so this happened...

Months of furious sewing and no blogging culminated in one pretty awesome looking femme Loki meeting Stan Lee at Sydney Supanova yesterday.

IT.

WAS.

AWESOME!

Meeting THE MAN.

 Loki with Loki, drawn by the very talented Hollie, and signed by Stan Lee

Aside from the 4-5 hours I spent in the line to get the autograph and picture, it was an awesome day, everyone was so nice and the cosplays were amazing! Can't wait to do it all again!
Posts about how I created the costume will follow (eventually).

Spring

Cymbidium

Snapdragon

Dendrobium

Daisy

Clivia 

Grevillea

Dendrobium

Lavender

Magnolia

Lemonade lemons

Blueberries

Valencia oranges

Tomato

Strawberry

The Australian Garden Show

A few months ago I saw an ad in the paper for the inaugural Australian Garden Show in Sydney, and since I love garden shows (and have been cruelly deprived of the Flora Festival since 2011), I was super keen for this one. I signed up to their website as soon as I was able, and followed them on Facebook: the release of details was agonisingly slow, but phrases such as "sustainability" and "kitchen garden" kept me hooked, I also loved the idea of on-site restaurants using ingredients from the kitchen garden, and the display gardens lit up with fairy lights at night.
So, did the show live up to its own hype and my expectations? No, it did not.
Why? Oh so many reasons.

First, the location. 
The AGS was held in Centennial Park... The middle of Centennial Park.
So?
Centennial Park is freakin' huge, not at all flat, with few proper walking paths (i.e., not a dirt track).
While this is partially an I'm-lazy-and-don't-like-climbing-hills whinge, I'm also annoyed by the lack of common sense here: the majority of the people who attend these type of events are the elderly or families with young kids in prams, so proximity to the main road and public transport (buses and trains) should have been a priority (rather than a cross-country hike that makes just walking into Mordor look like a piece of cake*).
Yes, there are roads through Centennial Park, but
(a) driving to, and in, Sydney is a nightmare.
(b) finding parking in Sydney is a double nightmare.
(c) paying for parking in Sydney is a triple nightmare that may require you to take out a second mortgage and sell your first born.
Taxis are an option if you don't mind death-defying insanity, and are a millionaire (and can therefore afford the fare). There was a rather large taxi stand outside the main gates, but in all the time I was trying to get into, and out of, the gates, I only saw one taxi pull up (despite the crowd of millionaires waiting).
Another problem with holding the show in the middle of Centennial Park was the complete lack of shade. Lovely trees all around, and me burning like bacon in the middle of the damn grass field they chose for this show.
Like easy access to public transport, adequate shade and seating is an absolute must for an outdoor event where the majority of attendees are elderly or families with children (and extremely pale, whingy bloggers), particularly if you want them to hang around through the day and stay for night events. This is a fundamental flaw across all outdoor events, and I cannot understand how organisers keep overlooking this!

(* possible exaggeration from someone with sore legs)

Look at all that shade! 

(If you listen closely to this picture, you can hear me getting sunburnt)

Second, the content of the show.
(a) the food: when we (my mum and I) arrived at the show, around 11am, we were starving, so we went straight to one of the big restaurants for an early lunch. This beautiful marquee with its elaborate, and delicious sounding, menu, was fail central. Within a few minutes of entering I was convinced that the entire wait staff had been drafted straight out of their first week of a TAFE hospitality course. I had plenty of time to observe this as we waiting fifteen minutes for service, before we eventually gave up and left feeling annoyed, slightly discriminated against and still very hungry.
We ended up in another marquee that was serving fast food that you had to line up for, so while we at least got served, I don't think the quality of the food justifies what they were charging for it (although it never does at these types of events).
I got better service, better food, and better value for money from the food trucks.

(b) the display gardens: the impression I got from walking around was there were maybe a dozen (I didn't count and I haven't checked the website for an exact number), and they were all virtually the same, with the exception of a few details; they all followed the same basic layout of path, sitting area and water feature; they all had virtually the same plants, mostly natives and greenery, no interesting floral features; and they all had boring modern designs, very much aimed at the put-it-in-and-forget-about-it types, rather than the hobbyists and serious gardeners whose gardens are an on-going project and always changing.

Design by Brendan Moar.

Designed by Myles Baldwin.

