Brillo Scarf

Next up in the reveal is a scarf that my mom requested for her Christmas present. She and I were yarn shopping and she found this purple yarn with silver threads in it that she loved. She requested a simple garter stitch scarf out of it. After I started it, I was concerned about the texture and called her up to get her opinion. I explained that it felt like a brillo pad. She said she didn't care, so I kept on knitting. She wore it most of the afternoon after she unwrapped it so maybe she is OK with the neck exfoliating qualities of her new scarf!

This yarn is really hard to photograph. It is called Glisten and is made by Louisa Harding. It is a tape yarn with bits of tinselly, glittery silver mixed into the dark purple.

Felted Balls

I mentioned in my last post how tired all of the Christmas events made me and I guess it only really hit me when I got home from work last night and sat down to eat with Paul. I took a few bites of dinner and realized I was too tired to chew. So I went to bed. At 7pm. And I slept until the alarm woke me up at 6:30am this morning. I think I really needed the recovery sleep!

Now that most of the Christmas gifts I made have reached their intended recipients, I can start revealing them here. First off is a gift I made for my sister. I wanted to experiment with felting roving into beads. I know my sister can pull off funky stuff, so I made her a necklace using a combo of felted beads, fishing swivels, glass beads, spacers from a necklace my mom and I took apart, wire and miscellaneous findings.

The clasp features a silver star on each side.

I am not sure if she is going to wear it. She was a little weirded out by the felted balls. Oh well, I had fun making it. In the process I learned that those little suckers aren't easy to make. I think I actually broke a sweat when I was rolling and rolling and rolling them to get them to wet felt.

Home again, home again.

Whew! We just finished 5 Christmas events in as many days. We are home and pretty dang tired.

After Christmas Eve at our apartment with my sister and dad and then Christmas Day at Paul's parents house, we still had 3 more Christmas events to go to.

Event 3:
On Friday we finished some last minute gift preparations and then spent the evening at the play Fat Man Crying, which was at the Minneapolis Theater Garage. I won tickets to this show when I attended Stitch, Bitch n Die at the Bryant Lake Bowl Theater in October. Both plays are by Joseph Scrimshaw and both shared a wry humor and an easy to digest storyline.

Event 4:
On Saturday morning we woke up bright and early, piled the presents, dogs and ourselves into the car to go to Wisconsin. It was there that we met up with my dad and then drove further into Wisconsin to get together with the extended family. I haven't seen some of my extended family members in so long that the younger cousins weren't recognizable to me anymore. It has also been so long since I have seen them that many of them had never met Paul. It was immediately obvious to Paul that I do not come from a vegetarian oriented family. He could tell by the "man room" in my aunt and uncles house that was full of taxidermy creatures including a bear, fox and other creatures I glimpsed when quickly scanning the room and promptly beating it out of there as fast as I could. He could also tell by the gift that said "man" of the "man room" gave to my dad: a back scratcher made from a dried turkey foot. Gross.

Event 5:
After spending the night at my dad's house where I got to sit and knit by the fire for a while, we got up early again in order to drive back to Minneapolis, drop the dogs off at the apartment, pick up a new batch of gifts and go to my mom's house.

It was totally worth it though because she made her famous chocolate mint bars. My sister and I look forward to those bars and have been known to get a little petty when it comes time to divide them up.

We enjoyed the afternoon together eating falafel, playing games, opening presents and teasing each other.

In addition to his real presents, Paul also got a few hand-me-down gifts including a tobacco pipe and a "meat pan." He is looking forward to totally grossing me out with his tobacco smoking, meat eating ways. And, to think, I married a non-smoking vegetarian. I think I was duped!

Although, I should mention that Paul was a really good sport and willingly filled his long Christmas weekend with tons of family bonding time.

