Snippet

Ohhhh ... I am experiencing MSG overload.  It's my last week, and so I've been out to lunch every day this week.  I work in Chinatown (and in Asian hubs), and we love hole-in-the-walls, so there is MSG up the wazoo.  I think the older I get, the more sensitive I get to it.  This makes me sad.  At this rate, I am not going to be able to eat in China, or in hole-in-the-walls, anymore.  I bet overloading has not helped the body's coping mechanisms, either.  I've spent the entire night drinking water, and I still feel a bit woozy.  I finally threw up my hands and decided that tomorrow, we are going for burgers.

Snippets

We grilled this bounty up a couple of weeks ago.  "Hot fennel ... HOT FENNEL."  Not sure why they didn't believe me that it would be piping hot off the grill, but interestingly, fennel tastes pretty good barbecued!  In case you ever want to try.

What a couple of weeks it's been!  I'm pretty tired -- and Sigrid, I think I jumped the gun on you, went and finished up my dress :-/.  I did one of those things where I went back to my parent's place and brought an UFO with me, and purposefully didn't bring a change of clothes to force myself to engage in the UFO --> FO process.  Which is why, last night, at 10:18 PM, I was not in bed as I'd hoped but clipping threads.  Ah well.  I shall photograph it in its currently slightly wrinkled glory this weekend, hopefully, and show it off to you all soon after.

Is it August already?  I can't believe that.  I had some mental deadlines for myself that were set to start this month, and I think change may be in the air ...

This weekend ...

Dove into some Sparkly sewing ...

Had friends over for tea and sweets ...

Postcards from the East Coast

Thank you all for the cardigan refashion love!!! As much as I love making things myself, it's always nice hearing that I'm not the only one crazy about crazily embellished cardigans =). I leave you with some photos from my recent trip to the East Coast. It was such a lovely week, full of good food, good people, and a good break away from life! Like a mini retreat. Such a treat, to be able to fly 5 hours and see some of my favorite people and sights!

New York:





And Boston:

Dessert Formulas For You!

A step up from improvised meals, in my opinion, are those baked goods where you just toss in a pinch of this, a handful of that, and wind up with dessert. For someone raised in the tradition of measuring cups, that's a pretty terrifying prospect [and mystifying process]. I do have two sweets in my arsenal that are more formula than recipe - the Tightwad Gazette universal muffins, which still makes liberal use of aforementioned measuring cups, and this crisp, passed on to me by a Swedish girl I met while WWOOFing in Washington State two summers ago.


Formula:

1) Melt 1 stick butter [or you can use softened butter, I never plan ahead sufficiently for this]. Mix in flour and sweetener in a 1:1 ratio until the mixture becomes clumpy.*

2) Sprinkle chopped fruit or berries** into a 9*13*** pan. The fruit should cover the bottom of the pan liberally.

3) Crumble crisp on top of fruit. Bake at 350 until the fruit bubbles. If topping has not browned by this point, then turn oven to broil for a few minutes.


Fast, easy, versatile! You can use any fruit you'd usually find in a pie [although I've never tried citrus], any type of flour you have on hand [I love adding oats with a bit of wheat flour], and any type of sweetener too [honey, which I've never personally tried, will probably need more flour to compensate for stickiness]. Also tastes lovely with a scoop of ice cream or plain yogurt. Works well as a last-minute dessert, to use up odd leftovers in the fridge, to disguise mushy fruit, and if you're low on funds like most graduate students are, apples are an economical and filling way to stretch out berries and the like in the filling.



*If you prefer your desserts less sweet, like I do, then add less sugar:flour. If you like your desserts more buttery, then you'll want to stop adding sweetener/flour sooner, when there are larger clumps. Less buttery, look for finer grain clumps. The best part is that you can taste as you go to see if your topping is too sweet or not sweet enough, and adjust accordingly.

** If you have a wet fruit like berries, coat with a spoonful or two of flour so that it will become gooey upon heating. If your fruit are not terribly ripe, also coat with a spoonful or two of sugar.

