Bye bye little blog

Well, it was fun for the few brief months that it lasted, but it looks like I'm not going to have any time for little Leftymadness for the next few years. I've been accepted back into university in pursuit of my ultimate dream job. It's going to consume me wholly and soully from now on, so I'm shutting up shop and heading into the world of the mature-age student.

Thanks to all those who stopped by and said nice things and had a look.

Wish me luck!

I'm a (happy) little teapot

I would like to share with you my newest (and favouritest) impulse purchase. I'm usually pretty good at resisting the temptation of pretty things in homeware stores since my partner and I live in a 3 bedroom house with 2 other people. If I don't need it then I try not to buy it because the thought of trying to fit one more thing into the kitchen cupboard or the wardrobe has the potential to reduce me to tears some days.

This little set, however, grabbed me the moment I saw it. Thinking back, I realise that I must have presented the absolute picture of the stereotypical woman impulse shopper. I was walking past my local Robin's Kitchen and stopped dead when I saw these little beauties on sale out the front. Absolutely stopped dead in my tracks - if anyone had been behind me, they would have cannonballed into me with no way of preventing it. It would have been worth it.

How could anyone be anything but happy drinking out of these?



Pardon the stained, wrinkled tablecloth in the background

It's a Maxwell Williams set that was obviously not selling well - looking at the discount. I bought the whole lot - teapot, small plate and two cups and saucers - for $21.96. I adore Maxwell Williams (no one paid me to say that) and am surprised that these didn't sell well - the cups are a little chunkier than I would normally prefer, but the colours totally sold me.


This little set is now my companion for when I work from home (usually once a week), which happens to be today. Between you and me, it's 10:40am and I am coming perilously close to consuming my own weight in tea.

Shaken, not Stirred

To continue the pretty cake posts I thought I would share the cake I made for my stepfather's 50th birthday. The theme of the party was James Bond, so naturally I turned straight to Google Images for ideas.

I can tell you, some terrifyingly ambitious cakes pop up when you search "James Bond cake":


Sourced from mikesamazingcakes.com

 

Sourced from kelly-apieceocake.blogspot.com

No freaking way. Additionally, I only had to feed about 50 people, so tiers were not what I was going for. Inspiration eventually found me with:

I figured that 3 solid colours, one being white, couldn't be too hard. I also wanted the cake to be something special in itself, and low on flour to cater for my mum's sensitivity to gluten. I ended up with an old-faithful rich, chocolate fudge cake.

The only photo here with decent lighting - be prepared for a (completely intentional) yellow filter



Close-up for fudginess



Believe it or not that icing is white, not yellow

All covered up in pretty red fondant

The decorations, all cut out

So proud of the little gun! Too cute

And the big finish!

The finished product weighed about 15kg. I believe the final tally of ingredients included something like:

• 1.2kg dark chocolate
• 600g butter
• 8 eggs
• 1kg sugar

Needless to say, it tasted really good!

Imma gonna scramble you!



I couldn't help myself! Hehe.

Tomatoes!

Look how big they've grown!



March 2011

Remember when I planted them?

Jan/Feb 2011

They've gone crazy, but that's not the best part.....coz look!

Babies!

Rainbow Cake!

A few weeks ago, LJ asked me if I would lend a hand in making a cake for a colleague's baby shower. She wanted an interesting cake but nothing too fancy, a nice simple design for the outside, but when it came to deciding on the filling I remembered a cake that I'd seen months ago here - the Super Epic Rainbow Cake.



Image sourced from http://illusion.scene360.com/food-drinks/5998/super-epic-rainbow-cake/

What makes this cake so cool is that it's creamy white exterior gives no hint to the total madness going on inside, which made it perfect for the baby shower cake - nice, plain and elegant on the outside, but crazytown when it's cut into.

