Festivities

A Christmas dress

Mince pies

And blingin’ Egyptian biscats

(and snow white chicken doves)

Jaffa Cake

This cake is based on the Quarg Fruit Cake from Ladies, A Plate, but is all chocolate orange syrupy goodness instead of dried fruit and fennel seed. You can use fromage frais or ricotta if you can’t source quarg (I find it at Commonsense Organics and always buy the tub at 50% off on its use by date).

185g butter, softened

300g sugar

250g quarg

3 teaspoons orange zest, grated finely

4 eggs

125g dark chocolate, chopped finely

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

Preheat oven to 150C and grease a 20cm cake tin. Cream butter and sugar until soft and light, then beat in the quarg and orange zest. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the chocolate chips. Sift in the flour and baking powder, then gently fold in. Put mixture into tin and gently level the top. Bake for approximately 2 hours, rotating after one hour. Check with a skewer after 90 minutes and remove from oven when skewer comes out clean.

For the syrup topping, combine the juice of two oranges, their zest and three tablespoons of icing sugar in a pot. Heat gently. When you remove the cake from the oven, prick the top all over with a skewer and then pour the syrup evenly over the cake (strain it through a sieve as you pour). Leave to soak in, then carefully turn the cake out of the tin and cool on a rack.

 

These shirts

After a massive lull in general creative tasks, some minor garden-related distractions and a fair amount of procrastination, I am busy sewing again and recording creations on this here space! First up, two new shirts. I had never made a shirt before but found this pattern on TradeMe for a fair price considering I was quite likely to make both the shirt and the culottes. By ‘fair’ I mean about $5 as opposed to 20c at an op-shop but considering that most of my op-shopping comprises of whipping things off the shelf while chasing a small child around, not sitting on the floor going through boxes… well I am quite happy to pay someone to op-shop for patterns for me.

My search paid off because the shirt pattern fits me nicely, though I may lengthen it next time as the sides come a bit high on me. It’s pretty simple and comes together quickly, and I do like having a pattern do the thinking for me sometimes.

I practiced making the pattern with a $3 curtain. The fabric reminds me of various textiles of my mum’s from the 70s. It’s going to look very nice with a navy blue skirt (it might even have braces) and my green shoes.

I also took it upon myself to make buttons for the shirt, and went a bit wild on the stripes since I knew they’d fall on a solid block of dark pink. It’s a fiddly task when you suspect you may need glasses (and at the very least a desk lamp) but I was happy with how they turned out.

THEN! I cut out my real fabric (after the loan of an overlocker, thank you Flo!) and got to work. The sleeves on my first shirt were too long and tight, so although I didn’t cut any extra I simply folded the cuffs to be bigger. It worked perfectly (and I can go back and do it to the other shirt easily). The collar sat neater this time and my button holes are better. Did I mention I just inherited my nana’s sewing machine, with the step-by-step button holer? I don’t have the foot for it yet but it was easy enough to keep track of how far to go. Proper button holes, YAY!

I REALLY like that fabric. I saw it in in Frankie magazine a while back on Kimbra, a Karen Walker dress, and wanted it quite badly. I can’t find any record of that dress on the internets, but while killing time before work one morning I stumbled upon the fabric in Arthur Toye. Quite an exciting moment, I have to say.

Like any shirt, it looks better on. Even in a crappy bathroom shot, complete with dusty mirror. Sigh. I will never be cool.

This party’s crashing us

Knock knock! Who’s there? A cake! A cake who? A birthday cake for Rata-Roo!

Ho ho ho.

This is Rata’s cake (it was delicious). It’s meant to be the ‘R’ from the movie ‘Rio’, so it is also all feathered. But I also think it looks a bit like a koala.

The icing a joint effort between Louis and I – he watched me do a row of it and could see that it was a two person job. We followed this tutorial. Well, I did. There were a few skirmishes about how best to proceed and a few cries of “why are you doing them so far apart?” and “I don’t understand what you want!” but we managed, as you can see. The best thing about this kind of icing is that if you muck it up you can just spread it all out and start again.