Designed by Jim Fogarty (while this design has a name, to me it will always be "Halo respawn bunker")

(c) the retailers: one of the main things I was looking forward too was browsing the plant retailers, and again I was disappointed. There were so few! Only two veg and herb sellers and and a few flower sellers (mostly orchids). There were more people selling garden tools (special mention to the Hozelock people who were wonderfully helpful and a delight to chat to), garden services and crafts than there were selling plants; tourism and media was especially overrepresented. The only floral displays were inside the Grand Floral Pavilion, which was disappointingly sparse (not to mention poorly ventilated, and therefore hotter than outside in the lack-of-shade). At times I questioned why they even bothered to call it a garden show, the garden focus seemed entirely contained to the talks/lectures, while the rest of it looked and felt like a regular market (a very spacious market... seriously, why were there so many giant open spaces with nothing in it? (see picture #2) If you're going to put all the stalls so far apart, then put up some darn shade sails in between and fill the space with seats!)

Floral display, Grand Floral Pavilion.

Another floral display, Grand Floral Pavilion... and that was pretty much it.

Third: the price
$35 for one adult. On top of train fare. To get into a show where they charge $10 for a freakin' take-away chicken burger that you have to eat standing up while getting heat stroke.

The good points? The port-a-potties were fancy, and not yet disgusting.
That's right, the highlight of my experience was the toilets.

Conclusion: poor execution, some of which I would attribute to the usual teething problems of an inaugural event, others to plain bad organisation/management.
The AGS website bills the event as "a stylish and unique event celebrating Australia's love of gardens and outdoor spaces", therefore I was expecting the same do-it-all-and-grow-it-all-yourself approach of more regional and country garden shows. Instead I found that the target audience/consumer of this show is entirely city-based, whose garden space is limited to a balcony or terrace garden. The entire focus of the show seemed heavily skewed towards edgy, modern gardens that are nice to look at, but don't require a lot of work, and therefore I would only recommend this event to people who I knew preferred that sort of outdoor space.
For anyone who prefers practicality, food and/or flower production and permaculture, I would say move along, this is not the garden show you're looking for.

August update

After a very busy and uncommunicative few months, I'm back to give you a quick update on what's been happening.

Went to Winterfest, got absolutely sodden in the rain and couldn't take many pictures, but had a great time anyway. Looking forward to next year, but hoping it will be drier!

Took a little trip to Melbourne to see the Hollywood Costumes exhibition (awesome, but so very dangerous for a costumer!), Monet's Garden and Australian Impressionists in France, followed by lots of shopping!
I will also be raving about the food for months to come, particularly Terra Rossa, the Breslin, the Quarter, and That Place (on Bourke Street).

I have finally gotten around to enabling prints so now you can purchase on some of my pretty pictures on deviantArt.

My fabulously artisti friend, Hollie, has started showcasing her wonderful drawings and paintings to Facebook, (some are for sale), go look and be amazed!

Sewing is progressing slowly as my craft room is currently playing host to the contents of two other rooms that are being renovated. Fingers crossed it will be finished next week and I can have my space back!

Regency shoes

The only thing better than shoes is free shoes! Get in quick!

home grown

A combination of beautiful sunshine, plentiful rain and the wonderful mushroom compost I have mentioned before has resulted in a massive haul from the gardens over the last couple of months; so bountiful I was finally able to achieve my goal of creating a vegetable pasta sauce from entirely home grown produce.

My initial recipe was simply tomatoes and herbs; a stroll through the gardens and I found I could add pumpkin, leek and spinach, and a rustle through the freezer resulted in eggplant and purple carrot from an earlier harvest added to the mix.

The fresh ingredients were used in the quantities I was able to harvest from the garden, with one cup of carrot and one and a half of eggplant.

I peeled and seeded the tomatoes (the most time consuming part of the entire recipe!) and roasted the pumpkin with a little olive oil and pepper for half an hour at 200°C, then everything went into the pot as follows.

My ingredients; most fresh, some frozen, but all home grown.

Pumpkin, pre-roasting, tossed with olive oil and pepper.

Peeled and chopped tomatoes added to the sautéed leeks and simmered for 10 minutes.

Eggplant added and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Finally, roasted pumpkin and finely chopped spinach, parsley, basil and garlic chives are added and simmer together for another 10 minutes.

