Pickles!

"Rare is the August evening when I'm not slicing, canning, roasting, and drying tomatoes - often all at the same time. Tomatoes take over our life. When Lily was too young to help, she had to sit out some of the season at the kitchen table with her crayons while she watched me work. The summer she was five, she wrote and illustrated a small book entitled "Mama the Tomato Queen", which fully exhausted the red spectrum of her Crayola box."

The above quote is from my favourite book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver (p.199).

I too love pickling, and pickles. Last weekend saw us preparing a whole host of pickled items - I made pickled beetroot and tomato & chilli relish. Sam made pickled onions and sauerkraut. Our friend Lucy made the most fantastic cumquat and ginger marmalade. Yum!



Cutting and boiling the beetroots. Love that pinky red goodness.


Peeling the pickling onions. We all got stingy eyes and had to take teary breaks. Luckily we had some homebrewed cider to see us through.


The sauerkraut - ready to start fermenting.



Pickling is actually quite easy to do, you can find loads of recipes online and if you can pick up a big bag of tomatoes/onions/jamming fruits that are about to go out of season and are going cheap - it can be cost-saving too (of course you can also grow your own, like Barbara Kingsolver did, but our vegie garden isn't quite up to that yet). At the same time, pickling is quite time consuming, but if you invite some friends around to join in on the making (and the onion-related crying), put on some cider and a cheese platter, it makes for a fantastic afternoon in this cold weather.

Heads Up!

Tea fans - just a heads up about two new teacozies that will be hitting the Stitchybritt etsy and madeit stores this weekend. Two fantastic new environmentally-friendly prints!



My teacozies are designed with spout and handle holes (hard to find these days) so that you can pour your tea while it's still in its cozy.



Oh and also check out this beautiful treasury featuring a Stitchybritt mug cozy amongst many other good Aussie and International items. Quick before it all sells!

Ooh yes and last week I went to Sydney's Etsy Crafty Party to meet some cool crafty peeps. We all got showbags full of goodies and ate too much...



That was my first serve of dinner, including the most delicious fudge made by Amanda of Calico and Co. And before you ask - yes, it is totally ok to have fudge for dinner.

Of course we made stuff too - paper rosettes, fabric flower brooches, and, as evidenced by the below photo... a big mess! What fun!

Scandi photos

Hej Hej! We are back from Scandi and, as promised, some piccies for you. Instead of bombarding you with endless holidays snaps (here's me in front of something... now here's me in front of something else) I thought I would share some inspiring staff - crafty, designy or otherwise. One thing that was great about Denmark and Sweden was some of the shop window displays, so I ended up snapping quite a few so that I could bring home the "I could so make that" memories.





So many shops with so many cute dresses. Makes a girl very wanty.




And then there's plenty of shops covered in beautiful blooms. In this one you can see the reflection in the window of people sitting in the sunshine drinking cups of tea.




Oh my god - op-shopping in Scandi! I discovered it way too late when we were close to leaving and my luggage was already full. I still managed to snap up a great skirt though.





And then the brilliant bars - particularly Mikeller and Norrebro in Copenhagen. Fantastic beers and interior design at Mikeller and fantastic beers again at Norrebro - including carbon neutral beers and climate friendly menu options. Very very cool.

Oh and one last thing...



Yum.

Time: 10:40pm Location: Bjorko, Sweden

Time for another quick update from Scandi, unfortunately without pics again (but I promise to do a big holiday slide round-up when I get home and can download them all from my camera).

Sweden is a funny place. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but there's something different about it that makes you smile. Maybe it's the excitement in the air as summer brings the first few hot days following a long, cold winter. Maybe it's the fields and fields of bright yellow canola flowers set on a backdrop of blue sky and massive wind turbines (yay for sustainable Sweden!). Or maybe it's just because bow-ties seem to be trendy streetwear. Sweden is also a fun place, and I really hope to come back.

Sweden (like Denmark) is also the sort of country you could just eat your way through - and I can proudly say that I've learnt some Svenska, if only menu-related words (but they are the most important ones, right?). The breads, cheeses, meats, fish - it's all fantastic. And then there's the beers - Sam has been very pleased to find a few bars that have beer menus the size of encyclopedias. Yes, it will be back into the exercise routines when we get back to Australia, however, I do intend to bring some strawberry and basil white chocolate home with me.

