Favorite Things- 2009

Favorite Books-
Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente. This gorgeous story about people finding a place they belong was hands down my favorite fiction out of the 400 or so books I've read in the last year. It stands out strongly. I really envy anyone who hasn't read it because they will get the chance to read it for the first time and I never will again.

Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey. A definite change from the Kushiel books, this book is about a young girl who is the child of a genetically altered soldier, she was born utterly without fear in a "safe zone" town between the US and Mexico. It's got a somewhat comic book feel to it and is very well written. As much as I like the new Naamah series, this was my favorite book by her this year.

The Illustrated Hassle-Free Make Your Own Clothes Book, don't be fooled by the clean cut girl on the cover. This is a re-release of an old hippie how to make your own clothes book. It's non-technical very easy to make simple clothing and just a lot of fun.

Cookin' With Coolio, a book I'm actually surprised made the list, but it's laugh out loud funny with some great easy recipes including some good vegetarian ones. I'm thinking of buying a copy of this for my sister.

Favorite new albums-
Marian Call's Got to Fly- Marian Call is a local singer I really love in a big nearly fangirl way. Our whole family enjoys going to her live shows. Last year for Christmas Mike got me a copy of Vanilla and I was hooked. Got to Fly is her Browncoat inspired album. I'll Still Be A Geek After Nobody Thinks It's Chic could be a geek anthem and it's lovely to listen to, It Was Good For You Too is her Saffron song and my best friend's favorite song on the album. Mike's favorite song is It's Good To Have Jayne On Your Side. Vera Flew the Coop is an imagined back story for the woman the gun is named for. I love the whole album.
Street Sweeper Social Club Boots Riley from political hip hop group The Coup (also very worth checking out) and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave released this album earlier this year. It's "music for the revolution". Tom wrote the music, Boots wrote the lyrics. Very political, very anti-establishment sung by Boots to Tom's driving hard rocking music. I love this album.  Two of the songs were previously released in the NIN/JA tour download if you got that when they went on tour.
Who Killed Amanda Palmer? alternate release. I don't know if this still available or not, but the original album is for sure. Hey, it's Amanda F****** Palmer working with Ben Folds. Favorite songs off the album- Ampersand and Blake Says, but the whole album is wonderful. If the alternate release is still available, there was a song on that was co-written with her boyfriend. I love his songs. I have the LaM songs he wrote and they are constantly on my playlists. Hopefully he'll write more songs with Amanda.
S.J. Tucker's Quartered- Songs of Palimpsest, the album stands alone I think, but if you've read the book.. favorite songs- The Girl With the Lion's Tail, We Are Shangri-La and November.

E's favorite new artists- Auriplane. She puts everything up for free, and E loves her music. E's favorite is Dancing Mad, and Marian Call.
William's favorites for the year are Voltaire, Street Sweeper Social Club and Tom Smith. Tom Smith's albums are on sale until the 3rd. Tom Smith is a filker who sings about all sorts of geekdoms William is a fan of.

Tom Smith, S.J. Tucker, Amanda Palmer and Auriplane links are to their sites. All other links are Amazon.com.

Name badges - rainbow beads printable

I recently got some Post-It Super Sticky Name Badges and decided to play around with a couple designs for making printable badges. If you don't want to buy a pack of labels, you can print it out on regular paper and use repositionable glue on the back. The PDF is HERE.

When my kids were babies I labeled *everything* I could in the house. The theory being that people refer the items regularly like the refrigerator and the television and seeing the word on the thing would help them associate letters to words quicker. People teased me about it of course, wondering if I'd forget what a door was, but I think it did help. I used masking tape and permanent markers. Repositionable easily removed labels would have been so much better. I'm not sure if anyone else can use this idea, but I did make a set of 8 labels with a few common household things on them.

You can download that pdf HERE.

The printables work with Avery 5395 or compatible.

New Crochet - Doily Earring Holders

I don't have a lot of use for doilies really. Every surface in my home except chairs seems to have books on it. Books decorate my home like knick knacks, paperbacks, hardbacks, vintage craft books, novels and more outdated unabridged dictionaries than anyone should have (which come in very handy for pressing flowers). Pretty lace bookmarks sure, but doilies, not so much.

I love making doilies though. I wind up giving a lot of them away to friends. Other than that, I also make bun holders and pretty lacy cozies for my nano which I get a lot of compliments on at the gym.

I picked up some size 10 thread and some macramé type brass rings at a local thrift store, and while I was watching tv this weekend with my husband, I decided they would work nicely for doilies made to fit to hang my earrings from. I'm awfully happy with how they turned out but I didn't keep notes while I was working.

I think using any doily pattern you like would work. Just follow the pattern until it's just shy of fitting in the ring, then attach it with crochet to the ring at regular intervals and add a loop for hanging. I don't use patterns for doilies. Working out the geometry and math for one while I'm crocheting is fun.

