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.