Keeping myself honest

Guess what?!  I’ve written my 100th blog post! 

A while back I wrote about not having a stash. This is completely not true anymore. I have pieces of fabric on chairs and hanging over balconies. I have accumulated three plus boxes of yarn. I have numerous WIP (works in progress). I’ve become a Typical Crafter.

I never really could be before. I always moved too much and lived in tiny apartments in Manhattan. I got rid of everything extraneous everything. Now that this is not so much of an issue, I’m accumulating junk. You understand that for me, “not moving much” means I’ve lived in my apartment for over a year (well, technically since May, when I moved from next door). This is quite something for me.

A friend said not long ago she didn’t really realize I did that much crafting. Ha! I just don’t post about it all. So to remind myself of my current projects and keep me honest, here’s part of my yarn stash and my crochet WIP. My sewing, cooking, painting and woodcarving, WIP are another post.

Stash Pix:

WIP1:
My most current work is the scarf for Stephanie - destined to be plaid, now just striped. Also, ran across another really awesome idea for the plaid from the new book Crochet Me from Julie/SkaMama (who also designed the rad and popular fat-bottom bag). Not that I needed an additional reason to buy the book, but here’s one. Ran across a potential tool for making the plaid at Lion Brand also. Currently the scarf isn’t so awesome and it’s sort of curling up (note: I’m farther along than this now).

WIP2:
Next up is the sweater in Lion Cotton-Ease and Wool. I say sweater, but I don’t know for whom. It seems to want to be a dog sweater for Audrey. Originally it was going to be for my cousin Sam, who’s a year and a half old. It got too wide. I had Issues with the pattern. It’s the first sweater I’ve ever made or tried. It just barely fits around my pup, so that’s why it’s probably for her. Even the arm decreases fit her, so that’s at least a positive step.

WIP3:
The Urban Wrap in Lion Brand Homespun, colorway Prairie. I was looking for an easy, decent pattern for something to warm me up at work. No sweaters, nothing fancy, just a wrap. The back is done, now I have to do the two front pieces. I really like the yarn. It’s really soft and the fabric it’s making is thick and squishy. The Prairie colorway is doing a self-striping rainbow thing which I’m quite fond of. The base color is a beautiful golden-brown color. This project has taught me how tightly I crochet - I’ve broken the yarn 3-4 times now.

WIP4:
This was the original scarf I made for Jeff. Isn’t it awful?  At the time I hadn’t been crocheting long, and the yarn and pattern (half double back loop stitch) combined with my lack of skill just killed this project.  The yarn, which is the very nice Manos del Uruguay wool yarn, is also handspun and therefore unevenly thick (particularly the black), and this made my few skills show up poorly. The scarf ended up getting narrower and narrower as I went along. I tried doing increase stitches to no avail. I suspect I wasn’t sure about what to do at the end of rows for turning. This scarf also taught me I have an allergy to wool.  So now I have a thick piece of beautiful crocheted wool that I’m going to felt into something. What? Dunno.

WIP5:
This blanket here to the left is the first crochet project I ever attempted.  The stitch is one that I’ve never heard of since - it’s in no book, magazine or online tutorial I’ve ever seen.  It’s kind of somewhere between half double and triple crochet.  I’ll post it one of these days. My mother-in-law taught me this stitch and a granny square pattern to go with it. Jennifer (hi Jennifer!) and her sister have made a large number of afghans using this stitch that are essentially gigantic (6-7 feet wide!) granny squares. The one I’m making will be four joined granny squares. This first square still looks funny because my skill when I started was so much less than my skill when I finished. The colors - country blue and something else from el classico cheapo yarn Red Heart- are designed to go with the quilt I made.  I’m currently on color #2 of square two.

WIP5:
The Chelsea Flower Scarf. I’ve thought long about what to make for my 13/14-year-old cousin Chelsea. I love Chelsea to death (she doesn’t realize that) but she’s at that age where I pretty much don’t get her language and likes. I was that age, I know what I mean. I hoped to make something pretty yet not too fussy-girly for her, something with sophisticated colors in a fun pattern. So what I’m gonna do is crochet sunflowers and daisies and join them together with a vine/leaf pattern to make a daisy chain scarf. What do you think of that? I got yarn for it - soft cotton from Cascade called Luna in brown, yellow, white and green that’s really great (this picture is crappy - the colors don’t look like that!).

So those are the basic major projects I’m workin’ on right now. Doesn’t include the hat I’m going to post on later.

I’m Back + Fall Decor + Cookies! (Big Post)

Housekeeping Issues…

As I mentioned Saturday, I have moved my blog to an independent host. Most everything got moved and my email subscriptions seems fine, but I believe my RSS feed was screwed up and Google’s indexer seems to have lost me temporarily. If you are a subscriber via an RSS feed, please sign up again - I’m sorry for the inconvenience this has caused!

Meanwhile, I’ve been set up with more new tools than I can handle, and the site redesign is proceeding apace. As usual in my life, I expect the new stuff to be gadget heavy (or in this case, widget heavy). I have Google analytics now too. I spent an hour looking around earlier, and I think I’m going to have to absorb that in bits. SO MUCH information!

Back to crafting:

I recently decorated for Halloween and Thanksgiving. I hung up my door sign, bought my little gourds and multi-colored corn and brought out the ribbon. My husband and I baked cookies. I’m waiting to get one of my favorite Thanksgiving decorations from my mom (hi mom!): it’s a cornucopia with fabric vegetables, and I hope to sew/crochet additional vegetables for it.

