The Owl and the Pussycat had a Potter Around

I wasn’t sure which blog to put this onto so there will be a link on Plummy Mummy to here. But it’s definitely a craft thing so [somehow] I’ll file it under “Paper”

This is not a sponsored post.

Last week, I took the tot off to Potter Around which is based on a farm in Kirknewton. You go up a bumpy gravelly path and approach the farm. I parked outside but later saw that the building that the studio is based in has more parking.  Now I have to tell you, it’s flipping fantastic that 5 mins drive from our house we are in farmland. I am slowly realising and beginning to appreciate that we may be living in Semi Rural Scotland. Livingston is a sprawling mass of shops and housing but near us we have gorgeous country parks, and lovely villages. And great places to do craft on FARMS!

Potter Around has all sorts of craft stuff including wool (ooooh!), fimo (oooooh!), jewellry making stuff (aaahhhh!) …oops I’m starting to do a parody of a rural person. Must stop. But predominately, it’s a pottering studio. The great thing if you are like me and tot, who have never pottered is that you go in, choose a model and then are let loose on all the paint and glitter your wee heart desires. And it turns out, I’m rather a big fan of glitter. It’s not cheap so we would only be able to go once in a while for a treat, but I like how the price is clearly marked, and you aren’t charged extras. I chose a rather modest owl but my daughter’s eyes lit up when she saw the Hello Kitty.

Having picked the model, we were shown what acrylics we could use so that we could take the models away that day. If you want the model to be fired, you use different paints and have to come back a week or so later. We don’t do deferred gratification, we are all about instant gratification so slapped on some bright colours and waited for them to dry. I kind of got into it. Little one did hers quickly and wanted to go off to play with the horses and their big house. However, Irene who is the knitter in the studio, patiently sat with my daughter and encouraged her to fill in the white bits. That done, she got down to playing with the toys in the studio while I finished my owl. While we waited for them to dry I went off to look around buy some wool and buttons.

We were there for hours. Karen who is one of the co-owners, is very welcoming and great with the little one. We were given lovely tea and juice and had a great time and best of all, my house is now covered in glitter as I may have gone a bit overboard in what I shook onto the models…it looks glorious in our record breaking Scottish sunshine.

Potter Around

Address:
Potter Around
Overton Farm
Kirknewton
West Lothian
EH27 8DD

Opening Times
Mon-Sat: 10-5pm
Sun: 1-5pm

    

Kitchenalia and books

It’s a dangerous thing internet shopping. Too easy to look around and way too easy to enter your details and spend spend spend. Luckily, I don’t have a lot of dosh so spending is limited. That is until I discovered the “vintage kitchenlia” category on Ebay. In truth, I’m trying to get hold of equipment my mum used to use. Stuff from the 60′s which I’m surprised to see labelled vintage. Anyway one thing leads to another and I have bought some cookbooks on the cheap. I’ve given Amazon links below but some of the books are much cheaper on Ebay. None of the books are purely vegetarian.

Indian superfood by Gurpareet Bains – a nice glossy book which tries to show how good some Asian ingredients are. I’m a bit surprised that he hasn’t included okra and kerala which are both known for health giving properties. However, there are some intriguing recipes – I need to figure out how to make the chocolate and chicken curry into a vegetarian dish.

The Curry Secret by Kris Dhillon – How to cook real Indian restaurant meals at home. Most of the restaurants in the UK are Bengali rather than Indian. There are of course restaurants for other areas of Indian including Gujarati, Punjabi and South Indian restaurants but your bog standard curry house is usually Bengali. In our house we never use terms such as madras, dopiaza, vindaloo etc. It’s one of the reasons I like eating in curry houses as the taste is very different from what I cook. However, if you eat out often you might suspect that the sauce is all the same. And reading this book you would be partly right – there is a base Curry sauce which the cook then adds to. I guess this is similar to my vagar which often consists of onion, garlic, ginger and chili base. I’m going to try out the base sauce from the book as soon as I figure out what green ginger is. Also again, many of the dishes here are meaty ones….who knows maybe hubby will pick it up and cook for himself!

Indian Regional Cooking by Sumana Ray – a bit of a happy mistake this one. I had a Sumana Ray book which was lost as part of a horrendous house move. I mourned the loss of that book as I referred to it often as it showed how to make so many foods easily. I thought I was ordering a replacement for that book but what arrived was not the same. The book I got includes meat and fish recipes but on looking through many of the recipes (and indeed the photos) from my old one are there. So this is the old book plus more. I love the sidebars which show step by step how to make things which helpful text and photos. There are loads that I want to try from this book so look out for future recipe reviews.

 

Paper folding

This is amazingly my first post under the “Paper” category which is funny as I’m paper obsessed, or rather stationery obsessed. I can spend hours online looking at different craft products and am in heaven in craft shops touching and looking at different types of paper. I’m not sure if it is a “girl” thing but quite a few girlies I know like their paper – an obsession that’s partly fed by our local Phoenix traders, and the nearness of Hobbycraft.

Anyhooo I digress. The recent spate of baking left me with a dilemma – how to take these to the sales without using my precious tupperware collection. The answer was simple – origami boxes. I have a stack of origami paper and card and et voila – boxes. Now this leads onto more paper-folding – and my 3-year-old and I have been making the simplest animal shapes. Easy to do and ever so cute once we stuck on googly eyes and hand drawn faces have been added. Not the most sophisticated shapes, but as anyone with a young child knows, you can’t do complicated within the 2 minutes attention span the child devotes to a task you may have spent hours preparing for!