So much to see...

Wow, there is just so much happening on line! I think I'll brows for just twenty minutes, and before you know it two and a half hours have past. What's the deal? So I've descided that since I spend so much time looking, I really should use some good blog manners and be commenting too. If I find something lovely to look at, I should say so. Don't you think? It's only right really.

So. Lovely things I found lately?

Thanks to Maudrey, Love In Melbourne

A dedicated quilting lady at this spot

The cover art work from Florence and the Machine - anatomical drawings, flowers...

A forum for crafty types - thanks Pip

I promise to endeavour to comment on stuff, and let the world know that I care.

Meringue ice-cream, sort of...

Since I found a few fabulous ice-cream recipes on Joy The Baker's blog, I've been really inspired to whip some up. And my love of home made ice-cream is growing as a result! Around six years ago, I was given an ice-cream maker as a Christmas giftie. It has had some use, particularly making Nigella's baci ice-cream from Forever Summer. I gave up for a few years though, particularly after one night's failed dinner party dessert. What should have been lush vanilla bean ice-cream turned into very expensive ordinary custard. It was exceptionally disappointing. And then last year during mango madness I experimented with mango sorbet. Again the results left something to be desired.

But thanks to Joy and the Kitchy Kitchen, I'm back into the ice-cream making mode. And loving it. I think I've mentioned this before, but recipes for peanut butter chocolate ice-cream and a cookie no-dough choc chip ice-cream have been winners. The cookie no-dough turned out to be a good butterscotchish/tasty flavour, rather than cookie per se. But the fella woofed it down.

So I've broadened my ice-cream horizons, read too many delicious magazines and made myself some meringue ice-cream. Well sort of. Loving the flavour, not so sure about the texture. I could have whipped it for longer perhaps. Or maybe the mixture needed thickening before churning. I think that's it. But post it I will, as I've got loads of it to eat and think I'll make it again.

I've scanned in the cover of the mag I found the recipe in. No camera. Yet again we have a broken camera, but this time I found the receipt. So it is off in the South being repaired. Hurrah for scanners!

Meringue Ice-Cream a.k.a. Cinnamon and Lemon Ice-Cream
Makes 1 L

2 c milk
150 ml thick cream
160 g white sugar
Peeled rind of 1 lemon
2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 eggwhites – 3 or even 2 would work though

If needed/using, place your ice-cream maker’s bowl into the freezer to chill, ideally overnight.

In a saucepan, combine milk, cream, 100 g sugar, rind and cinnamon. Heat over a medium heat, stirring to combine. Bring almost to the boil, remove from heat and leave to infuse for 1 hour.

Strain this mix, refrigerate until cool – ideally overnight.

Whisk eggwhites until stiff peaks form. Spoon in remaining 60 g sugar, one tablespoon at a time until the sugar dissolves in the whites. Gently fold ¼ of the eggwhite mix into the infused milk mix. Fold in remaining eggwhite mix.

Place mixture into the bowl of your ice-cream maker. Churn until it begins to set, around thirty minutes. Spoon into a freezer container, freeze until set. Alternatively, freeze until setting around the edges, remove from freezer and beat with an electric mixer to break up the crystals and make smooth ice-cream. Re-freeze and repeat two more times.

This would be delicious served with some poached pears or rehydrated dried apricots.

Adapted from Delicious September 2003.

Scandinavian dreaming...

I was blog browsing the other day and found a delicious post or two from Wren Handmade. She had recently been to Denmark and Sweden and recalled tales of coffee, bicycles, pastel painted buildings, freezing swimming holes... It sounded divine. It also made me long for a Scandi adventure of my own. It also had me searching for my photos of a Finland adventure of a few years ago... Where are they on this computer?

My mother in law returned from Finland recently. She lived there until she met her Aussie husband while working on the Thai-Cambodian boarder. It is a true story of love and God bringing people together in his most perfect way. Anyhow, so there is a precious bit of Finland in my fella and thus by default in me too! Back to the mother in law. She spent some time in her home town in central Finland, looking after our ancient grandmother. She had saunas, ate sausages, danced under the midnight sun and made day-trips to Sweden. She also brought me back the most beautiful piece of Kalevala jewelry. Isn't it the sweetest? It is a piece of ancient design, inspired by fertility symbols of the Laps of 1000 AD. How I love it.