Post Christmas Project Planning

The last Christmas gifts are currently drying after their blocking bath and washing. What does that mean? It means I am free to knit for me!!! As much as I love knitting and crafting gifts for my loved ones, it is a bit stressful to worry if they will like it or not, if it will turn out like it is supposed to and if it will be done on time. As I mentioned before, this year I only gave gifts that I made, which meant there was a lot of planning, supply shopping and execution time involved leading up to this week of gift giving. Prior to that, I was knitting Jessy's birthday Clapotis. And, prior to that, I was knitting Paul's birthday sweater. So, you can see that it has been a long time since I have been free to knit whatever the hell I want to. Which led to this mess:

I spent a good chunk of yesterday evening making some project choices. I am now set to start a cowl, a pair of socks, some cat toys and a pair of mittens. We are heading out of town today to partake in part 4 of Christmas, which means I will have some knitting time in the car and perhaps some knitting time by the wood stove at my dad's place. Aaaahhh, tis nice to knit selfishly!

Multiples of Christmas

This year's Christmas marks a big change for Paul and I. We are used to staying in Boston for Christmas, which means we had established really low key traditions for ourselves. We would take the dogs somewhere to run around off leash, have phone calls with friends and family, open presents, make a yummy dinner and relax at home. That is so not the case this year. Like many of the adjustments we have made as part of our move, one is not necessary better or worse than the other, but it is definitely different.

This year Christmas is happening for us in 5 stages. The first of which occurred on Christmas Eve. My sister and my dad came over to have Christmas dinner with Paul and I. We enjoyed an evening of eating, drinking and being merry. The "being merry" part included talking, opening gifts and watching A Christmas Story "Pulp Fiction Style", as Paul would put it. Since the 24 hour marathon had started before we had finished eating, we turned it on in time to watch the end of one showing and the beginning of the next.

We had a dinner of roasted veggies, quinoa, kale and, for the meat eaters, smoked salmon.

"We" didn't include Jessy, who, after taking one look at dinner, opted for a sandwich. She claims her taste buds are too sensitive for the veggie mix I had concocted, not to mention her strong aversion to the texture of mushrooms and "mushy" vegetables. Luckily I had anticipated her reaction and had sandwich fixings on hand.

I had spotted this recipe for Baked Apples a while back and had been saving it to make for our Christmas dinner. I made a modified version of the recipe and, for Jessy, an even more modified version. It was delicious!

Jessy brought gifts for the dogs which they smelled the second she walked in.

Christmas day brought the second round of Christmas celebrations this time at Paul's parent's house. It had been a really long time since I had seen Paul's sister and her family. It was great to see them, to get to know his nieces better and to meet his nephew. The last time I saw them their little boy was still in utero.

Paul's mom put out a FEAST. We all ate well and took home massive amounts of leftovers. In the corner of this photo you can see Paul's mom taking a photo with the camera she got for Christmas last year. I was sort of lazy with the picture taking, so I neglected to get photos of the other attendees: Paul's mom and dad, Paul's grandma and her boyfriend and Paul and I.

2 down, 3 to go :)

Surprise!

So, when we left off Paul and I had spent a nice day celebrating my 30th birthday and were heading home to have dessert, or so I thought. On the ride home from the restaurant we were having the type of wrap-up-the-day conversation that we would usually have. As Paul and I stepped into the dark apartment, continuing our conversation, I was suddenly met with a room full of family and friends yelling "SURPRISE!!!"

Paul had organized a surprise party and damn was he sneaky! I was so shocked that they had all managed to plan such an elaborate party without me catching any wind of it whatsoever. My very logical brain immediately starting trying to figure out how they had done it. Especially my mom and Paul, who had been a very effective party planning team. Paul planned the party but, knowing his own organizational limitations, enlisted my mom to provide him with helpful nudges and reminders along the way. Paul had made a copy of our keys so my mom could set up and let everyone in. Wow!

I was grinning from ear to ear saying hi to everyone, slowly processing the shock of it all and then I froze, remembering a few things that I likely would have cleaned up had I known I was having a party, like the underwear I left in the bathroom! I ran to put it away and then happily rejoined the party.

