Blog Poll and the Results

I haven't blogged since December - terrible I know - and other than the standard reasons of lack of time and general malaise, I found that the more I didn't blog, the harder it was to come back to it because I felt like I had to play catch up for the things I missed. Obviously the longer I'm slack the more there is to write about, which then makes me feel more reluctant... and so cycle goes.

Also, since relocating to Hong Kong, I've done absolutely zilch in the sewing stakes. I know the blog is called 'SuBoo: sewing and stuff', and a lot of 'stuff' has been happening, but I somehow feel guilty about neglecting the first part. It's almost like I feel like I'm lying if that makes any sense.

So. To just get over it all, I used Facebook Questions to see what my friends thought about it all.

The results were interesting - and the friends who read my blog most regularly and also have blogs of their own were the ones who wanted me to play blog catch-up (totally understandable!), but after having the question up for voting for a week, the winner was option 1 - 'Pretend the last 4 months didn't exist and start new posts from today'.

Am I relieved? If I'm being honest, yes! 4-5 months is a huuuuge effort to catch up on and I'm pretty sure I mentioned the word 'malaise' previously somewhere... so from this post onwards, I'll be posting a little more about 'stuff', and who knows, some of the stuff that happened earlier this year might make its way in here...

Thanks for voting peeps!

I can't even knit

But I totally have to buy this book!!

Cuteness overload!!

Easter Monday Macaroons

I thought I'd take advantage of the long Easter weekend to do a bit of catching up with friends, so Kimba and I nominated Easter Monday as our day of baking macaroons. I had had a very yummy one from Laurent when I went up to Sydney last week but it was a reminder that regardedless of where you are, if you want to eat a good macaroon, it's going to cost, so I thought it'd be great if we could just bake them up at home.

I had heard that making macaroons wasn't difficult *YAY* but making good macaroons was *eep*. Armed with that bit of information, we went into it knowing that at the very least, we'd have something edible!

Kimba found a couple of recipes online and printed them out, and with a bit of guidance from our own personal masterchef Cindy, we decided to combine the recipes and go with 2 batches - chocolate and vanilla - partly because they are generally liked flavours but mainly because we didn't have the ingredients to make orange or raspberry ones (we're maybe not so great with the forward planning).


The frothy peaks of whipped egg whites... so shiny!
As we progressed, we had some surprise visitors drop in so our group of 2 bakers and masterchef doubled in size - perfect timing to help with the various stirring, mixing and piping jobs that were available. No work no food!


Sifting the almond meal
Following the instructions, we piped out our macaroon mix to a 1.5cm ball size, expecting them to expand.


Masterful piping
They did not.

As they were baking and not expanding we decided to take sizing into our own hands and piped out the next lot into (rather large) escargot shapes which once baked, looked a lot like... well escargot shaped baked goods.

After the macaroons had cooled and we had whipped up the butter icing for the vanilla macaroons and the ganache for the chocolate ones, assembly began. As you can see from the pictures, visually our mini-macaroons looked almost like the real things but they were a little over-baked (I suspect due to their small size they baked a lot quicked than we expected), so they weren't too chewy on the inside.


Our pretty mini-macaroons. Almost perfect!
Our giant escargot-style macaroons were very goo-ey, but pretty much went the other way and didn't have the firm, slightly crunchy outside that we were hoping for, but they sure tasted good!


Our escargot macaroons. It was pointed out that the chocolate ones bore a rather strong resemblance to something stinky...
Considering it was a first time effort, we were pretty happy with how they turned out, especially since we pretty much had no idea what we were doing. Lots of lessons learned for next time - and lots of happy full tummies in the meantime.

Greedy

Is it bad that I want Stylish Dress Book 3 when I have both 1 and 2 as well as a few other Japanese pattern books plus a million other patterns I haven't touched?

Posts from make something and verypurpleperson are really not helping me in any way...

