Old and Full of Days

I am tired. Like, seriously tired. I could point to any number of reasons why this is so, but I think I'll bump up the most pleasant right to the top of the list: I am tired because I am having too much darn fun. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. To the rest of the possible reasons for my tiredness (work, stress, money, health, diet, schedule, etc., etc., etc.), thank you for your application but the position has already been filled.

Looking at the calendar I can see not a single moment from now until well after New Year's Day when I cannot tell you right now where I will be and what I'll be doing, more or less. I don't mind this terribly much. Surprises and spontaneity are increasingly unpleasant experiences and I am pleased to be able to look ahead a few weeks and know that I need a box of Legos, a rubber frog, pink glitter, a roasted hunk o' beef, a blue t-shirt, a bottle of chocolate stout, or a football-themed sheet cake, and also precisely on which days these are true. Predictability is the order of the day.

With that in mind, the advanced date reminds me that it's time for my annual rant on gift-giving, homemade-edness and celebrations. Or, we can skip it and go for the following instead, my favorite sources and resources for holiday crafting and gifting fun (please note this SPOILER ALERT in the event that you are related and/or are in a gift giving relationship with me):

- Sew Mama Sew has launched its annual Handmade Holidays series of tutorials gathered from all corners of the web. Wonderful inspiration for homemade gifts for nearly any interest or need of which you can think and for just about any skill level. Don't forget to peruse the archives of previous years' series. My nieces and nephews are (probably; see also having lots of fun and near miss on complaining about the calendar) receiving keyrings made of fabric tied (ha!) to their interests and personalities, a project posted two years ago, I think. I'd like to make them the "Don't Get Out of Bed" pants from this year's collection, but I don't think my skills are up to it (yet).

- I am also making up a number of jars of Cowgirl Cookies, except mine won't be Cowgirl Cookies. Follow? What I mean is that I'm making Buffalo Sabres cookies (blue and yellow candies), Dalmatian cookies (black and white candies), UB Bulls cookies (blue and white candies) and so on. That I have a brand spanking new Wegmans grocery at hand, what with their 99 cent 5-lb. bags of flour and bulk candy section makes this fun, easy and inexpensive. I cannot WAIT for my Sabres-obsessed nephew to open his cookie jar and start bugging my sister to bake 'em up right away. That's the kind of aunt I am.

- I have rediscovered ShrinkyDinks, a craft of my childhood. They're back! Who knew? Well, my five-year old knew and now announces with great regularity that she'd like to "shrink some dinks". For holiday gift giving of the aforementioned cookie mixes or jams or spiced honey or dipping sauce, I'll be making little Shrinky Dink tags that can then be saved or put on a tree or whatever. A small tangible reminder of the consumable gift, you know? A search through Microsoft Powerpoint or via Google Images for whatever key word one seeks (Buffalo Sabres, Dumpling, or Honey, for example) will likely yield an embarrassment of traceable riches for coloring and subsequent shrinking (remember, this method is NOT for commercial application, let's not take food off of designers' plates or run regrettably afoul of licensing laws, yes?). I'm no artist and if my tags work out o.k., I'll post some pictures.*

- For your baking pleasure, please see my friend Susie J at Christmas Baking. Every year I say it but it bears repeating: the gingerbread recipe is super-plus fantastic and should all the seasonal merriment makes you sleepy you could do worse than whip up a batch of mokka in response.

- If, like me, you need a gift-giving back up plan and you'd rather it didn't involve traffic, lines, or, heck, even bothering to dress I recommend Etsy and Artfire. I bought a number of gifts from Etsy last year (and in the time since) and have been pleased with each and every one. It can be hard to find what you need or want, and judicious application of key words goes a long way.

- Finally, don't forget YouTube as a source for wildly inventive tutorials on everything from knitting to making candy wreaths to gingerbread house hacks. Expanding my use of the site from nostalgic explorations of both teen-dream and more recent crushes (!) I can profess a legit educational application the type of which I'd heard about but not quite endorsed. I may set my children to work making smaller candy wreaths for their teachers (or at least as much of the wreaths as they will before a ravenous desire for the candy supplies and/or more complaining than I am willing to tolerate set in).

This weekend is the elementary school fund raising auction. Brainiac is feeling very competitive that our contribution of a Scotch-and-Cigar basket (designed to tempt the men away from the spa outings and girls-night-out packages) raises lots of money. For my part, I'm just looking forward to the first event of the rest of the year. With wine.

