A great day at Maia's

We had a great day at Maia's Market yesterday, it rained most of the day, which probably slowed things down a little, but nonetheless, we had lots of people come to have a look, and do a little Christmas shopping, all for a good cause. I've started uploading skirts onto Etsy, and there will be some upcycled kids pants up soon.

Skirts for Maia's Market

I've made two new women's skirts for Maia's Market tomorrow, I was hoping to make a third one, but I think I'll run out of time. This design is in size 10 and 12, and will be uploaded on Etsy if they don't sell.

Maia's Market sewing

This Saturday, the 30th of October, Bec & I will be selling our wares at Maia's Market, in Potter St, Geelong West from 10am-4pm.

I've been busy sewing 12 new skirts, in Heather Ross' Far Far Away 2 range, with cute fairytale prints.
There's Rapunzel (my favourite, in 3 colour ways), Sleeping Beauty, and the Owl & the Pussycat. Plus a sneaky little Echino peacock print. I'm also working on a few adult sized skirts, I hope to have them finished in time.

Rapunzel in natural- it's a cotton/linen blend

A dress I made in Rapunzel fabric to donate to the Kinder Art show's silent auction

From lemons...

To Lemonade! (Lemon cordial)

Recipe

LEMON CORDIAL
8 lemons
2 tablespoons citric acid
1 tablespoon tartaric acid
Sugar syrup - 1.5 litres water + 1.5 kilos sugar, boiled together until the sugar has dissolved.
Grate about 2 tablespoons of rind from the lemons before you cut them.

Juice the lemons - if you put them in the microwave for a minute before cutting them, you'll get more juice.

Add the grated rind and the juice in a large bowl. Add citric and tartaric acids. Pour the hot sugar syrup over the juice and mix well.

Allow to cool and pour into bottles. Stores well in the fridge for a month. Dilute with water to taste and serve with lots of ice.

From Aussies Living Simply

The mixing bowl

Last year I broke one of our mixing bowls by dropping it inside another mixing bowl. It was glass and it shattered into thousands of pieces. I finally replaced it yesterday with this little sweetie, found in a second hand shop, after having no luck in op shops. It looks like a cream colour in the photo, but it's actually a pale yellowy green, and cream on the inside. It was made by Hoffman Pottery, in Brunswick, Melbourne, which operated between 1862 and 1990. I like that it has been in someone else's kitchen, and that it's now having a turn in mine. I hope I don't break it!

Beautiful, just beautiful!

That's one heck of a snot rope!

Soapmaking Masterclass

On Saturday night, my friends Bec & Ali came over for a bit of a soap making lesson. We made lemon myrtle soap with green clay marbled through. Here's the first lot cut into bars, it smells like lemonade icy poles. Next up, bread making.

Rainy day

What to do when you're stuck inside all day because it's raining? These beans and lentils are now in the compost bin, because I'm sick of cleaning them up!

Casuarina Farm

We had our first fruit and vegetable box delivered today from Casuarina Farm, we found out about them at Ecofest. I've wanted to do this for a while, and I hadn't heard of these guys before. So far, so good, our garden will provide us with the rest- lettuce, cauliflower, leeks, silverbeet, spring onions, and soon, snow peas. I like to buy organic where possible, and this makes it that little bit easier.

Mmm, pea straw

I've started to mulch the garden with pea straw from Ecofest, I love how it freshens up the look of the garden, and defines the plants. This pic is from this morning, when everything had had a good soak of rain overnight. We've been blessed with both sunshine and rain this last week, and everything is growing well because of it.

Awesome Ecofest!

Just a quick post to say that Ecofest was a resounding success, with attendance far exceeding our expectations! Everything ran very smoothly, with a great buzz, everyone was asking when we were doing it again! We all put in a lot of effort, so it's not something we want to do all the time, but we may be able to run the market every 6 months or so. Bec and I did very well with our market stall, looks like we may have the market bug now :) The only down side was that Andrew's digital SLR is missing, presumed stolen, thus we have no photos to share :( We should have some on the blog soon from other cameras around on the day. Not sure of the grand total of $ raised, but we should be able to buy at least one water tank, which was part of the aim of the day. The other aim, to strengthen community ties was certainly achieved. Yay for us, well done and thank-you to everyone involved.

Ecofest

Just a reminder to local green minded folks that Ecofest is on this Saturday 10am-3pm, our whole family will be there, I will be sharing a market stall with Bec.
This pretty little number will be on my stall, it was a pillowcase a few days ago, picked up in an op shop, and it is beautifully soft, as only second hand bedding can be. It's a size 1 by the way. See you there!

Apples

Apple skirt

Curio dress

Now in the shop!