a short break from totes

Andria is getting married at the end of the month and thought the knit clutches I make would be a nice gift for her bridesmaids. I took a break from all the tote bags I've been making recently to knit these up for her.



The pink one seems to change color depending on the light. I took this picture last night as soon as I'd attached all the handles.



And then took this one (and all the others that come after this one) this afternoon when I stopped at home to pick up the bags I was shipping out tonight. Interesting.



I like the lining for this one. It's cherry blossoms with little birdies on them, though I think the way this one turned out, there's only one bird showing (and not in this pictures).



Here's the red one. I like the way the stripes turned out on it.



And the innards for the red one.



And the green one. I guess this one looks different in the daylight as well.



And the lining for the green one.

It was nice to take a break from all the sewing - the way our living room is set up, my sewing area is perpendicular to the television so I can't really watch anything while I work, but when I knit I can sit in front of the TV while I work. These were made while watching lots of Law & Order, Deadwood, and the Jason Bourne trilogy. It's fun to be a productive couch potato.



The cats have a new fun game to play. It's called run in front of the camera every time I'm about to take a picture. I think this is George.

geometric goodness

I've posted a lot of pictures of totebags in the last billion months, but there will be a short reprieve, probably tomorrow. I made three knit clutches over the weekend, but I haven't attached the handles yet. While I was waiting for the finish on the handles to dry, however, I did finish sewing up this tote bag for Melissa. I know her from the internets, where her screen name is melissainabq. For months I misread her name as melissainabbq, until it was pointed out to me that her name was a reference to where she's from (Albuquerque), not some bizarre inside joke about being trapped inside a barbeque, as I had thought.



Anyway, Melissa is getting married in April and wanted to give a tote bag to her maid-of-honor. She told me a little about her maid-of-honor's style, and I sent her some pictures of fabric, and she picked out this lovely geometric number. This is my favorite fabric right now. It's just so...mod. Or something. I wish I'd bought more of it when it went on sale in December. I didn't realize how much I'd like it when I found it on the internets.



And the innards. I also am a big fan of this stripey fabric on the inside.

P.S. As much as I hate turning the clock forward for daylight savings time, at least it will help me take more pictures that don't suck.

fetch!

I made a post the week before going to Boston mentioning that I was making a pair of fingerless gloves. I finished before going to Boston, and wore them there when my fingers were cold, and then failed to take a picture of them. And now that I've taken a picture of them, it's officially too warm to wear them in San Diego. (Really, there's only like a five week window of "winter" where knitwear is necessary, and it's only necessary if you've lived here long enough to acclimate to the climate. "Winter" here is very much like late spring in Seattle.)

Anyway, here is a picture that proves how unnecessary they are right now.



That's my hand. In front of a blooming cherry blossom tree. It's been like 70 here for the past week.

So if you look at the original pattern, you can see that there are three twisty cables around the model's wrist. If you take a look at the picture above, you can see (sort of) that I only have two twisty cables around my wrists. I apparently forgot to do the third set when I was knitting the first glove, and I didn't realize it until I got to the second, so I just made both with two cables instead so they'd match. They still were long enough to make it up into my coat sleeve, so they served their purpose.

ALSO! Stay tuned this month, I made a (small) mistake in sewing a (small) tote bag a few weeks ago (I used black straps instead of teal). When I finish my totebag making extravaganza, I'll have some sort of giveaway of the mistake bag. I also need to figure out how to run a contest through the blog, since I haven't done that before.

The giveaway will not be this bag (which I have been using for myself for the last week), but it will be similar to this bag:



As you can see here, they are good for holding paperback books and all other sorts of crap:

surprise!

It's another tote bag. This is one of the big ones, and it's for Flannery of Mediacrity.

Front:



Innards:



Angled view that I seem to like:



Sorry for the ridiculously short post, but it's late and I'm sleepy. I did manage to take pictures of this before we headed out to run some errands this afternoon before having dinner with Ian and Lisa (read: before it got dark, so the pictures aren't as terrible as they usually are).

Also, I realize that the last sentence was poorly constructed, but I am too lazy to edit it.

some things I baked

Lorne and I don't really celebrate Valentine's Day with big gifts or fancy dinners or anything. This year he had an abstract for a conference due the next day, so we ended up celebrating (in our minimal way) on the 15th. Lorne made gigantic T-bone steaks encrusted with blue cheese and port wine sauce, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Encrusted meats are delicious.

