Shades of grey

I did something a little bit different this week, while managing to use one of  my alltime favourite designs. I nearly always go for simplicity - if I can't draw/paint it with my left hand (and I'm not left-handed) then I really don't want to do it. Ok, my right hand looks awful regardless, but at least not *as* bad as it could.

The basic colour scheme this week evolved over breakfast on Saturday. As anybody who knows me well knows, I am always on the look out for colours and patterns that I like. And if I see a friend wearing a colour that I like, I am always going to figure out a way to use it.

So on Saturday morning I was sitting in my neighbours' flat, and looking at my friend Heather's grey nail polish. And I liked it. I have a few silvers at home, but I don't have a nice flat grey. And looking at it, I realised it was the perfect thing to go with my purple. But first, I had to figure out a design.

In the end, I plumped for the classic French polish - a design that would never interest me the 'normal' way, especially as my bare nails look better than that anyway - and hovered between grey with purple tips, or purple with grey. Such a hard decision - it took me ages to ask Heather to borrow the polish, just because I couldn't decide.


In the end, I went with grey with purple tips, I can't even remember why. I just thought it would look stunning. And it did.

I also, however, loved it with just the grey and was seriously tempted to leave it like that.

It's actually really good nail polish - that was the covering with one coat. But I ended up with two, just for the extra staying power. I also painted my right hand with green tips, instead of purple, as I realised the green would also look good with the grey. Though, writing that out just reminded me forcibly of my school uniform, which is not so cool.

And of course, with my left hand, I have awful nail painting skills...

I don't think the green looked *quite* as good as the grey, but in real life, it is still pretty nice. The purple however, was just perfect. Unfortunately, without my chip skip, basecoat or top coat, it started chipping on Monday. But on Sunday, just for a while, they were perfect.

Split nails and woollen scarves

I think I'm currently working on a weekly blogging plan. Basically, whenever I paint my nails. And anything else that can be reported - like the scarf I'm making - can be added at the same time.

This week has been super busy, now that I have classes sorted out, and the Uni has all their stuff sorted out too. I have at least 2 linguistic talks to go to every week, and every second week it's 3. Plus I have lots of reading to do, and questions to answer for readings I do. Everything right now is really go go go. But I've done all my reading for Tuesday, and I hope I can actually go to the wool store tomorrow, as I really want some new wool. I started working on a scarf last Monday at KnitSoc.

It's just an 8ply, Alpaca wool (of some type, I bought it in Germany), and I'm just doing rows of treble (double for Americans) stitch. I've got through an entire ball now and it's looking quite good. It might be a bit short, but I don't really feel there's much I can do about it. I'm hoping to actually do some knitting as well soon, because there's something quite infectious about being surrounded by knitters. Knitting is like a hidden passion - quite hidden - because every now and again, I just really feel the need to knit. I don't really understand why, as crochet is easier (for me) and far far quicker.

Still, the ability to make something is always nice.

But my nails! I still only have 3 colours to play with, so I have to be a bit creative if I want to avoid just 10 nails the same colour. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and I'm sure at some point they will all be painted the same colour, but right now I'm still trying to mix it up a bit. So I did a bit of eeny meeny miny mo this morning, and put the colours together to see which I liked best. I had already decided on a bit of a classic 'split' design. One nail, 2 different colours. I considered polka dots, but they can get messy and look awful. So I went with this instead - and I think I chose the right colours...

 Half painted

 One coat of each

The finished product.












And now for the final test I do, to see if ut reakkt worked. Sorry the lighting is so bad, by the way, I don't get much natural here - at least, not when the sun isn't shining.

The side shot. I love the fact that my nails look one colour from one side, and another from the other. But then, maybe I just like confusing people...

Nail polish dreaming.

So here I am in Edinburgh. I managed to leave all my nail polish behind - which was a huge disappointment - as well as all my cuticle sticks, my nail oils, my moisturisers, nail art brushes, decals and...well...everything. I didn't even have a chance to paint my nails before I went because I spent the day before I left packing. Oh, no, sorry, I spent the day I left packing.

