another reason to move to Portland

Posted on January 19, 2005 by mariko

They’re going to open a Penzey‘s there (at least I hope they meant Oregon and not Maine … ).

Posted in General | 13 Comments

You say macaroon

Posted on January 18, 2005 by mariko

I say macaron! I always equated “macaroon” with coconut, so I stayed away from them. I recently learned, however, that the French macaron has nothing to do with coconut. It’s made of meringue, almond flour, and powdered sugar, and the resulting cookie is light but chewy with a hint of nuttiness. Yummy goodness! Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to try making some macarons. Here they are, piped onto the baking sheet, before baking:
macarons prebake.JPG
Macarons usually, as far as I know, have a filling sandwiched between them. I attempted to make a coffee buttercream for the filling. Here are some of the completed macarons!
macaons.JPG
Since I have only had about one macaron before, I don’t really know if mine taste authentic. I gave some to my French teacher, who is French, so maybe she can give me some feedback. I think they are quite tasty and cute! I used this basic recipe from this incredible blog. For the filling, I used Gale Gand’s recipe for Easy Buttercream, which you can find here. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to make buttercream to save my life, so it wasn’t so easy for me!
If you have any macaron anecdotes, please share them!

Posted in baking | 14 Comments

and I ran

Posted on January 17, 2005 by mariko

I’ve been sewing a lot of lycra garments lately, and that got me thinking. Some of us really have no business parading around in lycra, and if you’re like me, you’re always searching for tops that are just the right length for covering the trouble spots and preventing you from looking too obscene yet not so long that you look like a throwback from a 1980s-era Jazzercise class. I suppose I could avoid lycra completely, but there are advantages to lycra–it keeps the muscles warm, and it keeps stuff from, you know, swinging all over the place.
SO, here’s what I came up with!
run skirt front.JPG run skirt legs.JPG run skirt back.JPG
It’s a running skort thing! The skirt part is made out of ripstop nylon, and there are lycra shorts underneath. I ran in it this morning, and it was very comfy. I still need to tweak the design quite a bit, since it doesn’t hang quite right, and the shape of the skirt is a bit off, but I think this is the start of a new exercise revolution–running skort things for everyone!

Posted in sewing | 24 Comments

flowery vest completed!

Posted on January 15, 2005 by mariko

Okay, so I finally finished the flowery vest from Girly Knit!

flowery vest.JPG

Yeah, that’s Peter’s thumb in the photo. I was too lazy to crop. Here’s a closeup of one of the flowers, complete with beads:
flower cu.JPG
I tell you, mohair is warm! The vest in Girly Knit is white and styled a bit differently. Here is a picture of it. Okay, some specs:
Pattern: basically made it up. It’s just a plain old V-neck vest. I measured an old vest and went from there. It’s an 8K 2P rib.
Yarn: Jo Sharp Kid Mohair in color 603 from elann. I almost got away with using THREE balls, but I had to break into a fourth to knit the neckband. I used 5mm/US 8 needles, but my gauge was looser than what is specified on the band. For the green I used Marvelous Mohair from Steadfast Fibers in color Groovy Green. The orange is Mango Moon.
Am I forgetting any details? I am usually terrible about specs, so I feel very virtuous right now for remembering to save the labels!

Posted in knitting | 32 Comments

turkey mole okay!

Posted on January 12, 2005 by mariko

For dinner I made the Turkey Mol

Posted in cooking | 9 Comments

flower power

Posted on January 11, 2005 by mariko

I am finished with the knitted portions of the Girly Knit flower vest, and now it’s time to grow some flowers! I managed to eke one out last night:

flowery vest back.JPG

That’s the back of the vest. I think I am just going to leave it with one flower. The front will have flowers all along the bottom. I still need to add some seed beads to the flower. Embroidery is kind of tough, but hopefully the flowers will be cute.

Posted in knitting | 16 Comments

at least he’s trying

Posted on January 10, 2005 by mariko

Peter does appreciate knitting, and he does try to learn some terminology. The other day, in fact, he referred to “that eyebrow stuff.”*
* I told him about eyelash yarn when he was describing the fluffy scarves that all his students are wearing.

Posted in General | 15 Comments

is it early or late?

Posted on January 8, 2005 by mariko

Today I made a Christmas stocking for my friend Wendy’s wee one. I have to send her older one her poncho, so I figured I could kill two birds witih one stamp and send the stocking, too!

paulina stocking2.jpg

It’s a little, well, funky, but the stocking was made with care and joy, and that’s what counts, right? Merry Christmas, little Paulina!

Posted in other crafting | 7 Comments

super duper surprise balls

Posted on January 6, 2005 by mariko

Amy of miniature clay sushi fame sent me a magnificent surprise ball:

amy surprise ball.JPG

Check out the great prizes she included!
amy surprise ball innards.JPG

Here are some closeups of the goodies:
amy sb sweater.JPG amy sb pulls.JPG
Can you believe that miniature sweater? It has a little donut appliqued onto it! The sprinkles are individual little stitches! And the zipper pulls are incredible. It was really fun unraveling this surprise ball, since it held so many treasures!

Posted in other crafting | 13 Comments

and now it is time for lycra

Posted on January 5, 2005 by mariko

Well hello there my moisturized friends. Thank you for all the suggestions! Now I have a huge list of moisturizers to try.
Okay, so as I threatened, I’m going to show you some multipurpose exercise pants I sewed up! I made the photos kind of small so you wouldn’t be too frightened (if you had told me a year ago that I would eventually post lycra-clad photos of myself, I wouldn’t have believed you):
capris orange.JPG capris lycra.JPG
The ones on the left are cotton lycra (Mrs. H sent me the fabric a while back), and the ones on the right are nylon lycra (got the fabric at Rose City Textiles when I was in Portland). I basically made up the pattern, using a pair of storebought capris (from lucy.com) for inspiration. Peter is rather dismayed that I made such loud and crazily patterned bottoms, but what can I say? Though I do believe that form-fitting exercise bottoms should be black (it’s so slimming!), in reality I am drawn to brightly colored, whacked out fabric designs. At least no cars will hit me when I’m out running …

Posted in sewing | 21 Comments