Since it was my turn to make a dessert for our after Easter get together, I decided it should be a semi-traditional cake....in a ring shape, with green shredded coconut as nesting material, and a chicken.......but not just any chicken....a rubber chicken. So after Googling many fine images, I made a couple sketches then set to work sculpting the little thing out of coloured marzipan....very much the same way I would make little sculptures out of dough......but you use icing sugar, not flour, to keep the paste from sticking to your hands.
It turned out a little larger than I had planned, but it still fit fairly well on the cake. By the time we got to my mother's house, the chicken had sagged a bit, but that helped it look more rubbery. I'm happy to say the cake was a big success and the beak was the first part to get eaten! I had a foot. Some of the others had the wings and one of my nieces happily devoured the head.
My kids and I also did a variation on a rainbow cake. It's more
difficult to control where the colours go than I had thought it would
be. It seems the colour you want in the middle should go (as batter)
into the pan last.
Around 5 PM last night, while I was waiting for our roast to cook in the oven, I was looking out our bedroom window at our next door neighbour's Elm tree. It's a gorgeous tree....but anyway, I saw an animal in it that I first thought was a cat. I went outside with my camera to zoom in on the critter. I figured if it had been a cat it would have been meowing to get down, but this one seemed right at home and was having a nap. Even through the highest zoom I still couldn't see 100 % if it was a raccoon, but today, when I lightened the images, that's exactly what the animal was. I saw him stirring as the sun was setting and he's not there today, so I figured he was possibly wandering out of his usual territory, and just using the tree as a safe haven until nightfall returned.
Here's a look at how high up he was....I've circled him in red. Wild animals sure are tough.....the sun may have been warm, but the wind was cold. I guess that's why they have such a thick coat of fur.
Druckfarben are Phil Naro (centre) Ed Bernard (left)bassist Peter Murray (right) ,
Multi-instrumentalist Ed Bernard on his customized guitar.
Ed Bernard on mandolin.
Ed Bernard on electric violin, accompanied by lead singer Phil Naro on semi-acoustic guitar.
I discovered that making birds in wool felt is a lot more difficult than making mammals.
Here's my latest little felt creature...a Yak.....also known as Bos Grunniens.......which some people refer to as "Boss Grunnies".......or an old boyfriend of mine used to call "Gross Bunnies" when we would visit them at the High Park Zoo. We would feed them carrots, which I recently read is something they really like.
This one is grey but he looks sort of blue in these photos. The ones at the High Park Zoo were black and brown. I made his horns and eyes out of Sculpey and his body is blended Shetland and Corriedale wools over a pipe cleaner armature.
Many times I've gone past here and always meant to photograph this beautiful hand blown glass sculpture of Fire. The "flames" all have little lights in them and they look amazing against their black background.
The Fire sculpture is just outside a restaurant in this building downtown:
