18
Feb, 2009

handy dad

my parents came up to visit the weekend before last.  while they were here, my dad helped us to replace the door that was damaged in the debacle described on this past post.  the two of us spent a chilly afternoon outside working on this new door that we found at the local habitat for humanity re-store for the low, low price of $2.63.  we were excited to find a door that was almost exactly the right size with no doorknob holes or hinge spots (so we could put them exactly where we needed them), but, of course, nothing is ever easy.  that’s why it’s handy to have my dad around.  he knows how to make stuff work–even if it takes a little finnagling (um, i have no idea how to spell this word.  any suggestions?) finaggling (thanks, ruhama!).  our first challenge was cutting hinge notches without a router.  my dad taught me how to make hinge notches using only a utility knife, a chisel and a hammer.  and then, we realized that we should have cut  the door down to size before cutting out the hinges.  i’ll spare you the boring details, but suffice it to say that we made things a little more difficult than they would have had to be, but i did learn some new woodworking skills and enjoyed a wonderful theological discussion with my dad while we worked.  it’s times like these when i wish i lived a little closer to my parents.  i learned to be comfortable working with fabrics from my mom, but apparently my dad thought that power tools and small children was a bad mix and i never developed the same familiarity with wood.  so every time we get together, i try to make up for lost time with a woodworking project or three.  during this project, in addition to the hinge trick, i also learned that scoring the wood across the grain before cutting it with a circular saw prevents it from splintering.  and, like i said before, i also enjoyed talking theology with my dad.  i’m beginning to ramble and i’m very sleepy, so i’ll sign this post off now.  thanks, dad, for all that you’ve taught me so far.  i look forward to many more lessons.

Posted in fun stuff, Uncategorized | 2 Comments
06
Feb, 2009

angelfood cake

last week i made some delicious meyer lemon curd (goes great on fresh english muffins!) and that recipe calls for three egg yolks.  so i had three egg whites leftover.  not being one to throw away perfectly good egg bits, i decided to try an angelfood cake.  i’m sure there are other, easier things to do with egg whites (omelets come to mind) but i can’t think of a more delicious way to use them.  plus, i’d never really made one by myself and i was a little bit intimidated by the whole “whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form” part of the recipe.  i’m always afraid that i’ll whip the eggs too little or (worse!) too much, but i’ve been doing more of those types of recipes recently to try to tackle that skill head-on.

my favorite angelfood cake has always been my grandma’s recipe, so i called her up and she gave it to me over the phone, complete with those little tips that don’t come in recipe books–like “to find out whether or not the cake is done, just look in the cracks for wet bubbles.  when there are no more wet bubbles, then the cake is done.”  i also learned the secret that makes her recipe better than anyone else’s– she leaves out the almond flavoring and only uses vanilla*.

i don’t have a real angelfood cake pan, but i decided to try baking it in my springform pan with the faux bundt cake bottom.  it’s a lot smaller than a standard angelfood cake pan, so i cut the recipe in half (plus, the recipe originally called for 12 egg whites and i only needed to get rid of three.  anyone have a good use for three egg yolks?).  the half-batch of batter fit perfectly and after waiting an extra 15 minutes, i decided that the “wet bubbles” were gone.  this is a strange cake because you have to cool the cake upside-down completely before slicing into it.  the next morning when i unmolded it, it was a little sticky (which i remember from past cakes), maybe a little fallen in one corner, but it was also perfectly delicious.  even better with mashed strawberries from last summer and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

and i love the way it looks in my glass cake stand–down to the last slice. yum.  thanks again, grandma!

* i’m not so fond of almond flavoring–i find it overpowers most recipes.

Posted in yum | 4 Comments
04
Feb, 2009

bunny wallet

last weekend, i needed some time to re-charge.  i had an evening at home all by myself and i knew exactly what i wanted to do with it:

when i first saw this bunny wallet in the zakka sewing book i laughed out loud.  how could you not?  it totally looks like the bunny is cracking up too and trying to hide it!  i’ve been needing to replace my “card wallet” for awhile.  i had this handmade origami one that i’d bought a few years ago, but paper can really only last so long and this one was on its last legs.  i use a separate card wallet for all of those weird cards i only have to use occasionally (tax exempt cards for when i make work purchases, frequent buyer cards, etc.) so they don’t junk up my everyday wallet all the time.

and look how nicely they fit!  i took a few tips from martha mcgyver (button eyes, adding in a third row of pockets, making them all card-depth so the cards don’t get lost in too-deep pockets) and made a few substitutions of my own.  i think my favorite change was making it a magnet closure instead of a snap.

