A new finish

I took part in a Christmas ornament exchange. It's been a while since I had a finish--I do try to stitch, but it doesn't seem like I get much accomplished. But I did make the time to get this done for Rossanna, a nice lady from Italy.

I do love this chart. I have no idea who it is by, it was from a site that had a bunch of cat charts, but the site is no longer there. It had no guidance for the colors, so I chose to make it a black cat, like my Lily, who loves to hide under the Christmas tree. Lily is one of the three reasons we had to replace all the glass ornaments on the tree; their first Christmas, the three kittens LOVED to climb into the tree, then would wrap their arms around the tree branches, making it difficult to extract them without breaking ornaments. I like to send a little bit of our holidays to other countries, and Lily is my pretty little Christmas kitty.  I did mail it out late, but I totally forgot when we had to mail. I hope it gets to her quickly.


I haven't posted since Halloween, but wanted to share a couple pictures of how we celebrated. It was a lot more low-key than we've had in the past. But I still wanted to make  some memories with Babyirl.

Her granny bought her the Pooh punkin inserts. I love him, much cuter than anything our terrible carving skills could create. 

 Mom bought her this little dress so she'd be pretty on Halloween. I don't know why Carter's made a Halloween dress with short sleeves and just a diaper cover, but we put it over jeans and she was in deep like!  She kept looking at the punkins on it. Maybe I have a Halloween fan in the making?

If I don't post between now and Thanksgiving, I hope you have a blessed holiday.

Happy Halloween

May your Halloween be full of fun, your Trick or Treat bag full of full-size candy bars, and your night a reminder that it's always better to err on the side of whimsy.

Confessions (full of links)

I used to be an interesting person.

I know this because I have such interesting links in my favorites.

Or else I have much more faith in my home-making abilities than I should have.

Example #1

I have been scrolling by this link on my work computer for a year and a half. Apparently, I seem to be deluding myself that I will actually quilt one day. But, that would mean pulling out my sewing machine and we all know that I am afraid of my sewing machine. And we will not mention the sites for finishing I have bookmarked.

Example #2
I don't think I have ever had a Macaron, but they keep popping up in my popular culture references. I favorited this link after watching the Paris episodes of Sex and the City. We also watch The Great British Bakeoff at my part-time job and they had an episode where they were making them. There is a part of me that thinks it's inherently unfair that, somewhere, people can eat blackberry-peppermint macarons, but I have never seen a macaron available in any bakery in the Washington, DC area. But, I am the person who turned on her brand-new, sleek, black, Kitchenaid mixer . . . and attempted to blend my spatula into cookie batter.

This looks more my skillset.

I'm too chicken to take this on.

But I can see using this one a lot; after all, who has room in their house for a fully-stocked bar?


But, I don't just want to eat and cook. OK, I'd be perfectly happy to eat and cook all day . . . when I am not singing random pop songs to a not-quite-4-month old. High on her list is "We are Never Ever Getting Back Together," by Taylor Swift and "The Way You Are," by Bruno Mars. 


By the way, here she is.

This was a month ago. She has grown a lot of hair since then. My mom loves this picture, because, as she puts it, "She's grinning and there is not a tooth in her head." LOL.

Anyway, as I was saying, at some point, I wanted to study more about Jane Austen.

So I bookmarked this site:
This one

I think I deleted others when I realized I live in Crazyville, not Pemberly.

One day, I'm going to take a chance and go through these links and do something from them. Make a little baby quilt, do some baking (if I can find almond meal in Metro Crazyville), maybe find a way to incorporate Regency style into my world.

Maybe 2013 will be my year to live fearlessly . . . or at least more interestingly?

New SAL

by By the Bay Needleart

And it's an autumnal one!

I just printed off the summer one--it came out while I was on bedrest, so I never printed it, but now I did. And I printed off the autumn one. I am hopeful I have the supplies in stash, since I am trying to spend as little money on stash as possible right now, but, if not, I know I have something that will do just as well.  This is just proof that I was right all those years I was collecting stash like they were stopping printing paper, only then my plan was to be a hermit on the beach and I needed it because I'd have no money.  Just call me a hermit in the country. Same issue, different locale.

