Spring fever projects and my creative space

Thought I’d share my a couple of my spring fever projects today and what’s in my creative space.  Truthfully not feeling all that creative today because I’m SICK AGAIN! I’m going to have to scrub my entire house with Thieves Oil to disinfect it as I’m sure we are just recirculating these bugs.  However, it is a relatively warm day here (50’s ish) and sunny so it’s lifting my spirits.

Spent way too much on yarn yesterday, but excited about the projects on the docket.  These lovely pastels are for some bunnies I’m making — One for the bunny contest at Seed Stitch Fine Yarn and the others to fill Easter Baskets.  I’m not going to give up the pattern I’m using for the bunnies until after the Seed Stitch contest.  Don’t want to tip my hand.  When I’m done, I’ll show you the finished product and share the ingenious pattern I found online.

The sage green, which is hard to see the exact color way in this pic, will be for this great pocket zip vest from my new Debbie Bliss book. How cute huh?  Thought I’d make it in a gender neutral color so should we have a boy in the future it can do double duty.  I think Mazie will love stashing all sorts of treasures in these pockets.

All this yarn is Rowan All Seasons Cotton and I LOVE it.  It’s my first time knitting with it, but has a nice hand and is easy to knit.

Stepping back, I’m also spending the morning on the computer seeing what others are doing, finding inspriation via my tweeters, and looking forward to reading my new Mix Tape, which arrived last night.  Yahoo!

God I’ve missed this

We’ve had a long standing and closely guarded tradition in our family of serving a special cake to celebrate birthdays.  My paternal grandmother passed down a recipe for something called Fairy Cake.  It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.  Although my mom equates it to a “blitzed torte” by which i have no idea what she means, I still think she’s not seen anything like it either and she is a much more experienced cook than I.  When I moved out of the house my mom bought me my very own “Fairy Cake Pans”, basically two round cake pans, but in our house there was little else we would ever use them for.

It’s a fairly persnickety cake to make and requires a special, never disclosed trick, in order to achieve success.  So even if you were able to obtain the recipe by stealing it out of our cold dead hands, you still might not be able to make it. You can see how much we cherish this cake in our family.

Alas when I was diagnosed with Celiac disease, this cake was pushed to the side because we did not yet know enough about how to modify the recipe to be GF.  Years have gone by and I’ve resigned myself to having something else to celebrate birthdays with, all the while longing for some Fairy Cake.

Well with my birthday approaching, my mom lovingly started experimenting so I could have Fairy Cake this year on my special day.  She came up to watch Mazie for us this weekend for our first overnight away and surprised me with one of her experiments.

I know you’ve never seen Fairy Cake before, but it looks just like this.  It’s basically a thin layer of egg-y cake with a meringue on top, sprinkled with coconut and baked.  Two layers like this sandwich a thick whip cream layer.  Just heavenly!

Success!

Just how I remembered it.  Thanks Mum!

Fresh baked bread doesn’t last long in our house

Although feeling rotten again (seems like I’ve been sick for a month and a half) Mazie and I made bread on Friday.  It’s one of our favorite activities together.  Well cookie making tops the list, but I can’t make cookies multiple times a week.  They don’t last long around our house either, which would be a big problem for my ass.

Friday morning:

Saturday morning:

Yes, we threw a recession themed party for our two year old.

So as you know, Mazie’s birthday party was this past weekend.   Each year (yes I know, all two years now) Robbie and I try to come up with something timely as a theme.  This year it was a recession.  Nothing says fun like a recession themed two year old party, but believe me it was fun and effective.  Last year it was a campaign theme of sorts where her invite was a Mazie for President in 2008 campaign poster and her campaign slogan was Make Cupcakes not War, a nod to Johnny Cupcakes, and great inspiration for a cupcake themed birthday party.  We’re going to try to do something timely like this until she demands a Hannah Montana themed party or something like that.

So this is how the theme started off with our two dollar bill, featuring Mazie’s adorable picture.  Note the subtleties in both of the “seals” on the bill: One being a gluten free birthday reminder and the other a bit of white where we’re replaced the white house with the red house, which is of course the color of our house and looks just like this little icon.  PS I know Saturday is spelled wrong, we missed it because we were busy congratulating ourselves on the great job we did in creating this invite and coming up with this theme.

