Alison Waller

Snow + Oranges = Marmalade. It’s been stay-at-home cold. I...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:05:55 +0100

Snow & oranges

Snow & oranges

Snow & oranges

Snow & oranges

Snow & oranges

Snow & oranges

Snow & oranges

Snow & oranges

Snow + Oranges = Marmalade.

It’s been stay-at-home cold. I made two different types of marmalade: straight up seville orange with fruit from Riverford and ‘good morning breakfast’ with a mixture of pink grapefruit, blood and seville oranges from this book by Diana Henry. ‘Good morning breakfast’ has come out more like a marmalade sauce than actual marmalade, although perhaps that’s what is meant by’softly set’?

***

Aside from the snow, it has been a busy few weeks. I’m counting this as #3 of my 52 projects. Numbers 1 & 2 have been completed, but I’ve had no time to record the evidence yet. Perhaps a January round-up when I’ve finished #4.

2013 & The 52 Project

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:56:52 +0100

2012 was quite a successful crafty Christmas.

I made these elephant bean bags for my little nephew. He likes to throw things.

And a lovely denim bucket, made from an old pair of jeans, to put them in.

[This comes from a great tutorial here]

For bigger people, I made these clever things.

They are long tubes filled with rice and lavender. You warm them up in the microwave for a few minutes and then use them like a hot water bottle, for aches and pains or cold places.

On the baking front, I made this yule log for a Christmas Eve lunch with some young visitors. I’ve never made a cake requiring rolling up before, so I was quite pleased with my achievement.

With Christmas now well and truly behind us, all that remains is to think about some crafty resolutions for the New Year.

I came across this post, in celebration of a successfully completed 2012 resolution at Peas and Needles. The author set herself the challenge of finishing an ongoing project or creating something new every week in 2012 - the Fifty 2 Project. What a fantastic achievement to have finished 52 things in a year. Somewhat optimistically, as my #1 resolution for 2013, I’m going to attempt the same for 2013.

Qualifying projects could be cooked, baked or preserved, grown, photographed, sewn, knitted, crocheted, or otherwise made, improved upon or upcycled in some way. I would love to add drawn to the list, but sadly learning how to draw goes down as a 2012 failure. I’ve started a new Pinterest board to record ideas and inspiration.

First and foremost on the list is the renewal of one of last year’s goals, the still-not-yet finished Africa Blanket. Poor old Africa Blanket, always gets neglected when things get busy. Never forgotten though!

Another inspiring blogger of 2012 is my friend Emilia Bird, who resolved this time last year to make by hand all of her clothes. I am in awe of her talents and I have decided I would love to attempt this myself - my own skills however are sadly lacking at present. So, resolution #2 is to work towards being able to take on such a big challenge one day. To start things off, I’ve signed up for another course at The Sewing Lounge this time in making alterations which seems like a good place to begin. It is really thanks to the owner/teacher Kat that I am able to sew at all, so I’m happy to be going back for more expert tuition!

I’ll be posting updates on these challenges soon. Wish me luck!

Festive food 2012. Yum and delicious!

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 19:52:08 +0100

Eat, Drink and Be Merry!

Bake-off

Yule log

Turkey 2012

Flaming pudding

Festive food 2012. Yum and delicious!

Christmas 2012 in decorations. Bright and sparkly.

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 19:46:17 +0100

Christmas forest

Advent calendar socks

On holiday this year

Alternative Christmas tree

Meeting House and tree in Library Square

Christmas tree wall

Christmas tree 2012

Christmas 2012 in decorations. Bright and sparkly.

Two trips north of the border to see my Nana in Montrose:...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 19:18:00 +0100

Montrose & Angus: September 2011

Montrose & Angus: October 2012

Two trips north of the border to see my Nana in Montrose: September 2011 and October 2012.

