My Crazy has a uniform

Dear Donk,

I got something totally amusing in the mail yesterday, which I think you'll appreciate in its irony, but we'll go into that another time. For today, let's look at my amusing scarf.

Amusing in the sense that it's basically ugly and it's basically totally unnecessary because I have a hundred scarves and despite these basic things, I still love it because of its weirdness. And its reuse of some favorite shirts that are so soft but so ill-fitting that I never wore them.

Shall I tell you more?

Sure, why not.

So, when I chose this project for this month's challenge, it felt like a no-brainer. Because it was a Tshirt reuse project which I automatically love and because it was not a holiday type project which I would automatically hate.

You know how I get with the holidays - it's a too much too soon thing and I always feel like I'm being bullied into the holiday spirit so I put off getting all into anything holiday-y until, like, later on when I feel like it's time. Or when Christmas is UPON US in the literal sense because it's suddenly December 25th. Then there are years like this one where Hanukkah starts way early and ends up dragging holidayness all through the month of December like a traffic cone stuck under the car and by the time I get to New Year's, The Holidays are worn down to a nub and are all covered in road debris.

And now that you know my detailed opinion on preemptive holiday celebrating, let's look at this scarf-beast.

Let's just ignore how pale and repulsive I look and the fact that my sweatshirt is dirty.

When I finally set out to piece this thing together, I had to have a serious coming to Jesus with my Tshirt drawer. Because, while I don't wear a lot of these shirts very often or ever, I had a hard time picturing myself cutting right into them.

Which makes no sense because wouldn't I get to enjoy them if they were cut out and featured on a scarf? Yes.

So, I make no sense.

Thankfully, I talked myself through it to the point where I choose my softest shirts, which I always wish I *could* wear because of their softness but never *do* wear because of the way they fit me like a big paper sack.

Those I felt OK cutting into. They were going to be swaddling my neck and that would be better than they way they swaddled my midsection when I had the gall to wear them which was never.

Then, when I'd stacked up a nice big pile of shirts, I realized an enormous error in my compiling methods - not consulting with Bubba first.

See, friends, Bubba is a Tshirt man. He has many Tshirts, he wears at least one a day (let's not go into specifics, you'll be happier this way. Promise.) and is something along the lines of a Platinum Diamond Super Special member of the Threadless community - if there is such a thing.

He is also a very good Tshirt selecter, which I know from first-hand experience because he gave me a lot of my favorite Tshirts which I refuse to cut into because of sentimental reasons and because I want to wear them to work on days when my director isn't in the office.

Some may reflect badly on future reviews, is why.

Anyway.

What I'd forgotten, in my haste to select shirts for this Soon To Be Coveted Scarf, was that Bubba was, like, the ultimate collector of awesome shirts worthy of showcasing and also The Great Destroyer of Tshirts and routinely tossed old wrecked shirts into the rag bin in the garage to make way for new awesome shirts worthy of showcasing.

Basically, I realized there was a bin of fab Bubba Tshirts in the garage with fab keepable prints on them that I could totally pillage.

OH.

Out to the garage I went.

And in this pile of shirts I found ET phoning home from a payphone booth (awesome), a list of grievances about the state of today's technology (where IS my jetpack, anyway?), and an X-ray of a dog who'd eaten some delicious homework.

That would do!

Didn't YOU think we'd have jetpacks by now? Yeah, me too.

Then I picked out my favorite soft shirts - the one with the green logo on it and the Mermaid race shirt - and another race shirt that I'd never wear again due to its paper-sack-fittingness from Rock 'N Roll San Jose '08 and my favorite Kauai shirt that had shrunk into a total belly shirt after a roll in the new machine set to HOT/HOT.

The fact that my shirts clash horribly with his shirts makes no difference to me.

I cut them all up, sewed them all together, enjoyed the fabulous coincidence that the super-softest white shirt with the green image on it managed to land square in the center so that when I wrapped it around my neck it looked like I meant to do that, and then basked in the glory of piecing together the reverse side from the remnants of the softest shirts so that I could reverse the scarf or wear it normal but always have the super-softness right there - swaddling my cold neck.

