I wish I could be random...

I want to be random. I mean, I want to be able to put pen to paper, and just add things, that come to a unified whole. Like the setting for this bunny.

Reading material..

Been buying a few books lately....



I was seeing The Dangerous Book for Boys around in the bookstores, but since my boy isn't really a reader, and dd wasn't spectacularly interested in getting a boy's book, I passed. But then I heard of The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls....Suki is over the moon. It's getting a bit of backlash as a giant step backwards for women's rights, scorn heaped on it for teaching girls how to make daisy chains and have a tea party. Whatever. My daughter is being raised to be whoever she wants to be, and by golly, she really wants to be a girl. I will teach her how to be a strong girl. But I draw the line at how to set a nice table for a teaparty. So not my thing. The book fills in nicely.





This cookbook looks amazing. The pictures are droolworthy, and the recipes look soo nice. And there are a lot of recipes that have no eggs, which, for a pastry and baking book, is almost unheard of, and therefore to be sought after! :p After this upcoming hectic weekend, I will be roadtesting it, and will give my verdict. :D



I have been seeing this book around, so I put an order in at my local poorly stocked bookstore, waited a month, and finally got it in. I am NOT disappointed. My fingers have been ITCHING to get into my own sewing room, and start organizing in beautiful ways. Trouble is, I have too much OTHER crafting I NEED to do, which I have to fit in to my limited free time.

Score!

Okay, this is as cool as I think it is, right? I went to the Salvation Army, and found four sewing and craft mags, with FULL pattern sheets! How cool is that??!!??

Clever Sewing and Craft 1997



Handmade Australia Sept/Oct 1987



Handmade Jan/Feb 1997
I actually bought this one when the kiddos were little....I think I still have it stuck in storage somewhere in Hawaii...




Neue Mode October 1981
In the original German, but with "Working English Instructions", lol. Man, the 80's could be really ugly!!! lol




Awesome haul, right? Right, right? :p

I need to get out more

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Red shows where I have been. Doesn't look like much, put that way.

ETA Huh...wonder why Australia apparently no longer exists, and there are no states past Illinois??

I want.

I need a whole hit of this in my house. Read the Pottery Process in the sidebar. How come MY ceramics teacher never taught ME how to do that, huh??

Random crafting....

Over the last couple of days, I've finished a couple of long overdue crafts, and made one new one.

I was given these beads for Christmas 2 years ago, but couldn't quite figure out the perfect thing to make with them, since there were just thismuch too few to make a necklace on their own, and I couldn't find the right beads to mix them with. Then I saw something, I can't even remember what, that made this flash into my head. I was going to the Stitches and Craft Show that day, and happened to find the perfect red coral beads, and I already had the other parts, so I was SET! I love it so much. I have no idea what the green stones are, and google isn't being much help, either.

I owe a set of the orange and green hairpins I made ages ago, but I am SO late in sending them, I made another little set to add to the box.

This was for a 1920's swap that I was supposed to finish months ago. :( I moved in the middle of the swap unexpectedly, and never quite got back to it. I haven't joined any swaps anywhere, until I finally make good on this one.

It's a little hardcover notebook....I couldn't quite figure out how I wanted to bind it, and all the options that I saw didn't quite work with how I wanted to do it, so I ended up just drilling holes and threading ribbon through. When I had the ribbon in, I had it hanging on a loop, and it just seemed better to leave it that way...it's odd, but I like it. :p It's a print of an Erte poster, on a piece cut from a printed red paper bag, backed with Japanese washi paper. The inside of the covers are covered with a thick cream silk paper. The paper itself is half white, and the other half red.

Have you noticed....

...how very much I like green??


I've always liked it. When I was younger, I liked a deep, clear emerald green.


























As I got older, it morphed to a deeper, forest green.


Then I discovered how much I loved celery, and celadon, and moss.

















Now, I love all greens.
















Except maybe this.



























Edit: Finally tracked down most of the credits for the pics I used....they deserve to be recognized.

Medley
Heart of Grass
Forest
Green Room

Makes me so happy to handsew....

I saw this tut by Heather Bailey last year, by way of Craftster, and had to try it...It's one of those things that, once tried, you wonder how the hell you ever got along without it, and wth has it BEEN all your life!!!??? It's THAT good. Everytime I have to make a knot to start another thread, I just get a thrill to be rolling it out. Yes, folks, it's been known for some time, I am a nerd.



Hennyways, flipping through old bookmarks, I found the link to it again, and geez, it's almost as thrilling to read it this much later as it was to read the first time!!!! :hahaha:

Simple pleasures...

I haven't been able to craft in ages, both from a time crunch, and sheer un-inspiration. It's been sad. But in the course of homeschooling the bubbies, I pulled out some of my old, burnt out pillar candles, and some wick, and we made new candles from old. Just like I did when I was a kid with MY mom. Made me SO nostalgic for that time...the year I first made them with my mom was a special year in many, many ways, and anything that brings it back is always going to be close to my heart. And now I got to pass it on to my own kids, and they loved it almost as much as I did. The little things that make you happy.....

Oh, man, I'm going to Hell.....aka OMG OMG OMG!!!!!