It’s a peaceful place. When I was there in October the trees were already bare and snow fell overnight and lay on the ground until late in the morning, when the sun eventually climbed high enough to melt it. Nature seems much more abundant there. Once you’re out in the surrounding countryside there are pheasants and grouse and deer roaming around and even in the town you can see and hear flocks of geese overhead at sunset. I’m always struck by the colours of everything: the greeness of the trees and the blue-grey of the sky. The painted railings and doors in seaside turquoise. Even the houses, made of big slabs of stone, greyish brown or brownish red, which are so different from the bricks-and-mortar or mock tudor affairs that line the streets around here.

My Nana’s house is a record of a lifetime. Innumerable books on every subject and magazines ranging from Vogue to National Geographic fill boxes and shelves. There are cupboards of glasses and plates and kitchenware. Whole drawers full of reels of thread, buttons, recipes meticulously copied onto cards, colouring pencils, long forgotten geometry sets, plastic film canisters and gloves. Somewhere there are the tools necessary for an admirable range of self-sufficient activities from growing vegetables and brewing sherry to making and mending clothes. There are photographs documenting four childhoods, adolescences and marriages, and the arrival of seven grandchildren and five [!] great-grandchildren. There are recipe books, knitting needles, crochet hooks, sewing notions, and a great collection of manuals, instructional magazines and patterns. Perhaps there is nothing of conventional value but it to me it is evidence of a life well spent: Cooking, baking, making, mending, growing. All the important things.

Montrose & Angus, a set on Flickr

I’ve got a bit of a blog backlog but it’s been a...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:05:46 +0100

I’ve got a bit of a blog backlog but it’s been a very busy month since I went on the Barbican Architechture Tour.

A fascinating place - if it was anywhere else it would be a grotty council estate avoided by any sensible person but something has gone right where it usually goes wrong and the result is one of London’s most desirable addresses and a cultural hub for the middle classes.

I liked how our guide pointed out the little details that tie the whole place together, like the scallop-shapes on the rooflines, as well as covering the history of the development. I’m not usually a big fan of guided tours but this one comes highly recommended.

Another lovely thing about living in Brighton again is how close...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:43:26 +0100

London Transport Museum: stained glass

London Transport Museum: old school railway carriage

London Transport Museum: branch lines

London Transport Museum: mind the gap

London Transport Museum: double deckers

A gift to me from TfL

Destined for the map room

Another lovely thing about living in Brighton again is how close we are to London. You can walk to the train station, and there are four trains an hour - you can leave and come back whenever you want!

I realise that to most of us that doesn’t sound like anything to make a fuss about, but I haven’t forgotten the meticulous planning and time wasting involved - check bus timetable, make special trip to newsagent for ticket, check train timetable, visit travel agent for ticket due to broken machine and perpetually closed office at station, be sent by travel agent to bar to make change from $20 bill, walk to bus stop, wait for bus with fingers crossed, wait for train for ridiculous length of time due to inability of bus and train companies to co-ordinate schedule, sit on slow train for twice the time required for similar distance on train in any other European country - in even the simplest of day trips in Sicily.

A while ago now, we went to the London Transort Museum, where we saw a great exhibition called Mind the Map. It was here I learnt that Transport for London have been quietly changing the covers of the tube map every few months for a number of years now, resulting in a beautiful collection of miniature artworks which you can carry around in your pocket. The Mind the Map exhibition featured a display [now viewable at Picadilly Circus station] of all the covers together which I loved so much I wrote to TFL and the kindest man sent me a copy of every one they had left!

I’m searching for the perfect frame to put them in, and maybe one day they’ll live in my Map Room.

We ate at a nice Italian restaurant yesterday. I had the house...

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 23:22:00 +0100

The Bacon Al-Muffin

The Breakfast Al-Muffin

We ate at a nice Italian restaurant yesterday. I had the house antipasto with two Sicilian specialities; Spaghetti alla Norma [although if any Sicilians were here, they’d probably complain that spaghetti isn’t the right type of pasta and perhaps also get into a debate re. the correct type of ricotta to put on the top] and a glass of Nero D’Avola [on which at least most of them seemed to agree].

I even sampled the closest thing to a real pizza I’ve eaten since coming back - just when I had pretty much decided I wasn’t going to eat them at all anymore after too many expensive disappointments from allegedly gourmet [=overpriced] pizzerias.