Yay?

Yes, yay.

And now I am the freakiest dog walker in town. Because that's the only time I've worn this scarf so far - was to walk the dog - and I wore it with the sweatshirt in the photo, black sweats, a Steamboat beanie and red mittens.

To say that I look like a lunatic when I walk the dog is an extreme understatement, but at least I'm warm. And crazy!

So, yeah, I made the scarf and it took a lot out of me. More so that it probably would have if I'd just broken down and chosen a holiday-themed project.

What do you want? I'm horribly stubborn. Which you know.

So? How are things going with YOUR projects?

xo

Finny

*I made a really good cake

*This title is stolen from a good friend who also made a really good cake this weekend.

Y'all, this was a very nesty weekend. Nesty in the sense that I did not leave my nest for any three dimensional interaction (beyond The Best Run Ever, which happened on Saturday morning in the fog) until Saturday evening when Bubba and I carried some armloads of food across the street to my neighbors' place.

At which time we engaged in some serious Comforting with a capital C, as you can see by the way I spelled Comforting back there in the beginning of the sentence. You get it. I know you do.

Anyway, my Comfort Mode was switched on when my neighbor swung by on Saturday morning just as I was cruising in from The Best Run Ever with news on her post-surgery pooch. He was doing OK (as explained while tilting thy head sideways and wagging one's hand in an unsure manner) after surgery but, according to the vets, "He almost didn't make it. Like a few times."

SADNESS.

But, he was home and bleary and wobbly and they were taking good care by staring at him constantly and making up a very complicated Pill Schedule in Excel so that he got all his meds at the right time and the right dose and all that.

They seemed stressed. And a bit sad. And, to my honed Mother Henning eyes, in need of major league comforting.

Which, if you're me, means food - good homecooked kinda food - STAT.

So, I offered to bring over dinner that night so that we could all keep a watchful eye on their pooch meanwhile propping each other up and raising spirits. They readily agreed and so my day of nesty began while Bubba played Tech Help and Jada and Rocket played I Have The Best Napping Spot in the Whole World in our backyard.

It was quite peaceful and nice and I set out to bring into reality Comfort in food form. And if you're me, this means chicken soup from scratch, home-baked challah and chocolate cake.

Yes, that is the trifecta of comfort for moi, thanks to my mama who produced these lovelies as needed throughout my childhood and, to this day, has the most bulletproof chicken soup recipe which I will even share with you in a future post if you're all a bunch of good little whores.

Wow, did you see how the tone of this post just took an erratic and wildly swerving turn?

That's because I don't want you all thinking I've gone super soft on you and will be doing everything for the good of others without considering my own wanton desires or anything. That would be so un-Finny and I'm sure you'd all leave me.

At the very least, it would be dishonest of me to mislead you in such a way. Into thinking that I'd become all Good and Nice and Altruistic on you just all of a sudden because that's just not true. And of all things that I may or may not be - Honest is something I like to stick with. For good or bad, I'm hanging it all out there for you whores in the honest way, even if it's not nice or good or pleasant to read. Fun!

Sure - sometimes I do nice things. Like make chocolate cakes for sad friends, but make no mistake about it, that cake was getting made one way or another. Though the soup and bread were impromptu additions that brought the whole Comfort theme together.

I'm good. I'm bad. I'm a menagerie of evils. Let's cook something.

So this cake, it was the one from this month's Craft: along challenge - the Chocolate and Roasted Beet Pudding cake - and it was, in a word, FUCKINGAWESOME.

Which is a single word and I defy you to challenge me on this.

And while you may have been thinking, "Duh, bitch. It's a chocolate cake, how could it be bad?" I'm sure you then realized that introducing beets to chocolate could have some unexpected and potentially not-awesome results.

Or that's what I was thinking anyway as I prepared to dump 1/4 cup of roasted beet puree (thank you farmshare for supplying two tons of beets during this summer's share, geez) into the most lovely melted chocolate a soul could want to see. And eat. I ate some of the chocolate off the spoon before the beets went in.

I imagined this would taste like raspberry given the color. It does not.