So the plans were planned, the ingredients were bought and the aprons were...left in the cupboard (although in hindsight they would have been a really good idea)



Coloured cake batter waiting for baking



We only had one pan so each layer had to be baked, cooled slightly and turned out before the pan was cleaned and prepped for the next layer

 Being the intelligent people that we are we didn't start baking till about 9:30 at night. Consequently, we were up till about 11:30 waiting for the final layer to come out of the oven. As a result of the late night and subsequent sleep deprivation, no more photos were taken until we made it to the next night - icing night.

And the stacking began

Another layer

And another



And another



Until they're all stacked up

Ta-da!

Another layer of icing for smoothness

And the final layer of rolled fondant - note the ridiculous quantities of icing sugar

A bit of smoothy smoothy action

A quick finish with a black ribbon and an expertly cut out stork sillouhette and we're ready for a baby shower

The cake was very well received by the mum to be and the rest of the party and only a small slice survived the journey home for the rest of us to try.

Post demolition

Yum! Tastes like rainbows!

Commissions Galore!

These last few weeks have been quite exciting on the knitting front (that's not something you'd hear everyday I'll bet). I received my first two commissions. Yup, people want me to make them things.

The first wasn't really a new commission, it was more of one that I'd agreed to prior the shop and my dreams of handicraft domination began being realised. I believe the deal was struck at the local pub one Friday afternoon during after-work drinks. But, regardless of the circumstances, the deal was struck and once I was reminded of it... I got to work making it happen.

And the results:



Charming Eyelet Handwarmers

Aren't they sweet? I'm quite proud of this pair - I had the idea of using rows of eyelets to jazz up an otherwise plain stitch and as I knitted along I decided on the wrist level row. You can't see the eyelets too well in these photos as my model has teeny tiny hands and they were knitted for a lady with more medium size hands, but you get the idea.

This soft snuggly little pair made up my second sale. Thanks Zelucie!

The second commission came from a friend of mine who is heading to Europe in a few months' time. Bec, who authors pour ameliorer (a blog for all things renovation) asked me to create some warm things to keep her from turning into an iceblock on Anzac Day in Gallipoli. We talked about what she wanted and came up with two items.

A cloche hat similar to:

Courtesy of craft-recipes.com

and a scarf based on this pattern,

but using kid mohair wool:

Courtesy of angelyarns.com

it's like wearing a cloud.
I promise.

Try it.

Ask me to make you one.

New Stock

After I made my first sale a few days ago I noticed that 25% of all my stock had suddenly gone and there was rather a hole in my little shop window. Thankfully I had a few items waiting in the wings - all I needed was a model. Enter......the beautiful LJ!

You'd think she was really working on that computer



Look at that talent!

These beautifully manicured nails are showcasing my navy blue double moss stitch handwarmers and my black lace handwarmers. Both are hand knitted in beautifully soft, machine-washable acrylic yarn. Check out my Etsy link for further details.

Also - if anyone is interested in placing a special order please let me know - you can contact my via this blog or via Etsy.

My First Sale

I made a sale!

Bye bye black handwarmers :) I'll work on replacing you soon.

Happy happiness of happinesses!

That is all.

Knitting Fail. Gardening Win

Last weekend I made the decision that if the 'Salad Bowl' of Australia had been all but wiped out due to flooding then in order to avoid getting punched in the wallet by the supposedly rising prices of salad ingredients, I'd better start on the road towards self sufficiency. Buoyed by visions of harvesting baskets full of fresh produce I bounced happily off to the Rocklea markets to purchase a punnet of baby tomato plants (from my favourite seedling man) and a little lettuce plant.


Grow me some tomatoes!



My babies

Lil lettuce

Unfortunately that's where the wins ended. I experienced my first knitting disaster/epic fail a few days earlier. I suppose I can't really expect any less when I make up so many patterns as I go. I had these grand plans for a wrist warmer (no thumb-hole) that had a long ribbed bottom, a knitted portion around the palm and then a different coloured crocheted shell design around the top. Grand plans indeed.

All I can say is fail. Super fail. Too tight, wouldn't have fit a 10 year old's hand. After I had finished off the knitted portion and sewn it up I could see that (a) I'd committed a cardinal knitting sin by casting off on the wrong side and (b) had cast off way too tightly so the finished product was all the wrong shape.

