Weekend cooking - english muffins

The weekend's a time when I sometimes get the opportunity to cook something different or fun, a change from the quick and easy routine of weeknights. Come and see what I've been up to this weekend...

My big girl is a difficult one to cook breakfast for. As in every family household, weekday mornings are all rush rush, toast, cereal etc, but one of the mornings on the weekends I like to cook something a bit more substantial if we have time.

However, as she is allergic to eggs (sorry big girl, must be bad genes ;-) that rules out a heap of things I like, and enjoy cooking. Like scrambled eggs with pesto, poached eggs, and fried eggs with dahl and flatbread.



She also doesn't like mushrooms or tomatoes and I won't cook bacon (sorry again - bad luck having a vegetarian mama ;-) And although she'll occasionally ask for pancakes - egg-free recipe here - like me she really is a savoury girl in the mornings... vegemite on toast anyone?

And so I am always looking for other things I can cook that she'll enjoy. I suddenly thought about English Muffins the other day and found this recipe which stated that it had been used by someone for 29 years! That's got to count for something, right?



I did a bit of experimenting with the ingredients, and they were a bit of a novelty to cook: a bread dough but cooked in a frying pan on the stove, a bit like crumpets. Next time I might try some wholemeal flour and maybe make a half batch - though they supposedly stay fresh for a couple of days they really were best still warm with some butter and cheese thrown on.

The Mr obligingly cooked some bacon for all but me and afterwards the big girl commented on how full her tummy felt, which was music to my ears :-) I had a nice poached egg with mine, though my energy and inclination didn't spread to hollandaise sauce and spinach unfortunatley!


Not particularly photogenic, the old muffins. But then I guess as they say, "A good tradesman never blames his tools"!

Copy cat skirt

When I worked as a graphic designer I was most affronted if anyone suggested that I may have stolen an idea from somewhere else. Certainly in any creative field you're affected by things you see and subconciously maybe you rehash an image you've seen before, but to blatantly copy someone else's idea just doesn't seem fair to me and also would suggest I'm not capable of having a creative thought myself, which is insulting.

But I seem to have broken my rule recently: when I saw this post by Tania from the gorgeous blog Myrtle and Eunice, I recognised some fabric. I remembered that I'd bought a piece from Ikea ages ago, meaning to go home and make a skirt out of it, straight away! Of course that hadn't happened and consequently it's been stuck in the depths of my stash ever since. When I commented on it to Tania she pointed me to this post of hers and I was smitten. The A-line style was what I also had in mind but her placement of the fabric's pattern was superb. So I copied. Shamelessly. Tania, I hope you consider it flattery, coz it is :-)



Being excited, the first version I whipped up in one evening and it was rubbish (no pics, too shameful). I'd cut a pattern from an old A-line skirt and hastily put a zip in the side. The fit was not quite right, I hadn't done the waist properly etc etc. Too much haste!

So after wearing it once I pulled it apart and started again. This time I tried to be patient, take each step carefully and sew slowly. So often I just rush through something and it doesn't turn out that well.



I added a yoke (not sure if that's what it's called on a skirt?) and some pockets (inside out pic above). For these I guessed what size might be good (bigger would have been better!) and put them coming off the yoke so that they were not too high up. Then I moved the zip to the back.



I lined the pockets in a mid blue soft cotton to decrease the bulk of the layers and top-stitched everything carefully. Which makes a change from my usual slap-dash sewing! Unlike the first version it's actually nice to wear. Maybe I should change my old ways for good :-)



It seems to have approval from a small boy too :-) Have a lovely weekend everyone.

My creative space

I'm playing along with Kootoyou's Thursday 'My Creative Space' this week. Lots more creativity over there to check out.



Feeding my new print addiction, today I stole a bit of time while no. 2 was at preschool and no.3 was having his nap (no.1 at school) to print some more tea towels. Next up I'm hoping to try a table runner in a mix of linen, burlap from a coffee sack, printing and stitching.

Hmm... now if only I could get my ideas to pop out of my head and materialise without having to spend lots of time on them! Still, I'm trying to teach myself to slow down and to enjoy the journey as much as the end point :-) It's just that when new ideas pop into my head I want to make them. Do you feel that way too? Or are you the patient and meticulous type who finishes one project properly before starting another (in which case I'm extremely jealous and want to know your secret ;-)

Another Shearwater Kaftan

I've been mostly doing 'sewing for me' lately - sorry kids! Each time I finish something I think of something else I'd like to make. The other day I realised I was wearing a full outfit (2 pieces) that I'd made myself and it kind of amused me, just like it does when I wear a full op shop outfit. I think the feeling of resourcefulness is satisfying, and not something that I get elsewhere as I don't work outside of the home these days. Hmm, anyway...