So, what do you expect? There was melted chocolate and a big wooden spoon in front of me. What - I was not going to sample it? Come, now.

This, however, tasted exactly like good chocolate.

Anyway.

After some thorough sampling (Scharffen Berger bittersweet is quite good. I can assure you.) and then blending in off beets and resampling (have to make sure I didn't just ruin my own good time you know), the little ramekins of dark reddish brown loveliness were set aside to haul over to the neighbors' for our dessert.

And wouldn't you know that I bought those ramekins special for this recipe because I only had ramekins in random sizes and I didn't want to risk getting the small one when they came out of the oven later. I figured the $2/ea price tag was well worth the guarantee that I'd get a Big One for dessert and so I have justified the proprietary purchase. There you go.

The little random-sized ones can hang out in the cupboard for future recipes in which I can risk not getting a Big One - like when I make quiche or something equally sketch.

Moving on.

You know there's something funny in this cake? Actually, there's something funny that's NOT in this cake.

Flour.

Yeah - I didn't realize it when I chose it for this month's challenge, but this is a gluten-free cake. Are y'all shunning gluten, too? I mean, not that I am, I could give a rat's ass about avoiding gluten - friggen mainline it to me - but apparently this is sweeping the nation, the anti-glutenness.

I'm sorry for all you non-gluten eaters. That has to suck. BUT, this cake is gluten-free, so you can just haul off and eat it without incurring the wrath of gluten on your ravaged souls.

Yay?

To clarify, this recipe only contains a small amount of rice flour, which I found in great abundance and variety at Whole Foods, and which I now have stored away in my baking cabinet for future gluten-free baking. Though I have no other gluten-free recipes in which to use it. Except these that I just found on the Bob's Red Mill site. We'll see what lasts longer - the rice flour or the giant bottle of molasses. As of now, it's a dead heat.

So, for those of you for whom photographic comparisons are the true teller of results, please allow me to present my perfect recreation of the Chocolate and Roasted Beet Pudding Cake for your edification:

This is what the real one looks like.

And for those of you for whom the texture is the truth teller:

Pudding-y center. Yes, please.

And for those of you for whom the taste is the truth teller:

Well, you'll have to make it for yourself. Because you can't be shoving a spoon through the monitor and even if you could it wouldn't be hot by the time you got it into your greedy mouth, so it's better if you just make it on your own, then isn't it? Because when it's fresh from the oven, smelling all lusty and warm and richly chocolate, a spoonful scooped direct from the center is like the richest, yet not-too-sweetest, brownie crossed with flourless chocolate cake you could ever want to have in your face.

It's just very incredibly good. Or, FUCKINGAWESOME, as some less eloquent folks (me) might say.

And I don't really know where the beets went in this thing, but the only remnants that really showed through in the final product were in the color of the dessert itself, which was this lovely dark reddish-brown velvet, and maybe the tiniest bit in the vague earthy flavor beneath all that heavenly chocolate.

I can tell you that it didn't taste like dirt, if that's what you're wondering. Which is what Bubba was wondering. Which is why he doesn't like beets and also why he was upset with me fucking up the first chocolate cake I'd made in forever (?) by throwing in a big old scoop of beet puree that was going to render his chocolate as dirt.

To sum it for you - he immediately declared it a winner and asked if I had more beet puree for a rematch. Which I do. Though I'm out of chocolate, so we'll have to deal with that matter separately.

A winner though! A big fat Here's What The F I Do With Beets winner!

I'm sure you'll be just as pleased when you make your own. Because we're not sharing. Because we're not that nice, despite what you've seen here.

And just because I'm a bit behind on telling you the intimate and absurd details of my life, here's some stuff I hope will be coming soon:

Running update on the topics of The Best Run Ever and Running Naked

Bulletproof chicken soup recipe if my mom lets me share it

How I have a winter garden growing even though I said I wasn't going to have one

The progress of NaNoWriMo now that I've stepped back from the ledge

Let's hope I can scratch together some time for these things before they all change.

