TAST

Do you know what I've been making today? *^v^*

My yesterday's post was a bit chaotic and didn't really end with any conclusion, so maybe I will add a few words to it today.

When I left my office job life offered me a new path, a choice, a clean page to write a new story of myself. And it was totally up to me what I would choose. And, as it often happens, I didn't know what to choose so I chose first thing that came into my hands. I was confused, scared, susceptible to suggestions, felt obliged to do something, panicked and grabbed whatever came to me first. I didn't sit and think about my life properly, about my dream, my path I wanted to follow.

If it happened to me right now I would definitely think about my choices more thoroughly, but today I'm several books and meditating sessions wiser. *^v^* I'm not saying that I am fully aware of what my life should be right now, but I'm not afraid to ask my inner self questions about my choices and listen carefully to the answers. Whoever's to blame for what I did or didn't do in the past 2,5 years is only me - my poor physical and mental health, lack of creative spirit, laziness, some kilograms more... ^^ And I'm glad that this year brought me some kind of awakening and that I took some steps to repair my body and soul. ^^

I found something useful on Laurie's blog last night that seems tempting:

Just put on the outfit that you would wear if you were actually as self-confident as you wished you were, then show up every day for the life you wish you were living, and act as if you were already comfortable in your own skin. The real thing will (hopefully) follow.

The game of pretending to be somebody in order to convince our mind that's a reality and, in fact, becoming one - I like it! I really hope that the real thing will follow!

I decided to take up a challenge and join TAST - Take A Stitch Tuesday.
I learned how to embroider when I was a little girl, but I never fully practiced many decorative stitches. And the funny things is that I don't know Polish names for most of the embroidery stitches because when my Grandmother taught me them, she didn't really felt the need to put the names in my head, the technique was more important. So I can perform them, but cannot name them! *^v^*
So now I'm going to recall, practice and learn (I hope) many new stitches and I even decided what I should do with them - I will create something un-useful (or a piece of art, ha! ^^). It will involve embroidery, but also patchwork, quilting, felting maybe, or crocheting? We'll see as it goes.
For now, I'll start my project and catch upon the stitches already practiced in the past 7 weeks.
If you need help with finding stitches, here is the excellent site: Sharon b's Dictionary of Stitches for Hand Embroidery and Needlework

I haven't shared with you one news that came to us a couple of weeks ago - it seems that my naalbinding Wednesdays will remain only recreational for me, because we are not expecting to go on any historical weekends until probably September (including our planned trip to Sweden for Viking Market in June, *sigh*). Things went a bit complicated in Robert's work, his closest co-worker left the company and until there is another person fully qualified and trained, Robert will be the only person with the proper knowledge in some fields, which means he will be on full time duty for several months and he was told to say goodbye to any holidays or sick leaves for some time... This means a bit more money but on the other hand we'll be stuck in Warsaw, not even being able to go to our cottage for a barbecue night (it's about an hour travel from Warsaw and if anything happens with the servers Robert has to be able to get to a server room within 30 minutes...). It didn't fully got to me yet but I think it'll hurt more when there's some medieval market and all our friends will be preparing to go, well...

Now, let's talk about something more cheerful and let's go back to my first question: today I've been making special Polish cakes called faworki (which can be translated into favourites, and they really are one of my favourite sweets! ^^).

They are really easy to make, first you make the dough out of some egg yolks, flour, sour cream, a splash of spirit and sugar (it must be very light - if you want I can quote the exact recipe), then you spread it very thinly on the flat surface and cut a strips of it, make a slit in the middle of each strip and weave one end throught the slit (that's why they look like ribbons! ^^).

Then there is the most important part: you heat up a lot of pure lard in a pot and deepfry them piece by piece, making sure they are golden brown on each side and not burnt. They get puffed like that during the process of frying. ^^

The last step is just to put them for a moment on a kitchen towel to get rid of the excess fat and sprinkle them with sugar. Yummy! ^^

Here is a preview of my finished corsets (I hurt my hand a bit with this metal eyelet attaching thingy, auch!...)