... on Market preparation, and a new sign!

Tomorrow night it's the first BrisStyle market for the year and, weather permitting, I'll be there! I'm sharing a table in the co-op section, and would love for you to drop by and say hello if you're passing through King George Square in Brisbane - I'll be there from about 4.00pm.

I've been busy making myself a new Kuberstore sign, which I hope to be able to suspend from the marquee somehow. I had in mind some kind of speckly-flaggy-banner-cardboard-cutout-letters-type creation, so I cut out a newspaper mockup to see if it might work.

Yes, I think so! I then speckled up a nice big piece of brown card, cut out my logo from white card, and painted in some shading.

I've just finished glueing and varnishing it this morning... here it is!

I've mounted it on a piece of corrugated cardboard, so it's very light and hopefully won't be too tricky to install. We'll see!

This time I've resolved to make things a bit more vertical in the display department, so have recycled my old sign into a brooch-stand. That should clear up enough space for me to be able to sit at the table and carve some plaster, which both gives me something to do, and demonstrates what it is exactly that I do. I have wondered whether people looking at my things realise that I make them from scratch. This will only be my third market, but one thing I have noticed is that people are more likely to approach a stall and have a good look if the owner is either already busy with a customer, or they are sitting there concentrating on making something. Plus, just standing there behind my table watching people looking at my things (or worse, not looking!) makes me feel very awkward and exposed, and is something I have struggled with so far. Perhaps this is the answer!

So, my rainbow watercolour plaster bird's eggs will be making their first appearance - can you believe it's only five weeks until Easter? Something from this cheerful little collection would make a lovely Easter gift for someone who doesn't eat chocolate, and I'll have several wall hangings available, as well as individual hanging eggs.

Weather, please be kind to us - and do drop by if you're in town. I'd love to see you!

... on drought, flood and pestilence.

I took the camera out into the vegetable garden this morning so I could share with you the disgrace that has befallen my two Stephanie Alexander no-dig vegetable garden beds. You may remember how luscious they were looking towards the end of last year. Since then it's been hot, it's been wet, it's been windy, it's been dry, it's been humid, it's been harsh, and as a result most things have turned up their toes. I'm hesitant to replace them because of the hordes of insects that are munching on anything that dared to survive.
But you know what? I went out to capture the shame, but in fact I found some good stuff going on!

The first bed is sprawling with pumpkin plants, who have happily spread beyond the garden and colonised the entire back corner of the yard. Although all the tiny pumpkins have rotted off due to rain and humidity (I think), I have hopes that soon the weather will be in their favour and it'll be pumpkin-a-go-go around here. Other than the pumpkins there's some caterpillar-fodder purple-sprouting-broccoli, some pestilential remnant silverbeet and one tiny patch of self-seeded rocket. True to its name it's bolting to seed almost before we can eat any of it but if I'm quick enough I can grab a leaf or two for a salad.

In the second bed the kale is slowly making a come-back after some months of being ravaged by a horrible spider-webby caterpillar - I think it's a two-year type plant so I hope it will continue to crop over the coming cooler months once the bloody bugs die off! There's also one valiant eggplant continuing to struggle against daily assaults by the local birds (chooks included) who have proven they will dig DEEP to get a taste of the Hydrocell water-saving stuff that is in that bed. Apparently it's non-toxic... I hope so, because there's some maggies and crows around here with a serious addiction!

I checked out the sweet potatoes which have been growing in bags since last year. One bagful looked a bit wilty (and the bag ripped when I attempted to move it - looks like those spud bags will only last for two crops) so I tipped it out to see what was going on.

Sweet potatoes, and a decent amount of them, too! They're a bit holey in parts but I'm not too bothered - not when one tiny bag can produce a big spud like this:

The little fig tree is another thing that has seemed to flourish after the hot/wet/humid rollercoaster Brisbane has been on for the past month or so. It's sprouted so many new branches I've had to stake it to stop it falling over, and is covered in tiny little figlets.

I'm feeling positive about the garden, as the nastiest (and most unrelenting) part of summer should be behind us now. I'm looking forward to re-planting it all out with cooler-weather things once February is over and who knows? I may have an awesome pumpkin crop to report upon soon!

... on an idea.

Ideas are funny, aren't they? You'll be minding your own business, maybe digging in the garden or peeling potatoes, not thinking about anything very much, when... WHAMMO! A thought will suddenly arrive, unbidden! into your head, leaving you thinking "Where did THAT come from?" and then, as experienced by me a week ago; "... and why haven't I thought of that BEFORE!?"

The thought was this. I'd finished drilling holes and glueing metal loops into the tops of a batch of my smaller plaster eggs. They were ready to be painted, and I was planning on undercoating and then layering up the acrylic colour coats on them in an array of rainbow hues. But I swear, I wasn't even thinking about them one morning last week when suddenly I thought watercolour. WHAMMO! I thought of my previous experiments of colouring my plaster letters by soaking them in ink, and wondered why on earth I've never thought of colouring the eggs in a similar way. I knew, from the letter colouring trials, that the plaster has various densities that absorb the pigments to different degrees - an effect I wasn't pleased with at the time. WHAMMO! I had a vision of a plaster egg soaked in watercolour paint, and it was all mottled and lovely, picking up the textures of the plaster; dark in places and light in others, any textural differences in the plaster highlighted... I had to try it straight away.

I couldn't believe my eyes! They turned out exactly as I'd imagined. I could see that less colour was absorbed where I'd sanded the eggs. At the bottoms, where the plaster is denser (I think the smaller particles naturally sink to the bottom when I bang the moulds to get the bubbles out) hardly any colour went on at all. Inbetween, the colour was really rich, and any surface textures were picked out with denser pigmentation. The result was, for want of a better description, really watercolour-y, and I was so surprised!

