The best pets are free

One thing that makes me sad about living here is I can’t have a cat and I would dearly love one. They are such beautiful company, and for many years I’ve always had one around. My small collection of ornamental cats is a cheaper version of the real thing – they don’t need feeding or trips to the vet!

But everything has its advantages and disadvantages. Other than all the positives about being renters, like the reduced stress for example, living in a gated community that does not allow pets definately has it upside. We are never woken up by dogs barking at ridiculous hours, by whining distressed pets left behind by their owners for the weekend, like my old neighbours used to do on a regular basis. There’s no vicous barking everytime someone dares to walk past, insulting the animal’s delicate sensibilities.

Instead, there’s a host of beautiful birdlife that often comes to visit because there are no cats around hunting them. We put a bird bath in the courtyard a few months ago, and a small swallow regularly stops by for his morning wash. There is also a pair of doves that live here, they often hang out on my fence and come right up to my back door where I leave crumbs for them. They have a pretty pink tinge and a speckled neck, and coo-coo delicately and lovingly to each other. Sometimes, the male goes right off and won’t stop his insistent love song, so I’m forced to play some music to drown him out, which sometimes does not work!

And then of course, there is Lizzie the Lizard. Now, I don’t know how she managed it, but this lizard looks an awful lot like the one at my old place. Or maybe, there is a resident lizard in every house that does not have a cat? Recently I’ve seen Lizzie chase a smaller lizard across the house, unusually oblivious to me, their tails flailing wildly and comically in the air.

So I guess because I can’t have a cat, I’ll just have to enjoy having these less intrusive pets around. Pets who are free to come and go as they please, and bring no harm to the other wildlife around the place. Except for other lizards that happen to be smaller than them! A bird free to fly away as it chooses I find a much greater joy than one that is caged against its will. There is nothing sadder in my mind than a bird meant to fly, captured in a cage.

What to do with a gollywog toy? Octopus Boy!!!

Ashamed and reviled by society, poor gollywog toy could not face anyone, could not bare to be in the company of people. They assumed he was ignorant and stupid and were scared he would cause trouble wherever he went. But in his heart, he was a peace loving artist who was just misunderstood. “I can’t help the way I am!” he exclaimed, alone into the night, and “Don’t stereotype me!”. In desperation, his fairy-god mother made for him a super hero outfit that would disguise him. Finally, he could be amongst the people proud, content in the knowledge that they would not burn him at the stake like a witch, or stone him to death in a frenzied riot. He was now, and forever will be Octopus Boy!!!!! Hurrah!

Pretty Covered Coathangers

Every wardrobe is not complete without a few of these covered coathangers! I don’t know why I haven’t made these before, they are so easy.

Many years ago I replaced all the old coathangers in my cupboard with plastic ones. But you know how these things multiply, right? Somehow, I now have three old wooden hangers in my cupboards and I’m not sure how they got there! They really needed covering, the wood catches on delicate clothes, and the corners leave imprints in the shoulders. Covering them fixes that!

I searched around on the net for ideas on how to do it, but they all  seemed a bit too fussy. For mine, I just cut up some recycled foam packaging and secured it with elastic bands. Then I simply hand stitched the pretty material straight over the top, folding in the edges, using blanket stitch. I folded in the ends and stitched that down, too. The lavender ones have pretty white buttons to secure the ends. I then finished off with a very simple little bow to cover the tiny gap for the hook. These are a cinch and don’t take long to make at all.

Elder Uma's "What to Wear" Dilemma

Oh no! What to wear?? That is the Question!!! Here is a gallery of all the Chinese New Year outfits you can get in WoW.  Seeing as Uma had a truckload of coins to spend after getting the title, what else was she to do but to go and get every single one???

Elder Uma celebrates Chinese New Year

One of my most favourite World of Warcraft seasonal festivities is the Lunar Festival, which celebrates Chinese New Year with fireworks, cookies and beautiful costumes.

I’ve always loved the special dresses you can get with the Elder coins, they are the most pretty in the game imho. In my old RP days, I had one of these outfits on each of my Feathermoon characters in a different colour (which was colour-coordinated with their other outfits!). At one point, I was logging them out in their RP gear so they looked nice at the starter screen. Aaaahhh, what you do when you are bored!

I’ve figured I would get one title for each of my ‘main’ toons, rather than trying to get all seasonal titles on one toon for the special mount. My druid Uma just Had to be the Elder, right? This is one of the few dresses that actually suits the tauren females! Also, I figured “Elder Uma” was a funny play on vowels which sounded right, much like how “Sigora the Explorer” suits my hunter. But I couldn’t get the Elder title on Uma last year as she was only level 60 and you need level 77 to get to the Elder in Utgarde Pinnacle. I thought she had to be 80, so was aiming for that, but realised she didn’t need to level all the way, so didn’t. No point in levelling yet another toon if I don’t actually feel like it.

Uma is an interesting character, pretty quiet,  supposedly stately and composed, so her personality seems well suited to the Elder title. But get her around Amberthorn and her impulses to /udderflash can be quite embarrassing! Now she is an “Elder”, perhaps she will conduct herself with more decorum, even while in the company of handsome tauren males!!!

Hexagon Jackets

I saw this baby’s hexagon jacket at Crochet Soiree and thought it was so cute and might be fun to try, even though there isn’t anyone in particular for me to be making it for!

I didn’t follow a pattern, just made a couple of hexagons and joined them together. The orange and blue one was my first try, which wasn’t quite right but I thought it might do as a toy’s jacket. I covered an old button with the blue wool. Then I did the white one, which fits on my big teddy. I think it looks rather pretty with the pink buttons which I haven’t decided to attach yet or not.  I’ve been feeling a bit blue the last couple of days to be honest, but I don’t feel like I’m allowed to express my opinion, even on my very own blog that no one actually reads! Go figure.