So, I am busy trying to raise funds to haul me and the kids to California, to see my family, which is going to take a chunk, seeing as we gotta haul us all the way from Sydney, Australia. To that end, I was working over the weekend, for my FIL, doing floorsanding. I thought we were doing a food court, but when I got there, I thought it was the strangest looking food court I had EVER seen!

That might have been because it was actually COLLETTE DINNIGAN'S studio/factory!!!! I nearly died!! It was SO COOL!! I was standing right in the middle of where it all happens!! :D All the drawings, and mockups, and to-die-for swatches, pinned to the boards, with what must have been hundreds and thousands of dollars worth of trims filling shelf upon shelf; all the idea boards, the coming season's designs, etc etc etc...not to mention all the industrial machines and sergers!! I didn't even know where to look first, and had to seriously repress my desire to lose all dignity and start rummaging through the rubbish, rofl! As it is, I couldn't resist, I had to know...do world famous designers use some fabulous, special pins on their amazing fabrics?? Something us mere mortals only dream of? I had to do it...I stole a handful of pins out of the dustpiles under the machines to put them to the test. Therefore, I am going to Hell. But it's WORTH IT!!! :D :D

Elephants and Candy Canes...

I have a very dear friend online, who I met through a shared love of the White Stripes, and when I saw THESE patterns, I knew I had to make her a Candy Cane Elephant! (I kill me! :p )

It was pretty simple, if a bit fiddly, and is not the best example ever of my sewing skills, but I thought it came out pretty cute! :D

I used another one of the patterns to make these little giraffes for another swap...I was stalking to find out tastes, and discovered some remarkably similar ones in her wist, right at the same time I saw these patterns, so it was obviously meant to be, right?? From the sounds of things, they went over as well as I had hoped! I forgot to take a pic myself, so I had to beg her to snap one and send back to me:




My dd loved them so much, she BEGGED me to make one for her, so...:



I have a calf cut out from those patterns, too, but I am not sure I am going to make it or not...it calls for fun fur, and I don't want to use fun fur, which means it might come out pretty odd looking, and I might not want to waste my time...we'll see.

I urge you all to run RUN and get you a pie maker. I LOVE these things. I made a...um...not quite chicken pot pie thing last night for dinner...SO SO yummy! I say not quite, because being a vegetarian, obviously I wouldn't be sticking chunks of dead chicken in my pie, right?? :p (Sorry, this is the picture that looked the least like it was from a 1970's Reader's Digest cookbook, lol!)



Anybody want a recipe..ish?


Not-Chicken Veggie Pie


Gluten flour
Bouillon seasoning (I used this mushroom seasoning ....very yummy stuff! Available in Asian shops. They also make an Aloe Vera seasoning that's pretty yummy too)
Nutritional yeast


Potatoes
Carrots
Frozen peas and Corn
Bell peppers
Cheese
Cream cheese
Salt
Pepper
Garlic

Pastry (I usually take the easy way out, and use frozen puff pastry, but you can make whatever you like)


Mix gluten flour with plenty of water...if you add too much and it's just mushy or soupy, just drain it or press it a little, to make it firm enough. Too firm, though, is pretty horrible, imo!

Bring water to a boil with seasoning and yeast in it....you want this strong and brothy, to flavor the gluten. Chop gluten into small pieces 1/2" or so, and drop them into the boiling water one by one, so they don't glue themselves together. Boil for 10 minutes or so, til the middle is cooked (no more rubber inside). You can also make bigger chunks, and just increase the cooking time a little. Drain.

Chop potatoes into 1/2" chunks, boil til mostly done, toss in the bell pepper cut into same size chunks, and the peas and corn. Finish cooking it all together. Drain.

Add cream cheese and grated cheese to taste, as well as the salt, pepper, and pressed garlic. Add in the precooked gluten chunks, mix altogether, and fill your pies!! I use my handy dandy mini pie maker but you can make it just as well in the oven, in any size you want. Enjoy! :D

Moving SUCKS!!

If anybody out there has been wondering why I dropped off the face of the earth, well, it was because I was in the middle of moving. And in this case, moving didn't just mean pack up one house and land in the next. Nope. It involved painting, sanding, floorsanding, repairing, etc etc etc. Ugh.

I'm only halfway finished. So far, we have ripped up the carpet and sanded the floors in all the main rooms, and painted most of them. We still need to paint all the trims, cupboards, extra rooms, re-lay a kitchen floor, and redecorate, cause we moved from a house a 3rd of the size of this one, and we don't have enough stuff to fill this one comfortably! Can't say I am crying too hard about the redecorating part, anyway. :D

Here's the preview, as you walk into the house. You can't tell, but all the walls inside have been painted a nice, subtle, creamy offwhite. That hideous, revolting yellow you can see on the sides is what the color USED to be, in most of the house!
























On the bright side, here's my new sewing room!! All to myself!! No sewing on the floor, or off the kitchen table, or down the side of the bed!! Woohoo!!

I am a noodle fiend..

