Demented Ramblings

I’ve let the depression rule my life for the last several months. However, in August I started feeling better and cleaning the house. Now that I had a nice clean craft table, I decided that it was time to put it to use.

Several months ago, my cousin mentioned to me that her youngest child would love one of my baby quilts, even though she is hardly a baby anymore. She told me that the kiddo loves pink and yellow. I found the perfect fabric in my stash and as I dug through I found that I had already put a top together with just that fabric. Joy!

Tonight, I finished it up. This is also the first quilt I’ve done on the Viking Rose that I bought from my auntie. I have to say, it’s a danged nice machine. There’s some puckering in the back, but that’s more due to me using a basting spray instead of pinning everything really well. I don’t think I’ve had a quilt not pucker in the back ever. It’s the nature of the beast.

I was quite pleased though with NOT having to fight with a machine for the first time ever. I may not have figured out all of the bells and whistles, but this thing sews a straight line like a dream!

Here’s the finished quilt:

I hope the recipient likes it as much as I do.

Next up – I think I’ll work on a sock monster! But first, I must sleep.

My mommy didn’t want anything for her birthday, so I’ll probably just buy her dinner. Besides, I kind of blew out on her for Christmas.

My friend Dream shares a birthday with my mommy. She’s recently become addicted to Angry Birds and I’d thought of making her an Angry Bird plush like I’d seen over at Obsessively Stitching. I’m especially in love with her piggies. However, when it came time to start work on the gift, I just wasn’t feeling the birds.

So, I called up her hubby, who clued me in to the fact that she’d been silently coveting the sock monsters. Thanks again, Homes.

It seems that each monster gets more detailed than the last. This one has teeth, a gothy collar, earrings, silly hair and a tattoo. I introduce to you – Fang von Lichtenstein, the Baron Fang von Lichtenstein to you lowly peons.

Why yes, that IS a Horde tattoo. Freehanded even! And here he is with his new person.

So, I have been thinking for the last few days about starting a new quilt. Digging for fabric in the closet led me to digging out all of the fabric in the closet. But this is not all of the fabric that I have. There is some in the cedar chest of doom, but I knew it wouldn’t go with the fabric I’d already chosen as my inspiration.

First surprise, I found an already assembled top in the Trip Around the World pattern, using the exact yellow fabric which was my inspiration. Obviously, something had drawn me to it.

I kept digging to see what else I could find. Oh kiddies, your Ysha is quite ashamed of herself. I sorted the fabric into non-quilting, cotton and flannel. And like I said before, this isn’t all of it. I know there’s half a bolt of the green dragon flannel left from MY quilt in the cedar chest and the fabrics that I used when starting Boo’s quilt are in a bin.

I spread the flannels out so that I could see what was there. I couldn’t fit it into one photo on wide angle (ok, I was sitting in the floor right next to it, I might could have if I’d backed up). It took three frames and I still may have missed a few. In my defense, I bought most of this several years ago at JoAnn on Black Friday for $1 a yard. But this is still a silly amount of fabric.

I didn’t even spread the cottons out, I just left them in their nice little pile, there’s not nearly as many of those.

This doesn’t even count fat quarters and other such things.

SomeONE (me) needs to get cracking on some baby quilts this year. Even if I never branch out from the Trip Around the World, I need to work some of these up and find homes for them.

Obviously, I couldn’t just post a picture of it last week, I wanted to keep it under wraps until the birthday girl had seen it.  And usually it’s my rule that the recipient must see the gift before the intarwebs at large.  Tho’ sometimes, if you see me in real life, I’ll show you a sneak preview pic on my phone.  I had trouble keeping quiet about this one, I was so proud of the results.

I will have to give a thank you shout out to my friend Homes, who not only pushed me away from a skull necklace and toward pearls (much more Mimi) he also recommended a tutu.

Without further hubbub, I give you – Miss Penelope Jean, the pink hippo or pippo.

Here she is, on the guest bed, chilling with Lenore, giving you a good view of her sparkly pink eyes and the huge fluff that is her tutu.  I love how one ear lies down and one stands up, she demanded to be that way no matter how much I argued that her ears should both do the same thing.  It gives her pizazz.

Showing off her pearls.

And with her new person, I believe they will be a good match.  Mimi seems quite happy.

Usually, I don’t name my creations, I allow the recipient to do that.  But Penelope whispered her name to me while I was sewing her together.  But maybe she’ll whisper a different name to Mimi and her name will change.