What an amazing party it was. I was having way too much fun absorbing the experience to take out my camera, so I had to rely on friends and family to take the photos. Here are some that were taken by Mark, Jerri, Jamie and Adam.

Walking in and totally surprised
...notice that "cat that got the canary" expression on Paul's face behind me!

It didn't take long for my mom to bust out the bubbly and organize a toast to my third decade.

Mom, Me, Zoe, and Jessy (the family baby whisperer)

Mike and Sally

Baby Wants Bubbly
Sylvia knows what she wants and she knows how to get it:) Good thing Adam's arms are longer than hers.

Zoe was taking charge of Mark's glass. She can knock 'em back like no other baby.

Kidding, kidding, kidding. No babies were intoxicated at this party. However, I am encouraging an early love of yarn.

As if the room full of friends and family wasn't enough, Paul had also gathered video birthday wishes from a few friends who live in other cities. That's Beth on the screen!

Paul had ordered a white chocolate, raspberry birthday cake from The Franklin Street Bakery. As Salt 'n Pepa would say, "Whatta man, whatta man, what a mighty good man."

I haven't had a birthday party in years and I've never had a surprise party. It was an awesome thing to experience and definitely made me feel loved and happy to be here in Minneapolis.

I should also mention that I got a haircut on Friday by the same person that cuts my sister's hair. We were chatting during my haircut and discussed my upcoming birthday. He was very insistent that I was going to have a surprise party. I told him that I didn't think that Paul would be the type to arrange something like that. In fact, I was SURE that he would never plan a surprise party for me. Paul is sort of known for his casual, lack of organization, procrastinating ways, none of which are qualities that would be useful in planning a surprise party. I was so sure that there was no possibility of a surprise party that I shared the amusing story with both Paul and my mom. That, in turn, prompted my mom to call my sister to find out if she had told the hairstylist, who had told me and potentially ruined the surprise. I unknowingly created a little ripple of surprise party panic amongst the secret keepers. And, really, the joke was on me because he DID plan it and he did it quite well. There were good guests, food, cake, drinks and most of all, I had no clue about any of it until he wanted me to know!

Busy Birthday Girl

Wow! What a spoiled girl I am! I have been very busy celebrating my birthday over the past few days.

I started my Friday morning, the day before my birthday, with a birthday cupcake. Jamie ordered a Red Velvet Revolution cupcake from Bangerang Bake Shop and had it shipped to me. It was a fun and yummy indulgence, which I happily ate for breakfast.

Paul had claimed the day of my birthday for secret birthday fun far in advance, so I had birthday celebrations with others in advance of the actual day. On Friday evening, my mom and I went out to a delicious dinner at one of my favorite places to eat in the whole wide world: The French Meadow Bakery and Cafe. I actually ate the dish pictured on the front page of their website, the Sweet Corn Arepas. We also shared the often raved about Appetizer Tasting Flight, some tasty stout beer, chocolate torte and dessert wine. It was a great feast and a great one-on-one evening with the woman who has known me the longest.

On the morning of my actual birthday, Paul started the day by unearthing our car from the snowfall and driving us through the snowy city to have a birthday breakfast at Victor's 1959 Cafe.

Victor's serves Cuban food in a mismatchy, oil cloth clad, graffiti filled, shack-like building. We loved it!

The food reminded us of the meals we ate in Costa Rica. Beans, rice, eggs and plantains = Yum.

At breakfast I was presented with an envelope titled "Do." It was filled with options of art exhibits that I could chose from as the thing we would "do" with the rest of the morning. The first omen that indicated things might not go as planned was that Paul realized he had forgotten his wallet at home. I had to front him the money for breakfast. No big deal. We have linked accounts and he can transfer the money back to me and it'll be like he bought it the whole time. Well, that was the beginning of things being a little off. After more snow clearing, more snowy driving and a wallet recovery stop at home, we headed to the first exhibit at Franklin Art Works.