i wasn’t sure if i had any snaps in my stash, but i know i have some tiny, strong magnets that i got from somewhere random that have been looking for a good, safe (not swallowable) purpose.  and the bunny’s nose and paw-circle were exactly the right size.  although i learned the hard way that when sewing near magnets, the needle tends to get closer and closer as you sew and… needles can’t sew through magnets.  i finished sewing the circles by cranking the wheel (carefully) by hand.  but it was worth it.  i love the tidy look of the hidden magnets and i think they’ll last longer than snaps which tend (in my experience) to eventually start to pull and stress the fabric.

also, i was too lazy to figure out how to enlarge the pattern 200% without a copier at home, so i just eyeballed the shape of the bunny.  he’s a wee bit wonky, but i like him so very much!  (any of you common thread quilters recognize his ear and the red/orange stripey pocket and his paw?  love those fabrics and was so tickled to have leftovers!)

this project was a little time consuming and pretty detail-oriented, but when i was done, i felt my crafty soul refreshed and rejuvenated and… i have a bunny wallet that makes me smile every time i look at it!

Posted in crafty stuff, stuff that makes me smile | 8 Comments
02
Feb, 2009

english muffins with my grandma–a photo tutorial

over christmas break, i was lucky enough to get to spend half a day with my grandma on the way home.  she used to live all the way on the other side of the country, but she recently moved and is now a short, five-hour drive away.  while i was there, i asked if she’d show me how to make english muffins.  i have a strong memory of her making home-made english muffins for us when i was in high school and realizing that i don’t hate english muffins–i just hate old, stale, sour-tasting, dry-as-a-bone english muffins.  home-made ones are a totally different story.  so get down your flour and butter, roll up your sleeves, put on an apron and join us for a baking tutorial!

first, you melt some butter in a pan with some milk:

then, combine flour, yeast flour and sugar in a bowl:

my grandma has turbinado sugar.  isn’t it pretty?  i have this memory of her house from when i was very little and she had raw sugar (it looked so strange and big and brown!) and i think flour that were kept in drawers (as in, a whole drawer full of sugar) instead of in the bag or in plastic tupperware containers.  (mom?  dad?  am i totally making that memory up?)  anyway, i still associate raw sugar with my grandma because her house was the first place i ever saw it.

pour the milk/butter mixture into the dry ingredients, along with an egg until well-mixed:

then add more flour until you get a stiff dough.  well, our dough was actually not so stiff and was pretty sticky, but it worked out okay in the end.

let rise in a warm place until doubled.  (i love this blue and white towel–it always reminds me of grandma’s house too)

when you think it’s risen enough, poke it with your finger.  if the indentation stays, then it’s ready.

turn it onto a lightly floured surface and cut the dough into circles.  i forgot to take a picture of my favorite part–cutting out the circles!  i love to cut dough with biscuit cutters.  in fact, i avoid “drop biscuit” recipes because i know i won’t get a chance to press the cutter into that soft dough and try to squeeze as many circles out of the first rolling as i can.  anyway, sprinkle some cornmeal into a pan (or onto the counter or whatever) for the next step:

drop each muffin into the cornmeal so that a little gets adhered to each side.

then, place them on a baking sheet (covered in parchment) to rise.  leave plenty of room between muffins as they will grow a bit!

once the muffins have risen sufficiently, heat your skillet.  we used an electric skillet, but any flat cooking surface will do.  cook the muffins for about 8 minutes, then flip.

check it out!  they look like real english muffins!  (only much, much better…)

grandma says she normally substitutes a little whole wheat flour for some of the white flour, but we just forgot to do that with this batch.  also, the recipe instructs you to put some oil on your cooking surface, but i didn’t re-oil the surface after the first time and they still turned out fine.  the cornmeal helps to keep them from sticking.  these would be fantastic with cream cheese, peanut butter, lemon curd, honey, jam, tuna melts…. you name it, my mouth is watering just thinking about them.  here’s the recipe in brief (from the more with less cookbook)

english muffins

makes 18

heat in a saucepan until very warm (130 degrees):

1.5 c. milk

1/4 c. butter (they say margarine, but i used butter)

in a large mixer bowl, combine:

2 tbsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 pkg. dry yeast

1.5 c. flour (sub in some whole wheat if desired)

with mixer at low speed, gradually beat liquid into dry ingredients.  increase speed and beat 2 minutes or beat vigorously by hand.  next, beat in:

1 egg

1 c. flour

with spoon add:

2 c. flour, or enough to make stiff dough

turn dough onto lightly floured surface and knead just until well-mixed, about 2 minutes.  shape dough into a ball and place in a greased large bowl, turning once to coat dough with oil.  cover.  let rise in a warm place until doubled (about 1.5 hours).

punch down.  turn onto lightly floured surface, cover with bowl 15 minutes and let dough rest.  meanwhile, sprinkle cornmeal in a pie plate.  roll dough about 3/8″ thick.  cut dough into 3″ circles & re-roll scraps to make 18 muffins.  dip both sides of each circle in cornmeal; place circles on cookie sheets.  cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled—about 45 minutes.  brush large skillet with oil and heat.  when medium hot, put in 6 muffins.  cook 8 minutes on each side, or until brown.  repeat until all are cooked.  to serve, split muffins horizontally with tines of fork and toast.

thanks, grandma!  next time, maybe we can make your cinnamon rolls?

