For my mother

Over the years I got from my mother all sorts of materials,

often family treasures, 

like antique linen, lacework, ribbons..

..retro prints from the 70ties, which where taken down in the 80ties

and thanks to my mother's sense for value!! were carefully stored

heavy old linen curtains with huge burgundy prints,

folk cotton prints and and and...

seems  here pool is bottomless..

an in a weeks time she and my father will load their car again to drive

more goods down to Spain

so when my eyes got caught on my antique linen stack the other day,

I thought this bag might be the right thing

to say: "I love you Mama and thanks for being loved by you"

Silvana

easter in Connemara

..hey hello there,

I am for a few days here in Connemara,
weather is fantastic and the whole place around the Old Monastery Hostel is covered in Wild Garlic

a gift from mother Nature

you can use it like spinach, doing a pesto, like fresh herb in a salad or soup
or mixed with sea salt,
like in the following recipe

blend 100g wild garlic and mix it well with 100g of the sea salt, you get a quite liquid  paste than mix it with the rest of the sea salt.
Lay out a backing tray with kitchen tissue and dry the salt /wild garlic mix on it outside.
Takes about 8 hours on a sunny day. Don't dry indoor, cause it smells really strong!!

or how about Jamie Olivers wonderful wild garlic& sausage fusilli???

 http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/wonderful-wild-garlic-and-sausage-fusilli???


Happy Easter wishes

Silvana

romesco sauce for BBQ

BBQ is such a nice food experience, whether you do it meaty or you go vegetarian.

it´s easy to prep and if you have guests and they join in with a salad or the desert, than there is hardly no kitchen work involved....

....so there is no excuse not to do some little extra effort and get one of the bests sauces done..




"the Romesco sauce" originates from Tarragona, Catalonia and contains only goodness



here my recipe:

• 100g roasted almonds and hazelnuts
• 1 head garlic
• 1 slice stale bread soaked in red vine vinegar
• 6 sun ripe medium size tomatoes
• 2 large red peppers
• 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
•  3 dried Nora peppers soaked in hot water or 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes or small hot pepper
•  salt and pepper

• Roast garlic, red peppers and tomatoes on a baking sheet with a bit of olive oil for about half an hour at 180ºC.
• skin tomatoes and red peppers and squeeze out the soft garlic from it's skins
• put the roasted almonds and hazelnuts (I don't bother to peal the dry skin off), the tomatoes, red pepper and garlic pulp together with bread I previously had soaked in vinegar (make sure not to take to much - especially if you use Spanish vine vinegar!!) in a food processor or use a large bowl and a blender
• ground, mix and drizzle the olive oil into it, than add salt and pepper and the scratched out pulp from the Nora peppers.

i.... ja esta!  Bon profit!!

Silvana

Me and Kirsty McGee

when I am diving into my "just me weekends" and I create the chaotic set up for my crafting,

- meaning that I spread out good part of my materials to see what triggers me on this time-

and I turn on the music
full volume
no teens around complaining "Mamahhh!!!"
not for the noice of cause, but for my music preferences

and there they are, strong female voices:

Nina Simone, Amy Macdonald, Katie Malua, Melissa Etheridge, Marla Glenn, Lhasa de dSela,
Alanis Morissette, Aretha Franklin..

but there is one I favour at the moment and her name is Kirsty McGee

here a taste

Silvana

Shopping in Barcelona

Yesterday I had to do quite a big shopping tour in Barcelona for the students in my workshops.
First of all I went to Nunoya for some kimono prints Maria uses for a colourful and elegant
log cabin quilt and I passed some time in the shop, cause they had got some new KOKKA fabrics...
dangerously beautiful!!!

After that I needed I little coffee and sandwitch break at one of my favoured places for that, just around the corner from Nunoya.
"La Granja" with it's old roman wall in the back, good background music, very good coffee and a good sized sandwitch for just 4euros.

Then I went on the hunt for one of these Diane von Fürstenberg wrap dress pattern...
.. and got hold of this one

it says "easy" and might be just the right to start, like I haven´t sewn a proper dress for ages.

All excited next stop was to get the material for it. So I went straight to one of the most stunning
fabric stores I know : Ribas i Casals - I have been to this from the very beginning living in Spain and it's incredible what you get there.
Yesterday the crowd was buzzing in there, seems that everybody wants to do the spring collection.
I got some really smooth material for two wrap dresses and some other fabrics.. the offers are just to
good..

Last stop was a real Patchwork shop, which I visit frequently more for it's good selection of fabrics
than for the friendly attendance... got what I needed and than back out of the city.

By the time I was at home and completely exausted, I thought it's really great to live so close to a great shopping city like Barcelona...but just close..

 ...today I started with the wrap dress!!!

Silvana

scrapping the scraps

Doing Patchwork and creative sewing for about 15 years, creates boxes and bags of scraps!!!

And like I am a real recycle, up cycle and upgrade junky

I hoard them like treasures, going through them to reorganise and categorise, than starting to mix them up again to see which ones are working together...

...always creating a mayor mess around my workspace, but just feeling happy 

discovering another snippet of a long ago used up fabric.

But know I found the ideal way to give a lot of my fabric scraps a chance for glorious show up.

Years ago I got from my German cousin a bale of white cotton, lots and lots of meters...

great to count on for my project:

I cut the cotton in 4 to 6.5cm wide stripes

grap what ever comes of my scrap box and cut the fabric bits roughly equal

than I sew them in an garland to a cotton stripe, cut them with scissors and sew the opposite side to another white cotton stripe

now I match them with similar wide fabric bits to a longer patched stripe,

white cotton stripe on either side and on and on it goes...

There is only one rule to this work:

No concession in matching colours!!!

everything counts...and if it gets a bit crooked, the livelier and better....

Hope you have a nice weekend ahead.
I will go for some material shopping in Barcelona tomorrow....

Talk to you soon
Silvana

wild at heart

 
when I stumbled the other day over this pin at Pinterest and got all excited by the idea to knit up all my carefully collected yarn scraps.
Seriously, I never thought that there is a way to match the awful colour and texture mix of them.
But from my experience in scrap patching, I know, the wilder the better!!!
So I just got started last Friday evening and by the time it was past midnight I was already half up the way...
as I looked at the job at day light the following morning, I was stunned by effect.

I am working with a circular 100cm wooden 7mm needle and use what ever I have in the scrap basket,
merino, mohair ( doubling the yarn), Aran tweed ( my favoured) and pure new wool, a lot of the wool I
brought down to Spain nearly 20 years ago!!

Like I don't know yet, if this is going do be a poncho or a wrap, I casted about 180cm length of stitches.
Working in rows of Knit and Purl stitches as it pleases me, and if sometimes I just get confused in the middle of a row -doesn't matter...

So this is an other WORK IN PROGRESS !! and so much fun...

Hasta luego
Silvana