Which was when I learnt a valuable lesson. If your suitcase is too full, and you *have* to take out clothes...you don't necessarily want to take out all your shirts and just leave underwear. Which is pretty much what I did. Reasoned, of course, that underwear is small while shirts are big and take up more room. So when I got here, I had enough socks and undies to fill up a drawer, and 4 shirts. And 3 pairs of jeans, 2 coats and some shoes. The worst bit was that I actually took out all my long sleeved shirts so I arrived, in Scotland, at the start of autumn, with 3 tshirts, and one long sleeved shirt. My problem,in all of this, was there were things I *had* to have. I had to have my white cord jeans, because I can't live without them. I *had* to have my red coat for exactly the same reason. And the coat will be very useful, just as soon as it warms up a bit. And possibly starts raining. It's a great jacket - it's waterproof - it's just not very warm.

The flight here was insane. I had a bad moment, sitting at Brisbane airport, and wondering if it was too late to just go back. Seriously, can you go back past security? I couldn't help wondering. But I got on the plane, and found myself between a Swiss woman, and a nigerian man. Both very nice people, but it's hard to get comfy in the middle. Both ways I turned, when I was trying to sleep, left me facing someone. Plus the nigerian guy tended to take up space. He wasn't fat, he just took up space. Like both his arm rests, with his elbows into my chair. But at least the conversation was interesting. And I got lots of exercise, every time either I or he decided to go to the toilet. The worst bit about it was that it was 14 hours. It's so depressing - you watch a movie, and then another movie and think "woo, I just got rhrough 4 hours of flight" and then you realise "there's another 10 hours on this plane, and then another 7 or 8 on another plane". And that's when you cry. No, kidding, but you get extremely depressed and start watching more movies. And Friends. I watched every episode of Friends they had on offer.

The stop at Dubai consisted of meeting a girl from Hong Kong, who grew up in Canada, and now studies in Durham, who gave me a headache tablet for the severe migraine I had coming on. That was a weird moment. You probably shouldn't accept drugs from strangers, especially when you don't recongise them, but sometimes depseration just drives you on. Plus, in Dubai, swiss woman bought me a bottle of water. Which was so kind, as the first plane had been very hot and I got through my bottle. As fot the 8 hour flight, it was awful. My screen wouldn't work, so I couldn't watch movies. My neighbour didn't want to talk so I didn't even try. Thankfully I had a book, and spent the entire time reading it. Until I finished it with an hour to spare.

And then, Newcastle. Possibly not the best place to come in, because they didn't have much in the way of Immigration. Just 4 people processing all these incoming students and holiday makers coming home. Standing in line for 50 minutes, watching the UK and EU passport holders sailing through beside me. And I saw 3 plane loads come in and go through quicker than me. Only to get there and have to show proof that I am actually going to uni here. Thankfully I remembered to pack it. Seriously, I nearly forgot and shoved it in my bag last minute. My last day in Brisbane was not well thought out or reasoned. As I realised when I got here and found I forgot loads of things I wanted to bring.

I had a great trip up from Newcastle to edinburgh. I love the scenery here, so I just sat back, ipod in ears, and enjoyed the trip. Didn't enjoy the 'getting off the train with heavy roller luggage' bit, and really missed my 13kg backpack, which had waighed less and was easier to cope with.

And as for Edinburgh itself. It's beautiful. It's just stunning and I love it. Ok, it's hard to find vegemite, and impossible to find milo or timtams. We're not allowed a toaster in case we accidentally set off the fire alarm and evacuate tbe building, but that's the main downside. My flatmates are great, my neighbours are excellent, and there is a guy from brisbane living downstairs. So I have the accent of home around me whenever I want. Plus a girl from Melbourne upstairs. So it's win win really.

The weirdest thing though, is that I keep meeting people who say (and I kid you not) 'oh, my best friend is from brisbane", or at least "I have a friend from Brisbane". I don't know what people from brisbane do, but we really get around. But it's nice that people have heard of it, even though I still have to explain where it is.

But of course, I am here to talk about nail polish! I obviously don't have any of mine here, so I've had to buy some. And I had no nail polish remover so I had to buy some of that too. I got these fantastic nail polish remover pads here. I've never seen them back home, but I will admit to massive OPI bias. But they're just cotton pads, soaked in remover. And they don't even smell too bad. And, being me, I took a picture.

Ok, ok, not much to look at. But I was excited.

And then, I went back to Boots and bought nail polish. I found an emerald green, like I've always wanted , and a nice purple, and a good pink.

So now I just have to decide whether I need more nail polish or not. I think, for now, that I'm going to see how much I can do with just three colours. I'm already planning something called "pink and purple polkadots'. And, I have nail polish buddies, so I will be knocking on their door when I need something a little extra. I think my neighbour Heather has something to go perfectly with that Green. I just need to check it out.

