (hardware store - organic, derived from chrysanthamums) to clean the house of them. You can also get pyrethrin traps (pantry moth traps) to get them. Everything then needs to be stored in airtight containers.

Moths tend to go for wool that is not scrupulously clean, such as ugg boots. Anything that isn't eaten should be cleaned thoroughly - wool wash, dried in the sun, and then stored in airtight containers with cloves, lavender, camphor and/or eucalyptus (essential oil on a piece of cotton taped in the top of the container, or on wood beads done the same way, with bay leaves sprinkled through as well).

It's a HUGE pain in the bum to get rid of them. I had this happen to me in Sydney because my pantry was infested and they also got into my stash and my coats. But I'm really sensitive to chemicals so couldn't dry clean and exterminate with chemicals. But you will have to check your stash...

So what are your suggestions? Anything else I've missed?

Table decorated!

Way too long ago to be 'fessing up here (it's more than 6 months) I commissioned my friend Eve from Atom and Eve to make some decals for a weird table I got in an op shop a couple of years ago.

It was white formica and I painted it purple originally and while it was an AWESOME colour, a paint mishap (crap formulation - product recalled after I'd painted of course!) meant the finish was less than awesome.


So I discussed with Eve how to make some octagons to suit the table. She was easy to work with and had some great ideas. I went with turquiose and wood grain and they arrived pre packaged for me, numbered and everything!

All I had to do was take the backing off and apply. Some of them needed trimming to fit of course!


And in the end it looks awesome! I bought a piece of 0.4mm plastic to cover it as well, as the paint is a bit rough still

Boy or girl

Some people are ADAMANT that they know what we're having! So here's a list for bragging rights:

BOY:
Parry
Yvonne
A million random people

Girl:
Sarah
Amie

Here are some words that we want for our child for the future. We consciously conceived this baby and we want to consciously parent as well - so the first part of that was to work out what that meant!

• Happy
• Thriving
• Cherished
• Loved
• Time
• Play
• Learn
• Talk
• Love
• Hope
• Learn
• Sleep
• Eat
• Walk
• Run
• Swim
• Free
• Best
• Fair

I then want to use Wordle to make some word clouds - I may have to cheat to get the effect that I want though, by repeatedly saying Puggle's name (or I could just put Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle Puggle!). We want this colour too: #80F6C3

Might have to go and paint some with that colour now!

10 Craft things that I have on my brain

Yep there are 10 projects that I want to get through before Puggles arrives. Which is in less than 100 days. So plenty of time!

Some of these need me to be using power tools which makes me really happy to!

1. Decorate gumnuts to be silver bells for Midsummer
2. Make a 4 seasons tree
3. Replace the glass in 3 frames - broken by moi, and by the cat, and by the heat dropping one off the wall
   
4. Hang all framed pictures on wall hooks!
   
5. Make a cotton reel board
6. Make wall buttons and decorate the bedroom wall
   
7. Make 2x baby quilts
8. Finish Puggle's Duck Soup jacket
9. Decorate the bed head
10. Put the decals on the kitchen table

What giftmas means around here...

Christmas is one of those things that we don't really get in to around Chateau Archer - mostly because it's so commercial and because we are not Christian so it's strange to celebrate a festival such as that.

However, we are both Aussies and it is such a core part of our culture that it's hard not to enjoy bits of it and to be caught up in it. For example, I love singing carols because I'm a soprano, and I love the descants, and it's fun. But some of the words are annoying, and some of the themes/stories go against my grain, but in the end it's part of my culture still.

So we kind of have a hybrid celebration of the end of the year. We do gifts, but it is minimal and not hugely over the top, and limited to close family and friends. Not-so-close family and friends get a card, or something small and foodie. This year I'm planning on making vanilla sugar, and some gingerbread people, and maybe more lemon butter if I can get my hands on lots of jars.

I also like to craft for Christmas - this year I'm planning on making modern paper ornaments from Design Sponge, and decorating some pine cones for wall art, and scenting some for a centrepiece. I also want to make a wreath, and put it on our door. I don't want snow-themed goodies, or snowflakes etc as it doesn't snow here, and it is hot during summer so it's not true to form - but I do want some colour and theme around here! Maybe something like a puzzle piece wreath, or else a pine cone one, or a ribbon one?

We actually celebrate the summer solstice more than Christmas anyway. The solstice is also someone's birthday this year, and the day after the Carols by Candlelight that I'm arranging people to attend because it's fun. It's about the longest day of the year and the turning of the seasons and the celebrations that should surround that. It's about eating food that is in season (oh cherries, how I love thee!) and being with people who've made the year what it was.

Part of thinking about this is because next Christmas, we'll have a Puggle to bring into this. We are leaning towards a toy-free giftmas approach, and a focus on what we are celebrating rather than what others are celebrating. It's also about family and friends and what makes us part of a community.