The patterns for skulls, penguins, roses and snowflakes are all available for free at Beadwork at BellaOnline, the chocolate covered strawberries, lollipops and ice cream cone patterns are part of a set you can buy at my Etsy store.

The holidays were fantastic. The teens loved their ipods, everyone ate well. Dad was happy with his present because all we got him was lots and lots of chocolate and cookies. Mike got me a new office chair with a built in massager. It feels good. I threatened to move into my office because it's so comfortable.

Honey Shortbread with printable recipe card

Down to crunch time for holiday gifts. Hopefully this helps!

I made this shortbread using a locally produced honey from Chugiak Heights Alaskan Honey. It's a wonderful wildflower honey with lots of flavor. You can either buy good local honey or gourmet honey and tie on the recipe cards or you could bake a few batches of shortbread and package it prettily with the recipe cards. I love shortbread and I'm working on an e-book of different recipes for it. This is one of my favorite variations. I used a combination of honey and white sugar, the honey adds a subtle warm flavor to the shortbread.

I used a white whole wheat unbleached flour for mine because it's one of the flours my family likes best.

Honey Shortbread
makes 8 wedges
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
2 Tablespoons honey
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 cup flour
Preheat oven to 300° F or 150°C
Cream butter, honey and sugar together.
Add half of flour, then add in the rest in increments until
dough is crumbly. Knead in the rest of the flour making
a soft workable dough. Pat into an 8 inch round cake pan.
Decorate edges with a fork and pierce with fork.
Score the wedges with a sharp knife. Bake for 20 minutes.
Turn off oven and let rest in hot oven for 10 minutes.
Take it out and cut wedges while still warm.
To decorate the shortbread with a fork, go around the edges with the flat of it to make pretty little score lines all around, then pierce the shortbread with the tines of the fork. Cut into 8 pieces.

For the recipe card, click on the image for the full sized version and print at 300 dpi or I have put it in a layout of 3 cards on one page in a PDF file you can download HERE

Happy Holidays!

Printable 2010 Calendar and Template

This image is just a preview. The actual printable is high quality in PDF format. You can download that HERE. The first page of the pdf is the calendar as shown. The second page is a blank version you can mask off the calendar and use with rubber stamps to decorate or color it in by hand.
The font is Sylph by Paul Lloyd.

I also have a template available in PNG format, 150 ppi, 16x24 inches that can be used in a graphics program to design tea towel calendars that can be printed by Spoonflower. If you donate any amount over 1.00 to my site in the next couple of weeks, I'll happily send you the file. Donation button is in the sidebar.

Right Angle Weave Photo Pendant

It's reversible. The other side is Glinda the Good. I used the art from the wicked little box.
You can find instructions for this pendant here.

Homemade Coffee Creamer - part 2

After the first batch of creamer was gone, I picked up a bunch of extracts from the grocery store since they are on sale now for holiday baking.
This one tastes almost like a Nutty Irishman. To make it..
In a blender mix
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 can of non-fat milk (fill the sweetened condensed milk can with regular milk)
1/4 cup instant dry milk
1 tsp. almond extract
2 tsp. vanilla/butternut extract (it's an imitation extract)
3 Tbs. powdered cocoa (I used Dagoba)
Sugar to taste- brown sugar in our case. My daughter loves brown sugar in her coffee.
Blend.
Pour into a jar.
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The picture has 2 Tbs. of creamer in my normal coffee.
If you don't know me and coffee, well, it's sort of essential. I'm addicted to it. I brew my coffee very strong with dark beans and I'm very choosy about the beans. I buy local roasted coffee that's dark and oily. A good French roast should be shiny with all the happy oils in coffee. A non-shiny bean is usually a bit burnt and bitter. The end result is something my husband says is "Illegal experiments in dark matter."  My coffee laughs at the attempt of milk alone to lighten it. So 2 Tbs. of this creamer in a normal cup of coffee would probably turn it a bit lighter.
I saw E lick her finger off after adding some homemade creamer to her coffee recently. I don't know if she did that with the full of oil and odd chemical names store bought stuff or not. I do know that it made me really very glad that I knew all the ingredients in this and how much of each were in it.

Peppermint Twist Box

I actually have a couple peppermint twist boxes up on my printables page, the first one is a 2x2 box, the second is a tea box made for holding tea bags, and the third is an earring box.
This is just a standard 3x3x1 inch box.
I was thinking about doing some bag toppers with a similar design for putting peppermint hot cocoa mix in.
Click on the image for the full sized version. I hope you like it!
I also think I want to do more tea bag boxes. They are some of my favorites and my daughter has taken to drinking a lot of herbal infusions lately.
She tested out one of the shortbread recipes I'm working on for a new e-book and accidentally melted the butter. It wound up being different than my usual flaky light shortbread. Smoother and less flaky, it baked up thinner as well. Tasted great, it was just different. Not better, not worse, just different. 