Time: 8:09am Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

A few people were disappointed when I told them I probably wouldn't have time to blog on my rush in-rush out visit to Europe. But as it turns out, such a time appears to exist when one is lying in bed, eating pringles, nursing a decent hangover and everyone else is asleep. The reason for the hangover? Eurovision.

Let me preface this story by saying that I've been in Copenhagen a day and a half. It's a winner. Great walk-about city, something to look at on every street, gorgeous buildings, food to die for. Most new cities I arrive in feeling cautious, a bit lost and painfully aware that I do not look or feel like a local. Not Copenhagen. I felt immediately at home.

So my wonderful friend Anne flew over from Berlin yesterday morning to meet me. As we sat on the dockside in Nyhaven soaking up a bit of sunshine and watching canal boats go by, Anne told me that the Eurovision Song Contest was on that night. Wait! Did you say Eurovision? I love Eurovision! And I'm actually in Europe! And therefore, I can vote!

So not too long after we found ourselves back in the hotel room with takeaway sushi, two bottles of wine and the tiny, highly dodgy hotel tv tuned in.

Now, Germany had not won Eurovision since 1982, but they had a new system for picking their entrant and a good song, Satallite, to show for it. After quite a few terribly boring love songs (sorry Ireland, what was that?) it was clear that Germany was my favourite with it's up-beat, Regina Spektor style quirky song. So I voted, and we waited.

To cut a long story short (and believe me, watching every country in Europe allocate points to every country in Europe is long) the winner was announced and Germany was triumphant! Yay! I believe a celebratory drink is in order!

And that is how I came to be in the state I am right now. I might try to go back to sleep for a bit. Sweet Eurovisiony Dreams all xx

Scandibritt

Stitchybritt is taking a quick break and visiting a part of the world she has been keen to see for ages - Scandinavia!

But before I scoot off, here's a quick update of projects:

Firstly, I made a jeans skirt



Old pair of jeans, chopped off the legs, unpicked the inner thigh seam, slotted in a piece of lower jean leg in the front and back and... voila! Jeans skirt.



A real simple refashion, but a good one, coz jeans skirts go with just about anything. This one is coming to Copenhagen with me.

Secondly, I'm still working on my bunny wool cardigan. It's getting longer, but still doesn't look much like a cardy. We do have a train trip from Malmo to Gothenburg though, and that will take a good few hours, so I'm thinking more will get done then.



What are holidays without stitching anyway?

See you soon everyone *waves* !

P.S. I just realised that I've worn the same striped top in at least three different blog posts. Therefore, I am now referring to it as my blogging top.

Goodies in the mail

Really, what is more exciting than getting goodies in the mail?

Today was a very good day for my letterbox (ok, so I also got an electricity bill, but I'm ignoring that for the moment). Look at these exciting packages...

(apologies in advance for the shadows/photo colours, it got dark early in Sydney today)



Don't keep me in suspense! Open them!

The first one was the gorgeous fabric I ordered from Ink and Spindle. Fantastic natural cotton and organic hemp printed with environmentally-friendly, solvent free ink. Oh yeah.



Then... a package from my mum in Queensland. This one is exciting. Recently my grandma moved into a nursing home and pretty much tried to giveaway everything in her house. "But 'Ma, I don't really need anything" "take it anyway". I told my mum that I'd be interested in any sewing supplies, no matter how old. Then, my nana got wind of this story, and offered up some stuff from her sewing stash that she no longer needed. Hence, a whole box full of vintage sewing supplies landed on my doorstep! So let's take a look.



There is a whole bunch of embroidered bits and pieces that my grandma obviously started a long time ago, but never finished (a challenge, perhaps?),



some really cool old print teatowels, including this one,



crochet and embroidery cotton, in all sorts of colours,



a pile of lovely colourful vintage bias binding,



and (drumroll) a whole bag of vintage buttons! Score!



And I must mention that there is one package left that I am not allowed to open until boyfriend gets home. It says "teapigs" on the side. I like tea, and pigs... I wonder what it is!