And I need to select a new nail painting day. Though, without any oils, basecoat or topcoat, it probably won't be such a lengthy process as it would be at home. I already miss having variety though. And it's been a fortnight - this doesn't bode well...

Black, with a touch of suede and matte

So my nails are painted again this week. I decided to actually make the time on Monday, because I figure I don't know how much longer I can keep painting them. I'm hoping to take a few bottles with me, but even if I can figure out the logistics of transportation, I will be sadly low on variety. As it is I'm still torn between 'absolute favourite colours' and 'a range across the spectrum'. I could do either - the former will mean I will be missing colours like yellow and orange, but the latter means I might not be able to take my very favourite colours. The decision is hard.

Fortunately, as I do have so many things to do right now, I always have a few stock patterns in the back of my head. Fairly simple designs that can look quite striking with the right colour combination. And I often like to have quite different polishes within the patterns - iridescent under something quite plain, without any shimmer. I took this idea again this week, but I went with something I think I must have done before, because it is such a good idea. But I can't remember ever doing it quite like this. Basically, I got my favourite shimmery black - Baby It's Coal Outside - and did 2 coats, with a top coat. And then, with one of my nail art brushes, I painted a design (a very simple design) over it, using La Paz-itively Hot - Matte and OPI Ink - Suede. The reason I did the top coat before I painted on the design is quite simple - if you paint top coat over the suede or matte, it loses the effect and just looks like normal nail polish. And I have been known to do that, because they are both such great colours, regardless of whether they're matte/suede or sparkly. But I didn't want that effect this week; this week I wanted to effect of something sparkly on the bottom with something very flat on the top. And it worked! Though, I don't think it comes across as well in the photos as I would like. It's hard to get the sun to really pick up the shimmer while also showing the matte effect well in a picture. And, we haven't been getting much sun where I am anyway, which made it even harder.

But I did try...

Whoops, slack

So, no nail polish post OR ice cream post this week - slack I know.

There is no ice cream post because last week I decided to make Peach sorbet instead. Mainly because I bought the can of peaches back in January, and I'm moving overseas soon so it feels a bit...wrong...if I don't at least make the effort. In my defense, I also (at the time) bought a can of peach and mango, which I very quickly turned into (a very delicious) sorbet. But it's a bit involved, so I wasn't in a hurry to do it again. Plus at the time, there were so many ice cream combinations to try - I hadn't yet perfected my condensed milk/cream mix. But now, I really feel I should. It's just, that on top of that, it's really time consuming. You have to make a sugar syrup, you have to pulse the peaches, you have to mix and chill for hours (as the sugar syrup is hot), and I'm working so much that I don't really have the time. Not that I would blog it anyway - it's just a bit boring.

And my nails...well, I took my nail polish off yesterday and found that I was nearly out of my nail polish remover wipes. As I'm leaving in a little over two weeks, buying anymore doesn't feel very sensible. I could use cotton balls, I suppose, but we currently have one. And then there are the cotton pads for make up removal (which I tried and are excellent), but that somehow seems like a waste of money, because they're so lovely and soft for make up removal. So when I was working this morning, and because I had no real plan in my head, I just decided to give my poor nails a break. It does seem a bit of a waste with the eminent move, but there you go.

Cake inspiration

So I decided to paint my nails yesterday with very little idea of what I wanted. I was out most of the day before and went to bed with a massive headache. And woke up with it too. So I hadn't really had the time to devise anything. Sometimes I have it planned a week in advance, but usually, if I want to do something fancy, I have it worked out the day before. But yesterday was just impossible.

I sat there this morning, thinking about what I wanted to do. Rifling through my memories to see if there was anything I could use. Colour isn't usually an issue, because, with the exception of Emerald green, I can do most shades, or pretty close. My lack of Emerald is the downpoint of my nail polish life.

On Sunday, I was at the Ekka - or the Exhibition to those not from Queensland or Australia. I went on a bit of a whim - I haven't been since I was in single digits, and even then I only ever went for the showbags, as rides have never held an attraction for me. But I have fond memories of wandering around with my brothers and my uncle, with my arms tired from carrying showbags, as we (or possibly I) did insist on getting them first. The logic being, of course, that if we didn't get them first, they might sell out. But when my middle brother started going with a mate, he used to take my list of showbags and buy them for me. And after Sunday, I feel I should probably thank him because I had no idea it was such a struggle.

