~thanks Karin!~

Surprise! Karin from the lovely sewing blog Ancien-Nouveau has awarded me a Beautiful Blogger award! 

Thanks so much Karin – I really enjoy reading your blog too!  And readers, if you haven’t come across Ancien-Nouveau in blogland yet, you really must check it out – Karin makes lots of lovely and inspirational things! 

Now there are a couple of things I have to do to earn this award –  I have to volunteer 10 things about me that you’d never guess, and nominate 5 other bloggers to do the same.  So here goes:

1. I live in a city with 20 volcanoes!
That’s right – dotted all around Auckland are the volcanic cones and craters of several volcanoes – luckily most of them are dormant or extinct.  The last one erupted 600 years ago and apparently it is safe to live here, I certainly hope so….

2. I used to collect stamps!
Who didn’t as a kid – come on, own up!  When we inherited my Granny’s collection, I spent ages sorting them all out – I just love arranging things and putting them in order!  When I discovered a stamp dealer upstairs near my shop, I started buying beautiful old pictorial stamps – New Zealand was the first country in the world to issue pictorials in 1898 – finally stamps that weren’t of kings and queens heads!

3. Spiders scare me…
I blame the story of Little Miss Muffet – not great bedtime reading for children, in my opinion!

4. I love Nestle Highlander Sweetened Condensed Milk…
Never mind about baking cookies with it – I eat it directly from the tin!

5. I prefer mountains to the sea…
I read somewhere that people tend to prefer one to the other, and I am definitely a mountains girl.  I love travelling down to Mt Ruapehu (another volcano – complete with skifield) for the weekend, or going to Mt Cook Village and breathing in that delicious glacial air.

6. I was raised on a sheep farm…
next to Fiordland National Park – one of the most beautiful regions of the world, with snow-capped mountains covered in native rainforest, and deep valleys and fiords carved by ice-age glaciers.  Do try and make it there at least once in your lifetime.

7. I once had open heart surgery which inspired a whole collection!
Amazing what lying in a hospital bed bored and on morphine does…

8. When I was eight I sewed a pair of jeans for my Daisy doll,
complete with double topstitching, which was like — 2 stitches this way — 2 stitches that way —

9. Even though I’ve been sewing since I was eight,
half the clothes in my wardrobe need mending or altering.  Making something new is far more exciting!

10. I sometimes crave sweet things,
So I whip up some melt-in-your-mouth-fudge – it’s ready to eat in 10 minutes.
Now you can too because here is the dangerously-easy-recipe:
1 Cup white sugar
1/3 Cup milk or cream
1 teaspoon butter
Melt all together over low heat, then gently boil about 5 mins to soft ball stage, add flavouring and beat with wooden spoon until just before it starts to set in the pot, and quickly pour it into a greased dish. 
Some flavourings I like to use are: vanilla, coffee and walnut, ginger, coconut, cherry and coconut, mint, rum and raisin, pistachio, and I have even tried Milo when my pantry was a bit desperate!

I made some coconut fudge this morning especially so I could indulge photograph it for you:

And yes, it is already gone…

The 5 bloggers that I am giving a Beautiful Blogger Award to are:
Tasia from Sewaholic
Steph from Three Hours Past the Edge of the World
Debi from My Happy Sewing Place
Tanit-Isis from Tanit Isis Sews
Ali from The Wardrobe, Reimagined
Enjoy your award folks – and thanks for all your lovely sewing blogs – keep it up!