Need a pincushion fast?

Huge amounts of sewing this morning had me scrabbling around on the floor looking for spilled pins. To speed things up I quickly made a pincushion - it took less than 20 minutes!

How to: trace a circle round a saucer on to a piece of cloth. Sew a row of running stitches around the edge, pull slightly to close, fill with stuffing, pull further closed, stitch randomly over the gap to keep it closed, and stick into that battered silver eggcup you just happen to have lying around.

Craft meeting

Craft meeting this Saturday afternoon from 2:30 at The Book Lounge, corner of Roeland and Buitenkant Sts. We'll be doing more of this. If you're in Cape Town this weekend, do come and join us!

(The picture is of an experiment: picking up stitches from 5 rows down. It's a secret experiment, too, so I can't say much more, but I needed a picture for this post.)

Font

I really like the way these vinyl letters have peeled, creating a new font.

Lamp

Some Friday DIY: a chromed pole attached to a stand; a lightbulb fitting; a 70s lampshade that's lost anything that could be used to attach it to a fitting; the wire skeleton of another lampshade; white spraypaint; flex, a lightbulb, and a fitting.

The screenprint on the wall is by Jacqui Stecher.

I made a cake!

Why? Because it's my birthday!

Pistachio cake recipe from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries.

Aah, bunnies....

I've been missing these 'skapies'*. I made a few last weekend, and as I sew them up I'll add them to the shop.

*Skapie is Afrikaans for 'little sheep'. Not lamb, because that's 'lammetjie' or 'lammer' or just 'lam'. Fine shades of difference. It's generally a term of endearment reserved for small sleepy children and miniature Schnauzers.

About the ham, in case you were wondering: pork legs buried in a barrel of salt in August, taken out and rinsed sometime around January, rubbed with a paprika and olive oil paste and hung in a cool place till now.

Vegetarians, avert your eyes! Come back tomorrow....

Remember the barrel of pigs? They've become this:


Whoo-hoo! Home-cured Parma-style ham!!