A Year in the Making, Day 50

Late post, but today's the first day of a conference for the day job. We all are based out of our homes and don't get to see each other too often, especially all in one place, so when we do all get together there's lots of socialization that occurs, usually over a glass of something frosty.

To keep up with the tradition I started from my last "on the road" post, here's the view from my hotel balcony:







I thought one of my coworkers of my coworkers was pulling my leg when we were coming back to the hotel from dinner. He was saying that he could go have a drink in the bar with the rest of us, but he could also go to his room and spend the rest of the night in his room playing with his beads. I'd been discussing my jewelry making a bit, and was actually thinking of doing exactly that and thought he was giving me a hard time for contemplating skipping out on the rest of the socialization part of the evening, but it turns out he was dead serious - he makes wine glass charms! Joke's on me.

Here's the three pairs of earrings I did manage to complete today between the conference and the pizza and the wine and the conversation:



Top left pair - pineapple glass
Top right pair - goldstone
Bottom pair - citrine

All with brass findings, and the top two with antique watch gears

Some older photographs

Here's some shots I took last year at the Seattle Aquarium. I was experimenting with my Canon PowerShot, which I don't use as often. My Nikon 990 is my main photo tool, and I'm much more familiar with it. I need to practice more with my backup. That being said, I'm very pleased with how some of these turned out. They were taken without flash or tripod, and I earned a few looks as I was in some very strange poses when I took these, trying to steady the camera.









The full set is here.

A Year in the Making, Day 49

Today, I finally finished the munchkin's dress. Buttons added on front, and I proved yet again that I am straight-line challenged. I marked it on the dress front with chalk, a line straight down the middle, measured in four parts along the front seams to make sure it was centered, with cross marks where the buttons should go, but they still ended up slightly crooked. I redid two of them twice, then gave up.



The original plan was for her to wear the mini tophat I'd bought for her a couple of years ago at Norwescon, but that hat has disappeared. So today, I made a trip to the thriftstore to see if anything suitable could be found as a replacement. My thrift-fu was even mightier than usual today, because when I walked in the door, the hat you see in the picture above was hanging on the endcap of the rack right next to the entrance. It is a bit worse for wear, with some rubbing of the velvet on top and the brim is a bit bent out of shape. When we did the test run and found that it would work with the outfit, I then proceeded to decorate it to match:



There used to be some kind of glitz or glam at the back in the center of the bow, but it had fallen off or been removed, and only the glue marks were left. I replaced it with an old broken brooch front from the stash:



And here's a close-up of the layering of trim:



Updating will be somewhat intermittent the next few days, as I'm off to a work conference, and coming straight back to go to SteamCon, with no breathing room in between.

A Year in the Making, Day 48

A few months back, I foolishly volunteered to make lemon curd for the green room for SteamCon, so today I put on my curdmaker's hat.

Ingredients:

5 lemons
2 sticks (16 tablespoons butter)
2 cups sugar
6 eggs

Equipment:
Citrus reamer
Double Boiler
Canning jars
Zester
Mesh sieve
Whisk
Spatula

Now if you don't have all of the "proper" equipment, don't panic. I don't have it either. Here's my citrus reamer, for example:



Yes, that is one of the beater from an electric hand mixer. They work just fine to ream citrus fruit, and you don't have an extra tool cluttering up your kitchen drawer.

And here's my double boiler:



Yep, a saucier pan set inside a sauce pan. Here's the innards, how I keep the bottom of the inside pan off the bottom of the outside one, and away from the direct heat:



So, now that you've seen the tools, here's the directions. It's pretty simple.

In the saucier pan, add the zest from the outside of your five lemons. Cut up the butter in cubes, add that too. Juice the lemons - the five of them should give you right about 1 cup of juice. Don't worry about the pulp, you'll strain it out later.
Add 1 1/2 of the 2 cups of sugar. Bring your double boiler up to a roil and whisk this mixture occasionally till the butter melts.

In a separate bowl, whisk the 6 eggs together with the other 1/2 cup of sugar. Doing it this way avoids getting "scrambled eggs" in your mix. When the butter is melted in the lemon mixture, slowly whisk the eggs & sugar in. Keep whisking occasionally until the mixture thickens. You can tell when it's done by inserting a metal spoon into the curd - it'll stick to the spoon with a thick coating when you remove it.

Pour the curd through your mesh filter, using the spatula to scrape the sides and press against the zest. Bottle and refrigerate. It has a cold shelf-life of about 3 weeks, but I'll bet you it won't last that long in your fridge.



Some of my favorite ways to serve it

- over poundcake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream

- on an english muffin or scone

- as mini tarts

- add as a finishing touch on top of strawberry shortcake

I also accomplished some jewelry last night and this afternoon. I found these lovely glass teardrop beads, and they became pairs of cluster earrings. They look so much like grapes to me!

Purple grapes:



Golden grapes:

The Mourning Market

For those of you in Seattle or the general environs, you should check this out today:

The Mourning Market

Lots of talented folks selling their unique wares!

Club Motor
1950 S. 1st Ave. Seattle, WA 98134
[206] 623.3230
www.clubmotorseattle.com

A Year in the Making, Day 47

Today, we spent a good portion of the day helping a friend move, but I still managed to get the majority of the work still needed for the munchkin's outfit done. Knocked off the checklist? Camisole, bloomers, and crinoline done. Still have to do the buttons on the back and front of the dress. Yes, I'm putting it off. I hate doing buttons. Especially since my buttonholer isn't working. Can I cheat and use snaps and hooks and eyes?

The munchkin has discovered the joys of mugging for the camera. She hasn't seen West Side Story yet, so there's no singing of "I Feel Pretty" yet, but she sure feels pretty.

Here's the under-under things, the camisole and bloomers:



And the crinoline. Hopefully I haven't given her a complex now, and she won't grow up insisting that her bra and panties always match.



Here she is in the dress. She's not wearing the crinoline under it, because this was actually the first thing we tried on and I hadn't made the undergarments yet.



Somewhere in her room is hopefully still a mini top hat I bought her at a con last year, that will match perfectly. We'll look for it tomorrow. It's about time there was another room cleaning and toybox purging anyways.

A Year in the Making, Day 46

Another sewing project tonight. I started the cutting on this pretty much right after making last night's post, a dress for my daughter to wear to SteamCon next weekend. It's this pattern, now out of print it seems. I still have the chemise and bloomers to put together and the crinoline to make, and the dress is missing its buttons front and back, but my back said enough, plus it got to be time for the new episode of Sanctuary, which sucked me in so thoroughly I forgot to publish the post for 30 minutes!



It's black satin with a red floral embroidery pattern, with the contrast of a dark red satin, accented with red trim and black lace. I've got red/black shell buttons for the front, and don't know what I'm going to do about the back, because my buttonhole function isn't working on my machine. Matter of fact, none of my stitches except my straight stitch are working at the moment. Something seems to have gone twitchy after sewing the leather waist cincher a little while ago. Hopefully this is a good Christmas for me, and the business can finally buy me the Juki I've been lusting after.