Lovely

This 5-colour letterpress beauty from The Otherist (unsurprisingly, now sold out). Definitely paying a visit to this place come January.

FoodConnect

With it almost time to make my resolutions for the year ahead once more (yikes!), I'm happy to report my efforts to waste less food are, for the most part, going well. There have been a few casualties–the odd bit of soggy rocket and petrified cabbage falling through the cracks–but overall we're doing well. (We did fleetingly consider having a 'whiteboard of shame', where those items dispatched to the compost bin were listed, alongside their current market value.) I've been buying less of the items which are likely to become casualties. Our little potted herb garden is growing great guns (despite those pesky caterpillars with a taste for oregano).

Earlier this year I read about the emergence of many subscription-based, locally-grown, seasonal produce suppliers, popping up across the globe. Wouldn't it be great, I thought, if there was a similar scheme here in Adelaide? Given the availability all year round of most fruit and vegetables (especially in supermarkets) it's easy to lose touch with what is actually in season. So when a friend posted on FB about how much she was enjoying her FoodConnect vegie box, I thought perhaps there is an opportunity to support a local enterprise.

FoodConnect Adelaide is a community supported agriculture (CSA) initiative committed to 'sustainably produced food, bought at a fair price, delivered to your area'. The minimum subscription period is one month (4 boxes), there are three different box sizes to choose from and there are now options for veg-only, fruit-only or mixed boxes. We've been subscribers for almost six months now and overall it's been a positive experience. Taking the decision making out of the weekly vegie shop has been interesting, and for those manic weeks where I've been too busy to shop, it's been a godsend. We're finding ways to use ingredients we wouldn't ordinarily buy and cooking to accommodate the new arrivals. There's only been one culinary disaster–a lacklustre eggplant dip. (If anyone can recommend a way to successfully deal with eggplants, I'm all ears.) Fresh beetroot has also been a revelation–and who knew it paired so wonderfully with chocolate?


(May contain traces of beetroot. Or, as Ol refers to them, 'beetroot heaven'. Recipe here.)

Thursdays come and I find myself eagerly anticipating the box and its freshly-picked cargo. There is a swap bowl at each collection point so if there is an item in your box which you're not so keen on (or you have an oversupply of), you can swap it for something else. The taste of fresh, locally-grown, seasonal organic produce is wonderful, and knowing that the farmers involved are receiving good returns for their produce is fantastic too. I'm looking forward to rediscovering what the seasons bring...

Pursuits

I've had a slow start to 2010, creatively speaking. (At this point I'm relieved there were no public declarations regarding my blogging frequency.) In an attempt to combat this creative malaise, I've set myself three projects to complete over the next three months. Tasks have been divided up and sorted into small components to improve my chances of success.

The first of these projects is to make a dress for an upcoming awards night. (The other two projects will be the subject of future posts.) If I can make something now, I won't have to stress about finding an appropriate frock at the last minute. Starting now also means ample time for trial and error; the inevitable unpicking, resizing and resewing which accompanies unfamiliar patterns. My sewing machine – freshly serviced and purring like a kitten – has been receiving plenty of attention lately. Success, it seems, breeds success: one garment leads to another, courage is fostered, ambitions grow, sights are raised. Trawling through a vintage pattern site I happened upon Simplicity 4467:



Love the clean and elegant cut of this dress, and the button detailing on the back is beautiful (not sure about that pocket though). Am feeling a little apprehensive about working with a vintage pattern, and this one seems to have a lot of pieces.



Not to mention that, according to the measurements, 60s women clearly weren't the same proportions as me ... who has a waist that small? One thing is clear from this pattern: it was designed by a human. It's lovely and I can hardly bring myself to put scissors to paper. (Then I remind myself I bought this pattern to use, not to put in a safe deposit box to sell for $20 when I'm like, 70, or something.)



Many of the modern patterns in my collection are typeset in some flavour of uniform-sized, all-caps Helvetica Condensed. A mass of text and no hierarchy; built by an engineer rather than a designer. (As if some of these patterns aren't confusing enough.) This vintage pattern, in contrast, has a clear and easy to follow hierarchy. It's almost a pleasure to read and follow these directions.

Armed with several metres of calico, I'm well prepared for Round 1. Worst case scenario is that I have a stylish calico number to step out in!

A.S.

Ankylosing meaning bond or join
and spondylitis meaning of the bone or spine.
That half explains the cracks and clicks,
the clockwork of my joints and discs,
the ratchet of my hips.
I’m fossilising - every time I rest
I let the gristle knit, weave, mesh.
My dear, my skeleton will set like biscuit overnight, like glass, like ice,
and you can choose to snap me back to life before first light,
or let me laze until the shape I take becomes the shape I keep.
Don’t let me be. Don’t leave me sleep.