Below has to be the most adorable picture of Mazie pre-party in her party prep mode.  She’s wearing a cute birthday hat my brother in-law and his family sent to us and wearing her apron (made by a friend of mine) so she can help out with all of the pre-party prep, including cake frosting.

Cakes in progress.

The finished product. Not so bad if I do say so myself. On top are these lovely little German, wooden candle holders that are from a larger set given to my as a child from my paternal grandmother.  They are each little soldiers or members of a band.  These two were a perfect match for the green icing used to continue the green and pink money theme we had going.

Now for the crafting icing on the cake: The Goodie Bags.  I’m very proud of this idea, which I’ve called the Baby Bail Out Bag — again as a nod to all things timely in this economy.

Thank goodness my mother in-law was in town to help because these would not have turned out so well and I would have been up late into the night sewing away, resulting into a cranky mummy the next day. She lovingly stitched up the bags, even adding a decorative stitch at the top.  She was so smart in her process as well.  She folded/ironed over the top edge on the entire length of yardage and stitched it down before she cut out each individual bag, making the process much easier and faster than my approach which would have been to cut and sew each one individually.  This way she had a couple of nice long sewing seams and then only had to stitch up the edges of the bags once they were cut from the longer yardage.  Note: the fabric was from my stash and was formerly curtains in our living room.  Yahoo I get recycling points on this one too.

Robbie then drew $ signs on them with Sharpie and we stuffed them with this great play money I found (one big set for ~$20, which we divided up) and some chocolate coins that I carefully researched to make sure they were not ones laced with Melamine from a scare earlier this year.

To sum it up, this party was a huge success.  We have such a wonderful group of friends and family who make events like this truly enjoyable.  The kids were great — no major meltdowns, confrontations, etc.  We had just the right amount of food.  Mazie recieved lovely little treats from her friends — books we didn’t have before, great art supplies, or thoughfully made handmade gifts and wrapping which are all truly appreciated in this house.  So thanks to all those that came.  Hope this post inspires those who might be throwing parties soon.  PS. To a few guest I forgot to give you a bag in the nuttiness and and to one quest we found a bag of cash on the step the next morning.  Feel free to let me know and you can claim your prize next time we meet.

A dose of spring in the winter

I’m so excited about the completion of my latest project.  It was my first attempt at making a pair of socks.  Just a simple knit three purl one rib and a stockinette foot, but look how great they turned out.  I’ve always heard people say there is nothing like a hand knit pair of socks and you know what?  They are totally right!  They feel so good on my feet.  One is a little bigger than the other because I was a loose knitter at the beginning of my sock adventure.  However, once you put them on, no one is the wiser and my feet don’t seem to notice either.

This yarn (I’m sorry I can’t remember what it is or find the sleeve) is such a lovely dose of spring color in the middle of winter.  I’ve already started my second pair of socks.  I’ll give you an on the needle preview soon.

This is another nutty week in our house.  I’m only just starting to recover from this HORRIBLE bug plaguing me for the last couple of weeks.  Mazie’s birthday is tomorrow and I can’t believe she is turning two.  I’m having a harder time with two than I did one.  When she turned one I thought oh this is so great she’s one, but two seems like such a big milestone for me.  It seems like a transition from having a baby to having a kid.  Part of me feels like oh my god she’s been here for two whole years and the other part feels like I can’t believe she’s only been around for two years.  Life would just not be the same without her.

Party festivities will commence this weekend and she is very excited.  She keeps talking about how at the party we’ll have cake and ice cream, balloons, all her friends will come, there will be presents, and we’ll sing and dance.  Seriously, could you ever ask for more than that in a birthday?  What a great thing to be turning two and to be surrounded by singing dancing friends and family who are all eating sweets.  Anyhew, lots of preparations in the days to come.  I’ll share the results with you in the coming days.

SAWA 2000

My mom often made Spritz cookies as part of her very extensive Christmas cookie making endeavor every year. Spritz cookies are traditional Scandenavian cookies most often made around Christmas time. The name Sprtiz comes from “spritzen”, which is German for “to squirt or spray. You have to use a cookie press, basically a cookie caulk gun. Tools for chicks.