*** Can also be made in an 8*8 pan. Just use less butter ... like 3/4 of a cup or so.

Note: in this photo, I didn't have much fruit on hand. Usually there'd be twice as much fruit in this kind of crisp.

Dark Green Leafies

After asking after other people's go to 'crap I have no time to make food" meal ideas, I guess I should share my standby. Sometimes I boil noodles and dump butter, shredded white cheese, and freshly cracked pepper into the pot [once the noodles drain]. Other times I make what Hana and I have fondly dubbed "random soup," one iteration of which appears above.

Generally speaking, it goes something like this. Boil 2 pots of water. One is your soup base, one is for boiling noodles [we use Asian noodles, they cook fast]. Into the soup base, toss a couple shiitake mushrooms [dried in my version, fresh in hers], miso paste, soy sauce. Scallions can be nice, or seaweed. From here I veer from tradition and start chucking in whatever Asian spices I have on hand. Hana's favorite combination is dandanmian sauce, Vietnamese chili sauce, and fig jam. Slide your noodles into a bowl and then top with soup. Sit back and relax.


Peanut butter works too. For nutrition and heft, add in some dark green leafies, an egg or some tofu. You could also put in thinly sliced daiko radish. Or fry some thinly sliced onions and carrots for a couple minutes in a pot, then pour in the water and start your soup base. Super flexible, fast, easy. You can keep the dried mushrooms, seaweed, miso paste, noodles, and eggs on hand pretty much at all times.

I'd had my eye on this pattern for a long time on Ravelry, but admittedly was a bit skeptical about bra straps showing through and all. After breaking down and ordering the Summer 2009 issue of Knit.1 magazine, I'd say it was totally worthwhile.


[The sweater's not lopsided, I am. Again, pardon the awkward expression on my face. I always feel weird smiling at the camera, so I try for a half smile and this is what you get. Apologies!]

The pattern doesn't call for sleeves but I don't look good in cap sleeve-type tops [which this yoke creates, ish], because my bust:waist ratio is not very large, and my hips are larger than my bust BUT my shoulders are the same circumference as my hips, which means that any blouse that emphasizes my shoulders will balance me out. So I improvised some sleeves by picking up the stitches around the armholes and using a strange short-rows method to incorporate those that I may have just made up entirely.

I knit part of this on the train from New York to Boston, and the Italian professor at the Rhode Island School of Design sitting across from me was fascinated by how I seemed to know exactly what I was doing. That's one of the things that I love about crafting. After a certain point you pick up enough understanding that you can go off roading and still turn out relatively OK. The sleeves are not the most beautiful knitting that I have ever done, but they work for the garment, they do.


Knit up using Knit Picks Comfy Sport, a cotton acrylic blend, in the Jalapeno colorway. In real life the color's a bit more vibrant. I'd read that cotton tends to sag and stretch so I knit these on 1 size smaller needles than required to get gauge, hoping that would help. I also realized that when I'm knitting in the round, my gauge tends to loosen by at least 2 needles sizes, so I had to rip this back quite far when I figured that out [many 4-letter words were involved at that point].

You can see some sag going on in the back. I'd love to knit this up in a red jewel colorway with 3/4 length sleeves for fall, but I want something machine washable because the yoke means I can't wear a top underneath it, which will greatly increase the wear:wash ratio. I've been wearing this like crazy and the yarn sags like crazy, which means it sees a lot of the washer and dryer which will shorten the lifespan of the yarn. Do you think it would work if I stranded the cot/acrylic with lace-weight wool yarn, or would the wool yarn felt in the washer/dryer?


As you can see, that bra is practically invisible! Also, a close up of the leaf motif.

Woohoo! That's 2 dresses and 3 blouses for spring/summer, and we're not even done with June yet.

My brother once had a mentor in the German lab he worked in through DAAD, and she would ask him English questions, then cock her head to one side and say happily, "My English, it is so good!"

So I say to you. "My crafting productivity, it is so good!"