Posted in trip down memory lane, tutorials, yum | 8 Comments
01
Feb, 2009

christmas, part 5: fun new toys and good old friends (or, hooray! i have my laptop back!)

so… my laptop is fixed and i now have access to my christmas photos again and the saga can continue.

one of the fun things we did on our christmas vacation was visit some very dear friends who live in england but who were visiting parents who don’t live very far away from mr. happy stuff’s parents’ home, so we traveled a few hours one day in order to visit with them and meet their little punkin for the first time.

the guys (our husbands) might have gotten slightly bored because we sort of went nuts with the crafting.  i mean, we were only there for a few hours, and we managed to sift through her piles of beautiful buttons and i couldn’t resist buying one of her luscious button bracelets:

and a few other pieces from her poor robin shop (that’s the same bracelet–not a second one):

i had a really, really hard time choosing, but i love all three (or is it five?) items i chose.

we also had time to play with one of my very favorite new toys that i got for christmas:

a fantastic needlefelting kit from my mom.  look at all of those colors!!!

here i am, enjoying my new bracelet and needlefelting at the same time!

and here is the first monster i’ve created!  doesn’t he look like he’s pontificating?  i love the bowtie.  this little guy was heavily inspired by made by moxie even though she took down her wonderful flickr photo tutorial a few days before i actually got my kit (sniff!) but i’d read through it before and got this result from memory.  i definitely need to play more with this medium.  and maybe get some more thimbles.

anyway, it was tons of fun crafting with my friend and visiting with her family.  maybe someday we can live a little closer together.

Posted in crafty stuff | 4 Comments
22
Jan, 2009

aural heaven

oh readers, dear readers, i am in aural heaven.  i just got back from a bobby mcferrin concert and my ears are so very, very happy.  also, my voice.  and my heart.  i dearly love to hear this man perform.  i dearly love to be in his audiences because he lets us be an integral part of his performance.  at times, he plays the audience as though we are his own personal pipe organ and we love him for it.  this concert was no less entertaining and astounding than the first concert i ever saw him in when i was a lowly highschool student in san antonio (thank you, aunt ruth, for taking me to that concert.  did i ever tell you how strong and lasting an impression he made on me?).  he did a few things tonight that i remembered seeing in that first concert (oz, the hillbilly song), and many new and completely improvised things.  he actually did do a few songs from his recorded albums (which he didn’t do last time–much to the chagrin of one of the women i heard commenting after that concert, “i wish he had sung some of his songs!”)–tonight he did “fast car” and the ave maria with a bach piece underneath (oh, and the audience was in charge of singing the ave maria melody part*.  we did okaayyyyyy…  he, of course, did the bach prelude awesomely.).  i also enjoyed his rendition of “smile.”  i was thrilled to pieces when one of his long improvisational riffs included the alphabet song and the itsy bitsy spider with audience participation (be still, my storytime heart).  but i think the highlights of the show came near the end when he began inviting people to join him on stage–first to dance (individuals could dance while he sang improvised songs for each of them), then to sing duets with him (there were a few fantastic volunteers that were a treat to listen to and watch sing with him) and then… he asked for twelve audience members to join him on stage for some fun choral improvising.  um, well, apparently we can’t count very well.  i ended up being one of about 40 or 50 (maybe more?) people who flocked to the stage, eager for the chance to sing with him. yep!   i.  sang.  on-stage. with. bobby. mc. ferrin.  eeeeep!  the big-city/small-town effect was apparent in that i was one of three women from my church and (i learned later) at least two men from the choir i used to sing in!  we sang, we danced, we made interesting mouth noises…. and eventually, we had to sit back down.  let’s see… did i also mention that at one point, he put the microphone on his neck and (i swear this is true) sang at least 2, possibly three notes at once?  i think there was at least an octave–mr. happy stuff thought it was two.  at the same time.  how does he do that?!  sigh.  if i could afford to just follow him around the country, listening to his concerts… i’d be there. i sort of wish i’d been able to see him earlier this week when he performed at my alma mater college.  can you imagine?  seeing him twice in one week?  and you just know they would have sung 606 to him.  sigh.  (if any of my readers were at that concert, i would love to hear how it went!)

at the end of tonight’s concert, he took questions from the audience and someone asked if there was anyone he’d like to perform with that he hadn’t yet and he said that he would love to sing in a quartet composed of himself, alison krauss, james taylor and eric clapton, but that the schedules of those four people were too busy to ever get together for such a dream concert.  we assured him that we thought it was worth the wait and we’d love to host such an event.  :)

*one of the things i love about him in concert is that he’ll ask the audience to do something and we’ll all laugh and think it’s impossible, and then, somehow, magically, he goes ahead with his part as though it’s not impossible and we follow and (more or less successfully) do our part and it all works and we have this great feeling of amazement and accomplishment…. and then we laugh when he asks us to do something else impossible.  and we do it again.  perhaps he’d make a good cabinet member for obama.  what a great week.