Though maybe, 20 years ago, it was less so.

The whim was caused by the fact that I am moving overseas in a few weeks. Not permanently, but long enough to make me want to do something really Brisbane-y. Something that just screams childhood memories and 'things you can only do at home'. And among all the things I looked at were the cakes! Or, to be exact, the icing.

And that, in the end, was the inspiration. I saw a lot of cakes that I liked - a few, particularly, in white and black. But one of my favourites, and possibly the most easy to reproduce, was one in dark brown and light pink. It had stripes, it had flowers, and the colours just worked so well together. Funnily, though, they were the colours that could give me the most problems. Light brown and dark pink, fine, I have many. But dark brown and light pink, not so much. I trawled through my polishes - and I really mean trawled - and I finally found what I wanted. Or as close an approximation as I could get.

And then, the other problem was - do I just do stripes on my nails (a bit of an old favourite) or do I try for something a bit more difficult? I decided on the bit more difficult idea, which involved vertical stripes until I got to the white of my nail, which I then painted brown. Depending on how it looked, would depend whether I drew flowers or not.

And I have to say, when I finished the basics, it looked pretty awful. The fact that I was working at the same time didn't help, as I had to paint some nail and then do something else. And vertical stripes aren't easy unless you have a very steady hand. It was just a mess. So I decided to draw flowers on the tip - or at least, a flower - which is when I had my brain wave. Diamantes. I love diamantes on my nails, but I rarely use them because they're a bit of a nuisance to apply. Fiddly tweezers, wet nail polish, so there's a real chance of smudging, it tends to be a nightmare. And by the time I had decided I wanted them, my first two coats were painted and already too dry. So, in the end, my 'flowers' became 5 lines that met in the middle, and on this I pressed a diamante. And I have to say, it adds a bit of class.

Unfortunately, however, it does mean I had to take the picture when they were still a bit messy, generally, as diamantes hate staying on (for me anyway), and generally come off when I'm doing something.

I'm still a bit undecided whether they look great, or whether they look awful...

Lime & Coconut Ice cream

Thursday, so it's ice cream making day again! One of my favourite days of the week - at least, when I have a recipe in my head that I've been wanting to make for a while.

I devised this one last week, at the same time as my chocolate coconut ice cream. Mum had been looking for recipes online using coconut and found a Lime Coconut one. I got very excited, as it is one of my favourite cake flavours, but it was one of those recipes that is 'some lime, some coconut, some vanilla ice cream'. And when it comes to ice cream, that is not how I work. I want to make them from the base up. But I had a big hurdle to get over - I use 600mls of cream, and if I add lime juice to that, it is very likely to curdle. And I don't want curdled ice cream. I decided, in the end, to ignore lime juice and just use the rind. I considered making a sorbet, instead of ice cream, but I wasn't really sure how it would go with shredded coconut. Plus, even though I like sorbet (especially in the middle of summer), I love ice cream.

So in the end, I devised the following recipe, and it worked quite well. The limes I used were quite small - as they tend to be here - about 5cm (2inches) in diameter. I *think* I've seen them bigger overseas, but I could have been confusing that. So if 5cm is what you have over there, you're fine.

Rind of two limes.
1/2 cup shredded coconut
395g tin condensed milk
600ml thickened cream.

I grated the rind off the limes, and mixed it with the coconut and left in a sealed container overnight. I was hoping to infuse the coconut slightly with the taste. No idea whether it worked, but the container smelt good in the morning. In the morning, I mixed the cream and condensed milk in a bowl, and then added the coconut/lime rind, and mixed well. I let it chill in the fridge for 30-45minutes, and then just poured it into my ice cream maker. I was a bit concerned at first that it had curdled, but I think that was just coconut.

And the result was a nice, creamy, lime flavoured icecream. With coconut. It was really quite good - though right now, I am feeling extremely full. The lime was just right (for me, anyway), not too overpowering, but strong enough to be noticeable.

Now, I just have to figure out a flavour for next week...

Simple, elegant design

If anything I do can ever be called elegant!

I would have posted yesterday, as I didn't paint my nails until Monday, but the internet got put back to dial up speed, so I didn't really have a chance.