Your Opinion on Skirt #20: Flowers and Honeycomb

We were out celebrating my friend's birthday the other night with a combination of crepes, nutella hot chocolate, and nutella smoothies. Why the combination of hot and cold drinks? Because it's still freezing at night, so we would take a couple sips of the smoothie, sigh with contentment, then switch off to the hot chocolate to keep warm and to admire the subtle differences between the two drinks. Our third friend thinks we're nuts. We're pretty happy the way we are, a slightly nutty duo, because being nutty is 100x's more fun if there's somebody else to be nutty with [kind of like crafting and DIY, no? Thank goodness for the online community!].


So I could use your opinion on this. When I saw this tutorial I thought it called out for really lightweight, floaty fabrics ... and since everybody's been going crazy about the AMH cotton voile and I've always loved her fabrics but have been recently growing disillusioned with quilting cottons and therefore never ordered any of her previous lines, and have been thus been looking for the right project = excuse to test out the cotton voile. So I did. And here's the result:


At first I really didn't like it on. It felt like that strange inbetween place of poofy enough to look blah and too short to hold the ruffles properly. At first I thought I either needed to take out some excess or make it 2x's my hip width [I fudged and made it ~1.3x's my hip width so that I could just buy 1 length of fabric ... it's 54" wide]. And I thought I needed to add a couple inches in length so it would fall properly.


I don't know, what do you think? Wearable? [Once I wear it properly so that it falls the same length front and back] Could I get away with making it narrower? Should I think about making it much, much fuller the next time around? And longer, or not? I'm still trying to get the hang of drape and hand and weight of fabric and whatnot. Also, I will mention this took me much longer than 20 minutes ... I am not good with gathers.

On a separate note, I've been working through The Artist's Way, and this coming week calls for a week without reading. As a student who graduates in six weeks [!!!], I am obviously going to have to fudge this one, so after some thought I've decided to go Tuesday-Saturday without reading, and hope it doesn't ruin the effect too much if I'm still doing a lot of writing for class/job applications/etc. But this also means no blog reading for a week! And very minimal email, I think. I think? Anyways, ack! I will see you all soon enough :-) [and I still have tomorrow to blog stalk!].

The tail end of February

On Saturday, a group of us got together to celebrate yuanxiaojie:

Homemade tangyuan! Yum. The colored blobs are our peanut and sesame filling, which we then wrapped in glutinous rice paste and boiled. Deeeeeeee-lish-us. [and if you notice, there is one, ahem, dumpling in the mix with the round balls. That's because a certain, ahem, somebody couldn't get the hang of rolling these up in bals without breaking the glutinous rice wrapper, but I was told it was a beautiful dumpling shape. My friends 很会安慰别人, or they know exactly what to say to soothe your feelings. Ha!]

This is how I study best

Little bits of two favorites to stave off the writer's block. The knitting, in particular, is a godsend - there's something about doing something dexterous, tactile ... with my hands ... that unsticks the brain and helps me through procrastination like no other. It's like an ounce of preventative productive procrastination, instead a pound of trolling the internet. The chocolate, too, is ensuring that I have adequate padding for the snow that has recently dusted our streets. Except now I think I'm addicted to the chocolate.

Minus 10

I went to pilates tonight for the first time in over a month. I slipped into class ten minutes late but oh, how I loved every minute there. It's funny, because I used to hate hate HATE working my core muscles, simply because they were the weakest part of my body. Through the years I've slowly worked through that to the point where they're decently strong, but it wasn't so much the act of toning my abdominal and back muscles [which remain some of my least favorite parts of my body, along with my arms. Haha, that doesn't leave much, does it? But in truth, my body image is so much better than it used to be] ... it was more the fact that I had made a conscious decision to clear away some time for myself, that I was going to actively forego other school activities and place my health at the top of the priority list.

Mmm. And then just lying there, doing nothing but concentrating on my breathing as I moved the exercise ball, engaged muscles, lifted and lowered my legs in deliberate, smooth motions. It was so meditative and peaceful. I just kept thinking, I need to do this more. It's funny how I know how much I love exercise, I know how good it is for you, and yet I never make enough time to do it.

At least I've gotten better about cooking for myself this semester. E. twin and I were talking about that today ~ it must be part of the cycle of learning to be a student again, what you can slowly incorporate back into your life, and when, and how. I'd imagine the same is true for most major transitions in life.

