Feet

My major creative project for the last 9 months has been growing a baby.

Hence the quiet blog and the resting.

My world is upside down in the best possible way.

Here are my 'feet' pictures from the first week of pregnancy until delivery. I took one picture per week for 40 weeks.

Growing a baby is an extraordinary thing.

Meeting the baby that has grown inside you is even more extraordinary.

I stare at his little face in wonder and awe.

How can it be that I'm his mother. What a privilege.

I'm still here

Its been a little quiet here for the past few months.

Resting has been a necessity rather than an option.

But 2014 promises new things and new making.

I have been making progress slowly on a few things. There has been some knitting, some dyeing and there will be some crochet to come.

I've been to a few museums recently. The Asian Civilisation Museum has some textile treasures.

This long timber piece with ornate mother of pearl ends is labelled as a 'warp beam winder'. Its from Cambodia and is early 20th century. As far as I can work out this is what the warp is wound onto and then it is placed at the back of loom under tension and as more warp is needed its wound out. More info on Cambodian silk weaving here and here. You can see a large beam like this at the back of some of the looms. And for interest, this site shows you how to make your own reed from bamboo if you want to.

These are embroidered collars from the Hmong culture, mid 20th century, from Northern Thailand. Clearer examples of the wonderful geometric embroidery here. The collars are worn at the back of the neck as part of a jacket.

This is a batik apron from the Miao of Yunnan in China, early 20th century. The central panel is batik while the sides are woven.

This looks like an apron but it is a baby-carrier from the Hmong of Chiang Mai. It dates from 2005 which is obvious when you notice the Doraemon fabric around the edges! The central panel is embroidered with a type of cross-stitch in geometric motifs.

These are waist ties from West Sumatra and were made in the late 19th and early 20th century. I would guess these are woven using a backstrap loom like this. The label says these are worn by men of Minangkabau and are symbolic of a male's ties to his nieces and nephews in a matrilineal culture.

This beautiful but hard to photograph piece is tapestry woven. Apparently tapestry weaving is rare in south-east asia. This piece is a skirt worn by Maranao royalty from Western Mindanao in the early 20th century. It is made of silk and because it has yellow it means it was worn by royal women because yellow is reserved for royalty in Moro communities and in Malay societies in south-east asia.

I'm currently reading this fabulous book on Prehistoric Textiles which is making me notice more about the textiles around me. Pre-historic people were weaving some very sophisticated fabrics and garments by 5000BC with patterns, multiple colours, fringing, beads and lace inserts. I hope one day to be as skilled as them with my weaving!

Some Gluten-Free Happy Things

Going gluten-free has not been that difficult for the most part. It has been only a small adjustment from the relatively low gluten diet I was eating for the last few years. At first I had thought it was just wheat that was the problem, but it turns out to be the whole gluten family: wheat, rye, spelt, kamut, barley... And I've also developed a mild egg allergy (though I can still get away with a tiny bit every now and then - like in a little icecream!)

However, the hardest things have been good pastry, cakes, pancakes and bread. I've got a good basic shortcrust pastry recipe that works well for either sweet or savoury pies (I just leave out the sugar for savoury)

I use this recipe for the pastry, but instead of shortening I use butter (and I use about 1/4 cup instead of 1/3), I skip the vanilla and for the flour I use half soy flour and half rice flour. I also double the quantities of flour (but not anything else) as the recipe only makes enough for the base of my tin. I find the rice flour is too crumbly by itself while the soy flour is too sticky. So putting the two together gives a balance of crumbly and sticky. It also allows you to press and knead the dough a bit without it falling apart. This mix holds its shape nicely when baked but you can't over-bake it as it tends to get tough. For a more textured version I use 1/3 cup of ground almonds and reduce the rice and soy flours to 1/3 cup. 

Here I used the pastry for a blueberry custard pie. I used a gluten and egg free instant custard powder with about 500g of blueberries piled on top. Then I mixed about 1/3 cup of blackberry jam with a dash of water to make the glaze. Then baked the lot for about 40 minutes at 180 degrees Celcius. I did blind-bake the pastry for about 5 minutes first because I was worried the base might get soggy. 