I ended up with a good eight cups of sauce, which I divided into four lots to be frozen for winter. A week later we've already eaten one portion with pasta and mama-made garlic and basil meatballs, it was simply divine!

blog love

My blog reached 1000 views last month, it may not seem like much, but I'm pretty excited about it!
Thank you to everyone who has stopped by here, especially if you're a repeat visitor. I'm genuinely glad you enjoy my words and pictures.
If you ever have any questions or requests, feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail, I would love more feedback on what you've enjoyed seeing and would like to see in the future.
Thanks again!

Regency Sewing Challenge: September

Only slightly behind in my sewing.

My project for September was a gift for my lovely friend Cath, who I'm hoping will be accompanying me to the Jane Austen Festival (work permitting).

The project started out as a simple reticule, then I decided I want to do some embroidery and it got steadily more complicated from there.

The reticule is pale yellow satin with a white cotton lining, and a pale yellow cotton bottom (as I figured cotton would be easier to clean if it accidentally got put down in something icky), it is decorated with lace at the top and a tassel at the bottom.

The embroidery is mainly a satin stitch, with a few decorative stitches thrown in.
I used two patterns, a wreath and a monogram.

I'm sorry I don't have any "in progress" shots, I'm still trying to remember to stop and take them.

Hobbity goodness

Hobbity sewing complete! *insert happy Hobbit dancing here*

Chemise

The chemise is calico and a combination of the neckline and raglan sleeves of the Simplicity 5582 peasant blouse and the length of the Regency Underthings chemise.

The neckline is drawstring with a few pleats at the back (because the drawstring casing was just a tad too short for the neckline and I couldn't be bothered cutting and sewing an extra piece of fabric to make it match).

The sleeves are decorated with antique crochet lace (with an adorable butterfly pattern) and criss-cross trim that I threaded with ribbon to make the sleeves adjustable.

I added a ruffle to the bottom of the chemise to give the bottom a bit more bulk when it’s under the skirt (and because I like ruffles!)

 Chemise: front and back.

 Chemise sleeve detail.

Bodice

The bodice is side-lacing with a sweetheart neckline, and is comprised of four pieces: the back panel (brown cotton blend), two side front panels (yellow gingham muslin) and the front (pinky red cotton).

The back panel is Simplicity 5582 bodice back. The front side panels are a combination of Simplicity 5582 bodice front and my own pattern for a curve-front fitted kirtle (use of the curve-front method inspired by this post: a good step-by-step how-to draft a curve-front bodice here). The front panel I drafted myself.

The back panel and front panel have two layers of lining: a thicker pink flannelette (from an old sheet) and white cotton. The yellow gingham muslin side front panels have a layer of pale yellow cotton instead of the pink flannelette, as the gingham muslin was too sheer for a pink lining.

The bodice is lightly boned with 7.6mm black cable ties, to help it keep it's shape. The ends of the cable ties are coated with hot glue to cover any sharp edges. Again the yellow gingham muslin proved too sheer for black cable ties, so the four under the yellow gingham are encased in white bias tape, secured by hot glue.

Gold eyelets were hammered in for the side lacing, and the entire bodice is finished with yellow bias tape, complete with bias tape bow (tutorial here)

Boning layout, pre-glue and bias tape.

Side lacing with gold eyelets.

Skirt

I made two circles skirts; one blue, one green; out of old jacquard tablecloths.

The blue table cloth was already circular, making its transition to skirt much easier (the bottom was already hemmed, score!). The green table cloth was rectangular and required a bit more fiddling with measurements and hemming (this post has lots of helpful pictures and confusing math about circle skirts... if, like me, you're not big on math, I can tell you that a 15cm/6" radius gives plenty of room to fit 105cm/41" hips)

I finished the skirts with a waistband in a similar colour, threaded it with elastic.

Costume front.

Costume back.

Inspiration:

http://rebelshaven.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/hobbitness.html

http://romantichistory.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/lady-hobbit-costume-finished-at-last.html

http://costuminglavenda.blogspot.com.au/p/lotr-everyday-bodices.html

http://costuminglavenda.blogspot.com.au/p/lotr-special-occasion-bodices.html

Let me know if I have left out any details.

Next up is accessories. If anyone could recommend good Hobbit ears, or hairy feet, that would be awesome, otherwise I will spend hours derping around the internet getting distracted while looking for them on my own (what a shame ^_^)

I hope you have a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

whoops

There goes another month without a post... blame this lovely lady as she finally convinced me to join Pinterest where I promptly wasted my November pinning random awesome things.
I also managed some sewing in between Pinteresting around; my Hobbit bodice is near completion, but I am awaiting the return of my glue gun (with much separation anxiety) and two Regency gowns are still in the works.
Rest assured you'll be the first to know when something is finished!

