Entry the thirtieth: In case you were worried

I realize that lately I've been blogging like an eight year old, or maybe just a senile old lady or a bouncy annoying teenager. You know what I'm talking about but you've been too nice to say anything. Dressing cats in clothes? Youtube links to Sesame Street? Penguins in little blue socks?

Okay, maybe you weren't worried about the penguins.

Here's my excuse (or at least the excuse I'm going with for the time being): every third person I know is having a baby and I am easily distracted by tangents. In other words, I've had children on the brain, which makes me think my childhood, which makes me thing of all kinds of diverting things that have nothing to do with the work I should be completing now. And then I discover youtube.com or that Sylvie really doesn't mind if you put a onesie on her, and it's all over.

In other news, I'm working from home today and the pottery studio next door is prepping for an art walk this weekend, so I'm learning all about the pottery biz. Conversations sail in from the acoustically-perfect deck next door and through my bathroom window.

For instance, when I put in my contact lenses, I learned that someone is picking up her laptop today and is looking forward to not sharing a computer with her family because one person is always researching trailer pricing and another person is fond of recipes for cranberry jello. No, really. You didn't expect them just to discuss pottery, did you?

Now I can hear someone breaking something that makes a satisfying noise when smashed. The sound is loud enough to carry to the living room but it isn't unpleasant. I'm guessing it's unfired, unloved unfinished pieces which will be turned back into soft clay, but I could be wrong. It could be crockery. Or delicate bricks. Or large china Dalmations with chipped ears. Yes, yes, I could go look, but then I'd know the answer.

Entry the twenty-ninth: Brrrrriiiiiing... yip yip yip

My most wonderful husband just downloaded the perfect ringtone for my new phone. Now when he calls, the phone plays the exchange between the telephone and the Muppet aliens in the clip below. (For the impatient among you, skip to 2:23.)



I'm very, very happy. Brrrrriiiiing!

Entry the twenty-eighth: In which I must have done something benevolent in a previous life...

... or Sylvie did something really evil in one of hers. Proof:



Isn't Sylvie a lovely model? I'd use my "small brown cat used for scale purposes" phrase, but I doubt any of you smart people would buy it. (Or you would point out the onesie is too large and that Sylvie is more of a "0-3 months" than a "12 months" cat.) You've no doubt already figured out that I'm the kind of person who occasionally puts clothes on defenseless pets.

The thing is, Sylvie is the most "eh, whatever" cat ever. I'm not going to say she loved this experience... but she didn't really mind. No, really. This picture was taken a few minutes ago and now Sylvie is asleep on my desk, mere inches from my keyboard.

Here's a clearer (i.e. sans cat) picture of the stenciled onesie I finished this weekend.



Looking back at the weekend, I can think of a dozen things I wish I had finished (or started) but for now I'm content with this.

Entry the twenty-seventh: Oops

A few friends came over to make rubber stamps tonight and I forgot to take pictures. Ack! You'll just have to take my word for it when I tell you they created nifty things. Since I have no evidence from tonight, I'm cheating and showing off some of my own stuff.



A little explanation: I decorate the labels for my canned goodies (and the recipe cards above and below), but I'm not crazy about using prefab stamps. It sort of feels like cheating to make a design and then call it my own work. My homemade stamps are a bit clunky compared to the ones from the pros, but I like them nonetheless. I wanted to share this doable-even-for-beginners craft with others... but I'm a dork and I forgot to take pictures.

Here are some of my homemade stamps with the cards.



My wonderfully talented (and patient!) friends made a candy cane/heart arrangement, a flower with separate stampable leaves, a paw print, and a supercool pumpkin with two optional jack o' lantern faces and a leggy spider on the opposite side. (The stamping material is thick enough to carve one stamp on each side and four more around the edges.)

One more shot of some of my favorite cards. And a promise: next time I'll remember to take pictures!

Entry the twenty-sixth: Adorableness

I've got some yucky bug (of the germ variety, not the kind Mirabelle likes) so I'm not up to doing much, but I had to post a picture of this guy.



This mini article says that this is Elvis (yes, really) and he's wearing shoes because the floor of his enclosure (he's at a zoo in New Zealand, I think) were making his little feetsies sore.

Poor Elvis. I hope the shoes help. Does someone help him take them off when he wants to go for a swim?

Entry the twenty-fifth: Extreme Canning Frustratrion

Raaaarrrrgggh.

