Brea Bag

Fall’s coming!  This probably isn’t big news to you but it’s a big deal to me. (Summer isn’t my favorite time of year.) I’ve been putting the finishing touches on some bags for fall.  Here’s the Brea Bag, a free pattern from the Berroco web site, which I made in my favorite olive-y green Ultra Alpaca.  It’s lined with a wild print and I sewed in a zipper a few weekends ago, so except for a handle it’s ready to go.  Anybody know any leatherworkers here in Central Ohio? I need to find someone to make a nice brown leather strap for it… with antique brass D-rings and with my initials stamped into the strap.  So far the closest leather craft store I can find is in Mount Vernon, Ohio.  If anybody knows someone closer I’d really appreciate the help!

Here’s a close-up of the wild lining:

Socks for Me!

I’ve been knitting adult socks in worsted weight and baby socks in fingering weight for some time now, but I finally bit the bullet and made myself a pair of socks using fingering weight sock yarn.  It took some doing… I adapted my favorite pattern from worsted weight on 7’s to fingering weight on 2’s.  The yarn is called OnLine Supersocke 100 in the color “tropic.”  It’s from Knitter’s Mercantile in Columbus.  One 100-gram ball made both socks with plenty of yarn leftover to do baby socks or hats.  It’s superwash wool blended with 25% synthetic.  They wash up beautifully (the label says “heiss waschbar waschmaschinenfest” which I think means safe for hot water machine wash) and come out SO SOFT!  Nothing feels better on the feet than handmade socks.

Ever heard of Etsy?

A few years ago I spent a couple of months building a web site to sell my handmade jewelry, and in addition to the build time it was a constant ongoing effort to publicize the site. Now, there’s Etsy.  It’s an online community of artists and crafters that allows each member to have their own online store.  Set-up takes minutes, item listing fees are inexpensive, and the site itself drives traffic to your saleables. No fuss, no muss online selling for handmades.

Here’s my new Etsy store. If you have one, I’d love to see it so please email me the link! 

Porkchops in tomato sauce

I was hungry for something good tonight after a fun day of letterboxing (more on that later!) but didn’t feel like spending much time in the kitchen. Here’s my 15 minute dinner:

• 4 boneless pork tenderloin chops
• olive oil
• 1 shallot, sliced
• 1-1/2 tsp minced garlic
• 14 oz can Hunt’s organic diced tomatoes with seasonings
• red pepper flakes (1/4 to 1/2 tsp)
• dried basil (1/2 tsp)
• dried oregano (1/2 tsp)
• 2 bay leaves
• sea salt and fresh ground black pepper

Use a large stainless skillet and get it screaming hot over medium high heat. Add olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan and then add shallots and garlic. Simmer momentarily while you season one side of the chops with sea salt and pepper.  Add the chops to the pan (seasoned side down) and cook undisturbed for 4 minutes.  While cooking, season the tops with salt and pepper. After 4 minutes, flip with tongs and cook for 4 minutes undisturbed on the other side.  After 4 minutes add the tomatoes and seasonings to the pan around the chops, stirring everything in as well as you can. Reduce heat to a fast simmer and cover. Cook 5 more minutes or so. 

I served it over some whole grain rice with steamed broccoli.  So good you want to lick your plate!

Our Dinner at Gaylord’s Restaurant

For tonight’s dinner we tried a new place: Gaylord’s Restaurant on North Sandusky Street in Delaware, OH.  I wasn’t sure what to expect at Gaylord’s… I knew its owner also owns Old Bag of Nails which is one of our favorite restaurants, and I also knew that Gaylord’s was a more “upscale” option.  I’m sorry to say that in the future we’ll be sticking to the Old Bag or trying other Delaware dinner spots. Gaylord’s was (sadly) a let-down.

We got there at maybe 7:00 on a Thursday evening. The restaurant itself is really sharp – great decor, great music, and a terrific atmosphere.  Before we ordered dinner I was thinking it would be a really nice spot to visit with friends or for a special occasion.  The restaurant was fairly empty: we were one of four occupied tables, and there was a lot of staff buzzing around.  Despite the high waitress-to-table ratio, the service was very slow. 

Dinner itself started out well: salads with sweet peppercorn vinaigrette which were delicious. We each had one roll and one glass of ice water (since no more was offered), and I can’t speak for my husband but my entree was disappointing. I ordered crab cakes with a creole sauce with garlic mashed potatoes. It was beautifully arranged on the plate, but the crab cakes and sauce were lukewarm and not very tasty. 

If we do go back to Gaylord’s (which we probably won’t), I’d try their pizza menu and skip the traditional entrees.  Gaylord’s has a fantastic atmosphere and it might be a neat, swanky place to stop for a cocktail sometime but I can’t recommend it for dinner.  We prefer a casual (and hot) dinner at the Old Bag for half the price.

New Favorite: McDonalds Iced Coffee

I’m not sure what Micky D’s puts in their new Iced Coffee, but that stuff is fabulous!  They offer three flavors – regular, hazelnut, and I think vanilla. I’ve only tried the regular and probably won’t try the others since I’m not a big fan of really sweet coffee.  The regular iced coffee is only slightly sweet with a nice, strong coffee flavor, just milky enough to cut the bitterness, and super refreshing!  A medium has 160 calories and is $1.69 – about half of what you’d pay for practically anything at Starbucks.

