Homework

I spent last weekend trying to figure out the taxes and laws that would apply if I started selling my pottery. After hours of reading and confusion, I finally figured out that selling pottery, for me, would likely be considered a 'hobby' by the IRS because I wouldn't expect to make any money--just enough to cover the cost of my classes. What a headache! In any case, I'm glad I finally understand all this 'cause I think it'll come in handy. I borrowed the books above from the local public library. Libraries are pretty amazing.


I invited some of the girls over a few weeks ago for a housewarming with Moroccan food. I managed to finish enough bowls and plates that everyone could eat off of handmade pottery. One friend liked her soup bowl so much that she commissioned me to make a set of 6 for her. I delivered them today and she was really pleased! The shape and the rough quality of the turquoise glaze reminded her of the Japanese tea bowls she studied in college.


I've also had a lot of luck lately with a new (to me) glaze--Arabia green. I'm playing with layering glazes and seeing how different loose applications of design look.

Craft book projects #2

My second craft book from the library was Bag Bazaar: 25 Stylish Bags to Sew in an Afternoon. Overall this is a good book, with a variety of bag styles to choose from. I decided to make a laptop sleeve, which is loosely based on the "Ellen" pattern from this book, though I changed it up by adding a flap. I used a nice canvas print fabric I found in Thailand, and vibrant blue fleece for the lining. It came together easily, and didn't take a lot of time.

Craft book projects

I decided that if I'm going to check out craft books from the library, I'd better actually make an effort to do some projects from them. Up first: Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson.

I'm a bigger fan of this book than I expected--there are a lot of really nice, simple, and elegant projects--many of which you might have trouble giving away when you're finished. I chose three projects to complete. It helped that two of these were things I needed, and already had fabric for. The third will make an excellent gift.

Quilted coasters made with batik fabric my mom brought home from Indonesia. My poor coffee table will certainly thank me!

Kelly's pincushion in an assortment of fabrics from India, Africa, and home. I've never had a pincushion before, and already it has come in handy!

Lastly, the super quick + easy baby quilt. Oh man, I was absolutely loving this quilt when I sewed it up--it was effortless and so fast...

...then I realized that I had four threads to knot and tuck in for each of the cute little satin diamonds that quilt the piece together. It took me the better part of my evenings this week to finish that. But, hopefully the little guy will love his blankie. The fabric is from Joann--pretty cute!

Awesome weekend

It was my first free weekend at home in a month, and I got to do so much! My house is clean, I got to spend some time in the ceramics studio (bit by bit I'm regaining my old skills)...

I bought myself a ticket to see The National. They're not coming til October, but it should be well worth the wait. Check 'em out here, if you want.

Library loot! I got my library card--which never ceases to be exciting--and this is what I came away with for now. I've got a few holds on other sewing books. The Built by Wendy Dresses book has some fun ideas in it. Hopefully I'll have time to make something before I have to send the book back to the library. I'm hoping the Threads Fitting DVD Series will help me figure out how to get a better fit on this tricky vintage dress I started months ago. Bag Bazaar would be a good starter book for people interested in sewing bags. The patterns I'm interested in are fairly simple though, I could probably figure them out on my own.

There happened to be a street fair outside the library, so I stopped by and picked up some free Lara bar samples. Yum!

I also walked around the art museum for the first time, and snapped some pottery inspiration photos:

The handle and spout on this South American pot are so elegant.

And I love the simple yet striking designs on these pots.

Not exactly awesome, but I've decided, after all, to unpick the messy free-motion circles from my quilt. It's just too frustrating and slow to try to do this on a queen-sized quilt on my tiny sewing machine! I was pretty crazy to think this would be a successful idea for my second time quilting ever, but hey, I like to dream big. Once I finally unpick the edge I started, I'm going to machine quilt in a zig-zag pattern following the blocks. Hopefully that will be more instant gratification!

New favorite cookbook

For Christmas, my Mom got me a copy of Peter Reinhart's new book Artisan Breads Every Day. It's like a perfect meld of his award winning The Bread Baker's Apprentice, mixed with the newly popular Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. This book teaches you to make all kinds of beautiful gourmet breads with minimal effort. What can be better?

I made the cinnamon rolls from The Bread Baker's Apprentice several years ago, and they were amazing--just like the one's from Ann Sather in Chicago. So naturally, I had to see how the easy version of this recipe would go. And let me tell you, they turned out beautifully and couldn't have been easier. If you're looking for a good book to start bread baking, I highly recommend Artisan Breads Every Day!

Sorry folks, these beauties are long gone.