* Regular readers know better than to count on this. I'm always promising pictures and rarely deliver. Sorry.

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Old and Full of Days

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I actually took a picture of my big ole' bowl of to-be-jarred salsa. I really did. But, as I'm sitting here very comfortably, sipping a homemade limeade, the odds are increasingly slim that I'll actually stand up, walk to the dining room, take the camera out of its drawer (yes! we keep the camera in the dining room, no where near the computer - this could explain why I never have any pictures), walk back to my desk, connect it, turn it on and...see? It's just not happening. You can picture it, though, right? Big glass bowl? Filled with chopped veggies and looking (mostly) green? Good! That's exactly what it looks like.

I don't actually have a recipe for the salsa, just a list of ingredients with which I mess around until I get something I think tastes good. Even if the result is different from batch to batch I'm able to respond to nuances in the ingredients (some tomatillas are tangier than others, for example, and some onions sharper) and also contrive to use up bits of remainders hanging out in the fridge. It's an approach I like to take with many things, come to think of it.

This bowl has about four pounds of tomatillas (minced), half of a large yellow onion (chopped), half of a large red onion (chopped), a head of garlic (minced), salt and pepper, a chopped hot pepper, a fist full of cilantro (chopped) and a splash or two of cider vinegar. Good stuff.

Processing the salsa tonight (15 minutes in a boiling hot water bath) took care of one of my weekend projects. The other, my sister's birthday tote, is marked but as yet uncut and oh-so-far from completion. I've been in canning and knitting world lately but really need to get back to sewing for a while - too many things started but not completed and wanted before the summer is out (like, sundresses for the girl and a linen skirt for myself - can't imagine wanting them in, say, November which is when I'll get to it if I don't shape up). Then again, if I order the Darn Good Yarn I've been scoping, my return to the sewing machine might be delayed further.

Too many hobbies, so little time.

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I write this while in the next room a pile of ingredients for tomatilla salsa lay (lie?) waiting for my attention. It's not so terribly late but I am very tired and I just don't know if I have it in me tonight. If I bucked up, poured an iced tea and got to business I know I'd be glad for it later so perhaps I'll have to let that thought carry me through since Brainiac's installation of air conditioning in the kitchen has nearly completely removed my former favorite excuse for procrastination - the heat and humidity of a Philadelphia summer - from use. Ah, well.

Tomatilla salsa is one of those things that I make about once and year and really love having around. Not only is it great plain on tortilla chips, but it's a good ingredient to glam up otherwise workaday dishes. It's wonderful over grilled steak, for example, or as a spread on a wrap (mixed with mayo and a bit of lime is even better). It can be part of a salad dressing or folded into a crepe batter and is a little piece of heaven inside an omelet along with a bit of chevre.
Hey, look what I did...talked myself right into it. At the very least I'll get everything diced and minced tonight and will likely do the actually canning tomorrow night. That's always a good compromise.

My other big project for the weekend is to complete the tote I've started for my sister. I gave one of these to my youngest sis for Christmas and had so much fun making it that I've added it to my gift-giving repertoire. This one is made from the directions in Christina Strutt's Romantic Home Sewing in a sort of wheat colored canvas. My plan is to embroider an initial or perhaps a flower or something on one side. Whatever I decide, I need to get it done because her birthday is in a little under two weeks and the tote must be mailed. I need to step on it, in other words. The only hold up I see is making the handles, a task that involves turning little fabric tubes right-side out and which is my least favorite sewing task. Like the salsa, I suppose, I will just have to buck up.

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I finished a project last night.

Wait. I like the sound of that. Let me repeat myself: I finished a project last night.

That reads beautifully, doesn't it? The project I finished is a tutu long promised to the Girl and worked on only in fits and starts. Yesterday after her grandparents left from a weekend visit and her brother was whisked off to (another) birthday party she asked with such sweetness if I thought perhaps, maybe, just possibly we could work on it, the tutu which had been pinned months ago and languishing in a sideboard cupboard ever since.

In the end, the finishing wasn't that difficult. Produced only of three layers of white tulle covered in two layers of a silky pinky something (bought unmarked from a remnants bin for twenty-five cents), stitched together at the waist and run through with a bit of elastic, I'd say that the total effort - stretched over months, granted - was probably no more than 45 minutes with five minutes of that needed to secure a butterfly to the waist.

The final product could be a bit fluffier and I may well cut the underlying tulle to graduate it into greater overall volume. It's not a professional job, to be sure, but not at all bad for no pattern, I think. The Girl is happy and for that I am even happier.

