Mother's Day Crafting Fun

This year I hosted a Mother's Day Brunch to celebrate my mother and my grandmother. I had grand plans of capturing gorgeous photographs of the glorious spread I created and of the amazing decorations that I crafted. Then things exploded, as the best laid plans always do. Oy.

Did I have a glorious spread? You bet! I made a smoked salmon, caramelized onion, and dill frittata. I made a spinach and strawberry salad with a chardonnay vinegar dressing. I made corn muffins, blueberry muffins, biscuits, crescent rolls, and cinnamon toast. I had sausage pinwheels, apricot and strawberry jams, butters, teas, and marshmallows. Dessert included a melon salad and my grandmother's amazing lemon poppy seed cake with coffee and cream.

And my amazing decorations? They looked better than any I had yet created. I had pinwheels for the walls and a bunting on my window. My table was layered with cloths and pretty paper table settings. I found the prettiest baskets in my collection and laid out everything in my best Martha imitation. I was thrilled with the result. I might be exaggerating how amazing they were but I was quite happy with the results. I definitely know they needed to improvement but I plan to take what I learned from this party and apply it to the next.

But I digress. There was an incident. It caused me to forget to take pictures. So it's all as if it never happened. LeSigh. But I swear it did. Sadly, you'll just have to take my word for it. I swear that I have a good reason.

The Mister and Boo had a small car accident in town while trying to get me a Mother's Day card. Shenanigans ensued. They wound up walking a mile home from the center of town, showing up 10 minutes before the first guest was supposed to arrive. My sister and I had to help rescue The Mister's car from the tow lot while my mom and grandmother watched Boo and waited for the rest of the guests to arrive. The party started over an hour late, everyone was famished, and we just dug into the spread.

Oh well. It will make a great story for years to come. No one was hurt. The car was fine. The food was just as good, even when served an hour late. Boo thought the whole thing was a great adventure. All's well that ends well, right?

At least I have a photo of the decor. Or some of the decor. What's left of the decor.

I'm quite pleased with my linen choices. I found the whole lot of them in Savers while on a thrifting mission with my grandmother. The tablecloth is a field of orange, yellow, and red flowers with green stems on a white background. It's a lightweight, summer weight, gauzy cloth and fits the table perfectly. I love the watercolor look of it. I was lucky enough to find coordinating orange runners the add a pop of color and texture to the look. They are a woven Ikea find. Lastly is a pretty yellow gingham handkerchief that I laid on top as a focal point.

The paper fans and bunting were created from scrapbook paper and worked well with the colors of the tablecloth. I found some great paper goods too!

Hopefully I'll be able to take some photos of the Father's Day Picnic I'm planning for This Mister. I'm having so much fun with this craftiness - I'd love for there to be some evidence!

Goodies Box - May 2013

My May Goodies Box arrived today! Luckily it arrived while Boo was napping so I could open it right away. The box was the same size as last month but it weighed a ton!!

The box, begging me to open it.

 I was super excited to find out what was inside.

The first peek...

Ta da! Look at all those goodies!

 I was really happy when I opened the tissue paper. The box was chock full of things to try. First up was Numi Organic Tea in Moroccan Mint. I have been a fan of Numi teas for a while but I've never tried this flavor...probably because I'm not a very big fan of mint tea. The Mister happens to love mint tea though, so I plan to offer him the chance to sample this flavor. I bet he'll be a big fan.  

They included a coupon too!

 The next item in the box was candy. I love candy. I love sour candy. I'm really interested in these Sour Power Straws. I worked in a candy store in high school and I became addicted to sour candies. I used to collect the sour sugar that built up in the bottoms of the sour candies bins at the store and use it to sweeten iced teas at work. It was so good that I got some of my co-workers hooked too. To this day I still groove on Sour Patch Kids and hoard them every Halloween.

I got Blue Raspberry and Pink Lemonade.

 I also think that these Sour Straws would be handy when decorating cakes and cupcakes. They'd be really pretty as swirls and spirals on a cupcake with a modern feel.

Chipotle BBQ Beanitos came out of the box next. I'm not sure about this flavor. The idea of a black bean chip sounds fantastic to me but I really don't like BBQ flavored chips. On the other hand, I adore chipotles. Maybe the combination will work for me? I don't know but I'm looking forward to trying them tomorrow night. It's BBQ night at our house so I'll give them a whirl with our burgers. I also like that they have 4 grams of protein per serving...I won't feel so bad if I share them with my toddler!
 