Craft: along 2009 : October

Hey Donk,

Its finally acting like fall here. Like, it's stopped being in the 80s and 90s (which probably sounds nice and cool to you) and instead it's in the 50s and 60s. I'll be honest, I was ready.

Not that the summer was a super hot one, but I think I was ready for a change - different clothes to wear, different shit to bitch about, different scenery on runs, different food to eat.

So, not surprisingly, I chose to hit up the creamy pumpkin pasta for my project this month because, to me, fall = pumpkin and hey, I happened to have made my own pumpkin puree which was taking up room in the chesty. And had I not skirted the sausage because of my too-lazy-to-go-to-the-storeness, it would have probably been really tasty. Sadly, my laziness won out and I had the pasta sans sausage which we all know is wrong. When there's an option to add sausage (or bacon or cheese or cream for that matter), one should always opt FOR it rather than for laziness, which never tastes as good.

Anyhoo, enough about my failed efforts - let's talk about someone's success - namely, laeroport's.

I mean, there's someone who knows her way around a recipe. It looks divine. Mostly because I'm sure there's sausage in there. What self-respecting Kansan (Bubba would be so proud) would opt out of sausage?



So! TEE DAH! You win, my friend. A fabulous surprise prize from yours truly. Just send the old addy to finnyknits AT gmail DOT com and I'll send it off in two shakes. Congrats!

And for November, well, I bet you're thinking I'll choose something holiday giftee since those fucking holidays are rolling back around again and don't we just all need to be acraftin' those gifts BUT NO - I refuse.

Who needs to do any holiday crafting when the perfect gift already exists at Amazon, anyway? (I jest people, obviously I'm *for* the crafting. Per the book's premise. Der.)

But still, I'm not going to take the path most traveled and dole out more predictability. We have too much of that in our lives already. I say Randomness Rules! and also, I have a lot of Tshirts and beets to dispatch.

What the fuck am I talking about?

Firstly, I vote for this sewing project where we recycle our sentimental Tshirts into something that we'll lovingly (and humorously wear).

Tshirt Memory Scarf

And secondly, I vote for this cooking project for any of us who:
A.) were brainy enough to plant beets
B.) have been storing up beets from their farmshare for months
C.) have an inexplicable number of beets lying around
D.) are willing to cook beets into something unexpected

Chocolate and Roasted Beet Pudding Cakes

Now, if you *must* make gifts, I'm sure the scarf (or any awesome creation from Tshirts) would make a lovely gift and I'm sure that these pudding cakes could be baked into sweet little ramekins for sharing with neighbors or coworkers.

BUT since I can already hear the whining, let's throw this one in there for good measure:

Zippy Wallet from Fabric Scraps

There. You happy now? Sheesh.

So, whether it's Tshirts, beets or fabric scraps that you decide on for the month (or all three - hey, you fuckers can be crazy!), I bid you all good luck. When I'll have a chance to do any of the above, I really don't know. Because from now until the tolling of the midnight hour on 11/30, I will be melting down my brain via NaNoWriMo.

It was nice knowing you.

xo
Finny

Oh the drama of squash.

Dear Donk,

Remember those randomly occurring pumpkins from my 2008 garden?

NO?? Pffffffft!

Just kidding, I barely do either. Going along with my theme of garden forgetfulness and all.

Well, even though it looked a lot like I let that volunteer plant go crazy and take half a raised bed and then its babies sat and decorated my sideboard for a few months and sat out on the front porch in an out-of-season-decor way holding on a loose brick before bringing them all in and roasting them and pureeing them and freezing them in our chesty for no good reason -- I did not.

Did you get all that?

Basically, all of that effort (of which there was precious little aside from the processing part at the end) didn't go for nothing because TEE DAH I made something with some of the puree and that something was this month's Craft: along challenge - creamy pumpkin pasta.

But before we get to the meaningful reason of why you'd come to read this post, let me bore you with the minutia of processing volunteer pumpkins and share with you a shockingly common discussion topic in our household.

That being: What the fuck are we doing with XYZ thing and why is it sitting out?

See, there are two big controversies at play in this particular instance. One - we don't have a lot of space in our pea sized house, and, Two - Bubba hates seasonal decor. Especially when it's out of its season.

