Baking Week

05/10/201905/08/2019Leave a comment

We’ve got two back-to-back birthdays in the first week of May. This means a lot of treats getting made this week. This year, it was a cake and some tarts.

We used our favorite cook book, Rosanna Pansino’s Baking All Year Round. Grammy’s cake used the chocolate cupcake recipe from the Mini Easter Egg Cupcakes, poured into two 8 inch round cake pans but cooked according to the instructions in the recipe, and the vegan buttercream icing. We added some peppermint extract into the cake and made this cookie dough frosting to go between the cake layers. And, of course, the chocolate pen made its appearance in writing on top.

Despite my baking assistant’s mother’s birthday coming before his grandmother’s, her treats came next, on her actual birthday, since Grammy was only here for the weekend. We made the Daisy Lemon Tarts over two days so we could make it in secret. Well, mostly secret.

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Yarn and Needles and Hooks, Oh My!

04/26/201904/26/2019Leave a comment

I’ve been working away at a shawl for the past couple months, having to stop and rip it out about three different times before finally getting it going, but I’ve also got quite a few other projects cranked out in the same amount of time. First up were some washcloths.

My mom was wanting some washcloths for the kitchen at work, but couldn’t really find anything for a good price. Then I offered to make some to donate instead. Got one of those giant cones of cotton yarn off Amazon and set to work, carrying them with me everywhere in case I had a few minutes to work on them.

I think I ended up with over 10 by the end of the week.

Next up was a baby shower, which meant a baby hat and the booties to match. Baby stuff is so quick to make. If only everyone were so small.

Then came the current massive project: Flower barrettes.

The flowers are so quick and easy to make with leftover yarn, and I have a lot of leftover yarn.

Make three flowers, sew them on a barrette, and there you go.

You can find them on my Etsy shop because otherwise I might suffocate under them all.

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Art Experimentation

04/12/2019Leave a comment

I recently finished this page of doodles that I wanted to turn into some bookmarks for the stacks of books I’ve been ordering at a time from the library. I’m trying to get through my “to read” list on Goodreads, yet it keeps growing instead of shrinking.

Doodling got me wanting to do some painting, but not just regular painting. That’s where the experiments started. I began with this painting, but quickly decided I wasn’t going to be able to cover the pencil lines any time soon, so I abandoned that canvas and started another.

The bottom layer worked out pretty well, though a little sloppier than I would’ve liked. But that wasn’t going to matter if my idea worked out.

Spoiler alert, it didn’t. I was going to try punch needle on the painted canvas, but it didn’t work out the way I had hoped. It’s ok, though. That’s the point of experimenting. And now I have a couple canvases that I can dismantle and turn into something else. Super excited to do more experimenting.