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May 24, 2016May 24, 2016 | klarisabet

I am trying to get my other (sewing) blog live, since I never really put in much effort with this page…..BUT:

I have customised all settings I could find, even setting this blog to be “Invisible”, and making Kloonpatrone the primary blog, but I still get the occasional notice that someone is now following this blog, instead of the other one (which is where I would prefer to be active.)  However no notifications of my sewing musings would be forthcoming from here, so it is not much use following this page…

So if you had been a subscriber to this page previously, please note I will be deleting it shortly to stop me from confusing myself. (I am funny like that…)

Please visit me at https://kloonpatrone.wordpress.com/ and feel free to follow that page instead of this (rather dead) one.



Oud Litnet-Blog maatjies wat dalk eens op ‘n tyd hier ingeteken het:  As julle kans sien om van rokke en lappe te lees, in plaas van perde en plaasdinge (lang hartseer stories daar op die oomblik wat ek die kuberruimte eerder spaar) sal dit steeds lekker wees om nie kontak te verloor nie.  Groetnis!

April 4, 2016April 4, 2016 | klarisabet

For my sewing blog, please redirect here:


(If there is anyone out there who could tell me how to set the “Kloonpatrone” page – instead of this one – as my default blog that people would end up on if they click on my Klarisabet avatar anywhere in WordPress, I would really appreciate it…I have been through all the setting options but I am missing something. Thanks…)

May 25, 2015May 27, 2015 | klarisabet So. I mean “sew”…

I completed the challenge. One whole day before the deadline. I knew I HAD to be a day early, since the 15th of May was “calenderised” for Daniel’s 10th birthday party. Thus, on the penultimate day, my convalescing sister camped on my bed with my camera while I pranced in and out between running a hundred errands and preened and posed and played model. Thus the different lightning in the pictures (which made it look like I had even more than 9 items.)

That night after dinner and dishes I sat down at the computer and created composite pictures. Because I am technologically challenged, it took me more than 2 hours to create the 3 necessary collages showing combinations of my 9 items. I wrote all necessary reviews, linked the reviews, completed the entry review and one hour after midnight, boasted on Facebook about being flippen Superwoman. Switched off computer, went to bed.

Got up the next morning, magicked up a Minecraft Birthday cake (if there was a Cake Decorating Competition running somewhere I would probably have entered it…) collected 10 x 10-year-old terrorists from school for the party (after discovering that my husband had forgotten it was The Day and had gone to work with the 9-seater bus, leaving me with my 5-seater Mazda…) got them all home, fed them pizza, stopped them from using up all the carbonated drinks for Soda bombs, watched them half destroy my house and part of the street.

Saved at least one undeserving 10-year-old from being savaged by the neighbour’s bull-terrier, comforted my own jelly-hearted son who could not handle the conflict between some of his mates, and finally welcomed a female version of Rambo who arrived at 16h00 to lead them in playing Lasertagging in the garden until after sunset. She was a chain-smoking ANGEL of steel.

When I ultimately delivered the last one to his parents just before 21h00, I was exhausted in body and mind, and ready to write a psychology (or criminology) thesis on the social maladjustment and behavioural problems of the average middle-class Afrikaner 10 year old.

Instead I washed dishes for an hour and then dropped into oblivion.

When I woke the next morning, I checked my computer…and found a message from the contest co-ordinator: “Klarisabet – Don’t know if you are intending to finish it up, but your wardrobe contest entry is missing some links. Plus it isn’t yet entered into the contest. I can enter it, but you need to edit it within the next 3 or so hours to have the links to the other reviews. (By midnight Eastern time.)
Hope you are able to do so. It is a nice looking wardrobe.”

Ag bleddie hel.

Midnight Eastern Time had come and gone while I was sleeping off my post traumatic stress.

I HAD done all the reviews. I HAD linked whatever I could. (Or so I thought). Okay, I had neglected to follow the enter process through…

I am officially a tech idiot. I give up. I hate computers.

