Autumn Zebra

Indeed

2012-01-23T19:29:00.000+13:00

Some graffiti I saw a while back:

Photo: Pink writing on concrete saying "What are the pirates doing here?"

Indeed that is a worthwhile question, but my question is - why are the pirates affiliated with Cthulu?

Photo: Pink skull and crossbones on concrete with tentacle mouth.

The Guy Who has Been Eating our Mail

2012-01-22T14:02:00.002+13:00

I found the guy who has been eating our mail:

Photo: brown patterned snail shell

Broadbeans

2012-01-21T23:40:00.000+13:00

I grew these babies in the garden. Ok, I am kidding - they are not babies, they are broad beans. But I guess beans are baby bean plants. I'm pretty sure I planted these at the very wrong time according to the books, but the plants grew the best of anything. Broad beans seem to be one of the few vegetables that are not destroyed by insects in my garden.

Photo: A colander with fat broad bean pods in it

Boxing Day Beetle

2012-01-21T23:26:00.000+13:00

Judging where it falls amongst my photos, I took this on boxing day.

It's not a fantastic photo, but it is interesting how much wear-and-tear there is on the beetle's exo-skeleton. In fact, it looks kind of dead, but I'm sure it was alive. Oh, that's right, we found it on the pavement in the hot sun and it was barely moving so I moved it to the edge under a bush.

Photo: blackish waisted beetle with a lot of whitish patches around the edge of it's body, like paint worn away.

101 Zebra Posts

2012-01-15T17:20:00.000+13:00

I'm posting a few catch-ups to my 101 Zebras blog - there's a feed to the right of this blog which shows the latest posts over there if you are interested.

Merino Tunic

2012-01-14T16:04:00.000+13:00

I haven't written a blog post in a long time.
During the holidays, I have been wearing mostly just tights with long t-shirts over them, which is very comfortable but not very practical for going places. I accidentally went to dinner at an Indian restaurant in green leggings, a "Lost World" t-shirt, an old loose cardigan and my Mum's too large ballet slipper-like shoes, but luckily it was in South Dunedin, where people regularly go to the supermarket in their pyjamas and being weird is normal, due to it's very low socio-economic status. Strangely, it's also pretty much the only area where you can get dinner or coffee after 9pm (and to a perfectly reasonable standard with good service and comfortable surroundings).
So, anyway, I didn't have any sensible clothes, so just before the holidays are about to end, I made a long tunic top. It is made of 100% merino (10$/m, amazing!) and it is based on a Burda magazine pattern. I made the pattern bigger and lengthened it from a t-shirt to a tunic. I ended up having to make the sleeves half-length or the whole thing didn't fit on the fabric.
Because I want to make my clothes more "special" - more time, decoration, personal value - I sewed wooden beads around the neckline. (I buy necklaces on massive special to use the beads.)
The mannequin is thinner than I am, so it is not so loose and drapey on me as it is on it.

Worms!

2011-09-06T22:42:00.001+12:00

I have finished making my compost bin (pictures later?) and today got grass from our garden rubbish pile to put in the new compost bin, and then was getting decomposing stuff from our plastic compost bin to put on as the next layer before covering it with more old grass and leaves.
The plastic compost bin never really produced any compost in 5 years, but never got full either - it is a black hole of kitchen refuse and weeds. So I took off a layer with the garden fork and was stunned by how many worms there were. They were everywhere, crawling away from the light. There were big tangles of them squirming around getting in the others way so that they couldn't escape. All different sizes of worms. I'm not even sure how such a small amount of compost could support them all. Also, the compost was very dense, and there were areas that probably got little air and did not decompose much at all, so it didn't really look like a good worm-farm kind of matter.

I decided not to put all of the half-made compost in the one layer in the new compost bin so I could save some worms for further up the new heap. I put the stuff in a container to carry it down to the new bin, and when I tipped it out, 16 worms remained inside it crawling on the walls. Fifteen of them were over 5cm long, one was barely 2cm, so there could have been other very small ones I didn't count. Overall there must have been several hundred worms in a 50cm cubed volume of old kitchen scraps. Phenomenal.

I don't mind worms at all normally, but the sight of so many kind of creeped me out and I brushed worms off the outside of the container and wore gloves so none would get on me and then got paranoid about worms crawling on me and had to have a shower. Like I said, normally they are just common little harmless things to me, but crawling everywhere they were disturbing.

I wonder how they all got in there. The compost at this time was not resting on the ground. The bin has a little opening in the bottom and I had scraped out the compost from the bottom of the bin a few weeks before, in winter, and the rest of the stuff was so jam-packed in it was held about 15cm off the ground. There were a few worms in the compost I got out a few weeks ago, which I was happy about, but there weren't many and I carefully put them in the ground or back in the bin. So either the few worms in there bred and grew a lot in the first 2-3 weeks of spring, or they were all contained in this mid layer of the bin the whole time. I have dropped the odd worm in there over the last 5 years, or maybe the progenitors came out of the ground - but there are VERY few worms in our ground as it is so hard, all clay. I've probably found about a dozen worms not in the compost bin. It is a bit of a mystery, but totally fascinating.

I have pictures of a different kind of amazing worm I found a few weeks ago that I might post later. I didn't photo these ones as it was twilight so bad for photography. They were a far more orangey colour than I expect worms to be (the ones you see on the footpath after it rains are more a pale pink).

Profound Snow Pictures

2011-08-21T22:33:00.004+12:00

First another sunrise...

One of the cool things about snow is that you can see evidence of everyone who has gone that way before you; the signs they leave behind connect you through time, via space.

Toad-in-the-Hole

2011-08-14T16:29:00.004+12:00

I made toad-in-the-hole the other day, which is sausages in Yorkshire pudding. I made it from this Jamie Oliver recipe. It worked out ok, except it sank a lot, quickly, and then the Yorkshire pudding at the bottom ended up very thick and more like an egg pudding. Well, it is an egg pudding, but like a heavy one with no air in it. Also, all my sausages floated to the top. Maybe if you use fat sausages they don't do that. A lot of people in the comments of the recipe said they had trouble with the oil burning, but I think that is probably because they used the wrong oil - different oils smoke and catch fire at different temperatures. I had a very small amount of smoke but really no trouble and used canola oil at 250 degrees C (or so my over claims, but it is old so who knows if it even gets that hot really?).

Everyday the Sun Rises

2011-08-12T22:48:00.003+12:00

Sheetweb Spider

2011-08-12T22:42:00.002+12:00

Just some not-terribly-good pictures of what I think is some kind of sheetweb spider that I took ages ago - by the look of it I took them inside at night in a plastic container. It is not only a sheetweb spider in that it builds sheetwebs, but is actually one of the Sheetweb Spiders with capital letters. There are 29 known species in NZ of Sheetweb Spiders with capital S's. This is a male because of the longer legs. Like with many spiders, it is written in my book that the males often come inside looking for a mate. I don't know why they all think the women spiders will be living in people's houses.

Cicada Pics

2011-06-20T20:15:00.002+12:00

I found this cicada on the side of our house a month or so ago.

Frustrating Bra Shopping

2011-05-26T17:30:00.002+12:00

I spent two hours in the last two days trying to buy a bra and came out with nothing. To start with I need a 16B. Less than half of styles seem to go up to a 16. Of those that do, 90% start at 16C. Then, 90% of those don't have long enough straps over the shoulders. In fact, they're also barely big enough in the band at size 16, although I normally wear size 12-14 tops. 95% of size 16 bras only come in black, white or beige, and not that much black actually either. So I found one style that came in black and white that had long enough straps and was just big enough in the band to be comfortable, but it unfortunately wasn't one of half a dozen styles that wouldn't drive me crazy in less than half an hour. If we say that a bra with the greatest amount of uncomfortable, itchy features* is at 100%, most t-shirt bras come in at about 20%. There was one really good one that probably would have been only 10% or less, but the straps over the shoulders were way too short. So the one I found that fit was at 20%, and I bought it anyway even though I'll have to cover up the itchy parts in order to wear it, which will be messy and frustrating and I don't know if I can really be bothered. Blah.

* Features include, but are not limited to: plastic mesh; synthetic lace; plastic thread; bulky seams that stick out; the sliders on the straps; the fastener at the back that isn't properly covered by that strip of fabric they put there because I have to have it on the biggest setting and it still pulls; that strip of fabric; most of the thread on the seams; the edges of the straps
Ways to fix these include: using cotton lace, using soft thread, covering the seams, putting the seam bulk on the outside, using straps that aren't made out of plastic, using strap sliders with smoother edges, using a different fabric to cover the fastener, making the cover for the fastener longer, having less seams. Most of these could be summed up by "don't use plastic".

Instead I bought these, because it's cheaper to buy cheap jewellery and take it apart than it is to buy interesting beads. The bangles I might just wear, but it's also cheaper to buy bangles than it is to buy rigid circles for craft purposes. In case you can't tell, the weird ugly necklace has all these cool little rings on it - too small for wearing as rings, but could be cool sewn onto something as decoration.

Thinking About Facial Recognition

2011-05-21T22:49:00.007+12:00

I think I've mentioned before that I do poorly on facial recognition tests. And what's more, my conscious recognition is way below my actual scores. What they normally do is show two pictures side by side and you have to pick the one you've seen before. I won't consciously recognise either - as far as I'm concerned they're both completely unfamiliar. However, you have to pick a side, and I will pick correctly at a better rate than expected by chance. Similarly with the emotion recognition ones - I'll look at the face and think "this person is happy" and be fairly sure I'm right and then I have to choose one of the four options - angry, scared, hurt, upset (or whatever). Ummm... whoops. How did I think it was the complete opposite? Of course, they all look pretty much the same to me anyway. But I'll pick the correct one above what is expected from chance alone.

So anyway, facial recognition is an interesting thing. There are a few experiences that seem like clues to the way it works, or doesn't for me.
It's extremely variable - sometimes I can see someone in the street for 20 seconds and recognise them days or months later as that person I saw in the street, or see an actor in a movie and then 12 years later immediately recognise them and know which movie I recognise them from. Other times, I can work in the same office (as in, the same room, with 12 people in there total) as two people for a year and still not be able to tell them apart at the end of it.

The people I recognise easily immediately stand out for me. I guess this is obvious. Sometimes it is because they have obvious physical characteristics - a halo of yellow curly hair, or being over 6 foot tall with a long beard and ponytail.
Thereafter, these people are more easily remembered because they are coded in my mind as "angel" and "giant" - although not as these simple words but as charicature-like concepts - a fuzzy halo of yellow light around their head and the concepts of angels and cherubs, and a man who is now over 2m tall with a wild bushy beard and hair and the concept of a giant striding through the mountains. No wonder I find it easier to remember these people.

People with unusual but consistent dress-sense are also easy to remember, and sometimes it'll appear that I'm recognising someone but actually I am recognising their interesting necklace or skirt. A lot of people look non-descript to me - they don't look like anything, except like another human.

The other way I recognise people is that something non-physical stands out immediately - I call this their character. Sometimes I will see someone on the street and their "character" is so... noticeable that I can recognise it when I see it in the future. I would not be able to tell you what they look like however. I tend to find that people's physical appearance (as I percieve it) and their "character" generally match up somewhat though.

Another thing is a kind of combination of these, in that I percieve some aspect of them as their appearance, even if they don't really look like that. But that's how I see them. For example, one of the people at my husband's work is, to me, "the grey man". He is all grey, in my mind. If I imagine him, his skin is grey, his clothes are shades of grey. This is not a bad thing, it looks nice, and I don't mean that I think he is boring or whatever some people might associate with grey. However, in real life, I guess maybe his hair is grey, or somewhat grey? But I recognise him because he matches up with the concept contained in "the grey man" in my mind.

Perhaps it is also obvious that I am much more likely to become friends with the people I actually recognise - but I wonder if it is because I recognise them so easily that I like them and maybe become friends; or is the part of them (their "character") that I recognise the very same part that makes them potential friends. You might be thinking that it is the former, because yellow curly hair and tall with a great beard are very recognisable traits, but I've seen lots of tall people and people with great hair and still not recognised them later.

So, we have established that I store and recognise everyone as these ideas and caricatures.

I had a frightening experience outside a shop a while ago when someone came up to me and started talking to me loudly and excitedly as if she knew me. I could not recognise her for the life of me. She obviously knew me. I examined her face, and I could not find anything to recognise; I was looking at her and just seeing all these PARTS - I saw only the shape of her nose, the colour of her eyes, her eyebrows, mouth, even the pores of her skin but no clue of who she might actually be. Just as I was starting to panic at being confronted by this face of parts, she suddenly turned into who she was, and I stopped seeing the nose and eyes and mouth and skin and simply saw her, and all I knew of her, and her character, and I recognised who she was.

That probably makes no sense to anyone who doesn't already know what I'm talking about. I'm not sure which is the way you'd normally see a person.

Let's run through it again - normally I see a person, I recognise an idea of a person, I usually don't even look at a person's face to recognise them. But sometimes, this fails, and I see a face. I see facial features, and all the things you should remember about an attacker so the police can draw one of those "wanted" pictures of the suspect. This doesn't happen very often, so when it does, it totally freaks me out. Most people look like non-descript blank faces until I get to know them enough that they start to develop a "character", at which point I can more easily recognise them. However, unless they also have strong non-face features like distinctive hair or clothes, I can still be unsure it is them until they start acting like themselves - talking, doing something - rather than walking down the street in deep thought, with their "character" inside them. Some people, however, seem to leak enough character anyway that I can recognise them without even knowing them. A sub-group is people who look like other people with lots of character- e.g. if someone looks like a particular character from a movie, I might recognise them that way - this is a bit like "the grey man" though - they'll look exactly like this movie character to me even though no one else knows what I'm talking about.

When I see a person, I usually don't see what they look like, I see something else. I see the idea of them that I have in my mind. This is probably why the more I like a person the nicer I think they look, and the less I like them the more ugly I think they look. Because I am seeing what I think of them rather than their physical attributes.

Another horrible experience was the time my husband got banged in the lip or something, and he wanted me to look at it. So I had to look past "him" and push through it to see what his lip looked like now. And then, I got stuck half in "seeing the parts" mode and he didn't look like him any more, he looked like this weird face and it totally freaked me out, not being able to recognise him properly and having him look like one of those strangers I don't know rather than the him I know and love.

Farmer's Market - 7th May, 30th April

2011-05-11T21:06:00.003+12:00

Woohoo, you say, more pictures of food from the Farmer's market!

Last week I bought a chicken and tarragon pie, an English pork pie, dried grapes from the organic fruit stall, camembert cheese, pickled walnuts, watercress, a really small half red cabbage, green tomatoes, plums (some of which are giant), corn already skinned, giant long capsicums. I haven't tried the pickled walnuts yet, Mum says they are yuck.

