The Laughing Crumpeteer

This has been a big weekend in the kitchen chez nous - yesterday Kind Dog decided to make crumpets.

 This involved much measuring, wooden spoon wielding, rising and frying. Not to mention tracking down the right sized metal rings for the containment of the batter.

They worked beautifully...

 

chocolate crackles

This afternoon the smallest sprog and I made chocolate crackles - an icon of Australian childhood party food.  The traditional recipe has copha in it which I object to for many reasons from taste/mouth feel to orang utans...

Luckily the Internet is a big place and has many recipes for chocolate crackles made with butter and not copha.  I used this one:

Much nicer with butter and golden syrup - I also added some vanilla for some warm dept.

 

THAT Book update

Exciting news today, folks. You may remember that last year Seth Apter (New York artist and all round creative dynamo) invited me to be part of his next book. 

Well, here is the cover

And it will be published this October!

small victories

I think this is my proudest achievement so far for 2013 - in fact I am claiming it as March quarter victory.

 Yes folks, I can get my hair to stay up with a pencil -

 in this case a 2B Faber Castell.

 You really do have to take your victories where you find them.

studio morsel

  I did manage a little studio time last week to experiment with a technique from Maggie Grey's blog magstitch. Maggie is an amazing artist and author and very generous with sharing ideas and techniques. She has a number of free tutorials on her blog and this one is disconcertingly easy and great fun.

 Go and check out Maggie's blog but basically you print an image on your home printer,  rub oil into it, let it dry then stitch and embellish.

 As you can see I have done step one - the oiled pages are drying in the studio waiting for the next step. Aren't the colours fabulous?

 

Burano

This is my long delayed post on our visit to Burano when we were in Venice in January - as it's still gaspingly hot here (paging Autumn???) I need to look at thse photos to emeber what cool feels like.

So here are the beautiful canals of Burano - the lacemaking island about an hour's vaporetto trip across the lagoon from Venice

There are a number of alarmingly diagonal belltowers in Venice  - this was one of the more alarming ones.

We visited the lace museum of course, although annoyingly were not allowed to take photos and were hustled through as they were about to close... I did however buy this beautiful piece of lace from the lace-maker herself

Really stunning work. You can see more of Sandra Mavaracchio's work here.

The Venetian lace is just exquisite - I bought more pieces at another shop in Burano and one just behind the Basilica of San Marco

I have a weakness for old lace and marvel over the time and skill it takes to make even the smallest piece. I especially treasure this work by my maternal grandmother.

sunday knitting news

I am casting off my citron shawl - hurrah!

 This yarn (Malabrigo lace) is so lovely to knit with - it's going to be a really cosy scarf this winter. 

 I didn't find it a technically difficult knit at all, but the miles and miles of stocking stitch were really starting to get to me.

 The colour is Paris Night -  lovely soft blues with some green tinges.  Gorgeous but quite difficult to photograph - the bottom photo is the closest to the real colour.