Kim Chi Three

Several weeks ago I found bok choy (or pok choy as I see more often in the UK) in the supermarket for my second batch of kimchi! If you remember my first attempt at kimchi, you’ll remember that it was too weak. I couldn’t find the same recipe this time and just tasted as I went along.
The second batch was too pale but tasted fine so I promptly gobbled it up (after sharing it with 4 or 5 willing tasters)! I just hadn’t put in enough paste.  The week that Kimchi 2 was ready, so were the rows of bok choy in partner’s parental allotment! It was amusing to make this third batch when my little sister was visiting because she literally runs away from it.  Admittedly, I too ran as a child when our mom chowed down. We thought it smelled (although my mom usually ate the oyster flavoured kim chi and I never ate sea food) but I saw the light when my mom made a friend of mine try some.  She had a jar of vegetarian kimchi and I figured I should be a good friend and try it too.  I changed my mind about it then but, being a teenager at the time, didn’t admit it until much later in life!

*Kimchi Three was “just right”. I soaked 4 large cabbages, some carrot strips, and spring onions in the salted water.

*Then, I made two times more flavouring paste than I thought I needed, which turned out to be the perfect amount.

*In no particular order, I added together crushed and finely diced ginger (and some tiny strips), freshly minced garlic, hot pepper paste (or, “Rod Paprika paste” as the label helpfully displays), some dried chili flakes for extra heat, a dash of vinegar, a dash of oil, and sesame seeds. I mixed it all together to get a concoction closer to paste than liquid.
*After sterilizing the jars (using the low tech way with an electric kettle and boiling water), I basically smashed and rubbed the paste into each piece of vegetable before placing it in the jar. Pack everything in very tightly and make sure that the top vegetables are covered in liquid/sauce/paste so they do not dry out or mold.

With such large cabbages, I was able to make two jars – I plan on giving the smaller one to my neighbour who thinks she has tried and enjoyed it in the past.
*If you don’t want to have orange hands for the next few hours/days, then wear gloves!
*For Kimchi 2, I let it sit for 4 days on the counter but did about 5 or 6 for this batch before placing it in the fridge.  It is summer here, but the temperature was mild at the time- around the mid 60sF.

Meet my new hat

Partner’s Aunt returned from a cruise with a lovely gift from Norway- a handmade hat! It was hand knitted, according to the tag, with crochet edging and a sewn lining. It has a head toggle, ear flaps and it’s a rainbow! Obviously, I love it! I only had to wait two weeks of Summer to try it out- as we frolicked around Arran together!

Here’s a photo of ‘us’ at Machrie Moor (my dad made the camera strap you see!).

Playing in Lamlash, where we saw a ton of aquatic hermit crabs!

Our guests left this morning and I’ll be slowly catching up with everything here soon.

Hair styles from the wedding

Although hair-dos do not really have anything to do with crafting or refashioning, I am posting these here for future reference since we browsed old photos for hours searching for some of our past styles.   I feel that even with the same old outfit, a new hair-do can make me feel like I’m wearing something brand-new for a fancy occasion and more likely to use what I have in the interest of frugality and controlled consumption.

I was planning on wearing this dress I refashioned for a wedding last summer but in the end I wore a different one.  A week or so before the wedding I noticed a large smudgy stain on the stomach area- obviously a remnant of some delicious dish.  I soaked it in borax and washed it to discover that the stain had shrunk but was as dark as ever.  Having run out of borax, I decided to soak it again in Soda Ash, or Washing soda.  A “strong” solution as advised on the pack eventually removed it! I soaked it for around 5 hours just to be sure.  I already had all the matching jewelery for this dress but Partner suggested I wear a dress my sister offered for the borrowing.  I am glad I did because now I’ve injected some variety into my dress-wear and am more likely to think of the dress with fresh eyes next time.

A few posts ago I wrote about how wearing the same size led us to compete for shirts but it also means that the dress she brought on her holiday fit me perfectly!  You can see me in the red dress ceilidhing in the photo above.  With white shoes and a shawl, there wasn’t much accessorizing to do so I kept with the floral theme and wore a silver Charles Rennie MacIntosh inspired bracelet with rectangles and rose buds and two rose bobby pins.

My little sister really is awesome and did our hair for us before the wedding.  Here are the hair styles I hope to replicate in the future:

Wedding gift

One of my teammates got married yesterday, on the 4th of July, and I wanted to make something special for the fantastic couple.