 

 

“Candyman can”

Rata has been watching the 1973 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Secretly I think it’s a bit scary for a (nearly) three year old but since she watches it with her dad all negative side effects cannot be traced back to me so that’s ok.

Last Friday we went on a little trip to Levin and THIS TIME I knew where the fabric shop was. I bought a bit of pink and white striped merino, some marvellous golden sunshine coloured cotton knit and this candy-striped remnant fabric. When I discovered it was a two-way stretch I decided to make leggings with it, cut on the bias so they really would be like candy canes. Of course, I don’t have a pattern so ‘cutting things on the bias’ involves a lot of winging it, and of the legs not having stripes on the same angle. But who cares when Rata isn’t going to wear them unless bribed?

But in the hour or so today when Rata DID wear them… I heard her on more than one occasion singing “the candyman can” quietly to herself, so obviously calling them her “candy cane pants” is having some effect. The problem seems to be that Rata only wants to wear tights at the moment, not leggings and socks. I’m not sure that I would be able to make tights with comfortable feet, so for now I think I’ll stick to the current mode of self-punishment, thank you…

Totally evil mother cackle

MOTHER WINS!

(Note that the pockets very neatly fit a Peter Rabbit – it may have something to do with it).

This jacket now has the peanut butter badge of proof of wear.

Rata’s Black Wool Coat

I had already learned my lesson, really, with the zigzag pants, the tweed pants and the bat costume. Now I have this little coat to add to my list of Rata-rejects, AKA “Rata is her own person now, stop trying to smother her with your own style.” The catch was that I had cut this pattern out over a year ago when I had the loan of an overlocker, and realizing that the pattern is a size 3 and it was now or never, I spent last Sunday sewing it up.

This is View 3, and although I had no idea what I was doing with those pocket welts (hence the dodgy one on the right) I think I coped okay with the vintage pattern instructions. The lining fabric is probably from the 80s, the wool with silver lurex from the 60s, the buttons came from Rata’s great-grandmother’s button jar.

Now I’d like one in my size, please. It’s actually quite big  on her anyway so there’s plenty of time for her to suddenly want to wear it as often as the strawberry dress. Given the perverse nature of children and their whack internal thermostat, this will be in the height of summer. So long as I get a picture of it I’m okay with that.

But as for the aforementioned tweed pants:

And bat costume:

A furry little hat went with it too, and the dress was another vintage pattern with the collar from the coat pattern tacked on (and the dress worn with the zip at the front). She was the cutest 60s Mod bat in the history of the world. I’m sure she will thank me later.

Other ‘finished’ things

Sometimes Louis and I have small battles over my enthusiasm for new things, and how many unfinished things are floating around. It’s true, I do have a lot of ideas (and that is only getting worse since I ‘discovered’ Pinterest – caved, more like) and I do enthusiastically start a lot of things, and a sad number of them reach a certain point… and then I quietly hide them from sight and start something else. We in the industry refer to these things as UFO’s (unfinished objects). They do have their uses – sometimes it’s really nice to pull one out of the cupboard and have something finished in ten minutes, but mostly they like to torment me too. Often I have taken them as far as my abilities will take them, and I must simply wait for a wave of inspiration before I can work out how to resolve it. But I will admit that a lot of the time it is just evaporated enthusiasm, or my irrational fear of button holes getting the better of me.

But given my recent enthusiasms for MORE new things (rental blues will turn a lady into a house-buying optomist of the worst DIY disaster prone kind, even I am taking this latest enthusiasm with a pinch of salt, and yes, Pinterest is not helping with my runaway imagination) I thought I should finish some stuff. So…

This dress! It only took me four months to put the button hole in. I even bought some fabric specifically for the purpose of making these to sell, in different colourways and a range of sizes. I still plan to do that… ha!

And a lampshade. These aerial photographs are something I’ve had lying around for years and it’s nice to do something like this with them finally. But while I like the concept I do not particularly care for the craftmanship here. I need stronger backing for it, and better glue. Faced with crap glue I did what any sane person would do – blanket stitch. It’ll do until I work out how to do it properly. At least it’s not sitting around half-done, right Louis?