(From Book of Matches, by the wonderful Simon Armitage.)

Sunday

With a painful back disrupting my Sunday adventure plans, I found myself looking for lower-impact entertainment. Embracing the spirit of my 2010 resolutions, I cooked and I created.

Now, I'm not one of those women who has a handbag to match every outfit. I have one multi-purpose number which has served me well, a gift from Ol some seven years ago. Over time, the corners of the bag have worn through the thin Japanese fabric, an injury not easily repaired. I've had my eyes open for a replacement but there seems to be a glut of *shiny* bags on the market right now, not really to my liking. Bling! Making a replacement could be a viable option. Having previously made a simple tote bag, and the trickier Choose-Your-Own-Adventure bag, I thought figuring out a handbag pattern and putting it together should be do-able.



To my fabric stash. I'd bought some heavyweight canvas cloth fabric at the Bowerbird Bazaar last October – I adore Julie Paterson's abstract designs and her use of colour. A pair of wooden bag handles from etsy – bought for a rainy day – and some denim offcuts from Ferriers for $1.78. (Ferriers stock some beautiful fabrics and you can pick up some bargain offcuts). Interfacing and matching thread came from my stash, so the only things I needed to buy were a magnetic clasp, some cotton lining and a little ribbon.

Using my old bag as a pattern reference, my new bag had to be proportionally larger to accommodate bigger handles. Originally I planned a 50/50 split for the canvas and denim across the bag front and back, but decided a one third/two thirds split looked more *visually interesting* (as they say at uni). Fast-forward through measuring, cutting out paper templates, cutting calico pieces, stitching, cutting, bringing edges in and stitching again, this became my pattern:



Figuring out the pattern was the trickiest part. The construction was relatively straightforward, although sewing in the handle loops took a little extra care, not to mention a little unpicking and resewing. (When I get some time I'll attempt to add full instructions and a PDF pattern to this post.) Some construction pics: single side of bag lining with pocket and clasp added, and bag front and back with interfacing attached.



Nearly there: right sides of lining and exterior pinned together, ready for sewing (although I had to unpin at several points to stitch in the handles, and to leave a gap for turning right-side-out).



The finished product:



In all, this project took between one and two hours to figure out the pattern, and about three and a half hours for construction. Material costs as follows: cloth fabric $10, denim offcut $1.78, handles $5, magnetic clasp $1.50, cotton lining $3, ribbon 50 cents, totalling $21.78 (thread and interfacing were left over from a previous project). New bag dilemma solved. Now if only my back was so easily fixed...

Resolutions

I'm a big list-maker. My memory is generally good, but often I need to get things out of my head and onto paper. There's a tradition I've cultivated of writing my goals for the year ahead at the beginning of each year. (For me it feels like a more meaningful ritual than getting tanked on December 31st.) The list is filed away and I pull it out occasionally, just to see how I'm travelling. Some years there may be three or four items, other years I'll have a dozen tasks to complete. Certain ambitions become carry-over champions year after year: improving my fitness, reading more, watching my finances. Looking back at last year's list, I did reasonably well: painted the study, learnt to knit, took a singing class, remained gainfully employed, got my keyboard shortcuts up. Obviously there's still some room for improvement as far as regular blogging goes...

This year I've chosen two broad targets to aspire to: to waste less and to create more.

First, wasting less. I'm not converting our egg cartons and toilet rolls into craft cash (although that would fulfil both targets), I'm thinking about that food in the fridge that get forgotten about and invariably ends up in the compost heap: two-week old bread, sad mushrooms, wilted herbs, limp lettuce, almost-liquid bananas, mushy cucumbers, leftovers left-over for a day too long. A shameful waste of resources and money. Recently I read about virtual water, which is the water used in an item's production. At the top of the water consumption list is beef, with roughly 16,000 litres needed to produce one kilo of meat! (This fact comes to mind whenever, walking past fast-food places, I see abandoned half-eaten burgers.) We need to get better at using the fresh produce we do buy. If an ingredient is bought for a specific recipe, we need to find ways to incorporate it into other things. If something's looking sad, we make using it a priority. Imagination will be required and will hopefully encourage some positive changes in our recipe repertoire. Ultimately if I can increase the amount of food making its way into our bellies instead of our compost bin, I'll be happy.

Secondly, creating more. There are a number of self-directed creative projects bubbling away in my head, waiting patiently to be poured out and served up. Is it lack of a deadline which stops them happening? Is the number of list items overwhelming? Is it working full time which takes my energy? Is it fear of failure, or a combination of all four? I know that self-directed projects can be incredibly rewarding and are great for boosting creative confidence. Maybe the solution is to break these projects down into smaller, less challenging components. To begin. Watch this space.