What can a girl do?

Write a gracious note to the co-ordinator thanking her for the reminder and telling her you never really considered it a contest as much as personal challenge, and then… enter the next one! (Link not live yet – competition will happen in June)

I am someone that thrives on external motivation. I recognize the trait in one of my three children as well – she NEEDS definite challenges and feedback from OUTSIDE HER FAMILY to keep performing at her best. The family is the comfort zone where she collects her energy, but the outside world is the driving force where she performs.

In a housewifey situation such as I have found myself in for the last 10 years, there is not really much of an external driving force. I would EASILY become a rather depressed middle aged stay-at-home mom if I do not take care of fulfilling that need.

Therefor the obscure competition entries, see. Last year it was the gardening competition (in which I come second, lest we forget…ahem…) and although that same garden would not win ANY competition this year, it was still a worthwhile effort because it was just NICE to have someone ooh and aah over something you attempted. But more than that, it keeps me from sinking into a rut. You get wonderful self-driven women who do all the housewifey things just for their families’ sake. I am afraid I am not that noble. Every now and then, I need to do something like this. It keeps me creative and motivated and really helps me focus.

April 14, 2015April 15, 2015 | klarisabet

I am considering entering a sewing competition. One has to sew 9 coordinating items before 15May.

This is the plan:

3 bottoms:
Wide striped linen pants
Narrow stretch pants, maybe in reddish brown
Blue striped denim mermaid skirt I will clone from one that fits sublimely

4 tops:
Linen tunic to go with the pants
Tunic in stretch fabric, (still need to find fabric) also cloned from a much loved garment
Cowl necked stretch tunic in same fabric as the stretch pants
Wrap-over stretch top (Fabric to be sourced)

2 items of sewist’s own choice:
My neighbour has a 90’s pattern for a dress and overdress I want to make in beige linen and rose-patterned georgette.

This post and the accompanying picture just serve to show I have not sewn anything yet before today {-;


September 28, 2014September 28, 2014 | klarisabet

So, we brought Maxi to town. 

Uhm. No. 

August 22, 2014August 22, 2014 | klarisabet

On Sunday we are going to bring Maxi back from the farm which has been her home for almost two years now, to be stabled here in town again for a month or two. Man, is she going to NOT like me! I already have a hang-up about her blaming me for ever and ever. First of all, because I am going to separate her from her boyfriend, Riverdance.

Secondly, because I PROMISED her I will never take her away from the farm where she has that wonderful freedom of ‘just being a horse’.


Wait. That is exactly why I am bringing her back: this constant habit of mine, of ASSUMING I know what a horse thinks.

So Maxi and I are going on a horse handler’s course, with Roux Horsemanship. Guys who have a good reputation for identifying objectively, and sorting out unique problems between horses and their owners.

To say that I am shit scared would be an understatement.

Had nightmares every night for the last two weeks. Involving her running away and me following her barefoot through bogs and marshes and thorny thickets.

I could have chosen an easier horse to do the course with.

But the journey started on her.

Nothing horse-related would have ever happened for me, if it hadn’t been for her.

One does not EVER give up on a relationship like that. Even when in your dreams the beloved runs away from you…

August 21, 2014 | klarisabet


In search of some Banting-bashing, I appreciated these two articles, albeit months after publication. Since I am a housewife with an unprofitable BA in a totally unrelated field, I would be too ‘lazy’ to go read up hard-core peer-related reviews. I am however proud to say that I was not too lazy to read through the whole January 2014 article, in which the author points out how unscientifically we express opinions. And the top few comments on that article just proved the author’s point: people are mostly too lazy to read extensively get their facts straight! Many people would be too lazy to even read through this opinion of mine – it is too long for the average attention-span. Which is EXACTLY why we are cannon fodder for the dietary industry.

My beef with Prof Noakes’s ‘revolutionary diet’ is not really whether it is consistently good or bad. It seems to contain some good principles. But as a housewife with a limited food budget for a family of six aged between 8 and 80, while also providing adequate workday meals for the three labourers on our weekend farm, I have serious issues regarding the economics of a high-protein low-carb diet, considering food prices in 2014.