Homemade coffee creamer

My daughter loves those flavored coffee creamers. You know the ones. Full of goodness like Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil or Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate. Um.. yum?

I wanted to come up with an alternative that didn't make me feel like I might be poisoning her morning cup of coffee.

I wanted no corn syrup, natural flavoring and low fat.

This "recipe" or method is highly adaptable.

So I talked to her, and we decided to try a chocolate creamer.
Evaporated milk is milk with 60% of the liquid removed. Sweetened condensed milk is similar, it's milk that's had a lot of the water removed, and in the case of Eagle Brand, it's sweetened with sugar.

In a blender, I mixed
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1 can of full of non-fat milk
1/4 cup of instant non-fat dry milk.

 A couple tablespoons has a lot of calcium in it, but if you are allergic to cow milk, you can try it with condensed goat's milk. To that I added
 1/4 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup of a good organic cocoa powder
 2 Tablespoons of vanilla extract

 Blend for a minute to get everything mixed and pour into a jar.

Both my eldest and E tried it in their next cups of coffee and both loved it. Since it's a very thick milk, it whitens the coffee nicely. The fat came from the condensed milk, but it's pretty low-fat and you can buy low fat condensed milks that have even less fat.

I used brown sugar because it's what my daughter prefers in her coffee, you can omit the sugar completely if it's sweet enough with just sugar in the condensed milk. If you use evaporated milk and the non-sugar sweetener of your choice you can make a coffee creamer that's sugar-free.

If you want fancier flavors, you can use extracts or candy flavors.

Works fine in hot or cold coffee. Probably not an issue for most people, but the only time my family drinks hot coffee is if it's just finished brewing. Mostly we all prefer it cold.

Today we are roasting chestnuts! Yum yum! Other than that, I'm working on a pendant, and still working on a scarf for my son for the holidays.

Shampoo bars

I'm reading a book on soapmaking and E and I are planning to make our first small batch soon with encouragement from Barbara (thank you again!). Right now I'm in the marketing part of the book and it reminded me of one of my biggest marketing gripes about shampoo bars. Lack of any sort of instruction past "Run bar across scalp and lather".
I'm mostly "no-poo" which means I don't generally use shampoo. I usually wash my hair with a paste of baking soda, rinse that out, then rinse my hair with diluted vinegar. The exception is shampoo bars.
I *love* shampoo bars. They are convenient. I use them at the gym as an all-over wash, I use them in my shower when I'm feeling like I want lather and scent.I usually get the Essential Shampoo Bar from Gladheart Acres.It smells lovely and works very well for me and I've recommended it to lots of friends who want to transition off of detergent commercial shampoos.
Unfortunately, a lot of people give up on shampoo bars. One of the most common problems is that they feel they leave a residue. Especially if they try first with something like Burt's Bees shampoo bar which is great for dreadlocks, less good for the rest of us, so it does feel less than clean.
Another problem is that while you use commercial shampoos which are pretty harsh, your scalp produces a lot of oil to counteract that harshness, so you shampoo to keep your hair from looking oily and it's a cycle. When you make the switch off shampoo to no-poo methods or to a good shampoo bar there is an adjustment time and your hair will seem oilier than normal because you aren't stripping it anymore and it's still producing the same amount of oil from when you were stripping. But honestly, if oily hair has always been a problem for you, getting off the shampoo may just cure it. It did for me, I wash my waist length hair twice a week and I don't have "bad hair" days. So pick a week for the adjustment period and pin it up or wear headbands.
During the summer, the glycerin in shampoo bars can attract too much water for me which makes my hair look dirty, so during the summer, I use a vinegar rinse after shampoo to get the last bits of the shampoo out of my hair. During the winter that's a non-issue, so I just rinse out well and do a vinegar rinse about every 4 shampoos to remove any buildup. Commercial shampoos can cause build up too, which is why people should change them out regularly and clarify with vinegar or use clarifying shampoos every so often.
Well, that's a lot to try and put on a label. But maybe
Wet hair well and run bar across scalp. Work in more water to build up a rich lather, rinse out well.
Shampoo bars need at least 4 shampoos to help restore your hair to it's natural condition.
If build up is a problem, use a vinegar rinse for extra shine and to clarify. Mix 1/4 cup of vinegar with 3/4 cups of water and pour it over your hair. Rinse out with cool water for maximum shine.

You could even make infused vinegars which are really nice to use. During the summer, I infuse my vinegar with lavender which does wonder for keeping oil under control. I usually put in a bit of lavender e.o. and a handful of dried lavender buds. It smells nice even with the sharp vinegar smell.

On another note, when I was a kid and doing vinegar rinses, my mom always said I was pickling myself. But she's the one who started me doing it because I have very straight hair, and after a vinegar rinse, my hair just shines and it's a lot better than using a silicone shine spray!
After we do a couple batches of soap, E wants to work on a good bar that will control her dandruff.