The bread above was yummy except for the fact that I forgot to add enough salt. Somehow when eyeballing 2 tsp salt, a little shake of the Morton can doesn't quite add up. Oops! So I just eat it with my hazelnut/chocolate spread I found on sale at Whole Foods. It's like Nutella but with no trans fats, and it is disappearing from the jar at an alarming rate.

Touch

Accounting something or other. Real sexy reading material. So instead, let me draw your attention to that bowl of soup up in the top part of the photo. If I had it my way, I'd be sitting down to a bowl of that good stuff, toast topped with melted slivers of Gruyere and Swiss, and a scoop of sauteed kale with pepper flakes, about every other week. But of course, that would involve a heavy haul of of the heaviest of the fall harvest bounty through rain and snow, so I will just take what I can get and look back to photographs during the leaner times in the pantry.

Butternut squash-onion-apple-potato soup. With milk and nutmeg. Absolutely heavenly slipping down the throat. Best of all, the recipe was completely improvised, just me making use of the stragglers from my CSA box (no more! sigh), going off a vague memory of ingredients I'd seen thrown together in Googled recipes in the past, and magically it turned into one of my favorite soups thus far. That combination of nutmeg and onion browned in butter, I think, is the secret here.

My friends are generally of three minds about recipes. Some swear by them, some use them as starting points, some adamantly refuse, point blank, to be tethered to any predetermined combination or amount of ingredients. Personally, I love when all things in life can be approached intuitively - cooking, crafting, you name it. But as I've often discovered in this journey through learning the ins and outs of sewing, knitting, crocheting, photography, and now cooking and baking, intuition and improvisation often presume a certain basesline comfort, a home territory of experience from which to expand upon. So I'm content - for now - to stand at my kitchen counter with my laptop and Google for guidance, knowing that as I move through life, the moments such as the one above will grow in frequency and in sophistication. Just as I look back on my first tote bag or my first skirt, and I remember how much I struggled with the measurements and the topstitching and, well, everything because everything was so new, and I see how far I've come.

Interlude

It's just been one of those weeks. Thanks everyone for your supportive comments, apparently over 1/4 of participants in the last swap were late getting their quilt out, so I'll just wait it out.

Anyways! Do you ever do this? Eat those slightly disgusting meals that you know you shouldn't, but are ridiculously easy to prepare and you're just that tired/lazy/disenchanted with cooking/preoccupied with your latest crafting adventure? May I present, bamboo shoots on bread:


I say it myself, this can be pretty gross. On the other hand, sometimes it is also entirely perfect.

Somehow caught the knitting bug, which means that progress on crafty endeavors around here may slow down for the next few weeks ...

Daily Miscellaney

Your daily dose of miscellaney. 6/29/09.

I had no cash on me today so I used my student ID to swipe in for some candy from the vending machine. Are my eyes deceiving me, or did it charge me $0.27 for a $0.90 candy bar, and is this normal? This could be dangerous. Very dangerous.


Oh, but look! My CSA. I am in lurve. Lurve, I tell you. So many greens, such an affordable price. Eating local, supporting family farms, trying out new greens. Heavenly goodness.

G3's:
-For meeting with my boss at 11AM today. Thank goodness he didn't take me up on my 8AM offer, sheesh. Sometimes those extra couple hours to get started in the morning are really, really nice.
-NYC this past weekend! I stayed with some friends from my Fulbrighting days and oh my, it was fabulous. I haven't seen XLT or Steve since 2006, and Laurie and I always manage to find interesting moments in mundane places, like when we were staring at a random flea market and trying to decide which cuff links to get her boyfriend for a hypothetical big gift moment. She went for a jousting knight, I opted for the bejeweled gold circles that looked both green and pink, depending on the lighting.
-For this "Hour of Power" concept that Laurie introduced me to. Apparently she and Mark will work for one hour, no email, no talking to each other, just focus. It's a really good way to get those procrastination-prone projects started, and Laurie's always been good at coming up with catchy names. One of many reasons why she's so well suited to journalism.