Anyway, it set me to thinking about the food of Sicily - how what was once everyday routine is now a rare treat - but before I could get too gloomy I remembered these bad boys: The Bacon Special, and his big brother the Greedy Breakfast. These are UK-exclusives, unavailable anywhere else on the globe. Yet thanks to our collective open-mindedness and interest in other food cultures, there is an immense variety of choices. You can’t put a price on that.

In the beginning...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:26:19 +0100

Adventures on a pre-WW2 whaling ship in the Antarctic from a 1938 diary. First entry, from October 21st of that year.

thewhalinglog:

Friday October 21, 1938

At long last the whalers are on their way to the Antarctic again and I am starting on my second great adventure as “sparks” on a whale catcher. Strangely enough I am looking forward to it with no less anticipation than last year, although this time I have some idea of what I am going to. Yes indeed, I have been anxiously awaiting this day for 3 or 4 months and consider myself very fortunate in finding myself on board the old factory ship Sourabaya, bound from Liverpool to South Georgia. Perhaps I should say that my haste to be away from dear old Edinburgh has been somewhat subdued latterly by “interests of the heart” or whatever you may like to call it. However, one must eat, and this is my chosen means of earning my living, so other matters will just have to suffer a temporary postponement; the duration of which I hope will be approximately six months.

Read More

Photo

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:21:00 +0200

[photo from the London Transport Museum] In a few weeks time...

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 23:55:56 +0200

[photo from the London Transport Museum]

In a few weeks time I’ll be starting a language courseas part of my MA. The choice of which language is up to me - anything from Russian to French to British Sign Language. To plod along with Italian or try something completely new? Maybe something new like Japanese.

If I learn some Japanese, I could read Japanese crochet patterns, cook sushi, and learn more about netsuke and generally be like Edmund de Waal [who wrote this incredible book]. Maybe I’ll even get better at eating with chopsticks.

Of course, learning Japanese is not a pre-requisite for any of the above.

If I stick at Italian, I guess I could practise making articles agree with prepositions through an exciting debate on which type of pasta goes with which type of sauce.

According to this opera-singing polyglot it is possible learn a language in six months with the right study methods. I will report back after 20 weeks of Japanese lessons.

After Lipari and Stromboli, we went back to Salina. The first...

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:36:15 +0200

After Lipari and Stromboli, we went back to Salina. The first time we didn’t have time to go to Lingua and the famous Da Alfredo, recommended by everyone from the Lonely Planet to cookbook authors and the Guardian for homemade granite and oversized open sandwiches. We sampled both, with a spot of jellyfish-hunting in between.

Salina, a set on Flickr

We never managed to visit all of the Aeolian Islands but in the...

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 19:18:29 +0200

Pirate's ice cream

Stromboli pizza by Napoli pizzaiolo

Cactus art

Blackboard

Mural

100%

Stromboli backstreets

Faded

Sunset

Stromboli

We never managed to visit all of the Aeolian Islands but in the end I didn’t need to see them all to know which one was my favourite.

Stromboli was the first one I ever went to and none of the others could match it for me. The little lanes too narrow for cars, replaced by three wheeled taxi trucks; the shimmering black sand; strombolicchio and its white lighthouse; the painted ceramics everywhere; the big bearded pirates and shoeless hippies; all under the smoking crater.

Only three hours from Milazzo on the aliscafo but as far away in spirit as it’s possible to be. Whilst on one hand it’s as absurd as someone from Brighton never having been to London, it’s actually no wonder that half the Milazzozzizis have never made the trip.

The rest of the photos are here: Stromboli, a set on Flickr and Blue doors on Stromboli, a set on Flickr.

We’ve been back just over two months but unlike when we...

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 19:28:19 +0200

We’ve been back just over two months but unlike when we were in Sicily, where long days stretched out ahead of us here in Brighton things are usually busy.

This weekend I’ve had some time to sort out the last batch of photos. It feels like the closing chapter of a book that started off well then deteriorated quite severely into page upon page of boredom and frustration but nonetheless managed to end on a high note - that being a lovely week of island-hopping before returning home.