William Lamson - Actions
Lamson, based in New York, will premier his recently completed Actions series of 33 short videos (2007-08) in which the artist artfully bursts dozens of black balloons in increasingly inventive ways. The videos, extending over 30 minutes, are a study in motion with a dry sense of humor throughout. Each short required intricate planning, exact timing and deadpan performance by the artist, such as Actions (April 10, 2008) depicting the artist swinging into frame, suspended from his heels to pop a falling balloon at the last possible moment of its fall with a pin attached to his head.

When we got there we found it was closed until noon. Ok, that was fine, we just headed to the second one and planned to return to the first one later. The second exhibit was called Sketchy Past and was at the Rosalux Gallery. That too, didn't open until noon, but with the drive over there, it wasn't long until noon. So we wandered around the Open Book Center and waited for it to open. Which, it didn't. The snow was pretty bad, so we suspected that the staff person was delayed. While waiting for it to open, I got hooked up with info about a pottery sale from Jamie and Charleen, so Paul took me there to buy me a little sumpin' sumpin' out of clay.

Then, we made one last attempt at seeing an exhibit and headed back to Franklin Art Works. It was open this time, but when we got inside we encountered an dark, empty screening room where the exhibit was supposed to be. As stated by the staff person, they were having "technical issues" that weren't worth fixing being that this was the last day of the exhibit. Ahhhh!!! At this point we took an arm's length photo and headed home to be under quilts for a while. We had had enough of fighting the weather and didn't want to further tempt the deck that was seemingly stacked against us that morning.

After a lazy afternoon and another envelope entitled "Touch" full of coupons for a year's worth of massages from Paul, we got bundled up again and went to dinner. Paul found a place in St. Paul we hadn't been to before called Cafe 128.

The menu didn't have a lot of choices, especially for a vegetarian, but the choices were all quality and quality is better than quantity! Paul had a chicken dish and I had roasted vegetables with saffron cous cous. We were impressed with the flavors and enjoyed our cozy dinner.

But, there was one more envelope to be opened. This one was titled, "Go." It was a BIG present. Paul is sending me to Rhinebeck in 2009! He knows how much I enjoy it and heard more than a few remarks during Rhinebeck 2008 about what I was missing out on, so he decided to start a little "savings" account into which he will make a deposit each month until my flight and admission are covered. What an amazing gift!

Now I just need to find some travel partners...calling Becky!...calling Jamie! Let's go!

As if that wasn't enough, the day wasn't over yet. Paul told me that I had dessert waiting for me at home, so we didn't order any at the restaurant. You'll have to wait until the next post to hear what happened next :)

Making Lemonade

Life has given me a few lemons lately. I am doing my best to make lemonade.

For one, I didn't get the job offer I was hoping to get this week despite them calling me to say how great my interview went and what a wonderful candidate I was. Also, I seem to be in some sort of job application loop in which I get nowhere. I applied for a job this week a few days before the deadline and received a response saying that I wouldn't be considered as they had "closed" the position, yet it was still advertised on the website. Then, I got another email from another job I applied to saying they would like to interview me, but they aren't looking to hire anyone right now due to the poor economy. I applied to that job in response to their company website which had an entire page dedicated to seeking new employees and instructions on how to apply. Waste. Of. Time.

Additionally, on Saturday morning my dog Tchazo was messing around with something on the floor that sounded off. I swooped in to take whatever weird thing he was about to eat and found that he was tasting and spitting this item out on the floor repeatedly. It was when I picked it up that I realized he was messing with one of his TEETH! One of his premolars had broken at the gum line and fallen out of his mouth. It was the weirdest thing because one minute he was sleeping and the next minute he was standing next to me with his tooth on the floor. A broken tooth means one thing: Oral Surgery. Luckily we haven't had occasion to take any of our pets to the vet since we moved back, but we did have a vet we knew from when we lived here in the past. I got him in to the vet yesterday and he is now happily back at home, minus a few big roots and with the addition of "railroad stitches".