The trip home and then back to the motherland

So this is stupendously long and mostly for me so that I can remember my fantastic trip home and to the guo. You've been warned.



Wednesday: arrive home!!! Oh man. As I was waiting for Caltrain to take me back to my parent's place, I couldn't help but notice ... the people here talk like I do, say phrases I find myself saying, talk about the types of things I'd talk about. Yes, the pace of life is noticeably slower than the East Coast, but who cares?!?! Home, baby.

Thursday: BART/Caltrain up to the East Bay to hang out with the e. twin ~ we crafted, CAFT'd, chatted and I love-love-LOVED seeing her new place. It is so Berkeley. She is so Berkeley. I miss that. I miss her. Then we had dinner with Jenni and Jordan, and Jenni and I BART/Muni'd to her boyfriend's place in the Cow Hill/Marina place. It was really nice to see my 'little sister' again and have a proper catch-up chat, plus I've heard so much about Karl and was happy to meet him for the first time :-).

Friday: Jenni and I wandered Union Street, where we spent a ridiculous amount of time in Ambiance and I spent an even more ridiculous amount of time trying to decide whether or not to get a peacock feathered headband. It looked so glamorous on Jenni, I couldn't help but wish some of that glamor would rub off on me if I bought it, and so I fell prey to wishful thinking. Then I met Anna and Jamie for lunch at Lee's, which we took back to Anna's place. Then Anna went back to work and Jamie and I had a nice stroll by the Marina and a long chat in a cafe, and then Rudy drove over from Oakland and we had gooooooood food and a really nice chat in our impromptu 'cafe' - a.k.a. the kids section of Kinokuniya! That was some blockade of the children's aisle we had going on there, us three big monsters crouching on the tiny stools meant for people a third our height. Ahem. And then we played card games at Anna and Henry's and laughed at all the random silly inside jokes we've collected through the years.

Anna: I can't believe you're 25. That means we have a history together.

Saturday: Wake up late, finally straggle off for dim sum [yum! Henry read my mind EXACTLY], a bit of wandering along Baker Beach, they drop me off for home, I drag the parents out for sushi, some light packing and drowsing off to the TV.


Sunday: fly to Beijing.

Monday: Michael picks me up at the airport.

Tuesday-Wednesday: Reacquaint myself with the city I am obsessed with in all realms of China Meets America Meets Jessica's Life. Throughout my stay here, various interactions with the public health system in China proves that China is more on top of its game than I gave it credit for, and that I am possibly slightly less compliant with public health quarantine efforts than a public health grad student should be.


Thursday-Tuesday: In Yunnan [southwest China] with the brother and the parents. 14 hours on the bus, plus another 4-5 in a taxi, in less than 2 day period, affords us food poisoning, spectacular views, and several close shaves with car sickness. Also, way too much goofiness to be confined to one family, but there you go. Also, I can't tell what draws more attention: our English, our various Chinese accents, or outrageous inside jokes and the laughter that ensues, or the fact that we are a family of 4 in a nation with a one-child policy.

Haha. I think my favorite are the 2 on the bottom right. You'll notice the intergenerational difference in the interpretation of the word 'fierce.' My brother and I were going for 'Channel your inner Korean superstar' fierce, and my parents were going for ... 'We are Korean royalty you will now be beheaded' fierce. Of note, there is no actual Korean blood in the family, Korean TV/movies is just all over the Chinese-speaking world so this is our faint interpretation [and probably misinterpretation] of the phenomenon.

Wednesday: fly back to the US.

Thursday: putz around, see my high school friends for a nice dinner and to celebrate Derek's birthday. J-S, Ted, Amy, Jeff, Rachel, Sarah, Emie, Derek, Adam + Jamie. We get gelato, yum.

Friday: Mumble goodbye to the parents as they head off for Toronto at the crack of dawn. Drive myself up to Berkeley to hang out with Alex in Peet's Coffee [and crack up the woman sitting next to us:

Jessica: Ooooh! You're the Love Doctor.
Alex: ...
Jessica: The Dating Consultant?
Woman: *Looks over at us but says nothing.*
Alex: It's the type of love that is defined by ... what do you call it ... there's a word for it ...
Jessica: Criteria?
Woman: *bursts out laughing* I think the word you're looking for is 'prostitution.'

