Crafty stuff

120 lino prints…

~ cloudytype ~ 6 Comments

being sewn into a first run of ten little books

This is tank-top guy feeling festive
This is Crow, missing her friend Tank-top guy
Sometimes when you miss someone, you just have to caw them up on the phone…
and work out how to spend time together, in a corvid safe way.

Waste not want not

~ cloudytype ~ 3 Comments

If you have access to red currant leaves you can add them at the end. Lay them onto the mixture. It helps with the fermentation process, but it’s not totally necessary. The main thing is to pound the cabbage so that the juice comes out and add plenty of salt. It packs into a smaller space than you’d imagine. It doesn’t take long. Ten minutes. I didn’t include a photo of the jar after I’d washed the bits of cabbage and spices off the outside of the glass because I can’t pretend it’s not a bit messy. The fermented cabbage is great as a side with lots of different possibilities. You can do this with just about any vegetable and combinations of vegetables. I was sceptical at first as cabbage can be so stinky. But the stink is released by the fermentation process. I should have said maybe burp your cabbage jars next to an open window. Haha. No seriously it’s one of the best things to do with cabbage you’d ordinarily throw into the compost.

Last minute holiday gifts!

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Rustic, cute, multipurpose, ocean-friendly body scrubbers!

You don’t even need knitting pins, as you can see, chopsticks make the perfect gauge when knitting these heart shaped jute scrubbers/ exfoliating lovelies.

Instructions:

Work in stocking stitch throughout. (Knit knit knit and no purl)

Take your garden jute string and your chopsticks and cast on 2 stitches.

Knit one row.

Increase at each end of every alternate row until you have 16 sts.

Make the heart shape:

Decrease now on first stitch and 8th.

Turn and decrease at each end of each row until you have 2 sts left. Bind these off together, cut the string, secure your last stitch.

Rejoin your string to the remaining 8 stitches and repeat.

Weave in your loose ends by poking them through the loops at the edges of the finished heart shape.

Make a loop and attach somewhere on the top of your heart.

Voila.

This takes about ten minutes.

The jute hearts can be used on your pots and pans, your surfaces, your bathroom, your feet and elbows, as well as those stubborn bits on dirty typewriters. But you may want to make multiple shapes to cover all uses. A great way to ditch those nasty plastic scrubbers we have become so addicted to 🙂

Pair the scrubbers with a special bar of soap perhaps for a last minute gift 😉

Happy Holidays , typospherians xx

Doing the Festive Season without palm oil

~ cloudytype ~ 2 Comments

Yes, it’s in most things. It’s truly awful. I’ve ditched buying mincemeat in jars now after not being able to find any mince pies or mincemeat without palm oil. “Sustainable” palm oil isn’t good either. The planet can’t sustain this insatiable lust for the stuff. I can do without shop bought gravy granules, I can do without stock cubes. I can do without all the sugary biscuits and shortbread, I can do without buying that nice coffee cake I always used to get as a treat… But I can’t do Christmas without mince pies…

There’s always something you forget when you type a recipe off … I also used a two inch chunk of fresh ginger, finely chopped in this mix.

For the pear jam, I did this:

There was no way of taking a picture of the pulp going through a sieve, but that’s what I did. Then I returned the smooth pulp sans pips and etc to the pan and added sugar, heated to setting point and ladled into jars. The pear trees were in the park. Free fruit! While I was scrumping a guy in a suit stopped and asked me what I was doing. He went home to get a bag to collect pears in. I hope his jam turned out ok.

On the case

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Sad and peeling and forlorn, this case lid was languishing in a corner and being used as a makeshift drawer for paperwork.

I happen to have some of this stuff for peeling wallpaper, and wondered if it would do the trick on this case.

First brush off all the old loose dry glue. Yuck…

And go slowly, one little bit at a time. I spread a fairly generous amount onto the inside of the peeling fabric and let it soak in for a few minutes before adding s thin layer more and pressing down

I stuck down all the outside edges and left it to dry

Before finishing off the inside

It’s still a scruffy old case but it’s all good enough to travel now.

Ah yes, you’re right, it’s the case for my 1938 Corona Silent 🙂

I’ll be there

~ cloudytype ~ 2 Comments

And this is my sign…I’ll be marching in London UK on 20th October. (The answer to the clue is not “rooster” 🤣) I would have liked to have painted this on a typewriter style font but time is short