craft action

Did you hear that? Craft action. Sandra. As I write I am in the middle of dyeing a shirt of Favourite Handyman's and a dress of Brighid's. The shirt was pocketless which was mmost inconvenient apparently so the shirt wasn't being worn. So the lovely ladies at our local Bernina shop found some white material and sewed a pocket on and the dye will hopefully make it all the same colour. Brighid's dress is a lovely hand me down from my sister-in-law which was a faded pink and this dye should give it some brightness (albeit either blue or lilac). I got the dye from the GreenBeans. I've had the pleasure of getting to know the lovely and very funny Sarah of Green Beans online but until now I've had no call to buy from her shop. I thought her shop was just for properly clever crafty girls like Nova and Sharon.

As today is both Saturday and raining, I've spent it mostly mucking around making things and marvelling at how I can make things amidst so much mess. I can. I have a lot of practice behind me. I made hummus, which I make 1-2 times each week. Tastier and probably more healthy than peanut butter for sandwiches. I put lots of parsley in it to sneak some more green leaved goodness into each of us here in Messy House, Smalltown. Plus I've made two batches of pasta sauce with the 10kg of tomatoes I bought at our local tomato growers yesterday. Put some of our own garlic, zucchini, celery and herbs in as well. Used bought onions for the first lot but not for the second as I forgot due to yacking to a friend who turned up at the same time. Tastes good nevertheless. I haven't bagged the second batch but the first one yielded four meals' worth for the freezer.

And the other exciting (to me) development is that my sourdough starter is foaming. If I owned a drum I would have done a drumroll when I found the foam. After a day or so on the bench top, I decided to put it in the hot water cupboard. Although we have one of those hot water cylinder blankets, it doesn't fit the whole way round and so the cupboard is still warmer than elsewhere in the house. That did the trick. I want to do the next step tonight but I can't try it yet as my multi-tasking quota is full at the moment. When I've finished dyeing and blogging and also have bagged up the second batch of pasta sauce.

And before I forget, I also drove out to our local dump/tip/refuse station and asked if I could have an old gas bottle to make a letterbox with. Yes I could. Favourite Handyman will do the turning into a letterbox part, but I was pleased with my contribution of sourcing the materials. It's currently bright pink.

That Omnivore's Dilemma book is seriously good. I want to rant about lettuces at length some time but for now I'll just say grow your own. He has got me thinking about so many things. Still rolling in that phrase "food drenched in fossil fuel".