Turned out great and tasted wonderful. 

I've also used this base for Pumpkin Pie, Cheesecake and Dark Chocolate Pie.

This sticky date pudding is soo good. I used this recipe here without any modifications (except using 'Egg-Replacer in place of the 2 eggs) . It was perfect. Totally not gluten-free weird tasting. The caramel butterscotch sauce was just lovely.

This was my first grilled cheese sandwich in 2.5 years. Two and a half years is a long time for anyone to go without a delicious grilled cheese sandwich.  I almost cried in happiness while eating this sandwich. 

It took a few tries cooking these to get this Ricotta Pancake just right. As I have a gas stove, it was a little too hot to cook these nicely. However, on the lowest temperature and moving the pan around while the pancake cooked, it turned out perfect. I served these with a dollop of ricotta on top and some blackberry jam. Though these are nice on their own. Certified good by the real-pancake eating Mr (and he is very particular about pancakes).

 The blog has some excellent looking other gluten-free recipes I'm looking forward to trying and the photographs are lovely.

My next challenge is gluten-free Snowskin Lotus Mooncakes as its the Mid-Autumn Festival. I plan to use this recipe. 

The trials and tribulations of Avocado growing

It has been a tense few weeks here as we watched our two avocado plants that I've been growing for the past year slowly loose all their leaves.

I sprayed them with some non-toxic bug killer to no avail.

Then I decided to do some online searching to find out what might be killing our beautiful friends. I finally discovered that they had fungus bugs eating their roots. Many of the sites said too bad the plants will die or to use lots of chemicals but one gave some helpful advice: stop watering the plants and let the soil dry out. Apparently the fungus bugs need moisture to survive and with no water the bugs will die but the plants will be fine. Once the soil is completely and utterly dry, you can start to water again, watching carefully for bug-action.

Today our second avocado lost its last large leaf. So both plants have are now stick-like and at first glance leaf-less!

However, both have started to sprout new leaves this week! Hurrah! 

I like to think that the little pep-talk I have with them every morning about them being such lovely plants and how much we want them to thrive has also helped. So yes, you should talk to your plants and tell them that they are great! (but also do some research on bugs!)

New Things and Old Things

Recently I have been very interested in time and its effects on surfaces.

How time changes things

How time reveals

How time is

Based on this idea I designed a sculpture for a national competition.

And got shortlisted!

(Hope I win!)

Searching for the perfect sunset

Sometimes things are just perfect.

Earth Meets Sky

My annual journey back home provided much inspiration in terms of colour and texture.  I plan to develop some of these colours in my dyeing work and the textures perhaps in some other projects.

Blue Hydrangeas in the evening garden take on the hue of the sky. The colour seems almost limit-less.

Sunrise over the great desert that is Australia's centre. The glow was so much more orange that my camera could cope with. It was like peach icecream.

The airplane was quiet as everyone else was sleeping. I snuck up the shades to take a picture. Its strange to think of the earth below rotating as we fly over it in the atmosphere. 

A little beetle I met. He was such amazing colours - reds and greens and yellows.

This little pond is a coppery green owing to the mineral content of the water. The pond was full of ducks and little fish.

Recycled brick pathways have always been a favourite of mine. This one was multi-hued red to orange and almost green. The day was warm so the path was radiating heat.

The farm-scape near where I live. The old fields follow the undulations of the land. The new fields follow the circle of the irrigation spray. A multitude of crop colours, mostly veggies or grazing. The white fields are probably poppies grown for medicine.

Sometimes you look out the window on the plane and see strange and beautiful cloud formations. 

The night sky at my parent's house is so dark you can see the stars. Here is Orion's belt.

The Bridestowe Lavender farm was extraordinary. The colour of the lavender complemented the purple of the mountains and the red of the soil. And it smelt wonderful.

Shadow of a woolen lace shawl I saw at the Tasmanian Wool Centre at Ross, Tasmania. I also brought some beautiful handspun undyed black wool there. They also have a wool museum where you can touch different microns of wool and see some of the world record breaking long staples from different sheep.

