my wheat grass growing, & my juicer. my daily tonic, i juice a handful.. mmm nice and sweet and sooo good for you.

this is my ginger beer bug it brews for seven days, ...

TO MAKE YEAST BUG
14g sachet of brewers yeast ( i used bread yeast)
1 teaspn sugar
1 teaspn ground ginger
1 cup of cold water

TO FEED THE BUG
1 teaspn sugar & 1 teaspn ground ginger per day

THE BEER
4 lemons
2 cups of sugar
5 cups of boiling water
14 cups cold water

TO START THE BUG... place the yeast, sugar, ginger and water in a glass jar feed it every day for seven days with 1tspn sugar & ginger.
after 1 week juice lemons add to sugar & hot water into clean bucket, stir to dissolve sugar, then add cold water. strain the juice from the bug through muslin cloth into bucket, stir and pour into bottles leave for 2 hours before capping, use cleaned plastic bottles, leave for 2-4 weeks before drinking, if bottles are very rigid release gas by loosening then tightening lids.

weaving

made this basket last night (left) its called a waikawa basket, the top picture is what it looks like when its dried out, i use them for washing baskets, toys , etc.

cloth baby shoes & cup cakes

today i made sum baby shoes for two friends, i got the pattern from.. http://www.stardustshoes.blogspot.com/ i made them from sum felt I've had sitting there for a while.

i tried the red velvet cupcake recipie from.. http://cupcakeblog.com/ and swiss meringe buttercream frosting from.. http://howtoeatacupcake.net/

SOAP MAKING

top is my soap making equipment, pretty basic,red sop is strawberry shortcake, triangle ones are cookie dough mmm smells yum.

made soap last night tried a recipe i made up, didn't work to well recipe as follows....

16oz rice bran oil
9.6oz palm oil
3.2oz coconut oil
3.2oz Castor bean oil

4.4oz lye (caustic soda)
11.5oz of water
it thickened up really quickly, checked it before i went to bed there was layer of on top, mixed it in went very gluggy, i should of used smaller quantity of rice bran oil and more palm oil, algood i remelted it down this morning added water, split into 2 batches.

1st batch i added 2 Tble spn kaolin powder, 1 tspn cocoa, 10mil cookie dough fragrance, & tspn of myrrh powder which helps hold the fragrance.

2nd batch red food colouring bout capfull, 10mill of fragrance: strawberry shortcake backed up with vanilla bean with tralings of snowfairies & sugardrops.

HARAKEKE & WEAVING

here are photo's of my harakeke (nz flax) plantation, which is what i weave with, it is harvested, softened, boiled, for a few minutes, can use straight away or hung to dry.

I finally have weaved up a kete for a friend who wanted 1 last july for her birthday..oops!

In the the mail today my package arrived after 4 weeks, 11 bottles of scent for soap, thats my mission, making rough & raw soap.. mmm..