Last night I used my pressure canner for the very first time. I've canned many a thing with boiling water, but never with superheated steam. My wonderfully sweet husband reread through the instruction booklet and walked me through it, step by step, as I prepared the ingredients and readied the hot sterilized jars.

The recipe told me to leave 1/4" headspace, so that's what I did. Even when my husband pointed out that the canner instructions said to leave twice that. But me? I followed the recipe. Grumblegrumblegrumble.

The first indication that something was wrong was when I opened the cooled-for-the-allotted-time-so-not-going-to-explode-and-scald-anyone canner. The canning water was cloudy and smelled a lot like lemon and egg. At first I thought one of the jars had broken (this happened to me once when I made pickles, but I think in that case it was because the room temperature cukes did not play well with the boiling water), but no. The largest jar had leaked approximately half its contents into the water during the process, but then sealed when cooling.

Concerned by this and the now-completely-filled-with-no-headspace-WHATSOEVER jars, I started Googling. And getting answers. And now I am extremely frustrated.

Turns out it may not be safe to can lemon curd (yes, this was the origin of the lemony eggy water), even with a pressure canner. And yet Linda J. Amendt's Blue Ribbon Preserves instructs me how to do it.

I don't know what to do. This book has forty-one reviews on amazon.com and all but (I think) three are glowing. Her book is published by Penguin. It didn't occur to me (before all that Googling) that her recipes might not be safe. Raaaaarrrrghh.

I've posted a "please help!" question on gardenweb.com and am hoping for a reassuring answer. But in the meantime, I Am Not Happy.

Here is a picture of an adorable dormouse to mitigate some of the grouchiness of this post.

Entry the twenty-fourth: In which I am gratified

If you read yesterday's post, you know what I did as soon as I was fully conscious this morning: run next door for stenciled onesies. (I might have put on my glasses and pet the cat a couple times before that, but that's it. Oh, and I took a vitamin. Vitamins are important.) After carefully pulling off all the stencils, I was quite pleased with the results. Mostly.

Here's the line up. The two at the top left (cheese and an unfinished sun) are still on the first stage. I will add another stencil and some paint today.



The pink mouse on the yellow cheese came out nicely. He still needs an eye.



And I love the sun and moon.



The navy onesie was a pain because it required three layers of paint, but I can't complain about the results. Maybe it's worth the extra trouble after all.

This is the only piece I'm not thrilled with.



Turns out the soft flannel-ish texture of these navy overalls doesn't play well with fabric paint. You can see that the paint leaked under the stencil in a few places. I might try daubing a little yellow paint on one of the "spills" to see if I can hide it. The other problem is the placement of the mouse on the cheese. I could have done a better job with that.

Overall, however, I'm quite pleased. I think these will be well received. Yay!

Entry the twenty-third: Stenciled onesies and a basket!

Valerie and I spent all of Saturday learning how to make baskets out of Torrey pine needles at the UCSD Craft Center. I didn't manage to finish that day (Valerie did, the showoff), so it looked like this when I took it home.



Yesterday I was freakishly (for me) productive. If I had more days like yesterday, I wouldn't need a blog to nudge me into getting things done! (I'm serious. I need this blog to lurk in the back of my consciousness saying "you could post pictures if you actually got something done. Plus, I'm pink!") First, I finished my basket.



Here it is again, this time with the obligatory (and irritated) small brown cat included for scale purposes.



Then I washed some stuff. I will spare you pictures of that. But after that I drew and cut out stencils from freezer paper and then ironed them on some onesies.



I followed these directions on this blog.

I used silk screen fabric paint and discovered that dark fabrics are, well, dark and difficult to cover with lighter colors. Yellow paint over navy blue fabric, for instance, does not work. At all. Luckily the white paint is quite opaque so I mixed that with the yellow and painted a second coat an hour or so later with better results.



When I got home tonight, the first thing I did is run next door (yes, next door... it's sort of our annex... it's a long story) to bring all the onesies back. I carefully peeled the paper off a few of them and was delighted to discover that the stencils were a success! (Apologies for the lack of pictures of this stage -- you'll just have to come up with your own mental image.)

I decided that several of the onesies needed another coat of paint before going further. The ones with the successfully-stenciled designs had a second stencil ironed on over them and then I painted the second design element. This one will have a pink mouse on top of a piece of yellow cheese.



Whew! More tomorrow when I see how the mouse comes out. :-)

P.S. My husband would like the world (or at least the four people who read this blog) to know that "Trader Joe's Chocolate Sandwich Creme Joe-Joe's are the Devil's Lunchbox." Whatever that means.