ginger & chocolate

For a few months now I've been making candied ginger from a recipe I got from here via The Cooking of Joy. Originally I made them for my Dad, who has always loved ginger. But then they proved very (very, very) popular around here too and every time I made a batch to send him it seemed to disappear in a few days.

This candied ginger is so very simple to make, you peel and chop the ginger into small pieces and then simmer it in a syrup that's half water and half sugar. I get slightly different results each time, and I always cook it for longer than the recipe says, they say 20 minutes, I do half an hour minimum. When they're cooked I strain them through a colander and then leave them spread out on baking paper to dry. When they're just slightly tacky I roll them in caster sugar. This last batch I made was from very fresh ginger and they are really spicy!


Something inspired me yesterday to try coating these beautiful morsels in chocolate. I bought some Lindt 85% cocoa chocolate, melted it in an aluminum bowl over a pan of water and then threw in a handful of candied ginger. I fished these out one at a time with tongs and set them to dry on more baking paper. Success! Once they'd cooled down and set these are even yummier than the plain ginger. I've put them in a jar in the kitchen, but I'm seriously thinking of hiding this one!


If you like ginger these are a great and simple thing to make. I've never chocolate coated anything and it was easy. And they make a nice gift. I put some in a little jar and gave it to my mother in law last time she was down, and I've planted out some pieces of ginger in the garden, I'm thinking that some time it would be nice to use my own homegrown, organic, ginger.

more vintage wallpaper

I know I'm not the only one who loves a bit of vintage wallpaper. Here's a site I've been meaning to post for a while, Secondhand Rose. I love the wonderful graphic and printy qualities of these and the pattern design. The collection covers a wide range of styles.

"Wallpaper in the attic of the store, represent the world's largest collection of vintage wallpaper. This impressive wallpaper collection, spanning the 1860's to 1970, has been featured on Martha Stewart and is in the collections of museums throughout the world. Kitchen, bathroom, geometric, and floral wallpaper prices range from $70 per roll (60'sq) to $1,200 per roll for original Frank Lloyd Wright designs (90'sq)"

p.s. I've added some tags so if you click the wallpaper listing at the right you can see all the other lovely examples :-)

wonderful video

You must watch this, it's amazing! via JennSki

winter garden

It's been too wet and cold here to spend much time in the garden lately but luckily constant rain and grey skies have given way to beautiful crisp, sunny winter days.
The garden is still in flower, our colder months are ahead, and I'm always quite surprised at the plants that are doing their thing in July. Of course the sasanqua camellias are always beautiful now. This white one is new and tiny but I love the simple elegance of its flowers. In contrast I always buy punnets of pansies for their colours. I'm a sucker for purple ones.
The lolly pink pompoms of the Hakea have been flowering for a month at least and bringing all the nectar eating birds and bees. The Callicarpa is doing its thing too with these totally unreal magenta berries.



The Red Hot pokers, well orange pokers in this case are a great splash of colour in the garden as is another favourite, and one that should have lost it's leaves by now, Euphorbia cotinifolia. I just love red foliage and this one catches the light beautifully.


The vegetable boxes down the side are starting to settle in and I've planted baby beetroot and peas and spinach. I was quite pleased with myself when I thought of this use for the grape vine prunings, with their little dried tendrils they make fantastic climbing posts for the peas.

lovely lemonade

What a nice surprise to be given the Lemonade Award by lovely Dee Beale. If you haven't seen her work Dee makes the most wonderful graphic gocco prints. Her printing technique leaves me in awe!

I was also lucky enough to be given the Lovely Blog Award by newearthsoaps a fellow Dust member who sells her soaps on Etsy. Thanks Karen, and all the other Dusters who have made me feel so welcome.

I'm always discovering new blogs which I can't live without. I'm a blog addict! And though I subscribe to some of the big design blogs I find its the small personal blogs that I really enjoy and look out for. Here are some of my favourites, old and new. Its nice to have an excuse to share them.

Red Pepper Quilts
Rita makes the most beautiful quilts, her colour choices and meticulous sewing really helped inspire me to start my own. On top of that, Rita is also the loveliest person, quick and generous with advice. I think I read her blog from top to bottom while making my first quilt.

Gardenmama
Nicole's blog Gardenmama is a new find for me. I was immediately drawn to her beautiful vintage finds, and her wonderful photography. She's also a lovely person, and that shines through her blog.

