I'm working on two sewing projects at the moment - a 
sleeveless top and a long skirt. Both have to be finished 
tomorrow (oh wait.. it's already Saturday, so they have to 
be finished by evening), cause I want to wear them on the 
choir performance on Sunday. I started last Saturday, but 
haven't got the time to finish them this week. My kitchen 
(where I sew because of the bigger table) is a completely 
chaos - even more than my usual chaos.



Talking about chaos... remember the disaster that struck
Japan last year? They are still recovering and still need help.
A ceramic artist started a Help Japan Project last year -
that was when I got my birds. This time she starts the Help 
Japan Project 2, thus if you want to help (and get similar
birds or.. - nah, I won't reveal it here..), please take a look
at her last post how to do so.


Birds by Maki; coaster was a souvenir from a dear friend

Yesterday I went to the museum, and let me guided through
the exhibition of a forgotten artist. Her work is stunning and
her life is so sad - somehow I could feel for her.

Afterwards I went to the Cathedral - up to the tower for the
first time. The view is amazing, even if it was still cloudy
when I was up there. Here are some of the pics I took and
you could see more here.

Back home I was hungry, but didn't got anything to cook
quickly, as I planned to get my hands on soba. Thus my
hunger has to wait. Making soba is not as it looks like (I
read some instructions and watched a few videos the night
before). The mixing part is not the problem, as I am used to
kneed my noodle dough with my hands, but the rolling and
cutting parts are tricky. I tried to roll it out using the pasta
machine, but I was afraid, that it'd break, so I went back
to do it by hand. As the result my soba was all short and
thick ^_^

In my soba:

180g buckwheat flour

20g corn starch

300ml hot water (or 250ml? add little by little)

a pinch of salt (normally, it doesn't belong to soba, I think)

a pinch of matcha powder

It was time to harvest some strawberries today before the
slugs, insects and birds eat them all up.



I also pulled and picked some greens - borage and lemon
balm. My garden is full of borage. They sowed themselves.
Each year more and more, since I wasn't able to pull them
out as soon as they started to bloom - the bees & bumble-
bees love them so and I love bees & bumble-bees.



A friend was so kind to cook chicken soup and brought me
some last week. I don't want to bring the boxes empty back
to her. So I was thinking of bringing her some strawberries.
But the strawberries were not sweet at all - too much rain
and too little sunshine. So I decided to make chutney and
fill it up in glass jars.



I had the rest of the chutney for dinner with some baked
potatoes - yumm!



In the chutney:
Strawberries - cut the big ones in halves
Ginger
Onion
Chili - with the seeds
Sugar
Lemon balsamico
Cidre vinegar
Salt
Pinch of cardamom seeds
Pinch of Black caraway seeds
Pinch of dried Rosemary
Lemon balm

For the baked potatoes: mix sweet paprika, cumin, salt and
pepper with olive oil, put the potato wedges in and mix until
all well covered with the mixture. Bake them in 220°C oven
for about half an hour until they are golden.

I thought, I'd better saved all the last opened peonies from
the rain, when I was removing the withered petals in the
garden. Perhaps a silly action, but I need a reason for cutting
so many flowers at once :-P

Two things I made lately.


a lavender wand and a collage

I had to crop (part of) the lavender very early this year. The
weather (and the fact that I didn't trim them this spring) made
them grow enormously and blocked half of the pavement.
But then, the buds are not yet well developed. Normally people
would cover the buds. But I thought, I'd rather cover the leaves,
which also have great scent. Also, normally people would use
ribbon. I didn't have any suitable ribbon, but stitch yarn in
lovely colors. It took a lot longer to make, but weaving is like
meditating.

I finally found this video again.

When I first saw it back in 2010, I thought he's SO right.
At least it applies to me (not only in creativity, but in many
cases of my life - with or without my real effort), but I know
this doesn't necessarily apply to others.

I loved my mom's ikan pepes. She used averrhoa bilimbi
and they makes her ikan pepes so special. I miss Indonesia
a lot at the moment, especially the food (of course, my son
would say, only food in my head lol). Looking at what I
have in the fridge, I decided to do my own take on ikan 
pepes for lunch..



... and failed shamelessly! lol I don't know - either I used
too much lime (as substitute for the bilimbis) or my tongue
hasn't been able to taste everything right. I could taste the
hotness of the chilli, although it was not as hot as I expected
using two chilis, but I couldn't taste the sourness at all - only
the bitterness (the last rice cakes I ate yesterday was also
bitter instead of sweet). Weird!

But at least I had some fun with my kitchen waste while I
was waiting for the fish to cook ;-)