Cushions!

When we put our furniture into the new house the old sofa didn't go at all. This surprised us as it's white and large, but it looks like someone has just dumped an unmade bed in the livingroom.  We were pretty sad about this, as we love that sofa!

Anyway, we ordered a new one. Went down to Auckland a few weeks ago to look at some, as we'd seen them online and the price seemed too good to be true, we were sure they would be totally rubbish! But no, they are lovely, and you can choose different fabrics and different legs etc. So we got one and it should be arriving in the next couple of weeks.

It's a very grown up sofa compared to the old one but it needs a couple of cushions, so I decided to go to Whangarei yesterday and get some not grown up fabric to make some. ( The old sofa will go downstairs into the new room once it gets built, so it won't be leaving us!)

I didn't want to make my usual easy peasy envelope cushions. I really wanted to go to town - piping, invisible zips... you name it! Only problem, I've never done piping or invisible zips before. I did a search and found a few tutorials - which I didn't really understand - but went for it anyway.

I can't give instructions, as the zips were a total trial and error! The piping was great though. Very simple.
Just make a bias binding and hide the cord inside it!

Here they are!

 A wee bit smooshy round the corners, but not too bad. 

Nice round the edges, though.

And the invisible zip! Quite invisible. (This was the second one! First one not so good!) 

They're pretty big, bigger than I planned, perhaps, so I really hope they go.

For now I've just put them on our bed! 

Have to say, I am missing the wee Pip. I really need somewhere to sew that's not the dining room table. The power socket nearest isn't really that near, so it's a total hazard! Almost garrotted Brodie and my machine was in danger of taking a flyer! 

It'll be lovely when the council give us the go ahead to start the building work. 

Wheat bags

Anyone use these?

When I was at the chiropractor on Tuesday he said that a wheat bag would be a good idea to put on various sore bits :)
I had a wee wander around town to look for one but then I thought eh!? why on earth am I thinking of buying one? I have a huge amount of fabric and after a wee online search found out that you can fill them with all sorts of things -

• Uncooked rice
• Wheat
• Feed corn
• Buckwheat hulls
• Barley
• Oatmeal
• Beans
• Flax seed
• Cherry pits

What did I have in the house? - a bag of rice - that'll do nicely!

You can also put various smelly things in them
  - lavender, rose petals, ground cloves, nutmeg, ginger, rosemary, cinnamon, peppermint oil, crushed mint...

So this morning I trotted off to the Pip ...

 (which you can see is a screenshot from my twitter - that I hardly ever use!) and found some scraps of material and sewed a wee wheat bag together.

I actually used a bit of a vintage sheet.

Here's what I had- the sheet - I made a rectangular one because I need it to sort of sit over my shoulder. Some lavender oil cos I love the smell, the rice and a funnel to get the rice into the bag!
 (even using a funnel I also needed a vacuum cleaner to suck up all the rice I spilled everywhere)

You sew the fabric together - I did a double seam - but leave around an inch so that you can get the rice, or whatever filling you use, in.


Once you've half to three quarters filled the bag just hand sew up the hole.

 And voila - a wee wheat/rice bag, finished and doing its stuff in around 10 minutes. And all for the price of half a bag of rice - not bad, I think.

and the best thing - it really helps.

oh I heated mine in the microwave for one minute. It's suggested that you don't leave it while it's heating in case it goes on fire or something!

I used this blog for inspiration - Sew. Cook. Laugh. Live

The Longest Summer

It's been a while since I last wrote anything, this is most likely due to the fact that summer is just going on and on and on and Lloyd and I are making the most of it.

Since I last posted, we've been to Waiheke Island for a wee holiday, I've been diving at the Poor Knights marine reserve, we've sauced and passata-d and gardened, done more pottery and yesterday we went over to the Hokianga for HokiFest. I've done all of this while dosed up to the eyeballs on painkillers. I've done something to my shoulder and am presently seeing a chiropractor and a voodoo lady! ok she's not a voodoo lady - she does cranial something or other and is a genius. After 2 weeks I think it might be on the mend. Which is great, because making do with only a few meagre hours of sleep, before being woken up with the pain is really beginning to get me down!

Anyway first things first - Waiheke Island.
In all the time we've lived in NZ we've never been, so a few months back we booked a 4 day trip. It was wonderful. It felt like we'd been abroad!  The sun shone the whole time we were there and basically we just explored. Highlights were a picnic on Palm Beach, watching the sun set from Cable Bay Winery,  exploring Stony Batter, Man O War Winery, Oyster Inn Restaurant, eating lovely meals and lying in bed looking at the view.

This is the view from our bedroom window - sunset on the first evening

Couldn't resist! Macarons by the sea - yum!

Picnic on Palm Beach

A fairly standard view around Waiheke! It's all pretty stunning.

Some washed out rocks

There are loads of vineyards on Waiheke - it's pretty famous for its wine.

Our last evening - at one of said vineyards - Cable Bay. Sunset.

We loved it. We'd love to make it a regular, maybe once a year thing.

Next!
The very next morning after we got home I had to get up at 5.30am to meet Simon and Alison and drive down to Tutakaka, where we were meeting a boat to take us out to the Poor Knights Islands. I've done a fair bit of diving here before so I knew how good it was going to be. And it was!
It's positively teeming with fish life there. Lots of sting rays, unfortunately no mantas, we'd been told they were around and had really hoped to see some.
I've said before how much I love diving. It's another world down there.

