Tuesday 27 May 2008 at 8:03 pm
Such as the first attempt at Mom's Secret Project. I was right to be concerned about sizing issues; the particular combination of yarn, needle size and stitch pattern I used is just not as elastic as it could be, so it needs to be ripped and restarted. I got pretty far before bowing to the inevitable.
On the "positive" side, a bout with probable food poisoning gave me time today to work on a less ambitious replacement project, pictured here.
Sunday 25 May 2008 at 6:11 pm
I dragged Jag down to the NC Farmer's Market yesterday, and the place was awash in strawberries. Are you listening, Durham Farmer's Market? Not only that, but I bought 2 large baskets of strawberries, and there were still tons left that other people could buy, from multiple vendors! Imagine that! Ahem. I also bought some peaches and blueberries.
The blueberries were herded into muffins this morning, and about 1/3 of the strawberries were transformed from this:
into this:
I used this recipe, with some minor modifications. I used probably 1.5 pints of strawberries, half of which I crushed up in the blender so as to make the ice cream all pink-like and strawberry-tasting. I left out the lemon juice, and I used pasteurized eggs due to raw-egg paranoia. 25 mins in my cheapo ice cream machine later, I had 1.5 quarts of extremely good ice cream.
I'm no match for the blazing speed of some people 
, but I've made some progress on the Mom Secret Project. Pictures here and here. I don't know if I'm going to make the deadline, and I have some minor sizing worries as well. I should know in a day or two if this is going to work out.
Earlier this weekend, Jag helped me swap out my old craft/cutting table for a new one. As you can see, the old table was a bit small. So small, in fact, that my 24" wide cutting mat overlapped the edges of the table by quite a bit. Rotary cutting a folded-in-half standard 44" wide piece of fabric has been a challenge for some time due to having to make a cut to around 4" from the edge, scoot the mat down, and cut again.
I replaced it with this new table. Not only does the cutting mat fit nicely on it with room to spare, so does the entire old table!
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I don't know why I waited so long to fix this little problem, but thanks to a sale at Target, it only cost $40 to make working on sewing projects a whole lot easier.
Monday 19 May 2008 at 7:57 pm
One of the two types of produce I managed to score at the de-vegulated Durham Farmer's Market this weekend was a bunch of baby turnips. They were so cute that I couldn't resist. But how the heck do you cook baby turnips? I had no idea until I found this blog entry. My turnip tops were in no condition to be eaten after 2 days in the fridge, so I used frozen spinach instead, but it still turned out great. I look forward to the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.
Everything's better with bacon!
Sunday 18 May 2008 at 10:46 pm
Between new job stress and spending last weekend at a wedding and some additional family activities this weekend, I haven't had time to blog much. A brief rundown:
