Hello! I’ve been unintentionally quiet this week. I’ve got lots brewing that I want to write about, but I’m just getting things in order so that I can do it properly – you know, with pretty pictures and all.
What I can let you know is that I’ve been lining up some markets. First off the bat is the Berhampore Primary School Sip ‘n Shop evening on Friday 20 September 2013 from 7.00 – 9.00pm. I dropped off my stall payment today, along with my donation for their raffle. If you head along on the night and buy a raffle ticket you could win this delightful pencil case.
My donation for the raffle prize
Then the next day I’ll be at the Spring Knack at Berhampore School, 9.30am – 1.30pm. Well, when I say I’ll be there, it’s yet to be confirmed whether I myself will be there or at the shop, but I certainly have a stall. 🙂
If you ever want to check on what is coming up, I’ve just set up a calendar. You can find it here.
This coming Monday is Cupcake Day for the SPCA. What’s that you ask? It’s one of their major fundraisers, where home cooks around the country bake cupcakes, and cupcake connoisseurs give a donation to the SPCA in order to get one to eat.
My lovely neighbour is a true animal lover (I’ve lost count of how many gorgeous pets she has, everything from fish to Samoyeds). She also works for the local Pet Centre, and each year they join in with Cupcake Day – including roping in friends and family to bake! This year they are holding their Cupcake Day on Saturday 24 August. So can you guess yet what my Friday Night Make was this week?
Yep. Cupcakes!
Vegan-friendly even
As they’re for the SPCA, I’ve made them free of animal products. The secret ingredient in these babies is tahini, which makes them wonderfully moist, and they have a hint of nuttiness to them too. Delish!
I have no idea how much they’ll be asking for them, but these are getting picked up from my kitchen at around 8 tomorrow morning, and will be available from The Pet Centre in Lower Hutt. Why not head on down and buy one. It’s for the animals, after all!
Just a quick post to show you what I’ve been working on over the last few days.
New! Lampshades!
When my mother was visiting in May we took a class in Lampshade making together at Made Marion. Since then I’ve been perfecting my technique, and I am now offering lampshade for sale. The selection above will be heading in to my shop, Made It later this week (but if you want one of them, get in contact with me soon – the pink foxes is definitely a one off, and I have limited qualities of the other fabrics).
The great news with these is that I’ve confirmed the lampshade making supplies I’m using are NZ made too – and yes, I am building them from scratch, so I can also offer a custom-made service to your dimensions.
I’ve set up a gallery with more detailed shots of each of the lampshades, in case you want a closer look.
So I promised you pictures of the cheesecake, and here it is in all its, um, glory?
My inspired cheesecake, looking rather like a giant meat pie
I did have wonderful things planned for the presentation of the cake, but due to a miscommunication about the cream that I’d reserved for it, a frantic search for my piping set, with thoughts that I could buy cream on the way, and eventually getting to the dinner party just as everyone else finished their mains… well, my cheesecake remained undecorated. However, somehow that didn’t seem to lessen its appeal. Even as I was walking through to the kitchen with it covered in the enormous cake carrier, a call went around the party “is that cheesecake?”, “Did someone say cheesecake?”, “I heard there was cheesecake!”. Continue reading Cheesecake for the win!
When my lovely friend Sadie from Ever So Scrumptious invited me to be part of her unofficial Wellington on a Plate event, Cheapskate on a Plate, I knew immediately what I was going to make, and that I wanted to make it from as locally-sourced ingredients as possible.
Ingredients for my dish – yes, that egg is blue.
Part of the deal, is of course, coming up with the best name and description, so I give you:
There’s no Gingernut tastes quite the same baked cheesecake
For generations, Griffins Gingernuts were baked in the factory at the foot at the Wainuiomata Hill. Sadly, that factory is no longer baking, but the Gingernuts packed into the base of this cheesecake made the pilgrimage back to the closest dairy to the former site. Topped with creamy organic delights from Zany Zeus in Morea, blended with Alicetown backyard free range eggs from a frizzle (brown eggs), a blue leghorn (white egg), and an araucana* (blue egg), and for a touch of the exotic, ginger from Thailand.
*Yes, you can see the actual chicken that laid the blue egg if you click the link. Her name is Quasimodo.