I made dessert.



This is a cheesecake with toffee bits (still in the springform pan). I found the recipe at Culinary Concoctions by Peabody. I haven't made a cheesecake since I was 16 because I've never had a springform pan before (I made the one when I was 16 in a pan borrowed from my friend's family, then gave them the cheesecake). We got this for our wedding and I figured it was high time to break it in.



I was quite pleased with how easily the cheesecake came out of the pan.



Here are the apples that went on top. They were the most delicious part of the cheesecake. Apples + butter + sugar = yum.



And here's the caramel I made for the top. I cooked it a little longer than I should have - the sugar mixture went from clear to caramel colored pretty quickly. It tasted a wee bit burnt, but not so much that we couldn't eat it. I failed to take a picture of everything all put together, so just imagine that the beautiful picture on Peabody's blog is what ours looked like.

I was pretty happy with how it turned out, especially seeing as how I completely messed up Lorne's lemon meringue birthday pie the previous week.



It looks normal here, doesn't it? But then Lorne cut it open, and this was what was hiding under the pretty meringue:



Lemon meringue soup. I missed the step in the recipe that said to pre-bake the crust, so the crust was all mushy and the lemon goo got all goopy and gross. Blagh. In my defense, I've only made two pies before in my entire life, and both of those were many years ago. I'm more of a cake person.

Emily Jo's bag

Emily Jo emailed me and told me she liked the bag I made for Megan and asked if I could make one in pink and black. I apologize for the short post, but it's late and I spent most of the day cutting things out and sewing them in an attempt to 1) build stock for PenguinBot and 2) update my blog more often. As a result, I am tired.



Also, because it is late and I have no natural daylight, the pictures aren't great. I didn't want to wait though, because after work tomorrow we're going to see Greg Mortenson (author of Three Cups of Tea), and by the time that's done, there will again be no daylight.



I originally bought the polka dot fabric to make a sun dress for myself, but seeing as how I'm pregnant and have no idea when I'll be back down to a size where I'd be interested in wearing a sun dress (let alone making one), I decided to make bags out of it. There are more bags using it forthcoming. I can always buy more fabric when I get around to making a dress.



Emily Jo said she didn't care what shade of pink I used, she just asked that the fabric not be too busy. Considering my history of using busy fabrics, I was glad she let me know. I probably would have used something with crazy flowers and polka dots and stripes all combined. I hope she likes it.

there will be real posts soon

I'd like to say that I've been really busy in the last week and a half, but I'd be lying to you. If I start lying to you now about little things like being busy, soon I'll start lying to you about larger things, like where I spent last weekend, or how old I am, or who makes all the crap I post in my blog. Anyway, I finished my fingerless gloves before going to Boston, but then failed to take a picture of me wearing them in Boston. As soon as I find them I'll put up a picture of the finished goods. In the interest of proving to you that I wasn't lying about Boston, here is a picture of me with a Bostonian statue:



Actually, I am wearing the gloves in this picture, but the sleeves of Lorne's coat are long enough that they went past my knuckles.

After getting home from Boston, I slept a lot. I attempted to start knitting some legwarmers, but after three rows they bored me. I finished sewing one coin purse out of the five I have cut out. And I sat around a lot. And slept. I blame this guy:



Then, my sister-in-law had a baby! Of course, she lives in Denver, and I won't get to meet the little munchkin for at least a few months, but this exciting news distracted me from getting any work done for at least two days, waiting for news and pictures and to find out her name (which I still don't know, but it sounds like her nickname will be Zaley). She's adorable and I wish we could go to Denver now.

fetching

I've been planning on making fingerless gloves for awhile. Long ago, before I could knit in the round, I worked in an office in Seattle. They moved my team to the top floor, which had gone uninhabited for several years. We moved in the winter and the heat never really got going, but the air conditioner worked well enough in the spring and summer that I used a fleece blanket year-round at my desk. When I wasn't typing, I stuck my non-mouse-using hand inside the blanket. I refused to buy fingerless gloves for typing because I could, in theory, make them if I took the time to teach myself knitting in the round. But alas, I was lazy.

