Electric Picnic 2009, Crafts and a Beer Surprise

This year we headed to the Electric Picnic in Stradbally, we had been before in 2006 and 2007. This year had a pretty eclectic line up with a good few new bands.

I decided to dress up as I had in previous years. Some Penneys hacking was in order. I bought a mad dress for three euro. I then sewed a string of battery powered Led lights onto it. These were got in Dunnes last year at christmas. The dress had a pocket on the side and I used that to store the battery pack.

I pinned a pink brooch to the dress and paired the whole lot with pink wellies which were absolutely essential in the mud this year. There was an awful lot of mud, luckily I avoided falling over, I think my caving training helped there.

The hat is one I picked up in Penneys a few years ago. Hats are really easy to do up. I sewed on two strings of beads around the rim. I also sewed a feather to the hat. I think the outfit was great fun, especially when dancing in a dark tent. It was great at night as when you're all lit up people don't tend to walk into you as much.

Over the weekend I made a few visits to Stitchlily or Orla as she is more normally known. In the future will we all wear badges with our avatar names on them? She had a fantasic Sit and Stitch stall with crochet, spinning, sewing and knitting, basically all things fiber and stitch related in the Greencrafts part of the festival. It was a wonderfully chilled out little corner. On saturday morning I sat down and spun and watched the world go by. I also admired all the lovely mushrooms and lilies she had crocheted to decorate the area. More photos here.

On Sunday night in a break before The Flaming Lips we spotted some guys with what looked like a corny keg. It was Oliver and some others from The Porterhouse so we went over to say hello. They kindly offered us some Hophead. The only beers available this year at EP were Heineken, Coors Light and Paulaner which I hadn't been drinking so this was like manna from heaven. Heavenly it was indeed, fresh from the corny the beer was hoppy and citrusy and thirst quenching. Thanks Oliver! We also discovered that Hophead would be available freshly bottled at SeptemberFest in Farmleigh. But more of SeptemberFest in the next post.

I had fun this year at EP but I think this may be my last year there. It had lost a little of it's magic for me, don't get me wrong it was great but it's very expensive. I have to send a big thanks to the man with the tractor who towed my car out of the incredibly muddy car park on Sunday My musical highlights this time were Explosions in the Sky, Brian Wilson, Jape, David Kitt, Efterklang and Chris Cunningham.

Summer Ramblings, a bit of everything

Things have been busy here at Aran Brew recently.

A few weekends ago we went to Eddie and Riona's wedding which was great, congratulations guys! Read their travel blog, it's great but it does make me very jealous of all the cool places they went to see.

We were driving home after the wedding and stopped to take a look at Lough Derravarragh just outside Crooked Wood. There's a great view from above the lake and we stopped to take a look. There's a field there and as you can see in the photo there's alpaca in the field!

I got to wondering if the farmer ever sells the fleeces and then I noticed a post box. Oh dear. I got out a pen and a paper bag as I had no paper with me and wrote a note with my contact details to the farmer saying I was a spinner and asked if he ever sold the fleeces. I apologized in the note for bothering him if he thought I was mad. Which wasn't unlikely given the state of the paper and the request.

I forgot about it and presumed they had rightly dismissed me as a madwoman but yesterday I got an email from the farmer and he said he's shearing the alpaca next week. He says I can come along and buy some fleece. Real alpaca fleece in Ireland, complete result! Sometimes it pays to write random notes.

I've also been sewing a lot recently. My Mum and I made a skirt using a pattern we made up ourselves. It's really nice but I have no photos of it yet. It was harder to do than I thought but I learned loads. In the photo is the beginnings of the spring ruffle top. This is going well, I did the top of it in an afternoon. I just have to do the bottom and join them together now. Hopefully it will turn out ok. I also bought some more fabric in Ikea when I was in Belfast, it was really cheap and I might turn it into some funky stuff for the house.

I also racked my Raspberry Wheat Beer onto secondary. I sterilized the better bottle then just put the frozen fruit into the end of it and racked the beer on top of it. I used 400g of raspberries and 400g of mixed summer berries. I tasted a bit last night and I think it's ready to bottle now. It's an interesting beer, unlike anything I've ever had before. It's light and not hoppy and pretty fruity, there's also a lot of chamomile going on too, maybe too much. I'd love to dry hop this with cascade as I think it would be lovely but that would disqualify it from the ICB all grain challenge. It's a quandary as I want to enter the challenge but I also want the beer to taste the best it can.



Dave and I went away for the June bank holiday weekend and lo and behold the sun came out. At one point it was 26 degrees which is very hot for Ireland. It was the best weather we've had in two years and luckily we were camping at the seaside for it. We headed up the causeway coastal route on saturday morning having been at a barbecue in a friends house in Belfast on friday night. I can recommend the Torr Head cliff road for anyone who likes driving along tiny roads with huge drops beside them. The view of Scotland from the head is pretty cool too. I didn't realize it was that near.

We brought the dog camping with us and he seemed to love it. We stayed at a campsite between Portrush and Portstewart. I think I'd prefer Portstewart for an evening out or something to eat. Westley was even left off his lead for short bits in the campsite and he didn't run away. We brought him along to see the Giant's Causeway. We'd been told it wasn't great but we really enjoyed the weird hexagonal rocks.