Then we ramble around Berkeley and find me new parking and chill in my parked car with the seats back and the windows rolled down as the meter maid rolls by about 5 times without stopping, until Rita calls and says she's back from work. Then I hang out with Rita and she shows me all the amazing stuff she's been up to. Like I get to see this and this and this and this in person, and it is even more beautiful than on the computer screen. And she bowls me over by giving me this and this as well. Rita!!! You're were supposed to keep these for yourself!!! And I meekly hand over my postcard and a very small amount of blue and green fabric, for variety, after which I pour through her scrap pile and haul away hordes myself [I am terrible with large pieces of fabric]. And then we get dinner and I am very sleepy and slightly jetlagged but make it back to Palo Alto in one piece.

Saturday: Drag myself out of bed but am late anyways for a morning hike with Amy and J-S at the Dish. Meet Rachael and Trip for lunch - vegan Indian, sooooooooo good. There's a Japanese market in the plaza as well, which should be perfect for my parents: she shops, he eats.




Food count: Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, dim sum, Japanese, Indian, more Thai ... I am ONE HAPPY GIRL.

China fooding count: jian bing, jin yin man tou, donkey meat, turtle, pearl tea, fried goat cheese with tomato, a ton of bottled green tea which I love, that chocolate-covered taro popsicle I love, the carrot and egg fried dumplings at that dumpling place I adore, zha jiang mian, and of course, several rounds of BREAKFAST. Oh, the breakfast.

OK. I'm good for the next 6 months. I think.



And finally, I snapped this photo before I uploaded my pictures. It's my "fabric combination inspiration" for the Spring Blooms swap:


Rita dear, notice anything familiar? The mini-quilt has since been sent and opened [and she's even uploaded a photo already!] but I am being a tad bit lazy and will get around to it soon, I promise you! Probably with more '11th hour sewing' stories to share.

It's good to be back!

Tiptoeing into May

Yesterday was nice. It started with a real brain fart of a moment, when I was running for the M2 shuttle and as I dashed on board I realized -- oh hey, I don't have my school ID on me. Which means I don't have my wallet on me, and huh, look at that, I don't have my keys or my cell phone, either. And then I talked the driver into giving me a ride over to Cambridge anyways.

Worked on a paper, went to a wrap-up class session, came back and endured much teasing by the security guard about leaving my entire brain at home, napped, oh, glorious napping, got up and fumbled around for my cell phone charger for half an hour [after looking under the bed 3 times and under the couch even more times than that, I finally found it sitting on my sewing machine chair. Wha? You mean all that crap I've been sitting on when I sew on top of heaps of papers and such, actually contained something I might want?]

And then on the way to studying at the MFA and back again, Rachael and I saw goslings and baby ducks and there was much hand clapping and aaaaaawing and general stalking of winged specimens. Since it sounds like she'd settle for baby fowl in the bathtub in lieu of human babies [her own] for now [grad school], I think I'm going to have to find some baby duck softie patterns online this summer. I am subletting her place, after all, and I can think of no better thank you present than little goslings, popping up everywhere at unexpected moments.

Afterwards we made our way over to the movie theater [I can't believe an adult ticket is $11 now. I remember when matinees used to be $4.50!], where we met up with a bunch of people for STAR TREK!!! As a Trekkie I think I'm supposed to be moderately offended by this new rendition, but I have to say they definitely did their job of introducing the series to a whole new set of people, which is what the franchise had been in need of, anyways. And what with that time series plot twist, well, they cleverly generated both the plot for the current movie AND perfect justification for never following any of the old series for future movies. Because I'm sure there will be more to come.

And then since apparently it was Derrick's birthday, we partied it up at Landmark, by which I mean we sat around sharing strawberry cake from Sybill and chatted in a quasi competition to see how much public health dorkiness we could insert into our converations.