Cooking with Coolio

I recently got a copy of Coolio's cookbook to review for Amazon. You can see my review here and all my book reviews here.
I got some of the thick wool-ease to make my son a scarf with. You know, after working with size 5 needles for the last week or so, it's just incredibly fast working with the size 13s. I forgot how fast and easy chunky yarns really are!

Vanilla Extract- repost with after pictures and suggestions

At the end of March, I made some vanilla extract. You're supposed to strain the beans and vanilla caviar out after 6 months, I actually let mine go 7. I did use it all the time just pouring carefully after it went about 2 months. It's a dark gorgeous thick vanilla now, but I only have about half a cup left. I'm getting ready to start some more.
So here's the original post.
I got my vanilla beans from Vanilla Products USA extract grade beans. This wound up being about 80 beans from 5 (at the shortest, and only a couple of those) to 7 inch beans. Delivery was fast, I did a buy it now on March 17th and got them today. Communication was good. When I opened the vacuum sealed pouch, I was hit by an intense vanilla/bourbon smell. Yum yum. The beans were thin, but full of a nice dense caviar, and they were moist, out of the ones I rendered for my extract, I only hit one woody bean in the bunch. Bonus- they sent me 10 free Tahitian extract grade beans to try. It was 10.95 + 3.12 first class mail. So about 18¢ per bean, which is a really great price.




So to make my extract, I used the method at Vanilla Review, he's got great instructions and takes vanilla super seriously. So I'm just going to give a quick overview and my math on it.
I *can* use a lot of vanilla, I use lots more than most people I think, since the complexities of underrated vanilla never fail to thrill me. And because vanilla meringues toasted to just golden are as close to a guilt free cookie as you can get. So if you're not as much into vanilla and think less will do fine, just reduce measurements.
So a quick reference for people who don't drink and need measurements (like I did.. so I'm just saving you the google time)
1/2 pint= 8 oz
1 pint= 16 oz
Fifth (the standard bottle size) = 1/5 gallon =25.6 ounces
VR recommends an ounce of beans per cup of liquid, and having 80 beans to 8 ounces roughly (I didn't weigh it) meant approximately 10 beans=1 ounce.
I used Skyy vodka because it was the only mid-tier vodka in a colored bottle. He recommends dark bottles, and in this bottle, I feel safe letting it set until it's ready. I won't put it in sunlight, but in one of my cupboards, it's fine. I got a fifth. Because I needed room for the beans, I poured 3/4 of a cup into a jar to use for something else (footspray actually.. I did mention I don't drink right?)
I wanted a double strength or better vanilla extract. So..
(25.6-6)/8= 2.45, or roughly 2 and half cups of vodka. So for a single strength extract, that would be 25 beans, for my double strength thick extract, it would 50 beans. I sliced off the tops and bottoms of the beans with my sharp knife, and put them in the bottle, then I sliced them lengthwise and used the back of the knife to scrape the caviar out and put the caviar in the bottle, and cut up the pods into inch long pieces and put them in the bottle. And did that for 50 beans, which was time consuming, but if you're making a smaller amount,or just want a single strenth you wouldn't need to do that many. I really like vanilla. When I was done, I recapped the bottle (oh.. a nice easy screw cap!) and gave it a good shake.
In 6 months, I'll strain out the beans, and decant it into smaller amber or green bottles and probably give away a few bottles to friends so my next batch can be made with Alaskan vodka. I'm planning to include a recipe for meringue cookies with it when I give away a couple bottles as gifts. It's supposed to be "done enough" after a month, but I want to let it go the full 6 months for the richness of flavor. A couple weeks before we strain the bean pieces out, we plan to make sugar crystals and then put the pieces in with them for a very fancy sugar for tea and coffee.

Of course, my husband was very patient about the whole house smelling like vanilla. Because he rocks like that.
-----

I strained out the beans into a glass measuring cup using a strainer lined with a coffee filter. I had to shake the bottle quite a bit to get all the beans out, but I did. If you can find a large mouth dark glass jar that might work better, but the shaking time didn't take very long. The cup on the left holds a little bit of coffee the way I brew it. Too dark using dark roasted beans. The one on the right has my vanilla extract in it. So you can see how dark the vanilla extract is. Too bad you can't smell it. It's pretty amazing, my best friend wants some to use as perfume.

Vanilla is expensive. Well, really, from the seller above, it's not very expensive. My husband who works in a large hotel doing a lot of purchasing was pretty surprised how inexpensively I bought my vanilla beans. But still, waste not, want not. I set the beans in a single layer in a glass baking pan and let them dry after straining them out of the extract. Some of them I mixed with a sugar free sweetener for my uncle. The flavor infuses the sweetener and adds a nice touch of vanilla to his tea, coffee and baking. Some went in my daughter's vanilla sugar jar. But I still had a lot left. So I tried grind a couple of the dried used vanilla beans  into my coffee beans then brewing the pot normally. It turned out fantastic. The coffee has a nice vanilla flavor that tastes natural instead of having the chemical flavoring that some vanilla flavored coffee and so far all vanilla flavored creamer I've tried have. It's yummy.