Traditionally for us, we go to the Adelaide Rowing Club on Christmas morning and carol to raise money for our choir. Then we go home, pop a roast in the crock pot, veges in another, and then relax on the couch with "Love, Actually". Then we open the house from about 2pm for any waifs, visitors, travellers, Christmas orphans or those that are between functions (after lunch and before dinner). That carries on into the night when we fire up the bbq and have a progressive dinner, and my sister provides dessert, and we celebrate the end of the year together. Then we'll pack the dishwasher and go to bed.

This year we are doing that but are going to the SIL's place for lunch. Which is fine but by that stage I'll be 30 weeks pregnant and will not be up for cooking, cleaning, dish washing, child wrangling or other activities, especially if it is Hot. I will try to be cheery when spending time with extended family that annoy me, and I will try to enjoy being pregnant through summer.

Oh and lastly - I always buy myself a Christmas present. I pick something I really want, and I buy it and enjoy it. This year I am buying myself some Birkis because I am starting to struggle to do my shoes up, and they are SO damn cute that I will be very happy with them:

Henna and bellies and exams, oh my!

I have a heap of photos to share but because our internet is dicky at the moment I can't rely on it to stay up long enough to link to them. So I'll do it in dribs and drabs, ok?

Here are some from yesterday, where I hung out with a whole heap of people from Joyous Birth and did a heap of things including having some henna on my hands and belly. Belly shots are to come so here are the hands:


This is the mixture on my hand - it's now a lovely chocolate woody brown and will darken over the new day or so.

Here is my belly cast - Alice did it for me at 23 weeks because I wanted one roughly halfway through, and then at the end. I'll upload a how-to soon!

Here's the bump:


And lastly a photo of the photo we had printed and framed for my FIL's 60th birthday last weekend:

On blankets and crocheting

When I was little, my maternal grandmother (I think) crocheted me a blanket. From memory, it was purple and dark blue and pale pink and cream, in hexagons. It was probably a single bed blanket but when I was an early teenager, it came apart and was never fixed. Which is odd, as my mother is a consumate seamstress and could probably have managed to fix it.

Oh wait - there's a link there perhaps? Oh that's just great. I go and blog about something innocent like a blanket and instead I end up dwelling on a freaking blanket and the nonrelationship I have with my mother. Yay.

ANYWAYS, the blanket has been on my mind recently. I want it as I remember it from my childhood. I want to look at how it's made and crochet some more. Well, any. I can crochet a chain (badly) and have only just bought a crochet hook. I can't read a pattern yet. So I'd like to. Do more crocheting. And get the blanket back. But how to get it back from my mother? My options are to go there myself (not going to happen c.f. snowflakes and hell) or ask her for it. But if I ask her for it, she can put conditions on giving it to me, or not give it to me and leave me in the same position but also grieving all over again for our relationship, *as* well as the loss of a blanket. Which in my mind is gorgeous and cuddly and wool and pretty and I'm hoping that it is something even half as nice.

So I sent her a relatively easy message via Bookface / Stalkbook and asked her for it to be posted. She sent me back a pointless message saying way more than she needed to, all about her of course, with essentially a "yes" response. When it turns up, I'll post pics and explain how I fix it.

Flowers and tools

Why is it that every new hobby I want to start, or interest I have, requires me to buy new tools? Yeesh. I've started some gardening and now I consider it probably necessary to replace the watering can that is cracked at the bottom, and with cake making I feel that I would like things to make decorations with. And to learn to make pretty flowers like frangipanis.

It comes back to priviledge in my mind, something which Kate at Craftastrophies has had me thinking about more recently. So many things with crafting come with priviledge, a surprisingly difficult word to spell. Here are a few:

• Access to skills through books, internet, shops and so forth - I don't have to find an artisan to teach me, or work it out for myself.
• I can read. I have experience with the technology associated with accessing information. That makes it very easy to just decide, on a whim, to learn how to do something.
  
• I have time to do these things - it is not taken up acquiring energy, water, healthcare, education etc.
  
• I also have money to do what is basically entertainment - it's certainly not a crucial life skill.
  
• It is socially acceptable for me to do what I want with my time, money and self, and it is not dictacted by my gender, class, caste or religion.

Ikea lust, list, loves and hackings

The Fira from Ikea is calling my name.

Thanks to my crafty brain, I look at it and think "change! colour! decorate!" and thanks to the fabulous sites of Ikea Hacker, Decor8 and Chez Larsson, I am inspired to learn how to decoupage and then pimp a few of these.

I also am thinking that this would work well in the Study of Doom

as it's quite a mess at the moment, partly because I have Too Much Stuff (TM) and because I have Too Little Storage (TM).

Buttons!

I saw a pdf for a button necklace the other day and was inspired to make things. Sarah from Frankie Fan 13's etsy shop (and sweet lovely friend as well!) made a very sweet necklace that I snaffled up, and one for Kate as well. It was amusing as I'd seen a green one on etsy, and Kate had too, and when she went back with a firm "I wants it and I'm going to haves it" she was devo* to find it not there. And thrilled when I gave it to her.