Oh, these cookies. They make me laugh. Awhile ago I took a plateful of chocolate chip banana bread over to my neighbor's, you remember them, and as their custom we sat and drank tea and nibbled on dried fruits and nuts and various cake-y specialities, and one that they pulled out was this pistacchio candy shown above. Apparently they'd brought it from Iran at the start of the school year and promptly proceeded to forget about them, until very recently when the box was discovered. They were still good if a little hard, so Shiva stood there whacking them with a knife handle to break them into smaller bite sized pieces, spraying powdered sugar all over the rest of us, which caused great bouts of laughter. A bit merengue-y with the lovely tint of pistacchio, I couldn't resist when they sent me home with a couple for myself. And proceeded to dust myself with powdered sugar as I whacked mine with a butter knife handle, as well.

I did not mean to get drenched today

We just stopped in for Ben & Jerry's free cone day, lured forward in the hopes of free cones after veering off our short walk in the late afternoon drizzle in search of Trader Joe's ice cream, and then we sat and enjoyed our free cones and chatted, so that when we emerged the rains were at their heaviest - mercurial as Boston rains tend to be - and then we walked home in them because homework will not wait for rains to end, Rachael in her raincoat she discovered wasn't quite as waterproof as she originally thought, the red one passed down from her mother, me in my red sweater and long jeans that dragged in puddles, so many droplets on the glasses it seemed easier to see without them on.

If one must get soaked to the bone, I can think of no better way to do it.

The good stuff

The farm was the first time I ever tried molasses straight from the bottle. Yuck, was my first reaction. Molasses is what's left over after sugar cane is processed, Lorna told me.

In other words, it's all the good stuff that's left over.

But molasses still got under my skin. I love ginger snaps, and every once in awhile the urge becomes absolutely, totally and fastidiously overwhelming.

Must. Make. Ginger. Snaps. NOW.

And so, double batch of Farmgirl Susan's molasses ginger spice snaps:


See that? That's before I added all of the flour. By the end of mixing, it was nearly teeming over the top of the bowl. Careful mixing, I tell you.

And after baking sheet after baking sheet of cookies, I still had a ton of batter left. So I made a brownie sheet of cookies as well. And then showered friends and neighbors with cookies. And still had cookies left.

My freezer, it's belly is happy. So is mine.


The recipe? Delicious. And molasses? It's growing on me.

More distractions from purple [sorry Kat!]

Inspiration is a funny creature. She creeps up on you at the strangest times, like when you're at the sink washing what feels like the upteemth load of dishes [because, oh right, you have exactly four spoons and two mugs that you use for everything, and I mean everything], or when you're trying desperately to fall asleep and there she is, dancing in front of you beckoningly, toying with the idea of merging two of your favorite crafts into one being, and its one of those moments where you are just slightly lazy enough that you don't get up and flip on the lamp and jot down the idea, so instead you just fixate and fixate and hope this fixation somehow burns a hole in your memory for tomorrow morning when the alarm goes off.

Somehow, I'm pretty sure all this fixation business conspires to keep you up even longer than if you had just flipped on the darn light.

Moving on. Remember these? It took me a long time to figure out what they would become. I played with scraps forever, put aside plans A and B for the granny squares, cast on for a long stripey scarf, frogged that, lost the brown yarn for a good 2 weeks, found it again, and then, BAM! And such is the story of the winsome, beckoning creature mentioned above.

Anyways.


This is for Kristy, a dear friend I've made here. She's the type of friend who is completely and totally understanding when you've very stupidly caught the wrong bus to meet her for hot grass jelly on a Saturday night [the same hot grass jelly drink she's been telling you about, by the way, for the past 3 months], and not only that but is totally sympathetic and understanding when this is the last straw in a very long day of straws and doesn't mind that you're going to duck out on meeting up for the night, AND THEN listens to you whine about your bad day, AND THEN waits 2 more hours for your third friend to show up, AND THEN (!!!) secretly leaves white chocolate covered pecans at your doorstep Monday morning with the sweetest, most encouraging note.

Monday morning!!! Holy cow, the girl is amazing. One of those people you grab in the middle of the hallway in school and hug for dear life because she is so amazing. One of those people you must make something for Right. Now. because they are so amazing.

