The Asia Challenge with Pod Collective

Well lately I've been a tad busy.... so when i heard about the latest Pod Collective challenge I decided I don't have enough time to create an artwork, so my artistic challenge for March comes to you in the form of a tart!

A bit of background on the tart....I found a recipe on Taste.com.au and I modified it.  I will type up my version and add to here, as soon as I can get around to it.  Anyway, in the recipe you whisk eggs, sugar and cream together and put in lime juice and lime rind, which you later put through a sieve.  So for my version I put in 3 crumpled fresh kaffir lime leaves, 2 stalks of bruised lemongrass (the lower third) and a heaped tsp of freshly grated ginger.  Also, instead of 1 cup of cream I used 1/2 cup cream and 1/2 cup coconut cream, and then added some toasted shredded coconut on top.  This was served with Red Papaya on bamboo skewers which had been sprinkled with lime juice ( I have dozens of limes on my tree!).  

To set the scene I brought in a few of my asian things, they all have a bit of a story.  

A CD "Taiwan 100 year favourites"  a classical music CD I bought on my last night in Taiwan and which was not what I was expecting!

The table runner is a piece of ikat weaving from West Timor.  Click here to see a website which explains the process of ikat weaving, this one is also in Nusa Tenggara ( the region of the islands east of Bali) During the time I lived in the N.T. I went to West Timor about 4 times between 1996 and 1999 and was lucky to meet a very interesting lady known as the Queen of Baun, Ibu Koroh in the village of Baun, West Timor.  She is a renowned weaver of the ikat style and speaks English very well.  She lives in an amazing house built by a Dutch arhitect and I went to see her each time I visited Kupang.  She loves cooking and baking cakes but couldn't get all the ingredients to get the cakes she wanted so asked me to bring her over some packet cake mixes next time I came over.  (there used to be flights from Darwin to Kupang a few times a week, it was only an hour and a half flight).  So the next time I went there I took a bundle of cake mixes and took them to her house.  She wasn't home so I left them with a friend and went back to Kupang.  The next day I returned to the hotel after an outing and she was waiting for me in the foyer.  She brought this beautiful ikat weaving for me to thank me for the cake mixes.  Needless to say I was extremely embarrassed, there is certainly no comparison, but the polite thing to do of course is to accept the gift.  This weaving has a lot of memories attached to it from my visits to the Queen of Baun and to West Timor.  There are no longer any direct flights there and I can't imagine I'll ever get there again, but I'm glad I had the opportunity to do so at the time.

 Here is a link to the website that shows weavings using Ibu Koroh's technique with some information about her.

An example of an ikat weaving from West Timor

The Taiwanese teaset is gorgeous and was given to me by a group of student I taught in Taiwan in 2001.  Going to teahouses is a big part of Taiwanese culture and I really enjoyed doing this with friends I met in Tsaotun.  This group of students were the 'advanced' level class and I also taught their children during the day at the school I worked at.  What a nice bunch of people they were, always taking me out for dinner and on weekend day trips.  

Here is a photo of me with them.  

So, after all that, here are the pictures

Served on a banana leaf with a big dollop of double cream!

Part of my Taiwanese Tea set

I forgot to mention my Thai cutlery - unremarkably I bought this at Bangkok airport, sorry, should have made up an exotic tale about it

 Shannon and Ali enjoying have their pie and eating it too...

The table, set up in our Pod Collective shop

I'm looking forward to coming back from hols and seeing the results of the other girls' challenge. 

Pod Collective Market Shop at Boyne Island

Last weekend we rearranged our shop - it was very exciting as it now looks even better! We just need to let more people know we are there! So many people are coming in and saying "how long have you been here, we didn't know you were here" so we are planning to get some flyers printed and deliver them (ourselves of course, what better way to exercise??) so everyone in the Boyne and Tannum areas knows about our shop. We think we really brighten up the Boyne Plaza and the smell of the soy candles drifts right through the centre, people say they can smell them as soon as they walk in the doors. We have a constantly changing display of our products with new things coming all the time. We now have some shadowboxes with paper cuts, cool badges, evening bags and fascinators - come to us for your Melbourne cup accessories! We also have some new handmade patchwork baby blankets with fleece on one side, clothing and lots of beautiful sun catchers. There is new jewellery - rings and hand made glass tile pendants and I have just made a new range of purses which are a small coin purse size with a wrist strap, the right size for carrying your change when you go walking or a great size to keep in a school bag. So if you are local, please come and see our shop! You don't need to drive into Gladstone to buy gifts, come and get something locally handmade. We are open Friday from 9-5 and Sat from 9-2.30.

Pod Collective shop at Boyne Island

Heaven Scent Candles

Ali Bird's collection

Ruby Lime Design

Toni Spencer, Ali Bird, Sacha Harrang and Carolyne Thornton

Four Pod Collective members, Toni, Ali, Sacha and myself set up a shop for a day at the Boyne Island Shopping Centre last week. What a great day. Sacha's paintings made the walls look so colourful and turned a drab looking room into a bright and happy place. With all our creations inside it looked amazing and we hope to do it again. Thanks to everyone who came along to have a look and buy something local and handmade. Here are a few pics from the day....

Pod Collective market at Breezes

Thanks to everyone for supporting our market, we had it was a great day and hope everyone who came along enjoyed it. For anyone who came to the markets, it would be great to get your feedback and ideas or suggestions so feel free to email me at rubylimedesign@yahoo.com.au and I'll pass the info on to our group at our next Pod meeting.

Here are some pics from the market day

Pod Collective Exhibition

Here are a few photos taken at the Pod Collective exhibition held last night. It was a great night and excellent to see so many people there! Thanks to everyone who came and made it such a good night and to all the people who helped us set up and clean up afterwards like Robyn and Vesna.

The Pod Postcard Challenge exhibit
Shannon Wright's display 'Snap'


Some coin purses and pyramid purses

Ruby Lime design products

Ruby Lime design baby singlets

Heaven Scent Candles

Ali Bird's display

A Ruby Lime design necklace to match a new outfit

Some of my collages

Some Funky toys by Penny Grainger and paintings by Michelle Grayson, Ali Bird, and butterflies by Toni Spencer

Some of our art exhibition

A dragonfly collage on Japanese papers

Pod Collective challenge

I'll put the full story on the Pod Collective blog which is http://www.podcollective.blogspot.com/ but wanted to put these 2 on here. We recently had a challenge where we had to give someone else in the group something, anything, and then they had to make something postcard size out of it. So Ali gave me 2 bread tags, blue and orange. I spent about 2 weeks thinking of what to do and thinking I couldn't think of anything, maybe cut them in half and fan some strips of Japanese paper to make a peacock's tail... well anyway, this is what I did. The text is from an old textbook of Hamlet and thanks to Suzie and Michelle for saving extra tags for me.

What??? am I going to do with these?
I'll do this. Can do! (that's what the alphabet brads say)

Then, I gave Ali some of the fabric from Sulawesi, the one I made a purse from this afternoon (see previous blog) and this is what she made. Looks great in my kitchen, matches the colours. Check out the pod blog for the other ones (in a few days when i get around to putting it on there).

A scrap of fabric from Indonesia.....
turns into this awesome design - reminds me a bit of something Moroccan actually or some sort of journey..