Book search

Does anyone have this book? I'm interested in finding some patterns for scalloped knitting as pictured on the cover. I'd like to have a number of options for a design I've been thinking about, and before I drop $50 for a used version of this hard-to-find book, I'd love to know more about its contents. Or, if anyone has any other ideas about sources for scalloped knitting patterns, I'd love to hear! I've already found a few good ones on ravelry, but I'd like to cast my net as wide as possible. I haven't checked the treasury books yet, does anyone know if one volume has these type of patterns?

This week in the kitchen

Crispy polenta and quinoa fries with tomato sauce and zucchini
I very loosely followed the recipe highlighted above, only the microwave directions failed miserably. I ended up adding a southwestern flavor to my polenta with a can of diced roasted green chilies, and the leftover feta and cheddar jack cheeses in my fridge. I also added my new favorite ingredient: nutritional yeast, except I didn't add quite enough to taste it. The tomato sauce involved throwing some crushed tomatoes, onion, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper in a pot and cooking for a bit. This dish was really yummy, and especially yummy as leftovers with a bit of fried egg thrown in.

Soft Chocolate and Raspberry Tart
For many people, dinner parties are a great excuse to get together with friends. For me, they are a great excuse to try out a new recipe. The tart above is my second recipe from Dorie Greenspan's celebrated Baking from My Home to Yours. This was actually quite simple to make, and was a very rich, velvety chocolate experience. I chopped up the raspberries rather than leaving them whole, so that they would make a layer at the bottom of the tart. They really helped to cut the richness of the chocolate. This was almost as good as the chocolate mousse strawberry tarts at the Bourke Street Bakery in Sydney. Next time I might try to make a lighter chocolate mousse for something similar.

Detail of the chocolate and raspberry layers.

This week in food

Perhaps you've figured out by now that I'm a bit obsessed with food and creating things. This week I tried out three new recipes, listed below in order of preference:

Chile Relleno Casserole

This was seriously good. I've never made real chile rellenos, and only started to eat them about a year ago. This recipe captures the essence of the dish, but modifies it so that rather than battering and frying the stuffed chiles, you instead bake them in yummy fluffy eggy goodness. I omitted the chorizo, and instead stuffed the chiles with a combination of cheddar jack and feta cheese. The feta added a really nice flavor and a less melty texture to the stuffing. This will be made again many times over.

Quinoa Vegetable Paella
If you aren't yet familiar with quinoa, I would recommend checking it out. It is similar to cous cous, only it contains quite a lot of protein. Plus it's really fun to eat. This recipe would be a great way to try quinoa for the first time. It's chock full of veggies, very healthy and tasty. If I were to make this again, I would probably kick up the spices a bit, since I tend to like flavorful food. This dish keeps with the traditional flavor of Spanish paella, which tends to be more subtle in taste.

Orange Berry Muffins
I happened to notice a copy of Dorie Greenspan's celebrated cookbook Baking: From My Home to Yours while visiting my mom the other day. Having read a lot of blog entries from Tuesdays with Dorie, I've been coveting this book for a while, and so borrowed it for the time being. It is chock full of some great recipes, many of which I can hardly wait to try out. Since I was expecting a couple house guests this weekend, I thought it would be great to make some muffins that could be munched on at any time. The orange blueberry muffins caught my eye, and so I whipped these up late Thursday. The muffins have a mild orange flavor, and are subtly sweet. I would rate these as a solidly good muffin. They don't bowl me over, and I don't find myself eating ten at a time, but they are certainly a pleasant thing to eat in the morning.

Colors and quilts

I'm on the quilt scheming phase again, and just picked up Denyse Schmidt's lovely Quilts book to help me along. I must admit, as much as I enjoy reading and finding inspiration in books, I'm often reluctant to actually purchase them--too often I feel weighed down by my possessions, and therefore try my best not to add to them unnecessarily. That being said, Denyse's book has some really great quilt designs that are exactly what I was looking for, and just what I need to give me a push in the right direction. I'd recommend checking this book out if you're into more contemporary quilts, and don't know quite how to start.

As I'm planning my theoretical first quilt, I'm trying to decide what colors to choose. I did a little googling to see if there was a good website that would let me play with colors to choose a palette. I found one, and though it's a bit annoying with all the ads, it worked pretty well for me. Click here to see the color palette I'm currently thinking about, inspired by this absolutely gorgeous quilt-in-progress on flickr. square one studio's quilt kind of breaks my heart, I love it so much. But alas, I'll just have to settle for the picture.

