I Have Cats

I myself was a cat when I was a little girl. I remember eating Special K out of bowls on the floor with a little girl down the street from me when I was 4 or 5. Yet it came as a bit of a surprise to me the other day when both Eden and Arlo demanded to have cat faces and to eat dishes of cereal and milk off the floor while meowing fiercely. Fiercely.
So now they are cats full time. They haven't got new cat names but Eden is a purple cat and Arlo insists that she is a blue cat. So funny I had to share. I suppose I should get out the sewing machine and make them ears and tails....

More Tea Towel Totes

I made some tote bags out of thrifted tea towels for Christmas and since then have found a lot of really great tea towels. For some reason it seems that if people of my mother or grandmother's generation went travelling the best the tourist shops of the time could muster were souvenir tea towels with maps of your visit. Sad.
I still am not sure who invented the calendar tea towels. They seem very odd. Maybe because they stopped printing them before I was born and so I have never seen one in use? Maybe they were not meant for use and only to go in that weird box of memorabilia that your mom saved for you of things that happened the year you were born? Who can say for sure? I'd love to know.
These sad dated tea towels do make for a great tote. Especially since plastic bags are being outlawed right and left. I never leave home with out one full of kid stuff and another five or six in the back of the car in case I end up at the grocery store.

Cake

Who doesn't like cake? Arlo actually. But she is a fan of icing so this is her favourite cake so far. The icing to cake ratio is high enough to interest her for a few minutes anyway.
My town's Museum and Art Gallery Society have a book sale every year to raise money. The sale is all of donated books and it runs for eight days. It is amazing. It's jam packed with books and people for all eight days, new books being brought out every day. I got an old baking book there and have started my review of the book in the cake section. This cake is called The Ultimate Chocolate Sandwich cake and it is seriously misleading. The cake is mainly beaten eggs and has a very stiff, dry texture. Blah. Not nearly chocolaty enough for the likes of me. And the icing was the type with raw egg in it so I decided not to use that recipe at all.
Luckily for all of us I had some white chocolate, whiskey and whip cream to hand. I made a chocolate ganache, cooled it and beat it into whipped cream. Ooooh la laaaa! I am not a white chocolate fan generally, but with whiskey it is sublime. Just to guild the lily a bit I added some yellow plum jam in one of the layers. I am finding that this type of icing is my favourite at the minute. Buttercreams tend to be overly sweet and whipped cream alone doesn't stand up for more than a day. Really, it's not an indulgence. This ganache and cream icing is pure practicality.

And then I needed green

To offset the distress I felt dying so many things purple, I had to dye some things green. Not that green is my fave or anything but it's spring and FINALLY we are getting some buds on the trees and bulbs peeking out of the dirt. I was beginning to think I might have been relocated to Antarctica without knowing it as some part of an alien master plan to take over Earth. Seems not.
And to celebrate my being left out of such an unfortunate alien re-location plan and left alone to enjoy spring, here are some green-ish scarves. All are merino felted onto silk and then dyed with kool-aid after the felting. I find that ironing the wool after the scarves are dry really helps tame down wools natural scratchy tendencies so these have turned out nice and soft and fresh. And smelling just slightly of lime.

She had to have Purple

I am truly not a fan of purple. Eden, I think, loves only purple. Occasionally yellow if pressed, but purple is her dearest love. So I have had to re-evaluate purple and try to reconcile myself to it and this is the best I can do. I will make purple things for other people but can't bring myself to wear it. I often enough realize while out in public that I look like an Easter egg (I am not a basic black girl at all) and feel sure that if I included purple in my outfits I may be run out of town. Boss Hog would certainly have to take to drink before leaving the house with me and in a few years the girls would disown me. Forestalling all this potential strife, I will not wear purple, plum, violet, lavender etc.

But, strangely, I do like this photo of some of the purple scarves I felted in the last few weeks. They are nuno felt, merino onto silk and dyed with kool aid. I am liking the skinniness of them and the slight sheen of the silk peeking out the ladder of wool. The grid somehow mitigates the random-ness of the felt for me. I can't sit easy with total felt chaos, I like a little structure to cling to as I perch out in granola-crunching, natural-fibres-wearing, start my own sheep farm territory.