I made the table runner slowly over two weeks unsure about my skills. All the fabric was chosen from my stash and I opted for the pre-made bias binding since I was getting too tired to make some and also nervous about messing it all up at the final stage. The colour of the binding I had on hand tied in very well with the darker strips and as I finished sewing the last edge I excitedly realised it was a keeper!

* I originally had batting/ wadding inside to make it sort of puffy but it made the bottom side pucker so I took the batting out and cut several inches off, keeping it to two layers of fabric.

* As I finished sewing the top and bottom layers, I squared it off and thought about how useful a cutting board and rotary blade would be.

To complement the table runner, I re-potted the best looking aloe we had been growing and placed it in a bright blue pot. I searched the DIY stores for a week but did not find the right size or colour and was relieved when Partner’s mom handed me a perfect blue pot she had picked up only days before our conversation. Adding a clear glass candle holder and four candles in greens and blues, we completed the gift.

When I was still unsure whether or not the table runner would be successful, I asked the bride about types of stores they would be likely to shop if I needed to go the emergency route and buy a gift certificate. I said I had been working on making something but didn’t know if it would work out. Her response was an enthusiastic “Oh, make us something!” which was reassuring.

It wasn’t until I finished the runner with pride, however,  and saw how well the plant and candles completed the theme with a caring simplicity, that I knew that I am getting better at expanding my crafting while still tuning the gift to the recipient.

Thrifting with my sis

So my sister and her husband have been here for 5 fantastic days so far.  I always knew we were alike and besides my partner, she is my closest best friend.  Still, when neighbours and teammates ask if we are twins, or our mom says on the phone that after a few days together our voices and intonations have melded together, I should not have been surprised to realise we were in direct competition with one another during a charity shop hop.  On Thursday we decided to run through the charity shops in town and soon learned that while I scanned the nick nack shelves and children’s rack for potential souvenirs, she was busy honing in on the shirts I would have grabbed! We wear the same size and have overlapping senses of style.

As she paid for a cute teal shirt in the first store, I jokingly commented that she might ‘forget’ to pack the shirt when she leaves.  In the next store where she found another cute teal/aqua shirt, she was thoughtful and let me try it on.  At that same shop, I found two football jerseys for them to pick up for my nephew, who plays in a soccer league at home.  We all left happy.  Here’s a shot of the new shirt. I am thinking about either hemming the bottom up several inches, or making slits at each side to create more of a tunic shape.  The first few wears I’ll keep it the same to see how I feel.

Incidentally, I learned that we also play Monopoly in the very same way-  in moving the game piece and our property buying strategies…much to the occasional frustration of both our partners! It’s good to have my sister here!

Things for the Home

My sister and her partner (aka “Young Wifey” and “Hubster”) are coming to visit us on Tuesday!  They are staying several weeks and I’m really looking forward to showing them around.  Last time young wifey came to visit me in Scotland, she wasn’t a wifey and I lived in a tiny student flat with 5 others in St. Andrews…that was in 2003.

Add this visit to the reasons cited in my previous post and you’ll know I’ve been busy  tidying, decluttering and creating for the home.  Here are my most recent completed projects

We have been working on this rag rug for a long time.  Started in January 2008, it has stayed its current size for about a year.  We ran out of purple to complete that round and have used it as a hang-out spot ever since.  This week I talked to Partner (we both worked on it) and we decided that it was a perfect size already so I dug out some newly aquired purple, finished the round, and now it is complete! It is large enough for both of us to sit on the rug while playing games.

Next, is a hand towel I made using the Basket rib stitch on Ravelry.  Here is the link to the original pattern.  I cast on 74 stitches and made it just under 2 feet long because I think long rectangles stay on the towel rack better than shorter ones.

Last, is a wee heart rug I made one night to use up the red strips we had cut for the rainbow rug.  It is about 1.5 feet across and sits next to our bathtub.  I may expand it in the future but for now, I enjoy seeing a small red heart strewn on the floor.  It reminds me of red hearts candy.

Organising and making space

Before you read this post, here’s a delicious muffin I made the other day.  I used of a lot of random ingredients (freezer bananas, mixed seeds, an oatmeal-type concoction that I thought was oats until I realised it was museli, etc).  I also made soup to knock through ingredients, all the while accompanied by NPR’s “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me”, my favourite radio show!