And the week before I bought quinces, strawberries, yellow peaches, silverbeet, a turnip, tabouli, dried peaches, seconds tomatoes, a mixed bag of fancy capsicums, a zuchinni and two chocolate croissant things that turned out to be much heavier and more cakey than a croissant, but I think yummier. The strawberries were to make jam, but the lady selling them told me there was 500g in the packets when there was only 250g (I thought it looked wrong) and then one third were moldy by the next day, and many of the others were brown inside. And they were really expensive because they were the last of the season. And of course, they were twice as expensive as I thought they were because there was only half as much, and then I didn't have enough, and then they went off, so that was money down the drain, and I was sad because I really wanted to make more strawberry jam :(

Flu Vaccination Stall

2011-04-18T21:40:00.001+12:00

At the University, when they have the flu vaccinations for the staff, there is also a stall selling stuff to raise money for the University Chaplains, apparently.

I spent some money.

That's a a bag made in Wales, where the fabric is double woven, in that the weaving creates two joined layers of fabric; two pairs of gloves, one of leather; a leather glove case; an old pattern for a slip which is quite interesting.

Blue Tunic-Dress

2011-04-13T22:46:00.003+12:00

So, I don't know what it's like in your country, but here the fashion is (still) tunic kind of tops over tights. This appears to be a significant change in the every-day wear of most people, so it's quite interesting.
I made a new tunic top top/dress for my work wardrobe. The colours I have chosen for work are blue, dark red, purple and grey, and I was limited in what knit fabrics I already had in large enough pieces in the right colour.
This is what I made, the second or third thing I have made of a knit/stretch fabric.

The decoration is sewn on by hand. Imagine the colours are actually blue and red in this photo.

The binding worked really well around the arm and neck, so I might make a t-shirt or something out of the same fabric. Since the fabric doesn't fray, the binding edge is not folded under on the inside of the garment. This makes it some-what easier to sew with kind of annoying fabrics like this, and also reduces the bulk by one layer - if you fold under both edges of binding, plus the fabric layer itself, that's 5 layers of fabric, so leaving one edge un-doubled reduces it to 4.

Farmer's Market Breakfast

2011-04-11T22:57:00.002+12:00

This is not a terribly good food photo, but all the food in this breakfast is from the Farmer's Market! Egg, tomato, ham steaks, bread. And then I had with it jam that I had made, out of fruit from the Farmer's Market.

Everyday Gardening - I Found Something!

2011-04-11T18:06:00.002+12:00

I have done a couple more days of "15mins out in the garden". Today was actually 22min out in the garden, and I retrimmed a bit of the hedge that the neighbour had helpfully done, but I wanted to trim it back a bit further, and then I trimmed back some ivy that is growing out over the corner of the path from the fence and hedge.
The other day however was more exciting, at least for me. I was clearing the aforementioned ivy where it was growing over the path, and I found....

That's the lid of my thermos which I haven't seen for months and was looking for the other day. It must have blown out the kitchen window sometime while sitting there drying. It is still good, presumably protected by all the leaves growing over it. So that was pretty cool, because a thermos without a lid is pretty useless.

Mushrooms!

2011-04-05T19:39:00.004+12:00

Pretty much everything makes me stressed/nervous/anxious/scared/whatever (which we shall hence-forth refer to as nervous) - getting up in the morning, going to bed, going to work, coming home, doing things that aren't fun, doing things that are fun, the beginning, end and middle of all activities, etc. Sometimes, even doing nothing makes me nervous so that I am about to be torn apart by the anxiety caused by both doing nothing and thinking of doing something.

You're wondering what this has to do with mushrooms.

I like my garden, but going into it makes me nervous because of all the things I could be doing there. So then I don't go there, and feel bad about it and that makes me too nervous to even think about the fact we have an outside. Even though I really like nature and I am sad I don't get enough nature time. So I thought I would go outside for 15 minutes a day and commune with nature or something. So I don't have to do anything, I could just stand there, but on the other hand maybe this will trick me into doing some gardening (which I am generally too nervous to do) since I am standing out there anyway.

So anyway, on the first (and possibly only) day of this new initiative, I am rewarded by finding a cool mushroom. And also a boring mushroom, although I feel bad for calling it that as that is rather mean as it is not its fault it is brown and not bright red like the cool mushroom. Poor mushroom.

What is it, do we see something?

Normally my camera is a jerk about representing colours, and just makes them all boring looking, so I didn't think it would pick up the red very well, but actually it kind of over-saturated all the colours instead. Which was quite good, because the way things actually look is not the way you see them. So in real life, the red really stands out because your brain really notices it when you are otherwise surrounded by green and grey (sky), but in an accurate photo, it wouldn't stand out as much. So hyper-colouring it in the photo means it more accurately represents what I saw, even though it is factually less correct.

The poor, boring mushroom, which kind of actually makes a better photo.

Farmer's Market - 12 Feb

2011-02-14T17:36:00.004+13:00

The Farmer's Market was good as usual, but I didn't take pictures of what I bought, and now we've started eating a lot of it!
However, what I got is:

Lebanese "pizza" - flat bread with cumin and other spices on it, pretty good, I warmed mine up in the microwave and wrapped it around bits of roast chicken
Lebanese olive dip and hummus- two little pots go a surprisingly long way
giant plums and apricots from my favourite, primarily organic, fruit place - they were about twice as big as normal plums and apricots! And yummy!
also from the above people - a big bag of greengages. I was wondering why supermarkets don't sell these - and then yesterday I saw that they do, at nearly twice the price, and the Farmer's Market ones are organic!
also one red pear - they have red skins and are yummy and good for preserving in jars. I'll buy some more for preserving later, because they are the best preserving fruit I've found so far
again from the fruit place, I got 3 small cucumbers - they were 2 for a dollar, but they have ugly skin so I got a free one. I love how these people sell all the "low-grade" fruit and veges rather than wasting it
a 4-cheese platter pack from the Oamaru cheese people so I can try some cheese other than their on-special cheddar off-cuts and creamy blue cheese. A good deal at $15 rather than the $18.50 I saw it at the supermarket yesterday. The only two of the four we've eaten so far are the cheddar and the blue cheese...
a bag of carrots - it had looked like there were only large carrots left and I wanted small ones, but the bags appeared to be divided by size so I got little ones, which we ate some of yesterday with the Lebanese dips and the cheese :)
a big bag of peas - I just chuck a few in what I'm cooking while waiting for the cooking to happen, so this way I don't have to actually sit down and shell them. Just chuck them in
a steak and cheese pie - I still haven't managed to get a family pork pie :(
some good frankfurters (can't wait to try them!) and some bacon mince from the free-range pork place

Free stuff, cheap stuff, and all fun and yummy! Seriously the Farmer's Market is the best idea Dunedin has had. There was a cruise ship in, which explained why there were all the American people asking slightly odd questions about fruit and vegetables. But it's good to see them coming and buying random produce from the market - that's a cool thing to do on your holiday! I guess you get pretty good food on a cruise ship, but it must be nice to go and buy your own fresh fruit for the day or whatever.

Edit: ok, apparently for some reason I took a poor picture of the dips and cheese! Yay? Posts are better with pictures?

Future Colour Dress

2011-02-05T22:37:00.004+13:00

When I did the draping class in the fashion design certificate, we obviously had to drape a dress for the assignment. In a way it wasn't much of a class. She just got us to copy a dress she brought in, draping it on a mannequin and basically we just made it up while she supervised. Then she gave as an assignment. Theoretically the brief was a quote (from Vionnet?) about how a dress is beautiful because it is well-cut. This didn't seem like much of a brief to me. Like, it didn't really inspire anything or send my mind off on any ideas...
I created a slightly more restricting framework than the one given as it's generally a lot easier to create something within restrictions than within a completely open space (i.e. the frameword given was basically that it had to flatter the body and be well-cut. Not only was this both very open and a completely obvious and expected goal of making clothing anyway, as a beginning draper, I figured we would be lucky if my dress was human-shaped, let alone well-cut and flattering). So, I have 4 sort of worlds or themes that I can use to link clothing, and I also thought I'd choose a song to inspire it.
Eventually I chose the F-M Tribe, which stands for both Future-Modern and Feminine-Masculine. Basically it is a sort of post-apocalyptic fashion from now into the future, with reduced gender rules for clothes, etc. The song was one that was essentially about falling, but I forget what it was now. So I looked at pictures of parachutes and parachuting harnesses and so on. I decided the dress was a party dress made by a young woman in the post-apocalytic future out of old parachutes. Or something like that.
Luckily, they ran out of size 8-10 mannequins for us to use in the class, and they only had one size 12 which someone else chose, so I got to use a size 14. Woohoo! Cos this is (was) my size, so I would be able to fit the dress, and also the way I wanted to do the sides of the skirt really required that the wearer had hips, otherwise it just wouldn't look right. (This is why I don't understand why designers use only one size and shape of model on the catwalk, etc. Different things look good on different shapes and sizes, so if you only use one shape and size, you are limiting yourself to one kind of clothing.)

Some components - the straps were sewn inside out, turned right side out, and pressed with the seam at centre back. I made sure the strapes were the kind of annoying synthetic that you could press creases into. The red fabric in the dress is the kind of annoying synthetic that you can't press at all, as well as being almost impossible to hold in one place, cut in a straight line, or sew.

The front partly made. All the fabric except the side skirt pieces are flat lined with a thin calico to stop it distorting, ripping at the seams or whatever else these annoying fabrics might do, and also to make it comfier to wear against your skin, as otherwise it would be really sticky and clingy.

Front.

Alternate configuration.

Side.The pleats in the side skirt didn't work properly because the red fabric is the worst fabric in the world for anything. You can't even see it in the photo, but basically there are sewn down pleats/darts/tucks in that curved red side piece from the waist down to the hips where it releases to make room for larger parts of the body, like one's butt.
The shape of the green side piece is inspired by corsetry and stays.
The arm-scye has corners, so it's like a big arch shape, cos that's just cool.

Back. The zip is open ended. I would have had it go all the way to the bottom of the skirt, but this is the longest I could get. The zip is a fairly chunky red plastic one. Hook and eye at the top.

I wore this dress to my brother's birthday dinner cos my family told me I should even though I was kind of embarrassed to wear it out. And then I had to stand-up and show the Indian restaurant owners the dress, and the restaurant was full, so with the restaurant owners and my family all commenting on it, plus the fact that it's not a very subtle dress, I imagine everyone got to see it. (We were sort of friends with the owners in the way you are when you often eat at the same place and you both recognise each other and say hi when you meet on the street, away from the restuarant, and they gave as free stuff and discounts. They are cool people and we like them.)

Shopping Bag for Mum's Birthday

2011-02-01T22:37:00.005+13:00

I got some fabric from my favourite seller on TradeMe, with the intention mostly of using it for crafty things like bags, because sometimes it just doesn't work making clothes out of "fun" fabrics. I asked Mum which she liked, so that when I got round to making bags, I could whip one up for her too. Then, it was a couple of days before her birthday so I thought I'd make it to put her presents in.

I started out trying to make a pattern from what I remembered of a bag I saw on the internet, but it wasn't working, and it didn't really seem actually possible. I booted up my computer and went and actually looked at her bag, and it was in fact different from what I had been trying to make. So the pattern for THAT bag, was obvious, and what I was trying to do had in fact been impossible after all. I try to make a lot of impossible things. It's annoying. I need a different type of material to make stuff out of. Anyway, the site in question is this one. I basically followed what she did, as far as I can tell - I only skimmed through her instructions looking for really obvious important tips. I like instructions, but I mostly find them difficult to understand or remember unless they're written a certain way. My bag is a slightly different size, slightly different dimensions, but fairly similar, as there's pretty much only one useful size for a bag like this.

Here's the finished bag, empty and with presents and cake decorations in it :) As you can see it has little sheep on the outer fabric, and flowers on the inner fabric, and there is a button and loop as well that you probably can't see. The button I actually got from Mum, probably when I was a kid, as a random spare button for my sewing box.

One thing that is cool that you should look at on the original website is how she made the curved corners; rather than putting them on the pattern and ending up with a kind of weird curve to sew, you sew it square, and then sew across the corner in a curve and cut off the excess. At least, that's what I think she was doing - that's what I did in my interpretation of what she did.
Here's my corner; on the left is the side of the bag, at the bottom is the bottom of the bag. I sewed that curved corner in as you can see, and then I trimmed along about half a centimeter from the stitching.

Here's the pockets in mine. You should generally sew any pockets first, but in this case, since the pockets go over a seam line, you need to sew that seam first, then put the pockets on. In any case, you should generally try to get pockets, and similar details, on as soon as you can. My pockets are a bit small to be truly useful, but they were the biggest pieces of vaguely matching scrap fabric that I had - the first pocket is that shape purely to get more pocket out of an oddly shaped piece of fabric. However, it is always useful to have pockets in things, just in case.

Tip - make pockets out of a fabric that you can iron creases into and that stays folded. Otherwise, it's a real pain trying to fold the edges under and sew them down, and you have to use tonnes of pins, and it slips around, and you sew it wrong and have to do it again. Much easier to be able to iron them firmly under and not have to worry.

Looking at the instructions again - she apparently left a gap at the bottom of the lining to turn inside out; I sewed lining and outer together, right sides together, all the way around except the strap tops and turned it through those (don't make the straps narrow if you want to do this!). I also machine sewed the straps together up putting one end into the other and then sewing through all layers - but hand sewing is way nicer. My sister was not complimentary about the effect of my method as it is difficult to get something nicely inside something else when they are the same size. If I do another I'll taper one bag strap very slightly at the end so it fits in without bubbling. I wanted to see if that was a good method to get an efficient entirely machine sewn process for making the bags. I also sewed my button loop onto the finished bag rather than enclosing the ends between the layers because I wasn't going to put it on at first, so when I decided to it was too late to do any differently.

Vegetable Dinner Item

2011-02-01T22:07:00.003+13:00

As we all know, we're supposed to eat lots of different coloured vegetables all the time, etc.
I don't like making more than one dish per meal, if possible.
Today we had really easy nachoes - tinned beans in chilli sauce, wow, we're almost done already! Defrosted some ham and fried that with onion and garlic before adding the tinned beans, so that's most of dinner. Guacamole which I have made probably a couple of hundred times now, so that is easy. So, we get to have extra vegetables!
Quartered mini capsicums that were on special at the supermarket ages ago and have somehow survived in the fridge all this time (the "baby" veges are always expensive, but as soon as they're a couple of days old, they put them on special, yay!), and yellow round beans and flat green beans from the farmer's market, fried over a high heat in some olive oil. Mixing them around every couple of seconds until they all have spots of browning, but are essentially only barely cooked.

Yay, yummy! They look best when cooked in a black frying pan like this one ;)
Beans are great. You should get some when they are in season where you are and try them at all stages of cooked-ness - from raw as snacks or in salads, through barely cooked to using them in whatever dish you reckon is short of veges (stews, pasta sauce, whatever). Peas in the pod are also good to take places as a snack. Then the shelling is less onerous cos you're only shelling enough for a snack for one, not a meal for 1+, and they are protected in their own packaging - the same advantage as bananas.