Four Leaves
Julie's blog is such a peaceful, thoughtful place which celebrates the poetry of everyday. She captures the magical moments and images of domestic life.

Mizu Designs
One of my early Etsy purchases was a dragonfly card from Mizu. A very thoughtful artist, I love to see her posts about her process, which involves Japanese woodcutting.

Lupin
Laura's lovely blog is another must read for me. She is always busy making wonderful pieces from her colourful felt or whipping up some other crafty masterpiece with her great eye for design.

dearfii
Fi's blog is a very new one to me, I discovered it recently when she bought some Ruby and Gold slippers :-) Such a lovely colourful world full of beautiful clever things. I always like visiting. She's had some wonderful and well deserved press recently.

and being greedy I'm going to post just one more!

Colour and Sound
It was Anna's beautiful quilt which really inspired me and made me finally decide to take the quilting plunge. I love her simple collages with their perfect balance and subtlety.

Thanks all these bloggers for the daily inspiration you give. Please feel welcome to take one or both award and pass them on, or not :-)

The 'rules' for Lemonade awardees (which are very similar to the Lovely award) are:
- Nominate 5 to 10 blogs you feel show great attitude and gratitude.
- Comment on the blog that awarded you.
- Copy the award and save to your computer, and then upload it to your blog.
- Link to your nominees within your blog post.
- Comment on their blogs to let them know they've received the award.
- Link back to the person who gave you the award to show your appreciation.

finished quilt

Day four of kids home with a nasty flu and fevers today. Day four of temperatures and medicine, stroked foreheads and midnight vigils. We are nearly through it though and its nice to see them getting better. Its given me a chance to finish off the binding of my quilt and handsew it while I play modified monopoly (courtesy a certain grandmother who likes the occasional Happy Meal!).



Its really satisfying to have this quilt finished and ready to use. I popped it in the wash last night and hung it inside to dry overnight. Now I am just admiring it, folding it this way and the next, and wondering what I will change in the next one. For a start I did four separate sides for the binding, and I can see next time I might try to do a continuous strip, to improve the corners.


Best of all I understand all the processes involved now and the next quilt won't be such a scary undertaking. And that's good because I have a lot of small people angling for their own quilts now.

winter knitting

At a party recently I admired a friend's scarf. It was a simple cotton scarf with a really interesting pattern. She told me it was a gift from our friend Jane who by luck was standing two feet away.
Jane lent me the Jo Sharp pattern book it was in but for anyone who wants to make one I've since found the same design on Ravelry free to download from Frazzled Knits here. It is basically an old knit/lace stitch called seafoam or dropped stitch.

Being a very basic knitter it took me a whole day to decode the pattern (literally) but I finally twigged (thank you ravelry forum!). To save you the time if you are as green a knitter as me here's how you do it - where it says YO (yarn over) pull the thread to the front (between the needles) before the knit stitch. For YO twice you wrap it round the needle and back through to the front, and go twice round the needle for YO 3 times (email me if this is still confusing).
On the next row you drop these extra loops and that's what gives you the neat effect.


This was the first wool that came to hand from my stash, but I think the neutral colour will go well with a range of outfits. I did really like the cotton version too. Something about the smoothness of the cotton gave it a wonderful defined look. Hers was only half width too so it would be a great summer scarf. I might have to try that next. It is quick to knit and once you get the rhythm you don't need to keep looking at the pattern.
p.s. forgive the 'fashion' shot. I will be much more appreciative of other people's attempts to photograph themselves in future. This is the best of a bad bunch taken in the bathroom mirror but I did want to show how it looks on!

learn to sew - pincushion

Shedding pins all over the house while making my quilt I realised I really needed a pincushion. I'd seen this tutorial a fair while ago and luckily filed it away in my overloaded brain. Such a simple but pretty design.
And it uses all my recently acquired patchworking skills! It's from the lovely Leah at Hyena in Petticoats. It's on her old blog paper.string.cloth.


It took me hardly any time to whip up and I used offcuts from my linen tea towels which are the perfect fabric, strong and finely woven. I think they go beautifully with this natural linen I bought at Remnants Warehouse.

To finish it I got to go through my button jar and choose two worthy buttons. That was fun, here are some of the contenders.