Time to get more vodka, but two bottles this time since I have an idea now how much vanilla I can use in 7 months. That way I'll have more to gift.

Star and Moon Gift Box

Another one of the first boxes I made was a star and moon design for my very good friend Melissa who loves all things celestial. I re-drew the original when I re-drew a whole bunch of my original boxes a couple years ago. You can find that here. The original is just a regular gift box. I was doing a lot with digital stained glass effects at that point until I finally found a method for doing it that I was really happy with.

The template I made for this version is the same one I used for the pink dotty argyle box that I made for putting soap balls in as a gift. It's one of my favorites of the templates I made this year. The lid is very fitted, and scoring and pre-folding are absolutely essential to get this one to turn out right. This one uses a flower as the star which was inspired by a pair of vintage costume earrings I have.

Click on the images for the full sized versions. It takes 2 sheets of cardstock. Print both images at 100 dpi.

 

Thank you and a sword design card box

When I first put up a printables page, it was in my mother's memory. She always encouraged me to make the most of my artistic skills and it was the sort of thing she would have loved. My children at the time were 7 and 2 and I designed some of my original printables with them in mind. Now they are 18 and 14 (their birthdays are 7 months apart if the math seems off.)
I never expected to see my printables page become more popular than my beadwork pages, it still surprises me that people like my boxes. Back then, most of the pages offered very cute clip art on boxes or were Victorian themed. My designs didn't really fit any category easily and even from the beginning I wanted to use my own art.
Thank you all for the support. To people who have just discovered my boxes to the people who have been following from the beginning. The comments and emails through the years have been heartwarming and encouraging. I tend to be very self-conscious and shy about showing off things I make, the last 11 years have helped out a lot with that and I've made some wonderful friends over that time. Thank you all so much. 
My son was into fantasy. A love of his that never quit. Harry Potter, Tolkien, his favorite books, games, movies and activities follow that love of fantasy. So one of the very first boxes I ever posted was a sword design.
Over the next couple of days I'll be using themes from those original boxes and making new boxes and posting them here. This first one is a template I made a couple years ago for my children's trading card games since both of them have lots more cards than they have boxes. It was supposed to be a stop gap until we picked up new boxes for them, but both of them loved their boxes so much they covered them with clear packing tape and still use them for the decks they play most. This one has a sword on it that's similar in a lot of ways to the original box I posted over a decade ago.
100 ppi, click on image for the full sized version.

Thank You Notes

Like most families, we went around the table on Thanksgiving saying what we were thankful for. Today's printable is a variation on that idea. It's a combination place marker and hopefully a good new tradition. I'm making them up for my family. The idea is that you put in the name of the person who's supposed to sit in that place, and you set it and a pencil or pen at each place setting. After everyone sits down, everyone passes their note to the person next to them and fills in something each on with something you are personally thankful for or appreciate about the person named at the top and keep passing them around until they get back to the original person.
Sometimes, it's just nice to hear thanks or to get a compliment.
At 100 dpi, these will print 2 to a page, then just cut them apart. If you want to make them very neat, you can cut off the borders from the printer margins as well. They should copy well if you want to bring them someplace with a copier and do that to save your black ink.

Before I forget,
Thank you Rachel, for all the work you do with your wonderful collections of projects, for the inspiration you provide to so many crafters.
Thank you Rosemary,  you know what for. But I can't say it enough.
Thank you Teri, you are both inspiration and aspiration.
Thank you Amber, I can quite honestly say my life wouldn't be the same if I hadn't known you.
Thank you Sally for your continued encouragement and support.
Thank you Lori, notes like the one you left are absolutely the reason I want to keep doing this.
Thank you Summer- Again, for the constant encouragement


Thank you, to all my wonderful readers, I'm glad people enjoy this little blog and all the emails I've gotten over the years I've had my old printables site up and the encouragement I've had since starting this blog. 

Snowflake tags and boxes

I did these in 300 ppi and pdf format, so they will take a couple minutes to download, but I hope you think it's worth it. I think these would look lovely accented with a little glitter.

You can download the pdf with the 2 inch tags, 12 on one page HERE

The box pdf has both colors on it, it's 2 pages, but you can print just one by selecting which page in your printer dialogue. You can download that HERE

The picture isn't really that good to see the detail of the tags. This is an example of one of them. Click on the image to see it in better detail. On your monitor it will show bigger than 2 inches, but it is a 2 inch tag in the pdf.

 

There are 2 each of 3 different snowflakes in 2 colorways for a total of 12 tags. 

I used a 2 inch circle punch to cut them out.

For lots of free Christmas printables, check out my Christmas printables page which has ornament boxes and gift boxes.

