Wednesday 22 February 2012

pancakepancakepancake

Yesterday was Pancake Day if you live in the UK (or carnivale, mardi gras, whatever in the rest of the world). I made a decision pretty early in the day.


Today would be the pancake day, when I ate nothing but pancakes.


It seemed like something one should do at least once in one's life. You know, like getting so drunk you shit the bed, or going bungee jumping, or swimming with turtles (I have done one of those. Guess which one!*).




When I was a kid, we rolled our pancakes up neatly so they looked sort of like cooked chicken or ham slices on a buffet. Now I fold them up and eat them like perverse samosas.
Total body count was approximately 16 pancakes. I really don't know. At one point a back-flow of batter started to replace my cerebral fluid. I love you pancake day... but next year I'm making dairy free pancakes. Ow, my lactose intolerance.






*I've been swimming with turtles, just for the record.

Friday 17 February 2012

Photos of Cakes

So, yeah. I haven't done much recently. I bought an offcut with beads on it with a view to divide the beads up and sell them, but I doubt I'll actually bother. I went to Frankfurt for some ridiculously large trade show, saw a lot of plates, and swindled a few free water bottles. I might do a design critique post of those in the future. Oh, and I got a job, sort of. I'm doing ad hoc work transcribing interviews from a design journalist. It's pretty cool, I'm learning about a bunch of designers/companies.


But apart from that, I've made cakes.


Carrot cakes, made at my parents' house. The trick to making them really good is to use one of those Microplane style graters- you know, the little ones chefs use for hard cheese. If you use a regular cheese grater, you'll get gross gag-worthy chunks of carrot, instead of deliciously fine bits of carrot, as delicate as dessicated coconut.
I also got a chance to use the icing nozzle and bag set I got for Christmas, but the bag was weirdly semi-permeable (it sweated) and I ended up with goo all over my hands. Gross. The icing is cream cheese with icing sugar and a few drops of glycerine. I was a bit worried about it because before it set it still tasted slightly cheesy, but afterwards they were divine. Thumbs up all round from my group at college.




These I made at my new flat in Camberwell, to test the oven. Sadly, they look better than they taste, the cinnamon buttercream just doesn't work that well :/




Pretty though! The fairy cakes are just a plain vanilla sponge, while the larger cake has cinnamon and ginger in it.




For some reason, the cake really domed. In this picture it almost looks like bread. I haven't tried it yet, but I hope it's edible. More importantly, I hope my flatmates think it's all edible!

Monday 6 February 2012

Apron version 2

So... not much has been going on lately. My teacups were assessed by my tutors. The long and short of that worked out as they liked my concept and strong narrative, but I need to learn to be less dismissive of my work and ideas and to have more faith in myself (as well as a few other bits and bobs on time management that I knew anyway). That was quite hard to hear. I have struggled with self worth, self esteem, and valuing my work for a very long time; we're talking since about aged 13 or 14 when I first started getting bouts of depression. But I know I can do better, and I know I am better than I used to be, both in terms of work and skill, and mental health, so everything is going to be okay.


But that's not what this post about, this post is about an apron! Y'all may remember way back in April I made myself an apron for class. Well, I'm back at it, hopefully making aprons to sell to classmates. But these won't be just any aprons: they'll be version 2 aprons.




The fabric is from the John Lewis offcuts bin. If you buy it off the roll it's £14 per metre and each apron takes 1m, so I'm trying to source all of mine from the offcuts bin. I'm also looking for cheap sources of oilcloth online.


What makes this apron better than others? It very cleverly (hard to see due to camouflage) has not 1 but 2 pockets- a large one for tools, and a small upper one for a mobile phone, point and shoot digital camera, or small tools such as razorblades. 
All pocket seams and straps are sewn with invisible thread, which is basically fishing line you can sew with. It's incredibly strong and provides a really professional finish, which is what I need if I'm going to try and hawk these to classmates. I don't want to sell shoddy crap!


So that's pretty much all I've done recently. Oh, and I made teriyaki salmon. That was tasty. I've also been trying a few Korean recipes lately, with tasty results, but that's another story. Other than that... well, there's some embroidery I'm working on, but I'll show that when I'm finished. And I've been cat watching a lot.






On that note, I think I'll go crawl into bed.