Nothing can jazz up a simple outfit like the perfect scarf. And now we’re into the chilly season, the creatively flipped or knotted scarf is more than a mere fashion accessory.

Even a filmy little nothing of a 50s-style chiffon scarf can keep those unpleasant drafts off your neck, while it’s pulling your look together.

Ah, but how do you wear a scarf right — so the local fashionistas don’t point and laugh?

Solution: A quick instructional video that shows you how to wear a scarf 25 different ways…

Yes, twenty-five. Granted, an argument could be made that three or four of these “ways” are suspiciously similar, but that’s getting picky. Point is, there’s enough here to take you through a full month of work days, without ever once repeating exactly the same knot /flip /twist /loop / fling of your stylish-but-practical scarf.

See?

There’s no reason to look like a frump while you’re staying cosy; no need to resort to single-knotting your knock-off Hermes like a kindergarten kid’s knitted scarf, for lack of scarf-styling inspiration — not with the unfairly gorgeous Wendy to give expert guidance!

Next item on the agenda,
stock up on fabulous scarves!

Ideally, you will want to lay in a selection of scarves in different weights — Wendy recommends “light chiffon for Spring and Summer, cashmere for Fall, and wool for Winter.”

I’d add silk to that mix: a gossamer wisp of chiffon or light-weight silk satin, in trendy patterns like the leopard print that Wendy shows; and a slightly heavier raw silk scarf, all slubby-textured and rustic, in a solid colour: rich jewel tones seem to flatter most faces and are a real mood-lifter in mid-winter. Silk fabrics drape beautifully and a silk scarf adds warmth to the back of your neck without adding bulk to make you feel bundled up.

Satin charmeuse, in either silk or a synthetic is always a good choice for a dressier lightweight scarf. You’ll find quite reasonable prices on some fabulous prints in a satin charmeuse scarf too, from Old Masters artwork — think Monet, Degas, Van Gogh — to cool retro patterns, delicate Oriental-inspired prints, and tongue-in-cheek take-offs on the British horsey set.

If you want something of the heft of a featherweight wool but find your skin reacts to wool all up close and personal, a soft combed cotton or even a viscose scarf may fit the bill (though I find viscose gets limp after you have cleaned it a few times — your mileage may vary).

That said, one of my go-to favourite scarves is an ultra-fine wool Mexican rebozo in soft natural pastels I’m not normally drawn to, but couldn’t resist when I found it in a street market in Oaxaca.

Another scarf I wear often is a cobalt-blue length of heavy raw silk that I just cut to length and finished off with a hand-rolled hem (<-- instructions right there, if you'd like to try it yourself).

It would have been prohibitively expensive to buy a scarf like that in a boutique, but as a DIY craft job, it took less than 10 bucks and maybe an hour or so.

So here's a frugal little tip for ya — check the remnant bins at your local fabric shop. Especially just after prom and wedding dress season, you’ll often find all kinds of de luxe pieces on for a song, just waiting to be hemmed or fringed and made into a wonderful scarf… and you now know 25 ways to wear that scarf!

Rebozo photo: Textiles by angela7dreams on Flickr

Sure, you could go get yourself a fanscy-schmancy garlic peeler — but there’s another way to get the skin off your garlic, fast and easy!

What’s the secret to peeling garlic?

For one single garlic clove, pulled from the papery skin of a whole head of fresh garlic, you just place the clove on a flat surface and press firmly with the flat of a knife or the heel of your hand. The tough base of the clove will split, given enough pressure, and the fresh white garlic clove will slip right out of its skin, ready to use.

Now, that is all fine and good, you may say — if you’re only going to need one or two cloves of garlic for a dish. But sometimes, if you’re making pickles, for example, or cooking up your end-of-season tomato harvest into a generous batch of pasta sauce for a crowd, you need to deal with whole heads of garlic.

One clove at a time? That could take forever!

Here’s how to peel a whole head of garlic in under 10 seconds, courtesy of Todd Coleman and the delicious team at SAVEUR magazine:

So, does it work?

Josh Whitkin says no; Mike Liv says no; but in my test — yes, it works. In fact, this is how I’ve always done it, as instructed by my chef friend Paul.

