Passion for Polishes

Ever since I was about 14 I have had an obsession with nail varnish. I remember standing on the hockey field as a total geek in school and yet having bright fuschia pink nails. Made me feel better. I like nail polish cos its more like a clothing thing; you can wear any colour. These days my brand of choice is Opi which I buy in John Lewis. They do new themed 'collections' every season and the names are terrible puns which amuse me. They also do unusual textures like matte, suede and a crazed effect but i haven't tried those yet. Their website: http://www.opi.com/

They do lots of weird and wonderful colours, my latest buy being the (apparently hugely trendy) 'You don't know Jacques'. It's sort of grey brown which I thought would go with whatever I am wearing. It's pictured at the top of the blog. I have lots of other strange colours too, mainly for toenails, turqoise, navy, blue, gold, and lots of bright glamourous red. As I have quite a manual job I usually wear neutral pink/beige type colours on my fingers unless it is for a special occasion.

Sweetmaking Projects

One of my 2011 projects is sweetmaking. For my friend Sarah's gallery opening I made candied peel. It takes a bit of a mental leap to eat peel, but it's pretty tasty. You must use organic stuff though or you'll just be eating tons of wax and chemicals ugh. The picture shows the peel in one of four boiling stages (three in water, one in syrup). The black thing is a vanilla pod. The peel smells lovely when it is cooking. It is then dusted in sugar and dipped in chocolate. Today's project is buttered brazils, where the nuts are coated in toffee. This is a techy step forward involving the use of my exciting new sugar thermometer....and I will report back.