I went out on Sunday, my usual nail painting day, to buy myself a suitcase for my upcoming move, and as I like to give my nails the entire day to dry I had to put nail painting off until Monday. And as I only have a few weeks left in the country, I might continue this. I find I can still work while I paint my nails (or paint my nails while I work), whereas going out on a Sunday really messes up my nail polish routine. Plus, I have a few craft projects I am madly trying to finish, so Sunday is rather wasted.

But because I was working, I went with a fairly simple design. An old favourite - I love painting my nail base one colour, and then painting the tips in something contrasting. This week, the base colour is a fairly new one from the OPI Katy Perry collection - Not Like the Movies - and the tips are done in a colour I used only in the last week or two - Deer Valley Spice. (For anyone who doesn't know, my nails are only ever painted in OPI)

I'm really happy with it. I also toyed with using my favourite colour - It's All Greek to Me - but it's a little gluggy and I needed something that would dry fairly well. Gluggy on my tips is not ideal, as it would be so much easier to smudge it or worse. But I think Deer Valley Spice - which is slightly darker, purpler than Greek - works really well. And I love Not Like the Movies, because it looks silver/grey in some lights and then green in others. Oh, and it's a bit sparkly, which is my favourite bit.

Chocolate coconut ice cream

Today was another experimental ice cream day. I admit, I experiment with ice cream more often than not these days. When I started, I did follow recipes, and I have made some very delicious things, like this cheesecake ice cream but my plan was always to find a basic ice cream vanilla mix and go from there. And I got lucky, because a few years ago I bought a Nestle Recipe book. One of those ones you get free with a magazine, or something. And it has a few ice cream recipes in there - including my basic cream + condensed milk combination. But it has other things, so when I have an ingredient I want to use, I check it out and see if it has any hints about quantity.

For today's ice cream, I had to look up two different things - how much chocolate to use, and how much coconut, and from there I developed the following recipe:

395g tin condensed milk
600ml thickened cream
200g milk chocolate (I just used Woolies Select)
1/3 cup shredded coconut.

Melt the chocolate over water, mix in the coconut, allow to cool (I probably should have left it longer than 5 minutes, but it still worked), and then mix in the condensed milk and cream. Chill (in my case, for an hour) and put into ice cream maker.


My ideas for ice cream come from strange places; I often just think "what flavours do I like together" and then mix them up and see. But today's came about because my mother bought the wrong sort of coconut for her anzac biscuits. She always uses desiccated, but she accidentally bought shredded. She tried them in the anzacs, and they were okay, but the texture was weird. So she told me to use the coconut. And, because it's me, my first idea was "I'll put it into ice cream!". And I really liked that idea, but thinking about it some more I wasn't sure I wanted an entire coconut ice cream, so I decided to break up the flavour and, being a total chocoholic, I decided to add chocolate.  Very simple, and allowing me to end up with an ice cream rather Bounty in flavour! Which is excellent, because I love Bounty bars.

And now, it just leaves me free for more coconut-inspired ice cream next week.

Red vs white

I went for something a little different this week, a pattern I had never tried before. I got the idea last week when I was painting my nails, because on one finger I managed to quarter my nail with four different colours. It looked good, but it wasn't the effect that I was going for so I had to paint over it. But I liked it so much that I wanted to try it again, and I thought it would look even better in red and white.

I don't know where the idea came from, but I went with it, using Vancouvered in Snow and You Rock-Apulco Red.

As I hadn't tried it before, I used two separate methods to paint each hand. On my left (and therefore easier hand to paint) I painted 2 white bits and 2 red bits. On my right, I painted two coats of white, and then when they had dried, painted in the red quarters. I think, generally, my right hand looks better, as there is fairly even polish coverage over my nails.But it's possible the colour is slightly better on my left - however, there are bits with no colour at all. Admittedly, they're about a millimetre thick, if that, but it does mean they don't work *quite* as well. Still, it's up to you to decide.

And of course, the picture quality really isn't good enough for you to be able to tell. I wish I could say it was a clever ploy on my part, but I've never been great with cameras.

My finished crocheted cat!

I am extremely happy; I finally finished my cat.

I used a ball of wool that I bought while I was in France. Being a bit of a wool-obsessive, I decided when I went to Europe last year that I would buy a ball of wool in each country. An ok plan, except for the fact that one ball of wool is very rarely useful, and you should usually buy at least 2 and sometimes 3. But at a little wool place in Caen, I found this gorgeous variegated Spanish wool called Katia Azteca. I'm not sure of the ply but it's at least 14 ply, so very thick. And very gorgeous. But then, I had to figure out what to do with it. Thankfully, I had the perfect plan in my head - I had wanted to make an Amineko cat for such a long time, and I was certain this wool would make a great one. It's taken me a while, as I've been distracted with other things, but by watching Press Gang every afternoon I finally finished it. (I was working on the premise that I could only watch Press Gang if I did some craft, and I really wanted to watch Press Gang.)