Anyway, I was talking about buttons. I own buttons. Lots of people have buttons. So I took my buttons and made these:


And then gave it away. Then made a few more. And gave them away too. I also made these:


Aren't they sweet? I love my hot glue gun. They're brooches by the way - itty bitty button brooches. Easy to make and great to look at!

* devo = mock devestation. Because the word "devestation" can be defined in my life at the moment but there are still times when I'm upset.

Maybe because I work in a hardward store (currently) or maybe because I love the idea of something other than Ikea in my house, but I'd love to make this Martha Stewart light display. It would be very easy to whip up (a canvas, an awl, some lights, some paint, and some lights) and fairly cheap... tempting!

Working with colour

In my job at the House of Bun, I tinted paint and gave assvice to people about what colours to paint their walls. I love doing this and trying to get people to paint something other than Antique White U.S.A. or Hogsbristle 1/4 strength (which are 2 of the thousand or so shades of white that are available).

When it comes to colour, I'm not actually gifted with something special but as a woman, I am better equipped to discern colours and care about them (there is research on this that I can't find right this second though!) and I like playing with them. I'm also S-M-R-T when it comes to talking people into what they want to hear.

I also love Behr.com's Color Smart (their spelling not mine!) where you can go and find a colour or two or three that you have, and then play around with what proportions to work with, or else to look at what other colour(s) you should/could put together with them.

This works for:

• outfits
• painting rooms
• designing knitwear
• painting canvases
• putting yarn together
• using up craft supplies that are coloured but you need one more colour
• cake decorating

It shouldn't be used for:

• eyeshadow choice
• cake decorating if you haven't looked at Cake Wrecks recently
• painting someone else's house
• overcoming colourblindness, as my dad tells me, as it just tells you if you can put colours together - not so much if you should do it!

So next time you have 3 balls or yarn, or some canvases to paint, or some time on your hands to "paint" the bathroom of your dreams, then try that website! You have to register but not pay for it and it's a lot of fun.

What to do with 2 skeins of sock yarn...

when you don't knit socks? You have a look at Simple Knits: 653 patterns to knit with 1-285 yards of yarn!

I have 384y of Knit Picks Memories (no longer made but linked to Ravelry) to use so will have to find something to do with it. Or trade it. For crafty favours.

Apricot chicken recipe, and thoughts on my childhood

My favourite comfort dishes as a child were sweet and sour sausages, fish pie, and apricot chicken. A few months ago, ManFriend had an unfortunate experience of reverse sweetandsoursausuages and has sworn me to never ever make it again for him ever. So I will at some point archive it here for posterity, and will also post fish pie, and apricot chicken.

It's funny - no specific sweets really stand out as "foods that highlighted my childhood". I've never had a sweet tooth. I was the kid who wanted water instead of cordial, and vegemite on Vitaweet instead of sweet biscuits; who wanted Saos instead of cream biscuits, and hated fruit but wanted carrot in her lunch box; and for whom dessert wasn't a great motivator. Desserts that I do remember loving:

• self-saucing pudding (butterscotch, blackberry, lemon - but not chocolate)
• apple turnovers
• stewed apple and cream
  
• sponge cake with strawberry jam and strawberries and cream
• trifle
• royal icing off christmas cake as I don't like cake
• pikelets (very occassionally)
  

Other savoury things that my family made and I "grew up on" would be:

• mashed potato wrapped in slices of fritz
• really awful bland chicken soup with equally bland scones (wow that's SO not a favourite but is something I definitely remember!)
• baked soy and honey chicken legs
• bolognese
• lasagne
• sausages sliced up the middle and stuffed with cheese, with mashed potato and gravy, and veges on the side
• chicken satay on rice
  

Awww now I'm all wistful. And I should go fold some clothes, and study. So - a simple recipe for apricot chicken.

Apricot Chicken (serves 5-6 times which for us was two for dinner, two for the freezer, and two for leftovers)

4 carrots, chunkily sliced
1.5 chicken breasts, chunkily sliced
4 garlic cloves, chunkily sliced
1L boiling chicken stock
1 410g ish tin of apricots
1 shake of spices (as you like - I used a dash of cayene and some nutmeg, with pepper as well as the stock was quite salty)

Arrange in a deep baking dish in that order. Bake loosely covered with foil, at 200C for about an hour. Stir and add some frozen veges. Bake for a further 15 minutes. Add a dash of cream and stir. Make some rice. Serve up.

Yum. I need seconds.

(Manfriend just leant over and asked me if I had a tape measure. And if not, would it be in my apron. 0_O. We both work at the House of Bun and this is funny in the context of, at work, we do indeed both have tape measures on us. At home, I don't usually have it *on* me but I do own a few... it was just a tad random. And amusing.)