101 Zebras - Chicken K'dra

2011-01-28T18:14:00.001+13:00

New post on 101 zebras about cooking chicken k'dra, one of 50 recipes to complete to cross off one of my 101 things.

101 Things in Three Years

2011-01-24T20:09:00.001+13:00

I have a new WordPress blog my my 101 things in three years project. Although, I don't expect many to get done really, a lot are next to impossible, etc. I'm adding them as I complete them, so you don't get to know the full list, and I have only completed one so far.
The link is http://101zebras.wordpress.com/

Farmer's Market - 22 Jan 2011

2011-01-23T21:49:00.005+13:00

I love going to the farmer's market on Saturday morning, because I love buying all the yummy stuff there, and I'm always amazed at what you can buy. Since it is seasonal, the selection is always gradually changing, which keeps it interesting.
This week I got this, plus a coffee, for $50.

It's amazing how little you can buy for $50 now-a-days. The "made goods" cost a lot more - if I take out the falafel, broad bean salad and cornish pasties, cheese and coffee, then it goes down to only $20. But I really like buying the made goods here, because they are a lot nicer than supermarket ones, and although more expensive than the cheap mass-produced cheese and so on, they are cheaper I think than equal quality supermarket and deli sold goods.

Full list, with prices as far as I can remember now:

Falafel with a little pottle of tahini sauce $5
Two cornish pasties $9.40
Chedder cheese off-cuts (the best chedder ever! It actually says on it Tasty cheese, but I don't know if they use that name for chedder elsewhere) $6.50
Lebanese (or other middle eastern but I think Lebanese) broad bean salad - so yummy, and very strongly flavoured as a lot of Lebanese food seems to be, so you can make a more boring salad and mix these in and they flavour the whole thing and make it all great $4
A bunch of mint $4
A small bag of broad beans - this was the last week of them apparently $4
A very small bag of small butter beans $2
A small cucumber of unknown type $1
Cherry-plums $1
Small new season apples - first week these were available this year $1
A giant...um... forget what it's called... kohlrabi. There was a medium, small and large one, all much larger than I've normally seen them, and I don't know if they are bad when big or what, so I chose the medium one. I can always put it in a stew or something, and I shop on coolness rather than practicality or whether we particularly like things. $3
Bunch of rubarb $3
A pretty good sized bag of flat green beans $3
A single shot flat white, not pictured :) $3

Tiger Beetle by the Beach

2011-01-08T23:00:00.004+13:00

Ages ago we went for a walk over some farmland towards a beach on the peninsula, although it turned out we couldn't get onto the beach as it was blocked off due to breeding penguins or something.
I saw lots of new bugs on this trips. I think I saw a native bee, and I saw a butterfly (I've seen butterflies on about 4 occasions in the last 5 years; they're not very common), and I think a stiletto fly - they live near beaches so even though I only got a quick look and had never seen one before, it's a reasonably likely identity. I also got pictures of this beetle, which is apparently a tiger beetle. They live in holes in clay banks, which matches the landscape in which we saw them.
They are fairly well camouflaged.

The ones pictured in my insect book are Cicindela tuberculata which looks very similar to these photos, and apparently looks very similar to the most common South Island tiger beetle, Cicindela latecinta. Since I am in the South Island, I assume this is what it is.

Both books have slightly different markings for their pictures of Cicindela tuberculata, although one is a photo and one is a drawing. The one in the drawing is most similar to mine, but I'm not sure if the differences indicate different species or if there is just variation in the patterns.

The Evening of Mince Pie Day

2011-01-02T15:28:00.003+13:00

In the late afternoon of mince pie day, my sister came over to cook various stuff.

I think she made a crazy Polish cake, most of the trifle, and here she is doing her famous salad from the vegetarian cookbook with lots of Polish recipes in it because the author is Polish.

Mum is becoming a hippie again, so she is not wearing shoes. I don't wear shoes much myself, but Mum has generally been a shoe-wearer. From the other photos I have, I see we were drinking beer and wine this afternoon.

At some point, my sister and I went down to the supermarket to get crazy Polish cake ingredients, mostly. It was great fun, as for some reason when go places together, we often act quite weird. I guess it is a sister thing :) It's always stuff that is really funny at the time, that no one else finds funny, and isn't actually funny at all.

We Made Mincepies at Christmas

2011-01-02T15:09:00.004+13:00

Every Christmas we make a zillion (fruit) mince pies that aren't anything like the shop ones.
This year my brother got to help - as in, he was here and available. I also managed to take a photo of him without his hands over his face for a change. He enjoyed helping, which was pretty cool. Mum had to leave for an appointment part way through, and my brother had to leave to go to a nearby town to do a fire performance there with his group, so I had to finish them by myself.

These are the mince pies we made. I made the giant ugly monster one last out of the left-overs.

Since the buses don't come very often, my brother and I walked to Mum's from town, which took about 45 minutes maybe. The previous bus had come about 10 minutes ago, and they come every 40 minutes, so the 30 minutes wait plus actually taking the bus plus the 10 minute walk at the end made walking seem more sensible. As it does every time to anyone capable of walking the distance when they consider taking a bus.

My New Year's Eve Late at Night Post

2011-01-01T13:06:00.001+13:00

So, it is 2011 already, as it is 1:22 AM here now.

I have read a few people's "the year in review" posts and wanted to post something as I enjoy the occasional band-wagon. However, I'm not sure what to post as I want it to be positive but I don't have much positive to say. And then the negative things are rather personal things that I don't really want to share, partly because I'd have to explain for years to make sure you didn't get the wrong idea.

However.

This is more a review of the last 10 years or my life, rather than 2010.

When I was younger, I used to be able to concentrate. Hyper-concentrate. And then when I got older, I didn't use that ability anymore because there was never enough time - at work you don't have enough time to really work before someone interrupts you. At home there is dinner to be cooked. And you have to go to bed at a reasonable time so you're not f*cked the next day because you have to get up early to go to work. (I use a strong word because lack of sleep has strong effects on me.) And so on. And so now I am left with my default concentration period of about 5 minutes because I'm no good at normal concentrating, and I am out of practise with hyper-concentrating. So I can't do anything. And this annoys me more and more and 2010 was particularly annoying in this regard.

Also, I am tired and lethargic and unmotivated and inertial a lot. These are all different things, but inertial is perhaps the major one and one I am not going to explain, although one person I know on LJ has probably come across this term as I mean it.

I have a terrible memory, for many things. I can't remember my goals in order to do them. I can't remember what I have to do today. I can't remember what I'm supposed to be doing at any particular time if I don't keep thinking about it. I watched the movie "Memento" recently and, although I clearly don't have short-term memory loss, the scene where he's trying to keep a thought in his head by thinking it over and over, and his use of situational clues is like a more extreme version of the way my brain works. For example, I'm making tea. I go and talk to my husband. I finish talking to him and I am wandering through the house with no aims or activity and I wander into the kitchen and see tea cups with teabags in them - oh, I am making tea! I forgot! This is why I can't multi-task while cooking because I will completely forget I am doing it as soon as I stop actively thinking about it. It's ridiculous.

And so, in 2010, I have got even more sick of these things than usual. I would like to be able to make a goal, remember it, and work towards it. Possibly even achieve it.

As a result of this, I am trying to come up with a plan to organise things better so that I can remember what I want to do in a day and so on. But I need to remember how the plan works and I also need to remember to work on the plan, and I keep getting distracted and forgetting.

But I have managed to buy a diary and a calendar and I am pretty sure that I have a plan on how to effectively use the diary that I hope will resurface out of my brain in a practical way at an appropriate time. You might be thinking - the way to use a diary is to write stuff in it and then do the stuff. But this is most definitely not a sufficient course of action for me. I have tried that way for about 15 years to no avail. To start with, I forget to write in the diary, forget to look in the diary, and lose the diary. I once found on the internet a really good diary method that I have been searching for through all my bookmarks and so on, but haven't found yet. It gave a method for how to record what you wanted to do the next day, or that week, or that year, and keep it all in a sensible, accessible way without losing any of the plans. It was pretty complicated, but kept everything all together so you couldn't lose or forget about any aspects.

In actual fact, I'd like to have less diaries and less writing down and less physical forms of memory, but the world requires you to do all sorts of stuff that can't be worked that way. I'd be much better off having to do only a few things, which I can focus on, rather than being interrupted by all this house cleaning, and food shopping, and cooking, and being places at particular times. The ideal situation would be to just work on 2-3 different projects, and to stop to eat, shower and sleep as needed and not have to worry about any of those other annoying things that take up all my brain power.

So anyway, in 2010 I really became dissatisfied with the way I function and I really wish I could live a different way that suited me better, but unfortunately the world doesn't work like that.

I have been trying to think of ways to change the way I live, but the constraints of having to go to work at specific times, and of having to live with someone else who doesn't want to live my way really makes it impossible. You kinda need to live a certain way in this world, because it is set up around the expectation that everyone lives this way. But hopefully I can identify some of the things I need and work out how to implement a system or something to help with that, and reduce the stress a bit and get a life that feels a bit more natural to me.

It is now 02:05 - I am thinking of staying up until dawn. Husband went to bed ages ago because that is the sort of silly thing he does. Apparently sunrise here is 05:51, which is less than 4 hours away, although I am starting to get somewhat tired already...

Note: I did not stay up until dawn. I got bored and tired and since Gwri wasn't staying up I decided it wasn't worth it, so went to bed at 03:30. Slept until 12:30, because I was having good dreams so decided not to get up too soon.

Orc Spotting

2010-12-05T17:49:00.003+13:00

As I was walking home, I saw a very helpful spray-painted message on the pavement - apparently there was an orc somewhere about! That way in fact! The same direction I was going!

I feared for my life, but still needed to get home. I looked for the orc down the hill where the next arrow pointed, but saw only bush.

I was not attacked by any orcs on the way home, nor saw any other sign of them.

Note: the phrase most commonly abbreviated to ORC around here would be the Otago Regional Council, but I didn't see them down there either. I heard they were looking for new headquarters, but a small stream-bed seems less than ideal.

People Can Recognise My Voice - An Obvious Revelation

2010-12-01T09:07:00.003+13:00

I realised yesterday that I had never fully realised before that people can recognise my voice. When I ring people, I generally not only say my name, but also where they know me from in case they know more than one person with that name. Yesterday I rang someone at work and since it went to a kind of communal phone line, two people answered, and I recognised both their voices, but still I said my name and my job position, and the person who had ended up taking the call said, "Yes, I know who you are" like, you don't need to introduce yourself, I know you, ha ha, smile.
We also have a blind guy working here, and I was sort of always confused about how he could recognise me if I just talked to him.
So even though I can recognise people's voices, I never realised it went the other way until yesterday.
Weird. What a revelation.

Resources for Victorian Working Class Clothing

2010-10-13T21:41:00.011+13:00

Primarily for 1820-1890.

Books

Everyday Dress 1650-1900 Elizabeth Ewing
The Victorians and Edwardians at Work John Hannavy
Fabric of Society - A Century of People and Their Clothes 1770-1870 Jane Tozer & Sarah Levitt
Working Class Costume from Sketches of Characters William Johnstone White 1818
Working Dress: A History of Occupational Clothing Diana De Marly

Museums with some relevant online stuff

Manchester Galleries Collection search
Manchester Galleries "Collection Themes" includes a "Clothes for Work" section
The Museum of English Rural Life has a lot about smock-frocks, sun-bonnets and the Women's Land Army and a little about other things - Collection Search
People's Collection Wales Collections (use "Discover" box to search or look through the pre-made collections) has a lot of prints of Welsh 19th Century people, and a few photos of extant clothing. They may or may not be working class, but they look like "normal people".
Gathering the Jewels is another Welsh site where I found some things, but I think they linked back to the previous site, however maybe still useful.

Online full-view books

The Workwoman's Guide from 1840 describes how to make clothes, etc, from that time, including useful things like "these [dresses] are particularly suitable for house-maids" and "caps for poor women and servants" so you can see what would have been appropriate, and also make gowns, etc from the instructions with working-class-appropriate fabric and complexity.
The Ladies Worktable Book from 1845 contains a little information on this topic, although very similar to the previous book, in fact a lot of the clothing stuff is just copied and summarised.
Picturesque representations of the dress and manners of the English, . Illustrated in fifty coloured engravings from 1813 kind of speaks for itself.

Other

I haven't looked through this list of museums yet, having only just found this page "Museums with strong collections of working class dress"
You can also find a few more drawings of poor women in various clothing around, although a lot of the ones I've found are covered in the books and links above.

Bedgowns (shortgowns in USA)
Often the drawings of the poor women look very 18th century like. Bedgowns in particular, which were worn in the 18th century, appear to have carried on into the 19th for poorer people - basically it is a simple fairly shape-less jacket worn with a petticoat-skirt. This is also where the Welsh interest comes in - apparently their national clothing in the 19th century was a bedgown and petticoat arrangement. But unfortunately this doesn't really tell us that much about how other people were wearing the bedgown as the Welsh appear to have been wearing it more universally rather than just as poor clothing, and the existing ones in the Welsh museums are very nice and rather more shaped than the simple 18th century varieties.

I haven't been able to find any information about any actual 19th century bedgowns (maybe none have survived) from outside Wales, and although one can extrapolate from the 18th century ones, and even though the garment is simple, there are variations of cut and construction and shaping that is unknown.

I did discover that in some notes I have on the 18th century, I've drawn a picture of a bedgown construction and labelled it 1814, but I didn't record where I got the image from, so I don't know how if it is based on a real garment or some extrapolation. It is also still a bit early for what I would like - I want something from 1830-1850 preferably.

So - if anyone has anymore information on bedgowns in the 19th century, please pass it on to me.

Something else interesting
I have no idea what's going on with the skirts in these pictures. Somehow the women have bunched up either their dress or their bedgown garment up like a bustle. If you have any input on this I would also be interested.

Golden Hands - Introduction and Flared Skirt

2010-09-07T22:39:00.005+12:00

So, I bought the full set of 18 Golden Hands books. They're craft and sewing magazines that have been collated into books I think, and are copyrighted 1968-1972 or thereabouts. I had got volumes 8 and 9 and decided to get more so that I could make the clothes and stuff, and if I was going to get a few more I might as well get them all. The have sewing, knitting, crochet, embroidery and lots of "lace arts" - tatting, needle lace, bobbin lace, macrame - basically anything using a long piece of fibre and twisting it up into pretty patterns.