In order to not become a totally crotchety, cranky, stressy mess, I made time yesterday for some enjoyable non-job related things. I got to stop by my dad's place and pick up my birthday present...a new BREADMAKER! He got me a breadmaker as my college graduation present 8 years ago. I used it regularly until right before we moved back to Minneapolis. It was about then that it started to turn itself off in the middle of baking a loaf of bread. It went in the dumpster when we moved and I have been missing my homemade bread since then. He also gave me a bag full of homemade canned goods like tomatoes, salsa and BBQ sauce and bit of birthday cash to be spent on something fun for myself.

Then I met my mom for dinner and dessert at Wilde Roast Cafe. After dinner, we went to listen to her friend Jane's band play Christmas music. It was sort of surreal going to a band concert in a middle school auditorium.

They kept the lights on in the auditorium while they were playing which meant my mom and I could knit through the concert! Here my mom is learning the importance of a selvage stitch:

I worked on one of two remaining Christmas gifts to be finished.

After the concert, we got to eat our second dessert of the evening: Gingerbread Men!

Despite moments of frustration, I am still managing to stay upbeat about banging my head against the figurative wall that is job searching in the current economy. It helps a lot that Paul, my friends and my family have been so supportive of the process and offering me encouragement to keep at it. Thanks guys!

Hardcore Life

I'm a bit behind the times on posting about activities. Since the weekend is looming near and I have not yet spoken about the massively hardcore weekend I just had, I figured I should get on it. Here are some of the hardcore things I did this past weekend...

I spent Friday evening knitting and chatting with Jamie and snuggling with Sylvia:

Jamie says she finally believes that I live here, so that is good.

On Saturday night Paul and I went to a party. We seemed to be drawn to people with Christmas trees as they are in the background of both of these photos.

At this party, Paul's friend Paul shunned his Bloody Mary in favor of a glass of chocolate milk which he drank with a bunny themed swirly straw:

Paul's friend Steve snuggled Orbity, Kristin and Ryan's dog, who is smaller than our cat and had multiple wardrobe changes throughout the evening.

Not pictured, but also accomplished this weekend was Christmas present wrapping, Christmas knitting, risotto cooking and job applying. All in all, it was a rock star weekend. We are lucky we didn't get arrested.

Sweater Blocks

Holy tedious! This is the project I started at Jamie's a few weeks ago. These are a set of building blocks/balls/toys for Paul's youngest niece and his nephew. I made them by cutting out squares from felted wool sweaters, seaming them together by hand using a thin yarn and stuffing them with polyfil.

I think the colors and textures are interesting so hopefully the kids will too!

If I were to make these again, I would sew the seams with a sewing machine. Handsewing 12 seams on each of 7 blocks took a long time.

Sage

Sage leaves look a little like a cat's tongue, but green.

Mittens for Zoe

When the weather first started to get cold, Jerri, Zoe and I were walking somewhere and Jerri mentioned offhand that Zoe needed some mittens. My ears perked up and I made a mental note to knit that girl some mittens!

Once upon a time, maybe 2 years ago, I had started a pair of adult, fair isle mittens with 3 colors. I got as far as the cuff when I realized that my needle size was far too small, my gauge far too tight and my stitches all wonky. I tore it out and haven't tried fair isle since then. I thought 2 color baby mittens were a safer way to dive back in.

These are the Two Colour Baby Mittens by Abigail Welbourn. I knit these in two shades of purple Encore Worsted yarn and followed the spiral chart on the pattern.

Since it is officially and very much winter here in Minnesota, I gave Zoe her Christmas mittens last weekend. She wore them home that night and seemed to be grateful for her toasty fingers and her tasty mittens.

What is this?