This new iced coffee addiction got me looking for a cheaper alternative I could make at home.  Here’s my concoction, which is just as good as the McD’s version but super cheap and free of 17-syllable ingredients:

Heaping half cup of ground coffee (mine was Folger’s)

Quarter cup of sugar

Boiling water

Ice

Large ceramic pitcher

2% organic milk (you could use regular – we only drink Horizon organic because it tastes so darn good and is free of all the hormones, antibiotics and other junk that milk isn’t supposed to have!)

Put the sugar in the bottom of the pitcher, and brew half a pitcher of extra-strong coffee into it.  Stir to dissolve sugar. Add ice to fill the pitcher and cool the brew. Then chill (the coffee).  When you’re ready to drink it, fill your glass with ice, pour the barely sweet coffee over, and top it off with milk to taste.  It’s outstanding!  Just as good as McD’s, super cheap and deeee-licious.

Finished Project: Felted Purse

It’s finished!  The booga bag pattern from Black Sheep Bags.  I used 3 skeins of Boku Yarn by Plymouth to complete this bag rather than Noro Kureyon, which is what the pattern calls for, and the Boku knitted and felted beautifully. 

If you’re a beginning knitter who has mastered the basics of knitting and purling, and you’re looking to spread your wings a bit, I’d recommend this pattern. It will give you some new tricks to learn like picking up stitches, circular knitting, making I-cord and felting.  If you’re just learning these kinds of things for the first time, check out the Knitting Help web site… This site has short, super clear videos on how to do basic to advanced skills. (In fact, everytime I graft the toe of a sock, I go and watch her video on Kitchener Stitch.  Kitchener is impossible to learn from reading but easy to pick up by watching it.) 

For an intermediate or advanced knitter, this is a quick project that knits up over a couple of evenings – a good “no-brainer” for knitting in front of the TV. I’ll definitely make this pattern again, maybe even as a gift.  The finished purse is just the right size, super soft and colorful. 

One note: if you like a purse that holds its square shape in the bottom, trim a piece of stiff cardboard and sew up a sleeve of fabric to fit. Fold over the edge of the sleeve and slip this into the bottom of the bag for some extra support in the bottom. 

The beds are planted… now what?

Saturday before we left to go camping, I made one last run to Miller’s and picked up a few more annuals, then came home and planted all our beds.  Now that it’s all planted, I feel almost disappointed… now there’s nothing left to do but wait.

Can any of you Ohio gardeners give me some help with my Victoria Blue Salvia?  I planted six of these this weekend, and they’re just six inches tall with one stem. As I’m walking around our neighborhood, though, I’m seeing huge masses of these plants already in full bloom.  Were these planted earlier this spring, or is salvia a perennial?  When should I expect to see my new salvia plants spread and look as abundantly blue as the other salvia I’ve seen here in Delaware lately?

Closing the Book on 2006

I’ve finished scrapbooking 2006 and will be starting my 2007 album soon. As I finished last year’s pages, I realized how much my scrapbooking has changed in the last six years or so since I started documenting our lives this way.  I used to create very involved, time- and labor-intensive layouts with a lot of handmade elements. Now, my scrapping revolves around photos, journaling, colored and patterned background papers and a few thematically chosen die cuts or other embellishments.

Why the change? I think my focus has shifted. I remember scrapping those very elaborate layouts and talking with other scrapbookers about how irrelevant it was to be scrapping the current year’s photos. But now that I have many years of completed books to look back on and cherish, I realize the value of these pages isn’t in the artwork - it’s in the completion.  Intricate designs can be beautiful, but if they keep me from completing my books, they defeat my purpose for scrapping altogether, which is to preserve our memories and all the things that are special to us. 

For me, simple scrapbooks are best.

Bwaaaaaaaaarrrrp

That’s the sound the giant bullfrogs make late in the evening at Autumn Lakes Family Campground in Sunbury, Ohio, where we spent Memorial Day weekend this year.  Autumn Lakes is a terrific campground, by the way!  It’s reasonably priced ($20 a night for our tent site), and the family who owns it plans a lot great activities that are available to campers.

We checked in late Saturday evening – after 9:00 – and while we were setting up our tent by moonlight, there was a pretty good country music band playing that could be heard throughout the campground.  Sunday evening our friends joined us for a very rainy cookout, and their daughter enjoyed an animated kids’ movie at the shelter house. We saw other kids enjoying a hayride, and there was also a playground available, horses, and a little camp store with a pool table and good prices on all the staples, in case you’ve forgotten anything.  (The store also sells firewood – only $3 a bundle – and bags of ice for $1.50, both of which can be delivered right to your campsite!)  But all the best parts of our campout were free of charge – the families of geese and ducks that entertained us while we fished, the chubby bullfrog that spent the weekend in the water by our campsite (and bwarped all night long!), and a relaxing two days spent getting some sun and taking it easy.  It was a Memorial Day to remember.