They have pretty good instructions for things, as well as free-er, less hand-holding sections where they more just provide inspiration. I thought I'd go through all the sewing and some of the other clothes and make myself a wardrobe of outfits 60's-70's style. Of course, it is mainly the fabrics that make these things appropriate for those decades, otherwise they're pretty classic styles. Compared to modern sewing instructions though, the clothes you end up with are better made, although I think some of the techniques are unnecessarily labourious, or just plain wrong and not the best way to make things. These "wrong" things are pretty much just standard "home sewing" things that people have been told to do through the decades, including now, for no real reason, so I'll just ignore those bits and try the other techniques.

The original books apparently came with a pattern pack of basic patterns that they then tell you how to modify. Since they're pretty classic styles, like I said, I'll just make the patterns myself to be the same as their illustrations of the pattern pieces.

Of course, I shall probably have another involved project shortly so I'm not sure how far through the wardrobe of outfits I'll get. I have started two things though, one of which is the "flared skirt".

Here are "two looks" for the finished skirt, from the book:

Apparently green and yellowy colours are the way to go, but unfortunately I didn't have anything suitable. I looked at a mustardy fabric I have always hated until recently, but there wasn't enough.

So this is my fabric, and the other stuff you need for the skirt, minus the hooks and eyes that looked ugly because they're in an ugly packet. The fabric is pretty cool actually because it is all speckledy like you can see in the photo, and unlike most of my fabrics, I can't actually remember where I got it from, or why. In fact, I can't remember ever seeing it before. 90% of my fabrics I can remember buying and either have a project for or I know exactly what I thought was good about, and most of the ones I can't remember are just plain cottons and the like. So it's weird that I can't remember this cool stuff, especially since it is grey and I have very little grey fabric.

So, I have made a mock-up of this quickly, although there's something I have to check on it - I'm not sure which of two possible solutions is best to fix the wrinkling caused by the fact that, for standard pattern shapes, my back is too hollow compared to how much my bum sticks out.

After the skirt I might make one of the skirt variations they propose a little further on, and then it is the very exciting dress! Unfortunately the fabrics they recommend as best for the dress are wools that would be $40/m and up, which is annoying because I really want to see how it works in proper fabric.

Spring! And A Lot About Bumble Bees

2010-08-28T20:40:00.001+12:00

Today is the first day of spring because a giant bumble bee flew in our window, and it is the first one I have seen this seasonal rotation. It flew in the window and I though it must be some giant alien insect come to kill me it was so noisy, but it turned out to not be that after all.

Now, the giant bumble bees, especially those flying around at the start of spring, are the QUEENS. They have to lay the eggs, collect the food and raise the "children" all on their lonesome until the first little larvae turn into big grown-up bees and start helping out around the house. So, please don't kill them and please rescue them if they get stuck. I like all bumble bees, but I don't mind so much what your response is to a small one later in the season, but wiping out a potential nest in one blow is a bit harsh. Another thing is to not leave blue containers out where they can collect water as the bumble bees will fly in and drown themselves, being attracted to the blue.

What if you don't care about bumble bees, why should you bother? Well, in NZ the varroa mite has reached the lower South Island this season, and so this is probably the last year of wild honey bees in NZ, although maybe the very south will last another year. So pollination of flowers, fruit and some vegetables will be dependent on domestic honey bees, native bees and bumble bees. Non-honey bees are either solitary or have small colonies, so they will find it hard to fill the gap left by the death of the wild bees, so there will be a dearth of bees unless more domestic hives are set up. So the bumble bees need all the help they can get to try and help fill the gap.

Maybe you don't think the problem is really that bad, I mean how much difference can it make, and do bees really do that much? Well, the advice to home gardeners is to try and encourage all types of bees to the garden, but that most people will STILL experience a significant drop in yield, so if you usually have plants that depend on insect pollination, the next few years will not be very productive. I'm not entirely sure on the commercial sector - I assume orchards and so forth will set up their own hives and try to get other people's hives onto their property, otherwise they will obviously be hit hard.

Outside of NZ, the bumble bee had to be imported back into the UK recently to replace the dwindling population that is native to there, and in the USA they are of course experiencing hive collapse disorder or whatever they called it, and presumably are experiencing pollination problems too.

So, protect the bumble bees, and happy spring! (for those in the appropriate places of the world of course)

New Dress!

2010-08-27T23:36:00.005+12:00

This here is my favourite dress, generally referred to as the orange dress. It is based on a drawing of a Victorian chemise, and this is where the neckline comes from in particular, but the ruffle I added myself. A chemise of the time would be white linen or cotton most likely.

I like to wear it over some kind of top and some tights, and is more-or-less my ideal outfit as I have discovered I don't really like trousers that much., but this still keeps you warm.

I am making some stays and had wanted to finish them to wear to Gwri's work dinner, but we had thought the dinner was on Saturday and when we discovered it was really on Friday I didn't have enough time. But on Thursday evening I had enough time to modify the pattern for the orange dress and make this new dress, all in 3.5 hours. I shortened the orange dress, widened the straps, shortened the upper back, widened the skirt very slightly and added a different kind of ruffle - the ruffle is actually twice as long at the back as the front and looks very cool.

The main fabric is some I had tried to make into a different dress ages ago but it didn't work out, so I reused some of it in this one as I thought it was a bit more fancy looking for a work dinner. The ruffle is a cotton sateen which is a shiny cotton which is a very nice fabric and work particularly well in red (the shinyness doesn't work so well in some colours).

The original orange dress pattern is one I made myself based on a pattern block from Handford's book, but I had to make modifications myself to remove the darts as none of the books have instruction to make a relatively fitted no-dart pattern block like this one. Unfortunately I can't entirely remember how I made the no-dart block. It is very useful however for historical clothing where they didn't use any darts or any other fancy shaping but you want to make something that is your size and not completely shapeless.

Organic Shop Shopping!

2010-08-12T17:19:00.004+12:00

At work, I decided I wanted fancy tea, so went through the building, briefly outside, and then into the organic food shop. I'm wearing my paint splatter effect tights, nearly-knee-high very expensive brown leather boots, orange dress with the purple striped top underneath, and a red and blue tartan cloak (so I figure I don't fit in anywhere). (They are my favourite clothes.)
I ended up doing some very expensive grocery shopping, getting only 5 teabags as I am trying the dandelion and burdock flavour, no-salt NZ peanut butter made from Aussie peanuts, organic yellow yams (oca, from South America), organic cha soba (green tea noodles) and spicy blue-corn chips. I have some crackers at work that I might try some peanut butter on as I work late this evening.
The soba luckily have a little recipe on the back for an appropriate soba sauce, which I might make, and somehow I will cook the yams and mix them with salady things I got from the Farmer's market last weekend, and that's dinner, probably fairly quick as it will be quite late by the time we both get home, as Gwri is going to his Japanese sword class today.
I think this makes my life sound a lot more interesting than it actually feels when living it :D
(the idea of the difference between a person's "real life" and how it seems when viewed through their blog is quite interesting I think, so I try to see how me and my life might be viewed from outside if only select bits of information were presented)

Hats, Just Because I Needed Somewhere to Post This

2010-07-21T21:39:00.002+12:00

I needed somewhere to post a picture of my hats for someone to look at, in case they have to borrow hats to wear for a blogathon they are doing.... (link)
I have chosen the most interesting hats, as there are more beanies, knitted hats and caps that I'm sure they own themselves.

Picture 1:
Back: floppy tartan hat, victorian-style hat/fascinator thingy, newspaper boy cap, hat with big feathers
Front: black balaclava, panama hat, cheap trilby, better trilby

Picture 2:
Back: floppy paddington hat, black something with lace trim, small sun hat, red hat with no better description
Middle: bowler, white sunhat, cap with Polish coat of arms, corduroy cap
Front: cowboy hat, 2 party crowns in fabric, flannel "Tui" hat, fur-trimmed hunting hat

Yellow Smock, Part 1

2010-06-28T20:59:00.005+12:00

This is part one of a two part post, but unlike other series of posts, this one might actually get past the first one, because the item in question is nearly finished, and I like it even if everyone else will probably think it's ridiculous.

Currently, I am using the word "smock" to designate any garments of a particular basic type. One of the very common forms that clothing has taken, through time and in various parts of the world, is this "smock". For the basic pattern, the front and back are made of rectangles (with a shoulder seam or one continuous piece of fabric), obviously with some kind of hole for the head, triangular pieces are added at the sides to widen it, and rectangular pieces for sleeves. Underarm gussets may or may not be added, and additional triangles might be added to the centre front and centre back to widen it further.
Variations can be made by having tapered sleeves, or sleeves that start rectangle and change to tapering around the elbow. There are various neckline shapes. The length can be anywhere between from mid-thigh (for a man's shirt) to ankle length (dresses/gowns/tunics for either gender). On outer garments, the sleeves might be three-quarter length, or "t-shirt" length. The same pattern might also be used for coats by making an opening down the front and using a fabric suitable to this kind of garment.
This basic pattern developed in some cultures, particularly Europe, into a dress that was fitted on the upper body, which required it to open down the front, back, or side, often closed with lacing. Also, generally for undergarments (shirts for men and under-dresses for women), the sleeves became fuller and gathered into a cuff, and a straight collar added and maybe the body made fuller and gathered into the collar. Eventually, the dress shirt came about.

How were these garments worn? Short garments like shirts would be tucked into some kind of bifurcated leg garment, something trouser-like. The longer ones (remember the longer ones could be worn by both men and women) might be worn with several layered over each other, with some kind of trousers underneath, with skirts and bodices over the top, with long coats over the top, and as night-wear. Generally this kind of item is a kind of under-garment - either a layer under other clothes quite differently made (eg. Victorian women would wear a chemise ultimately derived from this kind of garment whereas their outer garments were radically different), or if both the inner and outer garments are made to this kind of pattern, the differentiation would be in the fabric and decoration rather than shape and style. The undergarments were often quite standardised either way, being made of specific fabrics and specific colours (eg. white or unbleached in Europe).

Here's my layout for this specific, yellow, garment:

I believe I based it on something specific when I started making it, but I forget now. Something European in any case, medieval or earlier.
Here it is, this is close to the actual colour. It doesn't have the decoration on it yet. The neckline is not as shallow as in the drawing. I think this was 100% linen, and it's both soft and smooth.

This is the sleeve gusset.

This shows the shoulder and neck reinforcement (which is hard to see on the shoulders, but is little triangles), which I made up but is a standard place to add reinforcement, so it is in the right spirit for the garment. ie. this is not an authentic garment to anywhere or when, but it is made in the spirit of this kind of clothing.

The seams are all false french seams (machine sewn), which is also in the spirit of things as these garments were generally washed a lot, and had to last, and so had to not fray so enclosed seams were used. I'm handsewing all the visible stitching for some reason, including the hem.

Gwri's Birthday

2010-06-27T21:22:00.007+12:00

Some time ago, was Gwri's birthday. We were going to Christchurch to see his parents around his birthday, and they were coming to Dunedin after that, so we thought we should have the birthday dinner when they were here -I think that's how it went. But, I think one should always do something on your actual birthday, so I bought a giant muffin and lit a big red candle for his "actual birthday" birthday cake, and we had tea with the teapot and milk jug and everything. There isn't a really good photo cos it was kind of dark, so I can't really post one.
Then, when his parents were here, we had a proper birthday dinner. I made crowns for everyone to wear out of some of my favourite fabrics. They're like paper hats from Christmas crackers, but made of fabric. They're all lined, interfaced, and machine sewn except for the join at the back which is hand-whip-stitched closed. Everyone had the option to keep their crown, and some people did. The one at the front is for Gwri cos it is the tallest crown and it was his birthday.

Amazingly, everyone actually wore them, without protest (although since we once spent most of Christmas morning wearing stuffed animals balanced on our heads perhaps crowns are not too much to ask, but that was my immediate family only, none of Gwri's family or other non-family).

Unlike everyone else, Gwri's Mum managed to end up only in one picture, in the corner, facing the other way:

In this photo, Gwri manages to look nothing like himself. But it's an interesting photo, despite capturing none of Gwri in it.

MidWinter

2010-06-27T17:18:00.004+12:00

Well, we are now past the winter solstice and midwinter two-times-over as both celebrations have occurred - the dance party in the bush kind of one, and the parade and fireworks in town kind of one. It's a bizarre kind of celebration because although it does start getting lighter again, it also tends to get colder and winter proper tends to occur after the solstice. Maybe it works differently in the Northern Hemisphere somehow, or maybe it is fairly irrelevant in our world of electric lighting, and before that was around the increasing light made everybody significantly more chirpy even though it was more cold.
Some pictures of the "leftovers" of the party in the bush event, which occurred closer to the solstice itself. No description of the events, merely what is leftover, the only remainder aside from memories.

Our masks:

Spent glow bracelets in the dark:

Russian Steppe Dress

2010-06-14T20:47:00.004+12:00

I don't know why I call this the Russian Steppe Dress, I just do. I don't think it has anything to do with Russians or anything. I made it a while ago.

I got the linen off trademe, and it had a nice weight to it, somewhat heavy, and has a nice natural colour, with the embroidery and black band along one edge, and it seemed peasanty, and the heavy nature of the linen made me think of wearing it in somewhat colder places.
I had to do a dirndl type skirt (rectangle made into cylinder and gathered at the top, although I pleated it) in order to have the hem of the skirt straight so as to use the border as it was. I used the length of the fabric for the skirt, cutting it lengthwise to use some for the sleeves and bodice.

I made my own block for a dartless bodice. I obviously wanted to get the whole dress out of the same fabric, but was designing the dress after getting the fabric and although I thought I could fit it all on, it didn't quite fit and so the back is a different linen. The bodice back and one front is lined in this different linen, and the other front is lined in the outer fabric.

The embroidery I did around the neck obviously echoes the embroidery along the bottom edge, and the red star shapes are like the eyelets.

The black band around the bottom is copied in the sleeves. I have decided to call these "dragon-mouth" sleeves. This is essentially the necessary shape for a sleeve cuff if you want to have the top of the sleeve shorter then the bottom but join them with a smooth curve.
The black band was made the same shape as the end of the sleeve, then the sleeve and the band were sewn together at the cuff, seam to the outside, and the band folded to the outside. Then the upper edge of the band was ironed under and I sewed it down to the sleeve by hand, just cos I can. It is cotton, so it ironed under nicely making it much easier.

This dress actually fit, which is a rare occurrence, although it was actually longer than I had meant to make it, so I could have made it a few cm shorter and then got the whole outer bodice out of the fabric, which would have been nice, as that was the idea.

Dismantling of a Crane

2010-06-13T20:52:00.007+12:00

Last weekend they took down a stationary crane that had been working on a building for the last year. This meant of course that they needed another big crane to do so. I stood around in the cold for one hour in order to take these pictures, so you'd better appreciate them! (interesting note: from my observations, I can tell you that crane dismantling spectatorship is an activity practised equally by men and women)

These first pics make our city look like it might be bigger, grittier and more generally city-like than it actually is. Note that it was actually about 11AM when I took these, not, say, dawn or dusk or any time that is supposed to be particularly dark.

