Latest Project

 
 
I'm making a quilt! This side is done. The other side will also be quilted, so I guess it is reversible. The second side will be made of all different fabric, and with a different color combo. I think I will use navy for the edging, but I haven't decided yet.

Wow, it is a lot of work to make a big quilt! I am happy with how this side turned out. You can see that every square doesn't line up perfectly, and that is okay with me. I like how it looks.

Luckily for Jason, he is in Kansas so he doesn't have to try to live in a house that's been taken over by fabric, or sit at his place at the table while it's occupied by a sewing machine. I think I will be done with all the machine sewing before he gets back. Then I will get batting and figure out how to put the three layers together. I'm planning on doing that by hand. It may require use of the WHOLE dining room table, not just Jason's spot!

2nd skirt

 
 


This one was based off a slightly flouncier skirt. I'd show you, but I already packed it away with my summer clothes.

Tomato thief

Oh, I almost forgot. There were two beefsteak tomatoes growing, but they were still green. Today when I looked at them, someone had stolen one of them and gouged a hole in the other! They're totally not ready to eat, so maybe it was just a kid who did it. It pisses me off, because there were no other big tomatoes, only those TWO. And now one is gone and the other is ruined. That's what you get for having neighbors. If only I were really unobservant! Then I would never know that I had been robbed.

It's a good thing my skirt turned out well, to brighten my mood back up. I will try another one this week, maybe tomorrow. I probably won't make so many mistakes and have to re-sew the same seams 3 or 4 times on the second one. :)

First Skirt

I still need to attach a hook and eye above the zipper, but here is how my first skirt turned out.

Saturday Night Special

Well, folks. I'm so sorry to say that I did not bring my camera to Denver last night. I don't know what I was thinking, but I'll try to describe everything well.

We met our friends, Joe and Emily, at The Red Sea, an Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant on Colfax. Colfax is the longest street in the country that has the same name for the whole length. From Wikipedia: Playboy magazine once called Colfax "the longest, wickedest street in America." On the one hand, there is a respectable annual marathon on Colfax. On the other hand, if you want to find a prostitute or some drugs, you're in the right place. Some blocks are normal city areas, and on some blocks, you wouldn't want to leave your car unattended. Something like 40 years ago, my mom worked as a waitress for one summer at Pete's Kitchen, which is still operating on Colfax.

We enjoyed the Ethiopian/Eritrean food, though Jason and I had to learn how to eat without plates or silverware. You tear off a piece of spongy bread and then just pick up a bite of the main dish with it. It wasn't as messy as I anticipated. It was good!

Then we went to their friends' cupcake shop, The Shoppe. It is a little, very bright, bright, bright, white store where you can buy a cupcake or a bowl of cereal, or a PBR in a can. Jason and I split a chocolate cupcake with cream cheese frosting. It was delicious. They were displaying art on the walls, and the majority of it was photographs of tiny My Little Ponies in sweet settings, like surrounded by marshmallows or cotton candy. My favorite was the swimming Pony.



Then we went into a weird toy store a couple of doors down. It was filled with weird, collectible, plastic toys. They were also displaying art, as was the gallery in between the stores.













Next, we checked out RockBar, which is attached to a crappy-looking motel. RockBar was equally crappy, as expected. We sat in the AC/DC booth, drank cans of Tecate and tried to figure out what the deal was. There was a great jukebox, with punk from all eras. Then there was a modern-looking guy dancing by himself on the dance floor, in front of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. He had some great moves, like leading the marching band and rolling the dice.

There were two dudes from the Motley Crue era, with long, stringy hair (one had an Axel Rose-style do-rag) and tight, tight jeans, and high tops. One was allowed to believe he was a DJ, and he started spinning the worst records. GNR's "I Used to Love Her but I Had to Kill Her" made Emily pretty angry. We had to leave and move on to a more civilized bar.









We next hit The Bank, which was shockingly empty. I haven't spent much time in bars since the whole state went non-smoking, and I forget that they lost a lot of their business. I had been worried that it would be too crowded, but there were many empty tables. The fun part about The Bank is the long Happy Hours: 4:30 to 6:30 and 9:00 to midnight. Every time you buy a beer, you get a chip for a free beer. It's pretty much a sports bar with a good menu, and they serve food late at night. They had on the Wisconsin-Fresno game and some of the patrons loved Fresno and would shriek every time they scored. The waitresses grew tired of that table.

Jason ordered an Easy Street wheat, but received something that tasted more like Blue Moon. The waitress brought him another one, but the situation led to inspiration! We invented a new show, called "Beer Detectives!" If you aren't sure what they brought you, the Beer Detectives rush in to taste and identify it for you.

Fondue Friday

Friday night we ate at The Melting Pot: A Fondue Restaurant. It was fun to do something different, and it was so good! The building is meant to resemble a mine shaft, so that makes it a more interesting experience than just going to a regular Melting Pot.

We did our best to eat all the food, but there were just two of us, and there was enough food for three or even four people.

We had:

Michelob Ultra, to balance out the calorie intake ;)

Cheddar Cheese Fondue, with bread, vegetables, and apples

Ceasar salad with pine nuts

Court Bouillon (vegetable bouillon) to cook filet mignon, jerk-seasoned sirloin, vanilla rum chicken, marinated port tenderloin, zesty peppered shrimp, butternut squash ravioli, and fresh vegetables

Milk chocolate with peanut butter melted in with strawberries, bananas, cheesecake, marshmallows, pound cake, brownies, and rice krispie treats. When I woke up Saturday morning, the first thing I said to Jason was, "remember that cheesecake with the chocolate and peanut butter drizzled on top?" It was so good!

Jason said he enjoyed it, and might go again in a year. But, he has now described it three times as "a two-hour ordeal," so we'll see if we ever get there again.

Now I'm 32

It's a new year for me! I'm now 32, and I feel exactly like I did when I was 31, only much happier since I'm a year further away from law school. I have a little self-confidence coming back. I'm rediscovering things I have enjoyed doing for most of my life, like sewing and making things and painting and taking photographs. There are so many things I like doing, and for the last few years, I have been missing out on doing them. At the moment, I probably have too many hobbies going at once, but that's okay.

*I made a batch of soap last weekend and milled it this week. The base soap is olive oil, cocoa butter, and mango butter with lye. I made four varieties of milled soap: coffee (odor-eating, helpful when you've been cutting onions or garlic) with hazelnut fragrance; extra mango butter with cucumber-melon fragrance; extra mango butter with satsuma orange fragrance; extra cocoa butter with violet fragrance. They are curing now. I think it takes a couple of months before they're dry enough to use (if you tried to use them now, they'd just dissolve really quickly).

* I am going to make a couple of A-line skirts, based on a jean skirt that I really like. I will make up the pattern myself. The two tricky parts are: putting in the zippers and putting in the linings. I haven't sewed clothes since an unfortunate pants incident in 1997. I made this great pair of pants from a pattern, and I loved them, and I fitted them just right. At work, I squatted down to pick up a box from the floor, and the pants split open, horizontally, across the butt! I had to wrap my jacket around my waist and walk home to change. I never made pants again.

* I still have that novel going, which I occasionally think about, so that counts as actively writing in my book (HA! a writing pun for a nice Sunday).

* I have made 3 amigurumi animals in my quest to create enough to have a book and be a published crochet author.

I think there are a few more things, but that's enough for now, I guess.

Sparky's new man

 
Finally continuing my account of the trip to Dallas:

We continued our day of culture by proceeding from the wax museum to the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum. It was there that Sparky fell in love with a replica of the tallest man known to Ripley. He was like 8'11"! Look how well they hit it off. Cute!!