Bronco Bob's Roasted Mango Chipotle Sauce is sure to be a mega hit for me. I plan on using it when I grill tomorrow too. I'm thinking chicken breasts brushed with the sauce and served with a side of grilled onions. Yum, yum, yum!

The website suggests pouring it over vanilla ice cream as a sweet and spicy desert. I love my ice cream, I eat ice cream every night, and the idea of spicy ice cream is fantastic. The Mister and I made Jalepeno ice cream on one of our first dates and it was really darn good so I think I might try this out on dessert one night too.

Sea Salt Super Seedz are a salted pumpkin seed snack. They taste pretty good but I think I'll be using them in my granola bar experiments instead of just snacking on them. It's a great way to add a bit more healthy fat to my post-workout refuel.

Two tiny little pouches of California Olive Ranch Extra Virgin Olive Oil were also in the box. The Mister loves olive oil drizzled on a salad and I love it tossed with roasted veggies so these were very exciting to find. I might actually tuck these into a picnic lunch over the weekend as a treat for The Mister.

The item that had added all the extra weight to the box was Zico Pure Premium Coconut Water. My mother has been raving about the health benefits of coconut water for months so I'm looking forward to trying this. The website suggests using it in a smoothie which is an interesting idea. I think Boo and I might make one for snack over the weekend.

A coupon for Wholly Guacamole and a branded chip clip were at the bottom of the box. I might use this, but I prefer to make my own guac...it will probably wind up being given to my mother. She's a guacamole fiend.

It was a pretty great box this month. I enjoyed look at and looking up all of the various goodies and I can't wait to start sampling.

Exploding TARDIS

I have this obsession with the new Doctor Who. I really liked the 9th Doctor. I loved the 10th Doctor. I'm absolutely crazy about the 11th Doctor.

Why am I sharing this? Well, a few years back I got my hands on a gorgeous limited edition skein of Starry, Starry Night from the Three Irish Girls:

The gorgeous skein, photo from Three Irish Girls

The original inspiration, by Van Gogh

It was a gorgeous hank of yarn and I knew it was destined for something special. It sat in my stash for years, waiting for the right project which never seemed to come along.

And then...this happened:

See the little TARDIS in the sky?

And I saw this:

And then...it explodes.

And it all just clicked. My Starry, Starry Night needed to become Exploding TARDIS Socks. I dug through my stash and found a gorgeous (and perfectly matching!) skein of Cian, a bright yellow semi-solid from Three Irish Girls and set to work while on a road trip to New Jersey. By the time I got home, I had these:

My AWESOME Exploding TARDIS Socks.

 What great bits of nerdery have y'all engaged in?

 

Camping!

I'm currently working on my first ever Camp Loopy challenge! Each month for three months, we are set challenges to work up in yarn. If we complete all three challenges in the time period, we get glory and prizes!!!

Challenge one is to knit a 400+ yard project designed by a knitter from a foreign country. I chose to knit with Dream In Color Starry in Grey Tabby (IT SPARKLES!!!). 

At first, my plan was to knit Earl Grey by The Yarn Harlot, but the yarn whispered to me and told me that the cable would be lost in the sparkle. I listen when the yarn speaks so Earl Grey went back into the queue. 

What a lovely little cable! I still want to knit these very much!!!

I looked into UK designers since it's my favorite place on the planet and I found a gorgeous sock to attempt - Vorticity by Alice Yu of Socktopus. It's got undulations that I thought would really make the sparkles dance around the sock. Sadly, that was a disaster! All the errata in the world wasn't helping that pattern. I tried four different times and none of them worked so I had to give into frustration and frog it.

What did I finally settle on? An old standby from one of my favorite Canadian designers - Spillyjane. I decided to knit her Mokira pattern, a simple pattern with a wheat-ear like lace motif in it. It's a great match for the yarn. I'm just completed with my first repeat of the pattern and it's showing off the sparkles just like I hoped it would. The lace is subtle so it's not lost in the sparkle, it just breaks up the flow here and there with a flash of skin. Perfect. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the pattern!

Spillyjane's Mokira. Isn't it a lovely pattern?!