And, in this particular instance, I had six smallish to mediumish pumpkins sitting out on our not-huge porch and it was the middle of February - long past the harvesty seasonal times that might call for pumpkiny decor.

I knew that my time to dispatch the pumpkins had come, but I let them hang out there on the porch anyway, because there was a loose brick fragment I needed to keep in place and balancing six pumpkins on it was the fix I was ready to provide at time.

(Later I would employ the magic of Gorilla Glue and then even later still (now) we'd be employing the magic of a Real Live Contractor - but that's a story for another day)

Anyway, one day Bubba strode into our house, fresh from a rainy trip to the hardware store, and declared that it was high time for the pumpkins to go. What with us being closer to the current year's Halloween than the previous year's and all.

I agreed and told him that I had been planning to roast them and puree them anyway so I should just do that right now, then. I did not register any raised eyebrows at my declaration, but I assume there were a few. Even if they happened when I wasn't looking. And even if I was one of the ones raising an eyebrow.

Basically, the theory of roasting pumpkins and processing them into puree had crossed my mind, but the whole thing seemed so labor intensive for an end product that I could easily just go get five minutes away at TJ's, that I'd sort of started coming to terms with composting the pumpkins when their numbers were up.

Suddenly, though, I was compelled to make good on this gardening venture and see it through to fruition, even though that fruition was only theoretical and beholden to no man.

Oh well, you know how I am about this whole "to fruition" thing.

So, with a rainy day ahead of me and, apparently, nothing better to do in the whole wide world than reduce a sinkful of pumpkins down to a freezer bag of puree, I got started.

Hello, fuckers.

Folks - let me tell you - despite the fact that I will use this puree and it does taste as fabulous as pumpkin puree can taste - this is a process I will forgo in the future in lieu of some fine canned pumpkin from TJ's because WOW this took forever and produced very little.

Which is why I haven't told you about it for now. Because I didn't want you getting the idea that my life was so small and pointless that I'd spend half a day making pumpkin puree because the process is obviously so labor intensive that only psychopaths would be interested.

I get self-conscious, what can I say.

However, if you're a psychopath and want to get puree from your pumpkins, you can follow this process. Or, if you just like to see how I tortured myself one rainy day this past February, you can read along and quietly snicker to yourself or start dialing the local loony bin.

Hey, sometimes we all do pointless shit.

Witness ye, Pointless Shit.

Let's start with the roasting. Cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil, heat your oven to 400 and top your pumpkins. After which, scoop the inner crap out (If you're an irretrievable psycho, you can rinse those seeds and make plans to toast them, but I didn't because that's too far even for me) and cut them into wedges or halves or whatever shapes make them all fit on one baking sheet because LORD KNOWS you're not going through this twice.

I don't take two trips from the car with groceries and I'm SURE AS HELL not taking two trips through the oven for pumpkin puree. No sir.

Let the pumpkin roast in the oven until a fork can easily pierce the skin and it feels soft inside. Warning: this takes forever.

Remove the pumpkins from the oven wearing two oven mitts and a back brace because WOW they're fucking heavy.

Let them cool on the stovetop for a million years or until you can manage to cradle the pieces in one potholder-covered hand while scooping out the flesh with a spoon in your other hand.

Admire how the remnant skin looks like something from an old Friday the 13th movie. Move on.

Place a strainer over a bowl and plop all your cooked pumpkin in the strainer. With the back of a big spoon (and then your hand because you feel like the spoon isn't doing it fast enough) press the pumpkin so that the liquid drains out into the bowl below.

Do this until you have a nice smooth consistency in the strainer. Then scoop it all out into a clean new bowl and have at it with the immersion blender to make it super smooth.

Once you're done with all that mess, amaze yourself by fitting six pumpkin's worth of puree and half a day's work into ONE gallon sized Ziploc bag. Pat the puree flat in the bag (after sealing it) and, using your finger, "break" the puree inside the bag into four individual squares. These perforations will let you thaw and use smaller amounts later because who in the whole wide world is going to need a gallon's worth of pumpkin puree at once?

No one, that's who.

I kinda didn't think this would work, but it totally does.

Warning: You'll feel like you're wasting your life.

Then throw this carefully compartmentalized pumpkin puree into the freezer and freeze it flat. Then, when Bubba buys you a chest freezer for your birthday, put it in there *knowing* full well you'll never use it but because you're a sentimentalist when it comes to your own wasted time and efforts, store it in there anyway and then try not to look at it when you go to the chesty to store all your tomatoes.

The guilt is ongoing.

Ten months later, surprise yourself by going freezer diving (totally dangerous, I was nearly killed by a frozen tomato avalanche) to retrieve the forgotten bag of pumpkin puree to make FINALLY TEE DAH the creamy pumpkin pasta of this month's Craft: along challenge.

Death-defying pumpkin

PHEW. That was a long time coming.

After retrieving the bag and marveling at your frontierswomanness easily break off a brick of pumpkin, slide it into an inferior zippie bag (I don't know why these little ones suck, but they do, the plastic is too thin) and let it float in the small part of the sink in warm water for about ten minutes, or until it's thawed. Since you pat it real flat in the bag, it thaws fast.

Put the rest back in the freezer, then.

Now, if you made it through all that and you still want to make this creamy pumpkin pasta, let me advise you not to skip the sausage.

I did and the results were a tad bland. I didn't have anything other than spicy sausage at home, so I skipped it altogether and I suspect that was a mistake and the spiciness would have been AOK if I'd been willing to go out on a limb, which I was not because I was using The Precious Pumpkin Puree of Yore and didn't want to befoul it with some not-explicitly-included-in-the-recipe ingredients.

In this case, excluding the sausage should be considered a not-explicitly-included-in-the-recipe ingredient - so do what you must to procure it.

Aside from aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall that though, the recipe was simple, quick and provided a good base onto which I could load a nice big pile of fresh broccoli from the farmshare.

And, lawdy, if I don't love me some broccoli freshly steamed in lemon juice and sprinkled with sea salt.

This is a new experimental view of cooking.

Whaddya think?

Notice the broccoli off to the side, there? After this photo, I just put it on top.

So, yeah, that's the story of how I finally used some of this puree to make something and then was too lazy to go to the store for sweet Italian sausage. Sometimes I can be such an asshole.

Good thing I had that awesome broccoli. And good thing I have another labor intensive pureeing project in my future because I guess I just didn't get enough of that the first time around.

Happy crafting, doll.

xo

Finny

Weekend's exploits

Hey Donk,

I was having a hard time deciding what all to talk about today, given that we just had the lovely three days off to Labor and you know how much you can do in three free days, but I've decided posting about the Craft: along challenges for this month is most impressive (and wait until you see the other stuff, if I do say so myself, etc) because WOW it's only 9/8 and I've already done two of the three projects.

I know, I'm pretty impressed with myself. Also, I'm very modest!

Anyway, amidst all the running (update this week), gardening (update this week), drinking (oh yes, there's an update for this, too - this week) - there was Craft:ing.

Specifically, buckle making and tote-bag transforming.

The weather during my Saturday run informed me that, Alert! Fall thinks it's coming! and so I must immediately begin transforming my work self from Summer to Fall.

Thankfully, this just takes updating my Supah Profesh Laptop Tote Bag from black summer birdies and orange waves to orange fall birdies and blue leaves. And when I say "tote bag" I mean one of those canvas tote bags with which one would normally shop for groceries not one of those leather type tote bags with which one would normally shop for fanciness.

I have a work bag of some fanciness, courtesy of Bubba, but that comes out on special occasions only, like when I have to meet with people from the outside world, and not everyday when I meet with only people from my team who know that my fanciness is limited to mostly ridiculous numbers of shoes, most of which are flipflops.

So, my feet get fanciness, but my laptop? It gets could-also-be-used-for-the-farm share canvas tote bags.

To me, this makes sense. And to me, this is also easy to update for seasons, if you're prone to that kind of behavior. Which I am.