Here are a couple of tips that may help you, too:

1. You need to be absolutely sure that first smash of the hand is a good one, so the cloves are well separated from the base.
2. When you go to smash the garlic head, you might want to drape a dishcloth or something over it, so the cloves don’t go skittering and flying half across the kitchen.
3. Do use two large bowls. (In their tests, according to what we see in the videos, Josh used a bowl with a cutting board for a lid and Mike used two small bowls, instead of two large bowls. It’s my theory that it makes a difference in how the garlic tumbles around when you “shake the dickens out of it” — it’s all about the abrasion, baby! But we’ll leave that for the physics geeks to explain… Bottom line, however, in my books, two good big deep bowls are definitely the way to go.)
4. The fresher your garlic, the easier it will peel.

Have you tried this method of peeling garlic? Give it a whirl, next time you’re playing in the kitchen, and let us know how it goes!

Image credit: Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

In general, it’s women’s fashion that changes so dramatically from one year (or one season, even) to the next. Men’s clothing is much more difficult to pinpoint in time, for most of us, than women’s clothing.

One at-a-glance clue to nailing down the timeline on fashion is to look at the style of women’s hats, as well as the hemlines and the whole silhouette.

But the male of the species is not without the occasional mad phase of flaunting his plumage. Just think of the lace-ruffled Regency dandy, the well-fed Edwardian gent with his velvet lapels, the pin-striped mobster of the 1930s, the young slicked-back Elvis Presley, or those tight-trousered disco kings of Saturday Night fever…

100 years of East London style in 100 seconds

Quick — can you catch all the fashion trends of the century, as they dance by?

Nice touch, having the woman dance alone briefly in her Rosie-the-Riveter wartime gear, before her partner comes flying back into the scene in his spiffy, prosperous post-war civvies!

Don’t you find that the trends tend to blend together, and a look you might tend to associate with one decade turns out to be from a slightly earlier or slightly later period? Fascinating — both the costumes of the recent past, and our conceptions of them!

Pop quiz on fashion history aside, however, it’s just a whole lot of fun to watch the styles boogie (jitterbug, foxtrot, tango, bugoloo, bop, bump…) on by!

This really is quite a clever bit of advertising, well sugar-coated as a blend of entertainment and education. Advertising? Why, yes, in fact:

Directed by Jake Lunt with The Viral Factory, the film was shot over 4 days in east London locations with hundreds of costume changes. The music was commissioned from Oscar nominated genius Tristin Norwell who took a simple tune and interpreted it for each decade over 100 years.
~ 100 YEARS / STYLE / EAST LONDON: Westfield Stratford City

This video was posted on YouTube by “Europe’s largest urban shopping centre, Westfield Stratford City” in advance of its official opening on 13 September 2011.

Which explains the date given in bold red letters at the end.
And why “East London” in particular.
And why the century of fashion runs from 1911 to 2011, instead of even numbers.

Neat-o!

Have you seen those fantasy faux-glass flowers made from recycled pop bottles?

I mean the delicate fragile-looking twisty looking ones, like those the US-based artist Laura Astor) used to make.

Like this.

(Note: these aren’t the Anthropologie-style of flowers that use the ends of the bottles. But there’s a great tutorial from Sonia at Kosmic Chai, if you’re looking for a how-to on making that type.)

These more delicate PET flowers would make gorgeous Christmas-tree decorations, I think, if you coloured the flowers red like a poinsettia — or put together a whole bunch of the clear plastic flowers would make a fun sun-catcher mobile for your garden or a little girl’s bedroom — or tie them into a good thick evergreen wreath to add a little frosty glitter. The possibilities are endless!

Here, Leanne of Luvlee Scrappin gives a little video tutorial to walk you through how she makes her pop bottle flowers. You’ll find a number of YouTube videos that show a similar how-to techniques, but Leanne’s tutorial has the clearest instructions and best quality sound and pictures of any I’ve looked at.

Instructions for Pop Bottle Flowers

Here’s a quick outline of how Leanne shows how to make pop bottle flowers, just to give you an idea of what’s involved, but do watch the video (it runs about 10 minutes) for full instructions:

From the side of a plastic pop bottle, cut:

• 2 squares, 2.25″ x 2.25″ each
• 1 square, 1.75″ x 1.75″

Cut each square into four petals that are joined together at the middle. Leanne likes to cut curves from corner into the center like a windmill, then turn the plastic piece the other up and cut the other direction to complete the petals.

You can draw out the petals with a Sharpie first, if you like, but just be sure to cut all the pen marks off so they don’t show up on the finished flower. (My suggestion, if you’re not confident of your freehand scissor work: draw out a pattern on paper, lay the plastic down on top of the paper, and follow along the lines with a stylus or pencil point, then cut the plastic along the scored lines.)

If you want a coloured flower, use a coloured plastic pop bottle or colour the petals with Sharpie pens or alcohol (not water-based) inks.

Next, you’re going to want to melt the edges of the petals to get a bit of a natural curve or twist look. For this, Leanne suggests a tea light candle. You could use a heat gun can be used, but Leanne says it doesn’t give the nice ripple effect on the edges that you’re looking for here. I suspect that the heat from a heat gun is spread out evenly over too large an area, not as concentrated as a candle flame and not as unpredictable.

So, light you little candle (keep water or a fire extinguisher nearby, as always when working with an open flame) and grab a pair of metal tweezers you don’t mind using for craft projects.

Gently heat the edges of petal (holding it about inch and a half away from the candle flame, Leanne suggests) until the edge of plastic starts to melt and curl. This will happen quite fast, so be careful not to melt it too much! Then give the petal a twist with your tweezers. Try to keep the centre as flat as possible as this is where you’ll glue the layers together to form your flower.

Repeat with other petals.

Cut a couple of leaves from a green pop bottle (or cut from a clear bottle, if that’s all you have, and colour it with a Sharpie or alcohol inks). Use the same heat-and-shape technique to give a little ripple to the leaves.

Assemble — very carefully! — using a hot glue gun, positioning the petals and leaves in whatever way looks good to you. Add a bead, pearl, or other embellishment of your choice to make the centre of the flower.

And there you have it, a faux glass flower made from an old pop bottle!

Visit www.zibbet.com/LuvLeeScrappin and luvleescrappin.blogspot.com to enjoy more of Leanne’s crafty creations.

Fitted sheets are an invention of wondrous convenience when you’re making the bed, but not so much on laundry day! We’ve all got the one clever friend who really knows how to fold a fitted sheet — flip, tuck, fluff, fold, and hey-presto! Elastic corners are tucked out of sight, and the recalcitrant fitted sheet’s now a tidy little well-behaved rectangle, ready to put away in the linen closet with its neat little flat-sheet buddies…

I’ve poked around YouTube a good deal, looking for help, but most of the instructional videos for folding fitted sheets aren’t really all that clear, or the results aren’t as good as we’d really like, if you’re going to go to all that bother. Finally, however, my newlywed pal Katelynn discovered The Perfect Fitted Sheet Folding Video Tutorial:

Okay, now take a deep breath and just watch that first part again, where she’s putting the corners together. The whole trick is in getting all four corners of the sheet tucked inside each other, the way the video shows. Grab a fitted sheet to play along while you watch this, and you’ll find you quickly get the hang of it.

Also, yay for the beautiful white-haired calm and capable Granny-type lady who makes you feel like, hell yeah! — oops, sorry Gran — we can do this stupid chore. No fitted sheet is going to go unfolded around here from now on, gol’dang it!

Who let the dogs out? It doesn’t matter! because…
He Who Hogs The Power Tools built us this very lovely wooden pet gate for our porch (or “verandah,” as we usually call it), so the dogs can hang out in comfort and safety, while we do yard work or whatever.

So, the dogs are free to go into the fenced side yard off the other side, if they need to “do their business,” but the pet gate on the driveway side means they can’t get out and run loose in the yard — possibly to get lost or end up on the road or find a skunk to play with. You like?

A couple of design features in this gate I particularly like:

For one thing, there’s no ugly hook-and-eye or latch to fumble with, if your hands are full of dog leashes or grocery bags — the gate fastens with a knob attached to a slider, neatly hidden inside the top rail. It’s easy to use; in fact, you should know this is not a child-safe gate because a smart toddler can figure it out in about 2 seconds. So far, we haven’t found a dog who could open the pet gate, though — but then, to be fair, I haven’t tested it on a wiley Border Collie!

