T-shirt printing

M and S both wanted t-shirts. M wanted a cat - surprise, surprise. And S wanted a shirt "just like M". M wanted little paw-prints as if the cat had walked over the shirt, but this was a bit sophisticated for her brother. I took pics of the whole process that you can see in this flickr set, but here are some highlights:

Just starting:


Then we made the stamps from sheets of craft foam and drawer / cupboard handles:



We have used the others just as stamps, but only the paw-print was for the T-shirts.

Finally, we STAMPED!


and stamped...


Until we got this...


and this...


Hooray!

Children's crafty stuff

I discovered, quite by accident, that my son likes to do directed craft. He had shown absolutely no interest in painting or drawing, so I had not really tried to do any craft with him until Easter this year, when, in desperation and boredom, we made Easter chicks with two yellow circles and a black pen. And he loved it! I was flabbergasted. So I've decided that I need to do more cutting and glueing and directed craft.

The little guy is fascinated by thunderstorms - terrified and fascinated. He is constantly wanting to look at thunderstorm pictures and was very taken with the idea of making his own one. I took some cotton balls, some blue sugar paper cut into strips, and some backgrounds. The children drew their backgrounds on to the paper, and then helped me tear the blue paper into "raindrops". My son didn't really do this - but the 6yo loved it. When we had enough rain, we painted glue onto the paper, stuck on cotton ball "clouds" and blue raindrops and let it all dry. Then we added some glue streaks which we glittered for lightning. Voila! 6yo picture looked like this:



My son, though, wasn't happy with his picture. Apparently, there should be thunder that goes "Boom!". So we added some, which my mom and I wrote and he cut out, and he stuck a random piece of paper onto his picture because it kind of fitted, I suppose. The final 2 year old version:



The red circles in the background are "children in the rain". So now you know. I liked the fact that they were given the same equipment, and the same instructions, and produced two totally different pictures. Also that despite the 4 year gap, they both enjoyed doing this.

We also did some marble painting this break. I saw it at my son's nursery school and loved it. It requires virtually no set-up, and both children got great results. (I used an unused cat litter tray and tempera paint squirted straight into it. None of this "roll the marbles in the paint" stuff - way too much work!) The plan was to use the marble paintings as spider webs, and add spiders, but my daughter decided that her marble painting was "too special" and made a new web.



My son was quite happy to use his "web", only he really, really, wanted to play with his spider.


We made the spiders by cutting a small polystyrene ball in half, and gluing 4 twisted pipe-cleaners onto the bottom, then bending them up for legs. This wasn't as sturdy as I would have liked. If I did it again I think I would cut the pipe-cleaners in half, dip them in glue and wedge them into the ball bodies. We then painted them with normal tempera paint, waited for it to dry and drew on the faces with gold and silver markers. It was fun :).

My daughter's spider has a smile, and, though you can't see it in this pic, a tiny gold dot for its spinnerets:


My son's spider has LOTS of silver eyes, as well as, apparently due to a spinneret confusion, lots of gold bums.

Cat Cake

For my daughter's birthday, she requested a cake "carved into the shape of a cat". Yes, well, ok. How to start?

So I searched flickr for pictures of "cats curled up", and looked through a couple of thousand pics. I also took lots of pics of our own cats lying in the right pose, like this one,


and I watched these videos on sculpting a cat. I made a little rough cat out of playdough, and I found a porcelein cat in almost the right pose in my daughter's toy box.

Then I started on the baking. Since the curled up cat is a fairly round shape, I baked the cake in a 2l pyrex bowl - both the idea for baking in a bowl and the recipe for the cake from Debbie Brown's wonderful book "enchanting magical cakes". I used the recipe for chocolate madeira cake, as that carves well, but I doubled the cocoa, since I've used this recipe before and found it not *quite* chocolate-y enough.