An absolute ‘facepalm’ moment was when I stumbled across some of the Prof’s remarks in a lecture a month ago, about “revolutionising the diet of poor children in the Karoo.” I did not attend the lecture and didn’t find a transcript online but I would LOVE to hear more about his plan for them “eating more sheep intestines, a readily available source of affordable protein on Karoo farms”. I want to contend that, scientific or not, Prof Noakes is a little LAZY in his understanding of what ends up on the average labourer’s plate, and why.

I did not grow up in the Karoo but on a struggling Highveld farm, where my dad slaughtered one sheep every two weeks to feed his family of seven as well as for cooking up ‘sheba’ for the workers to have with their pap. Which yielded…let me count…one meal of afval every second Saturday: which the labourers’ kids unfortunately did not get. I say ‘unfortunately’ because it meant that we got it and I, as the eldest daughter, had to help with the preparation of it. Vile stuff to work with but quite tasty over samp, with a kerrie sousie. I remember us competing to dish up first so you could get one of the eyeballs, and Ma meticulously dividing the brain – tied up in the stomach lining prior to stewing with the rest – into seven equal parts. There would be war if one sibling appeared to have scored a disproportionate seventh.

The liver constituted a separate meal. One sheep’s liver does not fill seven stomachs so forgive her for bulking the meal up with white stuff like mielie-rice or pap. I will never forget the hiding I got because I made a remark about Ma’s ground liver on mashed potatoes. “Dit lyk soos mis…” (It looks like dung!) And lightning fast, as I was seized by the arm and hauled from the table: “Neeeee, Ma, ek bedoel dit lyk soos mis wat daar oor die berg aankom!” (Valiantly attempting semantics with the Afrikaans word for “dung” conveniently the same as that for the “fog” rolling in from the mountain. It didn’t work.)

Ah, the nostalgic memories of a “rich” white kid on a sheep farm…

For the record, I have eaten enough afval as well as mutton stew to last me a lifetime, thank you. But my son – who grew up on his Food-network junkie Mom’s versions of pantry-porn a la Nigella and Jamie, thinks the stews I cook up for the workers are the most wonderful culinary inventions since – well – sliced bread. I should publish a cookbook on those stews. “100 Recipes with Meaty Bones or IQF-30%-water-Chicken, and lots of Potatoes and Carrots and Cabbage.” O-kay, maybe “100” is a bit ambitious. At his point I can’t really think of 10, so I might have to include a section on sheep intestines.

I become incredibly sober every time I prepare these meals to freeze in portions for the workers on our farm. Very soon after we acquired the place I realised that expecting grown men to put in a day of work on bread and black coffee (even with four spoonfuls of sugar in it) was not an option. The next embarrassing revelation was that what I started spending on their modest lunches for a month was less the cost of just one week of eating for my middle-class family.

On the one hand, it was an expense which put strain on my already tight household budget. But on the other hand it was an indictment. I had to seriously evaluate our own weekly menus, and where I buy. Finding the solution, or even some balance, is a continuing exercise. One in which dietary arrogance has no place. It is also, unfortunately not one in which a Banting-type diet can be realistically sustained.

December 11, 2012 | klarisabet This is a photo of my daughter and me.  WHAT is it that makes one pull one’s face in such a funny way, when one holds a cellphone or tablet at arms length to take a self portrait? But to me, it turned out to be a precious photo, anyway.

Our birthdays are just two weeks apart, with 30  years inbetween our birth years. She could probably use it instead of some hit-and-miss “Age Yourself” application. And hopefully recover from the sinking feeling of knowing what she would look like 30 years into the future.

Which always makes me wonder: do we REALLY  want to know?

If  I knew what scars the next thirty years of living life were going to leave on my face – around my eyes and in the way my mouth is going to shape – would I have the courage to live them?