Finds

I stopped by the going-out-of-business sale for a local weaving store today. The looms were a little too large and expensive for my traveling student existence, and the yarn was not really knitting appropriate, but I did come away with two great stitch dictionaries for a few dollars. I had been eyeing Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns series for a few years now, but am reluctant to accumulate too many large books. Today, I found this condensed version of lace patterns from the first two Treasury books, The Craft of Lace Knitting, which I guess is out of print. It's a nice, slim book with a ton of great patterns that could be used lace, sweaters, and a myriad of other things.


I also picked up a fantastic Japanese stitch pattern book that looks to be from the 1960s. It is called 2000 Patterns of Design and Figure-Knitting and was edited by Y. Miyashita. Apparently this is a fairly rare book--I just did a quick internet search and didn't turn up a single one for sale currently! The book opens with a nice intro to the pattern chart symbols. I wonder if these are the same symbols used in modern Japanese knitting books?


The rest of the book has photographs and charts of each stitch pattern, and these great little illustrations of Japanese women with 60s updos. Each illustrated sweater looks so cute--very vintage, yet something I could easily see on the shelves of Anthropologie. Between these two books, I should have enough design inspiration to last years.

Zimmerman Love

I just purchase my second knitting book by Elizabeth Zimmerman, Knitting Without Tears. Although the name makes it sound like it is strictly for beginners, don't be fooled! Zimmerman discusses a variety of techniques useful for beginners and the experienced alike. I'm looking forward to trying her invisible cast-on and the afterthought buttonhole. The real reason I bought this, though, were the clear instructions for how to knit seamless raglan, saddle shoulder, and other sweater styles in any gauge. I'm going to be reading this carefully before I start on my next pattern project, which will [hopefully] be a hybrid of an asymmetrical yoke and seamless raglan sleeves. I've been trying to figure out the geometry of it in my head, but I think I'll need a pencil and paper for this one!

Knitting workshop

I'm on the Elizabeth Zimmermann bandwagon. She has many fans, including those who share their projects on the Zimmermania blog, the flickr Elizabeth Zimmermann group, and even everyone's favorite male knitter over at Brooklyn Tweed can be seen singing EZ's praises. I picked up her Knitting Workshopbook yesterday, and already have a bit of a knitterly crush on her. The book reads more like a novel than an instruction book. Elizabeth has strong opinions about how one should knit, but her opinions always help you knit easily and in your own individual manner. I decided to get her book because a lot of people use her ideas to design their own sweaters, instead of blindly following patterns. Her philosophy is also great if you can never seem to get the right fit from the patterns you choose. By reading her books, you will hopefully gain a better understanding of knitting techniques, garment fit and design. Plus she's really funny. I'm already thinking about picking up her other books!

Book review--Suite Francaise

Just a quick note to tell you about an excellent book I just finished reading. Suite Francaiseis a collection of two novellas written by Russian-born author Irene Nemirovsky during the Nazi occupation of France in WWII. It follows the stories of several families during the war, and offers a great deal of insight into the minds of the French at this time. Although I have read many books set in WWII, I felt this book offered a new and well-informed perspective. It moves away from the front lines, away from the larger political arenas, and instead focuses on smaller, personal vignettes. Nemirovsky was of Jewish decent, and despite having converted to Catholicism before the war, was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where she died in August of 1942. Suite Francaise was published many years after her death by her daughter, who had saved the original manuscripts as a memento of her mother. Included in this version of the book are a series of correspondences from Nemirovsky, her husband, and her publisher, which offer insight into the tragic reality of Nemirovsky's life while she was writing Suite Francaise.

Knit progress

For those of you who who only want to hear about sewing--my apologies, sewing is on hiatus for a while! I just can't put those knitting needles down. I'm getting close to finished with Demi from Vintage Knits. Just part of a sleeve, the collar, then blocking and seaming!


Seeing it all together like this makes me feel very proud of my accomplishments so far. This is my first cabling project, and it wasn't terribly hard at all. Here's a detail of some of the cables and bobbles:


It's really a lovely pattern. If you're a knitter who hasn't yet tackled sweaters or cables, let me assure you that you can do it! Despite the fact that Demi looks like a very challenging sweater to knit, the only two stitches you need to know are knit and purl. The hard part is keeping track of where you are, and learning to read the pattern. But that can all be done with a little help from an experienced friend, or with a good knitting resource. My favorite knitting reference book was given to me by a friend:


I turn to The Knitter's Handbookwhenever I'm learning a new stitch, or when I forget which way to wind the yarn for a yarn over, or when I'm trying to decipher a vintage pattern that has old-fashioned instructions. It would make a great gift for any new or intermediate knitter. It's small, but it packs in all kinds of information along with detailed step-by-step pictures and written instructions.