I’ve always remembered them fondly, but unfortunately haven’t eaten them for years since discovering I was a Celiac (gluten intolerance). Recently, I’ve become more bold in my gluten free baking adventures, understanding a bit more about the chemistry needed to create tasty treats without the benefit of the gluten-y stuff. I saw a recipe recently for gluten-free sprtiz cookies in Living Without Magazine and begged my mom to pull out our old cookie press and pass it along to me. [Spritz cookies have since been dropped from her xmas cookie mania.] Below is a glimpse into the Spritz cookie making paraphernalia.

I am also delighted at just how 70’s the packaging and design is for this SAWA 2000 and the name is so futuristic.

Anyhew this picture is not great, but you get the idea. They turned out pretty well in terms of the overall process. The dough squeezed out nicely through the press. I wasn’t thrilled with the taste. I wanted them to be butteryer and sweeter, but I will experiment some more and try to perfect for Christmas next year. WARNING: It made a TON of cookies. I gave away half and we still had an army of practice cookies to ingest.

It’s the simple things in life

I’ve been interested in the hand knitted wash clothes phenomenon for quite some time but was inspired to give them as a gift from the Purl Bee tutorial. However, as a gift for a non-knitter I thought it would be more practical to make them out of a wash and dry yarn rather than a hand wash and lay flat yarn.  These were made with Mission Falls Marino Superwash.

I think it takes a special gift recipient to appreciate the work that goes into something so everyday, but made with love. These were a gift I’ve just given a lifelong and childhood friend for her wedding shower. I hope they bring a little bit of joy during those every day moments.

I think I’ll make some of these for us out of Euroflax.  Stay tuned.

Aren’t you jealous?

I have always had a certain obsession with curly ribbon.  I love a colorfully wrapped present with a big pile of curly ribbon on top.  Thus I’ve amassed a fairly large stash of different ribbons to adorn gifts.  If truth be told , in recent years there has been a significant decrease in the use of curly ribbon on gifts in our house as our cat Cash is equally obsessed with the stuff…but he eats it…and then pukes it up.  Thus presents under our tree are no longer allowed to have curly ribbon.  All you have to do is crack the closet door and he can smell the stuff.  Over he runs with this cute but pathetic look on his face that says “oh please just let me play with it for a little bit, eat it, and then puke it up. I love it.”

Anyway, if you don’t live in our house and your gift will be quickly sheparded out, I will adorn it with lots of curly ribbon.  To contain the fray, Robbie (my husband as a reminder) made me this.

I LOVE IT!  It’s a simple board with pegs inserted and it didn’t take him that long, but I truly love it and one of my new favorite things.  I think it’s going to totally reinvent my curly ribbon life.  I bet you’re jealous that you don’t have one of these too?  Isn’t it great?

Christmas crafting…keeping family tradition alive

My grandmother was a wonderful crafter. She knit, crocheted, sewed, cross stitch, etc. Any handmade gift from her was an absolute gem. She made each of my siblings an embellished felt Christmas stocking. I’ve cherished it for as long as I can remember and always thought I would make one for my child on day. The stockings she made us were from these great kits from various companies, each one unique and special for the recipient. I was so excited to find so many options from which to choose for my first one for Mazie. The picture below shows my stocking, made by my grandmother 30 years ago, on the left and the one I’ve just made for Mazie on the right. I’m hopful Mazie will cherish it as much as I have mine. When I showed it to her, a huge grin came over her face and she said “Mummy I like it”. Pretty good marks from your toddler.

Here’s a little more detail on my stocking. The pattern was from Dimension Crafts

I had so much fun with the project, I think I’ll work on a tree skirt as well and I’m certain any new additions to our family will be receiving them as well.

Another retraction of previous toilet paper tube comments

I guess I never let my mind open up to the possibility of the toilet paper tube.   See this lovely idea from Claire Robertson of Loobylu where she uses biodegradable tubes as pots to start seeds.  I think we’ll have to adopt this method for our seed starting efforts this spring.