I thought I’d share some of my favourite southern blogs today. No, not “southern” as in the American South but “southern” as in south of the equator.

Maybe it’s something about the different magnetic field down there but there is a certain quality in all of these ladies’ work that really speaks to me.

At the top of my “must read” blog list is Skinny laMinx (AKA Heather Moore) of South Africa:

I’ve actually seen her work in person at Heath Ceramics in Sausalito; it’s just as gorgeous as it appears in her Etsy shop: Skinny la Minx.

Next up is Sugarloop (AKA Bernadette Sipkes) of New Zealand:

Her Gocco prints are inspiring and guess what? She has an Etsy shop too!

Sugarloop

Pippijoe from Australia has some great Gocco and textile prints:

Pippijoe’s Etsy shop is here.

All of these designers inspire and motivate me.

Even though the fires aren’t that close to us, it seems all the smoke is lingering right over our house. Okay, the entire valley is smoke-filled…

Yesterday was the first day the smoke affected me; I woke up with a very sore throat and a cough. It stays away if I’m indoors but any trips outside cause flare ups. (Oooooh, bad pun alert!) Today, I thought I’d take a look at just where these fires are…

(Google Maps image from CAL FIRE)

No wonder it’s so smoky here…we’re practically surrounded!

Good thoughts are going out to those more affected by these fires…

And it won’t cost a lot either!

Oh, and it doesn’t involve sewing…

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 yard of 58″ wide fleece
1 20″ x 28″ x 2″ pillow

Start by cutting the fleece in half along the fold. This will give you two pieces of fleece measuring 29″ x 36″.

Create a fringe along all four sides of each piece of fleece by cutting 3″ long cuts, 1″ apart. You will end up removing a 3″ square piece of fleece from each corner. Once completed, your fleece pieces will look like this:

Next, put your fleece pieces on top of one another, lining up the corner cutouts. Form knots along one short and the two long edges using a single fringe piece from each side. Leave one short edge unknotted for now.

Insert the pillow into the fleece and knot the remaining fringe pieces together.

Voila! Dog bed…

Thanks to Jessica Jones over at How About Orange, I can now make really funky swirls in Illustrator. Jessica linked to this tutorial at Bittbox and this was the result of my first kick at the swirly can:

How fun! You know, I’d thought about printing a leaf design I’d done as part of my “safari” images on some pillowcases:

Now I think I might just do swirly things instead!

We took a ride this morning to stock up on some of the best sausages we’ve found here in California:

Sitting right there on the main drag in Lockeford is Lockeford Meats, home of the best sausages in Northern California. A colleague of the Spouse turned us on to this place, telling us it was a fantastic source for bangers. We’ve gone there several times now to pick up some of their wares; also on the “must buy list” are their andouille sausage and their Dakota sausage (smoked or fresh…both are fabulous). They also offer a pretty damn good tri-tip.

Now, if they could do a beef and onion sausage, life would be complete.

I’ve spent the past couple of days working on a new design…a botanical!

For the past several weeks, I head out in the morning, sit by the pond, and receive kisses from the dogs. Every morning, my eye is caught by a nearby asparagus fern…not so much the fern itself but by its flower buds. The flowers (and their buds) are completely unremarkable but, at the specific time of the morning I’m out sitting by the pond, the light catches them in such a way as to make them utterly fascinating to me.

I’m not particularly good at sketching but decided to try and capture the ferns and blossoms any way. Once that was done, it was off to the computer to fire up Illustrator and try to create something that at least approximated those ferns.

And this is what I came up with:

From there, I’ve developed a border pattern:

and a “toile” type repeat:

It’s interesting how the eye can fool the brain, isn’t it? The Spawn was sure the toile repeat was a dogwood flower (until I showed her the original).

Next week, I’ll be trying my hand at block printing this design onto fabric (probably tea towels printed with the border pattern to start). If they turn out, they’ll be available in the shop. If they don’t, they’ll be in my kitchen…

Just because I love him…

I should have included this in yesterday’s post, shouldn’t have I?

I got this recipe from the Spouse’s grandmother way back, even before the Spawn was born. Every year, I’d do up at least one batch (sometimes I did several batches as they were consumed) and, for as long as we lived in Metchosin, I entered a jar of them in the Luxton Fall Fair. I’m happy to say that these beet pickles won first prize at said fair for four years running.

The yield of the original recipe is 4 pints; I have doubled, trebled, and even quintupled it (yes, I had to look that word up!).

4 quarts of small beets
3 cups vinegar
2-1/2 cups sugar
2 cups water
2 tsp. pickling spice
1 stick cinnamon
1/2 tsp. whole cloves
1 tsp. pickling salt

Cook beets until tender; drain and plunge into cold water. Slip off skins and trim if necessary.

Heat vinegar, water, sugar, spices, and salt to boiling. If spice bag is not used, strain out the spices. Add beets to pickling solution and bring to boiling. Pack into clean, sterilized jars, cover with solution, and seal immediately.

That’s the original recipe. I think it wise to add a ten minute spin in a hot water bath (85C) to the recipe. And, it should go without saying to follow all food safety procedures when making any home canning products.

After our meeting this morning, book club headed off to the farmer’s market to buy the fixings for making pickles…both beet pickles and dilly beans. Leigh was good enough to document our afternoon with her camera.

I’ve put all the photos in a Flash slideshow (powered by Flash Slideshow Maker) which you can see here: click!

At the end of the day, we ended up with eleven pints of beet pickles and one pint jar plus 5 half-pint jars of dilly beans. Yum!

I’m currently without phone and Internet service at my house so no post for today. Hopefully everything will be back to normal tomorrow and I can show everyone the redecorating magic the Spawn is working in her bedroom!