Baby Basils

We have three types of basil growing in our garden, the ‘all-year-round’ variety is doing very well. The sweet basil does not survive the winter, and the thai basil is currently looking a little sad.

Because the all-year-round basil is doing so very well, I researched how to propogate basil, which turned out to be a simple matter of taking some cuttings and putting them in some water. I had these on the kitchen window sill for a week or two, and they madly put out a bunch of roots. This morning I decided it was time to plant them, as the roots were starting to push the plant out of the glasses, making them fall over.

I’ve decided that whenever planting into an empty pot that is black, I shall first decorate it! I find the black plastic garden pots quite depressing looking and have been trying to work out how to paint them. I thought I could paint them with some acrylic paint I have, which turned out to be “epic fail”, as it just washed off in water. Finally, I found some Paint Markers from the newsagent that do the job. This is my first successful plant pot decoration, a very simple red, blue and gold design. Now the healthy basil has two new babies to grow and shelter under its wings.
/awwwwww

Hollandaise Sauce and Rosy Pink Meringues

On Saturday 13th February, the day before Valentine’s Day, one of the many things we baked was David’s yummy hollandaise sauce for our salmon eggs benedict. But what to do with the left over egg whites? Why, my Rosy Pink Meringues, of course!

I helped David with the emulsion step of the hollandaise sauce, which has to be done very slowly, adding one cube of butter at a time. We then refridgerated it in a jar over night. To heat it up the next day, you have to warm it very very slowly over the double boiler. If you do it too fast, the emulsion will break and the egg and butter will seperate. It is possible to do this, but on Sunday morning, it was heated a little too fast and it did break. All you have to do to save it is, put a tablespoon of lemon juice in a fresh bowl to use as a double boiler. Then add one tablespoon of the broken emulsion, mix until it’s the correct consistency, then slowly add the rest of the broken emulsion one tablespoon at a time. We also discovered that hollandaise sauce, it’s main ingredient being butter, makes a very yummy buttery spread on bread when it’s cold from the fridge! No need to warm it over a double boiler, it’s yummy cold. I reckon it tastes a bit like the kraft cheese spread.

Because hollandaise sauce uses three egg yolks, you are then left over with three egg whites. We don’t make hollandaise sauce often, its a special treat which I love, so we usually make some meringues with the egg whites. I use a very simple recipe I found in my “Australia the Beautiful Cookbook” by Hayes and Gorrick, 1982, page 168. You only need the eggs whites and a bit of sugar. I also added a drop of red food dye, which I clumsily splashed on my fingers, and a drop of vanilla essence. David whisked these up using our new handwhisk, so these turned out the best so far due to the proper whisking they got! I had considerable fun playing with the gorgeous pink mixture that spooned onto the tray so delightfully. When they come out of the oven, the pink had a rosy tinge to it due to the browning from the cooking, which I think looks rather lovely. When we were eating our love heart icecream cake on Sunday, David thought to crumble one of these pink meringues over the top of it, and it was scrummy!!

Three Small Things – showerpuff, beaded hanger, doily

>>> I finished this pink shower puff yesterday. I used the crochet shower puff pattern from Crochetspot. It was really fun to make, the pretty pink cotton yarn I chose to try was really nice, but it took more than a whole roll. It certainly isn’t the cheap option for shower puffs, as you can pick up the plastic ones for a dollar or two, and the yarn cost $3 each. It took a while to do as well, but it was a relaxing exercise. Apparently they last longer than the plastic ones, so I decided I needed to try it out in the shower. It feels like a face washer, and lathers up about as much. I’d rather the exfoliation of the plastic shower puff, so I think I’ll pop this one in the guest bathroom because it is quite pretty.

<<< After I picked up David’s suit yesterday from the drycleaners, I beaded the wire hanger with some old plastic beads I had stashed away. I don’t have any other wire hangers, I threw them all away years ago, but wanted to try this out to see if it works. I got the idea for the beaded wire hanger from allfreecrafts. With it being summer, I’m wearing more singlets than usual and want to hang them up, but don’t have enough of the kind of hangers where the straps won’t slip off. I finished this hanger with some red ribbon and a cute little bow.

>>> On Monday, I bought a new dress that might do me as a wedding dress, if we actually get around to organising a wedding sometime in the next 12 months or so, which might not happen. I’m wondering if I’ll be able to make myself a little cream coloured bolero to go with it, so I’ve started practicing and working out a draft pattern that has potental. I’m really liking the gathered petals, which is (tr 4 tog).  Part of this sample was inspired by a pattern my mum gave me, and I used some lovely lemon coloured cotton she also gave me. Thanks, mum!

Lovey Dovey Greeting Card and Envelope

I couldn’t post this before yesterday, but this is the lovey dovey card I made for David, wrapped up in a custom-made pink envelope.

First, I made the snowflake from red coloured paper which I had in my stash left over from my school teaching days (I have kept soo much stuff). This measured 9cm x 9cm. I got the idea for the front of this card from the snowflake greeting card from allfreecrafts.com I carefully glued that with craft glue onto the front of a 10cm x 10cm card cut from white cardboard. I then made a paper insert with pink paper which was 9cm x 9cm. I attached it by handsewing with red embroidery thread a few stitches down the spine and ended that with a soppy bow on the inside of the card.

I finished off the greeting card with love hearts hole punched into the top right hand corner of the pink paper insert, before adding some lovey dovey words for my sweetheart! Then using some more pink paper, I folded it around the card to form an envelope, trimming it to be neat. I secured it with a small dot of glue on the inside, which I concealed on the outside with a lovey dovey sticker I bought as an impulse. Not very thrifty of me I know, but those lovey dovey stickers were very cute!