The next project to complete - grabbing the low-hanging fruit, the things almost done - is an apron intended for my sis-in-law and which has been in its current not-quite-finished state for at least three months. (Aside: Why on earth I get things so close to done and then don't finish them is beyond me. Especially when completion is so satisfying.) And then, I think, a few of some teeny tiny counted cross-stitch Christmas things from Mary Engelbreit. Mary can sometimes a bit too much for my tastes but when it comes to Christmas all bets are off and the more too much I can get, the better.

Susie J will say I need to post pictures. She's right. Forthcoming, tonight, maybe, perhaps, just possibly.

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One of the challenges in being rather abundant of figure is finding clothes that aren't 1) made like junk, 2) poorly fitted/executed, 3) heading into Mrs. Roper territory, 4) priced to cost the kingdom. Like most women facing this particular vexation - and I know that every woman faces some kind of wardrobe limitation, be it size-related, access to clothing, financial or whatever - over time I have cobbled together a collection of what I suppose could be called "solutions" sourced from the late, great Mode magazine, Vogue's annual Size (or whatever it's called) Issue, a lifetime of way-too-intimate knowledge of the offerings of the various mall-based purveyors of the aforementioned junk and/or expensiveness.

As a result my wardrobe is serviceable if not as pleasurable as I might like. Jeans from KMart (no, seriously), plain tees from Old Navy, intimates from Lane Bryant, sweaters and skirts from Talbots or Jones New York, odds and ends from a TJ Maxxish kind of place and the very occasional marked-down specialty item from Nordstrom make the bulk of my clothes-shopping routine. I don't go in for patterns much (dangerous Mrs. Ropertude, which even Nordstrom alarmingly enables) and fearing the Mimi effect I also avoid what I think of as "art" (i.e., embellished) clothing. A perfect outfit as far as I'm concerned more or less begins and ends with Donna Karen circa 1985.

Lately I've felt a call to be a bit more proactive in my wardrobing efforts, relying more on conscious, ordered choices and less on clearance-rack mayhem. To that end I've ditched some ill-considered higher-end purchases via Craig's List, donated other stuff to Goodwill, cut up still others for the rag bin and, while I cannot claim the kind of streamlined closet of the kind that would please Andree Putman*, I'm working on it. I've also decided to expand my sewing from tutus, rod-pocket curtains and pillows into more interesting territory - that is, sewing for myself.

Close perusal of the complete works of those What Not to Wear girls and a lifetime of pondering why exactly it is that I always look rather disreputable have led me to understand that I need to obtain the following: better underwear, more wrap blouses, three-quarter length or longer sleeves, a total absence of turtlenecks, boot cut jeans, accenuation of the waist and perhaps more in the way of twinset-type things. Some of this I think I'd like to try making myself.

Good. I've got a plan. That's something at least, right?

* "I love America, and I love American women. But there is one thing that deeply shocks me - American closets. I cannot believe one can dress well when you have so much." So said the much-esteemed Ms. Putman.

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My grand hopes that I would post pictures today of all my completed projects were, by all appearances, wildly over-ambitious. Brainiac distracted me from my planned achievements with a day-long outing on Saturday, us and the kids, exploring new areas, cavorting on new playgrounds and making new connections. I am always happy surrender to his occasional zeal for aimless meandering, knowing that when it strikes he will take great delight in bringing me to as yet unknown (to me) garden center, used book store or fabric store (sometimes all three). Saturday brought a visit to a Revolutionary War-era house, beautifully restored and now for sale, in addition to other sundry delights and I just never quite got to doing whatever it was that I had meant to do.

What it was that I had meant to do included finishing a dress for Entropy Girl, made out of a beautiful toile, blue and cream, with a scene of pastoral childhood of the kind that is usually found only in books and consists of kids fishing, flying kites, dancing around a Maypole, that sort of thing. It has made, as I thought it would, a very sweet non-fussy dress that I hope now to finish tonight and which the recipient has flat out refused to accept. No matter, for the truth is that I made the dress for me, even if I have long since left size 3T behind, and my daughter wearing it is not required for my complete joy in its creation. Nice, but not required.

And then there is the unmade Sun Bread, from a recipe found in the book of the same name wherein a town of clever animals convince the sun to make an appearance by baking bright yellow bread to relieve a long, gray winter. I've been begged for Sun Bread for weeks (to be served alongside cherry and pineapple upside down cake conjured from Eight Animals Bake a Cake) and, well, perhaps tonight is the night.

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