Muffin insanity

Another one of my how-to-live lectures? Naa, this time it's plain news.

I'm baking muffins for the open day up in the castle tomorrow. I'm a bit dizzy already and there are still another three batches or so to bake.. Well, I've heard of scrying with chocolate, maybe I'll invent falling into a trance with muffins tonight.

But there's so many yummy treats here! I've started with classics - blueberry and double choc, but then got more creative - almond (and I love almonds, so added twice as much as in recipe), banana + choc chips + roasted walnuts, spicy apple and I may even go as far as some peach and something muffins if I have any strength left.

Fingers crossed before the day zero!

She sells sea shells...

Still fighting with a bit of creative block (probably caused by too much time spent in the Big Busy World. Did you notice how this can kill any creative urge? If you did - you're sooo like me:).

But the time flies, and I start to miss the feeling of doing something with my hands. The first line in my collection - earrings - is done. Amazing how they got me burning, but when their time of fulfillment came - the ideas just stopped flowing. So now I have twenty-odd pair ready, half of which is up on the shop website, half still needs putting up (check it out from time to time, I take pains to update it every day or two), and the only things left to be dealt with are photography/marketing issues. Quite gripping in their own right, but with a completely different vibe.

I miss the other, trance-like feeling of actually MAKING something. I try to fill the gap with impromptu domestic projects - like baking a cake, for example. Last night - apple/peach shortbread tart, brimming with cinnamon and raisins, adapted from a recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (check out his inspiring book The River Cottage Cookbook - I carried it with me even for field trips, at least for few good days) - yummy. And I enjoy it immensely. But still - I think the time gets slowly ripe to start on another finger-fiddly project.

I don't want to disclose too many secrets before anything is actually done, but just a bit to keep you hooked on - the ocean looks like my most likely inspiration. I've started on a series of hunting (mataphorically speaking..) - gathering expeditions, travelling all over Ireland from beach to beach, searching for different flotsam and jetsam specific to a particular area. Got good few handfuls by now (hopefully I'll manage to follow up with some pics soon) and there's more to come. Next destination - Coral Beach...

And of all that I'm planning to create something beautiful.

But for now - shh, let's not frighten the inspiration away! Let's allow it to mature in warmth and silence to see what will emerge!