Deconstructing Dark Cloud's pants

For years Gib has yearned to have pants like Dark Cloud's from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In about a week he needs a costume for an event we are attending, so he's going as some sort of warrior, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to give them a go. I'm not aiming for his pants exactly, but a similar style.


The problem:

I've been trying to take still shots from the DVD and work out how on earth they made those pants look so damn cool. I thought it would be straight forward, but there are surprisingly very few shots of the pants at angles that make it easy for working out how they are made. It's been hard to work out whether there is more than one layer, or if its just folds because the legs are really wide, or if there's a split somewhere. I have thought that maybe they were constructed like hakama...

... or wrap pants ...

... or Thai fisherman pants ...

...and after watching and replaying various sections and replaying over and over again, it's still too hard to know. The best view of the pants in full was in a scene where Dark Cloud was cartwheeling down sand dunes in a fight scene, and the pants billow out in full. I'm pretty sure from that the pants are just one piece, and the things I thought were splits are just folds (but the fabric is quite fine, so it looked like it could be a separate piece).

The conclusion:

I have come to a workable conclusion (as in, I don't care if it's wrong, this is how I'm doing it) that the pants are massively wide fisherman pants made in 4 panels, and the extra layers in the legs are just extra pleats that tuck in at the front.

Solution:

I took Gib down to Ziguzagu in Richmond and we picked up some beautiful hemp fabric that I've dyed black (or tried to. They are dark brown and still ok. My constant disasters when it comes to dying fabric can be left for another post!). I'm going to work with two patterns and nut out a pair of pants from there. They might turn out nothing like Dark Cloud's, but it'll be damn fun trying to make it.

Following from a random thought...

A while ago over at Sixteen Bluebirds, Fi said:

"Please tell me I'm not the only one who tries to pronounce the word verification letter-thingy? You know, "meddegxej" and "bxftsp" and stuff like that?"

Yes, I'm definitely in the school of people that tries to pronounce them too! And for some reason I've remembered that little post for all of this time. I remember it whenever I get an amusing verification word. But that post has popped into my head more frequently of late because it seems almost every single word these days seems to be less random and more... pronouncable.

So, for those of you out there who try to pronounce the blogger verification words: do you think they have become way more pronouncable recently?

It's like diabetes, but not

Just a minute in... November

I spotted Jess' Just a Minute post and it reminded me to do mine! I missed last month's but I hope you will forgive me. This month has been a bit up and down: mostly up with a few downs, but I'm going forwards rather than backwards.

Discovering... about 2 hours ago that someone had tried to break into my car, presumably for a joy ride. I think this is one of the few times I can say that it's fortunate that my car's engine and turbo are dead, and the transmission is on its way out. I don't understand some people in this world.

Reading... The Silver Chair in the Chronicles of Narnia. Yep, still reading it. I like to pretend it’s because I’m savouring each book, but really it’s because am only capable of reading one or two pages of a book before falling asleep at night. PhD reading never ends, but that’s completely fine with me. My “new and exciting journal articles to read” pile is a bit monstrous now, but on the plus side, I’m finding don’t need to pause every sentence to check what the words mean.

Reflecting... on my decision to finally leave my dojo after 15 years and forge my own path in karate. It's nothing to do with karate politics or anything like that, just realising that my ideas have grown into something different to that of my instructor. One of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make, and it was even harder telling my sensei I had to go. Honestly, leaving a dojo is worse than breaking up with a boyfriend. But I’m learning that sometimes it’s important to follow what heart tells you.

Learning... that my grandma has myeloma, which is a type of bone marrow cancer that affects plasma cells. I don’t see my grandparents all that often, but I’ve been making sure to get to the hospital and check that the doctors are treating my grandma well. It’s chronic and can be managed over the long term, but still, not the sort of news you want to hear.

Sewing... loads of things for Christmas (aprons, pot holders, wheat bags, other bags of all sorts) as well as some clothes for Gib. I’m feeling really inspired to sew right now, which is handy given how much I’m planning to get through before Christmas.

Enjoying... the sunshine, but also how it’s not revoltingly hot at the same time. Great weather for sitting on the veranda eating lunch or having a cup of tea, gardening and going for nice, long walks.

Eating... all of the delicious stone fruit that is just coming into season! There is nothing I love more than nectarines. Oh, and peaches, and cherries and apricots... mmm... and mangoes...

Photo by atomicshark

Thanks Jen, over at August Street for hosting Just a minute... what have you been up to this month?

Pickled onions are now pickling!

Ok, so to finish from yesterday...

