Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Sunday, April 09, 2006

phew!

I finally gave Luke his quilt this weekend. It would have been Thursday but that was the day he picked up his BMW wagon so I decided that he couldn't have the quilt until he could be properly excited about it. That may have been more for me than him. So without further delay I present to you the fruit of 6 months hard labor and stress...

luke with quilt

quilt on bed

Since I have had to keep this project in the dark, here are a few in progress photos.

Here is the quilt top finished and ironed out.

quilt top sewn

Spreading out the back to make the sandwich.

quilt back

The sandwich about half way hand basted. Notice the exotic creature in the top left. Mmmm.

quilt hand basted

The zigs and zags being marked and quilted.

quit progress

So that is all. My mom is giving me less than a year to start my next quilt. We'll see, it sure was a lot of work. Maybe next winter.

05 april 2006 or i hate coming up with titles

Sick again. Ah the woe that is my shitty set of lungs, every season change they betray me. Ah well, could be much worse, I did get a bit of relaxing in the past 4 days. On Monday I decided the only thing that would cure me is leek and veggie soup so of course I was compelled to make it, even though what I needed was to lay down. I bought this giant bunch of veggies at Jewel (home of crap produce), chopped them up, boiled them in a pot, then ate them up. Here is a before and after photo.

veggies

soup

I finished up hand hemming my skirt and now it is ready for some warm weather. I have to say I wish I could erase those butterflies on the fabric. I was hoping they wouldn't be very noticible but I think they are.

sew? i knit skirt.

Finally I am finally finished with my phildar no.20 pieces. It's about time, I thought I was never going to finish. Now I just need to block those suckers and sew them together and hope it's not as long as some other people's I've seen. The measurements say this should fit, but the visuals are telling me otherwise.

phildar sweater pieces

Up next is my bag. The pieces are cut out and waiting. We'll see how long they have to wait.

space-case wins. or looses.

My output may have seemed a bit low for someone so crafty as I and this is why. Ug that rhymes, nast. The "something else" was revealed to Luke in a desperate attempt to stop him from buying a cute duvet cover at Jonathan Adler, so a photo of it crumpled up on a chair while my fingers take a break from sewing the binding on should be permissible. Today I had to take pain killers to ease the shoulder and wrist tendonitis as well as the fact that I can't touch anything with my middle finger from forcing that needle through layers of fabric.

quilt.

I also picked up some sweet Vogue patterns at 75% off today. Here is my favorite with it's fabric waiting to be turned into either a) a shirt dress that is uber-cool or b) a shirt dress that gives people migranes to look at.

fabric and shirtdress pattern

Hoping to attend Ladytron on 4-21 and Yeah Yeah Yeahs on 4-14 but we'll see if I space on that like I spaced on Belle & Sebastion + the New Pornographers. Wow that was lame of me.

busy busy busy

It has been a very busy past two weeks filling in at work for the sickies and being all around super tired from my NYC trip and working so much extra. First off we have the pattern and fabric for my Sew? I Knit along skirt that I still have not taken a finished picture of. I will have a finished photo tomorrow.

1/2 Circle Skirt

After making the marzipan carrots for the tops of the cupcakes I have more marzipan left over than I think one person could eat in 5 years so I made some marzipan peaches. Why? Good question, but they sure are cute.

Marzipan Peaches

In other cooking news I made some delicious chicken chilaquiles for dinner wednesday night for Luke, Jon, their friend Justin, and Emily. I thought it was quite delicious and can’t wait to make it again.

Chicken Chilaquiles

Boring-est of all is the snails pace phildar pullover sleeve. Here it is. It is actually about 3" longer after tonights knitting but I swear this is the sweater that just won’t finish.

Phildar Sleeve no. 2

cup cakes cup cakes cup cakes yum.

Tonight I made Carrot-Ginger Cupcakes with orange-ginger cream cheese frosting and marzipan carrots. They are so tasty I love them. I never imagined in a million years that I would make marzipan, in fact I always wondered who on earth makes that stuff. Well the answer is now me.

Here are the marzipan carrots being made. It was touch and go for a while as we dumped obscene amounts of confectionars sugar into the mix but we made it in the end.

Marzipan Carrots


And here is the most beautiful carrot on the most beautiful cupcake. Did I mention they are delicious? Yum.


Carrot-Ginger Cupcakes