Plimsolls … now there’s a blast from the past!

I don’t think I’ve owned a pair of plimsolls since, ooooo, forever!  If I had to make a guess then I might suggest it’s been at least 25 years, certainly not since leaving primary school!  This is something that’s been pulling at me for some time to do and, Mmmmmm, there’s nothing quite like the smell of new plimsolls is there – or does that just make me a bit weird!?

Anyway I’ve been noticing images of customised plimsolls ever since I joined up with DeviantArt a couple of years back and I’ve got to say they are something of an inspiration, even if my own initial efforts are a far cry from those featured in that link – these pictured here really are an initial effort.  If nothing else it gave me a chance to try out taking photo’s in my new light-box!

The lass has made me promise to do her a pair and I can envisage something in pink/lilac with love hearts for her and she seems happy with the idea.  Of course if I do a pair for her then no doubt the lad will want a pair too so I guess I’ll need to do two more pairs at the very least.

Poly-tunnel building

We finally finished the poly-tunnel over the weekend (do you remember when I started this … in June!), during a brief and unexpected break in the weather.  If I’m being honest I don’t mind telling you that I was beginning to give-up any hope of getting a calm-enough-warm-enough day to actual get the cover on it and it wasn’t high on my agenda for Sunday following the long-day we had on Saturday at the Morningside Makers market … I’d rather have gone to Glasgow as I’d planned, but a break in the weather presented itself and happened to coincide with some self-nagging about getting on and getting things done!

Jolene agreed we should do it, so we did, and having laid the polythene out and managed to get it so far over the frame we got stuck.  Just short of a pair of hands, fortunately the chaps over at the railway were having a slow day and a couple of them gallantly came over and lent a hand at an opportune moment – seriously, we’d have been stuck without them!

The polythene is the probably the single most important element of the tunnel, not purely in terms of creating a warm wind-free environment inside, but also in terms of ensuring a rigid and secure structure resistant to the elements.  In this vein the tension of the tunnel is really really important as is correctly pleating the ends for much the same reason, you should be able to tell from the pictures below just how well we managed to tension it (even if I do say so myself).

We started out at around 10am and didn’t finish until just after 5pm, at that point I stapled some polythene off-cuts over the door and we called it a day – we didn’t even stop for lunch!  I managed to get the doors done on Tuesday in-between torrential downpours that made me glad we had managed to get the tunnel done on a rare sunny day.  The doors took another few hours as I had to ‘adapt’ the instructions following an earlier mistake in assembling the door-frames.  Of course, now that it’s got doors the kids think of it as their personal retreat and one of the dogs seem to believe it’s her own personal glorified kennel!?

Anyway, it’s done now and I’ve even put some seedlings and tomato plants in there, something that only really serves to highlight how large it is.  I’ve been finalising my plans for it’s interior layout and established that if I run two 2′ paths down the length of it then I can have around 20 plots at 3′ x 2′ plus 14 plots at 4′ x 3′ … unless my maths is seriously lacking!  That’s a great variety of crops!!

The Morningside Makers Market

The Morningside Makers Market is a monthly affair that takes place at the Columcille Centre in Edinburgh on the first Saturday of every month and accommodates around 30 stalls each featuring arts and crafts made by-and-large by the stall holders themselves, this in itself is a huge attraction, all the crafts for sale are created locally by the people who are selling them … so no imported crafts from the far east or elsewhere.

This was actually our first fair of the year, following the cancellation (through no fault of our own) of the events that were meant to precede this one.  The fact that we had a couple of fairs cancelled actually knocked our motivation quite badly, really taking the wind out of our sails, so it was good to finally get out to an event and speak with other stall holders and those passing through.

To be honest though we were fairly disappointed with the day, there were long periods when it was very quiet punctuated by spells when you would be forgiven for believing that people were arriving by the coach load.  In terms of takings it was probably the worst event we’ve had although from speaking to and watching other stallholders I don’t think we were the only ones and it seems from those who have attended regularly that the day was exceptionally and unusually quiet … I guess we just aren’t having any luck this year!

On the upside we met some really enthusiastic people, stallholders and customers alike, which made all the difference in terms of how we viewed the day and I think we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s an event we’ll maybe seek to attend on a more regular basis in the future, we’re back there in October anyway so we’ll hopefully get a better idea following that event and look to book up for 2011.

If we’ve taken away anything from this fair it was what people were interested in, the fabric finches proved popular, as did the plant pokes and the sock creatures, but I think we were both surprised to find that the most popular item by far was the hand-bound photo notebooks.  Jolene originally made these on a whim to use up some spare photo’s and yet people seemed to be fascinated by them and our limited stock was quickly depleted, later we’ll be poring over our photo collection to see which others might make nice little notebook covers!

I had hoped to get some pictures from the event to share with you but Jolene’s new camera (a long service award from her work) wasn’t really up to the job and there’s only really the one worth sharing, ho-hum, such is life!

Scottish wild daisies

Jolene loves these wild daisies that flower in masses up and down the sides of roads, motorways and any other wild verge they can gain a foothold in … little wonder then that a small colony has established themselves in the garden!?

They are tremendously nice, although they’re currently competing with some ground elder that I’d remove if I could summon the energy and if it would stop raining for a wee while, although even the ground elder puts out some lovely wee flowers:

Still, I think we’d much rather have these ones:

I actually went a bought a close approximation of the wild daisy, no doubt a cultivar of some sort – the marguerite daisy – before the wild ones sprang up:

Anyway, that’ll be some daisies then …

Andy Scott’s M8 Heavy Horse and other sculptures

I’ve always been a fan of the Heavy Horse sculpture that stands on the West bound side of the motorway on the way out of Glasgow, it’s particularly impressive when illuminated on a clear night.  There are a huge number of fantastic photo’s featuring the sculpture out there on the web although I particularly like this one from David May’s Flickr photostream:

I was certainly aware that Andy Scott has completed a number of other high profile sculptures, but to be honest I hadn’t actually seen other examples of his work until I started writing this article and conducting the obligatory google searches.  One of the first sites I came across was Andy’s own website where you can download a number of pictures depicting his work, such as this fine example, ‘Arabesque’:

Andy has completed a number of fine sculptures but just to give you a sense of scale I thought I might share this image that happened across on Zimbio.com

According to Zimbio, this is the worlds largest example of a horse sculpture.  It represents one of two heads Andy made, two Kelpies, which were subsequently placed at the entrance to the Forth and Clyde Canal.

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Kelpies themselves are an interesting string to Scottish folklore, but I’ll let you read about them yourself before I digress any further:

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Transfixed by Airfix

I feel that I should start this post by stating that I’m in no way an airfix enthusiast, a military enthusiast, or even an aircraft enthusiast come to think of it … there, that’s that settled!

It was while browsing through one of those gawd-awful large ‘hobby’ shops that I picked this up, more on a whim than anything else, and ended up devoting more hours than I care to admit to assembling, painting and finally affixing the transfers to this 1:72 scale model of the Hawker Sea Fury FB.11.

It actually pains me to admit that I actually rather enjoyed the whole process, although it was a tad frustrating at times.  Especially the transfers, many of which were so tiny that it was a real chore to get them correctly placed.  This model was an Airfix one and I was relatively impressed with the quality of the moulded pieces and the generally good fit when it came to putting them together.

I have to admit that I actually enjoyed making this one so much that I spent some time looking for another model to while away a few hours and ended up buying one  from Revell – a Sopwith F-1 camel – although I can’t say I’ll be buying any more Revell models, the quality being fairly substandard in comparison to the Airfix one.

What I particularly liked about this model was the wee bit of background information that came with it, so not even so much the model itself then, it read:

The Sea Fury was the last of the piston engine powered fighters to see service with the Royal Navy.  The aircraft represented the limit to which the propeller driven fighter could be developed  and at this stage the jet fighter took over.  The F.B. Mk11 was powered by an eighteen cylinder Bristol Centaurus engine, driving a five-bladed propeller.

The Sea Fury saw active service with the Fleet Air Arm in the Korean War aboard the British Eastern Fleet carriers.  They served with distinction when on the 9th August 1952, a flight of four 802 aircraft were intercepted by eight MiGs.  Lead by Lt P Carmichael in the dog fight that ensued one MiG was seen to crash and two others were badly damaged without any loss to the Sea Furies.  This was perhaps the Royal Navy’s most significant incident involving the shooting down of a jet fighter by a piston engine powered aircraft.

Now, I have no knowledge of such things, but that last bit sounds pretty damned impressive to me!

Will I be doing more Airfix models?  Perhaps, it was far more engaging than I had imagined and provided a good bit of focus on something at least marginally crafty when focus on anything crafty at all has been somewhat lacking of late.