So here is the finished product.

This is my cat when I had finished all the pieces, before I sewed him together

This is the cat's head, pre-stuffed, and pre-embroidered

And here it is after the eyes and nose have been sewn on.

The body, pre-stuffed, see how it can't sit up.

The body, after stuffing. It's sitting up right by itself now.

And here it is, sewn together, and finished. The white paws were a different wool, for anyone who is wondering.

Ice cream disaster

I have had my first ice cream disaster.

If you're wondering what an ice cream disaster is, well, it's when you melt some snickers bars, and they don't melt properly, slightly solidify, and when you (in desperation) drop them into the ice cream maker as it's churning, they don't break up. Instead, you end up with vanilla ice cream with three large chunks of frozen snickers. Not my plan at all!

My plan had been quite simply. Buy some snickers, melt some snickers and either add it to the ice cream base before I put it into the maker, or pour it in (once cooled) while the maker is churning.

I should have realised, when the caramel from the snickers started boiling, that it was not going to go to plan. These snickers are "special" so they have no nougat, which means they should have been easier to melt. Nougat is really hard to melt (I know this from experience- it takes ages). So the caramel started boiling, and I thought "whoops, don't want burned caramel" and turned it down. Right down to Low and left it there. And it melted quite quickly, really, though never to a really runny state. I admit, I might have been impatient, but it was doing this weird chunky melted thing. So I took it off the stove for 5 minutes to cool before I added it to the mixture (I was going to beat it in with my hand beater). But in that 5 minutes (2 chapters of Pride and Prejudice), it solidified. Back onto the stove, and nothing doing. I added extra chocolate in so there would be more chocolate to caramel, but that didn't help either. And I have melted Mars Bars before, so I know that this can work.

But it didn't.

In the end, we just added the chocolate straight in, in the hope that somehow it would break up in the cream. Unfortunately, it didn't. And the ice cream didn't set in the maker either - probably because of having something quite warm added to it.

In theory I was meant to get a gorgeous chocolate/caramel swirl through my ice cream. With nuts. In practice, I got some chunks of frozen snickers. With nuts.

Truly awesome nail design

I really shouldn't call this 'design', because that sounds like there was some intent of pattern. This week, there was only colour, and very little in the way of intent, other than 'let's see how much colour I can get on one nail'.

The colours I had in mind were *partly* inspired by a painting I saw last week. One rich in reds and pinks with just a touch of blue. Of course, I could be completely wrong about that, but that is the idea I've taken away in my mind. It was a truly gorgeous picture, with such wonderful colours, that I really wanted to capture it somehow.

So after rummaging around in my (quite large) nail polish collection, I decided on these...

The colours are - in order, left to right - Dear Santa, Don't Whine, Yukon Do It, Purple With a Purpose, Deer Valley Spice, It's All Greek to Me and the blue is Teal the Cows Come Home.


Because the painting had no visible structure, I decided to use an approach to nail polish that I used once before. I don't have a name for it, and I doubt it would be easy to get it done in a salon, but it's basically a dab effect. As in, I put polish on the brush and then 'dab' the brush on my nail. Violently, so I can get some coverage; little dabs would be no good, as all I would end up with would be spots on my clear basecoat. After the first coat, it looked like this -

As you can see, it's all over my fingers, but that never worries me as the polish usually peels off easily from flesh. Though, it helps to let it all dry properly and pull it off - it works especially best with 3 or 4 layers.

The second coat of this type of design is pretty tricky; you want to keep the colours in pretty much the same place, but at the same time, you're going over other colours that are now over the original colour. It's all a bit higgledy-piggledy at this point. And deciding which colours to put first and last can be difficult. In this case, I painted them in the order I had them standing above, so the blue went on top to really stand out from the reds, pinks and purple. And here is the finished design

 My left hand tends to be my favourite, as it is usually much neater than my right. Being right handed really means my nail art only works on one hand.











I really like the way the polish turned out on my left thumb. You can actually see all of the colours I applied to it.

I





 My right hand, just for show.