The dog didn't love it when we dragged him into the sea for a swim though. We went to Downhill, it's an amazing long beach with no stones, you can park your car on the beach too which is handy. There are also decent waves to play around in. It's just a pity the dog didn't like the water more. We also discovered a good way to cool the dog down on the hot days, we gave him ice. He loved it.

I also found time to sit outside doing some crochet while sipping a lovely cold Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. We bought some beer up north as it's much cheaper up there. English ales are especially good value, in some shops there's a two ales for four pounds deal. Down south it's not unusual to pay 3.50 to 4.00 euro for an English ale.

It was a great weekend. Here's a photo taken near Carrick A Rede rope bridge. The sea was incredibly blue and clear with the sun beating down upon it. I've rarely seen the sea this colour in this country.



As we came home a friend of mine rang inviting me to go camping with her for a few days during the week. So I snuck off for sneaky mid week break. It was great to see her and her young son. He had great fun in the campsite which had a playground and a pets corner. We had a barbecue one of the nights and sat down and relaxed outside in our camping chairs. It was a week that really reminded me of what summer is all about.

Here's hoping for more hazy lazy days...

All sewn up

I got a new sewing machine! It's from Lidl and cost eighty euro. I've been using my Mum's sewing machine rather too much so she got me one of my own for my birthday. It works great and is pretty simple which is better for me, when a sewing machine gets too complicated it's hard to use.

I've done a good bit of sewing over the years, as a kid my Barbies and Sindys all had couture outfits made from scraps left over from my Mum's sewing. My Mum is my secret weapon when sewing as she knows everything there is to know about sewing. She made her own wedding dress and lots of our clothes when we were kids. She works in a home furnishing shop and brings home loads of fabric with the excuse but it was cheap. I've gotten all my new curtains made by my Mum.

I want to make skirts as I never see skirts I like in the shops and they're not that hard to make. I decided to listen to my Mum who is always right about everything and make some cushions first. These are the mad looking cushions I like them a lot, they'll come camping with us this summer and brighten up the tent. I picked up the lovely colourful throw to go with them in Heatons for ten euro. I can almost sew straight but I'm really terrible at cutting straight. I can see a rotary cutter and a ruler in my future. Cutting wonky is ok on a cushion but not on a skirt.



I've got one or two sewing books recently. First of all is Sew What? Skirts. It's a great starter book about sewing as it goes through lots of techniques at the start. Then it shows you how to draft an a-line and straight skirt pattern. All the skirts are then made using variations on these techniques. The first skirt I make will be one from this book.

The other book is Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross. I love this book! It's all laid back easy style, nothing too fussy. The other advantage is that it's all aimed at the beginning/intermediate sewer. Hopefully I'll make some stuff from this.

I went shopping today and got some fabric in Fabric World on Parnell Street. I got some lovely navy and pink stuff to make a skirt and some lovely white flowery fabric to make this spring ruffle top. I also got lots of bits and pieces like thread, tracing paper and elastic thread in The Dublin Woolen Mills just beside the Hapenny Bridge. Expect to see some results on the blog in the future.

Belliveau Cove Hat

It's been a busy week and a crafty one too. As well as making some more mini hats I was busy making a hat for a friends birthday. It's a pattern from Crochet Me called Belliveau Cove. It's a shell stitch hat with a little brim. I made it using Kilcarra aran tweed in green and Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted in purple. It's a very easy and quick pattern which works up into a really nice hat. I also made a mini version of this hat in cotton for my new baby cousin. It's terribly cute, hopefully I'll get a photo of her it in at some stage. I forgot my camera so didn't get any photos of it as I handed it over when I finished it.





Before my jewelery making class on wednesday I called into the new branch of This Is Knit in the Powerscourt Centre in Dublin's city centre. Damn forgetting my camera! It's a lovely little shop with lots of yummy yarn in many different colours. It's a great location as well, there's a lot of posh shops in the centre so maybe this will help convince people that knitting isn't a chore and only for poor people. These days it's trendy and about designing things you want. I sometimes get odd reactions from people when I say I knit, they seem very surprised. As if a young person couldn't possibly knit.
Anyway I bought some lovely yarn in This Is Knit, some Kilcarra aran tweed to make a hat for the husband. And some Lorna's Laces Lion and Lamb to make a cowl to go with the mittens and hat I'm knitting. I really like the look of this cowl. I have an awful weakness for yarns with silk in them, they are so soft and the silk gives the yarn a lovely sheen.

I did some sewing this week. My Mum has a sewing machine which she is going to sell to me when she gets a new more powerful one. So until that happens I use it when I visit her at home. At the moment I'm learning to make curtains. We're decorating our bedroom and the curtains and bed runner will be made by me. Curtains aren't actually that hard to make, you just need to be able to sew straight which I can do most of the time. I find when I get to the end of the material I start to go a bit wonky. I'll put some pictures up when the curtains are finished.

Clutch Bag

A while ago I made a clutch bag as a present for my cousin. I made the bag but it stalled when I went to make it up and realised that it would need to be lined.

Last weekend I finally got round to sewing it up. My Mum has been teaching me how to use the sewing machine for the last while. I made some cushions and stuff and so a bag lining was now not beyond me. I used a piece of plastic from a shopping bag cut to size to give the bag shape as a clutch can't be sloppy.

I'm very pleased! Now I hope my cousin likes it.