Sorry - no pics of the plain cake :(. Then I looked at the basic shape of the cat. I decide that it was fairly flat on top, with a slope in two directions, falling off from the hind end of the cat towards the nose, as well as from the back (spine) towards the front (the feet and face side). So I took a large flat knife and carved that. Then I shaved a bit of each side of the cake to get a more oval shape. Finally, with a small knife, I marked in what I figured what the basic shape on the top of the cake, and starting paring away. I don't have any pictures of these parts because I was absolutely terrified of stuffing it up, and the only way I could get myself to do it at all was to pretend this was just a practise cake, and that I would probably have to do it all again the next day. Here you can see the results of the initial carving, as well as the playdough and porcelein cats I was using as guides.




Here is a side picture of the carved cake to try to show what I mean by the double sloped shape. You can picture the cat's bottom as the top of a gentle hill, where we are only carving the front quarter of the hill coming down from it.


Another view of the initial carved cake:


I think it looks quite lizard-like at this point :). I wasn't aiming for facial features, or shoulder or thigh bulges and I was planning to put those in later using fondant. BUT, I am working in high heat and humidity, and I have had to make my modelling paste using extra tylose in order to avoid it collapsing completely, so I felt that it was too stiff to use for the modelling parts. Instead, I used an idea from this excellent description of the making of a prize-winning cake, and mixed up some cake "clay", using the crumbled offcuts and some chocolate buttercream. No recipe, I just kind of mixed them together until it felt like something I could work with. I used the cake-clay to add shoulders, the thigh-bulge 'behind' the cake, some extra bulk to the leg at the front as well as the facial features.

Here we have thighs...

shoulders .....


face ......


and the finished kitty, waiting for fondant.

The silver cake board is 203mm in diameter.

Next for the fondant. I couldn't find a shop with any in stock, so I made my own, using a recipe out of "Cakes to inspire and desire", because this book featured the following inspiring words about sugarpaste - "it is also easy and inexpensive to make your own" :). She was right.

I didn't think that the cake clay ears of the cat would stand up to being covered with fondant, so I replaced them with fondant ears before beginning. I also made a fondant tail. Here you can see the cat in the process of being covered. I love the difference this makes to it. It suddenly starts looking like something good.


You can see that I've now cut the cake board underneath to match the shape of the cat. I stuffed up though, and cut it before putting on the tail, which made handling it later a little tricky.

Then I used gel colours thinned with water to paint the body. I tried to use a fairly course paintbrush so that the brushstrokes would look "furry". I used "warm brown" and "chocolate brown" cakeflora gel colours.

Here you can see the birthday girl helping to paint her cake.


I made a little fondant nose, and pushed in the nostril with one of my fondant tools - but the back of a paintbrush would probably work too. The ears I brushed with pink petal powder, and I sort of touched up the body with brown dusting powder too. Here is the finished kitty:


And a couple more views just to see the shapes:

Back view:


Top view:


Face close-up:


I really really wanted to try a cushion cake, but I ran out of time. So I just stuck two chocolate sponge cakes together and shaped them slightly, then covered them with pink fondant. The cat was slightly too big for the top of the "cushion", and it looked a bit wierd with its bum stuck into mid-air, so I decided it would be sitting in a tangle of wool, and used the rest of the fondant to make the long strings that boosted up the sides of the bottom cake. Her name was spelled out in unravelling balls of wool at the front of the cake too.

Ta-daaa!



One happy birthday girl :).

Not dead, just busy

But I have plans (TM) to post here when I get a chance. I have another 2 cakes to post, plus some cupcakes, and I'll be making at least 3 fancy cakes in the next three months (3 birthdays!)

Even more roses, and a cake

I promised to post pics of what I did in the edible rose workshop that I got to go to as a birthday present, so here they (or their links!) are. It was a great workshop, really fun, and I learned quite a lot. I now need to get a couple of fragrant rose bushes for the garden though, to put into practise things like Rose syrup. Mmmm.

We started out by crystallising rose petals with castor sugar. At the end of the workshop we reassembled those petals into a mini-rose on a cupcake. This is quite a cool effect, and one I would never have considered on my own.

We also got to do fondant (plastic) icing roses. Mine wasn't great. I started out by making the centre much too big, and that kind of stuffed it up from the start. I'll need to practise.