I love noodles, all noodles, in soup, fried, baked, as spaghetti, whatever. I ordered a noodle stirfry in a food court, watched the old Japanese guy making it, and came home and tried it myself. It actually came out BETTER than the takeout, if you can believe!

I typed up one of my vague, random recipes here. (If Ellenade is reading this, she might recognize the chopsticks!)



A handful each of any suitable veggies (broccoli, carrots, onions, any Asian greens, bean sprouts, bell pepper, etc etc), cut into bite size pieces

Hokkien noodles from the cold section in the supermarket. These are precooked, and just need warming.

Fried tofu pieces (I made my own here, but the premade fried tofu pieces in the store are great, too)

Vegetarian oyster sauce

Soy sauce


Boil a deep pot of water. I put everything into a metal colander, except the sauces, drop the colander into the pot of water, give it a stir to mix it all into the water, and then leave for one minute, til the veggies are barely wilted. You COULD just put it all in the water, and then drain, too, but I usually do a single person at a time (prepare one while the other is cooking), and keeping the water going works for me.

Pull out, drain for a minute, and drop into a hot frying pan with a couple tablespoons of oil. Throw in enough oyster sauce to thoroughly coat the noodles and veggies (I think mine came to about 1/4 cup), and a good splash of soy sauce; toss well, and serve!!!

For one person, this could take five minutes, with a little organization!

Tuesday has thrown down the gauntlet, and I have accepted. The challenge is ON!!! Okay, so, maybe not quite that aggressively. At least, not on my side. Cause I know she is going to kick my bootay! :p So, I am just viewing this as a friendly little game, where we are going to interpret that gorgeous red and white Dior dress into something actually wearable!! Woohoo!

I went into the city today to Kinokuniya, which has a HUGE Japanese section, and had a browse, and saw a pattern in one book that looked awesome as a starting point, so I put it on hold....and we're off!!! :D

I was talking with a friend about translating those Dior dresses into something wearable, and remembered these pics I have saved from way back. It's some random dress my SIL found on eBay....BEAUTIFUL!

Tough choices....

Okay...so...serious consideration here.....which do you think I could get away with wearing on an everyday basis? Seriously. Cause these are SO FREAKING GORGEOUS, I would NEED to wear them on an everyday basis.


Dior Spring 2007 Couture Collection. Of course.

Lotus

I was in a Lotus swap. I REALLY love lotuses (is that a word?). Here are my contributions...

A wooden trinket box, made the same way as the geisha and dragon boxes, but little larger, prob about 8"x5". I really loved the look of this one!


A purse...I've never used these kinds of handles before, and they are a BITCH to sew, imnsho, but I don't think I did TOO bad. I got the fabric a few years ago, at a shop that has since closed after 20 years, and I have been hanging onto it, too scared to cut into it, cause I love it so much, but decided to bite the bullet and just go for it, since it was so perfect for this swap, and it wasn't doing any good just sitting in the pile (yes, pile...my fabric organization is pretty much nil..*ahem*.) The lining is a pink cotton, with a slightly slubby texture. It's actually bigger than it looks in the pic. For some reason, it came out looking a lot smaller than it actually is?? I have no idea why.


Okay, this was an experiment, and NOT one of my better efforts, but my swap partner loved it...which either means she REALLY loved it, or she wasn't all that enthusiastic about my other stuff. Obviously, I hope it's the former.

It's an origami lotus I had seen somewhere else, and decided to attempt myself. Um, yeah. I had to stop trying to fix it, cause I was wearing out the paper, and just send it. NOT one of my more successful experiments.







This was also an experiment, though a bit more successful. It still came out a little plain, though, but I couldn't think of a workable idea to jazz it up...I was thinking of bordering in gold stitching, but that looked wierd, and beading didn't seem to fit in, either...so I just left it. Oh, well. It's a notebook sleeve, with a notepad slipped inside. Freehanded the pattern, painted with acrylics and textile medium, and outlined with an archival permanent pen. I should have have done a bit more variations in the lotus colors.

I am no longer a virgin. A serger virgin, that is. That one-night stand back in '02 didn't count. This is True Love, and this is forever!!!

I have been wanting a serger for-EVER, and I finally just went out and got me one. This baby:
A Janome 744D. AKA, the COOLEST little doohicky in the UNIVERSE!!

I had it for a month or so, too chicken to bust it out, but finally did it, and whipped out two tops (Burda 8361 , for the curious). OMG. WHY WHY WHY did I not get one of these YEARS ago!! I knew they were the shit, but I DIDN'T REALLY KNOW!! All that wasted time! Wah! I am now spending all my plotting and planning time running through my stash, trying to match ideas and fabrics, to come up with outfits that will not need the touch of the sewing machine at ALL, so I can just whip things out on my NEW SERGER! :D

Oh, yeah, the tops:

We will ignore the fact that apparently I have forgotten the art of a pleasant smile, and am glaring at us like a she-witch.

It's an Icky Thump...

Duelling guitars and trumpets! Bagpipes! Skeleton suits!! All wrapped up in an obscure reference to a British tv show!!



Yes, folks, Jack and Meg have finished recording, and their new album is due in JUNE!! Or sometime thereabouts. :D I AM IN HEAVEN!!!!