I am stitching a little more these days. I seem to have been able to find a happy medium between the baby and my needs. She is becoming a bit more independant, or maybe it's that we have a routine now. I even managed to find the time to read her a book this morning! Go me! I usually stitch at lunch now or after she goes to sleep, and it's OK. It takes the edge off, LOL.  I need to get crackin', though, have an ornament to make this weekend to mail out, and then it is time for Christmas ornaments!

Well, have to run. I'll try to check in with some project photos this weekend. I hope everyone is having a joyful October.

Book review: Cruel Harvest by Fran Grubb

I am starting a new thing on this blog. I love reading, I do a lot of it, since it's something I can do one-handed. Part of what I do now is review. Occasionally, I may post these on the blog. I'm not abandoning stitching by any means, this is just another facet of who I am.

Cruel Harvest is the memoir of Frances, who survived devastating abuse from her father until she finally summoned the determination to run away. The book is the story of her non-childhood, in which she was betrayed by so many people, from the father who beat and molested her and her sister, her aunt, who starved her because she felt she was full of the devil, to her mother, who abandoned her. She fights to survive, at times sacrificing herself to save her small half-sister, at times turning her head because she knew if she tried to help, it only made things worse. In later years, she calls on her faith in God to reunite her family and finally, forgive her father.

I won't cut corners, this book is hard to read. As a parent, it was hard for me to fathom how another parent could damage a harmless child in the numerous ways Broadus hurts his children. The part of the book where he beats Mary Anne is particularly heart-wrenching; I really felt for her, and I wanted to cry for her and, even now, wonder how her life turned out. I was extremely upset at the implied fate of Frances' baby sister, and worried about her baby brother. I found myself having to put the book down and walk away, to catch my breath and steel myself to read on. Most books don't affect me in the way this one did.

The one thing I did not like about this book was that she left the fates of characters hanging. I wanted to find out if Mary Anne survived, and the baby, and her Mother, but we are never told of their fates. I realize it is probably because she did not know, but Mary Anne especially, her fate tugs at me. And I don't like that the interim years are skimmed over. Perhaps another book is in the future, with more detail, but the brief glancing blow over her adulthood, after all the horror, it didn't do her recovery justice. I wanted to read more about how her faith helped her forgive, the process of accepting that the past happened, but I didn't get enough of that.


I would recommend this book, but with reservations. If you have small children, it's hard to get through, since most of the time, I wanted to be angry and fight for Frances and her siblings. But it does have a message worth reading, that one can get through even the worst abuse. One doesn't ghave to be a victim, they can be a survivor.

I received a copy of Cruel Harvest from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I present are my own.

Another finish

After two weeks of trying to finish, I managed, on Saturday night, after Babygirl had gone to sleep, to finish the September square. It felt like finishing something major. I think I fell behind because I have been enjoying the library--I've already been three times and came home with armloads of books--and it's easier to sit a book down quickly than stitching.

I did have a chance last weekend to look over the JCS ornament issue. Since my efforts to stitch every ornament in the 2011 issue have not resulted in success (at least not so far), I wasn't sure it was "right" to look at the new one, but I did it anyway. I liked quite a few of them. I especially liked the Dragon Dreams ornament as Babygirl's Baby's First Christmas ornie. At some point, I had a vision of doing a tree entirely in teddy bear ornaments for her and putting it in her room, and I knew I want to do the Pam Kellogg ornament from 2001 (I think), which is a sweet bear, but somehow in the rearranging and general chaos that is my life, I have misplaced those issues. I know, I know, I lose entirely too many things for it to be believable. However, they aren't lost, just misplaced. I'll find them. Hopefully when we get a bigger house . . .  if we get a bigger house. If we're here much longer, I'm telling Left-brain that I want a shed of my own, up on our hill, in the woods where I can set out my stuff. He has a garage and a mancave, Babygirl has a nursery, I have . . . boxes. Hmmm . . .

