Victim of Packaging

I confess that I am a victim of packaging.  I just can’t resist beautifully-designed boxes, tins, and bags.  You see above a super close up of a tiny package of Chelsea candy, a variety of Japanese toffee.  The box, a beautiful crimson, was spangled with foil stars that matched the foil wrapping the individual toffees.  [...]

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Retro Recipe Challenge No. 10: Storybook Food

Another fabulous Retro Recipe Challenge–this one hosted by Naomi at Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dry:
“So my challenge to you is to revisit your childhood story books – it might be Paddington’s marmalade or the tiny cake bearing the invitation, ‘eat me’, that Alice ate in Alice and Wonderland. Then find a way to recreate [...]

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Quaker Mittens

Here are the promised mittens–Quaker mittens because they’re “plain, but of the best,” you know?  Wool, in a Quakerly black–although gray or khaki would also be suitable–with a nice long rib, thumb gusset, and Nordic-style decreases.  They’re knitted in Heel Stitch*, a sturdy, long-wearing slip stitch pattern that gives the mittens a little texture and some extra [...]

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Petits Fours Hubris

I took it into my head at 9:00 this evening to make petits fours for the kids’ bento.  Why?  you ask.  Because I’m going steady with the Eumenides this week–and it’s only Tuesday.  I clearly needed to be taken down a notch, and the universe was ready to oblige.
So I made a batch of my standard [...]

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Last Week’s Bento

Little Sunshine’s special cutie bento to ease the slow agony of the last day of school before Thanksgiving Break.  Rice balls using Just Bento’s genius onigiri hack; mini chocolate chip cookies, salad, and orange slices.

Tuxedo Boy has recently taken up Pokemon, and this is my amateurish rendition of Pikachu and his little friend in onigiri.  [...]

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Bat and Insect Mittens

Tuxedo Boy goes through mittens like you wouldn’t believe.  Last year I made three pairs of the fabulous Hello Yarn’s Squirrel and Oak Leaf mittens;  he felted each pair on the playground until they looked like this:
  
For some reason, though, this year’s mittens were just a pain to knit.  It’s been several months since I [...]

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Fame At Last

The fabulous folks at Sew, Mama, Sew did me the honor of including my Otedama Tutorial in their month-long festival of craft tutorials.  I was in some incredibly illustrious company, including Hilary of Wee Wonderfuls.  And I got (wait for it) 755 hits that day.  Seven-hundred-and-fifty-five hits.  That’s larger by two orders of magnitude than my [...]

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Thanksgiving Knitting Orgy

My nieces from Boise were here for Thanksgiving (along with their mother, of course!) and their presence triggered a veritable orgy of knitwear design and execution.  Niece M needed an earflap hat with patterns all around it and tassels galore (“Everybody has one at school, and they’re really expensive, but I thought I’d rather have [...]

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Time Keeps on Slipping

We had our first snow last Sunday night.  This landmark in the calendar is always an ecstatic one–but this year is particularly nice, because the snow started in the evening, so I could sit in my chair by the window with the porch light on and watch the flakes drift out of the dark winter sky into [...]

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Granny Hex Scarf

It’s finished–Little Sunshine’s hip granny hex scarf, which incidentally used up nearly all of the odds and ends of Frog Tree sport weight alpaca.  I’m finding that the hexagons are addictive . . . they come together so quickly (I made the last six and sewed them all together while watching “Constantine,” of all things, with Joan last [...]

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