Thoughts for 2012

I’m hooked

Rotary cutter/mat – WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?

LOOK! STRAIGHT LINES! No messy edges. Also, sewing together two pieces that have nice edges is a PIECE OF FRIGGIN’ CAKE. No fiddling with trying to make things match up, or having issues with one side being significantly shorter and you miss sewing a whole chunk together and wind up with a hole in the middle of the damn thing. Nope – none of that here. PERFECT EDGES, PEOPLE.

I think this sewing thing might make the transition from intermittent hobby to full blown obsession.

I’m noticing a theme

The best holiday gifts are the ones you buy yourself the day after. Or pretty damn close to being the best.  This year I actually got 2 big things on my wishlist: an ice cream maker, and a rotary cutter and mat! I needed some extra accessories, though, to go with the mat – specifically #1, a nice ruler/tool that I can use to cut a straight line (I got the kind that has a lip on the edge to keep it in place, effectively keeping me from bumping it and accidentally cutting a crooked line), and #2, fabric!  So out to the store we went today.

I came home with a big haul of fabric. I spent like $62 at JoAnn’s, but I got enough fabric for quite a few projects (and bonus: almost all of it was clearance and JoAnn’s had an additional 50% off of their clearance fabrics). From left to right: 8.75 yards of the striped fabric for curtains, the brown and cream linen blend for a skirt, the blue/green/purple striped for PJ pants, and the blue/green animal-ish sheer for a thrift store cardigan project I want to try. Not pictured is the rainbow assortment of cheap broadcloth I bought for an idea for a cute little doll quilt/blanket I want to try out.

We’ve officially started moving my craft stuff to the downstairs office to free up the future munchkin’s room… but this place is pretty blah. Brown carpet, brown trim, brown paneled walls. If it had a mini fridge and a flat screen TV it would be the ‘man cave’ of the house… but now I get to girl it up a bit.  I really don’t want to paint the walls – panting paneling is such a PITA – but this place is so dark that I think a nice clean cream color would really make it feel brighter.  And make the colors in that blue/green striped fabric really stand out more. So that might end up on the New Year’s Weekend projects this coming weekend. Shhhh! Sean doesn’t know that yet

How we roll

Sweet potatoes cooking on the stove. 2 loaves of bread baking in the oven. One plain, another I have probably totally effed up during my whirlwind in the kitchen but I’m baking it anyway in hopes that it turns out ok. (Update: Bread turned out fine. Fluffy, even!)  I ran out of milk and sent Sean out for more and he – being the completely awesome husband that he is – brought me back a pumpkin spice latte.

I’m running back and forth from the kitchen to the living room, knitting row by row on this hat in between cooking and baking (hat pictured yesterday has been scrapped in place for a less stressful pattern. 28 stitch colorwork floats? No thanks. Not gonna happen. ). Tonight begins round 1 of the holiday festivities. Tomorrow, rounds 2 & 3. At some point we’ll exchange gifts between the two of us, but we haven’t decided on when yet.

Other than that its a pretty standard day for us. Video games. Knitting. Perusing Pinterest for craft project ideas. Catching up on laundry. That’s how we roll around here. Nothing big or special. Just the usual.

One last mad dash

I should be knitting.

This needs finished. Before tomorrow night. It’s… boring chart following. And I’m annoyed with it. Or bored. One of those.

So I keep getting distracted with the pretty poinsettias I bought on clearance last night. The house is starting to look like a greenhouse with all the plants I keep adding to the place. Not that I mind, of course.

I really should be… being productive. That hat won’t knit itself… will it? No? Damn.

Puzzled

I wanted to start a new little tradition here. Something to do instead of sitting in front of the TV playing video games or knitting and watching movies. Something we actually worked together on, since 99% of the time we just do our own things around here – me playing with my sticks and string and Sean playing his video games or working on the computer. So yesterday, while finishing up buying ONE last present for the holiday, I picked up a puzzle. A wintry-looking 1,000 piece one.  And we sat down at the dining room table, with our cups of hot cocoa, some cookies and candies, and a Christmas movie on the laptop, and got to work.

