A finished project and more underway

Well,  a combination of a wet couple of weeks and a cold going through the family means some projects have been finished and some have had to wait their turn.  I finished crocheting the ‘Granny Square ‘ blanket and sewed it up this weekend . A total of 19 balls of wool and at least 12 colours I think. It looks good on the couch in my lounge :

It’s great for snuggling up under by the fire !  When you crochet the resulting garment is twice the thickness of a knitted garment so it’s toasty warm.
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I have managed to spend a little time in my studio and made these two books from a couple of recycled whiskey bottle boxes.  They turned out quite well I think – I used my new ‘corner’ punch to round the corners of them . Each has about 30 pages of lined, graph and plain paper. Simple pamphlet binding.



Hubby  has already grabbed one – said he will use it for ‘tasting notes’  : )
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I also have made a new screen and have some fabric printing underway :

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And I found this book in a second hand shop and have ‘warped’ my loom again and am experimenting with ‘texture and pattern’ in some sample weaving :

I was really please to find this as the publishing date was 1980 and I don’t think it’s in print any more!

Hope you are keeping warm where ever you are.
R x

Quilting and more macarons ….

A quilt I have been working on – my first attempt at hand quilting . I quite like the effect ( I want the stitches to show)
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A macaron failure. I tried to make vanilla macarons but the mixture was too thick . They ended up more like meringues. However they still tasted ok when I filled them with a lemon curd and mascapone mixture : ) .
I bought this book at  'Bookfeast'  in Petone :

And my first attempt from it didn’t work either. So I’m going to have a go making the chocolate ones again . (the family is enjoying all these baking tests!)
I bought these macarons from one of my local French bakeries but they don’t look like the ‘Luxemburgerli’ or the ones from the book above, and they tasted like Chocolate Brownies.

When I get the recipe and technique right I’ll let you know ..
R x

Bento, Weaving and more macarons…

These are Bento box lunches from last week:
The box on the left is mine and slightly smaller and the box on the right is hubby’s. They contain “Onigiri” rice balls, carrots kinpira (stir- fried carrots with sesame oil, sesame seeds and soy sauce)(hidden under the onigiri in the right hand bento box), sliced red capsicum, beaten egg with a little soy sauce, cooked then folded and sliced, and cooked prawns on lettuce. I buy the prawns already cooked and frozen and just put a few in each bento. They are thawed by lunch time. I found all the inspiration and recipes at Just Bento.
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Here is the scarf I have been weaving – I finished it at the weekend! One more to practice I think. My selvedges are nearly consistent. Weaving is kind of like knitting – the more you do the better your tension and it looks more even.

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A dear family friend who lives in Zurich sent me this link after she had read my blog post about Macarons.  Apparently they are also made in Switzerland only they are called “Luxemburgerli” over there.  They are made by a company who are related to the Lindt family chocolatiers. She told me that they have different flavours depending on what is in season. Currently ‘Strawberry and Rhubarb’ are flavour of the week!

This wonderful looking box contains 6 types of ‘Luxemburgerli’ –hazelnut, raspberry, lemon,caramel, vanilla and chocolate! Wow!
I might try and make some! Vielen Dank  fuer Ihre Email Anne : )
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This book arrived in the mail today from ‘Prints Charming’. The authors are a couple of ladies who live in Sydney and print their own fabric. When I was in Sydney last year I visited their studio and bought some of their fabric.
The book contains screen printing designs and some sewing projects using your hand printed fabric.  I thought it sounded like me.  :)
Rx

Macarons and Stamps

I found this wonderful site in one of my cooking explorations the other day. It is the blog of David Lebovitz. He is an American chef living in Paris and he writes about his life and cooking adventures. Click here-  David Lebovitz  to open a link to his blog. Have a look as he writes well and I am looking forward to trying some of his recipes. I have reserved a couple of his books at the library.

Anyway one of his recipes I tried last week was for Chocolate Macarons. Much has been written about Macarons (not to be confused with maccaroons). (If you do a Google search you will get 100s of  pages of links). They are a French patisserie delicacy made of a meringue type mixture baked and then sandwiched together with different fillings. I had great success using David’s recipe found here , and I also followed some tips found here and here.  Have a look  - I did not leave the unbaked shells to rest for 2 hours, being an impatient sort I baked them straight away:

As you can see they turned out well with the ‘foot’ and uncracked shell  however they were really hard and chewy. Nevertheless I filled them with a basic ganache of cream,melted chocolate and a tiny bit of butter (David uses corn syrup in his recipe but it’s hard to find in NZ). Then came the hard part. We left them in the fridge for 3 days to soften. Then brought them to room temperature and tried them.

WOW was all the family could say! They tasted amazing  - such a treat and I can’t wait to try them again and give them to my family and friends to try.

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I have also been doing some stamp carving practice (and Daughter 2 and 4 did some too) . Here are our latest endeavours:

I am using a tutorial from Memi the Rainbow - another French link. This time an Italian living in Paris. Hence the ‘Notre Dame’ stamp bottom left. I am using her simple designs for practice while I work on figuring out some of my own designs.

Also while clearing out under the house recently I found my “Rigid Heddle Loom” which was a present from my in-laws a few years ago. I bought this book:

and have been learning how to warp up correctly and have started weaving a scarf.  The weather isn’t that great for photography today so pictures will follow in another blog post.
Here is a picture from the Ashford website of a Rigid Heddle Loom in case you don’t know what one looks like :

Back to the studio this afternoon : )
R x

Making

I haven’t been in the studio much lately but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy . . .

A ‘before’ shot of one of the computer chairs.
And ‘after’ . . .

And a Granny Square rug in progress:

I have another 20 or so squares to go.
R x