So tomorrow night I’m going on an outing with the Wellington Sewing Bloggers’ Network to the opening of the Dowse’s Home Sewn Exhibition. I’m pretty excited about this, because I love sewing, and I love celebrating the things that people make for themselves and their loved ones.
However, I’ve had a rather jammed packed life lately. Dinner and/or movie dates on Friday nights have put paid to my selfish sewing time (in a most enjoyable manner), and I’ve also just spent a week down south visiting family. Which means that tonight is the night to get my dress started… and finished!
I made the toile last night, and it fits pretty well, so I’ll be go go go tonight – as soon as I can decide which fabric to make up!
Which of these two fabrics should I choose?
There are two choices:
a) Teal/blue diagonal striped wool/silk blend.
b) Hot pink and black tiny houndstooth – I have no idea what it is off the top of my head, but it didn’t burn, and it didn’t melt…
Both fabrics are a little brighter than the image suggests. I’m working on my hubby’s laptop tonight, so I don’t have my normal correction software – nor a lot of time to figure out his.
Which should I make up? You have until I finish my dinner to help me make up my mind!
I’ve been working on building my business for a few years now. I’m pretty good at getting on bursts of sewing when there is a deadline – especially if there’s a market looming, but I was starting to get to the point where I was feeling overwhelmed with making things for others, and never making anything for myself. This was enhanced by the fact that I was working in the shop every Saturday, and so never really felt like I’d had a proper weekend.
It’s that time of year when I suddenly realise that another year has whistled past, and I do a mental stocktake of what I’ve been doing, and whether I’m making best use of my years.
Image used with permission.
One of the things that has been on my mind recently is whether I’m really doing the best I can be with letting my readers know what I do. In some ways I’m inherently quite a private person, and yet I still manage to feel like I’m rather verbose (I’ve tweeted over 8,000 times. Have I really had 8,000 interesting things to say in 140 characters or fewer?). I’m pretty sure I’ve had my blog longer than I’ve been on twitter, and yet there are only 43 posts. I’ve just counted back, and I did actually manage to blog 10 times in the last year, which is probably some sort of record for me, especially seeing as most of those posts were in the last 6 months…
I’ve been wondering though, is the content that I’m creating actually interesting? Is it engaging? Do people want to see more of it, or should I hang up my blogging hat and concentrate my efforts somewhere else? If I do continue, should I stay focused on the business side of things (the things I make to sell, and where you can buy them), or should I bring in a more diverse range of content? Prompting this line of thinking is the thought that I’ve tried to keep personal makes and professional ones somewhat separate, and ended up not really blogging very often at all. A few years ago I tried to found a group wardrobe makeover blog called handmakemeover (I still love the name!). I had 3 other interested writers, but somehow it all just fizzled out. I’ve made a few posts on it, but I’m wondering if it’s just plain silly to try and maintain 2 separate blogs (3, if you count the one for Made It, which we’ll be relaunching soon).
Wearing clothes I’ve made myself makes me happy. Image used with permission.
So tell me, Dear Reader, would you be interested in reading about my personal sewing too? And maybe the odd adventure in cooking (including teaching my 22-year-old neice who lives on the other side of the world to cook via the internet)? I have a slew of personal projects that I’ve stitched up and not gotten around to blogging about on handmakemeover, although I have been live-tweeting my Friday Night Makes recently.
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(It is probably fair to say that my husband takes much better pictures than I do!)
Oh, and one final question. Should I post more pictures of my cat?
Hobbes reclaiming his chair after I reupholstered it.
Super quick post tonight – Just to let you know that I’ll be at the knack market at Berhampore this weekend. Well, I’ll at the knack evening market tomorrow, and you’ll be able to find my work there at the winter knack market on Saturday too. I myself will be at Made It, and Melina will be looking after my stall and hers at the knack.
I’ve been working on a few new things to take with me, including these hottie covers, who are totally snuggle-worthy!
While I’ve known for a few weeks that it wasn’t broken (phew!), they were concerned about tendon damage, so I’ve had to be very careful, and using scissors was absolutely out. But now I’m allowed to start cutting again! So I made these wee fellows to celebrate.