I speckled them all up with white paint, sealed them with several coats of varnish, and sat back to look at them. They look like galaxies!

There's rainbow craziness all over the table, and I'm feeling pretty happy about it. I've set out a couple of rainbow-song wall hangings (you know... "Red and yellow and pink and green!") which I'll have ready for the next BrisStyle Twilight Market in King George Square. First market for the year - less than three weeks to go now!

I know I said I was planning on retiring these eggs. I was wrong. They've evolved!

... on cat toys.

I don't have a new cat, not yet. I hope to, soon. Recently over at Design Sponge I was rather impressed by Kate's cat toy tutorial, so I thought I'd have a go at some kind of flicky-pompom-feather-wand-thing for this as-yet-non-existent-next-cat-of-mine.

I have used extra-thick leather cord, knotted through a drilled hole in a sanded casuarina stick that I did have earmarked for a wall-hanging. Oh well.

It has a casuarina wood bead, which moves up and down the leather cord, and a pompom and a bunch of feathers on the end (thankyou chickens). Instead of sewing these on as Kate suggested, I have tied them to a knot in the leather. I have my suspicions that the feathers will last exactly 0.05 seconds once a kitten gets hold of them, and the pompom not much longer. If so, I can easily tie on a new pompom/feather-bunch once these get shredded.

Maine coon proof? We shall see. Thanks for the inspiration, Kate!

... on things in progress.

There's some things going on here this afternoon. Thought I'd share.

This is a freakishly tiny chook egg laid by my Ma's Old English Game hen, Major Hoolihan. I've made a Pinkysil mould of it to commemorate it forevermore.

Trimmings from some freshly-cast plaster bird's eggs.

Plaster bird's eggs trimmed, sanded and ready for finishing.

C, ever watchful whilst driving, spied this fabulous old coil of a thick green sisal-type twine lying by the side of the road some months ago. He pulled up and grabbed it, sure it would come in useful. I have since absconded with it because it's very very nice.

Unwound, it makes lovely long green fibres that I am experimenting with working into a nest shape. I'd like to paint these eggs the palest palest green and speckle them with white.

When we were kids, my bro and a friend shimmied up some old telephone poles (long disused!) near our house and gathered the sagging wires. The big roll of copper sat in our shed for at least twenty years before I... absconded with it.

I am using it, little by little, to make more of my little bird's nest sculptures. This one (with passionfruit-ish curlicue) is finished.

This one is in progress. It's interesting how, when I bend the wire to form the nest shape, the outer surface flakes off and reveals the clean pinkish copper beneath. Within a few days these fresh parts will start to oxidise and go green.

Hope you're having a productive afternoon too!

... on The Best Pizza Ever!

I have had a very useful visitor to the vegie garden - a rogue cherry tomato. I didn't plant him - he just came up by himself. I gave him a stake and he grew big and robust and started popping out what seemed like tonnes of tasty cherry tomatoes.

What to do with such a wonderful free glut of tomatoes? Pizza sauce, of course!

I think the secret to a really good rich pizza sauce is to roast your onion, garlic and tomatoes together in a pan with a coating of olive oil, because it just bring out all the flavours in the most delicious way. Whiz it all up in a food processor with salt, pepper and any herbs you care to add. I use oregano and basil, because I happen to have them in the herb garden at the moment. I also prefer red onion over brown or white, but that's just me. I like purple food.

In one batch I would use, say, two (or three small) red onions (peeled and quartered) to one colander of washed cherry toms, with peeled garlic cloves to taste (I use about ten, and you don't have to chop them because you're going to whiz them later), roasted with a decent whack of olive oil in a heavy pan at 180 degrees centigrade for about 30-40 minutes. 

When it's all cooled down a bit, I put it in a food processor with about a teaspoon of Maldon sea salt (that sounds like a lot - but Maldon in particular is less 'salty' than others and the flakes are really large - so less fit when measured), some pepper, herbs and if I happen to have a bottle open, a slug of red wine. Whiz as much as you fancy - the more you whiz the smoother the sauce.

This would make enough for about 6 regular-sized pizzas. I divide it up into small containers and freeze them so I have sauce on hand for whenever pizza is required - quite regularly!

The rest - take your pizza base of choice (I use sourdough leftovers from when I've made bread - it gets partially cooked before the sauce goes on. This makes sure that it doesn't go soggy) and spread it evenly with your lovely new pizza sauce.

Add toppings. For this one I used kalamata olives and chopped silverbeet, and then lots of pizza cheese (which is a ready-grated mix of mozzarella, parmesan and cheddar).

This all goes in a very hot oven (the hottest it will go - on ours the maximum is 200 degrees centigrade) until it's all melty and brown on top. Check it after ten minutes, and watch it - it seems like there's only a few minutes between pizza perfection and charred cheese!

Consume immediately, with gusto. If you have any of that bottle of red left, this would be the perfect thing to go with it.

Thank you little rogue cherry tomato! Please visit us again!

... on trying a new approach.

I'm going to try something. Certain people have told me that they think my eggs are lovely, but why do I make them anytime other than Easter? "They're not Easter eggs!" I feel like shouting. "They are bird's eggs!" even though there is a little voice in the back of my head that keeps whispering "They are kinda like Easter eggs, you know."
So, I've set up a listing for an Easter egg pre-order of my little red speckled eggs. You can place an order for a set of five anytime from now up until the first week of March. In the first and second week of March I will send them out ready for Easter, either to you, or to the specified recipient of an Easter gift. They'll be beautifully wrapped, and a lovely thing to receive in the mail whether it's for you or for someone else.

After that, I think I'll be retiring these egg decorations. They've had a good run and although I'll keep using some in my little bird's nest sculptures and wall hangings, I think it's time to focus some creative energy elsewhere. And that's good!