• After you have your nicely infused vinegar, strain it through some muslin and set aside.
• Rinse and wipe down the onions using a clean towel to remove any excess brine. Pack your onions into sterilised jars (although part of me wonders why you bother sterilising the jar when you're about to add loads of vinegar to it, but I still do it anyway). I use the blunt end of a skewer to pack them in nice and tight, but I'm sure there's an easier way of doing it that I'm yet to discover. Remember, if you're using chilies, put them in first.
• Pour the vinegar over the onions and fill to about 2cm from the top. I like to use a funnel to do this (that might sound obvious but I just tried using a ladel for years and I'd make a horrible mess). Optional: Add a few of the spices for extra decoration and to help the flavour develop, although note that sometimes you'll get a little bit of sediment forming from the spices if you do this.
• Pop the lids on your jars and seal them. I prefer the water bath method myself, which I do in a very deep pot.

Et voila!


Wait at least two (but I always wait four) weeks before eating.

Time to get pickling!

Another thing I like to make for Christmas presents (and for myself) is pickled onions. I'm getting them done now because it's at least 2-3 weeks before you can eat them after they are in the jar, although I like to leave them for 4-6 weeks, just to be sure. I get a bit nervous at the thought of eating pickled onions that aren't quite fully pickled. Don't ask me why.

I think the secret ingredient in pickled onions is honey. It gives a lot more depth in flavour to the pickled onions. Oh, and the long, bright red chili. It makes the jar look really pretty and also gives the pickled onions a bit of kick. I've been making pickled onions annually for about 5 years now, and my recipe has adapted over time, but this is the one that I've used for the past 2 years and was the best yet.

Day 1: Brine the onions

• 1.75 kg pickling onions, peeled, topped & tailed (roughly enough for 5 x 500 ml pasta sauce jars)
• 150 g salt
• 1.5 L water

Dissolve the salt in the water: it may need to be heated gently for the salt to fully dissolve. Add onions. Leave in the brine overnight (or two nights, if you run out of time on the first night, like me).



Day 1 or Day 2: Make the spiced vinegar

Make the spiced vinegar. I prefer to make this the same night I cut up my onions, to allow the spices to really infuse through... and also because I am lazy and like to just make it and pop it in the fridge and forget about it. You can make it the following day, just remember to allow the vinegar and spices to infuse for at least 2-3 hours. Use whatever vinegar you like: I use a combination, generally because I don't have enough of just one type lying about the house. I do like to add at least a cup of apple cider vinegar give it a slightly sweeter flavour and because it gives the vinegar a nice golden colour, which contrasts beautifully with the red chili and white onions. For a few years I used the honey from my friend who was a backyard apiarist, but unfortunately he moved interstate, so now I just use whatever rich flavoured honey I have on hand (leatherwood or similar).

• 1 litre white vinegar
• 1 cup white wine vinegar
• 1 cup apple cider vinegar
• 15 g all spice
• 15 g coriander seed
• 10 g black peppercorns
• 10 g mustard seeds
• 2 sticks of cinnamon
• 3-4 whole cloves
• 2-3 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup honey (or to taste)

Heat all ingredients to boiling, cover, simmer for 15 mins. Allow to cool and infuse for 2-3 hours at least, or overnight.

Day 2. Packing and pickling

You'll have to wait until tomorrow for the next installment. I'm actually putting the onions and vinegar into the jars later tonight because I realised I wont have enough time to finish them tomorrow, and leaving it til Thursday to jar them up is a bit much (I love pickling because it is flexible, but I think I'd be pushing there boundaries there!). When I'm done I'll be too tired to post, but it builds the excitement anyway... in case there are any of you out there who also get excited by pickled onions!

People who know how to make freaking awesome pie dough

I don't make or even eat pies very often (they're a little rich for me and I need to keep a bottle of Mylanta handy afterwards!), but when do, I want the dough to be freaking awesome. I am usually inspired to bake a pie when there is a large gathering and I need to bring a plate, so basically when I'm out to impress. But there's a definitely a knack and the books make it sound so easy. Like sponge cake recipes. And I've made plenty of crap pies while trying to impress!

I've found two great tutorials for making pie dough though: one that uses a mixer, and the other that swears by hand mixing.

• Beyond Salmon has a great tutorial, with loads of pictures, and it was the first time I made perfect pie dough. There are even additional detailed baking instructions. I made the tomato and onion tart for Christmas last year and it was divine!

• Smitten Kitchen, one of my all time favourite food bloggers, recently posted a follow up post on how to make really flakey pie dough. The original, easy to follow, fool proof pie crust tutorial can be found here. I have to say, I'm completely with her on the no-shortening thing (I hate the taste and texture). The combined tips and explanations from both of these bloggers has helped my confidence immensely when it comes to pie making.