In riffling through the trunk of my car (aka The Big Tote Bag) I came away with a suitable bag for transforming. It's a thank you gift from a wildlife org to which I've donated in the past and, while I like the soaring eagle print on the front, it was the only bag in my rather vast collection that had all the trappings of a decent laptop bag: sturdy handles, ample storage size, thick enough fabric to be durable without being so thick to render my sewing machine useless against its intense weave.

I have been hoarding this fabric for 6 months and now it's with me every day. I love that.

You might be wondering why I didn't just update my old birdies and waves tote bag for fall, but that would have meant sewing fabric over what was already a cute print that I'll enjoy using to pick up the farm share. So, just so you know. Not that you asked, but whateverthereyougo.

Plus, the white handles are dirty and it needs a rather aggressive spin through the washer, and so will now languish in The Big Tote Bag in the trunk awaiting its bath.

Hey, the straps are almost clean!

Meanwhile, I got to use some beloved stashed fabric that brought to my attention my obsession with the color orange.

Self-awareness in the morning. It can be a jarring occasion.

And, on a totally separate note that has nothing to do with crafting, bags or the color orange, I decided to rock my First Fall Outfit complete with my favorite green shoes, which were a gift from a dear friend who finally gave into my whining and just gave me her shoes.

Love you, KB!

After all the sewing was done (which took all of five minutes thanks to the excellent and easy instructions on Betz' site), the baking commenced.

And since I am in possession of many pounds of blackberries rather than strawberries and rhubarb (oh the days), and lemons rather than oranges and don't own individual ramekins but instead have a nice 8x8 glass baking dish - this also commenced the Bastardization of Baking.

Crispy topping was not so crispy but still vury good.

Blackberry Buckle

Adapted from Individual Strawberry Rhubarb Buckle, Katie Goodman

My changes in bold.

Ingredients

Batter:
½ c butter
½ c granulated sugar
1 egg
1¼ flour
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
½ c milk
1 Tbs vanilla

Fruit:
3 1/2 c blackberries
¼ c granulated sugar
1 tsp grated lemon zest

Topping:
¼ c butter
¼ flour
½ c brown sugar

To make
Preheat oven to 375° F.

For the batter: Beat butter at medium speed until creamy. Add sugar and egg, beating well. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to butter mixture alternately with milk. Mix well after each addition. Stir in vanilla. Pour into an ungreased glass 8x8 baking pan.

Please to enjoy this alternative view of zesting.

For the fruit: Combine the blackberries, sugar, and lemon zest. Stir until well mixed.

The juiciness is obscene.

For the topping: Combine the flour and sugar. Cut the butter into the mixture until crumbly. Sprinkle on top of the fruit mixture.

This seemed wrong, but in an, "if it is I don't want to be right", kind of way.

See, this looks OK.

Place atop a baking sheet to catch any drips, overflows, or splatters. Bake at 375° for 30 minutes.

Yes. That is a pool of butter. Don't be afraid.

And if you'd like to follow my version of this recipe all word-for-word and what not, but don't want to print out all my ramblings, a nice printable version lives here. Go on, I won't be offended.

Now, as far as the doggie poo bags go - that's still on the list, but after wrestling with an obstinate bobbin throughout two very simple projects (the other one is a birthday secret!), I was in no mood to continue the torture to make holders for poo bags. That will come at a later date, when the bobbin has had time to think about what it did and make amends.

For now, it has been sent to its room without dessert, and so we shared it (and some of Bubba's amazing BBQ) with our neighbors last night for an end of summer din-din of sorts.

Buckle not pictured. It was warming in the oven. Sorry to mislead you.

Hope you had a great long weekend,

Finny

Craft: along : September

Dear Donk,

I think I promised someone that there'd be something new and different amongst this month's projects, so I hope I don't disappoint. I ended up going back on a project I originally wanted to do because, well, I couldn't picture doing it anymore.

I'm just that fickle sometimes and since it's all about me, I couldn't be putting the project out there knowing that I, myself, had no interest in it anymore. Make sense?

Just don't hate me for being absurd sometimes - that's all I ask.

Anyway - to get back on track, let's go to our August winner, Ms. askercado, who created these lovely green patchworked placemats with some impressive stitchery skill to which I will aspire.