Imagine Peace Box

Today's MP3 album deal of the day on Amazon is John Lennon's Imagine for 2.99. Maybe the only song you know on it is Imagine, maybe not.

John Lennon has been my favorite singer for most of my life. I love the song Imagine, most people do, but my favorite song on that album is actually Oh My Love. John wrote some of the most honest and beautiful love songs ever, that's one of them. The whole album is wonderful though. Honesty and self examination is present in many of the songs like Crippled Inside and Jealous Guy, Gimme Some Truth is an angrier song than Imagine about war and politics.

Anyway, it just makes me happy that it's so inexpensive.

I hope you enjoy this box inspired by the cover of the album and the song Imagine.

Books and liqueurs

Well, everyone knows now that Kindle is available for PC right?
I love my Kindle. I got it right after the coverage went nation-wide because the original coverage wasn't available in Alaska. For me, it's this whole futuristic thing that appeals to me even more than flying cars would. I read a lot of cyberpunk and sci-fi well.. pretty much my whole life. The Kindle, with the ability to follow blogs and newspapers, near instantly download books and all that.. it is the future to me. Well, that and my ipod.
I love to read. I read all the time, and the reason we lived in the same place for 11 years without looking for a bigger house is because my husband flat out refuses to move my books again "anytime soon". Having the Kindle at least slowed down the books coming into the house. I still buy craft books and cookbooks, plus what I get to review. But fiction I buy mostly in Kindle format.
Anyway, all that gushing to say, I have a list of mostly freebies with the exception of a little booklet I wrote about baking bread that has a bunch of public domain cookbooks.
I need to add some of the Storey Country Wisdom Bulletins to the list. They are under 4 dollars each and are short booklets with a ton of information on all sorts of things. I just finished the one on making liqueurs for gifts which was exactly the information I was looking for. I want to make a vanilla cream liqueur for Mike's boss for the holidays, and I need information on how to make it. It didn't have a recipe for exactly what I want to make, but that's fine, I prefer to make things up myself once I understand the process. I'll post the recipe after I make it. I think it will be a good one for in coffee.
E and I are going to also work on dairy based homemade flavored creamers for coffee that won't have corn syrup in them (boo hiss!).

Camouflage Cookie Boxes

Camouflage cookie boxes in 3 colors. I was originally planning on doing them in the old style camo, but decided to see if I could do a digital camo effect, then I just colored it 3 ways. I hope you like them.
The finished box size is 3x3x.75 inches printed at 100 dpi. When I showed my husband the snowflake box and said it was the right size to give someone one cookie, he said "That's not very generous. One cookie?" and I said "When I make cookies, how many are you willing to give away?" and he said "None." So I said one is a lot more generous than none.
This one I made just a little deeper. I think it will fit 2 cookies if they are fairly flat.
Just don't ask me for cookies. Except maybe shortbread. I'm still baking a lot of that working out recipes.
Click on the images for the full sized versions.

 

Beaded Pincushion- link to instructions

Made with a bottle cap base. You can find instructions HERE

Soapy happiness

As I've mentioned before, I don't make soap. I use it though for laundry, for my hair, for my body and if I could find a formulation that worked well with dishes, I'd use soap for that too.
Real soap.
I read a lot of books about soapmaking. Even though I don't make soap I'm fascinated by the process and actually E and I do plan to make some sometime soon.
I just finished reading Soap: Making It, Enjoying It by Ann Bramson, it's not very expensive and it's a good book from the early 70s. Not the best book to start with if you want to start making soap, but if you want a clearer idea of how it's made, the history of soap and some tips on making pretty handcarved bars from a simple box mold, it's good. The reason I don't think it's a good beginning soapmaking book is because soapmaking has come a very long way since the mid-70s, the internet, people sharing information, the fact there is so much more information than there was then means that a lot of the information is out of date. Like she says to put the water into the lye in a glass juice bottle which can be dangerous. More current books explain how to mix lye into water more safely.
But the sheer amount of information on the history of soap was a lot of fun to read, and unlike a lot of how to books, her writing style is accessible enough I was able to read it from cover to cover instead of just reading the parts that looked interesting. Soap is a passion for her and her book was one of the first really good ones on soapmaking. Another thing is that most of her soaps are tallow soap, which means rendering fat to make the tallow. I like tallow soaps. In fact an awful lot of current formulations by major soap companies contain tallow, which makes for a nice hard bar of soap. More modern books focus on vegetable and nut oils that don't need hours of boiling and straining and have no animal by-products.
I've gone into detail about why I like soap, real soap over detergents. At some point I'll have to work on a list to ask soapmakers so you can know what you are using and buying. I usually ask if it's hot or cold process (cold process soap isn't boiled after the lye and fat are mixed, it's given time to age and fully cure to be usable, hot process is boiled to completely saponify all the fat and lye mixture and is usable as soon as it sets), if it's super-fatted (which means fat added that isn't saponified) and what additional ingredients are in it and if it uses essential oils or fragrance oils for scent. I will buy soaps that use fragrance oils, but I like to know for sure. Rose and jasmine soap from cottage industries almost always use a fragrance oil because their essential oils are really expensive.
For store bought soaps, there are a couple kinds that are real soap. Little House in the Suburbs says that Ivory is a good substitute for handmade soaps because it's inexpensive and only has a few ingredients which is what you're looking for in real soap. Mike uses Dr. Bronner's exclusively, the liquid version which seems expensive, but a little bit goes a long way, and can actually be diluted to half water, half soap if the people in your family just can't resist using lots.
One thing that Ms. Bramson recommended in her book to cut down on soap usage was not running the bar across your body and keep it all wet in the shower or bath, but using wet hands to soap up your hands and using your soapy hands which keeps the soap from being too water-logged and helps it last longer.
I love using my soaps. Other than Mike, we mostly use Gladheart Acres soap, which is cold process. We buy several bars at a time and the kids sniff them and pick out their soaps carefully. They love the whole process of it. We use end-cuts and mistakes from them in our kitchen and by our bathroom sinks for handwashing.
I'm reading another book on soapmaking now in between working on my current project which is pin cushion that's just turning out too cute. I should have that done in a day or two to show off and post general instructions for on Beadwork at Bellaonline.com.

