The Ex Expat

18 April 2013

One of my favourite things about living in Germany, is the Spargel Saison every Spring, where the whole country goes mad about white asparagus (I wrote about it in more length last year). 

So I was really happy to see this advertisement on the way to work the other day:

You can find some tips on how to cook the perfect Spargel in my previous post. Yum yum.

20 April 2012

One of my favourite times of year in Edinburgh is when all the cherry blossoms are in full bloom in the Meadows:

Usually that’s around mid to end April and they were just beginning to show at the end of our holiday. I’m really sad that we missed them, but luckily one of my Japanese friends once showed me how to make paper cherry blossoms, so I’ve been re-creating the cherry blossom look back here in Berlin.

Have you heard of kirigami? It’s a variation of origami, where you typically start with a folded base, just like in origami, but then use scissors to cut (from “kiru” - to cut + “kami” - paper) the final shapes which are most often symmetrical. In fact, if you’ve ever cut paper snowflakes, you’ve already done some kirigami. Here’s how to use the same principle to make cherry blossoms.

1. All you will need is a square piece of paper (mine was 15cm), a pair of scissors and a pencil. Origami paper is great, because it’s already square and it’s thinner than regular paper.
2. First of all, you need to make your folded base. The cherry blossoms use a five point fold (so you will end up with five petals). Start by laying your origami sheet like this in front of you with the coloured side up.
3. Fold the bottom corner up to the top corner and make a crease all the way along so that you have a triangle.
4. Now take the bottom left corner of your triangle and fold it over to the bottom right corner, but don’t fold all the way along the edge, just mark the middle point by making a small crease where you’ve folded over.
5. Open your triangle out again (I’ve marked this crease and all the following ones with my pencil to show you where they are as they didn’t show up in the photographs, but if you can see the creases you don’t need to mark them).
6. Now take the bottom right corner of your triangle and fold it up to the top corner. Again, don’t fold all the way along, just make a small crease to mark the middle point.
7. Open your triangle out again.
8. Now take the top corner and fold it down to the crease you just made. As before, just make a small crease to mark the middle point.
9. Open your triangle out again - you should now have one crease marked along the bottom edge of your triangle, and two marked along the right side of your triangle.
10. The next three steps may look more complicated than they are - just follow the pictures. First, take your bottom right corner and fold it up so that the right half of the bottom edge of your triangle aligns with the two creases that you marked out in steps 5 + 9 (this time you are allowed to crease all the way along).
11. Next, take your left hand corner and fold it over so that the left half of the bottom edge of your triangle aligns with the opposite side, as shown in the picture.
12. Finally, fold the right side back over to the left, again aligning the edges. 
13. You are now ready to draw on your cherry blossom template. Just copy the one in the picture. Once you are confident about making paper cherry blossoms you can experiment a bit with the template, e.g. by giving it more rounded corners or  making the stems in the middle different shapes.
14. Cut out your template.
15. Carefully fold it out so that nothing catches and tears. Voila! Your very own cherry blossom. Why not make a couple in different colours? I used a selection of shaded of pink and white to decorate my office.

29 March 2012

Spring is in full swing. The sun is shining (well, most of the time). Put on some happy music, let your ‘hare’ down, and dance around like crazy for half an hour! Here’s a wee playlist to help you along. Bring on the weekend and the Easter holidays!

Track Listing

1. Jungle Drum - Emiliana Torrini
2. How Do You Do! - Roxette
3. The Twist - Chubby Checker
4. Mowglis Road - Marina & the Diamonds
5. Here It Goes Again - OK Go
6. Elvis Ain’t Dead - Scouting for Girls
7. A Little Less Conversation - Elvis Presley
8. Everybody Jam! - Scatman John
9. Könguló - Hafdis Huld
10. Shake Your Tailfeather - Ray Charles (with the Blues Bros.)
11. Some Days You Gotta Dance - Dixie Chicks
12. Birdhouse In Your Soul - They Might Be Giants

27 March 2012

So, have you all been busy practising your paper napkin flowers ;-) As promised, here is the tutorial for a deluxe version. I experimented a little with different options for making different coloured centres for the flowers and making everything a bit more neat and secure, and found that this was the one I liked best:

1. You’ll need two napkins, one large and one small, in two different sizes. IKEA does a good range of both large and small napkins with changing designs. I tend to pick up a couple of packs of plain napkins any time I’m there if they have nice colours. The smaller napkin will be the centre of your flower. You’ll also need a pair of scissors and some sturdy-ish wire.
2. As before with the basic paper napkins, you’ll need to fold the napkins in half then cut off the folded edge (using scissors makes it a lot neater than tearing it off). Do this for both napkins.
3. Take the smaller napkin and cut fringes along both of the longer sides, then place it on top of the larger napkin, like so.
4. Fold your napkins back and forth concertina style, just like for the basic flower version, except that this time you have the extra napkin being folded in with it. Once you’ve finished folding, it should look something like this. 
5. Cut a piece of wire and twist it around the centre of your concertina napkins (in the basic version I’d used the torn off edge to tie the napkin in place, but the wire makes it a little more secure and less likely to tear, especially with the extra layers making it thicker). Not that, unlike before where it didn’t matter which side you tide it on, you now have a top side (the side your middle napkin is showing) and a bottom. Make sure to twist your wire on the bottom side.
6. With your scissors, round off the ends of the concertina napkin. This will make it look more like petals…
7. …as demonstrated in this picture.
8. Next, you’ll need to gently pull out the fringes of the middle napkin to make the centre of your flower. 
9. Finally, separate the individual layers of your napkin (as before with the basic version, you should have six layers), gently pulling them towards the middle and fluffing everything up at the end. And remember to be patients with the fiddly bits.
10. You can use different colour combinations to make a whole variety of flowers - doesn’t it look pretty?