Arise, Blogtoberfest! A Pome.

I wandered lon'ly as a blog,

Crafting slowly through the fog

Of work and life and lots of things

But -Hark! O'er there! A clear note rings! 

Raise high the bugle,

Tootle the horn.

Trumple the tuba --

Blogtoberfest is born!

Craft love, appear

again this year.

Trailing clouds of glorious

Ricrac stentorious!

Mascots and memes

And silly schemes

Let forth the host,

of Blogtoberfest posts!

Marmot vom Großglockner
Originally uploaded by _stebo_

Back to the mmm-market

Queen Victoria Market
Originally uploaded by Taccolina

I'm hoping that life will calm down a little now that the launch party has gone off as a success. You know, sometime in between work and studying and interesting projects, perhaps I'll have a little time to sew? Maybe I can start drawing again? (Caus heaven knows, I miss it a lot.)

I took the day off on Friday, and he took the afternoon: so we had a long leisurely lunch with a friend we don't see often enough. All three of us gleefully escaping from the usual hectic round of activity, sitting in comfy booth with milkshakes, parmas, burgers, big breakfasts and all the accoutrements of a good catching-up session.

Saturday morning, off to the market. Being completely and utterly ignorant of football and all things AFL-related, it was nice to go when everyone else was rushing off to the game/game parties/getting ready for game parties. Meanwhile, back at the bratwurst stand... 'A second coffee, dear?' Hhmm. Back home to finish the latest Lindsey Davis that I've borrowed from the library. And then some sewing.

Some weekends are about re-claiming the basics. Shovel out weeks' accumulation of clutter. Re-acquaint myself with my sofa. My sleep in. My sewing machine (sorry about all the dust!). My bag of library books. My dog on my lap.

I hope yours has been glorious, too. I've still got half a day of playtime left, so I'm off...

Careful consideration of chocolate cake

Careful consideration of placement
Originally uploaded by Taccolina

Another photo from the launch party.

It's a pleasant consideration to have, right? One medium-sized table plus about sixteen gorgeous cakes. Where to put them? Oh, what to do?

I'm pleased to report that the Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame took its pride of place in the cafe and was duly demolished. Remnants of fame were last seen disappearing in large white boxes borne away by happy Kinglake locals.

(Do you like my op-shopped Salvos store tablecloth? I love it!)

B

Cookbooks and cake

The cookbook launch went well! We had a party at Kinglake on Sunday evening, and much fun was had by all. Dinner from the cookbook, prizes and face painting, music and delights. Not to mention, much cake.... Here are a couple of shots of the pre-launch preparations chez Taccolina on Saturday afternoon. I'm still sorting the photos from the launch itself, so I'll show you those soon.

Saturday afternoon, getting sorted: cake boxes, muffin cases, mm-mm.

Baking and icing, mm-hhmm.

Cupcakes finished and starting to fill the cake box... (Little silver sugarballs on top.)

I'm not sure if I took a picture of our kitchen table before we left, but it was piled high with white cake boxes full of baked goodies. Many lovely people dropped off a cake, or three -- and the assortment was beautiful, and turned out to be delicious.

At the party, a very serious 10-year-old wanted to discuss the various merits of the cakes with me. The Chocolate Truffle cake was pronounced 'Very dark. But nice.' - and the Orange Cardamom Sour Cream Cake was 'Really, really good.' That's one sophisticated ten-year-old cake taster, not mincing her words.

We had dark cakes, light cakes, coconut cakes and pink-iced cakes. We had three tiers of cupcakes on a gorgeous stand. There was a strawberry-adorned chocolate beauty. Glossy icing on a tall dark number. A double-decker chocolate cake, with butter cream icing and german cherry jam in the middle. A clown cake. Ring cakes. They all made new friends. Large white boxes were last seen being borne away by happy Kinglake residents full of assorted pieces of cake (the residents - and the boxes, that is!)

Hurrah to the cake bakers, one and all of you!

When I can't quilt.

Life's kinda busy at the moment. The party this weekend, a small matter of dinner for 200, editing and ideas and chocolate cake and - oh, I'm not going to bore you.

We all have times when we're just unable to quilt. Or to draw, collage, stitch or embroider. Whatever yoiur craft addiction, I'm sure you know what I mean.

And at times like these, I like to flick quickly through pictures that inspire me. It's like slurping down a chocolate milkshake all at once, because you can feel it filling you up for hours to come. (Okay, so that's not the best analogy in the world - note to self: revise.)

Tiny bits of inspiration can percolate while everything else is going on. And I promise myself that soon - soon - I will draw something like this.

(This is not a slab of chocolate. I know what you were thinking, Curlypops! No, it's the carved wooden screen across the quire of a cathedral in northern England, near the Lake District. note to self - look up cathedral name...!)

Jam on top

Six days to the launch and counting... I've been working on a few interesting recipes for the second printing of the benefit cookbook. Yes, that's right, Homemade: The Handmade Help recipe book will be reprinting. Thanks to all of you who bought copies we're really close to being able to fulfil our goal, which was to have enough copies to provide one for every one of those 2000 families who lost their homes, should they want one. (We've been selling copies to raise the money to print extras, and any money left over from the sale will be donated to the Salvation Army. So when you purchase one, you give twice: you give a cookbook to a family AND money to the Salvos for the work they do all across Australia).

Thanks to the oddnesses of printing and presses and production stuff, if we add a couple of pages to the book, it costs less to print. (And wastes less paper). So, let them eat JAM! I've got a couple of jams and a marmalade to add to the back of the book.

The new copies won't be out for a good six weeks yet, so in the meantime, your copies are jam-free (but jam-packed with great recipes). It's a sticky situation, knowing we need to add something extra to the book, but we think we can spread it on lightly and the result will just be that much sweeter.

Book and bag

While I was away, I did a packet-load of crafting. Here's just one of the things I made which has been in my handbag ever since. It's just a pouch, but useful, very useful! Two kinds of fabric fused to woven interfacing, with a vintage sheet lining. (More of that sheet later!)

We're gearing up for the launch of the cookbook this coming weekend: lists and ingredients, lots of helpers to muster. It's plenty to organise but I'm starting to look forward to it, too. We'll celebrate and start giving the cookbooks away through some of the community groups in the bushfire-affected areas. Should be lots of fun.