Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

from Best Tips and Recipes, Solutions for Ladies.  We all want to bake the perfect Christmas fruitcake, so for this blog, I searched for the tips and secrets of the most famous bakers around the world. Regrettably I cannot possibly share some of recipes and tips for the "world's best fruitcake" - not because I want to keep them secret, but because I simply cannot understand them - like the example above in Urdu. However, I consulted just one American, one Australian and one British  baking expert to make a "to do list" for the perfect cake.   Firstly from American author, Dolores Casella, renowned for her two classic cookbooks, Th e World of Baking and The World of Bread : Make fruitcake well in advance of the time that they will be used. One month of storage is the minimum. Freeze fruitcake only after it has been stored for at least 4 weeks. Take several days to make your cake or cakes. prepare the nuts and fruits, pour the liquo...

 Background Information:  Temari (literally translated “hand ball”) is a Japanese folk craft that is alleged to have originated in China and was introduced to Japan five or six hundred years ago. Traditionally, the balls were constructed from wrapped kimono fabric remnants and silk threads. They were made by mothers and grandmothers for children to play with. Nowadays, decorative embroidered temari represent a highly valued and cherished gift symbolizing friendship and loyalty. Recently I've wondered if your don't use traditional techniques whether you should call what you create "temari". That is an ongoing debate but today I share what I do to make a "non-traditional temari".... 1.I start  with a polystrene ball ( traditionally the balls were wound  silk scraps or other organic materials) and begin to wrap with approx 4 ply wool, turning the ball as I wrap.  2. I then wrap another layer of wool in a similar fashion , this time a 3 or 2 ...

As the saying goes, you're never too old to learn something new - that includes tearing up bits of coloured paper! I am going to share some of the "tips" I picked up this week. None of them is related to one another, but I think perhaps at least one of these might be useful. Tip 1:  Play with paper to refresh design ideas whether you usually work with paper, textiles, clay and /or mixed media. I attended a mini-workshop with Judy Hooworth (NSW textile artist) at the Newcastle Creative Embroiderers and Textile Artists . We started off with a postcard of someone else's art - I chose this one, called Pandanus and Pelicans Townsville Common by  Sylvia Ditchburn , I have always liked the subject, the composition and the colours. Then we enlarged the postcard to A4 size - black and white and made a tracing of the outlines on tracing paper. Here's the interesting investigative bit - divide the tracing in half both horizontally and vertically, and join up points of in...