This is the crane doing all the work. Handily it has written on it that it has a 72m main boom, so there you go. It also says it has 32m HYD tilt - but I don't know what that bit means...

So the boom of the stationary crane is being supported by the truck-crane, and this guy and his colleague appeared to be using a giant hammer to smack out a couple of bolts that held the boom to the vertical section. That's right, the whole thing seemed to have been held together with only two (giant) bolts, but I may have missed something as later photos show there may have been another two bolts at the top, making four. They had already removed some pulley cables at this point.

And there - he's done it. The boom is now only supported by the other crane and this guy's steadying arm. Actually, there are big ropes hanging from each end of the boom that guys on the ground will use to stop it swinging round and ending up, amusingly but inconveniently, resting on top of the buildings on either side of the street, straddling the street. Let me make clearer that that did not happen or even come close to happening, I just like imagining it.

Woohoo! Let me explain again that I'd been here nearly an hour by this stage, and there were a bunch of people who reckoned they'd been there at least 30 minutes before I got there. So we were pretty relieved that something was happening and we could go soon without worrying we were going to miss something.

Maybe you can see the steadying ropes?

I assume the guys who do this job think we're insane standing around watching this. The local news station was there too.

Don't we have some nice buildings here?

Wait - what's this in the super, movie-like, zoom-in? It's a small piece of wood; I'm guessing it's there to stop the metal bits, which are no longer under tension, from crushing each other. Wood features a lot with cranes.

And that's all, there are no more good pictures of this one. What happens next is that they spend a lot of time maneuvering it back and forwards slightly to line it up to land on the wood they've positioned. And then they lower it down and lift it back up again and someone moves the wood to a better position and repeat several times until it's finally down.

I'm starting a new "industrial" tag for stuff like this.

Hoodie Present

2010-06-07T17:30:00.004+12:00

Since Christmas was about 6 months ago now, I thought maybe I should get round to posting something about it.
I made lots of presents for people.
I made my brother a hoodie, but like everything I make it turned out way too big; it was supposed to be over-sized, but it ended up huge. I haven't seen him wear it :(
I pretty much copied the pattern from one of G's hoodies, just took the measurements and made the pattern. We made a zip-front hoodie in the industrial sewing class I made, so I know the general idea how to make one, and I copied the little triangle of ribbing from the commercial one - I quite like that feature, it adds stretch at the neck so you don't damage that section messing with the hood etc. I'm pretty sure I used tape on the shoulder seams, and maybe the hood-neck seam, to stop stretching .
How to use tape on shoulder seams: get some non-stretchy woven tape and cut to correct shoulder seam length. Pin it to/lay it on (as per your normal sewing practise) the seam and simply sew it down as you sew the seam. You may have to ease the shoulder seam to the length of the tape if your seam has already started stretching, like it does for me. Voila! No shoulder seams that get longer and longer.

I originally bought matching ribbing for it, but I couldn't bear to use it because the quality of it was just so poor it was painful to even think of sewing with it (and I am not a particularly quality oriented person when it comes to my materials) so I went an bought some more and this was the closest colour of good stuff I could get - which I think ended up looking really cool actually.

The hood is lined in a cool samurai printed knit that I also once made a kind of singlet top from.

Random Recipe - Fried Parsnip and Bread

2010-06-05T23:28:00.004+12:00

We eat a lot of strange food. I had this realisation a couple of weeks ago, when I suddenly saw our meal from an outside perspective. Along with making a lot of recipes from outside our culture, I also make a lot of stuff up.
Here's a random side dish I made a while ago - chop parsnip into chip-sized pieces, and "sweet bread" (eg. this was raisin and malt loaf) into stamp or domino sized pieces and fry in butter, adding sesame seeds and a sprinkling of salt part way through. I pretty much like anything related to bread or fried/roasted food, so this is all good. With oil instead of butter, it would be healthy. If your definition of healthy includes a bit of butter now and then, then it's healthy already.

I like taking pictures of the stuff I cook, because it is another interesting creative exercise of planning and putting things together, so I might post some more interesting recipes.
Also, if you can afford it, you should get a titanium non-stick frying pan like this one. It doesn't have teflon or other weird non-stick stuff, somehow it works by being titanium I guess. It works very well, cleans easily, you can use metal implements in it, it's very expensive. We bought ours with a department store voucher we got for our wedding. I think that you will save money by buying this one if you normally buy non-stick frying pans because you won't have to replace this one as it won't get scratched, and you won't have to be afraid every time someone mentions how poisonous the normal non-stick coatings are...

91-Piece Skirt, Part 2

2010-06-05T22:40:00.005+12:00

Part 1 was here. I actually finished this ages ago but didn't post it.

This is the kind of skirt that strangers comment on. Since it doesn't look that awesome in the photos, I assume it looks a lot better when it's on, probably when moving. The orange fabric is quite thin and light, so it doesn't end up weighing too much. People, adults and children, seem to find it worrying that it drags on the ground when I go down stairs or slopes, but I mainly only mind when I'm trying to go up and I keep stepping on it, and it's hard to hold up because even if you hold it up in one or two places, there is still enough skirt to get in the way down by one's feet.

Finished skirt, with one side tucked into waist-band:

Both sides held up:

Small details - the skirt is hemmed by sewing a strip of fabric onto the hem-edge, folding it to the back and sewing it down and then sewing a wiggly line around too, for decoration and to hold the strip in place and help resist fraying.

- the waist edge also has a strip sewn onto and folded to the inside. A row of shallow zig-zag stitch is sewn around the top edge to reinforce it, and then 3 rows of (slightly different) zig-zag stitch are sewn, making a channel for the drawstring in the space.
You can also see two rows of top-stiching. On each seam the seam allowances were both pressed to one side and then that side was topstitched. Where the multi-colour sections were inserted into the orange fabric, the orange was topstitched and so when the orange pieces came together at the top both sides of the seam are top-stitched rather than just one like in other places on the skirt.

Regent 24-Hour Booksale 2010

2010-05-24T18:21:00.008+12:00

This is what I got this time - 10 SF books, 8 magazines, and 14 non-fiction. There's pictures of the books below the list.

The best ones:
"Simple Dressmaking" which is in near-perfect condition, and from what I can find on google, appears to have been published 100 years ago - pretty cool.
"Smocks and Smocking" which is about smocking but specifically as derived from English smock-frocks rather than just generic smocking with no history. This is the book they couldn't find at the library when I went to get out books on smock-frocks 2-3 weeks ago, so that is an interesting coincidence don't you think?
"Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire" which is a biography about the woman played by Keira Knightly in that film recently and lots of people complained that Keira is neither buxom nor sensuous enough to play such a character.
David Brin's "The Postman" - I always liked the movie based on it, and David Brin is good.

Others:
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
The Robot Who Looked Like Me
Orion
Roadmarks
(an anthology)
Conan the Freebooter
The Invincible
Way of the Pilgrim
Moonrise
----
An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present
Pitman's Shorthand Phonography
Things to Make with Leather
Conversations with the Goddesses
Witchcraft and Sorcery (readings)
The Country House Garden
All Colour Book of Insects
Basic Craft Techniques
Historical Paradors: A Journey Through Spanish Hotels
Golden Hands 8 & 9

Unusual Busking by the Farmer's Market

2010-05-15T12:24:00.002+12:00

Outside the Farmer's Market today, and a few weeks ago, there was a guy busking - with a drum kit. Which is something I haven't seen before, and looks pretty unusual on the grass lawn, with a few saplings growing nearby, outside the railway station. I took my camera to the market a few times after I saw him the first time, but he wasn't there then, and then I didn't have my camera today. Very unusual.
Today, in addition to the crazy drumming, only 50m away we had a bag-piper who may have been busking, or may have been there simply for general ambiance, as they like to have bag-pipers for special occasions and in touristy places (like the railway station). Anyway, bagpipes and drums at most 50m away from each other equals a lot of competing noise...

Exciting Farmer's Market purchase today: crab apples.

Mexican Crafts

2010-05-10T22:00:00.006+12:00

Near the Farmer's market on Saturday was a woman with a small stall of things apparently made by indigenous Mexican people. I think she was also Mexican herself. There were some fabrics and some jewellery, and also lots of Frida Kahlo postcards and some bags with her on (which hadn't been made by the indigenous people, she just really liked her). They also had these beaded animals where brightly coloured beads are stuck onto a wooden form. For some reason Mexican people like bright colours, whereas in NZ no one particularly likes colours at all...
There were wooden turtles where the shell lifted up like a lid so you could put stuff inside and the top of the shell was beaded, which I considered getting as a present for Mum, but I thought they'd be very expensive.
Instead I got the first thing I liked, which was a beaded deer, and when I said I wanted to get it, she said "Really?!" and seemed very surprised, and said NZ people didn't buy those ones usually. I think maybe it is the aversion to colour thing? And also in Dunedin, an aversion to spending more than a certain amount of money on a single item, limiting people to cheap things, usually whatever cheap jewellery every stall in town is selling.
The other is a carving of a wolf on a piece of bamboo, for Gwri.

Here's the picture:

The light's not the best; he should be brighter, and look less like something which had it's photo taken in dim light, which it had, and it always makes things look funny. But he is very cheerful all the same.

Cave Weta 2

2010-03-30T21:44:00.005+13:00

The cat caught a cave weta of some type this evening, but I rescued it before it was hurt.
Here are some photos; I think it is gorgeous.
To start with is the worst photo, but also the most overhead and thus "overview" kind of one.

Now, two better ones.

It was hard taking photos of it, I couldn't get enough light. I have to work out a better way of taking photos of insects at night (indoors, but I mean there's not enough light for closeups from our lights).

Angel Robe

2010-02-17T15:54:00.004+13:00

I made this last year, it was going to be part of a Halloween costume of this character in a book I was reading, but I never did the rest of the costume. The shape of the robe is from a 14th century (I think) item of clothing.

This is the fabric, and essentially the pattern. It is cut on the fold, just one piece of fabric. The fabric is linen, and was white with the green embroidery, but I dyed it.

The headhole and neckline is done like so: the shape sewn below is sewn onto the outside along the lines marked on it, then cut inside the lines and folded to the inside and sewn down. The hem of the "sleeves" is done by sewing a strip of fabric on the right-side, then folding to the inside and sewing it down.

I sewed (by hand) a shape of a kind of lacy wool fabric over the shoulders, for decoration, because wool is awesome, and to make the shoulders water resistant to a light shower (the water drops would sit on the surface). The character was a forest dweller of a fantasy past, so the thing was supposed to have consideration of practical issues.

A few people commented that it was a "nice summer dress" and seemed to like it. I had been wondering whether it was too weird to wear, because I thought of it as a "robe" and people don't really wear robes anymore, so I was kind of confused when people referred to it as a dress, but I guess it makes sense, although I can't see it as a dress.

Crane Fly Photos

2010-02-16T18:39:00.004+13:00

So, not much to say here other than, "here's a crane fly!"

I first found out what they were by emailing Landcare Research after not being able to find it on their website, describing it as looking like an enormous mosquito. Not knowing much about insects at the time, I didn't realise that a mosquito was a fly, and therefore this thing with a similar body shape would (probably) also be a fly, and that therefore I could, for example, look up giant flies on google. It's probably simply a "house cranefly" or similar. As you can see, it has a very nice wing pattern. From the tip of it's "nose" to the end of the wings is 3cm, and the legs as it sits there spread 8cm, but apparently you can get bigger ones.
Anyway, I thought it was good of the Landcare Research people to reply to people's pointless emails about giant bugs in their bedroom - good on them!

Crochet Hook Case

2010-02-05T09:44:00.004+13:00

I wanted to make a case for my knitting needles so that they had somewhere tidy and sensible to go, and it was going to hold crochet stuff as well (although I never crochet, but you know, you need the stuff anyway...) but I decided to make a smaller case to hold the crochet needles by themselves. It is made of linen, and has a beetle embroidered on it, and ties up with a finger braid cord I made. Pictures below:

The cord is made of fairly fine thread so takes a while to "braid" - it uses 5 loops of thread to braid it, so 10 strands. It's my first proper actual use of one of these braids (which were made in the medieval and tudor times for tying and lacing all sorts of things) other than using one to wrap a present for Mum's birthday.

There are various problems with how it is sewn so I will make the knitting one more carefully, and maybe embroider TWO beetles on it. Maybe I'll even have better photos of those beetles.

Soup and Rolls Dinner

2010-01-06T21:47:00.004+13:00

The other day I felt like making bread. I made some bread rolls, that as usual did not rise as much as they should have, even though it was a warm day. How is one supposed to make bread, how is one supposed to find somewhere warm enough to make it rise? Also, I believe they cheated somehow with the ones in the book to make them all golden looking.

We ate them with corn and plantain soup, as for some reason the supermarkets have started selling small plantains.

Felt Flowers of the More Hippie Persuasion

2010-01-02T20:45:00.003+13:00

I made some felt flowers for myself in a different style to the last ones; I like this style better.
Here's a nice picture of the first three:

And a poor picture of those 3 plus the next two.

They all sort of represent focuses or whatever for the year. I wanted to make some of these flowers for myself anyway, so I thought I'd combine them into a tangible form of these focuses, as writing lists on bits of paper gets boring. The orange one with the circles is juggling, and the blue one is 18th century clothing.

Reading List

2010-01-02T20:38:00.001+13:00

This is just a list of books I've read, which will be added to, so doesn't have much on it at the moment. It's primarily for my own interest really.

Caesar's Invasion of Britain by Peter Berresford Ellis
"Matter" by Iain M. Banks
"The Algebraist" by Iain M. Banks --2/01/10

91 Piece Skirt

2010-01-02T19:51:00.003+13:00

I'm making a 91 piece (minus the waist and hem binding fabric) skirt. It's primarily triangle pieces of scrap fabric, with the biggest pieces in an orange fabric I got several metres of very cheaply. I've just done the first 3 seams, yay!

Here are the remaining pieces of these sizes....

And the rest of the pieces...

Not pictured are the large orange pieces - which are kind of the base of the skirt, and would make an 8-gore skirt if just sewn together without the other pieces, which I guess are essentially pieced godets?
The idea is based on a dress from Northern Pakistan in the "Dress in Detail from Around the World" book (p. 166) which has 524 pieces in the skirt, apparently, and seems to be all one colour, not multiple.

Juggling Update - 29 Dec 2009

2009-12-29T18:29:00.001+13:00

Best club juggling so far is 24 throws and catches (i.e. not dropping any, finishing with 3 in the hands) or 26 throws (finishing 1 or more dropped).

A Couple of Beetles

2009-12-14T21:51:00.005+13:00

These photos aren't as clear - aren't as good close-ups - as most of the previous bug photos, although the second one isn't too bad.