Or, as "right now" exists in my world, over the space of about a week. Ahem.


I am so totally in love with this fabric, I think I need to go and order the rest that Fabricworm has in stock. I also really love the color combination in the granny squares, the raspberry is this shiny silky Debbie Bliss I picked up at the LYS awhile back. And Kristy loves pink, so I can throw a lot of "love"s into one bag for her.

The bag is just barely large enough to fit a notebook, which initially bothered me because this was supposed to be a "studying for qualifying exams" bag but now that I think about it, maybe she won't want to think back on her QE's so instead, it's just going to be a Friendship Bag. A Just Because Bag.

Just because you absolutely and totally make my day, Kristy.

[go Bears!]

One. Quarter.

Darling, at 25 you are being the wee-est tad bit impatient, wanting life to be all spelled out for you, trying hard to force a merger between intellectual interests and personal passions, that perfect meeting place between heart and the two halves of your brain [Left, meet Right]. You are creating false dichotomies all over the place, believing for many instances in the world that Haaaaaaaaahvahd claims as the way things are handled in this world. There is life beyond the ivory tower and the glass walls that prop up the battlement you now claim as your temporary home.

Meanwhile, there is daily life. And daily life, darling girl, has been given short shrift these past few months. As The Shrink said Thursday, you've placed yourself into a sort of Existentialist Limbo, suspended in time, place and disbelief until you can figure out The Life Direction, forgetting all the while that Life exists in the details, not merely in the Grand Vision.

I have been dreaming of spring. Although I cannot for the life of me fathom the change in the seasons and that warm breezes could possible curl around bare legs ever again, it is coming, surely it is, as surely as a few minutes are added to each passing day, slipped in ever so quietly so as not to attract attention. So for now I've Put Aside the Button Skirt that was Driving Me Nuts [I think I finally need to take some of my friend's up on their offer to help me duct tape myself into a dress form, and live like a wildly laughing child again, one who doesn't have to think about finding space for the dress form once the friends and laughter leave the apartment for the night], and turned instead to springtime skirts. Cotton skirts. Linen skirts. No more corduroy or wool for me, I want lightweight, I want beautiful prints, I want long summer nights and green on the trees once again.


I made bread for the second time ever last night, using Farmgirl Susan's whitebread recipe and adding in some whole wheat flour, just to pretend to myself that even if I did go and eat nearly an entire cup of flour in one sitting [hypothetically, of course], at least it was moderately healthy for me. Fiber, right? And I know they're terribly out of season, but I couldn't resist the thought of some grape tomatoes to go with the bread and mozzarella and fresh basil, plucked straight from the tiny plant sitting on my kitchen sill, so fragrant when I bend over it to add a little bit of water to the pot.


And me being me, I wind up inhaling great bit sputtering mouthfuls of this stuff, mostly because I tend to bite off more than I can chew in life, and in this instance I can't quite for the life of me fit all of the yummy flavors into a smaller package. My greatest fear, it seems, is that the tomato will burst its juices and seeds in all the wrong directions if I bite into it instead of popping it wholesale into my mouth [because using a knife for that? Inconceivable. I don't like my life that simply and tidy]. A little inelegant, just like my life.

So darling, take your impatience and set it to the wind. Let it float into some far, as-of-yet undiscovered territory at the ends of the earth where it belongs. A quarter of a century is far too soon to get things Just Right. Perfection is not a fairy that dances on rainbows in Tomorrowland. Let that go. Let her go.

Priorities, really

I should be getting ready for bed right now.

Instead, I thought I'd pop in to say, wow, how grateful am I for my freezer!


After finally cottoning on to the brilliance of freezing food - no longer need to eat the same meal 4 days in a row, helps out in a pinch, saves money, can buy bread in bulk or bake in bulk and freeze the leftovers - it's come in handy this past week. That's right, this 3 day weekend I did almost no cooking whatsoever, and now I'm dipping into the freezer stash for foods for the week.

Mm mm good. Mm mm lazy. Mm mm dish-washing procrastination [oops]. This growing up business, it is a stepwise process.