blog I found and I like

Today, not only did I get to use one of my new bolster cases I also made a kind of savoury cheesecake.

I looked around for recipes and found a few but got the general gist. So I made it up. I made the crust from polenta, oats, buckwheat, linseeds, a bit of millet left in the jar and the seeds and crumbs from the ryvita box. So very frugal. All fixed together with lovely melted butter. Filling was fennel, polish curd cheese, leeks ham and chesnuts. I have no picture as my camera doesn't work in the evening with the artificial light and all.

I found a recipe on a blog and I started to read it and it's great. "I am a trickster, a kitchen charlatan. But I am no fool." I like the post on ovals. feedingmaybelle.

With no pictures of my own here is one of maybellesmom's. Although I didn't like to steal so I just used her blog's banner. I like it.

when we went to the countryside I came back with a hoof

We went to visit chris and we went for a walk and we found this on the towpath and I said "is there a way to preserve a hoof?" and chris whipped out his leatherman (because in the panic of leaving I left my stockman at home in my handbag when I actually would have been able to make use of it. In my handbag.) and chopped the hide and we pulled the leg and broke off the foot.

This was a deer but only ribs and back legs left. Pretty spectacular sight. Sorry for the gore.

 
Hoof in a tesco bag with moss and soggy wild wool.

In looking up how to deal with the hoof I found this. Wow.

Tells you here how to sort the hoof out. I do not have a special basement fridge so its in the outside toilet. I had to apologise and explain to our friends when they came for dinner.

hot scrubbing

Ok, second forum confession.

I joined the dish (in italics to add a bit of showbiz pizazz, like an american tv show, as I want it to sound dramatic and a bit LA).

This is a forum for soap makers and makers of related products, lotions, candles etc. etc. I have been making scrubs because they are so very expensive in the shops and not actually very scrubby and they are basically oil and salt. It is very easy.

This was a previous concoction that I put bicarb in because I think I read it somewhere that it'd be good. All exploding all over the kitchen good.

So far with my scrub making, the nearest one to being anything that could be called "perfected" is one made from salt and sugar, ground coffee and cinnamon and chilli. All nice for increasing the circulation to ones bottom and thighs. I made a more everyday one with oats in but that one was pretty rubbish.

The new experiment, fuelled by recipes for "whipped shea sugar scrub", "bohunk's #14", "light and fluffy mouse scrub" and such, I bodged a concoction.

Scrubs can be made with some nice oil, I use SAO (as they say on the dish, sweet almond oil to everyone else) as its similar to the oil in your skins so it sinks in and doesn't feel too greasy, and some scrubby bits, I use a mixture of coarse sea salt ground up a bit so it's not too scratchy, table salt, granulated brown sugar and coffee. This makes a slushy sandy mix where the bits will sink down and you need to scoop it all up from underneath (or use less oil).

In the new scrub I wanted something with a body. So I put in some beeswax. I chickened out of adding in some water (to make a kind of lotiony-scrub). Well I couldn't really find a formula for this and was making it all up so thought I'd best not risk it. So just the beeswax to firm up the oil. Heat it all up, beat it all together. The heat it all up again as it was too waxy and add some more oil. Total bodge.

Anyway it turned out nicely in the end. I messed up the essential oils and made it all sicky geranium. Fixed it with lemon. Also I think I overdid the chilli, or rather the oil didn't really need to infuse the chilli. Ok on the legs, not so good on more delicate areas that don't get scrubbed but do get the bath water on.

Thumbs up for peppercorn chilli rose salt scrub.

I think this is also a kettle chip flavour.

clay for nails

I have been on and off looking for a nail varnish that is a kind of putty-mushroom-clay colour. I think I saw one on american apparel before. I seems all their nail varnish has been taken away as it is dangerous or faulty or something so no mention of it on the site. I thought for a bit I imagined I'd seen it at all but some blog somewhere says it has been removed from sale. Blah blah blah. For the best.

I got the paul and joe one before, mentioned in an earlier post and i't nice but not the could I'd aimed for.

I saw some more earth/people friendly brands mentioned on greenmystyle.

Looking at zoya it seems they have a never ending number of shades. I have been looking at them on lucyrose. These are the colours that I'm choosing between...

Butterlondon have good colours too and they also don't have the unnecessary nasty ingredients. Shades for me are...

 I think that I can stop looking now and choose one.

ikat

I can't remember how I came across this, possibly trying to find the cotton jersey, but I do like the things they have on here. Here is some nice ikat for a tablecloth...

 

They have some nice cushions also...

I like the sleepy animals. I know they are a little cheesy but they would be very pleasant to have around the house.

From onevillage.org.

hows about this bedlinen?

Hmmm, house of fraser, eh? I don't think I've ever looked in there for home things.

They are nice in the pictures, although not the styling, horrible houses. I was thinking that with a bit of mud and cat hair on them, in a crumbly, newspaper on the walls, made from scaffold planks and sweat cabin they might look nice.

maxx
ren

I can't totally decide about the flowery one as in such a stark setting it's hard to imagine in our house. Hmmm.

wood good food utensils

In a brief sidetrack to look for reindeer rugs I found these great things. I think that the olive spoon is possible the best kitchen spoon invention. What a great idea. I will get one.

 

Olive spoon, coffee scoop, butter knife. They are from a camping gear shop called nordic outdoor. They are made from juniper. I love juniper, it is quite rare in the UK but apparently because it has not stopped being used in scandinavia it is still common and can be made into things. I have a tiny plant I'm growing in the garden. I found some other great wilderness things too.

A kuksa, at lakelandbushcraft.