This chair took quite a while…

… so that would explain where I’ve been! I re-covered this chair I have only had for about seven years (though it did have some holidays at my mum’s house). I went a little bit mental on the home front, mostly due to a severe bout of rental blues in this freezing cold house (turns out I am allergic to gas heaters). And when you have the rental blues it would seem the best thing for it is to have a stab at the things you CAN change. So, shabby little chair, you have scrubbed up very well. If I do say so myself. It all started with this:

Bertie and I spent a lively afternoon with a bottle of meths and some ‘Steelo’ pads at Louis’ mums’ house scrubbing the shellac off her mantlepiece. Her house is filled with beautiful native timbers stained to look like mahogany as per the fashion of the 1950s (my guess). When I came home I looked at this chair and thought, maybe all that ugly dark varnish will come off with a bit of meths and Steelo too…

The seat itself turned out to be very easy to extract from it’s frame – two screws at the back and two nails at the front. It was interesting to see how faded the fabric had become – I always liked the pattern of the green, which is probably why I had put up with its rattiness for so long.

It was never a particularly comfortable chair, and I have to admit here that I didn’t really know what I was doing and therefore have not improved on its levels of comfort. I simply tacked the new fabric over the top. But I did pause to reinforce these corners where the frame was poking out of the front of the seat.

There were a lot of pins involved, a lot of furniture tacks, and then some nice blanket stitches around the edge of the seat (and eventually on the back as I wasn’t so pleased with how the fabric was sitting between tacks).

Getting the varnish off the frame was beastly and it was not a pretty sight, hence the lack of photos. I used a combination of ‘goldilocks’ scouring pads (to get the worst off), the finer steelo scouring pads, lots of methylated spirits and BRUTE FORCE. (Music helped too). Then I sanded it down and used something from a tin that Louis said was ‘dutch oil’ but in fact I did not look at what it said on the tin. You apply it liberally with a cloth, rub it in and smooth any drips, wait for it to dry and do a few more coats like that. In some places the oil hasn’t really taken but on the whole it looks a lot nicer than it did before. All up it probably took about ten hours – I covered the seat in a morning with the usual interruptions of tea breaks and hanging out the washing (though Rata was out, I might add) and several attempts at getting off the varnish did add up a bit.

The fabric I used is some wool I found a few years ago at the opshop – it’s a lovely pattern and I wanted to make a dress with it but it is just too scratchy for a garment. I have enough left over to make a skirt with… usually I match Rata but could it be time to match the decor instead? Watch this space!

(Actually, don’t. You know me. I still haven’t finished that chips dress).

Shrewsbury, Yum City

OK internets, I am out to confuse you: In New Zealand these biscuits are sold as Shrewsbury’s, but if you internet that name the only recipe you’ll find that matches the biscuit you know will be a New Zealand one (and a good one at that, thank you Woman’s Weekly!). The rest of the internet describes Shrewsbury’s as some kind of biscuit with dried fruit in in, while Jammie Dodgers seem to be the same as what we call the mighty Shrewsbury. Bought ones have paste-like raspberry jam in them, with either a plain round hole or a star or heart to show off the jam inside. When I am in bought biscuit mode I will quite happily polish off the whole packet in an afternoon, but I don’t have the stamina for that anymore.

The recipe is faultless. The biscuits are crisp and they taste nice. I didn’t have any vanilla essence so I just added a bit of lemon zest and a splash of lemon juice and I think it might have worked better for it. I could have gone all superhousewife and used homemade blackberry jam in them but I don’t have much left of that and there’s a large jar of cheap boysenberry jam in the fridge that needs using too (Pams actually make nice jam. If you need a lot of jam. I discovered this through being the housekeeper for Playcentre).

I rushed things by trying to bake both trays in the oven at once, and I should have known better than to do that. The tops biscuits cooked faster of course, but I made the whole ones a bit thick so their bottoms were nicely browned before their tops went golden. Oh well.

Now we are readying the teddies and the china for a tea party with our friends Marta and Anouk! It’s Anouk’s second birthday this week and Rata decided that Anouk’s birthday present should be the fancy dress costume I made for Rata this week… which Rata refused to wear. It seems like my days sewing for Rata are numbered. At least she likes my baking.