Japanese rice field art

It’s said that, ‘adversity is the mother of all ingenuity’, and when the small town of Inakadate (pronounced ee-NAH-kah-dah-tay) fell upon hard times that certainly seemed to be the case.  Struggling with a lack of industry and a public debt of more than three times it’s annual budget the town looked towards tourism as a potential source of much needed income, I can’t imagine they expected such success when they happened upon the idea of of using different colours of rice to create football field sized works of art.

In 2009 the works led to an estimated 170,000 visitors to the town, whose population is a mere 8,450.  A huge triumph in terms of visitor numbers even if they haven’t fully realised a method to capitalise on the economic potential of such large numbers of visitors – the council took $70,000 worth of donations, although you would have to imagine that local businesses have benefited from a surge in custom from the passing trade.

You can read the full article in the New York Times.

Chocolate meringue torte

I made this cake at the request of my wee boy who wanted it for his seventh birthday, no doubt he wanted it due to the large quantities of chocolate involved and the extremely pretty picture in the recipe book which was all swirls and twirls of chocolate … not a finish I was able to achieve, although not for lack of trying!

We decorated the cake in the only way kids generally know how, with a range of sprinkles and a mismatch of candles, as things stand I’ve been referring to this, and I apologise for the crudity, but it’s ‘the cow-pat cake’!?  Not that it tastes like one you understand … not that I know what one tastes like!  Definitely one for the chocoholics out there though.

What you’ll need:

• 6 egg whites
• 220g caster sugar
• 140g slivered almonds
• 95g dried fruit
• 200g dark chocolate, grated
• 300g ricotta cheese
• 180g single cream
• 80ml Tia Maria
• 200g white chocolate melts
• 200g milk chocolate melts
• 200g dark chocolate melts

What you need to do:

1. Preheat your oven to 150C.
2. Grease a 24cm spring-form tin lining the base
3. Beat the egg whites in a medium bowl – if you are intending on eating the cake yourself you should probably do it by hand to burn off some of the calories you’re going to be consuming later – until soft peaks form
4. Gradually add the sugar beating it in every time you add some.
5. Fold in the nuts, fruit and half the grated chocolate.
6. Deposit mix in the greased tin.
7. Bake in the oven for around 1 1/4 hours until it’s firm, cool meringue in the oven leaving the door ajar
8. Meanwhile, beat the cheese and the cream in a medium bowl until there are no lumps, stir in liqueur and remaining chocolate, place to one side, in the fridge is good.
9. Melt the chocolate melts (in 200g gram batches) adding each batch to the cream mixture.
10. Mix the topping together well, as it cools it will begin to thicken.
11. Liberally spread the topping over the meringue centre.
12. Decorate as you wish, or not at all, and serve.

more flowers … less fairs

In the last 4 weeks we’ve had both of our booked craft fairs whipped out from under our feet, due to no fault of our own I hasten to add.  The first thanks to the council library failing to sort out the right licence from, well, the council; the second being cancelled for who knows what reason.  It’s not like it’s the end of the world but it is just a tad frustrating!

In fact the only ‘fair’ we’ve been to recently was the Rosneath Highland Games, although that was only to spectate, not that I would struggle to throw the hammer or toss the caber you understand but I wouldn’t want to put all those big burly blokes noses out of joint by showing them up …

… I didn’t even get any decent pics of the games that I would be happy to share on here, so – I’m afraid – that means more pictures of flowers!  This remains a craft blog, honestly, even if it does look more and more like a gardening one!!

It’s pink … what more can I say!

Marigold

Rocket (I believe)

They’re white, and flowery … very pretty!

It was the lad’s birthday a couple of weeks ago so there’s a cake post waiting to be written, coming soon I assure you!

even more GrownStuff and a give-away

… and still I’m gripped by an inability to craft, seized as I am between an unfinished poly-tunnel and the start of the school summer holidays.

Progress on the poly-tunnel is slow, although there is at least progress with the door-frames having been erected since my last update, leaving only the base-rail to attach, the cover to apply and finally the door to attach.  On the bright side I have discovered an aquilegia hiding under a willow hedge, I’ve wanted aquilegia in the garden for an age and knew that if I was patient it would make it’s way up here from the village below.

We also have one of these (below) in the garden although, I’m damned if I know what it is …

… in fact, it’s bugging me so much that I’m willing to give the first person who can identify it a £5 discount off anything with a price-tag of £10 or more from the shop.  All you need to do is convince me that your identification is correct by providing me with a link/s to somewhere that shows pictures with the correct name attached.  Just leave a comment at the bottom.   That should be easy enough if you already know what it is :)

Also today the lad has been playing with dung beetles …