Toad Cakes

Well, that's a literal transalation of 'kuih kodok', or as we called it in my family 'goreng kodok' (fried toads), which is a something my Aunty Catherine used to cook up when I was a lot younger. It is also known as 'cekodok' and 'cokodok' and probably a whole bunch of other variation that I haven't heard of. It's actually a type of fried banana fritter where the banana is mashed up instead of being cooked whole. The only thing it has to do with toads however is the fact that the finished product ends up shaped a little like the amphibian so you can stop feeling a little grossed out :)

After buying a big bunch of bananas and having too many slices of birthday cake recently in the office (I don't know why half my team was born in February) I found myself stuck with 4 large bananas that were at least half black on the outside. Half black = a lot sweeter than normal, but too mushy to eat. I refused to throw them away and decided to 'recycle' them into something else yummy to eat. The standard banana muffins/bread/cake wasn't appealing to me, and for some reason I suddenly got hit with a craving for some goreng kodok.

Unfortunately I had a couple of things going against me:
1) No recipe
2) No ingredients (other than the bananas)
3) No deep-frying experience (and slightly scarred from seeing the results of a wok of oil overturning on someone - eek!)

Armed with just my blackened bananas, I did some research online (I so love technology and my iPhone) and found a few recipes (seasaltwithfood, Best Recipes, Foods and Travel, ptitchef) that looked like they might work. After a bit of umming and ahhing, I put together a trial recipe using the least amount of ingredients possible and a little extra sugar (I find Australian bananas nowhere near as sweet as the ones I ate growing up in the tropics).

I also made sure that I bought an appropriate oil for deep frying (sunflower in this case) and sussed out the dos and don'ts of deep-frying for safety reasons. One of the things I learned was that pouring the leftover oil down the kitchen sink was a no-no. Good thing I looked this up - last thing I need is a clogged sink!


The mixed batter


Sizzling away


The finished product - YUM

I thought they turned out pretty well for a first effort - I'm glad I put in a little extra sugar to compensate for the slightly less sweet Australian bananas.

I got four thumbs up from my two guinea pigs so I'm happy :)


Here's the recipe for those of you who are interested:

SuBoo's Goreng Kodok
Makes approx 12-15

Ingredients
* 4 big ripe bananas, peeled and mashed up
* 1 1/2 cup plain flour
* 2 1/2 tbs caster sugar
* 1 egg
* Sunflower oil

Method
1. Place all the ingredient (except the oil) into a mixing bowl and mix until well blended
2. Heat up a wok and add in the sunflower oil for deep frying.
3. When the oil is appropriately hot, take a heaped tablespoon of batter and place into the wok - try to keep the batter together so that it makes a flat oval 'patty'
4. Fry until golden brown, turning the patty evenly.
5. Once fried, use a slatted ladle to lift the kodok out from the wok onto a plate lined with paper towelling.
6. Dab the tops of the kodok with paper towelling to remove access oil.
7. Serve warm or at room temperature.

It's arrived!

After seeing several mentions of this book being released, I decided that I needed to get it ASAP. I found the other two Built By Wendy books very clear and easy to read (and I can finally put the 2nd one to use now that I have my overlocker *hurrah*) so I ended up placing an order from The Book Depository a week ago.

Here it is freshly opened from its cardboard packaging.

I know what I'll be doing this lunchbreak.

Books!

2 new purchases - Amy Karol's book "Bend-The-Rules Sewing"


and Kelly Doust's book "The Crafty Minx"


Both of them are gorgeously presented and after having read "Bend-The-Rules Sewing" from cover to cover I am absolutely loving it. I suspect from flicking through "The Crafty Minx", it will probably serve more as inspiration than an out-right instructional book as it seems to have fewer diagrams/patterns than a lot of sewing books I have come across.

Hopefully I'll have something of note to show from these soon!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Slack

That's me. Still not much sewing going on but when it does, I am too lazy/busy (pick one) to take photos and blog.

So in an effort to keep up to speed with blogging since there is no way I am going to be back tracking and blogging like some other persistent people have done (Hai Frannie!) here's a quick run down of my bits and pieces:

- I went to Sri Lanka. It rocked. I came back with 4m of cotton in blue and turquoise, 5m in coral, and an orange silk sari. The plan is to cut the latter up but we'll see how we go with that one. I have included a random Sri Lankan pic since I don't have any pics of the fabric... elephants!!


- Borders had 30% off up to 3 books recently - so I purchased Cath Kidson's Sew and Make, and also a sewing reference book for a birthday present for someone. I now think that I may return Make - not a huge amount in there that interests me and it also seems like the reviewers on Amazon agree. I am yet to decide about Sew but I do like the fact that you get the materials in there to make the bag on the cover!