Also, you know how wooden gates, especially those that go across a wide opening like this one, tend to sag down at one side, over time? Here, the corners are reinforced with steel, but the metal is cleverly hidden inside the gate frame so as not to spoil the looks. I do think it’s a pretty good-looking piece of woodworking, too. See how the design of the gate matches the porch railing: almost too elegant for This Old Farmhouse!

You think you’ve seen some truly disturbing crochet work over the years? If you haven’t checked out Patricia Waller’s works in crochet and other media, you ain’t seen what yarn + imagination is capable of.

In this video walk-through of an art exhibit (armchair travel, anyone?), Bugs Bunny and friends become an “artistic metaphor for malice, violence, and the inevitability of disasters”… and you can make of that what you will…

How’s about that for Yarn Art?!

Personally, I find the piece of Miss Piggy in the old-fashioned meat grinder a bit too strong (luv luv luv Miss Piggy), but the floor arrangement of sharks breaking through around a flailing hand, the iconic “Who Killed Bambi?” and the beautiful big Bugs with giant fork in him? Clever, clever, clever. Okay, also a tad creepy… but very clever.

Chilean-born Patricia Waller now lives and works in Berlin. Her most recent solo exhibition, called Follow the thread, is open now at the Museum junge Kunst in Frankfurt Oder, Germany.

This just in from Crafters News (Crown):

You’ve knitted their colorful blankets, sassy nightgowns, adorable baby bibs, dishtowels, and more, but did you know that Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne of Mason-Dixon Knitting fame are actually country singers in disguise?

Give a listen to Kay and Ann on the Nashville Bandwagon Show, performing their side-splitting-funny country song “Pardon Me (I Didn’t Knit that For You)”.

This musical gem was part of the whoop-up launch of the new (affordable!) paperback edition of Mason-Dixon Knitting: The Curious Knitter’s Guide: Stories, Patterns, Advice, Opinions, Questions, Answers, Jokes, and Pictures.

Now, doesn’t that make you want to rush right out and… knit up something cosy for the one you love?

Okay, okay, I know you’ve probably all seen this amazing YouTube video before — the one where a whole group of trained dogs are home alone and they decorate the Christmas tree — but let’s enjoy the smart doggies one more time, heading into the holidays!

This is like a Christmas pageant for a dog training school (in Hungary, isn’t it?) and a really clever idea! If you watch carefully, you’ll be able to see what behaviours each of the dogs has been trained to do (opening the cupboard door, pulling the garland, carrying the Christmas balls, or whatever) and how the bits are all edited together to make this impressive show…

But you’d never see a video like this coming out of a dog obedience school in most major cities in the US or Canada.

Want to know why?

Because they’ve got unneutered pitbulls running around off-leash in the same room as other dogs, including a tiny toy poodle. And with all the successful push for breed-specific dog bans we’ve had in North America, people have come to believe — misguidedly — that certain breeds of big powerful dogs cannot be trained or trusted.

Hope this happy little Merry Christmas doggy video helps to counter that narrow opinion, and help the advocates for breed-specific legislation see that all dogs are individual characters — just like people — regardless of their shape, size, or breed!

Have a Very Merry Christmas & New Year’s Holidays, everyone!
Woof woof!

As the owner of a retired racing greyhound, and not being opposed to the occasional adult beverage, I was semi-thrilled to discover there’s such a thing as a Greyhound cocktail. Here’s the mixology on it, if you’re feeling like a fruity-refreshing summer drink for patio sipping:

I’m only semi-thrilled to learn about the Greyhound Cocktail, though, because I also discovered that there are quite serious (as in, potentially life-and-liver-threatening) possible interactions with medications and grapefruit juice — and grapefruit juice is a key ingredient in the Greyhound cocktail. Guess I’ll just have to stick with the (admittedly delightful) company of a long tall dog, instead of a long tall beverage! But, you know, you could have one for me if you’re so inclined…

If it broke you up to say good-bye to the Shiba Inu litter whose “Puppy Cam” webcam broadcasts stole hearts through the holidays, fear not — a new pooch passion’s here. Once again, we’ve got a chance to watch fuzzy adorable pups of exotic breeding as they romp and snooze and rip apart toys in the nursery — awaiting the time of weaning and adoption — but this time it’s a litter of Thai Ridgeback puppies.

Online video chat by Ustream

If you’re still pining for the Shibas, however — and who wouldn’t? — you’ll be glad to know that the original Puppy Cam madness continues. Richard Gere and the Puppy Cam Shibas are teaming up in a remake of Hatchiko, the Japanese tale of a brave and faithful little dog…

I’ve not seen the Japanese film, but a dear friend with whom I shared the love of a Shiba for a number of years gave me a copy of a children’s book called Hachiko Waits that tells the dog’s story — and if you’re a dog lover, and if you’re lucky enough to come across a copy, I’d grab it. (And if I were a publisher, I’d be haggling for the reprint rights, before the Hatchiko movie is released!)

“Want me to knit you a bacon scarf?” Diane asked, and unwittingly launched my search for arts and crafts with a bacon theme. She said she could probably “fake up” a pattern. Thinking back, I’m not entirely sure whether she planned to knit it from the actual fatty meat product. In which case, er, no…

But this Unsettlingly Real-Looking Felted Bacon Scarf in merino wool is both amusing and completely wearable — at least, in cool weather and possibly not around those of my vegan pals who tend to get queasy at the sight of meat.

By the way, if you just dropped in (hello there!) and you’re wondering what the heck all this pork-related nonsense is about, please do skip back to Virtual Collection: Bacon Bits – Part 1 for the explanation.

It’s as good an explanation as anyone’s likely to come up with… except maybe for Revison3′s Lil Internet Superstar:

But enough of that.
We’ve got loftier ambitions for our pork products!

Bacon in Art and Crafts

(I’m pretty sure that Bacon in Art is an actual Library of Congress catalog heading. Okay, maybe not, but I do remember filing something under Pigs in Art back in my summer-job-in-library days. And yes, it was filed correctly.)

Bacon, when raw, lends itself to weaving and shaping. Cook it and it holds its shape. What better craft material?

Instructables.com teaches you how to make your own fashion-forward bacon placemats, the inspiration for NotMartha.org’s famous bacon baskets and breadless BLT.

Or you can deconstruct your bacon for a home science experiment by making bacon soap (bacon-shaped soap molds not included), though the 2-week wait — to cure the added lye so it won’t burn your skin — may discourage all but the keenest of patient crafters from trying it.

Perhaps we’ll just admire the bacon artworks of others.

After all, even Salvador Dali thought that thin-sliced pork products were worth a place on canvas: one of his paintings was entitled Soft Self-Portrait with Fried Bacon, Basket of Bread… but then, of course, what else is to be expected of the surrealist who brought us melting clocks and Santiago el Grande?

The Bacon in Art torch is lifted high and carried on by the artists of Etsy.com, and here are a few of my current 2-dimensional favourites. (Click each little image to visit the artist’s Etsy shop and get more views and information.)

This is an 8″ x 10″ original acrylic painting… on panel. It was painted for the LA Weekly and appeared in their publication.

~ pamelajaeger

Ever see a cute little pig advertising for some BBQ joint? They don’t want to be there. Trust me.

~ waterbears

As an ‘artist/meatcutter’ I recognized the necessity for meat to be abstracted in order to be swallowed, therefore, it was natural for me to objectify meat and approach it with the same focus as my other still-life objects.

~ mgenomgeno

Title: yummy, sinful bacon, I love you

~ welcometothedoghouse

But the piece de resistance in Bacon Art is in the realm of sculpture:

John Ptak has the competition locked up, and the key was lost sometime back in World War II: that’s about when the fabled fat artist Fleiss created and prospered and wrote an astonishing pamphlet:

In the world of found book objects, few I think are as deeply removed and as deeply obscure as the work by Otto F. Fleiss called White Art in the Meat Food Business. A Practical Handbook for Butcher, Pork Stores, Restaurants, Hotels and Delicatessens on How to Make Lasting and Transferable White Art Decorations out of Bacon Fat Back for Window Displays, Ornaments on Meat Food Cold Buffets and for Exhibits and Advertising Purposes. Enrich yourself with Personal Knowledge.

It just kills me that the time is long past when an artisan could make his way in the world by crafting a perfect 200-pound cathedral entirely in white bacon fat.