 

A potjie and other exciting cast iron cooking pots and pans, at bisonbushcraft.

futon blanket fail

I also failed in finding a blanket to buy for the new futon. Damn you toast for letting me think the nice one in the archive sale was still in stock but wasn't really. I searched for two whole days pretty much, I have no life. There are some really lovely ones at blacker (it's quite funny that this place is in launceston where I'm from, I always thought that there was nothing good there) so I might have to save up £70. It is the lovely sheep colours.

The next best cheap version I found was this recycled wool rug which is a nice £20 from ellajamesliving.co.uk ...

Other than that, nothing nice that I could find. Boo.

I would like to get some of these too. Ralph bought a little goaty one which is well good. Cabin. Frontier. Wilderness. Walthamstow. Sheeps, goats, deers.

These are on ebay in the postpacs store, reasonable priced as far as I've seen.

arrgh eco procrastinating

It has been such a long time as all I have been doing is trying to find a nice earth friendly stretch jersey.

Nonsence.

The thing is, a while ago I found a dress I really wanted but was a million pounds so I thought I'd make one. This is the lemuria cow dress (jumpsuit) and egg dress. You can wear them all kinds of ways with the sleeves as ties etc.

I found a forum with a pattern drawing of the egg dress...

I found one of the shorter dresses out of stock at yoox but you can zoom the photo and see some of the seams, so maybe this will be helpful.


Then I looked on the new toast website which I don't think looks so good, and you can't see the things so well, and you have to scroll sideways and can't view all. It's like you need a giant cinema display to see the website properly, maybe the web designers only showed it to the toast folk on ridiculous mac monitors. And then, after all the faff there is nothing nice at all. I thought these would be good until I see its a print and I don't think it really has much to do with ikat at all.

I had been looking at ikat weaving in a book as its kind of magic and I saw a people tree top (in an older post) so I got excited and then these trousers are a bit of a disappointment. From the couple of things I did look at I don't like the styling either, the outfits look a bit boden and the model's make up is not nice.

Here is real ikat from the book "classic crafts, a practical compendium of traditional skills"...

The pattern is made by tie-dyeing sections of the warp (up and down threads) so that the pattern is formed vertically. I like the bundles of threads all tied up.

So I decided if there was nothing nice at toast wouldn't buy any clothes ever again. I will make things.

First, I will ease in gently, a tube dress in the style of american apparel. I have one in aubergine, although I mostly wear it a a skirt, ruched up or folded, and a bit shorter than it's shown in the photos.

I also like this etsy seller, ha ha it says "for the global nomad". I think it means hippy. But the things are mostly nice. I like these the best.

Look at the lovely lady (who I think is the person who makes the clothes). She uses organic fabric and dyes them using earth friendly an natural plant dyes.

So I set off to look for fabric. I want to get organic cotton or hemp jersey that is stretch so will have elastane (lycra, spandex etc.).


Two weeks later and it appaears that it is impossible to buy such fabric in the UK.


I have gone a bit funny from the web trawling. I'm not sure what to do about this. I know it exists as I have seen it in american shops but nowhere here has the elastane blend. I've had a bit of a strange revelation type thing about the idea of buying organic cotton and how non organic cotton must be evil. I don't specifically buy organic vegetables as I'm not a total nut, I'd like them to be free from nasties but I don't think they are going to kill me. Having said that we do now get an organic vegbox (maybe more about that later on). But making textiles is full of nasty chemicals and bleaching and water wasting and pretend plastic fibre evil-alchemy. Like margarine. So organic seems to make sense. Which means I have to carry on hunting or I cant make any dresses.

I've joined a forum to help. What a geek. Please someone help me?

sale shopping

I finally got paid, after what feels like about four months. I had £40 for the whole of january. So I couldn't do any sale shopping. A number of the things I had mentioned here were reduced and yet I couldn't buy them. My toast basket was sitting there waiting.

Ant then I finally got paid and pretty much everything was gone. Booo hooo. I told ralph that our christmas fish tank would have to wait until march as "there is only one time a year a can buy things from toast" I think he understood, maybe. But then I was too late, oh no! No flannel djellaba for me...

Also, no perfect velvet dress, wool churidar leggings, wool blanket, long cardigan, double flannel pj bottoms, denim smock, urrgh. Well, I probably couldn't have got them all anyway. Shame.

I did however get the velvet harem trousers, which I'm assuming no one else wanted. They are great.

And a lovely bolster case. I'm a little obsessed with bolster cases.

So in the lack of toast goodies I got some things from asos.
Firstly, the seemingly endless quest to own some wool leggings is now over. I forked out for the humanoid fine wool pair. They are very nice indeed. In trying to find a non-asos picture of them I looked for the first time on their website, oooh, it looks like there is some nice things there. That is for a later date. I think this is the leggings...

And a people tree dress, the fabric is nice, its thick and soft and brown...

I also had a bit of a treat with a paul and joe nail polish and brow stuff, again, I am a grown up lady you see, I need brow stuff. It's very pretty. The polish is not quite the colour that it looked on the shade picture (peril of internet shopping) so I'm a bit sad about that. I was after a kind of pink-mauve-clayey colour. But I emailed asos to tell them that their picture was wrong. Maybe they'll send me goodies now?

I also finally got the futon, which is much less chic, but exciting none the less. We now have a living room.

I recommend the comfy living people for the cheapest futon I could find. Its quite good, I mean for something so simple I cant see how they can cost so much at some places. The lady on the phone was lovely and it had free next day delivery. £119.99 well spent.

My current mission is to find some good wool blankets to 'throw'. It seems they are all as expensive as bears.