Blog of the Month - Craft Sanity

So many nice blogs out there and I feel like sharing. It is time for blog of the month!


This time it is actually more the podcast that I'm so crazy about rather than the blog, although the blog is nice as well. The podcast and the blog is called Craft Sanity.  The woman behind it, Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood, must be one of the nicest people in the world. I mean I don't know her or anything but just listing to one of her podcast and you know what I mean. 



In her podcast she interviews all kind of creative people and the way she does it is phenomenal. It's more like a real good conversation between two best friends. Or actually three friends the listener being the third one. This is a true power to the people kind of thing. She is exited about something and interviews the person behind it. The person in question gets free marketing and the listener valuable information. No marketing departments or sales reps or editorial boards involved. Just people liking each others stuff and sharing. All this in a fun informal way that I just adore. In Jennifer's own words: Craft Sanity - works for me. 

Sweet Alabama

My craft library has tripled it's size during the last months. The excitement of browsing on Amazon and waiting for the books to come from United States is getting a bit addictive. Couple weeks ago the post brought me book called Alabama Studio Style by Natalie Chanin. I doubted for a long time if I should buy this one or the first book of the same author instead. I finally decided to buy this one since it has recipes as well and I thought if I don't like the projects at least I have a new cook book. I love it. Before I knew it I was hand sewing a basic tank dress for myself. And it is already done! The sewing part that is. I still need to color the fabric which of course in the book was the first step to do but since i didn't have the tools for coloring in hand I skipped it  and started sewing.

Why is this book so great? To be honest, I don't know! I read all the reviews on Amazon and I kept thinking that they are all so enthusiast about it but I don't really see why? What is it that makes it so special? I still don't know what it is but I love it.  As I said I have been purchasing quite a few books lately and most of them I have just skimmed through. With Alabama Studio Style I was cutting fabric the next day and week later bought more fabric to start on another projects from the book. 

I love it that it is all hand sewing. That is one of the few thing that you can actually do when looking after small children. Or when your watching TV. I hope I can get to the coloring soon so that I can post some picture of the finished dress, but since that is not one of the things you can easily do when caring for a 1-year-old it can take awhile. In the mean time please enjoy other peoples creations. 

Fabrics

The quilt shops seems to have it easy - they have this one type of cotton fabric that they sell and that's pretty much it. It is even called Quilting Weight Cotton. But outside the hardcore quilting world things get more complicated. Anna Maria Horner recently posted about her new fabric type, voile. She is also have a collection printed on flannel. Last week I got my new books from Amazon including Alabama Studio Style and she uses cotton jersey for almost all of the projects. When looking at the options to make nappies to my youngest one my head really starts to spin. Bamboo, hemp, silk wool and all kind of combinations of these with different textures. 

What I do know is that I love the combination of hand sewing and cotton jersey as described in Alabama Studio Style. At least if it jersey that I'm working with...and if it is, is it double, interlock or single? I really don't know. I need some help. 

Blog of the Month - angry chicken

So many nice blogs out there and I feel like sharing. It is time for blog of the month!


It is March 28 so it really is a time for the Blog of the Month!

I hinted again on this one on my earlier post:

angry chicken

This one is hard to describe without making it sound boring - what it of course is not. It is a blog about recipes, sewing, crafting and the life of a mother of three, but I don´t think that description really catches the essence of it. It's what I think you could call "gate opener" blog.  It is like Oprah´s book club. There is some much out there that it is overwhelming to even start to look for a book, so you just don´t even bother. And then you see a book in Oprah and think, well they all like it, why not. Angry chicken is a nice place to hang out and when enjoying the stories you get expose to all kind of nice information that is angry chicken approved and want to try it. Like vanilla cake. Or making your own cosmetics.

I have been thinking about making my own natural cosmetics every since I saw how easily it can be done on TV show criticizing the cosmetic-industry. This must be over a decade ago. I have never actually tried it since I did not know how to get started. The internet must be full of (free) recipes, but how can I know are they any good?  And then I saw on angry chicken that she was selling a ebook with 16 health and beauty recipes, all tested, used and approved by her! A gate opener for me to finally try to make my own cosmetics. 

Cake

Spring! Cake! These cupcakes where delicious. Who would have thought that plain-vanilla can be this good!

I got the recipe from here and she got it from here. The recipe is for a cake, to make cupcakes I just reduced the baking time and increased the temperature a little bit. I used real vanilla and you really do notice the difference. Like eating cake and vanilla ice-cream all in one! To get the real idea of the taste and the texture I recommend you visit the first link and you will know why I just had to made these.

The little flower-girl I made a year ago from a DIY kit from Hompeltje en Pompeltje. I would love to have a real season table with all the figures. When I'm fifty I think I will be finished with the spring and can go on with the summer...I'm working on a second doll, I will introduce him to you when the time is ready. Could be this spring, could be the next one.

Seeds

First seeds of the year have been planted! Today we woke up here in the Netherlands to another snowy winter day, but yesterday it was sunny and lovely. Perfect day to start the gardening season by planting the first seeds. The seeds in these boxes will stay inside for awhile, but fingers crossed, maybe in few weeks we can start to plant outside as well. 

As you can see it is very low budget process here using the old milk packages, but I managed to spend  some money as well buying seeds for purple queen beans, pink and white Borlotto Firetongue beans and purple haze carrots...love to have some color in my vegetable garden. I already had way too many seeds for my very little piece of land but I could not resist to get some more!

Crafty afternoons

Each time my daughter is crafting she insist that I join her. One of the many many joys of having small children. I love cutting and gluing, or this time it was actually just gluing using the small fabric leftovers I had collected from other projects. It is amazing to see how even the smallest pieces of design fabric  can look so great!