Meanwhile, this is my dining room here, feeling autumn-y. It’s not a fab picture, but you get the idea. My decorations typically involve a lot of ribbon. I love bows and ribbons. I like organza most of all, and during the holidays I like things that shimmer or sparkle. My living area is a mass of brown and dark red, so it really does well with fall things. I’m still really pleased with the curtains I made.

Want some cookies? Come to my house.

I may have mentioned that Jeff and I made the 3-D Halloween cookies from Williams-Sonoma - at $24 for the set, I think that the cookie cutters are a bit expensive, but I really haven’t seen anything else like them, so I guess they get to charge for being unique. They also have a Christmas-themed set of 3-D cookies now (the link was broken at time of posting, sorry).

The cookie cutters make a Scary House, a Cat, a Witch and a Pumpkin. Icing is separate, but they come with a Fan-Tab-U-Lous cookie recipe. Basically you mix up butter, cream cheese and sugar and add some flour to make dough, and then you bake. These cookies are not health food, but they are terrific to eat. They’re soft and crispy both in exactly the right way, lightly browned lovely sweet treats.

Jeff and I both took them to work (this recipe makes a lot) and they were a big hit. At my workplace people took pictures of them and showed them off to others. Sweet! Want one? Pop on over to my house, I still have some left. Really, how many cookies can one woman eat?? We neglected to take pictures of the final, put-together product, but the ones below should give you a pretty good idea of what they looked like. Enjoy and get hungry!

Makin’ Cookies…

#1 First you find out that you don’t have a flour sifter and have to improvise. Luckily, a strainer is at hand. #2 You have to try to kill your hand-mixer by making it run too hard in a bowl full of cream cheese and butter. Eventually you succeed, but not before your mixer smells like burning. #3 Resolve to buy a real mixer. #4 As you taste the butter/cream cheese mixture, realize just how bad for you these cookies are.

#5 Reaffirm how bad they are for you by adding sugar. #6 Realize you have no vanilla. Run to store. #7 Then realize that you have no more room in your bowl even though you have yet to add any flour. #8 Realize that you have no larger steep-sided bowl. Hmm. #9 Move batter to a shallow but larger bowl, and deal with splatters. (The dog now has a a sugar high from catching the bits that land on the floor). We now have a coating of batter on our shirts. #7 Belatedly attire ourselves in the aprons that were hanging 2 feet away the whole time.

#8 The dough is finally mixed and the mixer again smells slightly like burning. Resolve again to see about that real stand mixer. #9 Chill the dough. Wait.

#10 Come back much later and roll out the dough. Realize you don’t have that rolling pin you thought you had, and try to figure out at what point you threw it away. #11 Give up and go back to Williams-Sonoma for an ultra-swank rolling pin because they also have these neat rubber bands that attach to your pin that allow you to precisely determine how thick your dough is when rolled. #12. Roll. Poorly. #13 Put down more flour and do it again. Better.

#14 Cut out cookies. #15 Have a devil of a time figuring out how to get it to the baking pan. #16 Realize you don’t have the parchment paper you need. Run to store. #17 Finish the cookie cutting and reshaping. #18 Repeat from #12 about a dozen times over until your sheets are full. Chill in fridge.

(Note: Our cookie-making took about 3 days. We only have 2 baking sheets, so we did this again and again. Roll, cut, transfer, chill, bake, repeat.)

#19 Bake the chilled, cut dough. Be thankful you didn’t forget or screw anything else up. Cookies come out browned and delicious. (oh, sorry, did I taste one?)

#20 Begin to wonder how you’re going to eat all these cookies. But happy that you remembered to put them away before they spoiled.

#21 Decorating time approaches. Out comes the cream cheese icing (yum!) and the black and orange food coloring. Out comes the decorating pens. Out comes the bowl of hot water because the icing in the decoratng pens is rock hard. Out comes the knives, and mixing things, and bowls and … wait a minute, this is a mess!

#22 Get totally sick of frosting. Ugh, just the smell of sugar is awful. #23 Realize you have no way of taking frosted cookies to work, particularly if you take public transportation. Oops. Begin wondering if the icing will harden. #24 Wonder how real cake decorators ever do this stuff with any skill.

#25 Forget to take picture of cookies put together, however, cookies make it to work thanks to being late to work, ingenious pan rigging and judicious use of foil and plastic wrap.

They are enjoyed.

Whoopsy doodle

So didja notice my blog disappeared for a few hours? Betcha thought I went offline. Nope!

In fact, I upgraded, and now I have a swankariffic independently hosted blog instead of one on Wordpress.com. Not that I don’t love ‘em, I do, I just wanted (1) more features, (2) more features and (3) more control. And that’s what I have now.

I’m still on brief hiatus (really seems like it, doesn’t it, what with the posting?) because I’m actually redesigning my blog as well as upgrading the hosting. I set a personal deadline that it would be done by Nov. 1, which is Thursday. We’ll see.

You know, I keep saying I’m doing this and I’m doing that, but it’s totally not true. In fact, my husband is a web genius and has been busy in the background helping me with coding, moving all my blog materials over, etc. What would I do without him?

While he’s been busy I have been buying yarn and playing Zelda, Twilight Princess. Have I mentioned I love Zelda? I bought a Wii to play the new Zelda. I kick ass, too.

Toodles, will be back Monday with cookie pictures, yarn stash updates, scarf updates, holiday decorating and more fun.