Decadent

Unavoidably, Christmas time is all about gorging yourself on sweets. The richer the better, to keep those freezing temperatures in check. Growing an extra layer of fat, you know :) So in fact I thought it only appropriate to call this gorgeous ice-cream recipe (requiring NO ice-cream machine!) decadent. [A decadent person or group has low moral standards, definition given by Cambridge dictionaries online]. Indeed. Once you try it, you are lost. It’s creamy and somehow produces only an urge to have MORE! MORE! MORE!!!!!!!! It was really difficult to stop, honestly.
I modified the recipe slightly, after having read all the comments on the website. I whipped the cream first, until it was rather thick, but still soft, and then let the condensed milk treacle in, with the beaters still running (I dumped the whole 397 g can, by the way), and then whipped some more. And then off into the freezer, I popped my ice-cream in at about 2 PM, and in the evening it was already frozen. It gets harder, though, the more it freezes, and I found it helpful to let it thaw a bit (I put it in the fridge then, though) – some 15-20 minutes, and it’s easier to scoop. Many people complained about greasy residue in the mouth  - well, I didn’t have this! Perhaps the cream was just overbeaten, easy mistake, unfortunately, if you beat just a tiny bit too long. Or if you eat it straight from the freezer. I’ve just did this, and yes, it could be something in it. Ok, I’d better finish this post, otherwise I’ll gobble up the second container here and now. And then… and then… I’d better call the ambulance, considering the amount of fat and sugar rushed into my body. But oh my, so delicious!

Summer has looked in

After so typically grey and rainy fall weather – bright sun-shiny day! More amazingly, I’ve managed to find a spot in the city center, that was not a building site (the whole city is just one giant building site in summer, usually).
When I look at this photo, a comment from another time, another life is coming back to me: Your pictures are very nice, but where are the people?

Fall Is Coming…

…carrying Chinese lanterns. I love the color of these plants. Papery and heart-shaped, they are the ultimate fall signals – perhaps because of their Halloween-y shade?

Alpine Pastorale

This time I’ve decided to divert from my usual sewing/knitting related reports and to share something else. I have to throw in a disclaimer immediately: I am by no means a landscape photographer, and don’t even own a camera (of my dreams) more complicated than point and shoot one. But I tried to do my best.


Last week we went for a short vacation in the Austrian Alps. Life is a paradox: I am afraid of heights, an ancient fear that seems to gain strength with (I shudder as I write this) with age. The thing is, I can’t bear looking into what to me, personally, looks like an abyss. It can be even a flight of stairs. Imagine me climbing a small hill-sized mountain! But the view. Breathtaking. I love mountains, despite my ridiculous fear. They make me immensely philosophical – majestic, beautiful, covered with trees or just bare, sharp, wearing their permanent snowcaps. They make me feel how small we are, after all. We will be gone, but the mountains will stand, guarding. Somehow they give a feeling of safety, too (well, ok, from the sole).
Once we climbed as far up as 2200 meters (about 7000 feet), and, honestly, some parts were done on all fours by me, so terrified I was to stand upright on the narrow path. But when I was finally UP THERE, I was stunned. Landscape already more scarce, only short flowers and grass, wind howling in my ears. And I thought: astronauts say they feel God when they are in open space. For me it was enough to climb a small mountain.
Do you see what I mean?

But my favourite was a small lake, lying like a gem, almost turquoise. One day it was full of cow bells clinging. Pastoral. It was a moment out of time – it could be today, it could one hundred years ago.

Talk about photographers’s luck: a couple of day later we came back to exactly same place, but it was abandoned. Just a serene water mirror. With a lovely place to stand, watch and contemplate your nothingness:

My Creative Space_Sky is the Limit

Like-minded people think alike, right? Just last week, preparing my My Creative Space post, I was debating with myself if I should write down a recipe instead of a routine knitting/sewing thing, kitchen is a creative space too, after all! In the end sewing won, as I wanted also to show off my new towels. And then I open Kirsty’s post for the week and bang! what she suggests if not thinking about all the other places we do get creative! Well, the last week post was about sewing all right, but this week I change my direction.
Besides, this week’s challenge is my top tip for staying creative. The first thing that came into my mind was keep going, keep making stuff, try something new – but it all seemed so banal, so everyone-knows-that-already and, most of all, not really me. And I realized that when my creative springs run dry, I go backwards, into the past. Look through the photos I took maybe years ago, remember the sweaters I knit so many years ago I don’t even want to count them. And believe me, the effect is close to a kick in the butt. IF I COULD DO IT THEN´, WHY CAN’T I DO SOMETHING EVEN BETTER NOW????? is the inevitable question. It’s like a breath of fresh air.
The recipe has to wait for another round, I’m afraid. This time it’s going to be photography, another dream of mine, for realization of which I don’t really have time right now (does it sound as lame to you as to me?) I do try, but it’s lots of baby (who became a toddler in the meanwhile) photos in chaotic domestic surroundings recently. If you are a fan of portrait photos, I’m sorry, I’m not your guy. I’ve always been fascinated by landscapes. And the sky. I grew up deep in the North, where in summer the sun goes down only for a couple of hours. It simply doesn’t get dark, you have a summer of perpetual day. Unfortunately, at that time my camera was totally incapable of capturing THAT sky. Many years later and a different camera, I decided to try my hand at some sky photography, in town. Here are some pictures taken two years ago (sorry, nothing recent!), but every time I look at them I remember how much fun I had in the process! (For those interested in technical details: Nikon CoolPix P100, edited in Picasa, as I I don’t have the Photoshop).



And my heavily edited favorite, it looks… electric, don’t you think?

Head over here to read more tips for staying creative!

Waiting

Now that it’s getting warmer, I see more often dogs tied outside the shops, expecting their owners. Somehow it’s always painful for me to witness, as if these dogs have been abandoned. In a way, at least in their doggy brains, they have been – animals don’t have a notion of future as we do, and they don’t really grasp the idea of “Ill be back soon”. What is soon for them? As minutes, hours, or perhaps years for us?
This dog has been waiting for the owner to come back, and served me a great model – I just bought my new Nikon then and wanted to try it out downtown. This dog was such a personalization of waiting! I think he was bored, too… The pictures were later edited with Picasa, to accentuate certain aspects of the photos.