I know there are probably a gazillion more posts out there on how to get the perfect pastry, but these two have given me the most help and inspiration, and have yielded the best results, so I haven't bothered to look further. Having said that, if you've got any tips to share I'd love to hear them! I love having little collections of ideas on a topic!

Tomato and onion tart by Beyond Salmon

A gardening confession...

This is going to sound incredibly lame, but I hate getting my hands dirty. I hate getting dirt under my nails. I hate my hands feeling dry and dusty (my skin is actually prickling at the thought). Worse, I also hate the feeling of those cheap, nasty $2 leather gardening gloves too, because they also leave my hands feeling dry and dusty. It's gotta be the super dooper soft cloth inndards with the super tough plastic coating ones for me - ultimate for ripping out that freaking periwinkle.


A person who loves gardening but hates dirt. And nasty gardening gloves. Crazy, hey?

Curse of the periwinkle

This is a bit of a work in progress in the garden at the moment. We're trying to clear the backyard of blue periwinkle. Blue periwinkle, like the innocent looking and very popular arum lily, is a noxious weed in these parts and notorious for seriously choking up the local waterways. It just sort of arrived in the backyard and proceeded to take over. Probably about 1/4 of the whole garden is covered with the stuff - and it's not a big backyard.

From the top

From the bottom

I really should have taken a before photo, but I got so into ripping it out that it totally slipped my mind, so just imagine that all of that dirt area was covered with blue periwinkle. It's a pain to clear because it grows in tight nodes and you have to rip out the roots or the fragments just grow back.

"Spreads locally mainly by stems that root at nodes. Seed is apparently rarely produced in Australia. Long distance dispersal occurs via stem fragments and crowns dispersed as garden waste or by water."

But we're slowly getting there. It's all down the side of the house as well. Our very ambitious Grand Ultimate Plan is for the plants in our garden to be indigenous, or at least native. It's amazing how quickly extra birds and pretty butterflies come through the backyard just by adding a few more local plants. There are a few remnant patches nearby and there are local parks and waterways, maintained by local environmental groups, that we're getting some inspiration from.

We have a few ferns leading down to the backyard (the property is on a hill) and we thought it would be totally awesome to have bracken (Pteridium esculentum) growing in the more dry parts of the backyard, to keep the continuity in the backyard and because it's indigenous. Although I have no idea where to get bracken - you can't just buy it because it grows from spores and doesn't take so well to transplantation. And strangely enough, many people think it's a weed (mostly stemming from farmers' dislike of it because it makes their cattle ill) so there are many websites on the struggles on how to remove it (once the spores are settled, it's hard to remove), but not how to get actually some in your backyard.

Failing on the bracken idea, we might just trawl the list of indigenous plants supplied at Kuranga and see what we can buy.

This is... my favourite thing from nature

Even though I put forward the topic this week, I actually had no idea what my favourite thing from nature was! However, after much thought, I realised that my interest was very broad and could only be reduced to this: Australian bushland.

Courtesy of wikipedia

There are the muted greens, the dryness of it all, the variation in shapes in the foliage. Then there are the coastal bushes too, with their fat, furry leaves. When I was young, I never ever tired of long family car trips with miles of dried grasses and eucalpyts. As I got older and learned a little bit about native plant physiology (it always comes down to physiology and "how stuff works" for me), the bushland that I had loved as a kid suddenly had a new level of awesomeness. Like learning how the odd features of coastal plants, like their furriness, help them to survive. Or why eucalypts suddenly sprout leaves from their trunk after fire - and look pretty silly - was because of a fascinating process called coppicing, where buds under the surface of the trunk suddenly sprout to compensate for the leaves lost in fire. Actually, all of the eucalpytus' adaptations are pretty cool. It's combined beauty and function makes it a never ending source of fascination for me.

Thanks to Three Buttons for letting me choose this week's theme, and for hosting This is!

Gardening bag - finished!

Well it took me about half an hour to finish off the bag after my frustrations from the other night. I have to say, I was rather pleased with the outcome and may even make one for myself. I hope my cousin who I'm giving it to for Christmas likes it. It has lots of spacious pockets for spades, forks, gloves and fresh flower cuttings. But I reckon it'd make a great bag just for taking out and about too, like for a picnic.


Very straight-forward to sew. Approximate time to make: 3-4 hours.

Gib and I are celebrating our 3 year anniversary today! Hooray! Um, it means I'll be a day late in doing my This is... post (my first late one!) and in showing you all the photos of the gardening bag. But I can assure you they will totally be worth the wait (maybe)!!