My favourite edible rose decorations for the day were the little roses made from Jelly Tots. I liked these so much, you don't even have to go browse for the pic :).



Next up:my birthday cake. I wanted to do a chocolate log with little woodland creatures all around it. But it didn't happen. Maybe next time. The cake is a chocolate roulade (recipe and cake instructions from this book), filled with double cream and hazelnut spread. The ends are homemade almond paste, and the bark is chocolate buttercream, which is not light and fluffy, no matter what I do!

Done!

I finished the Wild Rose Blanket just in time. The teacher loved it. (I loved it too). It looked really good, and the colours worked really well. Since I don't consider myself to have a great eye for colour I was very pleased about that. Each time I added a new colour (the yellow border, the green extra interior border, the pink join) it just made the other colours brighter and more beautiful. I used Elle Gold DK (courtelle) for the main part of the blanket, and I was really surprised at the difference between the dusty rose and the yellow. The dusty rose colour is much harsher and feels thicker, although they are both double knit. The pale yellow feels really really silky. (Click pic for bigger version)


There are a couple of other pics of the work in progress on flickr.

Now I am using the left over yarn to make a hat for M. I was going to do a wild rose hat, using the same pattern for embellishment as the blanket, but when I asked her if she wanted a woolly hat to wear, she said "Yes, I'd love a duck hat!". So I am making a dusty rose hat with a yellow duck face inset.

My daughter's idea of what a project should look like and mine are often poles apart, so it's really really important to get her to clarify exactly what her mental picture of something is before making it. (This goes double for cakes!)

I've also finally finished my brother's wedding sampler. I am never ever again doing a "me to you" bear sampler. The backstitch fur was horrible, and the colours were so similar that I could only work in daylight. That's a severe limitation on a crafter with kids! Admire. It has taken 3 years! (I stitch really slowly, but I don't give up!) (Again, click pic for full version if you can't see the whole thing).

Rose-tinted glasses

I'm making a blanket for my daughter's teacher. The teacher goes on Maternity leave next week. I have to finish this thing by Friday. It is taking a lot longer than expected - mainly because I didn't work out how long I expected it to take. If I didn't think this teacher was actually absolutely fantastic with my daughter, I would be not be making the blanket. I'm guessing I won't be getting a lot of sleep tomorrow night....

Let them eat cake

It seems I have not posted any details of the cake decorating I've been doing on this blog. I meant to post a whole lotta detail about each cake, and I'd still like to get to it. This set on flickr shows a whole lot of making cake stuff. The order of the cakes, and what I learned from each one, is as follows:

1st: January 2008: Zeb's 3rd birthday cake. A bird cake.
I learn: That one can buy plastic icing (fondant) in the shop. That this is fun. That cake glitter exists. That gel colours are what one uses to colour fondant. That I need a better way of ensuring that the models don't gradually ooze downwards whilst drying.

2nd: July 2008: Aeroplane cake for two friends who are leaving.


I learn: That water icing runs, damn it! That Tylose is a marvelous, wonderful, model-stiffening powder of great goodness.

3rd: January 2009: Zeb's 4th birthday cake - Underwater themed

I learn: That I need to know a lot more about this craft. That water icing is not good for sticking together the layers of cake. That I need a better paint brush.
(You can check out the diver here - I'm pleased with the diver)

4th: January 2009. Zeb's school birthday - 46 Mr Men and Little Miss cupcakes.



I learn: That a fine paint brush is essential. That black gel colouring makes a good paint for fine details. That tweezers are good things to have. That when using the gel colours (at least, the ones I have), red and blue make black, not purple. (Pink and blue make purple - go figure!).That I may be ever so slightly prone to obsession :).

5th: March 2009: Baby shower cake, made from this book:

I learn: That one can emboss fondant icing with a pattern. That having the right tools makes the job easier. That I am prone to over-colouring :). That fondant must be stuck onto the cake with buttercream or jam.