The Compleat Cook- a 1658 cookbook

I love my Kindle.
One of the nice things about it is that slowly a lot of the public domain material from places like Project Gutenberg is becoming available in Kindle format so I can hit one click buy for free, and turn on my Kindle, open up the connection, and get it in seconds. The weird part is that a lot of it is not being reviewed. So I went to review a cookbook I downloaded and just started really going through in the last couple of days. The cookbook is The Compleat Cook Expertly Prescribing the Most Ready Wayes, Whether Italian, Spanish or French, for Dressing of Flesh and Fish, Ordering Of Sauces or Making of Pastry which was printed in 1658.(Project Gutenberg link to read online or download) The first reviewer said it was from 1658 and you couldn't make the recipes now. I had to disagree and said this..
Yes, the first reviewer is right, this IS a cookbook from 1658. But I don't see that as being a bad thing at all. A lot of the recipes in it are doable now and adaptable. If you are interested in renaissance era cooking at all, it's an invaluable guide and being in Kindle format makes it easy to bookmark things you want to try out later.
It is NOT a step by step cookbook as we are used to now, so it will take a little bit of research to understand what some of the terms are, as well as a decent knowledge of how to cook to be able to do the recipes in it. It will call for "enough flower to make a past" which means enough flour to make a paste/dough, or for cooking in a "quick" oven which means hot. You don't get exact temperatures or times or even exact measurements for a lot of the recipes.
That said, I read some of the recipes to my husband yesterday and he's looking forward to me trying them.
It also has a couple bread recipes in it, and a lot of bread recipes weren't recorded in the middle ages and during the renaissance because it was generally assumed that people knew how to make bread. Which leads to another thing that people miss in older recipes. We are very used to having instant dry yeast available to us, so when we look at older beer or bread recipes that call for a cup of yeast, it's a bit confusing. Yeast at that point was the sourdough yeast culture, a liquid mix of flour and water that had live yeast growing and active in it.
It's free and it's a nice bit of history.
----
I'll admit, there is something very strange about reading a cookbook that old on something that seems to be science fiction to me still even having one.
You can see all my book reviews here.
Okay..back to beading.

BeadTool4

I recently wrote a review of BeadTool 4 that you can find here on the BellaOnline beadwork site. I'm really impressed with it. In the article I used some pictures I took of mushrooms to show how nicely the photo conversion works.
I just used one of those wild rose pictures I took this summer and converted it to a 50x50 peyote stitched pattern.

This is the photo I used.

 

The realistic bead image, set at size 12 for export.

 

Indexed, unshaded beads, same pattern. It also generated a color list.

1-DB-1482 Transparent Lt Rose Luster Count:666
2-DB-1267 Matte Transparent Olive Count:402
3-DB-1484 Transparent Lt Moss Green Luster Count:148
4-DB-279 Lined Green/Maroon Luster Count:409
5-DB-310 Jet Black Matte Count:69
6-DB-436 Galvanized Pewter Count:46
7-DB-1406 Transparent Pale Grey Count:49
8-DB-1497 Opaque Lt Sky Blue Count:12
9-DB-281 Lined Pale Blue/Magenta Luster Count:50
A-DB-1054 Matte Metallic Violet/Gold AB Count:18
B-DB-422 Metallic Magenta  Count:226
C-DB-1310 Transparent Fuchsia Count:142
D-DB-1340 Silver Lined Bright Fuchsia Count:54
E-DB-1184 Galvanized SF Magenta Count:62
F-DB-355 Matte Rose Count:91
G-DB-157 Opaque Cream AB Count:41
H-DB-121 Dark Topaz Gold Luster Count:15
As usual, click on the images for the full sized view. I really really like this program. It won't replace the way I usually graph, but for photo conversion it's really wonderful.