And now for something completely different:

My PhD thesis is still under way so I have no illusion about being able to be less of a paper hoarder any time soon.  I have 11 binders, two cardboard magazine ‘racks’ and 13 expandable cardboard folders full of documents and fieldnotes from my research, taking up one and a half shelves where I would otherwise have space for books.  It’s not that I am going to get rid of these documents.  In the future, all research tends to be cumulative in a way but I would tuck them away somewhere.  I’ve  come to suspect that most university staff only want to work in a department  for the priviledge of an office to keep their academic collections separate from their living quarters! This week I filled our recycling bag of papers- thousands of scraps that had already been used on both sides, etc- just sitting around waiting to be classified.  Most of the information was no longer useful, like some company phone number without a name- so out it went and I found my desk surface again.

One thing I can begin to whittle down, is my stash- of yarn and fabric.  The plastic bins I brought home the other day have been great for that and now I need to really get started on going through what I don’t really need to keep.

I took a large bag of fabric strips (I had the intention of making those into another rug, but the off-white and black didn’t fit anywhere into our schemes or inspire me at all) to the textile recycling skip the other day, freeing up some under-bed space. I am also going to cull our socks – the funky novelty socks we receive as gifts are fun to wear, but not the easiest to darn once they wear so thin.  The darning ends up being much thicker than the rest of the sock! Those pairs will be recycled too.

I am not going to have time in the next few years to use up all the half-balls of yarn that I’m not interested in.  Many of the colours are going to make it into a de-stash blanket.  It’s here if you’re on ravelry.  I need to sort through the rest and find a Girl Guides troop to bring it to if there’s enough, or get it on Freecycle or a charity shop.

We have a charity shop bag open in our home at all times.  We deliver a full donation bag every three weeks or so.  I occasionally post on Freecycle but I need to start taking fuller advantage of it to hand out the things that are unsuitable for donating.  I like that you can say “I have this ____ that needs fixing, or repairing, is anyone interested?” and they usually are.  The same stuff just wastes the resources of charity shops.

Other ways we sometimes declutter that I would like to make more habitual: a) Selling unwanted books and strange electronics (we have a wireless router that we were sold as “mac compatable”, it wasn’t and then we lost the receipt) on Amazon. b) Finding even more recipes to stretch our fresh foods further with creative uses of the dry ones so my partner doesn’t rush out and buy food because we “don’t have any”.  I would like to try a new recipe a week or, realistically, every two weeks.

I am trying to organise all this in my mind because it seems like we are headed towards a gradual change in the road.  We are not yet financially comfortable, or even started out in life- parter is still looking for a full time job and I need to finish this PhD and apply for jobs as well.  I’ve been keeping my eye open for non-academic positions and applying as I go along, but that must not be in the plan at the moment.  Last week I talked to my old boss at the shop about coming back for a shift a week and once the fall semester starts I will have a bit more pocket money from tutoring but I am far from the power earner at this point.

That being said, we have begun to actively think about moving in order to save money.  We have such a fantastic set-up right now and are so comfortable, it will be hard to let go of the easy walk to my sports club, the train and the job at the shop.

The question is, at what point does moving to save £100 a month not make sense?  We have great landlords and have plenty of warmth and space in this flat.  I have lived here for 4 years and it is home.  But really, home isn’t a collection of things, home is with one’s partner.

The things just make it harder for us to consider moving.  Both of our hobbies take up quite a lot of space, as you can at least gather from my stash descriptions.  Moving from the centre of town will knock the prices lower but we still need to be near public transportation and there’s only a certain distance away that could make that move worthwhile.  Another thing is that we barely have any furniture in this country.  We have a bookshelf, a few chairs…no bed (we do have an air mattress we could use for a while!) etc.  So we would need to rely heavily upon our network of fantastic people, freecycle, store vouchers from completed surveys, and finding a decent furniture charity shop somewhere.  We also have discussed moving out of central Scotland if any jobs come up, so we really need to start preparing.  This potential move may not happen, yet my brain is a-buzz.

1. Be ruthless with worthless (to me) stash fillers that someone else may be able to use- yarn, cds, look into getting a crafty things box together for the guides or other group that appreciates craft supplies.

2. Keep Amazon active and list more.

3. Get the plants under control.  Re-pot more babies and give away to friends and freecycle.  Pare down to just the main parent plants and keep them happy. Then, freecycle the extra pots.