I've got about 3.5 weeks to complete the pair of socks and post them to the Camp Loopy boards if they are to count towards completing the challenges. Can I do it? Well, I'm almost done with my current batch of publication work and the next batch won't start till at least July...I have high hopes!!!

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I'm A Spinner

 This is my new spinning wheel, a Kromski Minstrel. I love it. It was a birthday present from my husband who drove me to Webs in the middle of a snowstorm (two and a half hours away) so that he could surprise me with it. I love him too.

 This is my first yarn. It's a mohair/merino blend and I practiced both drafting and plying and it's what I wound up with. It's a tiny little nugget but it hooked me. Wow. I love spinning. I need to thank Lucy at Mind's Eye Yarn in Cambridge for teaching me so much during my private spinning lesson. I will recommend her to anyone looking to expand their spinning skill set - she is a font of knowledge!

I've started to work with a brightly colored roving, just to see what it can do. I've chosen this 100% superwash merino in Seriously Citrus from Mad Color Fiber Arts. Isn't it crazy bright and so much fun?

You can see it on yarn on Ravelry here.

So far, I've got about a half of a bobbin full. I've decided to spin it up in colored sections - green, yellow, orange, pink, repeat. I figure I'll spin two bobbins filled with singles and then ply them together and see what happens. I hope that some sections of the final yarn will be solid colors and other sections will be marled. I can't wait to see though - it's an experiment.

Are you a spinner? What fiber dyers can you suggest? I'm looking for some fun colored superwash fibers to play with!

Sushi + Fruit = Frushi!

This year my family celebrated New Year's Day by hosting the Third Annual New Year's Day Dessert Brunch at our home. While planning the shindig, my husband and I had a brilliant idea for a dessert, inspired by a food review I had read earlier in the week. We decided we would tackle frushi, the delicious love-child of fruit and sushi.

We committed ourselves to the plan about three days before the event...which seemed like a lot of time. How hard could it be?! Well, it was a good thing we decided to test the recipe first because we would up making three batches before we had one that we felt was up to our standards!

Lesson 1: The rice we used was a sushi rice prepared with coconut milk and sugar and it was VERY sticky. So sticky that it needed to sit in the fridge overnight.

Lesson 2: Melons are very juicy. Let them sit on paper towels for a while to bleed out some of the juice.

Lesson 3: It's very hard to take the membrane off of a grapefruit section. Get an extra fruit to practice on. Luckily the failures were still delicious.

Lesson 4: Haribo Gummi Raspberries look like they'd make a great caviar. Looks can be deceiving.

Lesson 5: Seaweed tastes fishy. Who wants fishy dessert? Well, now you can get sushi wraps made of soy paper, especially designed for dessert sushi! They come in a 5 pack and are very pretty, coming in all different colors.

Not a lesson, but a brilliant discovery: Slice a banana into flat strips. Saute the strips in butter and sugar to caramelize. Let the pieces cool and place on top of rice, nigiri style. Drizzle with the caramel sauce. They look exactly like Unagi!!!

The fruit sushi was so much fun to make and a huge hit at the party. To keep with the vaguely Asian theme and flavors, we also served Pineapple Ginger Pound Cake, Lapsong Souchong Infused Chocolate Cake, Ginger Cookies, and Fortune Cookies. A giant bowl of steamed and salted edamame added a savory note and we served a selection of sake and plum wine. Delicious!!!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

It's 2012 and I'm so excited for this coming year. I have so many interesting and challenging projects on the agenda - most knitting but some not - and I just can not wait to get started.

Shall a provide a teaser or two? Let's see, lots of socks, my first e-book, and an updated website are all in the cards for this year.

I also plan on participating in 12 Pairs of Socks in 2012 on Ravelry. I'd love to make a fancy plan of knitting 12 pairs from stash or use 12 patterns from different designer or some other crazy hook like that, but in reality, I think I'll be pleased with myself for just getting through 12 pairs!

This was the last time I attempted a 12 pair challenge!

Secretly, I'd love to design 12 pairs of socks in 2012...or to design 12 designs in 2012...but I think I need to get my head out of the clouds. I've still got that toddler running around my house and I bet a good deal of time will be spent keeping him out of trouble. Not that I mind - he's awesome. He's 15 months old and already likes to play with needles and string!