More pudding pudding pudding
My Christmas pudding was unveiled on Christmas Day (read more about the recipe and cooking method here). After another hour or two of bubbling away on the hob, the pudding was removed from the pan and up-ended on to a Pyrex plate.
It came out in one piece!
And I cut myself an enormous piece to have with an obscene amount of cream.
It mightn’t be pretty, by gum it is nice.
Mince pies
Wee Birdy’s lovely photo of some mince pies in this post spurred me into action today. They’re made from Darina Allen’s recipe for sweet pastry and a jar of standard shop-bought mincemeat which I loosened up with a bit of booze and cooking apple to be a bit more palatable. It’s Christmas soon!
Christmas cards
These are my Christmas cards (there were more, these were the only ones not in envelopes by the time I remembered to photograph them). They bear more than a passing resemblance to these other cards I made; I like this template so much because of its pretty, pared-down appearance, but it’s also easy to make, so long as you measure and cut out the pieces correctly. Cut and fold your card shapes, and cut out rectangles of a paper of your choice (Japanese screenprint with a metallic sheen from Daintree, in my case); attach these rectangles to the front of your card shape using a small square of double-sided tape in each corner, doing your best to align with the edges of the card shape (you can use an X-acto to neaten the sides up if you need to) and keeping the rectangle flush with the card. Simple!
Simple drawstring bags
My latest sewing project, and my favourite kind: simple, pretty and useful. I’m travelling quite a bit at the moment, and these sort of bags are just what I need to sort out all the detritus in my bigger bag. I don’t think the photo really does the prints justice (the pink fan one being from Amy Butler’s Nigella range, the yellow ovals Kaffe Fassett’s ”Aboriginal Dot” print). I adapted this tutorial so that in making them I could arrange the prints as above, rather than sideways-on.
In other news, this is my 100th post on Basil Exposition!
Chocolate-y Rice Krispie Mars-y yumminess
It may not look like it, but the above is a photo of quite possibly the best Rice Krispie-Mars bar-chocolate confection in the world. I got the recipe off my pal Laura and it is just too fantastic to keep to myself. Be warned that the following quantities make up at least two of the trays featured above (the first tray was polished off before I got to the camera) and, unless you have an enormous saucepan to mix it all up in, I advise you to halve the quantities.
Ingredients:
200g butter
390g Mars bars, chopped or broken up
200g Rice Krispies
250g milk chocolate
Melt the butter on a low heat. When melted, add in the broken up Mars bars. Melt, but keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn or overcook. Add the Rice Krispies (carefully – that’s a lot of Rice Krispies) and mix thoroughly. Press into lined tin(s). Allow to cool a little and then melt your chocolate for the topping. Spread well – the amount of chocolate may seem a bit scabby, but spread it out well and it’s just the right amount. Allow to cool and set or put in the fridge for an hour or two, then cut up and serve in small, rich bars.
Craft fair in Dublin this weekend
I was in A Rubanesque (the best Dublin passementerie [or ribbon shop to the likes of me]) yesterday and found out about the following:
A Rubanesque Christmas Craft Fair
Saturday 13 December 2008 – 10 am to 6 pm
Sunday 14 December 2008 – 2 pm to 6 pm
Featuring “hand-crafted ceramics, printed shawls, embellished gift cards, vintage table linens, embroidered canvases, soft decorations, cloth dolls and ribbons with which to wrap these gifts” according to the poster they had up in the shop. It’s all going on this weekend at 27 South William Street, Dublin 2.
Found in Paperchase for £5.50. It now holds all my sewing paraphernalia in one handy and exceedingly pretty place.
London Bust Craftacular
As promised, here is my report on the Bust Craftacular 2008 in London. The venue, the St Aloysius Social Club, was, in all honesty, a bit of an odd choice. I could see the logic in picking a spot hard by one of London’s main railway stations, but to get to it punters had to go down Eversholt Street, which featured such establishments as the Euston bookshop (not really a bookshop), Euston Videos (not an indie version of Blockbusters) and Transformations, a cross-dressers’ shop. It was also to prove a tight squeeze for the large crowd which the event drew.
