Kale Season starts tonight!

While fall continues, the temperatures sink and the sky most times is hued in grey, here in Northern Germany, many start to have an appetite for kale. Traditionally it is cooked first after the first night frosts, we had those in the last days, so I needed to stock my freezer with 3 kilograms of this jummy vegetable.

I´ll cook it today, because we invited my Mom in law over for tomorrow evening to have the 1st of this years "Gruenkohlessen" and this dish tates best warmed up again, we think.

For those of you, who´d like to know my recipe, here we go, but bear in mind, that some of the ingredients are very "German", it depends on where you live, perhaps you have a vendor nearby, who sells German specialities. If you cannot get any of the recommended suasages, any smoked sausages will do, I guess. Some people also add pork belly (pure or smoked) to their kale dish, but I don´t like this sort of meat that much, at least it´s pure fat, isn´t it?
Traditionally salt potatos are served as side dish, plus, and here comes one reason, why this dish is a good reason for family and friends to meet: a jigger of good, ice cold Korn schnaps or aquavit is the traditional degestive for the adults. Serve chilled beer or Water as drinks.


Green Cabbage Recipe
(a quite fast/easy but jummy one by my Granny)


makes 8 - 10 servings

You´ll need:

3 kg kale (fresh or deep frozen, personally I don´t like the canned one)
3-4 big onions
500 - 600 g smoked pork chop - depends on how much you like it ;)
6-8 groats sausages ( you can do without them, if you prefer)
6-8 boilded Mettwurst sausages or scalded sausages
2/3 cup of oat groats
1 l vegetable stock ( no shame to take instant)
1/4 cup vegetable oil or marge
2 table spoons mustard4 bay leafes
2 tea spoons allspice
salt, black pepper and additional allspice for seasoning

How to:1. Chop the onions in fine dices, roast them gently in heated oil in a big Dutch oven. Fresh kale of course also needs to be finely chopped. After a few minutes, just before the onions get brown, add the kale and stir while it is roasting. Put the lid on the oven and let it simmer at medium heat for about 10 minutes.
2. Add the vegetable stock, oat groats, bay leafs, allspice and the mustard, stir until everything is mixed up well and put on the lid again. Let simmer for another 10 -15 minutes.

3. You now can slice the smoked pork chop, dice it or leave it as it is, just as you like. Add the chop, all sausages (groats and Mettwurst ones) fold all in and let boil the cabbage for the next 30 mites. The groats sausages might blow out sometimes, but that´s ok ;)
4. Meanwhile you should prepare and cook enough salt potatos for your servings, cool the Schnaps and decorate the dining table. Dont forget to check your kale and stir it from time to time to prevent it from scorching.

5. After 30 minutes check if the kale is done and season the dish wit salt, pepper, additional allspice and if you like, some splashes of Worcester sauce (but thats not traditional, I guess ;) ).

6. If you had left the chop in one piece you should slice it now.

7. Serve the kale hot, either in the Dutch oven with the meat and sausages still in it, or in a bowl and the meat and sausages on a seperate plate.


"Guten Appetit"

cheers
Mone

Happy Samhain!

While searching the net for some Samhain/Halloween inspirations I tripped over this gorgeous blog: Vintage Pallette Art. Just look at those amazing old photos and the crazy artwork by Lori Davis; I love this!

Recently I re designed this blogs layout and started with the shop all over again. It´s a little frustrating, because I´m not good enough in php scripting to feel comfy with the fantastic os-commerce tools, so I need to stick with my very old sharewared xaran shop. All web based solutions for free I´ve seen so far did not match my needs. So, If you know a provider, who offers an online shop solution, where I can add more than 1 damned picture per product, where I can manage and offer more than 100 products plus where I can fit the layout matching my blog and website and, most important: who offers a shop solution for free - please let me know.

