Made Marian: Oozing Crafty Goodness

My friend (and extended family member ) Laura at Newbrowne has created a food themed meme and I’ve been tagged!  Although not strictly craft related it does refer to things I make so I’m sneaking it in here.

The Foodie Confessions Meme

IN THE KITCHEN

1. My trademark recipe: Lamb Tava (Tessa Kiros)

2. Kitchen gadget or accessory I couldn’t live without: Meat Thermometer

3. Biggest kitchen handicap: I can’t make an omelette (I have tried and I ALWAYS end up with scrambled egg!)

4. Dish/technique that I want to learn: Same answer as Laura - I would love to be better a cutting meats and preparing fish.

5. My top cooking tip: If you use tinned tomatoes for anything, add a sprinkle of sugar too, it makes a huge difference.

INSPIRATION

6. Favourite cuisine/food style: Probably Italian.  Lorraine from Italian Foodies opened up a whole new world to me when she revealed that Italian food is more than pasta and pizza

7. Favourite cook book: Clodagh KcKenna’s new one - Fresh from the Sea

8. Favourite chef: I still love Jamie but for innovation it has to be Heston Blumenthal

9. Favourite food programme: see the above

10. Favourite food magazine: I don’t buy any, there’s plenty of excellent stuff on blogs!

11. Favourite local restaurant: The Market Square Brasserie

INTERNET FOR FOODIES

12. Favourite foodie website: I don’t have a favourite

13. Favourite recipe search: Twecipe – same

14. Online recipe binder: same

15. Favourite food blog: Italian Foodies and I’m loving I can has Cook? at the moment! (I only read Irish food blogs)

FAVOURITE RECIPES

16. Main course: Changes all the time but at the moment it’s Lakeshore Pork (from the Avoca Book)

17. Quickie: Sweet and Sour (even made from scratch takes no time at all)

18. Soup/salad: Broccoli, Feta and cherry tomato salad from the Avoca Book

19. Baked treat or dessert: Mars Bar Mousse

20. Self-invented (or adapted): I usually on invent recipes on “use up everything in the fridge day”

I’m not going to tag anyone but feel free to answer the meme if you fancy and don’t forget to stop by and say hi to Laura.

I bought this little vest top in Penney’s a few months back to see if it was possible to embroider onto that kind of jersey fabric.  The lesson of the day is that, yes you can but it’s a lot of work!  As suggested by Grannymar ages ago, I lined the embroidery hoop with bias binding and that definitely helped prevent any lasting marks on the fabric.  So for anyone who might be thinking of pimping some vest tops, that is a top-tip

The tops of the feelers and the blue dots in the bottom of the wings are embellishments that are sewn on and the butterfly’s body and head were donated by Ruth after she saw my WIP and suggested that she might have just the thing to finish him off.

This was a time consuming project but it was well worth it as I now have a one of a kind vest top for the princely sum of €3.  By the way this is the same patterns as I did here.

I haven’t been feeling the card making recently, I don’t know why but it’s a craft that has been neglected in the Made Marian house of late.  However there are some important birthdays coming up so I said I’d better come up with something inspirational soon or I’d have to resort to buying a card, something I haven’t done in well over a year.

So inspired by the birthday cards with badges that we all got as kids, I decided to combine my crochet skills with my card making and came up with these.

The crochet circles on the front are actually brooches, so they can be removed from the card and worn by the lucky recipient. The circles were super easy to make. I cut out a small circle from a piece of felt, attached the crochet circle and the button to the front and then sewed on the brooch back.  Easy Peasy

I’ve been tagged by Ruth from Nice Day designs,  I haven’t done a meme for ages so here goes

Seven Things I Like:

Getting parcels in the Post

Things being tidy

Vintage China

Shoes, pretty pretty shoes!