This is the yarn I bought when I went yarn shopping with my mom a few weekends ago. We went shopping so that she could buy yarn to start a knitting project. She is newly interested in knitting, so she wanted my help making project choices. I was interesting in going to some yarn stores to see what they had but I wasn't interested in buying any yarn because I have a long list of Christmas crafting that I am still chipping away at and I have plenty of yarn. However, we made the poor (?) choice of going to Needlework Unlimited's outlet store. As with most outlet stores, everything in the store was being discontinued or closed out and was marked at 50% off or better. That means SALES and THINGS THAT MAY NOT EXIST AGAIN and TEMPTATION! Besides getting yarn to make a scarf for my mom's Christmas present, I ended up with the skein pictured above. It is Chacabuco Multy by Araucania, which is a bumpy, slubby, thick and thin cotton yarn. My plan is to make a cowl for myself as a quickie, all-for-me, post-Christmas-crafting treat. Well worth the $7.75, in my opinion.

This purchase marks the second time since February that I have bought yarn for myself. The first purchase was also recently made and also in tandem with buying yarn for a Christmas project. That purchase was actually these skeins, which I wrote about here.

They were purchased in order to make a pair of felted mittens. I need to replace the pair that I wore constantly until I lost them last winter. I chronicled my despair in this post. I've been wearing the replacement pair with the cotton thrums and they are working well except for three things.

1. They are a little delicate. I feel like I need to be kind of gentle with them so that I don't rip the thrums out. For example, they wouldn't hold up well if I wore them on the dog walk while holding on to two dogs straining at their leashes.
   
2. Also, they are a bit thick for things like unlocking doors. The thickness is like a little cocoon, which means my hands get steamy hot inside of them, but the bending and moving is quite limited.
   
3. Lastly, the thrums are white, which means they very quickly became dingy looking as soon as I set them down on something dirty. Another reason why I can't use them when I walk the dogs.
   

Basically, they are keeping my hands warm, but I miss my felted mittens. The two skeins of Nature Spun totaled $7.00, so for less than $15 I am going to get two things that I need to keep me warm while I trudge back and forth to work. Now, all I need to do is get all of those Christmas presents finished.

Woolly Gnome

...And the prize for the goofiest thing ever knit by me goes to... The Woolly Gnome!

This little dude is going to be part of my dad's Christmas present. He not so subtly conveyed his recent attraction to garden gnomes and his desire to be given more if I were to ever be at a loss for gift ideas. Since I have vowed to make all of my Christmas gifts this year, this was what I could do for him, gnome-wise. I plan to snag this little guy and hide him somewhere weird every time I go to my dad's house. He has taken to hiding his ceramic garden gnome in various places in his garden, so I imagine the Woolly Gnome as the winter version of the garden gnome.

This was made from the Woolly Gnome & Mushroom pattern by Marie Mayhew using Cascade 220 yarns. I modified the embellishments to suit my fancy.

Crafting Media References

Bad, narrow-minded crafting reference:

Star Tribune article:

Titled:
"No money for gifts? No problem
Here are some ways to fulfill your holiday gift list without resorting to stealing or crafting."

Good, comedic crafting reference:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Nailed 'Em - Radical Knitting

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Random Tidbits From My Recent Life

• The past two nights I have come home from work to find cat puke on the bed. I've never encountered a cat that doesn't have enough sense to puke on the FLOOR, not the bed! The first night was bad, but we changed all of the bedding and all was well. The second night, I was like "Come on! I am going to run out of blankets!" The weirdest thing is that she pukes where she likes to sleep. She doesn't want to get near her puke, so she has essentially chased herself out of her favorite spot until I come home and make it all better. My opinion of her has always been that she is really cute and sweet, but I question her intelligence. For the record, I also question her coordination.
  
• For the 4th time since I started this job search, I am waiting to find out if I get the offer. The suspense is killing me. It is flattering to be one of the chosen few interviewed and sometimes one of the chosen finalists, but dammit, I want the OFFER!
  