Anyway, so I had this idea of doing that, but it's a little hard to fill a tree with teddy bears on top of everything else I have to do, so I may table that idea for now, or get one pre-made for 2012 and hope 2013 brings more time. But I love the Dragon Dreams ornament. I love how the dragon is the date; it's subtle, sleek, and it's auspicious to be born in the Year of the Dragon, so she'll be proud to show it off 20 years from now, when it's on her tree.  I'll just add her name to it, maybe on the back?

There is a deer ornament from another designer that I also love. It's very peaceful-looking, and I think it will stand out on my white tree. And the Blackberry Lane ornament is cute, but I still haven't stitched the one from LAST year!  And I love that one too. Should I even try? Should I get off my duff?

Other things seem to be going a little better. I did some low-cost advertising for Left-brain's business to try to drum up some interest. It's hard to say if it's helping out, though; I haven't heard if they're finding us through old sources or new ones. All I can do is keep slugging along.

Yum, cake . . .

Have I mentioned yellow cake with chocolate frosting is one of my vices? I craved it after my GD diagnosis, I had dreams of cake. I posted on Facebook. I bought boxes of cake mix in preparation for the day when I could, at long last, eat cake again.

I managed to hold off til the week before I went back to work, when I finally had time to make a cake. I was going to use the canned frosting to ice said cake. And then I got a wild hair up my butt, and remembered I USED. TO. MAKE. ICING!

  A few years ago, someone posted a Texas sheetcake recipe and I stole the icing part of it. It helps that they said the cake was more like a brownie, and I am not that big of a brownie fan, but do I ever love chocolate icing. And so, for a month or so, I became a yellow cake with chocolate icing FIEND. I made cakes all the time, just for the icing. I even made poke cakes to deliver the icing faster. (And, to think, I wonder why I gained so much weight. Whoda thunk?) And then I had a doctor's appointment, the scale measured over 200 pounds, the nurse said, "You're considered . . . obese," with that "obese" word in the same whisper that my relatives use for "the di-ah-beet-us", you know, that shamed stage whisper, followed by a sorrowful headshake, and I screamed and opted out of making homemade icing.

But I am not over 200 pounds now, and I wanted to eat cake. With homemade cooked icing, and not just any icing. Texas sheetcake icing!

And I made it.

I slightly overcooked it for the first cake--I think I was trying to close snaps on a sleeper for a certain little lady. It was good, but not great. But I ate it anyway. Because even good icing is better than no icing.

We had a family reunion this weekend. I made the icing again. I did make a mistake and let Left-brain pick the cake. He chose white cake. Left-brain is never allowed to choose the cake again--there is something about this icing that hollers for yellow cake, white cake is too dainty for it. But he redeemed himself by telling me to mix the melted chocolate with the powdered sugar in the blender, which, frankly, is GENIUS!

I thought I would share the recipe here today, since it is yummy. I didn't remember the recipe from my cake-making days, so I did have to google it. This is the best one I found, courtesy of  Cooks.com.:


TEXAS SHEET CAKE FROSTING

Read more about it at www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,166,155164-247199,00.html

Content Copyright © 2012 Cooks.com - All rights reserved.



1/2 c. butter

6 tbsp. milk

4 tbsp. cocoa

1 tsp. vanilla

1 c. chopped pecans

2 c. powdered sugar



Bring butter, milk and cocoa to rapid boil. Pour ingredients into mixing bowl; add vanilla and powdered sugar; mix well. Add pecans and mix well. 

I did make slight modifications. I don't like nuts that much, so left those off. They interfere with the chocolate delivery and we can't have that. But use them if you want. I did find out that you shouldn't stir the butter,milk and cocoa while it's coming to the boil, it doesn't work too well. It burns if you are lucky, separates into NASTINESS if you aren't. And then when you mix it with the sugar, blend it in the blender til the lumps of sugar break up.  Pour onto cake when the cake cools. You need a real cake pan though, the aluminum ones from the store don't hold the icing in, and it makes a mess, unless you enjoy licking your counters. Then let it set up, and enjoy.