We spent a few days on Lipari, which must have been our fourth or fifth visit. Milazzo people like Lipari because they think it’s just like Milazzo. In reality it’s much much nicer, and it comes with lots of opportunities for photographing some of my favourite things: Little boats, shutters and balconies, rooftops, painted doors, blue seas and blue skies, pirates and good things to eat. Here are the best of the pictures.

Lipari, a set on Flickr.

Every week we have a box of fruit and vegetables from Riverford....

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 11:01:08 +0200

Blueberry cheesecake

Banana cupcakes with lemon creamcheese icing

Birds eye view

Every week we have a box of fruit and vegetables from Riverford. Recently they’ve sent a few things to inspire some baking.

Blueberries, which came with a suggestion of putting them on your museli. In the end I went for cheesecake. I adapted this recipe, which was every bit as easy as it claims.

Bananas, which prompted an experiment with my trusted banana cake recipe by baking it as banana cupcakes instead. I thought the results were very successful, but my taster in chief says the original cannot be beaten.

Accepted

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 12:50:06 +0200

I guess I won’t be under the five suns so much as under the many clouds but I’ve lost my enthusiasm for packing suitcases. If I learnt one thing in Italy it’s that there really really is more to life than good weather.

If I’m going to be an English teacher and stay in England, my existing CELTA isn’t going to be enough.

My course starts on September 20th, which is less than a month away!

Having just finished my course, I wanted to practise some of the...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 19:48:21 +0200

lavender pockets

little ones

bigger ones

all together

jumper protection

Having just finished my course, I wanted to practise some of the basics I learnt. These little pockets are filled with lavender to make things smell nice and keep the moths away. Apparently they look like ravioli…

Two weeks on, having finished my course and here are my finished...

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 19:50:28 +0200

Little purse for hooks

Finished cushion

Two weeks on, having finished my course and here are my finished objects. A squashy cushion and a little purse. I am (perhaps excessively?) proud of my non-wobbly-seamed achievements.

What next? I’m thinking about this course, making clothes from patterns.

World, meet the sandwich pie. King of the sandwiches. One round...

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 00:36:07 +0200

Sandwich Pie

Sandwich Pie

Sandwich Pie

World, meet the sandwich pie. King of the sandwiches.

One round loaf of bread with the top sliced off, hollowed out and filled with as much meat and cheese as will fit inside. Chilled overnight and then sliced into wedges. I think it’s a good start to my summer sandwich challenge.

I’m taking a course at Sew In Brighton which claims in...

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 21:12:51 +0200

Supplies: beginner's sewing class

One day soon I will be a cushion

I’m taking a course at Sew In Brighton which claims in three weeks I will be able to sew, and have two handmade items to prove it. This course is a) necessary and b) long overdue: I’ve owned two sewing machines in my life, and I’ve never got to grips properly with either of them.

This could be blamed on whichever government was responsible for the National Curriculum during the years when I was at school. I never learnt so much as how to sew on a button, as “design and technology” had by then taken over from the learning of useful skills such as how to cook and sew or actually make anything.

I took “food technology” for GCSE. Over the course of two years, we studied the process of designing ready meals and attempted to recreate that process in the rooms used by former students for learning how to cook. This involved preparing the same dish 20 or 30 times over with minor variations to the method or ingredients, producing mock ups of packaging and perhaps most futile of all, hand-drawing a 2cm border around the edge of 40 or 50 sheets of A3 paper onto which we then recorded our efforts for presentation to the exam board.

So, what with trying to make a cardboard sleeve shaped like a pineapple and drawing all those borders, I never learnt to sew. There have been countless occasions since when I’ve really wished I could. Most recently, after an incident involving a dress and an airport escalator, and indeed every time I buy a pair of trousers.

The first class was last week, and I came away feeling pretty confident. I can thread up a machine, wind a bobbin, change a needle, sew a seem, and keep said seem straight. I know how to change the type of stitch to zigzags, change the length of the stitch and the tension. I have a somewhat scruffy strip of fabric to show for it so far. Perhaps after the next class, I’ll have a non-wobbly seemed cushion to proudly display.