I thought this thing would keep us busy for a while, being 1,000 pieces. The last one we tried we gave up in the middle of it because I needed my coffee table space back and all the colors seemed to blend together. But we picked it out because we thought that it would be a little easier to put together since there was enough going on in it to be able to match up pieces (such as people ice skating, so finding the pieces of their clothes is easier). And now I’m thinking that this is going to go by way too fast.  And now I’m looking online at puzzles, because what I can find in the store is pretty lame compared to what I know is out there (Hmmm do I dare buy a 9,000 piece puzzle for next year? It’d definitely keep us busy all winter!)

Cookies for breakfast = awesome

I did my first ever cookie exchange last night!  I’ve never done one and had no idea what to expect, but it was fun! And, bonus, I got to bring home all of what I wanted needed. (Clearly I wanted but I didn’t need a dozen of each kind, so I took a little bit of everything home in my little cookie box. I consider this my epic win of the holiday season.)

There were lots of yummy homemade cookies. I took some eggnog spritz cookies with me and came home with all of this – I firmly believe I lucked on on this end of the exchange. My eggnog cookies were good, but not great compared to homemade pizzelles, meringues, etc. (Speaking of pizzelles, Santa won’t you please bring me a pizzelle iron one of these years? Pretty please?)

We’re officially 8 days until Christmas… and I’m extremely behind on my gift knitting. And by extremely behind I mean that I’m reaching that point where I’m starting to freak out. I severely underestimated a. how long it would take to knit a fair isle hat, b. how long it would take to knit not just one but TWO fair isle hats (the second one has yet to be started), and c. how little time I would have these last few days before the holidays to actually sit down and knit.  I think I marathon knitting session is on order for this weekend. Or scrapping these hat projects entirely, which isn’t really an option.

On a quiet evening

Orange overload

What’s a girl to do with a huge load of delicious, juicy, perfectly ripe oranges?

This is what I’m discovering today. Just what, exactly, can I do with 2/5ths a bushel of oranges aside from trying to eat as many of them as fast as I can?

Today’s project: candied orange peel. Which really doesn’t help me with my orange problem because you have to eat the oranges to have the peel (or don’t, but that’s wasteful so I don’t do that). But it does put to good use something that normally would have been composted.

I spent far too long perusing different recipes for how to make them. I thought it would be a pretty simple thing, but apparently everyone has their own technique – from how many times to boil the peels to rid it of bitterness to when to toss in the sugar coating.

So I just kinda winged it. I cut the peel in quarters, then threw in a pot of hot water to boil. And then I boiled it again a 2nd time in fresh water.

Then sliced them up. And proceed to throw them back in a pot of sugar water on the stove to simmer for a while.

Drained the peels from the sugar water, saving what was left of the syrup. This is delicious as an extra flavoring to diet Sierra Mist, by the way. I’m trying it later tonight as flavoring for some hot chocolate (orange+chocolate=HEAVEN), and – if it lasts that long – I plan on trying it mixed with the honey vanilla vodka I got last week.

Tossed the peels with sugar. There was conflicting directions on this step between the recipes I looked at. Some said to let them dry out a bit first, then toss in sugar (to prevent the sugar from clumping). Others said to toss them in sugar after draining the syrup. If I the forethought to think of it earlier, I would have divided the peels in half and tried both methods to see which results I liked best. Instead, I just tossed them all in the sugar to coat, and then laid them out on a cookie rack on a baking sheet.

And that’s now where they rest, waiting to dry.

What I’ll do with them I have no idea. I have an idea for a holiday cookie that I think these would be delicious on/in, but I’m still working on that. I’m definitely dipping some of these in chocolate. I bet they’d be pretty tasty chopped up and sprinkled on some vanilla ice cream with homemade caramel sauce.

This still doesn’t solve my orange problem, however. This used exactly 3 of them. THREE. I still have… 20?  I think tomorrow I need to do a batch of orange jelly to get rid of some of these.

Anyway.

Candied Orange Peels

What you need:

• 3 navel oranges, peeled
• Water
• 2 cups sugar, divided

BEHOLD!

I went to the liquor store and this is what I came home with! (It’s what I was drinking Saturday night at the Yelp thing)  Who wants to come over and crack this open with me?