- Lincraft is having 30% off everything for 3 days - as usual just after I had forked out for some materials for the baby bootie making fest that I will be undertaking soon - but I managed to use the discount on some tracksuit material and a Singer dressmaker dummy *hurrah* I had had my eye on one for ages - so I managed to save a whopping $75 :D

- I think it is pretty obvious that I didn't make a Chanel jacket. I really was all set to do it but work got crazy, I had a week and a half overseas and I was rushing a present for Princess S, so yeah... no jacket...

I think that is it for me with regards to sewing-related items of note for now... all I can say is I will *try* to get better...?

hehe

xx

New purchases

Wooooooo! I am so pleased with my purchases! I had a game plan for my weekend in Sydney and even though I only managed to complete half of it, it was the half that mattered! I made it to Kinokuniya and spent a good 45 minutes browsing the Japanese craft book section.

Other than the fact that there were a multitude of books there that caught my eye, I was especially pleased that I could look through the patterns inside the books. A couple of the books I'd been eyeing online turned out to be WAY too complicated for me to follow, with super small diagrams and a whole heaps of Japanese text (which I do not read/speak, just fyi).

I ended up coming away with the following 3 books - Girly Style Wardrobe, Stylish Dress Book (the pre-cursor to Stylish Dress Book 2 - I wouldn't have guessed, I know) and Girl's Everyday Dress.


All I need to do now is get some tracing paper to copy out the patterns and see if I can make head or tail of the diagrams!

Due to time constraints I didn't make it to Menya (sorry Frannie!) but there was a cafe called Ichi-ban Boshi just outside of Kinokuniya that looked like it had some decent Japanese fare so we decided to do lunch there and then. The food was given 2 thumbs up by all!


Princess S enjoying her edemame - she ate the whole lot!



My super yummy salmon don set

All in all a great day spent before jetting off to the airport - couldn't have asked for much more than my share of good food, exciting purchases, gorgeous weather (a sunny 28 degrees in the middle of winter!) and great company!

Wanna follow?

As part of me getting back into blogging, I decided to add the Followers widget onto my blog. Alas, I only have 2 followers (thanks guys!) - so if you do regularly visit this blog (or did before I got lax) please show me some love by becoming a follower - I think it might inspire me to write and share more :)

x

Away

Sorry everyone - been away from sewing and blogging and a lot of stuff I normally do due to some unforseen things that have been happening in my life. Just wanted to let everyone know that I'll be back soon - better than ever!
x

Tessuti encounter

Today I wandered down and across a few city blocks at lunchtime and met up with K to check out the newly opened Tessuti Fabrics store in Melbourne. I had heard about the store opening via their blog - I wasn't too sure what to expect as the only other Tessuti Fabrics store I've ever been to is the Chatswood one in Sydney, and I stumbled upon it by accident.

Picture of the Melbourne store courtesy of the Tessuti website
Even though some pictures had been posted on their blog, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of space and light in the store - especially great for taking in all the beautiful fabrics they had on display.

Also exciting for me was meeting Lisa and Colette (author of the Sew Tessuti blog, and therefore a fellow craft-blogger *yay*), who were both really friendly and lovely. There was talk of upcoming sewing classes, blog addictions and how pattern companies have a knack of picking the ugliest materials possible to use to peddle their wares.

I went off a happy camper with a couple of metres of black poly-viscose fabric (I'm thinking a new skirt) and anticipation of future jaunts down that end of town.

Meet Me at Mike's

I received a lovely gift from my great friend KazKaz as a thank you for hemming up her skirt. Totally unnecessary since I quite enjoyed doing it, but it was very sweet of her. The gift itself was very welcome, as it was a copy of the newly published Meet Me at Mike's book.


I'd seen the book around in a few places but hadn't thought about purchasing since it would have meant additional distractions from the other projects I have literally piling up around the house. I instead made do with taking a few sneak peeks whenever I had a few minutes in a bookshop, and checking out Pip's related blog instead.

It's chock-full of gorgeous little projects and the presentation is a work of art in itself.