I could gush for hours, but I wont. I think this photo pretty much sums us up.

A 15 minute powernap could save your sewing

I should know better than to sew late at night, and especially after a glass of wine. But yet, I still decided to roll with it, eager to get a Christmas present out of the way. I am making a gardening bag for my cousin, from Lotta's Simple Sewing book. At one point, right before I was going to stitch the handles in, I was feeling a bit smug, thinking "Oh wow, I can't believe I have almost finished this bag without having made a mistake yet!". And then I tried to work out why the lining was fitting awkwardly. And then I realised that I had sewed the base in sideways. I have no idea how that happened. Not a biggie, but still frustrating. That's the point where I threw it down on the table and walked away. I probably would have continued had I not been so smug the whole evening about how well I was doing, getting everything right.

If you drink, then sew, you're a bloody idiot

Take a break, fatigue kills your sewing skills

Overall though, like all of Lotta's patterns, even though this is one of her more complicated patterns, it is still very straight forward. There are a few bits where you have to make some pleats, and really that's the most complex part. And again, her time estimates were spot on (or would have been had I not sewn the base in sideways).

This week's 'This is' theme!

Ooh I was stoked to be asked to name this week's This is theme. Over the past week or so I've been hanging out in the garden, heading down to the beach to enjoy the warm weather, listening to fruit bats arguing in the trees. There are the big things, like clouds and oceans, and little things like bugs and flowers, and I find thinking about them as a whole is very humbling. So with that in mind, this week's theme is:

This is... my favourite thing from nature

Week of Happy

I'm a little late jumping in on this, but Meet Me at Mikes is having a Week of Happy! but I have at least been thinking happy thoughts this week and reflecting on what makes me happy. Here's what's been on my happy mind this past week:

Education: My office buddy is from South America and often tells me stories of her time at university in the '70s in police run states, overcrowded lecture halls where people would have to camp out overnight in the theatres to have a place and libraries where you weren’t able to browse books, but had to give a little card to the librarian who then retrieved the book for you. Things that we take for granted. The ability to read freely, understand and question the world around me makes me immensely happy.

Support: I've been hanging out with tons of friends, old and newer friends. Having a wonderful support network of good friends and family makes me happy. My boy and his antics have had me in hysterics (he knows how to ride a fine line between amusing me and infuriating me). We’ve been best friends for years and there’s nothing like hanging out with my best friend!

Good health: I think, right now, is the healthiest and fittest I’ve been and I feel like Little Miss Unstoppable. Perhaps it’s the sunny weather (see below), but it feels good to have good health. I found out recently that my grandmother does not have such good health right now, however as this is Week of Happy I am making the most of my own and my immediate family’s good health!

Sunny weather: the weather makes me unproductive at work, but it makes me happy nonetheless. I spent yesterday afternoon in the garden in the sunshine and the smells of the eucalypts were so good.

Ruud Welton's photo of Melbourne's sunny, blue skies

Dr Isis’ blog giveaways: Dr Isis the Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, who appreciates tight science, nice people and hot shoes, is giving away a pair of (never worn) shoes, in celebration of her move to Scienceblogs. That makes me very happy.

You can be a domestic and laboratory goddess too!

Carnivorous plant developments

The cool thing about having a blog for me is that it's kind of like a lab book. I can detail my methods, make observations and see how things change over time.

Back in May I explained how I took my rather sick scorpioides to a bunch of experts who told me that my poor plant wasn't getting enough light and was growing sparsely. This photo was taken before it got so sick that it lost all of its sticky, bug catching bits. Back then it was sitting in a kitchen window sill in an east facing position. About two months ago we moved it to a warmer, north facing position and despite the fact that its lean is now far worse than before and needs re-potting to correct it (so its new roots are in the ground, not hanging out the side of a pot), it's totally thriving. Look at all of those sticky leaves! And that's a flower sticking out there on the right too.

Scorpioides - May 08


Scorpioides - Nov 08

Then there's the Albany pitcher plant (Cephalotus follicularis) that we picked up in July. Back then it was absolutely tiny, the little pitchers were about 1cm, if that. Now look at it! The big pitchers are about 3cm long now.

Albany pitcher plant - July 08

Albany pitcher plant - November 08

We have a few tubs of Sarracenias (no idea what exact species) that are flowering too. I think the flowers are pretty crazy - peculiar bright green stars, with a weird shaped bit poking out from the middle.

In other carnivorous plant news, a while ago Gina was kind enough to link me this: A gorgeous carnivorous plant calendar by A Print a Day available for download in pdf. I think her work is absolutely gorgeous. She also did some other carnivorous plant prints too in such great colours.