Except for the buttons that I used for her eyes and nostrils, and a little bit of fleece for the tail, everything that went into this project came from my craft stash.  Some of this fabric I’d been hoarding for years waiting for just the right project to come along.  It did.

I won’t promise to be diligent with this journal.  I am a known slacker and am entirely too old to change.  However, I’m going to make an effort here to keep up with this thing a little better.  There are so many beautiful things out there and I’d love to be able to perhaps inspire some one person as I myself have been inspired by so many.

I thought I’d start by posting a preview of a project that I’m about to start on.  It’s a birthday gift for a friend and from the color selections (and the fact that her birthday is next week) it won’t be difficult to guess who this is for.  But this is before any cutting has taken place.  I don’t want to give too much away.

I recently bought my grandmother’s Viking Rose sewing machine.  This will be my first project on the machine.  I hope it and I can come to terms enough to sew something relatively simple.  I have another sewn project in mind for another January birthday.  Otherwise, I’ll have to come up with a completely new idea.

Last week, for the release of the MAC Venomous Villains collection, Mimi and I took the afternoon off work to go play in makeup. Then, we did a bit of halloween shopping. This is the time of year when I find most of the decor for my house.

While we were at Michael’s, I saw some cute clip on bats and ravens. I thought about how awesome it would be when I’m an old lady to clip bats onto my old lady hat. Then I saw this silly vulture. I squeed at how it made me think of Neville’s grandmama and how I so needed a hat with a vulture sitting on top of my head looming at everyone.

Thus, an obsession was born. I spent friday and saturday thinking and replaying all of the various stores we’d been in and products I’ve seen. The teeny bat dingleballs at JoAnn Fabric, all the hats at Halloween Express. On saturday, I made a few quick stops and picked up supplies. Sparks helped me pick out the hat.

Later that afternoon, Blizzard seemed to know that I had a very important project to work on. It flat refused to let me into World of Warcraft. That’s my latest time suck. So, while I was denied entrance, I worked on my hat. Once it was complete and resting on my head, I logged in with no problem at all.

I started with the hat, added purple sparkly marabou around the crown. Then I attached one bat dingleball to the tip. Next I attached the vulture to the hat and secured him to it.

I wore that hat all evening saturday and most of sunday. This made this boyfriend laugh every time he looked my way.

I posted this picture on the facespace and someone said “I wish I had that kind of free time.” I really like another friend’s response to that – “Time spent in creative pursuit is not ‘Free time.’ It is just as constructive as time spent on technology, non-creative production and analysis.” Wow, yes, exactly! Thanks for the beautiful words, Mark!

We went to a bbq this weekend with lots of Sparks’ old (and my not so old) friends. We took a bean salad as a side dish – it got rave reviews from the darling Robin. This is just something I made up once upon a time and it’s always a work in progress or as Sparks calls it “a moving target” but I’ve got the basics down.

It all started because I needed a side dish for a Cinco de Mayo bbq. Plus I was looking for something with no mayo so it would be safe to sit outdoors all day if need be. I like pasta salads, but the pasta seems to get too mushy after sitting in the dressing for a while. I was all – “hey, I have these canned beans, wonder what I can do with them….”

I’m throwing this recipe together off the top of my head and all amounts are of course to be changed for number of people and your personal taste. This recipe makes a good sized bowl, enough for a group. Or change up the kinds of beans to fit your tastes. Someone said that garbonzo beans have a weird texture – leave them out if you don’t like them, or add more if you love them. I like the contrast of texture

3 cans of black beans, rinsed
1 can garbonzo beans, rinsed
2 large jalapenos, minced
1 small red onion, minced
1 bunch cilantro, leaves chopped

That’s it for the salad. Then you dress it. Sometimes I just throw on some lime juice and salt. This last time I made a honey lime vinagrette to try to counter some of the heat since the jalapenos were setting my lips on fire.

2 tbls honey
juice of 2 limes
olive oil (I dunno, enough. I put enough in to just about double the volume in the jar I was using to mix in)
salt, a couple of healthy pinches – you rinsed all the salt off the beans

shake to combine and pour some over the salad. Stir and taste, keep adding the dressing until it’s enough. I used almost all of it.

A big plus to this – other than the olive oil you really don’t have any fat. Or not much, there’s not much in canned beans. And olive oil is supposed to be a healthy fat. So yay! It’s got to be a healthy alternative to the sugar/bacon laden baked beans of my youth. (I’m not knocking those, I like those too, I just like these better.)

