Max makes malformed manx mollie makes mouse

The title says it all really.

Manx? Tail missing as the instructions didn't suggest making a tail until after they instructed the back be sewn up, and lack of gumption.

Malformed? Ears on forehead. Due to lack of spatial awareness and failure to photocopy the pages relating to sewing the head.

The dress is also a fizzer as its wayyyy too big probably due to too small seams and lack of mouse neck.

Sewing, so relaxing, rewarding ha, but claud does love her.

http://ourcreativespaces.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/our-creative-spaces_29.html?m=1

Autumn pleasures

I've been planting, picking, preserving and pickling with the zeal of peter piper. It's a Pickering family thing, we like our food like our humour, home grown and tart! My maternal grandparents pantry was an open invitation of jars, with no holds barred. I remember my sister eating lemon curd from the jar with a spoon (her favourite). And her day-glo vomit.
I remember the finesse required to make and eat a pickled red cabbage and salted peanut sandwich (my favourite). Press the peanuts into the soft white belly of a door stopper crust, pile on the cabbage, indent the lid (also a crust), put it on top, roll up your sleeves, put your elbows in a bowl and enjoy!
Anarchic grandparental feeding practices aside, i have always wondered if our Pickering preference for pickles was genetic. Perhaps we have a tendency to low sodium which we unconsciously corrected by scarfing pickled onions by the jar in preference to popcorn when watching a movie (my mother). More probably it was the copious cigarette smoking of previous generations which necessitated a strong flavoured food to remind the damaged taste buds that flavour exists.
Either way, whilst i no longer eat oxo cubes or rhubarb raw (we begged for them like most kids do for sweets) and now channel my thirst for the tart through the more sophisticated route of a weekly ploughmans lunch, it's such an essential part of my identity that, in addition to annual bouts of preserving mania (we have a years supply of jam, passata, pickled onions and tomato relish so far) i was determined to indoctrinate Claud to the 'way of the pickle' early. A baby-led-weaning child she first ate a pickle, a gherkin, aged 8 months, and she ate it with relish i'm very proud to report. Now, aged two, if you ask her what she'd like to eat she invariably shrieks "OLIVES" before having to settle for what ever is on the menu that day. Yep, she's a Pickering (if not in name) hurrah!
Anyhow, this was meant to be a brief post to say as most of the produce in my garden is now in a jar i'll be back to normal blogging frequency soon. Sooner still if someone can suggest a way to preserve cucumbers or grapes?

Auroura australis...

It's dusk and the skies are clear, although the full moon might put a spanner in the works. We're waiting and watching for the aurora australis. A big solar flare is hitting earth right about and we should be able to see the aurora from this latitude.
Twenty years ago on a mad whim i was in orkney trying to get work on an archeology dig. Our camp site flooded and we were staying in a local's shed instead, a fishing boat that had been upturned and built in, with a cosy peat fire. One night we met a love child of jimi hendrix's (allegedly) in the pub in kirkwall and leaving to escape his incessant ear bending, on the threshold a shooting star caught my eye. Looking up i saw the northern lights. Green, red, blue, white pink,
All moving like a wild sea. It frightened me, and the more i watched the more frightened i got. You know how you can lay back on a sunny day and sleepily see shapes in the clouds, bunny rabbits and such like. This was like the nightmare, speeded up version of that. Even though i 'knew' what it was it still totally rattled me, after 10 minutes or so i had to go hide inside to give my eyes and my brain a rest. It was so totally unlike the serene aurora photos you see around, for me anyway.
I cant wait to see the aurora australis, to see if it has the same effect on me or if i can put down that first experience to something jimi hendrix son put in my drink?!

It's nearly dark now...nothing yet...

Whatcha watch in winter?

"Winter. I can smell the cold coming. I can almost take a bite out of it. It tastes like a steel bar" Chris Stevens.

Northern Exposure. Remember that show? My past week in bed with the flu (still there) has been quite cheerfully endured with the medicinal aid of a marathon bout of Northern Exposure watching, and latterly, as my appetite has returned, with mexican (chilli) hot chocolate.
Grungy 90's fashion notwithstanding, Chris-in-the-mornings loquacious charm has survived the (22-yikes!) years. That said, this time around it's Ed Chigliak's austere bedroom decor rather than Chris's bedroom eyes I've been oogling.
That shade of blue-grey is exactly what i want to repaint my dining room; and with the pretty brass bed and lemon blinds the decors dated far less than the NE fashions, or my taste in telly-men!

Anyway, wimpy bugs and snivelly colds i hate em. But full on, so-sick-i'm-bedridden, that kind of sick i can do. I like the enforced rest. I like the hibernation mode required to endure it, and i see feeling unwell a small price to pay. I look back as fondly on such illnesses as i do holidays, truely! Especially those childhood ones where you had a doting mum bring you tea and bikkies ever half hour. Ahhh, them were the sick days!
The last time i was really ill was 4 years ago. Shingles. Incidentally i came down with it the day after i got back from a work trip to Seattle, where i bunked off a conference day and failed to get myself to Roslyn, the nearby town where Northern Exposure was filmed and where an annual Northern Exposure festival is held (long story).
On that occassion i watched sex and the city in its entirety, having previously ditched it at the point where carrie chose shoes and Big over aiden and a back country cabin (Something about being sick allowed me to suspend the necessary-but-difficult-to-muster disbelief past this silly point).
So, anyway since New Zealand's autumn-like summer is on the cusp of a winter-like autumn i'm changing gear. I'm thinking wool rag rug making; mad men watching ( i've done Downton) and plenty of pumpkin eating; and i'm wondering, what are your winter/illness survival tips?

And what's your favourite chris-in-the-morning quote??

And what did you think of mad men, is there much substance below the 'style'???