Last year I saw this pattern on Knitty. I'd started to knit my first project in the round (which I should make a post about another day...it went horribly, horribly wrong) and I had some pretty alpaca yarn from Churchmouse (an awesome yarn and tea store on Bainbridge Island, in Washington) that I'd bought purely because it was pretty and soft, but I got distracted. Then it was too warm out to think of needing fingerless gloves.

I've only really attempted cables once before, a few years ago when I thought about knitting a cabled scarf for my sister. I decided I hated the yarn I was using though (it wasn't soft enough and it made a weird noise on my needles) and bound off after a few inches, making a weird cuff thing which I then used to torment my cat.



Poor Gracie.



So this is my first real attempt at cables and my first real attempt at gloves. As strange as this may sound, I don't usually knit things for myself. I have a big orange purse, a pink scarf, and a purple hat, but that's about it. But my hands have been cold at work lately and I'm going to Boston this weekend, so I figured I'd use my pretty blue alpaca yarn and finally attempt the Fetching pattern from Knitty.

Here's what I have so far.





I'm about halfway done with the left one. My pictures suck, as usual, but I seem to only do well with natural light and it's almost 11, so whatever. You can sort of see the cables. They look pretty nice in person, all twisty and even and such. I think the yarn is Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk, but I'm too lazy to go into the other room and read the label on the other skein. It's quite soft and nice to knit with. I'm excited about wearing them.

If you've never heard of an alpaca, here is a picture.



They're like super hairy llamas.

blog friend!

My friend Grant just started a new blog. I think Grant is hilarious and, dear readers, I would not want to deprive you of hilarity. Grant's blog features lists of things he ate, a crockpot score card, and funny stories. New features are probably being added AS I TYPE THIS.

Bac-Log, The most important blog in the history of time, a tribute to food (also known as "one of the requirements of survival") by someone who will eat almost anything. WARNING: May be heavy on bacon-related posts.

Grant will eat almost anything. Last year at Spring Training he ate nachos off the ground.

cherry limeade cupcakes

I made these on Thursday/Friday. I love them. It took all of my willpower to not eat all of the leftovers on Saturday.

As you may have noticed, I like cupcakes. I like them so much that I read a blog every day that is dedicated to nothing but pictures of cupcakes and interviews with owners of cupcake cafes and things of that sort (Cupcakes Take the Cake). A few days ago they put a picture up from Ooh, You Tasty Little Things. It was of cherry limeade cupcakes. I've been drinking a lot of limeade lately, so I knew I had to have them.



We had people over for dinner on Friday, so I figured it was a good excuse to make them - I couldn't eat them all myself.



I like swirly frosting, and Lorne used our lime for gin & tonics, so I omitted the lime wedge from the decorations. You can also see our pretty gold countertop here. =)



I put some green sprinkles on the top. Green = lime, right? I'm also pretty proud of these pictures. As you know, I'm a terrible photographer, and these are pretty decent.

a smaller tote

Well, not smaller than the Big Ben tote or the cupcake tote, but smaller than the larger totes I've been making in this style (like Heidi's bag and Tia's bag). Megan emailed me and asked if I could make her a vinyl-bottomed tote, but she didn't really need it to be as gigantic as the ones I've been making. Sometimes it doesn't occur to me that people might not want to put everything they own in their bag and carry it around with them all day. So here's what I came up with:



I played with sizing a little bit until I found the fabric-to-vinyl ratio I liked on the larger totes.



This one still holds a fair amount of stuff - you could easily fit a paperback book on top of your wallet, keys, phone, etc. Megan emailed me a few days ago to make sure I'd put a pocket in for her train pass and her cell phone. I also have cell phone stuck in the bottom of the bag issues, so of course I complied.



My sewing machine decided it didn't want to sew the straps for this one. I'm not quite sure why - I didn't do anything differently for these straps than I did for the straps on Big Ben. I ended up having to throw one strap out and start over again, after I broke three needles on it and snapped the thread three or four times. I also bled on it a little bit after stabbing my finger. I figured Megan wouldn't appreciate that so much. It all worked out in the end though.

And one more picture, because I'm happy with how the pictures turned out:

baking

I got a KitchenAid Mixer for Christmas (from my fabulous mommy). As a result, I've been baking more than I used to. (I used to have my mom's old Mixmaster that she got from her first wedding...about 32 years ago - it shook and rattled, and if I used it too much, it smoked.) I decided that baking falls into the realm of this blog, so I will put pictures of things I bake in here, starting with some cupcakes I made last week. I'll put the cupcakes I made last night up a little later. (This was also in my myspace blog, but my myspace is private...so I'm putting it here too.)