The first one was at Mum's house on my birthday - yay, a birthday beetle!!
I think it's a type of long-horn beetle, but isn't one of the 22 or so in my book, although it looks most similar to the "pallid longhorn" (Calliprason pallidum, was Stenopotes). The antennae aren't very long for a long-horned beetle, but they only have to be 2/3 as long as the body to be considered long, and the male often has longer ones than the female.

The second looks to be some kind of "waisted ground beetle" (the corset-like waist effect is not as visible in this photo as it could be) of which there are 60 species in NZ, so unsurprisingly my little book did not go into them.

I Had a Birthday

2009-12-14T21:16:00.005+13:00

Yes, I had a birthday :) I turned 1000 years old, although only under certain mathematical conditions. Ever since I've had a camera (I was... actually that was about the last time I was 1000, under similar but different conditions) I've taken a photo of my presents (for archival purposes, lol). Probably people will think this weird, but whatever.
Other than getting presents, I went to see "Where the Wild Things Are" and made everyone dinner at Mum's house: Moroccan food, which is like my destined cuisine or something - it's the most ideal type of food I've come across so far. If each person were born to a certain type of food, Moroccan is the closest I've found for myself so far.

Here's the picture!!

Contents:
[from Gwri]

3 striped juggling clubs
booklet on juggling clubs
booklet on juggling balls
90 minute DVD on fire safety (eg. for fire poi, staff, etc) (which you can get free with an order from "home of poi")
"Where the Wild Things Are" stickers
"Where the Wild Things Are" badges
a very pretty card

[from Mum]

a card she made :D
a very nice but funky black and gold bag which doesn't look that good in the photo
a vintage (age unknown) locket, of the kind you can actually put a photo in

[from Lisa]

"grow-in-the-bag" borage - the bag has dirt and a seed sachet in it, and you make it like instant noodles; sprinkle in the seeds, add water, put in the sun
"Desperate Housewives" season 1 on DVD

[secret santa]

chocolates

A Difficult Dinner Dress - Part 1

2009-12-07T13:02:00.007+13:00

I am making a dress to wear to Gwri's work dinner on Friday (as I write this it is Monday, in case you read this some other time). It is based on a drawing of a dinner dress from 1908, in a book that I got from the library but I've forgotten what it's called. I don't think I shall show you the picture until the end, ha ha ha.
I have so far spent nearly 20 hours on the pattern and mockup, including 1 hour writing out instructions for myself to follow so I put it together right, but not counting probably nearly as many hours again just thinking about how to pattern it and put it together, but that thinking time is normally done whilst doing something else, like lieing in bed hoping to go to sleep sometime soon (putting dresses together in your head isn't conducive to going to sleep, but otherwise I get bored).
Here's a random picture of part of the mockup. (The dress itself will have 2 sleeves.) I didn't take any other pictures of the process.

The pattern has 18 different pieces, and will involve 6 different fabrics, although it probably could have done with 4 if I had the right fabrics and enough of each.
The main fabric I really wanted to use only had 2metres on the roll when I went to buy it, which wasn't enough for the oringal design which involved the skirt being bias cut (cut diagonally rather than stright - uses more fabric but hangs differently) so I changed that, and also had to make the skirt less full than I would have liked. But then when I came to cut it out, there wasn't enough even for the pattern I had, so I had to take a bit off the skirt.
Here's the lining, which will hopefully fit me better than it fits the mannequin.... It looks more-or-less like it fits her here, but the bodice is way too long for her in the back, and the bust is a bit funny. It opens at the back. Hopefully these pictures do something sensible.

So far, on the making side rather than the design side, I've spent 5 hours - 2hours 40minutes cutting the pieces, but I still have 4 pieces to cut, 1 hour interfacing parts, and 1hour 20minutes actually sewing.

Green Spot Bag!!

2009-12-06T18:35:00.003+13:00

There's a curtain and furnishings store near our house that sells the most expensive fabric ever, a lot of which isn't even that nice. It's really odd. Their cheapest stuff looks a lot like the cheapest stuff from Spotlight, but costs literally ten times as much. I have spent much time trying to understand this, but have got nowhere. They do have a remnants/ex-samples bin where each piece is $2, which has many small, interesting pieces of fabric in it. The largest is generally only big enough to make a knee-length skirt or a sleeveless top, but the smaller pieces could be used as accents... or for bags!!
Which brings us to this awesome satchel-style bag I made.
The piece of fabric was just the right size to make this excellently sized bag, and the dots are a raised pile i.e. they're furry. I lined it in some nice, slippery fabric and bound the edges in cotton poplin. The strap is made out of the same poplin which was interfaced and then folded so that the strap is 4 layers of interfaced poplin thick - because all my straps and waistbands and so on always get all crinkled so I wanted to make it thicker and stronger.
The button is an awesome little red hand, and makes up 50% of the total cost of materials for the bag :D

It even has a pocket!

Felt Flowers

2009-12-06T18:20:00.005+13:00

During the year I collect ideas for presents for people, including tutorials on how to make them, and save them in my email. One of the ideas was "felt flowers" eg. for brooches. We bought a gift for one of our "secret santa" recipients at Gwri's work, but I am feeling all crafty so thought I'd make a felt flower to add to it. I didn't much like the ones in the tutorial I had seen and saved, so I did a google image search for felt flowers to get ideas for shapes and styles and found lots of good ideas, and I decided to make one like this one (picture from this site):

I've got some pictures of some more "hippie" style ones that I, personally, actually like better, but they're probably not so universally attractive and acceptable, and we don't really know the recipient's style.
So, here are my two - the red one is for me, which I made to test the pattern and method, and the blue and white one is for her. They turned out really nice, which surprised me somewhat.

Luckily, the only beads I have that are larger than tiny happened to work quite nicely. They're about 10cm in diameter. The two inner most layers (of the same colour) are the same size - about 9cm diameter - and the bottom/outermost petals are slightly bigger.

Reading List

2009-12-04T13:22:00.003+13:00

I've added a little bit to the sidebar saying what I'm reading, and hopefully I will remember to do some kind of brief review when I finish books and put the link to the most recent review in the "just finished" section of the sidebar. Or something. I might make a post that I update each time I finish a book so I can see what I've read.

Super-quick Bug Blog Post!

2009-11-24T13:10:00.009+13:00

I'm probably possibly going to start writing some more on my blog again, so to start off this burst of activity, here's a picture I prepared a while ago that I don't think I've posted yet. This one has had only a sliver cropped off the side to make it more symmetrical, so is basically as it was taken - it's nice to take a picture that you don't need to change later.

Here is ... a dronefly on a flower.

And here it is close up (the aforementioned picture cropped around the fly) - looks like a bee.

Taken with your everyday type of digital camera (Mum's one), which had a large offset error in the view finder when taking closeups, and it was too bright to see anything on the screen, so I had to "point and guess" to actually get the whole flower in the shot. My new camera has no viewfinder at all because apparently no one wants them when you have the screen, so about 25% of all the pictures I took this weekend were entirely "point and guess" photos due to glare on the screen, etc.

The colour and light and focus all worked out really well and are fairly as-they-really-were. It can be difficult to take a good flower picture because it's hard to get the camera to see the colours the same way you do. I'm pretty sure the amazing flower came out of our garden; it was taken a while ago. Just behind it are those little white flowers you get with bought flowers.

Moth Pics!

2009-08-04T17:08:00.005+12:00

So, moths are generally boring and ugly, and tend to mostly look the same (small and brown-grey) but still the insect books devote large amounts of space to every species of moth you might possibly come across. (They also devote a quite disproportionate amount of space to butterflies; I see one butterfly a year, but they take up one tenth of the book. I used to think I saw a few more, but they turned out to be day-flying moths.)
Anyways, yesterday there was an annoying big moth in the house, so I got my special bug-catching plastic container and caught it to put it outside since otherwise they fly around in the bedroom when I am trying to sleep and I can hear them, and sometimes they crash into my head. But then I thought, since it was big and seemed to actually have some markings rather than just being brown, I would look it up in my insect book moth section. And, there it was, quite - fairly anyway - clearly a "slender owlet" moth.
Since it had stopped fluttering around inside the container, I thought it might be possible to take pictures of it as it might stay still. The bathroom is the smallest, least cluttered room so I took it in there, and if it started flying around it wouldn't be so hard to catch again as in the rest of the house.
It's kind of hard taking close-up pictures with a snapshot-type digital camera as it is hard to tell if it is actually focused properly, and often it looks like it has focused, but when you look at the pictures later you discover it was not. In this case, I could see from the image on the display screen that in many cases it was passing through the correct focus and then setting it wrong, i.e. I get it to focus and it starts off on blurry and goes through it's range of focusing distances, including a nice clear one before finally settling on "very blurry". So obviously the lens could focus, but the camera couldn't work out how for that distance + zoom combination, and there's no manual focus.
Anyway, here's two of the pictures. You can see it's very feathery antennae quite clearly, especially in the second photo. The first photo is a bit washed out because of the flash, but it did pretty much look like this if you had enough light on it - when it was flying around or sitting on the wall it looked much duller as the light wasn't enough to bring out the patterns - like the Stargate-like orange w-with-a-line-over-it in the middle of each wing. It also has a weirdly pointed nose, and kind of looks like an aeroplane.

The moth's actual size is about 1" long, maybe a little more, and in case you missed the name, it is probably a Slender Owlet moth, but I don't have the book here to give the scientific name.

Monkeys and Midgets

2009-07-31T18:48:00.004+12:00

Today I saw this written multiple time on the pavement at the University:

And I was wearing this today:

Huh, weird.

Completely unrelated to that, is that when going around the lecture theatres at the university, I often ponder the fact that if any of the lecturers were midgets, the cords used to pull down the projection screens would be too high up for them to reach.

Monkey Truck Clothes

2009-07-27T20:27:00.005+12:00

Today I wore my new top that I have recently realised is actually supposed to be a pajama top, but no matter (what gave it away was the label that said "I only sleep in " and the word "sleepwear"). It is dark grey and says "embrace your inner monkey" in bright pink, and has a picture of a monkey (of course) who appears to be dressed like a Buddhist monk. After thinking about this for the last 6 hours, it has ocurred to me that this might be some kind of play on words with monk and monkey. If so, it's not exactly one of those funny jokes, more the confusing kind.
So I wore this monkey singlet top thing over a black wool top of the kind that you generally wear under other things to keep warm, and my new trousers that I made and haven't put up pictures of yet. Interestingly, if I pull the singlet top down over my hips, I look like some kind of weird mutant with a small top half and disproportionately giant bottom half. Generally close-fitting clothes look good on me because I have a nice waist (yes, I do) but this mutant business is some weird property of these trousers which are rather snug (over snug even) at the waist, causing a sort of accentuated hip curve springing out from just below the waist. Anyway, it looked odd, so I have to have the top artfully rumpled up to just below the waist.
Then, there was the issue of keeping warm - I needed a warm top to go over as although it was warm now it would be cold when the sun went down. BUT I wanted to wear my zip-up top with trucks on it, which is not-warm. You can surely see what a dilemma this was - trucks vs. not-warm. Obviously the trucks won and I wore the top, and luckily it is not that cold.
The end.

Goose!

2009-07-19T12:24:00.006+12:00

Here's some pics I took of the goose that currently hangs out in the Leith outside the clocktower building.

Soup Day

2009-07-17T09:19:00.003+12:00

Yesterday was soup day, because I made soup. Amazing how that works. I made lentil and root vegetable soup. It also had celery in it, ruining the root vegetable theme - but I categorised it as "seasoning" so the theme was saved, whew!
The veges were carrots, an old wrinkled parsnip (it is not necessary that the parsnip be in this state, but in my case I am trying to reduce food wastage so I had to use it on the double! It was rehydrated in the soup, good as new, I'm sure...), yams, swede... I wasn't quite sure if that even grew underground initially, but it does... Wikipedia says that it is a cross between a cabbage and a turnip! So you can eat the leaves, although it is never sold with leaves here. Actually, if you want more ideas on how to eat a swede - I can seldom think of any good ideas but buy them anyway - wikipedia has some cooking notes. Hmmm, looks like a New Zealander has been at that article as it specifically mentions that they grow bigger in the South Island than the North - which means it was a South Island New Zealander.

Want to see some boring pictures of soup preparation? Maybe I'll give you the recipe too - I wasn't going to because it is from a book, but we've changed it tonnes, so there isn't any infringement on their intellectual property.

First, we start off like the recipe does say - as soon as you even think about making this soup start soaking the lentils... You don't need to do it quite that soon, but the first step is to put one cup of red lentils in a bowl with one litre of hot water.
Then, chop up some onion relatively small, and fry it in butter or oil or a mixture of these. Cut up your veges relatively small too and put them all in except the swede, and "sweat" them - cook them for a bit. Put in your garlic at this time too (garlic and onion are both seasonings AND root veges! how wonderful).
Photo: you can even see the steam coming off it - when I took the first picture (not shown here) I was disappointed because it wasn't moving; a weird thing to think about a photo - which are well-known for being static - and also about soup - which also tends not to move. But it was the steam that wasn't shown so it didn't look like it was busily cooking away like in real life. This one is a bit better.

Now, add some ground spices - about 1 teaspoon ground cumin seeds, 1/2 teaspoon each of garam masala and ground coriander seeds, some ground chilli if you want - and fry it all some more briefly. Add the lentils and their water. Add the swede.

Cook until cooked.
Add chopped celery leaves that you saved from the top of the celery stalks. They are edible and presumably contain some nutrition so you might as well. Plus they are nice and bright green.
Eat it! It is quite thick, kind of a stew... If you leave it to go cold, it will get thicker, but will thin to an edible consistency when reheated.

Movie review

2009-07-03T14:18:00.006+12:00

meh, I didn't like that post, so it is gone now!

Personality Imbalances

2009-05-23T11:56:00.004+12:00

In dealing with more people through work than I would have normally dealt with, I have come to the conclusion that many of the incomprehensible things people say are in fact the result of certain problems they have, or, as I like to think of it (at the moment, until I find a better phrase) "imbalances in their personality". I can't identify what the imbalances ARE at the moment, but I'm imagining that there's a perfect state where people can deal with everything that comes their way, are pleasant to interact with, reconciled with their past, free of guilt, etc. Nobody's perfect however, so we all have problems. (Note that personality is probably not the best word here, because even people in the perfect state would still have their unique personality that makes them them - but doesn't include the things that make them miserable and unpleasant.)
Anyway, people are off-kilter, and this makes them respond to things oddly.
For example, today at work there was a problem with something. And someone said to me, "what are you going to do about it then?" and I said, "Well, the only thing I can do is...." And so he replied snippily, "Well, that's your problem isn't it?" and left. With me thinking - "well, why did you ask then?!" as well as - "yes, duh." There was more to his attitude, but I can't quite identify it so I can't describe it.
There's another guy here who complains a lot. Even when things are going well or fine, it's like there's a problem. This makes me wonder why?
Anyway, it's quite fascinating how these imbalances manifest themselves in people.

