cakes!!!

i have been taking some cake classes with my sister this summer and though i have been too busy to post anything about it i thought i would throw a few pictures on here and show myself that i'm not a lazy slacker i just haven't had a lot of spare 'internet' time. Not all my pictures are on this computer so i'm putting up the two more recent cakes which are a lot less messy anyway.


Here is the last cake of the first course....

Then my newest masterpiece from the last class of the second course.....

Anyway this has been my new obsession for a few months, i have TONS of cake making stuff and i still have one more course to complete, and i'll be learning how to do a tiered wedding cake so that should be fun! Ironic though that i start making cakes at about the time i go on a diet and can't EAT them...ah well, such is life.

death by gardening

Ok gardening is not my forte... i am secure enough in myself to admit that in some ways i am a total 'girl' and i absolutely HATE dirt under my fingernails. i also don't find anything calming or satisfying about digging around in the dirt and unearthing all of it's creepy crawlies, who may or may not then take it upon themselves to get on me as a result. i just plain don't like it. So wonder of wonders i just moved into a house set on a half acre of land, with roughly 1/4 of which already an established garden area.

Why not plant grass over it and pretend i never saw it?? Well because i may not like gardening but i love to make things from scratch and having the opportunity to grow my own fruits and veggies and be able to learn how to can is just way too tempting for this poor girl to resist...so garden hoooooooooooooooe!

There are already raspberries, strawberries, and grapes coming up in the garden...now for the veggies and that's where my life gets tricky. i am litterally flying here on a wing and a prayer because the only veg i've been able to make grow in my life has been tomatoes and they took over the entire yard the last time i grew them and we had sooooooooooooooooo many tomatoes i had to start pushing tomatoes like a drug dealer on the corner. "Pst...hey you! lady! Hey...you want some tomatoes? eh? They are good for you i swear...they'll grow hair on your chest! Come onnnnnnnnnn all your friends are doing it!" So tomatoes i can do....but peas on the other hand...

Yesterday my 15 year old nephew came to help me with some yard work and we ended up planting our peas in what i can only describe as a moat...the dirt was too hard so i asked him to put on a little bit of water and let it soak in...apparently 'a little bit of water' translates into 'enough to fill a swimming pool' in teenager'ese. i would post pictures of me balanced on the edge of the muddy sludge planting a tiny little pea plant but theres never a camera around when you need one. Some how i don't hold out much hope for the peas...sad really they were too young to die.

Today i plant tomatoes, after all a girl needs to have some of her hard work pay off, but tomorrow it's pumpkins and watermelon....wish me luck!! i'll post pictures of my garden once i get it all sorted...which could be next winter.

The tale of one sock.....

Ok so i have had this dream all my life of knitting socks, it seemed like such a feat (no pun intended) to sit down with a ball of yarn and a few weird needles and end up with socks. All of the cartoons showed it as being only a matter of starting at the toe and knitting for a few seconds and being done...and while many people may find it odd to feel somehow betrayed by a cartoon that is exactly how i feel!! It is NOT a project for the weak willed or the less animated, making a sock (let alone two) is a grueling and maddening process with pain and suffering involve. The pain being the tiny knitting needle point bruises all over my index fingers and my thumbs, and the suffering would be all the times i realized i made a mistake and had to undo hours and hours of work in order to start over again.



Ok now the first attempt was a question of my eyes being bigger than my knitting capabilities, i started with this sock pattern.....




Mostly just because i thought it was pretty, and as i started i fully intended to make it considerably longer, at least a knee high sock if not a thigh high because i thought it would be really pretty with a garter belt. I have one word for you.....HA!

After the third start over and the 53rd look of complete confusion as i read a pattern that made absolutely no sense to me, i finally threw the yarn across the room and gave my poor wrists a break while i stubbornly looked for another, more comprehensive, pattern to fulfill my dream.

After another four patterns with similar results i finally went in search of a tutorial, at this point i hoped to never see another knitted sock reference again in my life but i can't stand to be defeated by a project so i had to keep going until i had indeed mastered the stupid sock.


So in my search i found my sock salvation first in a tutorial (which for some reason blogger wont let me make into a link so here is the link, http://knittersreview.com/article_how_to.asp?article=/review/profile/011018_a.asp ) which was for the most part very comprehensive until talking about the heel, bringing about a 5th 'do over'. Then finally a sock pattern that for the most part actually made sense to me, AND was really cute...though thigh highs they are not!











Aren't they cute? i of course went after the full toe sock because the others seemed far too complicated for me for a first run but i was confident that i could master one and then move on. Of course things never really work out the way they are supposed to in my stories, the guy never gets the girl, the heroine never saves the day, and the socks never seem to just work out.


Don't get me wrong i made a sock, and it even looks like a sock in almost every way possible, and it even fits....but it has about a trillion flaws in it and took so long to make i pretty much put away my knitting needles by the time i was done and vowed not to touch them again for a month. My sock also isn't pretty, i messed up on binding it off, i messed up on the heel, and i messed up in the decrease...but aside from that i actually accomplished my goal and i learned how to knit a sock.


i'm going to try again in a few weeks and i'll post my progress and results so you can suffer along with me ;)

What the heck am i making from scratch anyway....?

i am one of those weird women who tends to get this weird twisted delight in starting with nothing and working my butt off only to end up with something that you could buy in the store for under $10. i make home made food, yes, but also home made facial masks and washes, home made dish clothes, home made socks (ok only one sock so far but i'm working on it), home made clothes, home made body scrubs, home made bath salts....from the interesting to the inane. So here i am creating a blog so i can share the insanity with other such women...or with people who can read and laugh at me for actually spending so much time and effort on crafty stuff.

i am going to basically post my trial and error and my favorite patterns/recipes and maybe even a wish list of what i WANT to be able to make but am no where near being able to yet (aka all my knitting patterns i want to make but am too chicken to try.) Then pretty much anything else i want to write about...hey it's my blog i can do what i want!