For those of you who might not have the opportunity to buy it from a local bookstore, you can order a copy from Readings online, where the book is described as:

"From Melbourne’s best loved crafty store comes Meet Me at Mike’s, a cornucopia of crafty fun and inspiration. Queen of Crafters Pip Lincolne has gathered 25 of the best projects from the country’s most creative cleverbods -everything from baby yoga pants and clutch purses to hankies and softies. You can sew, knit, crochet, collage and screenprint yourself into a frenzy! Each cute and quirky project comes with easy-to-follow instructions and full-size fold out patterns. With such a fabulous range of ideas, you’ll find something to make for all your favourite pals. If you’re looking for fun and creative things to brighten up everyone’s day, have a peek inside and get crafty!"


I've got my eye on these pretty fabric coasters for my first project but there are so many other gorgeous things in there I might change my mind a few times over!

Thanks HEAPS KazKaz! ;D

Lemonade scones and hot chocolate

I had a craving for Devonshire tea and Sunday company, so I decided to bake some scones and invite K, J and D over for a catch up.

During my trawls for scone recipes online, I noticed a lot of recipes that recommended the use of lemonade. 'Weird' was my first thought - and then 'I wonder how the lemon flavour blends with jam and cream'. I decided to ignore the whole lemonade part until I met someone last night who informed me that lemonade (or soda water) was key to getting scones that weren't as heavy as rocks. Something to do with the bubbles.

Since there was nothing stopping me from adventurous (is it sad that this is as adventurous as I get these days? lol) I tweaked a couple of recipes I had been looking at and the resulting scones were enjoyed with some strawberry jam and whipped cream by all.

We also had very VERY chocolaty hot chocolate, made with half milk, half cream, and a whole lot of Koko Black chocolate flakes.
We had to wash it down with some tea because it was so rich - so it ended up being the Devonshire tea I was craving *hurrah*

I think when I make them next I am going to change a couple of things - my scones turned out to be mini-scones for some reason, so next time I am going to use a bigger cutter and ensure that they are also less flat before they are baked.

Here are some pics of the left over scones - there were about 14 all up but we scoffed them down pretty quickly.


The tweaked recipe (including the changes I plan on making) is as follows:

SuBoo's Lemonade Scones
Makes 8

Ingredients
* 2 cups self-raising flour, sifted
* 1/2 cup lemonade
* 1/2 cup thickened cream
* 1/2 tspn salt
* 2 tbs milk
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Place greaseproof paper on a baking tray.
2. Place the flour and salt in a large bowl.
3. Add the cream and lemonade and mix to form a soft dough.
4. Turn out onto a lightly floured workbench and knead lightly until combined.
5. Use your hands to flatten out the dough so that it is about 4cm thick.
6. Use a 8cm round cutter (I used the top of a mug) to cut out 8 scones
7. Place the dough cut-outs on the baking tray and brush the tops with milk.
8. Bake for approximately 10-15 minutes - the tops of the scones should be lightly browned.
9. Serve warm from the oven with some whipped thickened cream and strawberry jam.

Enjoy!

Another distraction - the Stylish Dress Book

I was soooo excited to get this package in the mail! After seeing several blogs such as Japan Craft Journal and Domesticali mentioning this Japanese pattern book and after always admiring the simplicity and clean lines of some Japanese clothing, I knew I had to get my grubby little hands on one of these.



After a bit of research, I decided I would buy the book from a seller on Etsy. Landmark moment - my first Etsy purchase - and I was happy I picked well since the book arrived in speedily from Japan, and in pristine condition, so thanks very much to ichigonopantsu!

Even though I can't read Japanese, the illustrations in the book seem clear enough, so hopefully when the time comes for me to have a go at one of these patterns (ideally after everything on my to-do list has been completed!), I won't be too confused.



There are a couple of patterns I am really liking, but am refraining from getting carried away until I have proper time to sit down and plan what I want to make. In the meantime, check out some of the designs below.



Thoughts?

Back!!

Finally back to blogging after several weeks of blog neglect. Lots has happened but unfortunately no craftiness (the good kind!) on my part. I have been busy busy busy with a bunch of things, most importantly that one of my dearest friends just got married! I was lucky enough to be asked to be a bridesmaid - I felt SO honoured - and so was busy with the other bridesmaids planning the hen's weekend and working with the bridal party to make the day as great as we could.



The big day took place on Saturday - the bride looked stunning, the weather held up and a good time was had by all so I think mission accomplished and credit to everyone involved!

Now that I am settling back down to normalcy (my feet still hurt from wearing those stupid shoes for almost 24 hours) I am slightly aghast at how little I have done with regards to my to-do list! Some might say that the whole point of making the list is to ignore it, but I have to disagree in this instance since I am so far behinds schedule!