Fabric samples and what to do with them

An early birthday gift came my way yesterday - only two months early. It was a beautiful 50cm piece of olive green owl fabric. Thanks Mum! So, what to do with it? Well, first I held it tight and ahhhhhhhed a little. Then a studied the cute little faces of the differing owls. Then I flicked through a few books and pondered making a bag. Then I stacked it up with another length of new fabric with a similar colour scheme. Then I ahhhhhhhhed a little more. Cushions perhaps? An apron trim. Pockets on a denim skirt. An owl even. What to do, what to do?

And the floral fabric? I'm in love with it. It was the inspiration for the pinwheel quilt I started in my dreaded patchwork class. I simply adore the addition of coral flowers and soft lilac on the green. Really, this metre of fabric should go into a quilt, but I can see a skirt forming. Oh, the tugs on my creative heart...

Today I plan to contemplate these important things a little more, while pouring over the new Frankie if it is out. My subscription has expired, and with current subscriptions of MixTape and Peppermint, I'm not sure I should be subscribing to anything new. Plus I'm keen on regularly reading InsideOut and Real Living at the moment. But as it is my last day of no-work-due-to-sore-knee, perhaps I'll splurge. buy sushi and read new magazines. Sounds like a nice afternoon, perhaps I'll do it snuggling under this old quilt?

If only every Monday started like this...

I've got a few days off work due to having a knee investigation last week. Mum has come up from down south to look after me too. So today we spent the morning crafting quilts, drinking tea and flicking through old cooking magazines. It was wonderful.

Mum is finishing off the top of a quilt for my nephew the J-Man. He is eight months old, and the son of a die-hard trucking father. The quilt has trains and cars and planes on it. I can imagine my brother making engine noises to the J-Man while rocking him to sleep.

My project is the old-world star quilt. The quilting is 95% complete. I just have to get it done. I also have two quilt tops waiting for their turn.

And after all the magazine flicking, there is so much I want to cook. Chicken with rice vermicelli salad, baked olives, meringue ice cream, lamb with roast eggplant salad, cream cake, orange and poppy seed cake, chocolate and pistachio whirley-gig buns, pumpkin and prosciutto cannelloni...

How did I survive without....

So, he did it again. Left me alone without technology that is. Yet again the fella is away and this time he took the laptop. Only being able to check email at work was infuriating! Plus I've got so much work to do I felt too guilty to blog-surf.

But I braved the maniacal German florist-cum-computer repair lady (surely this is a terrible combination and we should have never gone to this shop in the first place as she uses fake flowers). She had taken our desktop hostage and refused to cooperate. We were going to call the dodgy computer repair ombudsman. They must exists, surely....... But lack of technology, a malfunctioning DVD player and looming knee surgery compelled me to fork out the exorbitant amount of cash require to redeem the computer. I must say I do feel more gleeful than this girl.

She is from a cute little group of articles I found all around the theme of tips for nerdy girls. They are as follows:

How to look less nerdy in glasses

How to make a room look nerdy

How to be smart without being nerdy

How to like nerdy things without being a nerd.

For some reason I get the sense that some people have a problem with being nerdy. Not me, not that I'm that nerdy. I don't wear glasses, I didn't study chemistry at school or uni, I don't know pi to any decimal places, and I've only just gotten in to hyperlinks. My fella though is nerdy. He will even wear his sunglasses over his glasses when driving. Love him!

Crafting: a few cows for the herd, working on the final sleve of a jumper, contimplating some embroidery.

Some breakfast eye candy

I'm desperate to get to work on time, but was distracted by these images of my recent creations. Yep, the fella is back with the camera and hopefully our upcoming trip down south will result in the decent camera being repaired. Until then, these substandard images are not too bad.

A pin cushion just for my quilting pins.

Pieces of the pinwheel quilt made at my recent sewing class.

I particularly like the deeper green fabric with the amethyst and coral flowers.

Possibly the ugliest thing I've made - colour wise, what was I thinking? Think the fella likes it though, so it may become a blokey quilt for our bed.

Hope your day is filled with creative things and beautiful textiles (and good coffee).

Design sponge and some divine design...

Loving Design Sponge.

Loving the finnish house they featured. Loving Finnish and finnish design and rich lush gardens and antlers and saunas... Loving that I will see my mother-in-law this weekend, who recently returned from Finland. Looking forward to some Scandi food and some lovely gifties - thanks Kaisu in anticipation.

Check out the finnish blog that has even more lovely images here - wish I understood more of the language! Must learn, must get out the Soumi-Englanti dictionary...