6th: March 2009: Pooh cake for my brother:


I learn: That Baking911 is a truly marvelous website. That freezing your cakes before carving makes it much easier to do. That chocolate buttercream is not always light and fluffy :}. That thinning gel colours with vodka makes a fantastic paint! That model bits can be stuck together with water. That my standard chocolate cake is a little too light to be shaped easily.

And that's it for now. Hopefully it won't be another year before I post again :).

Paid it forward!

Finally finished the first installment of my pay it forward stuff. Here they are:

A pair of fingerless gloves for starmadeshadow, about oooh, 16 months after the request. (And actually modelled on the hands they were made for.)

I might not be speedy, but I get there eventually :). These were super fun to knit, and I used Elle Elite, a wool / cotton blend. More details, including a link to the pattern on Ravelry. I really like the designer's stuff. I have done tons of other crafty stuff in the meantime, like the little cardigan I knitted for my daughter's teacher last April.


This was from an old magazine pattern, and one of the first things I've knitted using a wool, not an acrylic. I'm particularly proud of the strawberries cross-stitched on to the jersey. It's the first time I've done cross-stitch on knitting, and I think it worked really really well. I tried to make the strawberries match the so-cute buttons that I used. I really like the way the bright colours of the buttons and the decorations redeem the jersey from creamy blandness. I liked the texture of the block pattern too.


I used Jaegar baby merino that I bought on sale, and it feels sooo nice once it's knitted up. I have two more balls of a blue / cream mix to use which I may just use for own brand new baby. He needs a new hat.

KIP day

On Saturday my mom, my daughter and I went to a coffee shop in Nelson Mandela square for World Wide Knit in Public Day. (My husband tagged along to entertain the sprog, and shop for books!) It was really nice. The food was good, the company was very pleasant, and we learned a new way to pick up stitches! Worth it just for that.

I've also finally decided what to make for everyone on my pay it forward list. Now to find space in my copious free time (*snort*) to make them.

'Twas the season to be jolly..

And it was a good christmas. My Mom, mother-in-law and I got busy making these really pretty decorations for the tree.


They come from a pattern (quite modified) that I found in my pattern file. When I checked the date I was quite shocked to discover that I have been personally clipping knitting patterns for 20 years!! This pattern is from Your Family 1988!

I'm not old enough to have been cutting (and storing) patterns for that long. Clearly, I'm a bit of a squirrel. I'll put these up on Ravelry shortly - but it's bedtime now :).

Tech Generation

My husband has a much nicer phone than I do. This has caused some tension in our household. One of the things his phone does is retrieve his email for him. Then it beeps. And he reads his email. And I bitch and moan because
a) My phone can't do it &
b) He's always reading his damn phone.

My daughter has a little green toy phone that beeps and plays noises. Yesterday she brought it to me looking grumpy. Looking at me soulfully, she wails

"Zeb's phone doesn't have email, and you want email!"

I'm pretty sure she doesn't really have a handle on what email is, but it was pretty funny nonetheless :).

Pay it forward

This is kindof a sneaky post, as I know hardly anyone reads this blog! Anyway, there's a crafty, handmade Pay It Forward meme out there. It works like this - the first three commenters on this post get a handmade gift emailed to them some time in the next year. Really. I've got to tell you, though - that they will be small.... my track record with big projects is not good :).

I got this from Muses of a Dragon Mad Knitter, a blog I really enjoy :). (Dragons, knitting - what's not to like!)

I'll make sure I have an email address on my profile for a bit so that you hordes (hah!) of handmade-gift-wanting-commenters can send me your postal addresses.

Later.....

You thought it was a hippo

Last night my daughter came running up to me in the garden, urging me to come with her. (If she sees anything scary now, she fetches me and I have to come and look.)

"See that, Mommy - that brown thing, with eyes", she says, pointing to a small (~10cm high) clump of mud and leaves in the flowerbed. There was a bit of white gunk on it that could conceivably have been mistaken for eyes. I explained that it was a heap of leaves out of the pool pump, and kicked it apart a bit so she could see what it was.