Felted Scarves

As I mentioned last post I have been hermitted away in my house for the last few weeks felting like crazy. Here are a few of the scarves I made. Above are some 'holy' scarves made by laying out a diamond grid over a very thin layer of wool fibres and then teasing the thin bottom layer apart to create slightly rounded holes rather than a more rigid, geometric grid. I like the effect but I think the next ones will have an even looser grid with larger holes and more forced irregularity in the felting process so that the grid is not as well aligned. You know, work twice as hard to make something that looks like it took half the time.
Eden is totally baffled by the brown scarf. She is aware that I have control over what colour I make things and cannot comprehend any reason good enough to make anything brown on purpose. She tells me that the brown one can be for Arlo and she will wait until I make a purple one she can wear.

Felting up a Storm

Where have I been you ask? And with good reason, it's been ages since regular posting.
I have been up to my elbows in suds felting at the kitchen table. I am part of an artisan market at The Caravan Theatre's Mayfair. It's happening May 9th (Mother's Day here in Canada) and I am, as usual, wondering what I've got myself into. Right now Arlo is trying her level best to climb onto my lap for some attention and both girls feel felting is not a worthy activity for toddlers. This leaves only nap time and night time to felt my heart out. Anyone with little kids will tell you just what you feel like doing when the kids go to bed. Fall into a coma until they wake you the next morning.
But, onward and upward. I am making some felted wool and silk scarves that I really like and will photograph them as soon as the sun comes back out. Promise.

I also joined an online felting community called Working with Felt that I am really enjoying. I can totally geek out there with a pile of felters around the planet. It's an excellent resource for anyone who's interested in learning more about felting.

Salted Caramels

I love caramels. So when a friend asked if I wanted to sell some at a small local concert a few weeks back I jumped at the chance to convert everyone in my town to the love of homemade salted caramels. I converted a few people by way of samples but many more were converted by a lovely lady who offered to walk around with my baskets of sweets as a neutral but enthusiastic third party. Jiminey Cricket! She is a born saleswoman and sold all the caramels in minutes. She also boosted my self-esteem to great heights just by being interested. It was so nice to have someone who is unrelated to me say something flattering. It is much easier to accept compliments from a stranger than from your family and friends. Seems like it should work the other way around? but there you have it.

Easter Bread

There seems to be a time in life when your kids start to realize the importance of holidays in terms of what sort of sweets will be served. That time is now at our house. My new challenge is to get them to look forward to the Easter bread as much as the chocolate bunnies and jelly beans. Not that there is much wrong with chocolate bunnies, but I am starting to wish we could settle on some more solid traditions in our family. So, naturally, I begin with baked goods.

I have a fairly standard Challah recipe that I love and this is where I started. To it I added the zest of one lemon and a few hand fulls of raisins, cranberries and Turkish apricots. It's pretty good but the next batch will have a lemon juice glaze to give it a fair chance at competing with chocolate bunnies.
(note the little bread thief in the first photo. Eden could not let the buttered slice sit untouched while I took endless photos. )

Super Hero Capes!

I had a moment of spring time inspiration (regardless of the snow in our backyard) to make the girls some jaunty purple fleece cape-lettes for a bit of extra warmth on the soon to be sunny days. I attached bunny rabbit buttons that are clearly the main attraction for both of them. I find them imminently more satisfying than the girls do, particularly Arlo who is totally perplexed at the lack of sleeves.

The Earrings I Can't Take Off

When I was in Calgary visiting Postmodern Hausfrau last summer I went to Komarevich to get some jewelery supplies. I bought a string of rectangular amazonite beads that are faceted. I cannot get a decent picture of the light reflecting off the different faces of these blue beauties, but I love them so much I never wish to take them off. Except when Arlo has tugged on them enough that my ears are red, so I only wish to take them off once a day, maybe twice.

She's Two

Arlo is two!! She seems like she's been two for ages now. Partly because it's easier to say she's 2 than to say she will be two in four months, and partly because she's the second child and she's way more advanced than Eden was at two. In any case, Arlo doesn't much like cake. She LOVES ice cream though so I decided to make an ice cream cake. Super yum.

Line a bowl with cling film and fill the bowl with ice cream. Bake a brownie while the ice cream sets up in the freezer. Cut the brownie into a circle to fit the opening of the bowl. Invert bowl of ice cream on top of the brownie and frost with 8oz chocolate melted with 1cup of whipping cream (cool the chocolate ganache completely before attempting to frost the ice cream!!) Promptly freeze again for at least three hours and then enjoy!!