New look

Made a new template for my blog here, just because I could.

Seeking waffle tips

Waffle

I tried out Alton Brown's waffle recipe and it worked out pretty great. Fluffy and delicious waffles. Of course, you can see that my waffle is a little deformed. I've never managed to quite get the hang of getting my waffles to fill out perfectly. Maybe it would be easier if my iron were round, but it's square, so does anyone have any tips?

Easy gift tags from toilet paper roll

The holidays being a busy time and having over-extended myself in trying to create too many hand-made gifts, I had to come up with a way of making some fancy looking tags requiring minimal work.

I happened to have several empty toilet paper rolls laying around (I knew they'd come in handy some time) which were begging for a use.

The process for making these is simple enough:

1. Flatten your toilet paper roll.
2. Cut 4 strips from the tube; I made mine 1 cm wide.
3. Dab some glue in the middle of one of the strips on each side of it. Fit the strip inside of another one to make a cross and squeeze the strips together so the glue will hold them.
4. Now glue the crosses inside each other to make an 8 pointed star.
5. Once the glue is dry, "fluff" it out so it's not so flat.
   
6. Attach to your gift with a piece of string, yarn, or ribbon.
   

Christmas presents in progress

Remember the felt of last post? Well my project has been started. Here's a little peak at some of the stuff lying on my dining room table. Hopefully I can make my way through the entire alphabet in time.

All the colours of the rainbow!

So I was looking for some felt for some baby projects that I'm going to make in the future. I really wanted to go for a plush wool-blend type felt, but I decided that an acrylic felt would probably be best for its machine wash-ability.

Well I ordered a colour bundle of eco-felt from Felt-o-rama and you can see all the beautiful colours I received. I'm eager to get started when the rest of my materials arrive.

Fallen off the Blog train

I guess it didn't take very long for me to fail at posting. However, I have kept making stuff, although, it hasn't been at quite such an ambitious pace as I had set out to achieve at the beginning.

I'll try to get to posting some of my recent crochet & knit objects. I recently discovered ravelry and the bajillion patterns that are there. You should see my queue, it's 10 miles long now. JoAnn had some yarn sale going on so I bought a bunch of cheap cotton handicrafter yarn to play around with. I also got some crochet thread so maybe I'll hop on the doily fun train.

Also, with it being almost October it's time to start making things for Christmas gifts! Of course I generally just plan to make people hats, scarfs and mitts (toys for the little ones). Hopefully I can some day graduate beyond objects that have no gauge requirements.

Basil Garlic Pesto!

I guess first of all I should let everyone know that my tomato plants survived just fine somehow. They're still ok (for now) despite my best efforts to snuff them from existence with abuse. I spent the last week hardening off the plants and later today I shall transfer one to its permanent home for the season, a 16-inch planter.

My basil was getting rather spindly looking and very tall so I made an executive decision to lop off the top. I have provided a before and after picture of my Basil plant. I must admit that I haven't been the most attentive in pruning it (and I feel bad about cutting my plants even though I'm growing them so I can eat them) so it didn't really bush out like it's supposed to. Maybe after lopping off the top it'll look better in a few days.

Anyhow, after cutting off the top, I attempted to make some pesto with the leaves that I had cut off. Lacking a mortar and pestle, food process or real blender, I resorted to chopping the leaves into little itty bits by hand. I threw the basil and some garlic chopped up the same way into a small bowl and mixed it all together with a bit of olive oil.

I think I ended up with a bit too much garlic and not quite enough basil since my garlic cloves were huge and my basil leaves were few, but hopefully it will all taste delicious.