"You thought it was a hippo!" she exclaimed.*



*She's improving with the first / second person pronoun mix-up, but it's not quite perfect yet.

Buttons!

My daughter has developed a major phobia about buttons. You know, those things that pretty much all mens' shirts have, and most of my smart, for-work clothes. Well, she started off last Tuesday having a complete hysterical fit whenever she saw a button, and refusing to be in the same room as her Daddy until he changed into a T-shirt, and she has gradually been improving all week. On Wednesday, when I fetched my car after a service, my Mom had to take Zeb out into the car park - because she refused to stop screaming when she noticed that one of the guys at the service reception desk was wearing a button-up shirt.

This follows hard on the heels of the massive ant phobia (about 2 weeks ago) and, before that, the snake phobia (causing her to be unable to enter the children's diningroom at the hotel, or even walk past the door - because there was a small picture of a cartoon snake on an ABC poster). This seems to be the pattern at the moment..
1) Develop huge, world ending / hysteria inducing phobia.
2) Gradually work through phobia, until it settles, in 1 to 2 weeks.
3) Develop new huge, apocolyptic, hysteria-inducing phobia.

I'm now running out of reasonably smart clothes to wear that have no buttons. This morning, my daughter suggested I should wear my (buttonless) dressing gown all day. Hmmmmm...

Two, going on fourteen

The other day my daughter dashed outside early in the morning, while I wittered on in the background about it being really cold and her needing to put on her slippers. But she completely ignored me and carried on walking carefully around the pool bricks (it's netted). So I walked out a bit further (it was cold), and said "Did you hear what I said? What did I say?" *
Little Zeb, without looking up, then says loudly "Zeb's not caring!" and keeps on walking.

I, of course, initiated immediate disciplinary action, without trying to decipher whether she didn't care about the cold, or whether she didn't care what I had said, but would do what she liked anyway! I figured, either way, forcible removal from desirable outdoors and insertion into slippers was justified.

I'm torn between pride at her obviously correct understanding and good contextual use of the concept of not caring about something, and utter disbelief and incredulous shock that the thing she doesn't care about is my opinion.




*Shudder - I really did say that.

Birdsong

It's a bird of paradise.
It's not a dove.
It's not a peacock.
It has a fancy tail -
It's definitely a bird of paradise.


- Made up by my 2-year old, bird-mad daughter today. I can't remember the
tune, but there was one. She made that up,too.

Don't hand me!

A couple of weeks ago, I was in a restaurant with my daughter sitting on my lap. She accidently pushed her elbow into me, and I said, as one would "Don't elbow me!", at which point she fell over, convulsed with laughter.

I said "what? what?" - wondering if it was some strange sort of fit - and she gasped through her chuckles "Elbow me! elbow me!" and collapsed again. So I said "What's so funny about your elbow?", and then, just in case we've never introduced her elbow to her, clarified this with "It's that pointy bit in the middle of your arm - why is it funny?".

Little Zeb then calmed down enough to sit up, waved her arm about madly, backhanded me in the face, shrieked "Don't hand me!" and collapsed in convulsive laughter again.

It's illuminating to me how much of our language use really is quite wierd. I guess the use of a body part to describe an action is a bit odd - but as an adult I'm used to it. I remember as a kid sometimes just repeating the same word over and over and over until it lost all meaning - then being really stumped in conversation for days afterwards.

As you wish

I have just reread The Princess Bride. It just gets better and better each time. I'm reading a lot at the moment as I have a UNISA assignment due and my wabbing structured procrastination is taking a bit of a hit.

Anyway, today I found, in a marvelous example of universal synchronicity, one of my favourite web comics doing this.

Made me feel all warm and fuzzy :). Hooray!

Bookses!

We (at work) got notification today that the book that our paper will be in will be out soon.

It's one of those catchy, easy to remember titles...

The Geospatial Web: How Geo-Browsers, Social Software and the Web 2,0 are Shaping the Network Society

The book has an accompanying home page here . My contribution is the paper / chapter titled "Fire alerts for the Geospatial Web".