• When I am stressed out, making a dinner that requires chopping up lots of fresh veggies helps relax me. Or, maybe it is the glass of wine I drink when I am chopping the veggies :) But, seriously, something about the motions of washing and chopping, the shapes I cut and the color combinations is therapeutic for me. It doesn't hurt that I end up with a good meal out of it!
• Sometimes I forget where I live. Namely, the other day I had a random, passing thought about how I should go get one of the Green Plates from Bloc 11 Cafe (in Somerville) soon because I really like it. Then, I remembered I don't live in Massachusetts anymore. It is weird how my subconscious brain hasn't fully recognized my change of location. I still feel "near" all of the stuff that was really familiar to me in Somerville/Boston.
• My book group in Cambridge had an article published about them in the Boston Globe yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised when I joined the group at the level of intellect and insight that came out of discussing ChickLit. I think I have been hesitant to join a book group here because I am not sure if it will match the awesomeness of that group!
  
• I've discovered a pattern of emotions related to the number of hours I have worked at my temp job. At 20 hours immense boredom starts to set in and I begin to get antsy. I can push through until 25 hours by using distractions like podcasts, bathroom breaks and snacks. If I push past 25 hours, things start to get nasty. Despair, frustration and pessimism start to take over. If I hit 32 hours I dissolve into a mess of tears. Since recognizing this pattern, I spoke with my temp placement and have negotiated new and somewhat flexible hours which I hope I can keep around 25 hours a week. Unless, of course, the aforementioned job offer happens, in which case I will run, jump, skip and happy dance away from temping.
  

Sugar Pear

Charleen shared these delicious sugar pears with me. They are the perfect size. Tiny, ten-bites-or-less, fruit snacks.

A Good Omen

Yesterday I went in for a job interview in a building that houses a variety of activities including some children's classes. When I was signing in at the front desk, a little boy came up to me and gave my leg a big hug. I almost felt like his gesture was saying, "Welcome. You belong here." At the very least, it put a big smile on my face.

Craftmas

As planned, I went to the Handmaiden's Craftmas Fair on Sunday. Due to a delay getting out of the house in the morning (which means not wanting to change out of my pajamas until I was good and ready to), I ended up not having as much time to browse as I had planned. As it turns out, I didn't need that much time as it was quite a bit smaller than the No Coast Craft-O-Rama. There was a little bit of crossover of vendors, but there were also some new vendors to check out. Here are a few that I liked:

Jennie the Potter makes gorgeous and impeccably made pottery including some that is knitting, yarn and sewing themed.

A few years ago Jamie gave me a little sheep bowl that I love. This was the first time that I got to see the rest of Jennie the Potter's goods in person. When I strike it rich, I am going to buy some more of her things, including one of these knitting pendants:

I also loved the irregular shapes of the rings from Betty Jager of 3jagdesign. If I didn't already have a wedding ring, I would consider asking Betty to make me one.

Sewn, zippered pouches were plentiful at both fairs. I am a sucker for cute zippered pouches so I liked many of them. But, I adored the whimsical embroidery and the use of vintage fabrics on the pouches at Mine Creations.

I browsed through the Craftmas Fair in under 45 minutes because I had a date with Sally for some catching up and some consuming of the tasties at Wilde Roast Cafe. By the time I got to the cafe I was starved for lunch. My gigantic and filling portabello burger didn't leave any room for their tempting dessert selection. I am going to have to go back there again to partake of something sweet or, even better, go back for their date night special AND something sweet!

As with the Craft Heaven post, all of the photos in this post were taken from the artists' websites. I've linked to their sites above if you are interested in seeing more of their offerings.

Craft Heaven

This weekend is ripe with craft fairs in Minneapolis. I ventured out to the No Coast Craft-O-Rama with former co-worker and new friend Jill (Hi Jill! You can delurk and comment now if you would like!) today and I plan to go to The Handmaidens' Craftmas tomorrow. I am not in the market for purchasing anything, but I did want to see what is being made by fellow local crafters and take in the sensory experience of all the beauty and creativity. Here are few of the vendors that nearly made me break my "just browsing" vow:

Becky Klay of Small Motor Designs makes really amazing textile jewelry primarily using embroidery. From afar it looks like the jewelry is made from tooled leather. I liked all of her designs, but I thought her most unique pieces were these textile lockets:

Not in my price range, but stunningly beautiful and impeccably made jewelry by bmf jewelry was a standout at the fair:

I loved the Jersey Scarves from Michelle Brusegaard (mbmb). My favorite purple one wasn't on her website, but these pretty ones were.

