New Lovelies

Hooray, I have lots of pretty new vintage and recycled fabrics! I can't wait until the soaking/washing process is over, so I can get sewing! I love finding great pre-loved fabrics. Putting something old to use again - turning it into something special - is probably my favourite part about making dresses!



And in other news... I'm all booked in for my first market stall! I will be at the North Melbourne Market in October! It's not for a while, but I have lots of preparations to make! Exciting!

xox

oh my gosh yum: sun-dried tomato pesto!

One thing I do miss a teeny bit about my pre-vegan days is delicious spreads and dips. Most supermarket varieties are packed with either parmesan or cream cheese. And wellll.. hommos can get a bit old. So I thought I’d have a play around at creating my own! This semi sun dried tomato pesto is delish!

Here’s what you need:

- A small tub of sun-dried tomatoes - I think mine was around 220 grams
- ¼ red capsicum
- I used 3 lil home-grown cloves of garlic, but maybe just one if it’s the bigger, supermarket variety
- 30 grams pine nuts
- A few tablespoons olive oil
- A few fresh basil leaves
- A little pepper, and maybe some salt if you’re not saltaphobic like me

First, I chopped the capsicum into medium-sized pieces and roasted it, with the garlic and a little olive oil, until it was cooked through.







Now of course you could just pop it all in the blender and it would only take a few seconds, but I rather like any excuse to use a mortar and pestle, so I went with that option. It’s also a bit more chunky too, which is nice. I put the capsicum, garlic, basil and tomatoes in and smooshed them around until they started to turn into a paste.



Then pop in the pine nuts and keep bashing, until most of them are broken up. Stir in some olive oil, until the pesto is the right consistency.



Yum!

I popped mine in a wrap with nothing but salad and avocado and it was deeelish! It’s equally good alone as a dip, or mixed through pasta.

SallySaid Handmade

When it comes to computers, I am fairly incompetent. lucky for me, one of my BFFs has excellent skills and she made me this lovely banner. yay thanks Alice!!



and also thanks to sweet Siggi who wrote about SallySaid on her way-cool blog Colour Me Red last week. Thanks Siggi!

Do It!

Thisi a very very worthy cause!

Etsy Love

Hooray! My little etsy shop is up and ready and good to go! It's mostly sizes smalls and extra smalls at the moment, but i have more mediums and larges to come!

www.sallysaidhandmade.etsy.com

xox

Coming Soon!

Eeep! Yesterday, little Siena helped me take photos of some of my handmade dresses. Hopefully my little etsy store will be up and running by tomorrow!

xxo

Vienna: Art and Design

Another one of my favourite things about winter time is the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibitions at the NGV. Yesterday we finally went along to the Vienna: Art and Design Exhibition. I literally look forward to these exhibitions all year and am never disappointed! While it didn’t quite blow me away like the Dali exhibition did a few years ago, it was still pretty amazing! We’re so lucky to have exhibitions of this standard every year. One curator said that Klimt’s portrait of Fritza Riedler would never leave the Belvedere again!



For me, Klimt was definitely the highlight of the show, and Emilie Flöge (1902) was my favourite. I could have looked at it all day. Despite having majored in art history at uni, I got away with never really studying Klimt. That may well be why I like his work so much; I only really judge it on beauty and my initial reaction, rather than background knowledge and analysis. Although, maybe if I had studied Klimt, I would have been less disappointed to discover that it was not the original Beethoven Frieze (1902) which was on display, but a replica! It was still amazing though.





While I’m not usually particularly interested in photography as art, I do love the works of some of the early pictorialist photographers. Heinrich Kuhn was one of the earliest photographers to use photography as a form of art and a few of his works were included in the exhibition. I am particularly in love with his autochromes. Although they didn’t actually have any on display, a number were shown on a little screen alongside lovely Mary Werner (1908).









It's definitely an opportunity not to be missed!