On wednesday this cute baby finally arrived:
Goodbye my old mechanical ones, hello automated times! I allready managed to check her out a little, but, of course I developed my annual tendinitis just in time, s that I have to wait a few days, before I can start all over again. My 2 old sewing machines will end up at ebay tomorrow. They are in good conditions and well kept, don´t hesitate to bid on them! :)

A new order came up last week as well, so I ´ll also work on a new wallet design this weekend. This will be a kind of waiter´s wallet, with lots of pockets for cards and photos and a huge change pocket. The patterns we agreed on are 2 beautyfully retro-syled fabrics by IKEA called Malena, the 2 below this stack (image by IKEA):
Inside I will use thin and soft lamb nappa in a matching red or pink. This will be quite a task for my new Necchi I´m really looking foreward!

a 6-months summary...

... or the "same old song", to quote anothor song title by another great band - PAIN this time... by the way: While HE was doing this: we were doing that ;)

Yes, it was... uhm, let´s say quite satisfiyng having this fantastic artist in front of us and playing all the good stuff. For those of you, who are not into Metal that much, there is talk of Peter Tägtgren, who had held court with his solo/side project PAIN two weeks ago at the Wacken Open Air. But this blog isn´t about Metal or music in general, so, if you´d like to see more pics of strange guys floundering in mud, defenitively drinking way too much alcohol (at least some of them ;) ) and having a good time over all, then, feel free to check my flickr for this years photographical loot or see, what I and my beloved pals uploaded to our myspace pages ;)

But, how did I get the "same old song" thingy in my mind? Just, because, it´s allways the same: I plan, I set a deadline only to myself, for getting things done, like the shop or the never ending updating-my-homepage-nightmare or, most annoying, finally getting my driver licence. But there´s allways something strange happening. And, in this case(s), it did again. No dramatic stuff almost, but enough to receive setbacks in all the mentioned points. Anyway, here I am, and here I go.

So lets resume the past months since my last post in more pics than words, not that you get bored by reading all that stuff ;)

1st: newly sewed things:

new mobile purses, the orange one was an order, the brown one I made for myself.

Another "FeKa", as a birthday present for Dani this time. Unfortunately I totally underestimated the hard conditions in Wacken, so both front buttons need to be re-sewed now :(



a non-sewed tablerunner - non gothic, non victorian, just spring-like ;):

A ready-made Opeth longsleve; the band´s logo on the front and logo plus quote from the song "To rid the disease" on the back, both prints made with Photoshop and transfer foil (the shirt I wear on this pic):

the back:

The quote says "I have lost all trust I had in you..."

2nd: new soaps:
from the top to the bottom: coffee, honey (1st try) and vanilla-cherry. And no: one should not eat them ;)

Coco-soap in progress back in march:

OK - more pics and news will be shared tomorow - I promise. But for now, that has to be enough, I need to sleep; the holidays are over :(...

green ... man!

Allright, I guess I started a bad idea here, taking song titles as titles for my blog ;) but, since we lately had Liv Kristine here, let´s move on with TYPE O Negative, whom I adore totally... and one song from the album "October Rust" (one of my favorite albums ever) includes a matching song for todays post: Green man.

Yea, I´m totally on a "lets have everything green"- trip. But not only simlple green as out of Newtons or Goethes color circles, it has to be a soft, nice, quaint and romantic somewhere between olive and lime green. No kiwi, no neon green or mint green... ouch, don´t give me THAT ;)

So I redesigned this blog in a friendly green I liked (using photoshop to disclose th hex code for it). Just to make me more happy theese days. After not getting the anticipated job I quarrel a little with my working situation, but I´m quite sure, thats just passing. At the moment some new chances are showing up and I´m totally willing to take them.

Regarding my crafty life a big chance could be starting my own business. After I had some success with Dawanda I think it´s time to move foreward and open my own shop. So I was busy all over the last weekend finding an online shop tool I could work with, testing and playing around. At last I stucked with osCommerce, even I don´t know a damned thing about php scripting. I just tempted and I think it´s starting to look good and to work.

