Love. . . Auckland's Japanese $3.50 shop!

I got back from Auckland on Wednesday night, but not before I had been introduced to the wonders of the Daiso Japanese $3.50 shop! I got the recommendation from a friendly raveller who met me in Auckland on Sunday to give me some paper cranes towards my 1000 for Christchurch. It turns out Daiso is "Japan's no. 1 ranking livingware supplier". Any 3 items for $10! I went in there looking for origami paper, and came out with lots of it, in various sizes. I also got tempted by various cute Japanese "livingware" including several sushi moulds, Nori punches, flower-shaped cutters for vegetables, wiggly plastic chopping knives (for tofu) and refillable soy sauce bottles with animal head lids! Ok, I freely admit I was like a child in a sweetie shop in there, but never in my life had I seen such a place and I am sure it will be a long time before I see such a place again! Here's my haul of loot. . .

Sonny Jim decided he wanted to cook dinner last night and he used the Japanese flower-shaped cutters to cut flower shaped carrots to put in the soup he was cooking. For the record, he used his Kung Fu Panda recipe for Po's Chicken Noodle Soup and he made two pans of it, one to the original recipe for him and my step-dad (who is staying with us from the UK for a few days) and another pan with the same soup but with veggie stock and shrimps instead of chicken stock and chicken for the non-meat-eaters. He also made a loaf of Mediterranean bread in the bread maker and I can tell you, there were MANY compliments to the chef!!

Knit. . . Bridge over Troubled Water mitts

Photo by Sara

This is the third time I have knitted this mitt pattern - it's a firm favourite. It's called Tower Bridge Mitts by designer Rachel Brown, and is available for download from the link on ravelry above or directly from Rachel's blog: Porpoiseknits. I was actually involved in the test knitting process for these mitts - it was the very first pattern I officially tested via the ravelry group  Free Pattern Testers. the original pattern has one extra lace repeat, but this is my shortened (quicker and more thrifty!) version. These mitts are a birthday gift for someone else, a reasonably new friend, but one who has offered support during a difficult time (the CHCH earthquake) and so I changed the name of this project from "Tower Bridge" to "Bridge over Troubled Water". Here's the link to my project page on ravelry.  I really hope that the birthday girl likes these mitts. . . I will let you know once they've arrived.

Photo by Sara

The yarn is Knitsch yarns 100% merino sock yarn and was the first instalment in the Knitsch Flights of Fancy 2011 yarn club. The yarn base itself is absolutely gorgeous - it is a beautifully soft 2 ply construction, and being firmly twisted has lovely crisp stitch definition. The "Go Lightly" colourway which I used to make these mitts is absolutely beautiful, with such subtle colour variations.

Knitsch sock yarns 100% merino "Go Lightly"

Tash Barneveld of Knitsch yarns has recently opened a new yarn shop Holland Road Yarn Company, at 281 Jackson Street, Petone, near Wellington. I haven't been lucky enough to get there yet, on account of it being on a different island and everything. By all accounts, it sounds wonderful though! There is talk of comfy couches and beautiful yarns and friendly service. One day, I will get up there and check it out for myself! In the meantime, Knitsch do a great online store if I ever feel the urge to part with a few dollars (although I am trying hard to spend very little on yarn this year!).

PS Edited 14th April: The mitts arrived somewhat belatedly and the birthday girl liked them a lot! Yay! She was good enough to send me some photos of them, as I didn't get any really good ones before I posted them. 

Eat. . . "Bargainaceous" box of plums

A week ago I was at the fruit and veggie shop when my eye was caught by something on the "Reduced to clear" table. That something is pictured above - a ten kilogram box of Hawkes Bay "black amber" plums for only NZ$2.99. That's about £1.40 or US$2.26 for 10 kg/22lbs of plums! Incredible value or what?!! "Bargainaceous" even!

Needless to say, those plums came straight home with me! Although the plums were obviously past their best (hence their vastly reduced price) I managed to retrieve approx 6kg of plum flesh after the stones and rotten/mouldy bits had been removed. I froze just over half for use another day, and set about making jam with the remainder. This might seem inconsequential, but what you probably don't know is that I haven't actually made any jam since I was about 12 years old, back in the early 1980s. Chutney, marmalade and lemon curd - yes, but jam? Nope!

I used the plum jam recipe in the NZ classic Edmonds Cookery Book …

Plum Jam

2 kg plums, halved and stoned
1.5 cups water
7 cups white sugar

Put plums and water into a preserving pan.

Boil until soft and pulpy. Add sugar. Stir until dissolved. Boil briskly for 15 mins or until setting point is reached. (I used my cooking thermometer to make sure the temp got to 105C, by which point most jams will set.) 

Pour into sterilised jars, a few of which I have photographed below. . .

Makes about 6 x 350 ml jars. 

This jam has so far been pronounced delicious by all who have tasted it, even Sonny Jim, who is usually monogamous to raspberry jam! So there may just be a few more jars of jam gracing these pages at some point now I have rediscovered my inner jam-maker!

Knit. . . Wifie's Tiki fingerless mitts

So, a month ago I spotted that Grannyg (of most excellent New Zealand podcast Crafternoon Tea ) had published a pattern called Tiki. It is based on the iconic New Zealand Tiki. Some of you are probably wondering what a Tiki is so I will quote from the Tiki pattern:

"In New Zealand Maori mythology, Tiki is the first man who created the first woman and bore children with her. He appears all through Central Eastern Polynesian culture in carvings but for us in New Zealand he is found in pendants known as Hei-Tiki. These pendants were traditionally carved in greenstone or bone, although in recent times all manner of materials have been used.
A Hei-Tiki is a powerful good luck symbol, representing ancestors in human form. The tilted head indicates thinking, hands are for strength, mouth indicates powerful communication, heart is for love and the loins are for fertility."

My "wifie" (or civil union partner if you prefer!) saw the Tiki design on ravelry over my shoulder and immediately pronounced that she would love a pair of the Tiki mittens! I needed no encouragement to buy the pattern, but only once I had bought and downloaded it did aforementioned partner realise that the mittens were full mittens. "Wifie" wanted fingerless mittens, didn't reckon it gets cold enough round here to warrant full mittens, and remarked "You could make those fingerless, couldn't you?!" It seemed somewhat sacrilegious to cannibalise the pattern no sooner than it had been downloaded, but I mentioned it to Grannyg on ravelry and she gave her blessing!

First step was to dye up some green sock yarn using food colouring from Morag at Vintage Purls. Next I knitted up a Hei-Tiki pendant to test out my colour choices. . . Grey Regia sock yarn and the lighter green that I had dyed worked well together. Originally, I tried with two shades of green but they were too similar, but the grey and green combo worked well (it's the two colours used in the published pattern, so I guess it was a no-brainer!)

So far so good, except "Wifie" wasn't keen on the Tiki's eyes. So I offered to try making them grey instead of green! 

Thus I started on the fingerless, grey-eyed Tiki mitts! If I had worked at them consistently I definitely could have got them done in less than a week of evenings, but I got distracted onto several other projects (including my new-found fascination for knitted graffiti!) and so they took a month from start to finish. I finished them yesterday and here they are. . .

Tiki mitts - back of hand

Tiki mitts palm

If I can find some suitably sized paua shell buttons I might try attaching those for the eyes. . . But overall I am really pleased with the mitts, most importantly "Wifie" loves them and it's great to have such a very New Zealand-themed pattern at our fingertips (only NZ$5 to download from ravelry!) Thanks Granny G!