I have reproduced the list below:

1. Putting in an elastic waist on a pair of PJ pants
2. Hemming up some baby PJ pants
3. Enlarging another pair of PJ pants I made (I didn't have the person's measurements so I guessed - and guessed very wrongly!)
4. Hemming up a pleated wool skirt for a friend (my first alteration on fine wool - so will need to be very careful with it)
5. Making a nappy bag (Butterick B4560)
6. Finishing up the blue silk dress/top once I decide what I want to do with it.
7. Re-pleating my yellow polka-dot top
8. Pulling apart and remeasuring my summer maxi dress (which most likely won't be worn for months as it is getting nearer to winter now)
9. Making a dress for my friend Charlie's birthday - we picked the Butterick B5176 pattern after a lot of umm-ing and ahh-ing.

As a look through it it is pretty obvious that it's the big things that I have done nothing about *sob* so I think it is time to get moving again. On the upside, I haven't had time to go shopping for fabric to add to my ever growing stash *hurrah*

In terms of priority - item number 9 has a deadline in a few days so I may have to beg for a bit of an extension - hopefully there won't be any disappointment with the final result. Wish me luck!

Twitter Box

I just added a widget to my blog showing my Tweets on Twitter at the bottom of the page. I took the lazy way out and automatically added one without customisation courtesy of Blogger Buster. I'm not too fussed about that right now seeing as it's just a trial - it may disappear later on if I decide I don't like it.

Feel free to Tweet Me anytime.

Tweet tweet

I just got myself a Twitter account. Not sure why and no idea if I will use it but meh, thought I'd have a squiz and see what the fuss is about. Seeing as I have flu-head and cannot think, I have gone as far as getting an account name, finding ppl on my gmail email list who have accounts, and registering my mobile (for what I am not sure) before logging out.

Anyhoo, feel free to add/stalk/follow/whatever it is ppl to other ppl on Twitter - account name is '_suboo'.

Sew U x 2

I'm excited - I picked up my Xmas present from my mum today from Dymocks. Yes, a bit late for Xmas, but they had to be ordered in from whereever books are made so they arrived today. I must say I am quite impressed that they now send SMSs to notify customers to pick up their orders.

Anyhoos, I thought I would share my excitement since it has been quite awhile since I have been this interested or stuck to something for a long-ish period of time (i.e. more than a month).

I'm currently reading through the first of the 2 books by Wendy Mullin titled 'Sew U'. It's about sewing (*duh*) and her approach is to teach people the basics and then explain how you can change a plain item into something completely different by altering the design slightly or adding some embellishments.




The 2nd book, 'Sew U: Home Stretch', builds on the first book but deals with stretch materials, which are a whole different kettle of fish. A quick glance through it has made me think I need an overlocker but seeing as I am broke, and lacking space, I may not be working with stretch materials in the near future. I do however want to be able to make a hoodie, so watch this space.



For any blossoming seamspeople (is that a word?) out there, I highly recommend these books (especially Sew U) based on what I have seen so far.

Best bit about these books is that they each come with 3 basic sewing patterns. Meh you might be thinking, what's the big deal about that? Well let me tell you, all other books I have seen either provide patterns for things that are not to scale, or are rough drawings that you have to draft into patterns. The way I see it, what's the point? Nice pictures of finished items are great and all, but I don't really see them helping me along with developing my sewing skills.

If all goes well, you may see creations using the patterns from the book in my blog somewhere along the line *yay*

Look and feel

For those few people who visit my blog regularly (or at all even!) you may have noticed that I have once again changed the style of my page. Partly because I am trying out new things and partly because as a Gemini I am indecisive and slightly schitz, I have been adding and removing page elements depending on my mood and also playing around with very basic HTML in an effort to really ram home the fact that I work in IT. Or pretend to anyway.

So I have created a new header for the blog using a photo I took in Spain and Paint (yes you read correctly - Paint). It was slightly painful but I am happy I now have a custom header as opposed to the standard font title that used to be there. I've also played around with a few of the colours on the page and added links to some of my regularly visited websites.

Any thoughts/feedback/requests would be very welcome - still looking at bits and pieces to add to it - its very much a work in progress sort of thing seeing as I only do this when I can be bothered....