Poor Posting & Magic Man

2009-05-23T07:50:00.004+12:00

I did not write a post yesterday. So I have to write two today. In case I do not have the inclination to write two, I'm writing this not very good one now. Actually - I really wanted to post some more photos today (I have a large back-log) - but I am working 7AM until 5PM! :O That would be 0700 to 1700 which is clearly ten hours (one of the advantages of 24 hour time is it makes the arithmetic simpler). Since my job is to help people in the lecture theatres, if they don't need any help I don't do much, so I will probably have the time to post something, the problem is thinking of it. I doubt much will happen today, although I have spent 45 minutes checking the rooms and getting a door unlocked and standing around looking at people.
I was momentarily thrown by the fact that one of the people setting up is the magician that did the (mostly) for children magic show in Oamaru during the Victorian fair; we watched it once and then I liked it so much we had to stay around for his second show so I could see it again.
We saw him somewhere else a few months later, and I watched my favourite trick again, which involves 3 lengths of rope that (apparently) change length. Part of the reason I like it is that it is very obvious (to me) how each part is done, but it is fun to work out exactly how he is doing it. That seems like it doesn't exaclty make sense, but think of it like maths or a puzzle like sudoku, you know how to do arithmetic/sudoku, but that's not the same as knowing the answer; you still have to aply the rules to solve it, it's just that you know how to solve it. Another favourite one is where he opens a book and there is a can of beer/coke inside. Cans are not flat, so how is it in the book, which is narrower than the can? If we assume he can't ACTUALLY do magic, then there must be a trick, a simple trick, but it looks so perfectly impossible.
So we have the easy to understand, and the impossible to understand. The other tricks are somewhere between, so not quite as fascinating.

Prayers in the Corridor

2009-05-21T17:46:00.006+12:00

Since I was in town all day, and then at work, I didn't have time to really write anything. Probably the most interesting thing that happened to me today is that when I went to get a drink there was a woman doing her evening Islamic prayers around the corner in the corridor. Unfortunately I sort of walked right through it as I didn't realise what she was doing until I was unlocking the doors that the sink is behind, which was right beside her - before that I was thinking "why is this person just standing here looking at a jacket laid out on the ground?" then she knelt down and bowed to the ground, which kind of made it a bit more obvious....
I went away and then came back, not sure if I could say anything to her during this time, but she was occasionally talking to a guy who was standing there with her, so I interrupted anyway and offered to let them into a lecture theatre if she wished. But, she said she was nearly finished. I guess I shouldn't let them into a room, but on the other hand, there's various rooms unlocked and unsupervised all day so anyone who wanted to could cause mayhem almost anywhere at almost anytime, and the cleaner and myself are in this area all evening. And, it must kind of suck trying to find places where you're not in the way and people aren't looking at you all the time.
Anyway, I've never seen anyone doing these prayers before, so my couple of seconds of witnessing it was interesting although I guess I was pretty nosy. I actually offered to let her into a room if she's around on other evenings and wants to use one. If there were more Muslim students around at the relevant prayer times, I guess they could actually book a lecture theatre/teaching room to use. The City Baptist church used to book half the College for most of Sunday.
Hmmm, religion is interesting; almost makes me wish I had one.

Wasp and Spider Story

2009-05-20T12:07:00.011+12:00

So, there's these solitary predatory wasps that live in our neighbourhood, and in other places around Dunedin that I always noticed and wandered what they were because they're kind of large, and red-orange. Then this year, when it was summer, or whatever that non-freezing, not-constantly-raining season is, I saw lots of the wasps/the same wasp many times doing all sorts of stuff around the garden. Mostly that stuff was looking for and killing spiders, looking for a nest spot, and then dragging the spider to the nest. One time after it had found itself a spider and dragged it around a bit and then gone off to look for places to put it, I got the camera (which has since been taken by an evil university student) and took pictures of the rest of the dragging process.
I also sent two photos to the museum and Anthony Harris at the museum said it was "Sphictostethus nitidus (Fabricius, 1775) with prey, Miturga sp. The wasp is the red spider hunting wasp, in the family Pompilidae." So there we go. I got out the two books/journal things on NZ hunting wasps that he wrote but have not completely looked through them yet. However, I did see that how the wasp drags it's prey depends on the species - like some drag it upside down, some the right way up, some push it, etc - and most of the ones here generally find the spider then the nest rather than the other way around.

Here are the photos.

First, the spider, while the wasp is away investigating potential nest spots.
I turned it over so we could see what it looks like on the top, that being the way we normally see spiders.
The wasp comes back - Hey! What happened here?
- Who turned over my spider?
- Damn, heavy, massive, spiders (grumble grumble grumble)
- Finally! It's over! Ok, taking it across the path.
- Still going. This thing is heavy.
- I've got to pull it UP a whole 10cm here!
- Over the edge to my secret lair, bye!

Whereby it went into the silverbeet garden and presumably dragged it into a hole somewhere.

I saw it drag one another time into a little hole between the bricks. It went in first, and pulled the spider in afterwards, and it looked like the spider would just get stuck and plug the hole, but it managed to get it in.

I don't think I'm going to tell you what happens to the spider, etc, cos it ruins our nice happy wasp story by being realistic instead of cute.

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The weather here today is alternating between being briefly sunny and hailing whilst looking like it will snow, all the while being freezing. And it has been cold and raining for nearly two weeks now. It normally doesn't rain for this long!

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I'm putting insects, spiders, etc under the tag "bugs" because I don't want to have separate tags or use "arthropods" because that doesn't mean much to most people.
For those who actually want to see the pics bigger, click on them and you can. A couple are really good (the fourth and last ones), especially since they're taken on a normal "snapshot" kind of digital camera without any special close-up stuff. I was impressed at how well it took these close pictures, although it's always hard to get the camera the right distance away so it's as close as it can go and still focus, as there's not much indication that it is properly in focus - and there's not much margin for error at this distance.

24 Hour Regent Book Sale Haul

2009-05-19T10:11:00.005+12:00

I went to the 24 hour (runs from noon Friday to noon Saturday) regent book sale with my Mum on Saturday, 2 hours before it ended (we seldom go at strange and interesting times), and got some books, as follows:

The Weaver's Craft by LE Simpson and M Weir, 10th Edition, 1967, Hardcover. There's numerous other editions of this listed on Amazon (but not available), including a new 2008 edition which is available. My one is a nice solid book with a sewn binding (not glued). It looks good and covers different types of weaving. 50 cents

Weaving as a Hobby by M Ickis, 1972, Hardcover with a proper binding again. Aren't old books nice? The pages are nice and hardy too. This one only covers weaving on a large loom. 50 cents

Step-by-step Weaving by N Znamierowski, 1967, Softcover. This is mainly about weaving on a large loom again, although it talks about frame looms, and has useful stuff on different types of weaves (eg. twill, basket weave, etc) and about natural dye plants. 50 cents

Europe in the Sixteenth Century by Koenigsberger et al., 2nd edition, 1989, softcover. There's a milllion books called "europe in the sixteenth century" and hopefully this is a good one; it's an ex-textbook and cost $4

The Home Fix-it Book for New Zealanders by B Joyce, 1982, softcover. Hopefully this will make us useful and able to do our own house-stuff. 50 cents

Pali Primer by L de Silva, 1995, softcover. For all those times you need to learn the language Buddha spoke. According to the comments on amazon, you can download it from here somewhere for free. 50 cents

Julie Biuso's Italian Cooking. Standard cookbook kinda book, but it's got a bit of writing about the ingredients, tips and tricks, etc. Also included is someone's shopping list at the page with the mozzarella salads. $2.50

A Small Garden Designer's Handbook by R Strong, softcover. Although theoretically about small gardens, you'd need a quite large garden to implement any of it, and all the garden's pictured are massive. $3

The Spiders of New Zealand, Part 1, by R R Forster, 1967. Scientific study of spidies, with many large drawings. $20 - was originally $25 but when I asked her if that was correct, she reduced it a little.

For G I got:

The Lady of Shalott (a different edition to the one in the link) by Lord Tennyson, hardcover. This is illustrated and quite nice. Amazon says the age group for it is 9-12, but surely there shouldn't be any upper limit, that's just weird. $4

Icelandic Primer by Henry Sweet, Second Edition, 1926, Hardcover. The spine cover bit has come off but otherwise not too badly off. And not just any Icelandic, but Old Icelandic from between 1200 and 1350, a.k.a. Old Norse. Did you know Tolkein knew Old Norse? Enough said. 50 cents

I also got 5 old fashion magazines and a more recent women's business magazine for $3, and the total for everything came to just under $40 (I couldn't remember all the prices for the non-fifty-cent books so I had to guess) with the spider book being half of that.

Fair Trade Movie Screening

2009-05-17T22:51:00.005+12:00

Since the last fortnight was Fair Trade fortnight, Trade Aid plus Forest & Bird were showing films at the Academy Cinema for $5 incl. free coffee/tea/hot chocolate and chocolate (fair trade of course; a product show case of sorts). We saw the one today where the feature (The Greening of Southie) was about trying to build a "gold" standard (LEED certification) building (the MacAllen Building) two years ago in South Boston. It was quite interesting: they used bamboo for the floors, a kind of mdf made from wheat straw, etc. Apparently, no one in the USA had really heard of dual-flush toilets - you know the ones with two buttons, for more or less water? Yeah, they really made a big deal of that aspect - partly because toilets are funny I guess, but given that this type is practically normal, it seemed really weird to talk about them at all.
They sort of made all the labourers, cement workers, etc look/sound like morons, which was a shame, although they also appeared honest and ernest, but isn't that also sort of the stereotype of hard-working stupid labourers?
The first, shorter little video (Xtreme Waste) was about a NZ town that had started a strong recycling policy with a goal of zero waste to land-fill.
So that was good.

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I'm sort of wondering what stuff I shoul dput on my blog and what on LJ, if anything. Photos are mcuh easier on my blog, but LJ has the useful comment system. But do I really care if anyone comments? Should I just put craft stuff and things like that on the blog and everyday stuff on LJ? But sometimes they overlap... Sigh... I might move from Blogger to Wordpress in any case because that looks better, so I'm not sure what kind of features they have over there.

Simple Cute Internet Games

2009-05-08T16:44:00.004+12:00

Traci posted this link on her LJ - cutest little internet games - good for some time-filling entertainment.

This one confused me at first, because apparently the point is NOT to collect the little insects (lady birds) after all - very strange! (Why would you not want some random beetles?) Link to ladybird game

So....

2009-04-20T09:24:00.002+12:00

So I think everyone who reads this blog that I know, knows that Dad died on April 1st, but I thought I should post it here because of the last posts, before launching into posts about making hats or something. I posted on my LJ, if you want to read what I had to say at the time - link.
Other than being April Fool's day, April 1 is also my husband's mother's birthday. So that's an odd collection of events, but it doesn't seem meaningful.

Dad and a Hat

2009-03-06T18:35:00.003+13:00

I might start writing various diary-like entries about depressing stuff, and other stuff, for a while...

So I decided two weeks ago to make Dad a nightcap for "receiving visitors in the evening" (lol) and for when he is in hospital [ :-( ].
On the day when we didn't know what was wrong yet and he'd gone to the hospital to find out, I picked some seeds off a tree, the type that turn into "helicopters" to show him, because this is the sort of thing I do. Before they go brown and fall off the tree as helicopters, they are green and joined together - two wings or blades instead of a single one. I'd post pictures but I want to see if I've got any of mine at home (but I lost my camera/it was stolen and I think I hadn't got the photos off yet). Anyway, I got them to show him and gave him the best one.
The point of this is that I decided to embroider these and the leaves of the same tree on the night cap.
I used the shape of the one on this page on the Extreme Costuming site and scaled it to what I guessed was probably the right size, made a mock-up of the shape, and got Dad to try it on.
A week ago I started embroidering it and I finished it today. I did the seams on the sewing machine and a few other non-historically correct things. It was my first effort at blackwork, I had hardly any resources on it, I haven't done much embroidery before, and I was in a hurry, but I think it turned out good anyway.
I wish I'd had it done before he'd gone into hospital so he could have had it then, because it is strange and amusing and thus good for hospitals, but at least he will have it at home.
I'm particularly upset having finished it, for various reasons. It was my goal for the week, and now I have no goal. It had to be done before he died, obviously, and now that it is done... well, what does that mean?

Dad and Cancer

2009-03-06T18:22:00.005+13:00

Very depressing; don't read if you're not in a suitable mental state.

Four weeks ago we found out that Dad had cancer in his thyroid (which is in one's throat) and they were going to operate on it. Three days later we found out they couldn't operate on it and he would have radiotherapy that would make it shrink, but after that it would come back so he probably had months to live. One week ago he went into hospital with an infection. He stayed in hospital for nearly a week, during which time swelling and the cancer meant that he couldn't swallow. So now he can't eat, and he probably has a couple of weeks.

If you want to say something and don't know what to say, say that you want to say something but don't know what to say. Not commenting will not be held against you. I'll assume all comments are meant in the best possible way, obviously. If you know me in real life, don't ring me unless you warn me first because I hate phone calls.

At the Moment...

2009-02-26T12:24:00.002+13:00

Well, RIGHT now, I'm listening to a piece of music on an online Polish radio station that sounds like they chucked an orchestra down a really long flight of stairs, with alarmed accompaniment on the trumpet*. It's "alarmed" accompaniment because it sounds like the trumpet* player is observing the disaster, but was not able to remove his instrument from his mouth before expressing himself or calling for help.
The next piece seems to be "tuning up, played by a swarm of bees".

*May not actually be a trumpet; I'm not good with brass instruments. Could be a trombone.

Other than that I am trying to learn Polish by new and instinctive means, gardening a little bit, and studying a few things. Today I put some seedlings into pots and put them into the glasshouse - it is not-cloudy and not-raining today, which is a change from the last 5-6 days. I also poured boiling water on some weeds in the path in the hope of killing them and stopping them from growing back for a bit.

Waisted Efforts - Book

2009-02-16T16:22:00.004+13:00

A couple of years ago, I set up a search on Trade Me for the corset books that were generally regarded as pretty good, so that it would email me if someone was selling them. The likelihood that someone would first buy and then actually sell on TradeMe one of these books was low, but I was patient, and recently "Waisted Efforts" came up and I got it at a fraction of the price (like a half or a third) that it would cost to buy it from overseas, thus making it a price that I would reasonably pay for a book here if I really wanted it. Woohoo!
It arrived today and it is thicker (fairly chunky), slightly bigger (about landscape A4), and a lot more readable than I thought it would be. I was sort of thinking of it more like a reference book only, but it looks like you could read through it rather than just flick to relevant pages. This is good.
For some reason I thought it was written by a woman, and read through the overview and preface with this in mind, before seeing that the preface was signed "Robert" and which thus seemed rather odd.
If I remember, I might do a review of it. I'm not sure I'm really happy with it's mix of "authentic" with "useful for theatre" but we'll see how it goes.