I applied a layer of Shatter to my right thumb, just to see what the effect was like. I didn't want to do it to all my nails, in case it was too busy, but I think it turned out alright in the end.

Musk!

So it turns out that musk ice cream is delish! Of course, I love musk sticks, so it was somewhat of a given, but I did wonder if it would be too sweet or too...something...for icecream. But instead, it worked perfectly, with this lovely musky flavour coming through the extra smooth, creamy ice cream. I don't know how I managed it, but I think I got the level of lifesavers needed for the flavour just right. Too many more and it might have been a bit strong, less and it might have been weak. Or maybe, as I did do it through guess work and nothing else, it didn't really didn't matter and I could have added the entire packet for the same effect.

I was just searching for pictures of musk lifesavers - as I thought it might be nice to add a picture here - and I had no idea they were an "Australian" flavour. I do know that they are not to everyone's taste, even here, but I love them. Whether as a musk stick, or a lifesaver, they are just so yummy. But an extremely difficult flavour to describe.

Ice cream experiments

I had one of those moments a few weeks ago - the type brought about because you like being inventive with icecream, and you like messing with flavours, but you can't think of any new flavours to do. The moment when you just start going through all the flavours you like and wondering how they will go in a vanilla icecream. And an old favourite popped into my head - musk. I love musk; I know it's not everybody's favourite but it definitely one of mine.

My original plan was to buy some musk sticks, break them up and watch them dissolve in the cream/condensed milk mixture. But, musk sticks werre unavailable, so I had to use musk lifesavers instead. I crushed up a bit over half a packet in my pestle and mortar, and poured it in once my ice cream was churning. I thought the hard pre-dissolved bits might cause scratching on my freezing canister, but it seems ok. The beater is a bit ragged around the edges though, so I think I might have been better off with musk sticks.

And now, I just have to wait and see what it tastes like...

Lazy, damaged nail design

I did have some merging ideas of nail polish designs floating around my head, but I ended up going to this

I try not to go out on Sundays because it really curtails the amount of time I can spend doing my nails. They take ages to dry properly and as many of my designs will give my nails at least 5 layers of polish in places, it just isn't worth the trouble. Especially as a good design will get ruined by something as simple as me dipping my hand in my bag. I ended up just painting my nails with a colour called Sapphire, from the OPI Diamond Dust collection. They're a little bit more expensive, but oh so gorgeous.

Unfortunately, I then managed to ruin the polish on two fingers, as I was attempting to fix a problem with my computer and messing around with the cables on the back. I tried to fix it, but with all my time limitations, there was only so much I could do.

But on the bright side, I saw some fantastic colour combinations yesterday that I would love to use for my nails. An interesting combination of reds and pinks with just a touch of blue.

But here are my nails for the week. I was attempting to get a picture of the way they sparkle...

Note this is my right hand, as my left hand has been mangled...

Delectable desserts...to everyone but me

I was going to make some extremely experimental ice cream today, but we had some creme fraiche that desperately needed to be used, so mum made this instead. 

We changed the recipe somewhat, as there is only one person in this house who actually likes coffee, so it was just a Green & Black chocolate mousse. I'm not sure what exactly it was - the ricotta, the creme fraiche, the combination of the two, or the dark chocolate - but I did not enjoy it in the least. I'm not really a dark chocolate person; I find it makes me feel slightly ill when I eat too much of it. I think I ate a quarter of my serving and then put it in the fridge for another time. Preferable for somebody else.

Working hard...

It's a good thing I spent my unofficial day off work crocheting and watching movies yesterday, as I now have to work 5 hours a day to make up. I don't mind, but it means there will be no more crocheted cat for me this week. Technically I could do it at night, but the wool is hard to distinguish in the dark.

It may also delay my ice cream making plans...

A study in Blue

I often have a nail polish design worked out weeks in advance (and sometimes several) but just recently I haven't had my normal amount of planning. I've been painting my nails red or maroon for 6 weeks and avoiding blue as much as possible because of a sporting even, otherwise known as State of Origin. So usually, once it's over, I like to splurge with my blues.

I could have been interesting. I considered stripes, vertical stripes, horizontal stripes. I even considered polka dots. But in the end, I decided just to dig out every colour I could reasonably call blue, and go with it...

Crocheted Cat

Just wanted to share some pictures of my current project. It's an amineko cat - I've made a few already for family and friends, and I thought it was about time I made one for myself. You can find the pattern here.