So, if you´d like to click the link on the rigtht side (my new store) and perhaps want to give me some advise? I really would appreciate it, because I just change this and that and try to finally get the shop I imagine ;)

First and most important thing to run your own shop is to have something, you can sell. So I spent the rest of my weekend and the 2 weeks of sickness with making new soaps, sewing, researching for new ideas and designs, reading and so on.

The new soaps are smelling quite delicous, but unfortunately they still need some weeks for drying. I made 2 different soaps out of the same base: an orange scented and a french vanilla scented bunch. My little studio smells all like this now... yummi!

I also made (and now we´re starting with showing pics again ;) ) some new wrappings for the already existing soaps, wrapped them and stored them in my (way too small) studio:

This is the new wrapping of the guest soaps I showed in my last post (with the soaps in the front)

I sold a lot of the other soaps during last december, thats the stock left: ( from left to right: the guest soaps, a pure olive oil soap scented with lavender; "Kalimpong Market" scented with Nag Champa, Amber and Cinnamon; and Lent Lily with Fresia and Orchid in big bars (also available as guest soap)

Maybe a better shot of the wrapping´s design. On the back side I added a word of thanks, a really short cuted overwiev about my product range, the ingediences and web links for more informations. Do you think, it´s ok this way?

It was dark allready, so I will take some better pics (for the shop as well) at the weekend.

Last week I also received an order from Amazon, inclouding this fantastic book:


It became a kind of bible meanwhile, I will visit all of the introduced blogs the next time. I simply love it, not only the crafters introduced in there, some of the patterns I definitively will reproduce, like the book cover or the little puoch shown on the cover.
If you didn´t have untill now, then I just can recommend: read it! If you´re unhappy and unsure sometimes if your crafting isn´t insane or way too much... here you read about guys, who were afraid of the same, who started their own thing, and, if we are honest, isn´t that what we crafty ones all want to have: our own thing and finding others, who love our stuff?
If you´re struggeling with these questions sometimes, or even if you´re thinking your are some kind of freak or insane somehow by collceting all that vintage fabric, whool or what else you need for your crafting: this book shows you, that you´re quite normal and healthy, you´re just creative and this is good :)!

I tought about using the questions used for interviewing the crafters in this adorable book for my own introducion on my website. I will ask Anna for permission after I have finished this post, I guess.

Ok, let´s finish this... I just read a comment from a girl at etsy´s community, that she preferes short blog posts (sorry for needing that amount of words ;) ).

Next time I will show you my findings at our local thrifting store, a social network, that offers cheap vintage and used stuff to people in need and lives from our donations "Wilhelmshavener helfen e.V".
I just need more daylight to take some better pictures of it all.

So, stay crafty and keep on ;)

Yours,
Mone

3 a.m

... thats a song from Liv Kristine I really like and by the way it perfectly fits right now, because it´s 3:38 in the night here, I´m still sitting in front of my PC and I´m not tired at all.

Meanwhile I asked at etsy for help regarding the international shiping issues and immediately I´ve got help from some cute guys, who told me, I should try it. So I will open a shop on Etsy tomorrow after taking some more pictures from the newest goodies.

But lets recall the last week first: I`m still suffering from bronchitis but with antibiotics, a lot of tea and a warm room it works somehow. Since I´m certified sick still but couldn´t stay in bed all day I did some sewing and some designing for new soap wrappings. I couldn´t manage to photograph it all by now, but here is, what I have right now:

Last week started with the idea to customize a pocket calandar I was given as a present from a former colleague, who happens to work for a health insurance now:


I don´t want to schlep around an insurance advertisement with me all the time, so I started thinking and sewing. Something matching to the adorable handbag artsy crafty babe sewed for me a year ago came to mind. So I used the same chandelier styled fabric:


It took me some days ( I needed to lift up some of my WoW characteres some levels in the meantime and sewed other stuff, I admid) but finally this former green beast looks like this:





Later last week I recognized, that my pin cushion was not big enough. The logical next step for me was sewing a bigger one, that would meet my needs:



(Sorry for the messy picture) The new one has got 18 cm in diameter and I can hang it on my inspiration shelf, nearby and reachable everytime while I sew something.