Posted in la la la!, stuff that sparks a glow in my soul, trip down memory lane | 3 Comments
20
Jan, 2009

meeting a new small friend

here are a few photos from a fun visit i had today, to meet the new daughter of some friends of mine.

thanks, friends, for wonderful conversation, yummy cookies and tea, and a grand time meeting your baby girl.  she’s beautiful.

Posted in photography | 3 Comments
19
Jan, 2009

all caught up with common threads

i finished jenny’s block today.  i loved working with these fabrics.  i think i’ve decided that (at least for me) the secret to sucessful “wonky blocks” is to cut the pieces freehand with scissors instead of trying to use a rotary cutter and straightedge ruler.  i hope she likes it!

Posted in crafty stuff | 3 Comments
18
Jan, 2009

finally, the quilt!

it’s so reassuring to see that other people have trouble photographing quilts well in winter!  i have struggled to get a good shot of this one and i think this is the best it’s going to get:

i made this quilt as a gift for a friend of mine in exchange for one of her monster paintings.  i’d sent her a few flickr photos as inspiration and she chose this one.  i thought maybe she’d choose a few different quilts–maybe one for the colors, one for layout, but no, she liked that exact quilt and wondered if i could just make her one just like it.   so i did my best and… i love it!  (and so does she!)

i decided to title this quilt, “one fish, blue fish.”  it was the first time i’ve tried loopy quilting and i couldn’t believe how quickly it went.  and i just love the whimsical effect it gave.

my loops were considerably less regular than most of the loopy free-motion quilting that i’ve seen on other people’s quilts, but i still like the way it turned out.

i didn’t draw on any guidelines or anything and i was afraid that the loopy lines would all tilt to one side or something, but even though the lines aren’t perfectly straight, they still look surprisingly good!  this was also the first quilt that i hand-finished sewing the binding on.  i did it over christmas travels and my original stitch method was driving me batty (trying to run the needle inside the fold of the binding), so i switched to something slightly more visible (just catching the bottom edge of the binding and running the needle inside the layers of the quilt) but way easier, and actually more stable since i took shorter stitches with the second method.  i might consider doing it again.

the quilt is currently hanging in an art show of library-staff-produced artwork at the downtown library (how exciting!) but i think it’s looking forward to being cuddled with.

i also love the way the back turned out.  this photo doesn’t do it justice, but at least you can see the layout.

i am very much looking forward to having my own computer (with photoshop express and my own, familiar keys!) back.  hopefully sometime next week?  i had no idea how much i would miss it.

but let’s end with one more little happy thing for today–

i had an appointment this week in a shopping center i’d never explored before and discovered a bread shop there.  i went in and, of course,  had to order a chocolate croissant and the proprietor asked me if i liked chocolate croissants and when i wholeheartedly agreed, he said that when he was in paris, every morning they ate a plain croissant with a few bars of really good chocolate along with their cups of coffee and he said i just had to try it like that, so he tucked in a plain croissant and a few sticks of chocolate for free.  how nice!  and… it really was delicious.

Posted in crafty stuff | 11 Comments
15
Jan, 2009

catching up with common threads

holiday craziness sort of knocked me off schedule with the common threads quilting bee (and i think i’m not the only one), so here are two blocks i recently finished:

these fabrics were sent by nadia with a special request for embroidery.  i used the flowers in the upper left fabric as inspiration.

i’m still a beginner at embroidery, and i tried a few different stitches.  this one is outlined in split stitch, with satin stitch sections and some french knots (my first successful ones ever!)

and this one… i don’t know what the stitch is called.  i saw my mother-in-law using it this christmas when we visited and i liked the way it looked, so i thought i’d try it.  i also tried two different kinds of thread and i’m not sure which one i like better.  i hope they’re okay with nadia!

oiyi sent red and white fabrics to make a valentine’s quilt for her baby girl, melody.  some of the prints she sent were a bit “old school” and reminded me of my childhood, so i decided to use an old school simple square pattern.  i was so inspired by the sashiko work projects in the zakka sewing book that i decided to try it out on this block.  i really enjoyed this type of embroidery and i think i’ll do it again soon!

i will try to get these in the mail soon, but today it is -13 degrees (-35 with windchill) and i’m not leaving the house!  maybe i’ll finish jenny’s block today and mail them all at the same time!

Posted in crafty stuff | 3 Comments