I made cupcakes to take to an MSTP party. The cupcakes were vanilla with cherry filling and a meringue frosting. I don't have any pictures of the rest of the cupcake making process because it wasn't very interesting, but we documented the frosting completion.


These are the cupcakes after frosting, before torching. The recipe said to "use your finger to make the frosting look interesting."


As you can see, I'm very excited. Also, you can see our lovely orangey-gold countertop. The retro-70s look is in, right?


Here I am, setting the first cupcake on fire. Also, I kind of look like a linebacker. I blame the baby.


Torching up close.



I feel that the torch will become useful on marshmallows in the future. I have a recipe for smores cupcakes that I've been dying to try, this would be awesome for the frosting.


Torches are a good way to involve your husband with baking. He enjoyed setting cupcakes on fire as much as I did.


Lorne torches a cupcake while some finished cupcakes look on.

I really enjoyed using the kitchen torch. Way more than I probably should have. The torch also came with some little creme brulee dishes, so perhaps I'll make that soon. And also the smores cupcakes. I'm going to get really fat....but at least I can use the baby as an excuse until June.

I see London, I see...

Well, just London. Lisa of Homesick Wanderlust is an anglophile and an avid traveler. When she's not traveling, she's planning her next trip. Several months ago she took a weekend trip. To London. I was so jealous. Lisa shares my love for all things British, especially London. She asked if I could make a Big Ben bag, so I did (four months after she asked...but I digress).


This picture came from Wikipedia. I tried to find a good picture of Big Ben from my trips to London, but mine are all crap. Surprise, surprise.

Just in case you haven't heard of Big Ben, it's a big clock tower attached to Parliament in London. Actually, it's not even the clock - the clock is just The Clock Tower (how clever). Fact: Big Ben is actually the bell housed within The Clock Tower. Fact: Big Ben can climb trees faster than it can run. (Okay, not really. That's bears, according to Dwight Schrute.)



Here we see the Big Ben bag on the lovely brownish carpet that covers our new apartment floor. Sadly, new apartment does not mean new and improved picture taking skills. Though, to be fair to me, I intended to take pictures this afternoon when maybe there would still be some natural light coming in to our living room. But my ultrasound lasted much longer than I expected, then we had to pick up the Subaru, and then it was dark and rainy.



Lisa was interested in a lining fabric that would exude Britishness. Something reminiscent of Burberry plaid. Burberry is a British "luxury fashion house," their tan/black/red plaid is widely copied everywhere. PLEASE NOTE: this fabric is NOT Burberry plaid (which isn't even called plaid, they call it "Burberry Check"), I am not trying to pass it off as Burberry anything, I have no association with Burberry. Please don't sue me Burberry. It's just a plaid fabric in similar colors.



Anyway, my original plan was to use red vinyl under the cut out of Big Ben, ahem, I mean The Clock Tower, but I liked the way the plaid (NOT Burberry plaid) fabric looked underneath, so I used that instead. Dr. Pants suggested I use a button for the face of the clock after he saw me struggling with the placement of a circle of black vinyl. I had a red button, it looked cute, so I used it. Hooray Dr. Pants!



Here's another attempt at a decent picture. George kept getting in the way though. I think he thinks he matched the (NOT Burberry) plaid.

rubber ducky, you're the one

Daria likes pink, rubber ducks, and purses that aren't too big.



She also has a hunting knife she carries around with her most of the time, so I tried to make a pocket to accommodate that. Hopefully it will work - she sent me the measurements, and I stuck a sideways pocket in that should fit it. If it doesn't maybe she can stick pens in there or something. =)



There are two small metal snaps to close the bag, off center to make room for the diagonal pocket.



Again with the terrible photography. The hospital didn't cure me of that.

coin purses, part 1

I mentioned back in this post that I was going to put my nose to the grindstone and try to churn out some stuff to build inventory for the PenguinBot website. Well, I made a few coin purses, but then I went to Berkeley and got stuck there for six weeks. Here are the first five coin purses from the gone awry coin purse week of October.



From the top, clockwise: birdy, Ohio, Washington (state), Washington (president), California.



Here they are all arranged pretty-like. The second five will be finished sometime this weekend (barring any unforeseen hospital visits).