New rabbit girl

Hi everyone! I have had a good laugh today. They say laughing is good for health, I believe that. I feel laughing releases blocking in the body and head.

Rabbit girl

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 This is my new rabbit girl. I say a girl, but she is actually a young woman. It is flax paper porcelain clay. I tend not to be able to sleep well after a busy day at office. But when I do a bit of ceramic, I usually fall to sleep easily and don't remember anything much until next morning. Touching clay is, I think, therapeutic, but also using a part of my brain which controls creativity removes edgyness derives from my tense day work.

  

Moomin sheep! and 10 minutes pasta sauce from scratch.

I changed him again! I wanted to make his tummy rounder, and neck slimmer. So I severed his head! and removed arms, and adjusted his waist line and neck line. How about that? Do you like him? I like him better. Then I made his arms lifted, just because he looks chirpier this way. Compare with yesterday's.

Sheep side

This paper flax porcelain clay is doing what it says it does. I attached bone dry to moist parts yesterday, and they seem ok. Today I reattached his head to body, that seemed fine, too. So far I am happy with it.

Sheep front

Next one is this. It stared something cute, and ended up with something, which Mike called 'spooky' lol! Oh well.

Penguin? Bird?

Spooky thing!

---Midori's very quick cooking corner----

Mike comes home and prepares lunch for both of us, although I work form home. Yes, I know I am very lucky. But today, the beginning of my holiday, I cooked lunch for a change. My cooking is very quick. It is pasta with bacon, garlic and cherry tomatoes fried in olive oil. There are two points you should follow, then you can't fail. First, buy very good quality bacon. Dry cured lightly smoked from outdoor raised pigs is our one. Second fry garlic until it becomes light brown. Well, if you could get ripe tomatoes, that makes a big difference, but in UK in December, we can't expect that.... Yummy!

Midori's 10 minutes sauce for pasta

Paper flax porcelain clay experiment

The last Sunday before Christmas was spent mostly cleaning parrot cages and house. We have three large cages, so it was a whole morning job, even though I started before breakfast.

After dinner, I tried to make a whippet, and failed. But I was eager to make something, so I added a body to 'Moomin whippet' I made last week 

Mooomin whippet found fleece body

Back side

This clay is called paper flax porcelain clay. According to Jane who recommend 'paper clay' to me, even bone dry parts can be attached to moist parts. So here is my experiment. As you can see from the image, the head part was bone dry; it is white. I attached the body to the head this evening to see what will happen. It felt to me fine. There was no peeling off, which happened when I used ordinary clay when it was too dry to be worked.  

Mike baked polenta muffins with Italian twist. Ingredients are ground almonds, polenta as well as other usual things.

Polenta, ground almonds and egg yokes

A bit gritty (intended) and they didn't rise much (because of heavy ingredients?), but taste was good. They remind me Madelaines. I ate three, and Mike tried to appear to be shocked for the third one, but he also ate three!

Our tree. Christmas is coming. Beaper the grey parrot, stopped whistling 'I wish your merry Christmas', even though that tune is his favourite. Typical! He usually starts after February.  

Our tree

Moomin whippet with paper clay. Mike bakes and cooks a lot.

Hello everyone! I hope you have had a nice weekend. Today I finally set up my studio with Mike's help in the dinning room, and made a small sample with new paper clay. At first I struggled to return to creative mode, but managed after for a while. I think it is important for me to create something often to keep an edge. The sample I made is this! Mike named her 'Moomin whippet'! 

Moomin whippet

Close-up

I long for having a real studio, but at this moment, we have to make do with the dinning as a studio. It has ceramic tile floors and close to water and garden door.

We moved the dinning table to the lounge, and moved a work table to dinning.

He said 'I am doing a job for two people' while I was happily snapping photos. I said.' I am journalist' LOL

Voila! My studio.

Recently I have uploaded lots of food pictures. It's because we actually care so much (too much?) about food. It is definitely our main topic!

We did quite lots of baking and cooking today. Mike cooked English breakfast for me at lunch.

Bacon went to the oven

Without bread, but with a glass of red wine!

Then, he baked a carrot cake with lots of walnuts (my favourite!) and cinnamon (another favourite of mine!). I suggested that we could put cream cheese on top of a slice each time. (I just didn't want to wait...) Marmalade which he added was made by me last year. I made it too much and we used them instead of orange peels.

Mike's carrot cake with marmalade and lemon zest

Lots of walnuts!

I also made honey roasted peanuts. It is very moreish.

Microwave 1Tbs butter and honey each, and stir it onto 1 cup of peanuts. Roast them for about 15 minutes at 160C in the oven.

Once cool, store them in an air tight container.

Mike cooked fried rice and spinach for two meals, and broccoli. We usually cook for two meals or even more to save time.