Baking Days and Mondays

This weekend just past was the Queen's Birthday weekend here in Australia. The Queen's birthday is actually in April, but we take a day in June to acknowledge it. Go figure.

The weather is rather bleak at present - grey days for the most part, rainy and cold - and as any owners of old houses will know, it is in this sort of weather that your house starts to look, well, how can I put it...crap and depressing. And so it is here. Everything is cold and damp! Things that we overlooked in the summer are now very, very obvious in the cold, grey light of a winter's day. So, while my dear husband wrestled with covering the windows in plastic insulation strips, I...baked! Well, the oven keeps things warm, right?

I found the recipe for the Bayou Buttermilk Biscuits in a great book I am reading at the moment - Motif for Murder by Laura Childs. I love a 'cosy mystery' and Laura Child's books are always good fun. And so...here's how you make Bayou Buttermilk Biscuits (great as a side with soup - I think they're a kind of American scone, really).

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons shortening (I used butter)
1 cup buttermilk

Combine all dry ingredients. Chop in butter until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Add buttermilk and mix to form dough. Roll or pat out to a 1/2 inch thickness on a floured surface. Cut into rounds with a glass or a biscuit cutter. Bake at 400 degrees fahrenheit (200 degrees celsius) until golden. Makes between 12-18 (I got 18!)  

And this happy chappie below is 'Paddington Bear's Favourite Marmalade Cake' from Jane Brocket's Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer. Perfect with tea for toasting Her Maj.

Moomin with a stomach-ache

Just think, never to be glad or disappointed. Never to like anyone and get cross at him and forgive him. Never to sleep or feel cold, never to make a mistake and have a stomach-ache and be cured from it, never to have a birthday party, drink beer, and have a bad conscience...how terrible.

~ Tove Jansson, Tales from Moominvalley

Despite the fact that I don't understand a word of Finnish, I am a 'friend' of the Moominvalley museum at Tampere in Finland (http://muumilaakso.tampere.fi/ - the image above is from there) on Facebook. Recently, they announced that a new guided tour was being launched entitled "Kohdata, vaeltaa, tulla kotiin – olemisen tapa Muumilaaksossa". With the help of Google Translate, combined with my own understanding of the Moomin stories, I am reading this to mean "To meet, to wander, to come home to - a way of being in the Moomin Valley". Any Finnish readers of this blog are most welcome to contradict me (and say hello!). Because the Moomin stories seem to me to be about going out into the world (Moominvalley and sometimes beyond), meeting all sorts of people (or other beings, as the case may be) but always knowing that you have the security of home to back you up and to go back to. Moomin-fans (and others!), what do you think? Just quietly, I think Tove Jansson was something of a philosopher...

Life is all about being alive, in whatever way we may express that. The Moomins get that, and I think I might be starting to as well.

Enjoy x

Bits and Bobs

I seem to be spending a lot of time researching things online at the moment and as I'm sure you know, one Net search can lead to any number of rabbit holes to rush down...

One thing I have discovered is that the Moomin characters I love so much also featured in their own cartoon strips. Did you know that? Have you read them? So now I have a whole other set of Moominalia to collect (yes, I just invented that word)! The cartoon strips above were a part of a very sweet article from the pop culture site Buzzfeed called "50 Lessons that Moomins can teach you about life" (http://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/50-lessons-that-moomins-can-teach-you-about-life)

I am often obsessed with one historical period or another, and when I was looking at these pictures of Edwardian hairstyles the other day, I was struck by how close most of them are (with a little modification) to long hair styles today. What do you think?

I found these illustrations here: http://blossomgraphicdesign.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/trend-alert-edwardian-fashion-and-style.html

But I haven't been deskbound and square-eyed all week. I have also been doing some practical things and crossing a few craft want-to-do's off the list...

This is a little pouch I made from the wool I bought in Beechworth. I attached blue wren and possum charms to it.

And these are some metal bangles I wrapped in fabric and gold embroidery thread. I have to say, at the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I rather like them! Tomorrow I'll show you a Dr Who style scarf I've just finished which I might, might, might be able to convert into a sontag. I think...

PS Have you heard we are to get a new doctor on Dr Who? Will you miss Matt Smith? I think I will, but not as much as I did David Tennant...

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

The entry stone at Newgrange, Ireland. Newgrange is a Celtic temple, built in approximately 3200 B.C.