Red Wine

Hoodies

Yarn

Seven Things I did Yesterday:

Had Breakfast with my Parents and Fiancé

Had Lunch with my Fiancé and his Family

Watched an Episode of the Wire

Put fresh sheets on my bed

Re-arranged my jewellery and cosmetics

Painted the frame of my jewellery holder and added new paper to the background

Did out a meal plan and shopping list for the week ahead

Seven Things I Wish I could Do:

Arrange Flowers Properly

Sew, as in make things, not just sewing buttons and hems

Make Lace

Design Websites

Make the perfect Risotto

Pull a Pint of Guinness

Take beautiful Photos

Seven Things I don’t Like:

Pears

When the Phone rings late at night - it’s always sad news

Traffic

Hearing about the Economy - I prefer denial

When things are out of place

Forgetting things

Being Irritable

We had a fine old time at Stitch ‘n’ Bitch last night, Froodie, Ruth, Lu’s DD Megs and myself. It was a lovely sunny evening so we sat outside the Old Quarter and had pints (except for Megs of course who stuck to Fanta).  Naturally we also did some crafting and had some great chats, sharing tips on where to buy supplies as well as loads of other things.

If anyone else fancies joining in, we meet every Tuesday at 7.30 at the Old Quarter, all are welcome so please come along if you can.

Remember this?

Well I can finally reveal what it is.

The blanket is now in the possession of baby Frida Browne (or Newbrowne 2.0 as I like to call her).  Frida is half Finnish so I wanted to do the blanket in the colours of the Finnish flag, blue and white.   I was kind of hoping that the baby would be a girl so that nobody could accuse me of doing “blue for a boy” and luckily she obliged me

I’m so annoyed that we don’t have any TV channels other than the Irish ones.  This show Kirstie’s Homemade Home is my dream TV and I can’t watch it.  I was just having a look at the website there and it looks like she’s already covered some great topics, expecially the sewing ones which I’d love to finally take up this year.    There’s a video for making lamp shades that has me drooling and itching to look up where to buy the raw materials online

Update:  My beloved SO has downloaded the show from the Channel 4 website - Woohoo!! Watching Episode 1 now.

As well as trying to add value to bargain bin tops I’ve also been attempting to make jewelery.  I love jewelery and I especially love handmade jewelery so after buying some basic jewelery making tools online ages ago I decided that it was finally time for me to try making some myself.  Here are my attempts so far.

This first one is a pretty conventional necklace, nothing special going on here just threading some beads through some silver wire and attaching some fasteners.

This second one is a little bit more unusual as I crocheted it (after being inspired by something that Craftyrainbowhead suggested    ) It is fastened at the back with a regular necklace clasp which I’ve just tied the yarn onto.  This is a very fine crochet yarn and I used a 2mm hook.  The pattern was a border suggestion from the squares book that I keep banging on about.

Next on my crafty list is card making - I’m way behind on this so I should have some pictures soon of my endeavors.

As I sheepishly return to the blogosphere I can’t help wonder if I have any readers left.  I’d love to say that I’ve been off doing something exciting but alas I’ve just been a little uninspired lately due to nasty factors beyond my control.  Anywho, I’m tired of complaining (aren’t you lucky I haven’t been complaining here) about the cards I’ve been dealt and I’d better just get back playing the game, if ya know what I mean.  Last thing I wrote here was that I’d be back with some crafting so true to my word, here is an update of what I’ve been up to.

I made these very pink brooches.

And inspired by Ruth at Nice Day Designs I decided to revamp some bargain bin tops.

This one had plain white buttons when I picked it up for €3, I changed the buttons and then did some plain backstitch embroidery to add some colour.

To this one I just added some crochet flowers.

What do you think?  If there’s anyone out there that is

Well, I’m off home to visit my folks tomorrow and then we’re heading down to Ballyferriter outside Dingle for the rest of the May Bank Holiday weekend.  Hope everyone has a good one

Although I’m not religious I’m not one to say no to four days off together so we’re off to Dingle and Abbeyfeale for the weekend so I will bid you all a very Happy Easter.  I hope to get some crafty photos taken over the weekend and should have a few posts for you all next week.