All of the photos in this post are from the artists' websites. Check 'em out! Each of them has lots of other pretties to be ogled and possibly purchased.

Christmas Has Begun

My first holiday gathering of the season occurred last night, a snowy, cold, Minnesota evening.

It was definitely not cold in Joey's kitchen! When I arrived his kitchen was in full swing, brimming with friends preparing their contributions to the finger food feast. From left to right we have Justin, Jerri, Joey (our host for the evening) and Genevieve. Not pictured were Mark and Zoe who were staying out of harms way in the living room.

Our potluck contributions yielded this spread:

After eating, drinking, chatting, a little crafting, some Charlie Brown Christmas watching, carol singing (not me, I am still a Scrooge when it comes to Christmas music) and some lounging around, Joey prepared an amazing chocolate fondue.

After that we had a gift exchange, cleaned up and headed home. It was a great way to get the season started and even my typically anti-Christmas-merriment-self enjoyed the festivities. Plus, I got to taste persimmons for the first time. Yum.

Hollywood

When headed to Crafty Planet over the weekend, I saw this theater and just had to take a few photos.

It was boarded up and obviously not in use. A quick google search produced this history that mentioned a renovation project that was to begin in 2004. It didn't look like there was any work being done on it. Another search found this site and this site. It seems there has been a lot of trouble finding the right person and the right funding to renovate and reopen the theater. I really hope someone does, because it looks so intriguing.

Grinding Nuts

Did anyone else have one of these in their family kitchen when they were little? What a simple contraption. I know I can achieve the same results with a knife just as quickly, but when I saw this at the thrift store, I had to buy it for nostalgia's sake.

Naughty and Nice

The other evening we put out a bag for Fanny to play in. She made quite a ruckus running in and out of it, pouncing on it and just generally getting her playfulness out. Every now and then I would toss one of her toys in it. Most of her cat toys are felted wool. She likes wool toys. After an evening of noisy playing, we had to put it up out of her reach so that she wouldn't keep us awake at night.

Paul and I were laying in bed, falling asleep when we heard the sound of Fanny in a paper bag. I was pretty groggy so Paul got up and took care of it, mumbling about how he couldn't understand how she had gotten the bag down. When he came back to bed, I didn't ask him about it, I just fell asleep. The next day I got home from work and found a ball band from a skein of yarn in a very odd place. I then realized that my paper bag from the yarn store was up on the shelf and not on the floor where I had left it.

At that point it clicks in brain and I realize that she had been playing in my little paper bag from the yarn store when Paul had gotten up the night before. When I looked in the bag and only found one of the two skeins, I determined that she had found wool "toys" in the bag and had a grand old time before the bag had been taken away. Paul didn't know what was in the bag and therefore didn't look around for errant skeins of yarn. I eventually located the missing skein.

It could have been worse.

November Recipes

One more month to go! Here are the new recipes I tried in November:

Chewy Granola Bars
These aren't really at all like pre-packaged chewy granola bars. They are tasty, though. I made mine with peanuts, walnuts, dried cranberries and chocolate chips. I used the crumbled bits that broke off from the bars to mix with granola.

Best Formula Three Cheese Fondue
Paul and I made this for our fondue date night. It was tasty, but we felt our arteries being clogged as we ate it :)

Caribbean Sweet Potato Gratin
I made this as my vegetarian contribution to the family thanksgiving. I don't think anyone was particularly thrilled with it, but I really liked it. Next time I would only use half the amount of corn meal it recommends.

Back to Your Roots Soup - Moosewood Daily Specials
This soup was a mixture of turnips and parsnips, neither of which are my favorites. Charleen let me pick up her farm share when she was out of town and it had a turnip in it. I looked for some recipes that included turnips and ended up trying this one. I did end up liking it, but I wouldn't put this on my regular rotation.