This yellow lichen never fails to amaze me with its colour. This is growing on a 150 year old gatepost in Oatlands, Tasmania.

The deep dark sky fades to light cloud. I am reminded of Hiroshi Sugimoto's amazingly beautiful scarves for Hermes when I see this. 

The shallows of the bay make strange forms.

Tasty Things

This is the second time I have made this polenta cake. Its gluten free and uses polenta and ground almonds instead. However it does contain eggs so I can't eat too much at once. This time I used limes instead of lemons and it was lovely. The cake has a lot of butter in it too so its not so healthy but very tasty!

I tried making Macarons for the first time. I was surprised to find out that Macarons are wheat free! They are made with ground almonds, egg white and sugar. It was going well in the oven but they flattened out once I took them out and I didn't get nice little 'feet' on them. They were also much too sticky.

After cooking they went quite flat. Fortunately they tasted quite nice so we ate them anyway. Though once again they have egg whites in them so I had to restrain myself to just eating one or two (dozen!). 

I filled some and then I baked some of them a second time and we just ate them as is. I put lemon rind in the shells so they had some flavor without the filling. For the filling I used white chocolate, coconut cream and lemon. This was an excellent plan as the filling was very good. In fact I think the filling was more successful than the shells!

Fortunately the Creme Brulee turned out perfect. I used the egg yolks left over from making the Macarons. Turns out I can tolerate these quite nicely. I used real vanilla beans to make them and that made them taste MAGNIFICENT. 

 Alas my grill is not hot enough to get nice toffee on the top without burning the brulee. Next time I shall have to get a brulee torch!

I used this recipe from the Guardian to make the Creme Brulee. It really is easy and tastes amazing. I had no idea it was so easy to make so I'll have to make more in the future. The fun part is thinking up different flavors to put in them. Though I think Vanilla Bean is the classic.

Updates from the little garden

Our Chinese Greens are growing well. Since this was taken they have grown twice as big and need re-potting so they each have enough space to breathe. I'm already plotting how to eat them.

My colleague gave me this Water Moss and its a great little plant. It enjoys a little sunlight every now and then to photosynthesize  You can actually see it making oxygen as little bubbles appear on the surface of the moss then float to the top! 

We have harvested our first Chillies! They are very hot so we can't eat so many at once so I'm drying them to keep for later when the plant is not fruiting. 

I am so happy that my bean is now growing beans of its own. It has two beans now and they are getting quite big. Interestingly they are not the same colour as the beans I brought from the supermarket and sprouted. The ones from the supermarket were pale and striped with pink! Oh well, I'm just glad Bean is growing nicely!

Some walks and some things which are lovely...

The Mr. and I went to Pulau Ubin, an island just off the shore of Singapore.  We didn't see a lot of wildlife because it was around noon when we went and all the birds and animals were having their midday nap. This beautiful Kingfisher and his mate were calling to each other though and considering little Crabs and Mud Skippers for lunch.

Two large-ish Mudskippers enjoying the mud (fishy shapes below the piece of metal!).

In the centre of this picture is a bluish blur. This blur is a beautiful blue/green metallic pigeon, probably an Emerald Pigeon. An extraordinary sight. Unfortunately I was not fast enough with the camera! You just need to know if was quite possibly the most lovely pigeon I've ever seen.

This little Zebra Dove was wandering around with 3 friends at the carpark at my work. I only got one picture before he got scared and flew off. Zebra Doves are really small, I imagine you could comfortably fit one in your hand...not that they would appreciate that!

Quite a perfect mushroom/toadstool specimen seen on another walk. 

The dangers of walking in the tropics!

The weather this past week or two has been nice and cool and rainy. In this weather, the hills behind take on mist as if they are distant mountains.

And then we get this! Perfect blue skies are rare for Singapore, but one morning I woke up to this sight. Even the airplane trail looks lovely!

Having plants inside the kitchen seems to be attracting ladybugs. This is the first of two spotted last week. They are so tiny and beautifully spotted. Its very reassuring that such beautiful bugs would like to hang out at my kitchen. It must be an alright place to be!