4. Work on wardrobe.  Recycle non-reparable socks, fix the things I plan to fix, get rid of extra bags, wet suits and other strange things that we never use.

5. Crafting priorities- finish sewing the wedding gift, use of the acrylics for the destash blanket, use the large partial-sheets in stash for appliance covers.  Go for the biggest impact- use the most materials for the most useful items first!

This post has mostly been to organise my own thoughts, so here are a list of some of the blogs and posts that inspire me when attempting to de-clutter.  I may have posted some before but they’re relevant again!

I am inspired by Smallnotebook in general and this new post is particularly relevant. Prioritizing life- well said.  That is exactly what we are trying to do here and it seems that it is all around at the moment.  One friend of my has decided to completely deconnect with all non-essentials.  She’s keeping her email, but unplugging facebook, her blog and everything else that she feels has cluttered her life.  I also really like this post about moving at smallnotebook- it will come in handy some day.  Livingsmall is also inspirational for getting rid of ’stuff’.  Zen habits has a good approach to stuff.  While I don’t keep a wardrobe as basic as this, I am working towards a streamlined and compatible system [and another] of only clothing that I love and that mean something to me.

First attempt at making mustard

I love mustard.  I love it on sandwiches and many other savoury things, but most of all on pretzels.  Pretzels and mustard are one of my all time favourite snacks (although we’re out of pretzels at the moment or they would be in the above photo!)

The store brand pretzels sold in the UK at Chrsitmas were great when they were all we could buy, but now that there is enough of a demand for importing packs of pretzels from Poland (say that quickly 5 times!) I just can’t go back to the under-toasted flavour of holiday pretzels.  Also, since they’re only sold for the holidays, they’re all produced at once and every pack expires in March.  So, we’re very happy nibbling on the yummy ones our store now sells for an affordable price….which leads me to my mustard cravings!

I’m also picky about mustard- I was raised eating spicy brown mustard on all pretzels, hard or soft. The whole grain mustard here is beautiful looking (in that earthy, real food sort of way) and I do dump it on sandwhiches or roast veggies  but I find it too lumpy and sweet.  So I thought I’d make my own!
I came across this recipe and modified a few things.  I used a bit of purple onion instead of shallots because I had one to use up.   I used only brown seeds instead of brown and yellow and added a bit of tumeric in the blending stage.

I followed the recipe and soaked everything together overnight in the fridge. It looked like this:

The next step is to blend it all, which I tried to do in my food processor since it is sturdier than my blender.  I strained it and only put about a third of the liquid in- which was a very smart move! Using the food processor, however, was not.  The large blades just threw the seeds around, making them look like those little styrofoam balls dancing about inside a child’s play vacuum! After scraping it all into the mortar and chasing the seeds around without grinding many of them, I resorted to the blender.  The blades started to do their thing, although it took many pauses to scrape it all down off the sides again. Just as it was getting close to being smooth the blender stopped having fun.

Next time, I will make more than one batch to justify all the scraping and only put in a third of the liquid for soaking.  The mustard does taste good and it’s pleasantly Not sweet, but I will be trying a few more recipes before I settle on one.  If you have one of those wee mini-blenders for your food processor (the sort that you grind coffee in), this process will be a breeze! Tonight I’ll be making some rye bread to make the perfect sandwich!

Offered on Freecycle

1. TAKEN (subject to collection) Wet suit and boogie board, both well loved. The wet suit is a women’s medium, last worn by a 16 year-old. Partner remembers owner saying there is a small tear in the suit somewhere but we cannot find it. It should be easily reparable.

2. TAKEN (subject to collection) Three plastic aquarium plants.

3. TAKEN (subject to collection) Jewelery set- earrings, necklace and tika.

4. TAKEN (subject to collection) Radio alarm clock, in working condition.

5. TAKEN (subject to collection) Eleven yellow Ikea photo frames, 4×6 inches.

“Stocks are low, donate your clothes”

As I walked by a charity shop today, I saw a cute window display/campaign. Two mannequins dressed in nothing but underwear, have signs draped around them saying “Stocks are low…”
I didn’t have my real camera with me so here’s a shot with my wee camera phone. I think you probably see more of the building across the street but the idea’s still there!

Edited to add: Two days later I walked by another shop with my camera and snapped this photo.