Poppalina

Crafty business

Some friends have a fashion label, Baraka, and a new store, Baraka HQ. They are in the process of making the store the place to be for all kinds of things besides a lovely place to shop, with craft classes, a book club, story readings, movie nights and much more.

I mention this purely to show you some pictures I took of a kid's t-shirt printing class, which was going on in the next room from the book club I attended. (We were discussing Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, if you're interested; which is very much worth a look.)

Masterpieces created on the day included: a charming lady robot,

four siblings;

but my personal favourite was the shark.

Specifically, the proportional size of the tiny fish's eye at the realization of what appears to be imminent.

In other news, last night I went to a yarn swap at the best yarn shop that sells coffee (or cafe that sells yarn) in Sydney, A Coffee & a Yarn. Ok, maybe the only, but it's still good.

I took a bag full of balls from my stash that I was unlikely to ever use, and came back with ... these:

Nice, huh?

Watermelon Ice

Today I started making sweet pickled watermelon rind, to give as a Christmas present to a few people. It's so pretty, and pretty yum, too. The recipe is from Stephanie Alexander's first book, Menus for Food Lovers. I was then faced with the prospect of eating all the flesh of an entire watermelon.

Hmm. What to do? My husband doesn't like watermelon very much, and I can only eat so much of it myself. But he says he does like watermelon granita on a very hot day. (Which today isn't.) So I decided to make a watermelon ice, which we can keep in the freezer for any time we want it.

I whizzed the flesh of one (seedless) watermelon in a food processor, and added a scant teaspoon of rose water and a capful of dark rum (we didn't have any white rum, which I would have used if we had).

I put 250 g of castor sugar in a pan with 1/2 cup of water, and brought it to the boil, stirring so it would dissolve. I let it boil for a few minutes, then turned off the heat and let it cool.

Then I stirred the sugar syrup into the watermelon juice, and churned the mixture in an ice-cream maker. (You could do it by semi-freezing, flaking with a fork and re-freezing, if you don't have one of those).

Holy moly! It was fabulous!

About Kurt Vonnegut

He died,

bugger it.

Killer Slippers

By hml request:

 

isbn 0 949284 34 3.

Real Men may not half-leg wax, but they do, it appears, wear Tug Boat Slippers.

This book is obviously the long lost companion to Killer Tea Cosies and How To Make Them, but there's no mention of it anywhere inside. Deeply intriguing. How many more are there? And what are they called?

The mind boggles.

Father's Day suggestions include:

for the Continental Man,

The Citroen

or, if the Continental Man likes to eat on his feet,

The Continental Breakfast.

 

But if Your Man likes to look as though his feet have died and not very recently, he'll be delighted by

Hanged Man's Feet

 

Or if he's one to light up the barbie on a Sunday afternoon, you might consider bringing out the snags in a pair of these:

The Blowfly

 

But wait, there's more:

For people who like to keep white slippers in the pond,

Swamp Life

Or for kicking up your heels at the next PTA cleanskin fundraiser (that's you, Marjorie):

The Fruit Punch

Feeling like busting out of the closet? Try the

Ashton Circus

Or if you prefer a more Zen approach to your morning coffee:

The Koi

For lovers of highly decorative wedding cakes,

The Weightless Frangipani

And last, but not least, best experienced with a bucket of Neopolitan icecream and a 3 hour movie involving Sharukh Khan and a cast of thousands

The Couch Potato

They remind me a little of leg irons, actually. I suspect you'd be more confined to the couch, no sashaying up to the fridge in these.

There are more, of course, but to see them you'll have to get your hands on a copy.

Currently retailing for 50 cents at Amazon. I was a bit offended by this. hml's tea cosy book reputedly has a price tag of $69. Seems a little unfair, somehow.

This post is dedicated to Chrissie Boyle, creator of the Melbourne fashion label 'Queen', last heard of doing a roaring trade at the Gertrude St end of Smith St, Collingwood. We used to share a studio, and she gave me this book as a parting gift, branding her ever after as a Woman of Great Taste.

Teach Yourself to Fly

Have to show you this:

By Mary Thomas, EUP, first printed in 1937, mine is 1942, and I've no doubt that many editions were to follow. Such a handy and interesting little book, incorporating Romanian embroidery (!), the trusty Cretan stitch (?!), and, for the more ambitious Textile Artiste, faggoting. Yep, faggoting, so anyone needing handy tips for doing a nice faggot, let me know, I've got the how-to here.

The most important aspect of this essential little book is, in fact, the flap. Like so many of my how-to books, they are part of a series, none of which I ever seem to be able to locate. This one is AMAZING. With the entire series, you could do just about anything, anything at all.

Teach yourself to fly for only 2/6. I call that Wartime Economy.

Ah, the Good Old Days. Men off fighting the Good Fight. Women being actively encouraged to use their brains and bodies for something other than the pulling of aforementioned men, and housework.

Where they actually got paid for it.

Must have been wild. What strange, dull, thunking sounds their hearts must have made somewhere in their deepest secret insides, as they packed up their skills after the War and went back to the housework. Dunno about you, but I think I would've spent the 50s taking tranquilizers, and trying to forget. But I wax nostalgic.

So, given that the publishers are actively inviting suggestions for other titles, I plan to write immediately and request, for these modern days of multi-skilling,

The Kitchen Guide To Bomb Defusing

Calculating Ballistic Missile Trajectory With Your Menstrual Chart

Feeding the World with Cheese Slices and a Jaffle Iron.

Meditation, Reiki, and Terrorist Abduction.

Organic Muffins and the Malarial Child.

Land Mine Clearing for the Holidays.

Plot the Downfall of Insane Political Leaders with the Perfect Martini.

It's a work in progress. I may have to add to it. All suggestions welcomed and considered.