Can I Post All my Xmas Stuff by February? - Wygilia

2009-01-28T17:22:00.007+13:00

Wygilia is the Christmas Eve Polish feast, which is, as I understand it, very important and more important than the Christmas day (although, this might be changing in modern Poland due to general international influence on customs?).

Maybe I'll just do pictures with identifying captions? Basically, we made some food and then ate it... :D

Firstly, the table setting. One is supposed to use a white table cloth, so we do. I assume the white table cloth is so that it shows up the stains from any spilt beetroot soup better...
We also have Polish bison grass vodka, and red wine in crystal glasses here. Matching table mats and plates too! Very pretty and nice.

Barszcz (beetroot soup) with giant mushroom uszki (filled dumpling things) in it. We have these handy pierogi maker things (you put the circle of pastry on, put the filling on, then fold it in half and it folds it and crimps the edges for you) and we use the smallest for the uszki, but this makes them about 3 times bigger than when we did them by hand.

The rollmops, pickled mushrooms and tomato salad course. This is where the vodka comes in, with the rollmops, cos they're gross. I mean, great, and sort of rubbery and slimey just like a pickled fish piece should be.

Roasted salmon with olives, beans, cherry tomatoes. This is in the first Jamie Oliver book, and is not Polish, but is the only fish we can really get. This is, by the way, an immense amount of salmon, and so good...

The fish comes with the giant salad of doom, which may or may not be Polish - the recipe is in a vegetarian cookbook written by a Polish lady. My sister usually makes and decorates the salad of doom.

Compote, I love compote. This is fruit cooked in some sugary water with some spices, probably cinnamon and cloves. I had some for breakfast the next morning too.

Pierogi - they always look ugly. These are dumplings with cherries inside, and are yummy, but terribly un-photogenic. They're trying to look good here with a sprinkling of icing sugar. You can see the fancy crimping from the fancy pierogi makers. We had leftovers of these for breakfast too, fried.

Christmas bread, kind of like a fruit bread-cake thing. This was really good - I should get the recipe and make some more! It's got lemon icing on it here because we felt it needed something more. All Polish cakes pictured in cookbooks seem to have a thin, white, partly transparent icing either drizzled over or all over, so it seemed the right thing to do.

Parting candlelit shot. Featuring the massive pile of a zillion pierogi. They're less frightening in the dark.

Quiz - Is Your Cat Trying to Kill You?

2009-01-25T16:38:00.003+13:00

I find the concept of this particular quiz quite amusing :D

Then, read up on the warning signs!

My Creative Space...

2009-01-16T14:11:00.004+13:00

There's this thing called "my creative space" where each week you post a pic of what creative stuff you're doing, and add a link to a list, so that everyone can go and look at everyone's stuff. I'm thinking of participating....

This week - more mindless than creative.

That's a book with a picture of some stays similar to the ones I'm making, some cable ties that will be boning, and the fabric and embroidery thread I am using to make them - sewing boning channels in backstitch down each piece. Just another couple of dozen hours or something to go, sigh.. I'm not sure they'll work out that great even, but I wanted to hand sew some, just because I did.

This weeks creative space link

NZers in Movies

2009-01-16T14:01:00.002+13:00

I don't know why, but for some reason the NZ accent seems really obvious in movies. Even if it's the predominant accent. I watched "A Perfect Creature" again today, and all the NZers' voices stood out, even though I obviously here the same all the time. And in the "interview with everyone" special feature, it wasn't as obvious as in the movie. There must be some kind of "intensify accent" filter they apply ;)

Belated Christmas Post 3 - Presenty Stuff

2009-01-15T11:21:00.005+13:00

Random pics of things I made or liked or whatever...

It seemed like a good idea to follow the inspiration in the Spotlight catalogue and make food covers out of mosquito net with fabric around the edge as a presnet for my Mum. However, I discovered I don't really understand about getting a wide fabric border around a corner, and it was a total mess and really annoying. I wanted to sew one edge on, then fold it over and sew the other edge down on the other side like you can do with bias binding (as this seemed like it would be like a giant binding, essentially), but out of 4 sewing books, only one gave instructions for this kind of thing and those instructions were more-or-less "when you reach the corner, leave enough fabric to mitre it" and then when sewing down the other side "mitre the corner" - ok, not very specific there. I had the most success folding it in half first and sewing down both edges at once, and just messing with the corners when I got to them, with varying success.
The 3 covers:
Close-up of the different corners/fabric:

In any case though, they've been used several times now at bbqs at my parent's house - they were a pain to make, but they work, so that's ok.

I just liked the way I wrapped this bottle - corrugated cardboard is, ummm, great:

This present we got for my brother was awesome. I got it from Trade Aid, and it is a briefcase made out of uncut fizzy drink bottle tops. Presumably there was some flaw with these sheets; normally they chuck them out but here they have recycled them into these sturdy cases:

I recently bought some cool fabric with maps on (includes both NZ and Antarctica, which is unusual and more unusual for a decorative, or even functional, map). And so it was lying around handily when I wanted to make a wee pouch as part of a gift of a cheap poker set, to put the chips in once you take them out of their plastic packaging. It's lined with fair trade calico scraps from making the bags, and I just really like it for some reason. I think it's part of the appeal of this calico, which is just so lovely.
Once you pull the ribbon to close it, it stays closed by itself without having to tie the ribbon, which is handy.
It has no exposed fabric edges but the method I used is simpler than lining it normally. It is made by sewing two rectangles right-sides together around the edges, leaving a space to turn it inside-out - which you then do. Then you iron it nicely and sew the sides together, leaving the sealed edges visible on the outside - this is like if you were sewing leather as you wouldn't have to worry about fraying or ugly edges there either. Leave the seam unsewn a bit at the top so that you can fold down the top edges to make the channels for the ribbon. You don't need to sew up that hole you left for turning it inside-out as the side seam closes it.
I reckon the resulting construction details - different coloured band at top, exposed stitch lines and sealed edges - are attractive and interesting without being forced decoration.
For some reason, I included the large plastic needle I used to thread the ribbon through with in one photo, I guess because I was so excited to have a practical way of threading the ribbon instead of an annoying, time-consuming way that doesn't work very well, like usual.

Christmas Shopping Bags

2009-01-10T20:11:00.004+13:00

I think I'll try and post some pictures from Christmas, before they become completely irrelevant...

I made shopping bags to put everyone's presents in (except my husband's because I do most of the shopping so it would be like giving the bag to myself), out of fair trade cotton calico and leftover scraps of fabric I had. Since it's fair trade, and not on special, it's rather expensive, and with the cost of labour these shopping bags would cost about $50, as compared to $2 like they do when you get them from the supermarket. Of course, mine are a bit fancier than the $2 ones, but still...
However, it was lovely lovely material, it felt very nice and it was really nice to sew. The weird thing is that cutting it felt a bit like cutting some silk I had- like the feeling through the scissors was similar in the way it sliced through it. Very odd. For those that like cutting fabric, you could cut this all day; it was lovely.

So I did some of it batch-wise, and some of it individually. I made up all the straps, and all the pockets first, then put each bag together. Here are the pockets, made of smaller leftover pieces. Doing all the stitching in white was a design decision. Also, it would have been really annoying changing threads for each, and really I think it looks ok.

This is the inside of one bag - the seams are enclosed by having an uneven seam allowance and after sewing the seam, wrapping the wider piece around the other seam allowance, folding it under and sewing it down. Two of the bags were done like this, 2 had french seams, and I think the other one was just annoying so I just zig-zagged the edges.
You can almost, but not really, see that I did fancy little corner reinforcements on the pocket top corner.

The most fun ("funnest") bit was reinforcing the handles. It was surprisingly easy to make nice little even crosses just by eye (except for the time I forgot I'd moved the needle over and everyone of the crosses on one bag came out wrong and it was mystifying why it wasn't working - like if you were trying to do something with your right hand but your left hand was moving instead and you couldn't work out what was wrong; something like that), and very satisfying once done. Isn't it pretty?

And here are the 5 bags, hanging on the door. The first two use fabric from jeans on the side, the third and last ones have other fabric on the sides, the fourth just has fabric added to the front. The curved bottom ones (3rd and 4th) were easiest to sew because I could do a continuous french seam around the bottom, thus enclosing and reinforcing the seam efficiently and easily. Dad got one of the square ones on the end and is reportedly actually using it for shopping, yay!

Finished Stays - Black and Gold

2008-12-20T21:44:00.003+13:00

Finished - entry on LJ.

Picture for those who don't want to read that.

Christmas Decorations

2008-12-20T21:38:00.004+13:00

I made Chinese Lantern decorations. I wrapped cardboard toilet rolls in old wrapping paper that was cool but too crumpled to use to wrap presents then made the outer lantern bit out of coloured cardboard or this other very thick wrapping paper. I think it's better to have the outside patterned, but it needs to be stiffer than just paper. Wire through holes made in the side with a needle is used to hang them on string (I used blue hemp twine) across the opening to the stairs and the hole in the wall between the kitchen and dining room. They look really good hung up actually.
If you make some, I think a yellowish or reddish paper on the inside is best, to be a bit more "lantern-like".

Developing a Stays Pattern, Attempt 2

2008-12-13T15:20:00.002+13:00

Posted on my Live Journal for the same reason as last time.... entry here.

Mutant Doom Puffs

2008-12-12T12:59:00.004+13:00

I made cream puffs, which are the same recipe as eclairs, just a different shape. To make mutant doom puffs you add food colouring to them, have them end up a weird shape, and probably overcook them slightly even though they cooked for slightly less time than the recipe said.
Due to them going a bit brown on the outside, the coloured ones don't show their colour as well as I was imagining, but on the inside they are a nice blue and pink.
You can see I tried doing two long ones to make eclairs, but I quickly got bored of that.
I shall put cream in them later when Mum comes over with the cream beater, but I'm not sure whether I will have time for chocolate icing.

Stays, Outer Layer

2008-12-05T15:25:00.005+13:00

I have sewn the inner and outer layers of the stays so far, but still need to make bias binding, bind the edges, and sew the eyelets. Also, I might want to hand-sew in a lining.

Here's the outer layer. It is wonky because it is hard to get it to look sensible on the mannequin. I think the fabric looks better in the photos than in real life; it is rather poor quality because it is upholstery material, but I like it anyway and in this case it's supposed to look "rougher" as the one I liked in my book seemed itself very roughly made.
I didn't think to pattern-match it until I had sewn it and it seems a waste to cut more, so I'll just have to make another one some time with pattern matching. There are a lot of straight lines so it shouldn't be too hard to get it looking a bit better. Since the inner layers are the "strength" layers, the outer layer wouldn't necessarily have to be cut on the grain, if it needed to be mucked around with to match the pattern.

18th Century Stays Pattern Development

2008-12-04T22:12:00.005+13:00

I posted this on Live Journal because I also posted it on the corset makers community over there.

Link to the Live Journal post.

I've since discovered it's fairly wrong, but I think it will still work well enough so I'll make them up anyway (I am about half-way through actually). It won't be too much of an investment of time etc if it doesn't work out that well, as it is machine sewn and doesn't use special materials.

This is Normal Right?

2008-12-04T22:10:00.001+13:00

3 little sewing machines, all in a row.

The centre one is my good sewing machine, the Bernina 840 which was unfortunately not going properly so the sewing machine man is coming tomorrow, and hopefully he only needs to clean it or something... :( It's good. I hope it gets better.
The one on the left is Mum's Globe which I am using instead of the Bernina, and which I borrowed before I got the Bernina. It's pretty good. It's quite heavy - that's how you can tell it's good. If I've got my companies right, then it is actually a copy of a Bernina.
The one on the right is my first one and is the worst sewing machine ever, which is why I eventually borrowed Mum's. Not only is it terrible, but you actually feel insulted when you use it. It was the cheapest one available though, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone as unless they are very enthusiastic it will not help them to enjoy or improve at sewing. I use it to do button holes as I don't know how to do them on the other 2. It's a Brother BM-2600. Don't buy one. It's all plastic, and not heavy, so you know it's bad.

Test Your Colour IQ - Interesting Quiz

2008-10-29T16:47:00.005+13:00

This is cool.
You have to arrange these little squares in order of colour.
http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77

I got 7, best score is 0. The ones I got wrong were right in the centre of the spectrum they used, in the blue-green area; it was interesting that they weren't scattered around.
Aynia, as a designer, the pressure is on you to get 0 ;)

I found it really hard to really "see" the colours and squares - the lines keep bending, the colours moved about and there are "light" and "dark" lines running through the screen*. This generally happens when I try and look at things (computer screens, the outdoors, etc) where there is high contrast (I think that is the problem), and it is a cloudy afternoon here**, with the computer screens a fair amount brighter than the surrounding light level, and it is hard to see what's on them clearly. Luckily I don't need to analyse the exact position of lines nor exact colours, so this isn't a problem to work, etc, it's just annoying. Mostly I don't notice it much as I'm focusing on reading, not on seeing. It's actually really annoying; it feels like I can't see properly, even though I can see perfectly well, and it seems like I should be able to just look "better" or look "around" the annoyingness, and be able to see properly, but I can't. If anyone knows what this weirdness is, tell me, otherwise just do the colour test!!

*They're not actually light and dark, they're not actually even there, I don't think, that's just the best/easiest way to describe them.
**Actually, cloudy but bright skies seem to cause the problem the most, but I'm not sure what that means in terms of the light.

Update

2008-10-15T11:38:00.003+13:00

We went on holiday. We came back. I decided I'll do NaNoWriMo in November. I estimate this will take up 2-3 hours per day. I have to make a Victorian cycling outfit by the 16th of November, and this week I am making a cloak for my brother's birthday. I am doing millinery (hatmaking) at the polytech this term. The process of actually enrolling in and doing a course is still a mess. I want a new job doing... something more fun, maybe my own business but I don't know what I'd actually do, which is a bit of a problem. I got my hair cut. I need to get the downstairs computer working as I finally set up the new computer before the holiday and it didn't work either. We are going to Queenstown in the weekend. I haven't done any gardening and I should. I still haven't thought of a form of exercise I actually like and would be at all convenient/practical which is bad because exercise is good for you. I am still obsessed with fabric but am trying to buy less/none because I have so much at it is silly. I am interested in recycling and fair trade, so if you have any interesting links/resources, send them to me. If you hear of any jobs I could do that are fair trade related, let me know, although it's unlikely I know.

What Dog Breed are You?

2008-10-09T09:17:00.003+13:00

I don't think this describes me much at all; other people's results I've seen seemed fairly accurate in terms of job choices and character!
Anyway, fairly fun, 10 questions I think.
link: http://www.dogster.com/quizzes/what_dog_breed_are_you/