Here's the finished Shearwater Kaftan that I blogged about in 'my creative space' last week. I love how each one I've made has it's own individual look.



I read a not so favourable review of the pattern on a blog a while ago that I thought was a bit unfair. The person said she had to alter some measurements, but hey, we're not all made with cookie cutters! And she felt it was not of the calibre of a tailored shirt pattern and obviously designed for beginners. But I think she missed the point, as it's meant to be an unstructured cover-up for the beach or whatever (though I wear it for everyday wear!). Sure it's pretty quick and easy to make, but that doesn't mean it's inferior, in fact it's a positive to me when I'm trying to fit in a bit of time here and there in the evenings. So on the instant gratification scale it's pretty high up there!



Each time I've made this I've altered a few things, which I would on most patterns. This time I did French seams (I think that's what they're called?) for most of the seams so that when the sleeves are rolled up they look nice.



And as usual I did my extremely rough buttonholes by hand. My sewing machine doesn't have a buttonhole feature (it's an oldie passed down from my Granma) so I just muddle my way through with a needle and thread until the hole that I've cut is bound, and it works OK. Wouldn't want to do a tailored shirt that way though ;-)

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On an unrelated note, I got to wear socks today - oh the novelty of it! Finally the heat has dropped off a bit and it's a weird feeling to cover my feet again for the first time in ages, which I know must seem worlds away to you Northern hemisphere dwellers at the moment. Now to stop myself from dreaming of all the winter clothes I'd like to make...

This moment

I'm joining Soulemama (and many others) this week with the Friday ritual of 'this moment' - a moment from the week gone by. Happy weekend to you.

My creative space

I'm playing along with Kootoyou's Thursday 'My Creative Space' this week. Lots more creativity over there to check out.



Squeezing in a little sewing when I could today, I started making another Shearwater kaftan. I find the design perfect for this weather - the sun is often very strong and it's the hottest part of the day when the littlies and I walk to pick up the big girl from school. Sleeves are needed as protection but I can't stand anything thick. So this style of shirt, a skirt and a wide brimmed hat (more on that later) provide pretty good protection. I think this will be the fourth one I've made (one here and another here), each with some little details that make them different to the others (apart from the fabric).

I got this printed soft voile at the sale of this shop. Damn the sale, I'm meant to be stash busting, not re-stocking! But at $9 per metre I thought it was a steal, and $9 for a new shirt is great, right?!



Also I guess on the creative front I made a dinner tonight that I was actually a bit enthusiastic about. Normally I love cooking, and even when the daily grind gets me down a bit I can still muster up a bit of enthusiasm, but not lately. Maybe it's the heat? It's hard to have an appetite with this weather. But I had a packet of soba noodles in the cupboard and inspired by a few things I've seen lately, like this salad over at ecoMILF, I thought I'd build the meal around it. I added some tofu and also cooked some fresh salmon for the kids and the Mr. It turned out well so I'll make sure I always have a packet in the cupboard from now on.

Coffee sack art

Inspired by all the coffee sack craft I've noticed around the blogs lately, like this lovely footstool from Kootoyou, I thought I'd show you something I made with them a while ago.

When we renovated our kitchen a few years ago we had a wall that could do with some decoration and I wanted to make something to hang on it. I decided to do a homage to coffee. As the Mr works with coffee, we both like drinking it and a sizable proportion of the new bench space would be taken up with the machine and accessories, I thought this was a fair call!



So I came up with the idea of painting on coffee sacks. I bought them for about $2 each from a great local place called Reverse Garbage who take in donations of packaging and materials from local businesses that are no longer needed and sell them to the public as art materials of whatever. Then I bought a couple of cheap canvases from a local $2 shop, stretched a single layer of coffee sack material ('hessian' or 'burlap') over the front surface and used a staple gun to secure it at the back.



Next I used acrylic paints in shades of green, beige and white (to work in with the kitchen colours) and with a small foam roller I rolled out random geometric shapes until I was happy with the design. The hessian turned out to be a nice surface to paint on, though it's so coarse that I don't think I'd try and intricate design as it would be hard to get much detail in.



I left some of the bare coffee sack showing so that you could still tell what it was, and mounted the canvases side by side. It was a fun project to do and I've enjoyed them, but 3 years on I'm a bit tired of the design so I think I'll paint something over the top, maybe trying some different colours this time.