But easy come easy go, it didn't take long and now I've got my eye on a few balls of varigated yarn purchased recently from Spotlight. I'm interested to see how it works up.

Knitting, knitting, knitting

After a brief hiatus I'm back knitting madly, creating new stock for the store, coming up with new ideas. The cabling was going well - I had managed to complete the 6-stitch twist and started on a braid, but I'm not very diligent when it comes to keeping track of my rows. I ended up completely lost after 3 repeats and decided to frog it. I'm not very sentimental when it comes to ripping out my work. Once I've made the decision it's actually quite enjoyable.

Finished braid

If/once I finish the cabled stripes, I'm considering turning them into a cushion. I have oodles of hobby fill left over from a failed attempt at an amigurumi alien and I think it would look lovely on an armchair or couch. Of course in the soft squishy acrylic yarn it would nice and snuggly. Come to think of it, it would match this blanket really nicely.

I've just the pair of lacy handwarmers and posted them to the site and I've also been thinking about a few other ideas - I'm going to try the knit/crochet combo which is new for me, and considering making a few longer pairs for something different.



Lacy black handwarmers and scary post-gardening hands



The Big Clean

This weekend I joined in with the thousands of other Brisbanites who took to the streets of our city armed with brooms, mops, buckets and gloves to help out those hit worst by the floods. It was just stunning to see how many people had given up their weekends to help out complete strangers.

About 6 members of my family started off in one house that had been inundated up to just under the ceiling. We were gurneying out the mud and sludge that had settled in the house and cleaning off the silt that had settled on all of their salvagable furniture. We were there for about 5 hours and by the time we had left there were about 30 volunteers in this house, cleaning everything they could get their hands on. Not one person in this house had known the owners prior to the floods and most people still didn't even know what they looked like. There were just locating dirty things and turning them into clean things. It was wonderful to see and I have never been so proud to call myself an Australian.

By the end of the day our little team had mucked out three houses in the western suburbs of Brisbane.  We were stunningly filthy. Sewerage-tainted mud was caked onto our shoes, legs, arms, face, hair. My feet were the most impressive.


Those runners were white at the beginning of the day



Tide marks

I'm glad I was able to help out and I'm glad so many others are doing the same. Now I've just got to explain to my back that what we did was a good thing and hope it understands and stops punishing me soon.

Flood Horror in Brisbane

If you have turned on the news in the last 48 hours, anywhere in the world you will have noticed that most of Queensland has been swallowed up by record breaking flood waters. Higher than average rainfall over the Christmas period lead to flash flooding which then lead to even more widespread flooding, including what can only be described as an inland tsunami in Toowoomba.

When we were made aware of the impending disaster my housemate, her friend and myself headed off to the nearest council depot to join hundreds of other volunteers filling sandbags and distributing them to those in need. We were there for 3 hours and my arms are still sore.

The Brisbane River broke its banks on the afternoon of the 11th January and waters have continued to rise since then, peaking at around 4am on the morning of the 13th. As a result a huge number of Brisbane residents are waiting for the flood waters to recede and are about to be faced with a clean up a mammoth proportions.

Myself and my immediate family have been spared any damage and my boyfriend's family have sustained some, but not major damage. We have been some of the lucky ones. All we have to do is walk a few minutes away from our house and we are greeted with these sights:

This is the street behind (and significantly below) ours

This is the park I run in. It and the streets and houses surrounding it have completely disappeared.

This is the entrance to Coronation Drive - one of Brisbane's major thoroughfares. Closed to all traffic until the waters recede.

We weren't able to get any further down Coronation Drive, but you can see the level of Brisbane River in the distance - it's not normally visible from this point.

My heart goes out to all those affected by this tragic disaster. We are about to head off to the CWA in Spring Hill to donate spare towels and linens to help those who have lost everything get back on our feet. If you are in any position to help please do. Donate what you can, be it food, supplies or your time.