October excuses

As you probably may have guessed by now, I'm a bit of a lazy blogger (in my defense I am also pretty boring and don’t usually have much to talk about). Nonetheless, bad me for not posting anything for October yet!

I am still soldiering along in the Regency sewing challenge, my project for September is very close to completion but I had a mishap with my sewing machine about a week ago where I accidentally put my finger through, and on top of a rather painful sewn finger, I also snapped my needle and haven’t been brave enough to change it until now... but finger is now on the and not swollen and bleeding everywhere (seriously, I do NOT recommend sewing yourself!) and I have braved the change of needle and finished the little sundress that was in progress when I sewed myself.

I have also been busy forgetting about my graduation and having to scramble at the last minute to hire academic dress, but I got there despite the best efforts of my terrible memory and the freight train that broke down on the track ahead of my train.

The only thing left to distract me from my sewing is a trip to Ikea on Monday, but hopefully the Ikea-induced euphoria will translate into desire to sew.

Lookin' academic in my robes at the University of Sydney (or, as I usually called it, Hogwarts)

Regency Sewing Challenge: July & August Updates

My (very late) Regency sewing challenge projects for July and August. 

Bonnet
Plain straw Jane bonnet purchased from Austentation.
White poly-cotton lining
Gold satin cap
Knife-pleated white satin ribbon, with white braid
Gold satin ribbon rosettes with pearls (I'm not entirely sure if these are period, but they were too cute to leave off)
White satin ribbon bow and ties
Pink velvet roses (from Miss Rose Sister Violet, whom I love!)
Yellow roses All stitched, and mainly by hand (the only machine stitching is the hem of the lining... no glue used, although I will be sorely tempted to use it next time, it would make it so much easier!)

I am tossing up whether or not to add more flowers, and possibly a feather.
The only problem I found with this bonnet is that the top of the cap part of the bonnet is very flat so it sits on your head funny, but since it’s a straw bonnet I imagine I can squish it into a rounder shape. I also have an Elinor awaiting decoration, but that’s another project for another month. 

Reticule
Four diamond panels (made from the pattern I found here) 
White poly-cotton lining
Pink and cream upholstery fabric 
White lace decorative trim with pink bead tipped yellow ribbon draw string
Yellow ribbon wrist/shoulder strap
Five yellow tassels (that could probably do with a bit of a trim, they seem very long) 
Mix of machine and hand sewing.

My September project is still in progress as it is pretty embroidery-heavy, but I'm hoping to have it done by the end of the month.

filler

Since my craft projects are taking ages to finish (some brightspark decided embroidery was a good idea... then got distracted with making Hobbit garb), I have decided to start doing some filler entries in the long stretches between projects, this will mainly be recipes or ramblings about my garden (unless I get a specific request). I hope you enjoy and will forgive my tardy craftiness.
Today I would like to share one of my favourite, and more naughty, recipes...

Rocky Road Brownies

1 ½ cup plain flour

250g chocolate, coarsely chopped*

125g butter

½ cup chocolate chips*

½ cup mini marshmallows

½ cup glacé cherries, chopped*

½ cup desiccated coconut

½ cup pecans, chopped*

2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 160 °C.

Line 20cm square baking pan with baking paper.

Melt 250g chocolate and butter in double boiler over simmering water; let cool for 5-10 minutes.

Transfer to bigger bowl, if needed, and mix in chocolate chips, marshmallows, cherries, coconut and pecans.

Add eggs, one at a time, and mix until blended.

Mix in flour.

Spoon batter into lined baking pan and bake for 30 minutes or until dry on top and firm to the touch.

Let cool in pan, then enjoy!

(*Dark, milk or white chocolate can be used, as well as other types of fruit and nut. Experiment!)

Here's one I prepared earlier (I've always wanted to say that!)

priorities

Yesterday I handed in the last assignments for my Graduate Diploma, which means I am finished with university once again (although I will probably go back to do my Masters sometime in the future).

More importantly, while I was on campus I went to see the Lego Colosseum on display at the Nicholson Museum... It was so awesome! I love how it shows both ancient and modern, and the attention to detail is amazing. 
All Lego sets should be this big!

The Nicholson Museum also has mummies and lots of other cool stuff from the Mediterranean and Near East, if you're ever in Sydney you should definitely check it out!

The Lego Colosseum is on display until January 2013.