Last weekend also hubby reminded me, that I had promised to sew a clothespin bag some months ago. On Sunday I was in the mood, so I sewed this one, after researching the net and getting some help for my pattern from whip up´s incerdibele "Über collection of sewing tutorials":



The green fabric I had found at IKEA, quite frankly we never get to the checkout without any new fabric in the trolley ;). The bag has become a little crooked, what reminded me again of not drawing patterns freehand. The next one will be more exact, I promise!

This week was filled with doc visits once more and making more soap for the up coming shop. I designed, printed and glued together unique new wrappings for the already existing soaps, took new pictures of some of them, like the ones below and today made two new soaps, which, right now, are drying in the kitchen: one soap scented with french vanilla and another one scented with essential orange oil; both made from a base of olive oil, milk, shea butter and goat´s milk. Tomorrow I´ll know, if they came out well, but even after a few hours they began smelling fantastic! I´m totally looking foreward tomorrow, when I will put them out of their trays!

Below you can see a picture of the last soaps I made.

The white ones are made without any scent, they were made for allergic sufferers in the first place. The blue ones are scented with Lent Lily, Freesia and Orchid. The tray was a jul present from my mom in law. I love the look!

Both soaps are small "guest soaps" and, yes, I sell them. As long, as the shop is not updated and online again, just comment this post or send me an email if you´d like to buy some of these little ones. They come in a unique hand-crafted paper purse in a quantity of 4 soaps; you can choose if you´d like to have 4 unscented, 4 scented or an assorted pack of 4. Tomorrow I will post more new pictures from the new wrappings and the other soaps.


But that shall be everything for now, just the last, most joyfull and most important insight: spring is coming, at least the snowdrops in my garden are telling me this:




So long, have a peacefull and crafty night! I´d better go to bed now ;)

Yours, Mone

useless but funny: The WoW "Char Dice 2008"

Today I suddenly had this complete useless but funny idea...

As I mentioned in my last post, I play World of Warcraft. I play this god forsaken game since the open beta, before it was released. I never played it consequently, so that I cannot tell you about my lvl 80 char(s) with their "imba" equipment. But I play it consistently ;).

So, today while I was checking something at work suddenly a very tiny particle of complete useless creativity hit me and I thaught: "Whom do I play tonight?" With "whom" I meam one of my many characteres, counted 17, I could play.

And thats, what now is the result of thoughts like this: a paper dice, with 10 sides to dice, if I cannot commit myself on playing one specific charactere. I choosed 10 of the most played characteres (difficult enough ;) ) , took ingame screenshots of each of them and put them into a 10sided dice template I had found here.

Together with "Morpheus" as the font, that seemed to be usedt in WoW I finally got a template that looked like this:
I just had to print, fold and glue it. And after this it looked like this:


here is another view of the dice:


complete useless for daily life, but a funny Idea, I think ;)
btw: needless to say: I didn´t play any WoW tonight, because I was busy making this dice ;)...

Read you, nan

Im so weekend

There is still nothing new to tell about the AC, I´m still waiting for our works council to confirm the "winner", from who we don´t know, who it will be or was. This is not an easy situation, because rumours are running wild in the company and I have a hard time not to listen and believe in them.

Meanwhile I took some pictures from my new decorated and completely changed room and finally decided to buy a new camera next year, because my nearly 6 years old Sony Cybershot definitively has seen her last days. Therefor I work for a big company which produces fine digital cameras I should know that a 3 times digital zoom, none optical zoom and the choice between only 3 scenemodes, without any opportunity to save any own modes does not make, what we today think is a good picture. but see yourself below ;). I tried my best to rescue some "quality" using Photoshop. The warm light comes from my lamps and candles, because these days it´s allways dark outside, when I come home from work.