Image from Wikipedia

I am in the mood to make at the moment. I've got a sewing basket sitting on the living room floor brimming with 'to do' and 'to finish' projects, a knitting basket with the beginnings of shawl in it, made from the lovely wool I found when we were in Beechworth and I bought a gorgeous piece of what I think may be Liberty Lawn fabric at the op shop yesterday which I hope will be just big enough for me to make a tunic top from - if I can master my fear of my sewing machine.

There are so many little projects on the go, in fact, that I don't know where to start and if I don't make a concerted effort, I'll end up doing nothing, with a bad case of option paralysis!

I am also obsessed with spirals right now and I am trying to incorporate this current fascination into a few new bits and bobs for my Etsy shop. If you want to get spiraling too, I would highly recommend any of Aidan Meehan's books on Celtic spirals. Fabulous.  

I'll keep you posted on my various crafting doings.

Have fun, friends x

Winter Warmers

Taking my cue from Sefarina's lovely Blog Windleben (http://windleben.blogspot.com.au/), here are a couple of my suggestions for cheering and sustaining you during dreary and bleak weather (two degrees this morning...!)

1. Find something to please the eye - and sit it on the windowsill

After seeing some lovely photos of glass collections online, I have just started to collect coloured glass. I have amber glass in the living room on the windowsill and blue glass in the bedroom. It looks so crisp and pretty with the white winter light coming through it, and makes the bleak weather outside the window a little less dull!

2. Bake - preferably something sweet!

I have recently borrowed Jane Brocket's Vintage Cakes (do you know her blog Yarnstorm? - http://www.yarnstorm.blogs.com/) from our great local library. Happy Days! Easy recipes that really turn out well and, as an added bonus, the house becomes nice and warm from the oven and everything ends up smelling delicious! I highly recommend the Parkin Cake and the Genoa...mmmm...

3. Listen to some good music

Music can change how I feel in a moment. I have recently re-discovered Backworld and their mellow sound is just perfect for the quiet, cool days right now...

An Excellent Woman

Image of Barbara Pym and one of her beloved cats from  

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/barbara_pym_gets_rediscovered_%E2%80%94_again/

I am very excited to learn just now that there is to be a Barbara Pym Reading Week online from June 1st to 8th. It is timed to commemorate one hundred years since her birth. As you may already know, Barbara Pym is my favourite author, without doubt or peer. I absolutely love her keenly observed novels in which very little appears to happen...but that's precisely Miss Pym's genius, in my view. In fact, everything is happening. If, on some distant day in the future, my own efforts with fiction writing were to be compared with Barbara Pym's - well, suffice it to say (with Pymmesque understatement), I would be very, very happy.

Have you heard of Barbara Pym? If so, do you like her books (I know I am preaching to at least one convert...librarygirl)? My favourites would be Excellent Women, A Glass of Blessings and An Unsuitable Attachment. Her letters and diaries are wonderful too.

If you would like to read more about Barbara Pym Reading Week, take a look at http://myporchblog.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/barbara-pym-reading-week-is-almost-here.html

And to wrap up the week, I couldn't resist posting a clip from The Two Ronnies. They were a tv staple in our house in the 70s and 80s and as much as I complained about them then (like any teenager worth their salt), I now realise they were in fact very, very funny.

Have a lovely weekend!

Sprechen Sie Denglisch?

  

Lovely vintage German poster at http://www.antiques.com/classified/30958/Original-Vintage-German-Floor-Wax-Poster

I have been trying to learn German for many years now, on and off. Primarily it has been for the purposes of the research work I have done but I have to confess, I don't think I am really a natural when it comes to learning languages. I learnt French for six years while I was at high school and that was something of a battle. I did pass my final year French exams though and, as my husband reminds me, I was able to book our accommodation in Paris over the phone from London. But suffice it to say, the UN will not be beating my door down any time soon for my services as a simultaneous translator!

So it has been with German. But that hasn't stopped me from snapping up vintage 'Learn German' textbooks every time I spot them in the op-shop. Today yielded A First German, Teach Yourself German and Teach Yourself More German. What I especially loved about them was this, on the back of Teach Yourself German -

Anyone who follows this course conscientiously should be able to read, write and speak the German language with some measure of success.

First printed in 1938, that sentence has a nice tone of understanding to it, don't you think? Read this and you'll probably be able to manage. Perhaps it's just me, but I find that most reassuring. Maybe there's hope for me yet!

Do you speak any other languages?

Another lovely one at http://www.fitacola.com/i/vintage-posters