I’d been meaning to post pictures of this project for quite some time – it is finally finished. Me being me, I jumped right in and didn’t take a before photo. Luckily, the lamp I “upgraded” was one of a pair – Dad has the other. So I was able to pop by his place last night and get a photo of the mate for a pseudo before and after.

I needed one more lamp for my living room. I had a pair of these at dad’s house.

They were inherited from my nana, some sort of milkglass lamps with brass trimmings. I decided that it needed a bit more pizazz to punch it up. I started out fiddling around gallery glass. I filled in the dots with red and played around with the idea of putting some black swirlies on it. However, I just couldn’t get those to turn out as I wanted. Luckily, gallery glass is very forgiving – a couple of seconds with a fingernail or razorblade and PRESTO back to start. I added a line or two of instant leading (peel and stick). Then I took the whole thing apart and hit the brass parts with a hammered black spray paint. The brass was rather beat up anyway.

The crowning glory, I think, was the black and white stitched lampshade I found via Black & White Delight. I was a little unsure when I put it on there, that it might be too small. But I love it when the light is on.

It’s been completely finished for a few weeks, I just finally got the pictures last night. Yeah, I’m a slackass.

Looky, looky! A finished project! There haven’t been many of those around here for a while. Moving really threw my crafting into a standstill, then working too many hours made getting the house together take even longer. But now the house is together enough to live with and I can get back to making things. I missed it something fierce.

The first thing on my list was to finish the neverending scrap scarf. More than a year ago, I got the idea to knit a scarf from leftover bits of yarn. I had a few small balls, but no major amounts. My auntie though, she had tons of leftover yarn. She and my nana had saved every scrap of yarn down to pieces that were only 6 inches long. I decided to knit this longways on circular needles. I cast on (by my mom’s old, tail free, cast on method) until I couldn’t cram any more stitches on the needles. It would take an hour or two to do a single row. On each end I did a full row of black, but otherwise I just randomly grabbed a color from the bag. If they were short, I used them until they ran out. If they were long, I used them until I got bored of the color.

I don’t knit fast, I don’t knit daily. But I did knit enough to be sick of this project. I was bored to death with it. So, once it got to be about 5 inches wide long, I finished it. I expected it to be maybe 8 feet long, it’s well over 16. It is triple my height, which is 5’6″. I decided to mostly leave the ends poking out, just because, though I’d sometimes wrap them up in the next row once I got there.

And here we have it – the scrap scarf!

I don’t know if I’ll keep it or not. Most likely it’ll go in the giveaway bag. Crazily enough, I have enough yarn bits leftover to do a couple more.

As I was finishing this one up, I was already plotting out the next scarf. I started it last night too. I like to knit while watching tv, it keeps my hands busy.

I am probably the only person I know who will make soup with filet mignon.

Several months ago, I bought a whole beef tenderloin. I trimmed the chain off and cut it into small bits and put it into a baggie in the freezer. I also cut several small steaks and put them in the freezer.

Flash forward to last week. Mum and I went to Malone’s for lunch and I had their steak and potato soup. I feared that it might be a cream of potato soup with steak bits in it. Nope, it was just what I was hoping for – a beef base with steak pieces and cubes of potato. Yummy, but I can do better.

Today, I called and asked the boyfriend to dig out that baggie of steak bits for me – not thinking that when frozen, gobs of meat all look rather similar. He put down the bits and a couple of small steaks too. That’s ok, it’ll all go in the pot!

I called pop and asked him if he’d come over and help me install a peephole in my front door, I bribed him with promises of dinner. Luckily, it turned out well. As usual, my cooking is all method and no recipe. I’ll make a great grandma someday. (“I dunno, honey, a little of this and a little of that.”)

I cut the meat into bite sized pieces and dropped it into a hot soup pot with a little olive oil. While it was browning a bit I chopped 1 onion and 3 cloves of garlic and added them. Then I cubed 2 baking potatoes into small pieces and added that. Dumped in a 32 oz carton of beef broth and then decided that wasn’t enough liquid. I dropped in two beef bouillion cubes and two cups of water, whatever worchestershire was left in the fridge (maybe a tablespoon) a little merlot steak sauce (maybe another tablespoon), a couple healthy pinches of salt and a palmful of montreal steak seasoning. Then I cranked the heat and put a lid on it, letting it boil happily while dad and I worked on the door. A half hour or so later it was done – the steak was tender and so were the potatoes. We dished it up and had a little toast with garlic butter on the side.

TASTY!

And plenty left for lunch tomorrow! Super yay!