Creating from Scratch

Whirlwind week

[image Marmaladya.com]

Busy, busy, busy around here. Was slightly clobbered by magazine deadlines (aka my day job) this week, plus lots happening on the entrepreneurial front.

Last night I attended a networking event organised by the wonderful ladies at Marmaladya.com. The swanky affair featured cupcakes and cocktails (a heavenly pairing) plus lots of interesting women, each doing their own business thing. (Hello to Lucy, Jessie, Kate, Katy, Lisa, Sally, Lizzie, Annie, and everyone else I chatted with!).

It was great to get feedback, too, about my own budding business. Especially useful was hearing from inspiring women about what types of workshops they'd love to attend. For example, I heard from would-be knitters, scrapbookers, sewers, and one woman who really wanted to learn how to make quilts. The enthusiasm was infectious! I'm currently lining up teachers for future events, so if you have a particular expertise and live or work in or near London, please do get in touch.

On that note, I'm very pleased to announce that my first workshop (slated for early March) is full, but if you would like to find out about upcoming workshops, please email me and I'll put you on the e-list).

Easier eating

[image Eat the Seasons]

The weekend visit to the farmers' market near my house is a ritual I've practiced for years, first when I lived in Los Angeles, then in New York, and now in London. I feel it's important, from both a health and environmental perspective to eat seasonal, buy local, and choose organic whenever I can.

But it can admittedly be a struggle to figure out how to use some items, especially unfamilar (to me) ones like Jerusalem artichokes (I still have trouble with those strange, nobbly vegetables!). To make it easier, I subscribe to Eat the Seasons, an e-newsletter that each week spotlights a single seasonal food and offers tips, recipes, and other useful cooking resources. (If you're reading in North America, visit their US/Canadian site).

In the UK, Eat the Seasons has just added a wonderful new wrinkle called Cook Book Companions. The idea is simple - to draw on the recipes already sitting on your book shelf by selling companion e-books that automatically let you see, at a glance, an index of a book's recipes that are best for cooking in this month. (Nigel Slater, Nigella Lawson, The River Cafe, and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are among the authors/restaurants they've already got on board). For example, in September you might find a cake that makes the most of the month's seasonal fruits, or when the weather warms a bit, locate a recipe for a starter that uses Spring vegetables).

I've just purchased two - a steal at £1.50 each - one for Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries; another for Nigella Lawson's How To Eat. (If you're not in the UK, you could probably still use them but the page numbers on US editions of the cookbooks might be different).

I'm already planning my shopping list for the weekend. Anything that makes mealtime easier gets an enthusastic thumbs up at my house.

Midweek Make Break: MOTION

The creative challenge from this week's Midweek Make Break newsletter is all about "motion." (The issue should be in your inbox now. If you're not yet a subscriber and would like to receive your own copy each week, please sign up over to the right).

Here's a snippet:

You've probably heard the saying that if a shark stops moving it ceases to be alive. I'm not sure if this is true (I recently saw two sharks at the London Aquarium happily resting, and alive, on the bottom of the tank), but it can serve a good metaphor for our own journeys.

Think how heavy and difficult the days seem when you're feeling stuck in some aspect of your life. Now imagine when you're in forward motion, especially with periods of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow" - that state of total immersion and concentration in what you're doing. When you're in this pleasurable state, your actions and emotions feel light, almost effortless.

Looking forward to seeing what everyone creates!

My kind of camping

[image Canvaschic]

It's so inspiring to watch entrepreneurs as they move from strength to strength with their business.

A few years ago, I heard about Canvaschic, an elegant camping company that creates amazing holidays in France. (We own a VW camper van but my desires are always split between roughing it and looking for the nearest spa). I'd always wanted to book but they were always fully full up as the number of yurts (just three at the time) limited the amount of campers they could accommodate.

The other day, however, I received news that they've secured a new site, with 12 new upscale tents - including nine for families. Now I just have to figure out how to find the time to go...

Merrily we

Grey, grey, grey, cold, cold, cold. I'm tired of British weather. Multi-tasking all week long has left me exhausted, so I've taken the morning off. Over Christmas, I found one of my favorite children's books, Ed Emberley's Fingerprint Drawing, and I decided today was the perfect day to reconnect with my youth.

Excuse me, if you will. I've made these cheery birds and now we're going out for a stroll. Are you injecting a bit of fun into your Friday? I hope so.

The Midweek Make Break challenge: RED

It's a mini-celebration round these parts. . .I hit "send" this morning on my new e-newsletter, The Midweek Make Break!

The challenge from this week's issue, sent to a slew of busy women craving a bit of creative "me-time," is to make something (anything!)- from a scribbled doodle to a Play-Doh sculpture - around the theme of RED.

Did you know that red is:

- the hue of the long-wave end of the visible spectrum
-the chromatic color resembling the hue of blood
-another name for losing money; the opposite of black
-in Chinese symbolism, the color of good luck and success
-the synonyms scarlet, crimson, and vermilion
-the color of anger
-a name for an extreme radical or revolutionary
-the color of cherries, tomatoes, and rubies

I'm really excited to see what everyone creates!

Circles

Playing around with paper, fabric, and canvas yesterday. It's part of a little e-newsletter / Flickr group project I'm launching in a week or so. It's geared toward busy women who could use a creative break (sound like you?!?). Take a sneak peek here.

A moveable feast

[Subway lunch bag via Craft]

File Marti Zabell's subway commuter lunch bag into the "great idea" category - or better yet, get in touch with her and convince her to make you one! I would have loved one of these when I lived in NYC - I hate most handbags (far too fiddly...I'm more likely to tuck a tube of lipstick and my keys into my pocket and go). Backpacks are functional but tough to get your hands into one while you're traveling.

In contrast, this tidy hip/shoulder bag created by Zabell, a graduate industrial design student at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, offers an elegant, useful alternative. Let's hope she gets these to market - I think she's hit on something wonderful here.

On that note, I'm planning on profiling clever female entrepreneurs here in coming months - particularly ones based in the UK. If you know of any - or are one yourself! - please do get in touch (my address is to the left). If you've created something wonderful from scratch, I'd love to hear from you.