I'm going slowly, as I have lots of other things to do, and my crochet is necessarily curtailed on Sundays (otherwise known as 'nail painting day'). But here is my progress so far.

I've stuffed the legs already because they can be quite narrow, but I leave the body until the legs and arms are sewn on. It gets a bit floppy and difficult, but it solves other problems. It actually looks nearly finished, though the arms are currently 'in progess', but I still have to do the ears, nose and tail.

Kit Kat Ice Cream pt 2.

My brother managed to guess the 'secret ingredient' in my ice crema tonight. Every week we play a game called 'guess what type of ice cream it is'. Ok, when I say 'play', I mean I say "what do you think I've put in the ice cream this week?", he says "I dunno, I haven't thought about it", and then about 5 minutes later has a guess. He was totally off with his first guess - but he gave me a great idea for an ice cream flavour - but he got kit kats on his second go.

Though, I suspect he had a piece of chocolate with the word 'kit' or 'kat' on it to give it away...

Starting Out.

I've never written a blog before, so I'm not really sure how it's meant to go. For that matter, I've never really read one either, which helps even less. But I've been doing a lot of crochet lately, and making a lot of icecream and I suddenly had a desire to share it.

But quickly about me: I really do love nail polish, and I am sure there will be a few posts about that over the time. I have been knitting for most of my life, and crocheting for the last 8 years. Crochet is really my thing though; my aunt taught me when I was about 21 but I never got the hang of it. She only showed me how to crochet in the round so while I was great at making granny squares and many other weird cylindrical shapes, I never got the hang of just back and forth crochet. This served me well, I must admit, because when I finally learnt how to crochet in rows, I rejected it for the love of amigurumi. Tiny crocheted toys are the best, and I hope my friends agree as they are often the recipients.

But this has to be a blog about ice cream! Mainly because today is Thursday which is fast becoming my 'ice cream making day'. That and when I was doing a search the other day, I came across people wanting evaluations on ice cream makers and I saw a few people trying to dissuade them on account of it being too hard and too fiddly. And I just have to disagree.

I love ice cream - and from 2009 I have wanted my own ice cream maker. So much so, and so many hints did I drop, that come Christmas 2009 I fully expected to receive one. I literally opened all my Xmas presents, expecting to find this ice cream maker that was going to open my world up to ice cream whenever I liked. I didn't get one. My reaction was - Where's my ice cream maker? Which is evidence that parents really don't listen as my mother didn't know what I was talking about. But it all came good and Xmas 2010 gave me the ice cream maker I had so long desired.

It's just a cheap one - one with a prefrozen canister, as opposed to the 'self-freezing' type. But it is fabulous. I must admit to being shocked though, as I expected to be able to just put all the ingredients into my ice cream maker and away! It doesn't work like that. You mix the ingredients, sometimes you dissolve sugar in water and cool it overnight (or for several hours). Sometimes you melt chocolate and add it to your mix. Sometimes you make a custard involving 5 egg yolks. But frankly, this was way too time consuming and expensive for me. I wanted to be able to make ice cream when I wanted it. And I wanted it to be cheap, so I could spend my money on other, more important, food stuffs. But, I hear you saying, ice cream is important. True, I agree, but I wouldn't recommend it as your entire diet.

So I went on a search for an easy vanilla icecream. Because from that you can make anything. And I found it - in a book of Nestle recipes, a cheap-y I had bought one day at the Lifeline Bookfest. It was actually a recipe for cookies and cream icecream, but I just remove the cookies (when I don't want them).  All it takes to make the perfect vanilla ice cream is -
 
390g tin of condensed milk
600ml of thickened cream.

Put them in a bowl and mix them together and you have the perfect ice cream base. I used to use a hand mixer to mix, started using a whisk and am now using an old fashioned egg beater. Fairly quick to mix, easy to use and easy to wash. Where it comes to adding things to this ice cream base you have lots of options. You can melt chocolate and add it; you can add vanilla or peppermint essence; you can put choc chips in it. Or you can do what I do and add random chocolate bars. I either get a knife and cut chunks, or get out my pestle and crush them. So far I've tried crunchies, cherry ripes (so good), maltesers, peppermint crisps and various other types I can't even remember. Today I added crushed up kitkats for a fairly good chocolatey and wafery ice cream.

So this is my first blog about ice cream. You can expect others, as well as thoughts behind my nail polish designs, and updates on my current crochet projects.