To Oz and beyond…introducing the prototype Fab-Brick.

Though popularly perceived as an object best suited for throwing at things with the express aim of smashing them, the prosaic nature of the brick belies its infinite potential to be used as a component to build things more extraordinary than the proverbial shithouse.

The Fab-Brick is essentially a hand-sewn, upholstered brick form that can be configured and reconfigured to create useful objects to furnish the changing needs of day-to-day living (watch this space). A useful addition to the clutter of any lived-in home; not just for my fellow friends of Dorothy, but for their friends too…
Click here to view my Instructable on how to make your very own Fab-Brick.

A big "thank you" to the peeps from the European Street Team blog for mentioning my Fab-Brick in their Etsy SewUseful post.

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   Seed Stitch Pom-Pom Scarf

Aside from the fact that the publication of ‘ Stitch ‘N Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook’ and a plethora of spin off manuals allows you, should you simply want to try your hand at knitting, to neatly by-pass any hoary, matriarchal rite of passage preparing young girls for womanhood and marriage, you can now, with a knitting project in your hands, watch much as telly as you like, GUILT-FREE.

To knit this scarf I used:

• 2 x 50g balls Jaeger Baby Merino DK shade 226 - Ocean
• 2 x 50g balls Jaeger Baby Merino DK shade 232 - Olive
• 2 x 50g balls Jaeger Baby Merino DK shade 230 - Khaki
• 1 x 50g ball Debbie Bliss Merino DK, colour 225503 - Gold

To knit in Seed Stitch:
Cast on 48 stitches(or any even number of stitches)
Row 1:*k1, p1; rep from *
Row2: *p1, k1 rep from *
Repeat Rows 1 and 2. I knitted the scarf to wrap twice around a person's neck and terminate immediatley in two neat pom-poms.

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seedstich scarf thumb

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Melon Bubble Tea

A real treat is sitting at a worn formica table in Jen Café on Newport Place, in London's Chinatown listening to the clatter of mahjong tiles and muffled shouts in Cantonese wafting in from the windows above the street, a bubble tea in front of me slowly sweating beads of condensation and sharing a plate of vegetable jiaozi freshly made by the woman sitting in the window. The really accomplished trick is to pick up a dumpling with chopsticks, dunk it in the soy-vinegar dipping sauce and transport it to your mouth without ripping the skin of the dumpling and emptying its contents down your front. I just love how the big gloopy, amoeboid, tapioca bubble tea pearls shoot up the oversized straw and eddy around your tonsils before you can manoeuvre them into position to be chewed and swallowed. And then, how they seem to reconstitute themselves and gloop down your oesophagus much like gobs of chewing gum hastily gulped down the hatch to avoid school detention; only you can swallow these without fear or regret, confident in the knowledge that they won't wrap around your ribcage and form a sticky web entangling your innards.

Ingredients:

• Half a small watermelon, juiced
• Half a cantaloupe melon, juiced
• A cup of green tea
• Unsweetened soya milk
• Honey
• Black tea flavoured bubble tea pearls

Mix the cup of green tea with the cantaloupe melon juice. Sweeten with honey. This layer goes at the bottom of the glass so it is good to sweeten this as much as possible without completely overpowering the cantaloupe melon flavour. This acts as counterpoint to the more fresh, slightly vegetable tasting watermelon juice. Spoon the cantaloupe juice mix to quarter fill a couple of glasses. Put the glasses into the freezer until the juice freezes solid (approximately 2 hours).

Divide the watermelon juice between two bowls. Add a couple of splashes of soya milk to one of the bowls. Add the soya milk carefully as you don't want to overpower the watermelon flavour. Sweeten to taste with honey. Place the watermelon / soya milk mix in the refrigerator to chill, place the unadulterated watermelon juice in the freezer.

After two hours prepare the bubble tea pearls following the instructions on the packet. Strain them from the boiling water in the saucepan and run them under cold water to cool them down to room temperature. Take the glasses containing the frozen cantaloupe mix and the bowl containing the unadulterated watermelon juice out of the freezer. Crush up the frozen watermelon juice with a fork and spoon a layer to each glass. Add a heaped spoonful of bubble tea pearls into each glass. Take the watermelon / soya milk mix and fill the glasses to the top. Pop in an oversized bubble tea straw and enjoy.

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   Stripey Winter Throat Warmer

I learnt to knit garter stitch as a Brownie. We knitted squares to be sewn into a blanket for a charitable cause. Whoa Louisa May Alcott! Hold those bucolic thoughts of benevolent thrift! This was Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, 1979.

The resulting blanket was truly UGLY as only a project of mean, acrylic yarn remnants garnered from the bottom of knitting baskets at the end of that decade could be: a dropped-stitch riddled patchwork of burnt orange, salmon, bottle green and mustard interspersed with odd squares in new born baby pastels (give or take an occasional crumb of peanut butter and syrup sandwich – a Brownie staple). It was probably palmed off on somebody’s underpaid, disenfranchised maid servant as we upstart, sanctimonious six year olds were congratulated on our magnanimous act of altruism and presented with much coveted knitter interest badges to sew onto our badge sashes.

Years later, under duress, I knitted a toy in garter stitch for a Home Economics class project. I decided on knitting a beige Pink Panther to co-ordinate with the 80’s knotty pine ceiling & mute green walls of my bedroom; because as a teenager mired in white, apartheid South Africa, I exercised my choice to fully test the ambit of straight-laced conventionalism with impassive indifference because there was no access to any promise of anything better.

More years later my third ever attempt at knitting: I have just completed this winter throat warmer as a harbinger of striped deckchair days and the promise of that elusive sun-drenched picnic in St James's park being hustled by the Canada geese for (peanut butter and syrup) sandwich crusts.

To knit this scarf I used:

• 3.5mm needles rather than the recommended 4mm


• 2x 50g balls Debbie Bliss merino dk red 225700


• 2x 50g balls Debbie Bliss merino dk blue 225203


• 1x 50g balls Debbie Bliss merino dk grey 225104


• 1x 50g ball Debbie Bliss merino dk white 225100

I sewed the corsages to badge pins so that they could be removed or positioned where I liked once I had put the scarf on and adjusted it in the mirror. They are also very convenient for disguising the odd unsightly twisted, picked-up dropped stitch or any other unintentional loop, split stitch, hole, knot or irregularity.

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