We got our first snowfall!

It's all snowy and white. I love the way it looks.
I drew this box this morning to celebrate. I hope you like it! Click on the image for the full sized version. Makes a 2x2 inch cube.

Sparkly Recycled Cardboard Ornaments

 We keep cardboard food packaging to use for crafting. It becomes the frame work for duct tape purses, new boxes, covers and backs for mini-notebooks and all sorts of other things. I like these a lot too. Glittered ornaments for our tree.

What you'll need is templates or craft punches a small hole punch, all but the heart I used a 1/8 inch punch on, glitter, we used Martha Stewart's because I have lots of it I bought on sale after the holidays last year,glue and some sort of spray sealer.

If you use my templates, print them out on paper, then cut them out. Trace the shapes on to your cardboard and cut out the cardboard. A craft knife is helpful for the peace symbol, but if you work carefully you can use scissors.

Punch a small hole near the top, and cover the shapes with glue and sprinkle glitter on them. Let dry. Seal. If you want them to come out very nice and neat looking, you could spray paint the shapes before spreading the glue and glitter on them, but I like the way these look without it. We put the glitter on the plain brown side.

You can actually decorate these all sorts of ways. I offered my daughter buttons and sequins as well. She did the green ones.She also wanted me to point out the shapes make nice negative stencils to decorate clothing with. Click on the templates for the full sized version.

 

Sally's Snowflake- Cookie Box template

4 different colors. I hope you enjoy this as much I enjoyed doing the art for it.

Click on the image for the full sized version. Print at 100 dpi on card stock. Thinking more about this shape, I think it would work well for gifts of handkerchiefs as well. I have handkerchiefs on the mind though, I just got a bunch of vintage ones for my daughter so she'd stop using her great grandmother's hankies. She's thrilled with the prettiness of them, and I told her since they were hers she could re-embroider them if she wanted.

 

 

 

I was thinking about putting individual blank templates in my Etsy shop for 1.50 each for other people to use. I'll still keep posting lots of decorated ones here if I do that.

Heart topped box

Another new template. The top of this one makes a heart shape by interlocking the top pieces. 4 color ways. I hope you enjoy it!
Click on the images for the full sized versions. 100 ppi makes a 2 inch cube shaped box.

 

 

 

A flat box

This is just me playing around with a new template and some techniques but I was happy enough with the results I decided to post my test model.
The finished size is 3x3x.5 inches, which I think makes it's just the right size for one cookie, or a necklace or pair of earrings. As usual, click on the image for the full sized version and print at 100 dpi.

I hope you like it!

Can't Stand to Cook

When I was young, my mom worked for the local Equal Rights Commission, which happened to be in the same building as the local MS Society. As a result she had a lot of friends who had MS. I did all the readathons and other fund raisers of course because I personally saw how MS impacted families, a couple of those friends of my mom had children the same age as me.
I have a cookbook from that time period, called Can't Stand to Cook. It's a cookbook written expressly for the handicapped. Chair bound and otherwise handicapped people who might want to make their family a meal but didn't always have the resources available to do a lot of what's involved. This book was written when microwaves were brand new and nobody had food processors to do all the chopping.
I've wanted to do a website on that same theme for years. Even before I became handicapped. But now it's a lot more personal. I'm trying to figure out how to do it, how to schedule the updates I want to make to other sites, e-groups, etc, and still have time to do that site.
I'm not nearly as handicapped as those fine women my mom knew then were, just mildly so. There are days when I have to make choices about how much I can do. There are days when the best I can manage is to talk my husband through a simple meal. Then there are days when I can actually cook almost like I used to, I have to change some things.Even on my best days, everything it takes to make a chicken pot pie properly is not going to happen without a lot of help.
Still deciding how I'm going to do it. If it's going to be a reasonably static site or something like a blog with other contributers, or a posting board, but more and more people I know who have some of the issues I have are asking for tips and techniques and quickie recipes for the bad days.

Links and stuff

Rachel at One Pretty Thing keeps finding the best of the best links. Really truly. Like miniature caramel and chocolate apples. We got apples and caramels and we are using cut down skewers  instead of lollipop sticks. (My Homespun Threads- includes a printable bag topper)
Or Edible eyeball eggs which just thrill me on so many levels. (A Bit of This and A Bit of That blog)
And this free pattern for a bat is so cute it's just irresistible. (Whosies)

Speaking of bat patterns, I have one here for this crocheted bat. Works up super fast and also works well in thread. My son has a tiny thread bat on his keyring.

We are planning to make dry ice ice cream this weekend, and possibly frozen hot cocoa using the same method.

Still working on a collection of shortbread recipes that will be available as an e-book in the next couple of weeks. My family is starting to get sick of shortbread I think.