The BF and I arrived before noon, as I had heard there was a prospect of a goodie bag for the first 100 people, and if there’s anything I like, it’s a freebie. The bag consisted of a Tatty Devine tote with a smattering of promotional material from people such as ClothKits and Rowan, one of the event’s sponsors.
Of more interest to me was a Sublime Stitching packet (Dutch-Russian) and two free magazines, Yarn Forward and Sew Hip!.
I was surprised that issues of Bust weren’t even available for sale: I’m not complaining, as I managed to wangle myself a free copy by virtue of my early arrival, but I still felt it was a tremendous oversight on the part of the organisers, as they would have made a killing.
Like Mondoagogo, I was less than impressed by the distinctly shoddy presentation of the programme for the event. This was inexplicable, considering the purpose of the show, as a showcase for craftspeople and arty types generally. It wouldn’t have killed them to farm it out to one of the crafty people featuring that day to knock together, who might have done it for free because of the advertisement it would have given their business. It was pretty light on information, too – no short blurbs for any of the stallholders, just a name and indication of where they might be in the room. As Mondogogo points out, it really didn’t have to be pink, but more to the point for me is that, seeing as it’s the London Craftacular, could we call it a programme? Did we all get that memo? Great, thanks.
As I said above, the venue was quite small and was soon uncomfortably packed, making browsing an obstacle course rather than a pleasant wander, but this should only encourage the organisers to choose more ambitiously next year. The music was a fun addition and, according to the official Bust blog’s report, was a great success in the evening too. The quality of products on show was very high and sellers were personable and happy to chat to the punters. Of particular merit out of the nearly thirty stalls were The Great Cake Escape (I can verify the heart-shaped chocolate cakes are very acceptable indeed), the Experimental Letterpress Workshop, Custom Made, Love from Hetty and Dave and Bobby Dazzler. On the whole, things were very affordably priced, which was a boon; I picked up this pretty bracelet from Kirsty Kirkpatrick, a maker of recycled and reclaimed jewellery, for just £13:
I also got to meet the lovely Top Bird of Wee Birdy. We dipped out of the melée of the fair to have a cup of tea and to discuss the vagaries of craft shops in the UK, Australia and Ireland amongst much else, and it was a pleasure to finally get to meet her. I expect her report may well be a good deal more satisfying than this one, as I managed, yet again, to forget my camera, and so all the above photos are, as you’ve probably noticed, taken after the event.
Getting topical
I bought this top over the weekend while I was in London. It’s from Topshop, so it’s also available in Ireland. The sterling price on the tag was £28, but with my student discount (10%) and the reduction in VAT, the price I paid was actually £24.66. Not bad.
This same tag revealed that the price in Euro, i.e. the price I’d have paid in Ireland, would be €43. The current exchange rate is €1.149 for every pound sterling (I’m taking this figure from the BBC Business page), so the price Irish customers really ought to pay is more along the lines of £28 x 1.149 = €32.172. Let’s make this a bit easier, and just say somewhere around €32. Now, even taking in whatever extra costs are entailed in getting the shirt over to Ireland, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t amount to an extra €11 on top of the price offered to UK shoppers, giving us the figure of €43 for the Irish shopper. Topshop has multiplied their price by about 1.535, not 1.149 – the Euro was once about this price, but it’s many years since it has been.
If we disregard the VAT cut to make comparisons simpler, the English price with just a 10 % student discount is this: £28 – £2.80 = £25.20. Now, let’s convert that into Euro: £25.20 x 1.149 = €28.95. The Irish price with a student discount is this: €43 – €4.30 = €38.70. I’d still have saved €9.75 by buying in the UK rather than at home, even without the extra reduction in the UK on VAT.
I am no economist, but surely when the differences are so stark even in such a small matter, it’s no wonder the Irish economy is faltering quite badly. It’s easy to work out with clothes, when shops print the sterling and Euro prices side-by-side (though these same shops rip off or scribble out the sterling price in Ireland so that people can’t see the unfair prices they’re being asked to pay), but I wonder how we’re being diddled when it comes to other things, such as food or even big purchases like electronics, which don’t have such simple comparisons.
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