Two snapper following us around the place - they are incredibly tame.

I can't remember what this is called - but it's super cute!

A moray eel - this was a rather large one!

Simon and Pete having an underwater confab

I'm pretty sure  this is a large scorpion fish - its eye looks odd!

A long tailed sting ray

Alison rolling off the boat - I love this!! For non divers, the way you get off smaller dive boats is to sit on the edge with your legs in the boat and your back facing the water, and simply roll off backwards - it's great fun,

Now we've got pottery - I took some of my bowls and stuff home to glaze so that I can take it back on Tuesday to be fired - it saves time, and means that when I'm there on Tuesday I can make more stuff rather than paint glaze on.
 I also took home my wee buttons! They were just a time filler one evening, but I think they're very sweet so I sewed some onto the back of a white linen tunic I made to take on the Waiheke holiday.

 One of my bowls made on the wheel - ok not totally symmetrical! This has been fired once and has had the glaze painted on - once it's been fired again the glaze should be a glossy cream colour - we shall see!

These are just little hand made bowls - from white clay - again these will be cream with pale blue spots on them - I hope!

finally, my wee buttons

Today Lloyd and I picked the remaining tomatoes - there were actually still a fair amount left after we picked about 8kg - but by this time I am over them totally - we have about 20 litres of passata in the freezer! This'll last us quite some time. Anyway, because of this we took out the tomato plants that were left and fed the nice red tomatoes to the chickens. They were delighted! Then we chopped the basil down that's been in the greenhouse - I left the stalks as I'm fairly certain it will sprout from them. Then we set to work making another HUGE batch of passata - but this time it had a tonne of basil in it - I honestly think it may be the nicest one we've ever made.

You can really tell the difference between the outside tomatoes and the greenhouse ones. The outside ones are less sweet and also a lot more dirty! Greenhouse ones are super sweet and lovely and clean!

 This is the pile of basil - the pic really doesn't show how huge it is. These stems are about 1m long!

HOT CHILLI SAUCE RECIPE

Lloyd also managed to make the first batch of chilli sauce. The greenhouse has been amazing for the chillies. They're like flipping trees in there!  This sauce has a mixture of about 30 habaneros, 50  chilli fire, 50 anaheim, 50 hungarian peppers and 100 ceyenne oh and about  4 bhut jalokias.

Here's what was in the sauce as well as the chillies

200ml dark soy

100ml light soy

200ml cider vinegar

500ml dry sherry

and about 5 teaspoons sugar

brought to the boil and simmered for around half an hour -  turn off and let it stew for about another three hours.

Then blend it with a stick blender, mouli it and bottle it.

The trug with most of the chillies he picked

Lots of lovely greenhouse chillies! There's still about a gazillion more to come

Preparation, preparation, preparation. We also have a wee gas burner outside now. The catch in your throatness of cooking a million chillies really didn't do it for me.

Ready for bottling

Finished and labelled

( not great quality  - but the labels say Rather Hot Chilli Sauce)

This is the tomato sauce I made a couple of weeks ago.

on the left is one large bottle of basil passata to have in the fridge the remaining 100 litres is in the freezer!

So, all in all we've been rather busy. Sometimes I feel totally exhausted and others I feel like I'd could go for ever!!

pottery - GLAZED!

Last week when I glazed some of my stuff, Sandrine, our teacher, said that it wouldn't be ready this week as there wasn't enough to fill the kiln yet. But she tricked us! And when we got there yesterday everything that we'd glazed was all ready and finished!
It was so lovely to have some things to take home.

Some of them I'm delighted with. Others I do love and am proud of, but they're perhaps a bit dark. This has made me come to the realisation that I am a lover of paler colours ( except perhaps that sort of natural brown you see on a lot of pottery - I like that!)

So I've put in an order for more of the cream glaze and also some pale blue. I'll do the small pots I made on the wheel in paler colours. That'll be a wee bit away as they're not 'kilned' yet.

Anyway here's what I've got so far.

This is the wee owl soap dish. I LOVE this. I especially love that the glaze did something it wasn't supposed to - it makes it look all shabby chic!

The pinch pot - first thing I ever made - Lloyd can put chilli sauce in it.

Now, the large platter and what I call the "ugly bowl". I like these, and would really like to make another platter, however I think the glaze is too dark for my taste. I do think it's a lovely glaze, but just not as lovely as the paler ones. I forgot to take a photo of the spoons, but they are in the same dark, midnight blue glaze.

 

 Now this was a total surprise to me! I made this with a wee blob of clay, last thing, on the first night, and I love it! I think these would make lovely presents if you made them in, say, three different sizes.

Anyway, suffice to say I am having a blast doing all this. There's just a small group of four of us. Simon and Alison ( who helped make my greenhouse) and another lady called Chris. We've formed a really lovely wee group and I think we all look forward to our Wednesday evenings.

Right onto something totally different!!

At the weekend Lloyd and I were invited to a friends birthday party. It was fancy dress and the theme was "Out of Africa"

This is how Lloyd and I interpreted it!

Yes, we went as Barbar and Cheetah!!

  Oh yes, I really got into the 'swing' of things!

And what an amazing spread. There were a lot of divers and spearfishers so this was very apt!

I contributed a lot of these! I had brilliant fun making them. And they disappeared really fast, so I think they were enjoyed.