The last days I was busy making some Jul decoration (yes, I still prefer to name it this way ;) ). First I made some cute paper houses after I had found the cute templates for them at flickr.


They are that much adorable, that I even made the pink coloured ones, although I don´t like pink thnings *g*.

Yesterday before playing a little WoW I decided, that I need to make a paper snowflake, which is based on a how to on cut out + keep.


This year I try to decorate the house without spending amounts of money, because buying that stuff ends in getting what everyone else who bought their decorations, have too. So I collected some pictures on Flickr and made some mosaics to fit in picture frames, revarnished some old stuff new in an antique looking white and hung baubles and lightchains on soon everything possible. (I even tried out on the cat, but she didn´t seem to like wearing little glittering stars)


But, before I forget, the most important: I had a fantastic weekend in Nuernberg, visiting some friends of the adorable WoW guild "Chaos", which I´m glad to be a (rare seen) member of. As I don´t know, how the other guys feel about posting pictures of them here, I just show an "after dinner" pic of me first:
Lygia, one of our hosts and by the way a really nice and cute witch and me (a not even less cute witch I hope) made a legendary meal inclouding franconian dumplings, mellow pork roast, one of the best sauces I ever tasted and salad. After dinner all of us were stunned, and this was the first time of my life I recognized that a meal can be a debuff (damned WoW slang ;) ).
We visited the famous "Christkindelsmarkt" as well and a restaurant called "Bratwurst Roeslein" where I had a marinated pot roast for the first time ever. The best thing was the sauce: a ginger bread sauce, from which I tried to guess the recipe by taste. I have to try it cooking myself!
We also visited the Nuernberg Castle and the historic town; Lygia and Babarus were fantastic and lovely hosts, I learnd a lot about myths and history of Nuernberg and, really, I had a great time! Thanx for that, my 2 sweethearts *hug*!

But now, let´s see, what my new room looks like at the moment.

It´s Thursday, the in many blogs I read the so called "Thankful Thursday" and the chance to live, like I can live my life now, after all the hard times, even without something to eat sometimes, definitively is some big thing, I´m really thankful for each day:

Here I sometimes sit and read, but most times my hubby or the cat sit there.

New locker, some space to store all the fabric and DIY books finally.

If you are a fan of IKEA, you might have noticed it: I love LIATORP

My Jul tree ;) formerly known as a black member of Ikea´s "Statist" family

I love white funiture and white, green, purple and grey as colour for decorations, so a white Amaryllis became a kind of consistent for the season. The heart was a finding in a local florist shop and was so cute (and cheap) that I bought 2 of them.

Working desk, sewing place and the place where the magic happens, if it´s happening ;)

Same desk, the other end: the PC´s place, if you´re talking to me via skype/ teamspeak or ICQ, when I´m writing for the blog or homepage or when we´re playing WoW together; thats exactly where I am. I choose a self arranged solution of Ikea´s "Galant" series in white for my room: my desk now is soon as long as my room and even goes round the corner, it also has a rounded cornor on one and a rack for the PC on the other end; plenty of space, that´s what I wanted and needed. ( btw remeber the heart?)

... and if we don´t talk or play, he takes care of the headset. It´s not ment in a blasphemic way, I´m not into Buddhism either. But I liked him, because he looks so peacefull and relaxed.


Just have to show you these cute mini- orchids, a really surprising present by the lovely Wudonia. I love them, allways wanted to have some; I just cant wait untill they reflorish! The cute rabbit-missy I found at Flickr, it´s drawn by the amazing talented leontine. The flying witch is a picture I drew some years ago.

Did I mention I play World of Warcraft? ;) That´s all that left of WoW related decoration, except the gameboxes itself and a wow mousepad; all maps are stored at the attic ;)

Thats all for today, lets see, what tomorrow will bring.

take care and merry meet again :)