The straight lines. The perfect stitchery. It's all just too much.

Seriously, friend, WTF? That's hot. I don't even want to think about what any patchworked placemats I made would look like. Which is why I baked cookies. *Sigh* But this is about YOU.

You and your sweet ass placemats and WOO your sweet ass prize!

So, missy, please send me your full name and address to finnyknits AT gmail DOT com and when Gmail is done being haunted (it no sendy right now - sadness), I will get your prize together and ship it off to you. Congrats!

Now, for the pseudo new and different projects for this month...

(Don't forget to post your project to the pool by 9/30 so that maybe you get picked as the winner. That's what we all want, right? To have our greatness confirmed by way of link love and prizes? Indeed.)

For the stitchers, we have two choices:

1. The always useful and soon to be my fall/winter laptop conveyance device: The Covered Canvas Tote.

The stash is quaking in its boots right now because it knows I'm coming for it. Also, my stash wears boots.

2. The always useful and soon to be Jada's fall/winter poop bag conveyance device: The Doggie Poop Bag Pouch.

This is not Jada. This is Jada.

And for the bakers, there's but one project. Because when berries are in season, one really only needs a single project: The Berry Buckle.

In case you couldn't guess, I will be making these with blackberries. You feel free to do the same OR DIFFERENT. It's about you now.

And that, friends, is all I have up my sleeve right now. I mean, I'm wearing a tank top so technically don't *have* sleeves, so I'm thinking this is a pretty good show. For a sleeveless gal.

Wow. I need a nap.

Ta!

Finny

Craft: along 2009 : August

Hey Donk,

I didn't want you to think that I ran off to Hawaii and forgot all about our Craft: along project this month because I didn't.

I totally made the Ginger Spa Cookies that don't really taste all that gingery but are still very good and, now, mostly gone from the recently very full cookie jar.

This was about as spa-y as it got, y'all.

I believe there was behavior such as this to blame for the jar's current status. Which is to say, empty.

Which is fine since we leave soon for vacation and I can't have cookies going stale in the house while we live in swim suits for a week and eat ourselves insane with pineapple and fresh caught fish and coconuts from the tree out front.

I can't have it I tell you! The thought of staling cookies haunts me from afar!

Ok, not really, but you know I don't like waste.

And that is why I went out to the garden last night and harvested my fingers to the bone so that I could abandon the dog at my mom's house with a bag full of produce and so that I could surreptitiously drop a bag of produce next to the Reformer in my Pilates class for my instructor and be all WHOOPSY what do you mean you didn't need 5 lbs of tomatoes?

I found those cucumbers hiding under the beans. Sneaky bastards.

I'm very sly and clever, don't you know.

The scary thing was, this didn't even make a dent in the garden.
Melissa - please come pick vegetables.

Anyway, I'm happy to report that the cookies have been baked, eaten and requested for a rematch. This time with more ginger.

I'm also happy to say that I will peace out for a week now and then come back and do Craft: Along September which may include some different kinds of crafting (plus sewing DON'T FREAK OUT) since I am feeling the need for adventure - in the crafting sense. We'll see. Perhaps kayaking during cocktail hour will quench my need for adventure...

Cheers,
Finny

Craft: along July : Not too shabby

I'm sure you expected this when I announced this month's totally unbiased Craft: along projects.

I mean, you do know me to be something of a Tshirt makeover psycho, and well, this was a project just calling out for the bottom dresser drawer (that's where the Tshirts live, dontchaknow).

Of course, I hit something of a mental design block when actually sitting down to craft my swimsuit cover-up because the contest example is pretty much exactly what I had in mind to make as it's a near duplicate of my favorite swimsuit cover-up but I couldn't just go making exactly what they have in the example, that'd be lame.

Even though it'd be awesome. And I'd totally wear it. And I might make it anyway and just not add it to the contest pool.

But let's walk away from that obsessive behavior for a moment.

After some careful culling of the bottom dresser drawer and then inquiring within Bubba's superior stash of giant Tshirts, I unearthed (or rather Bubba handed me) this gem.

And while, at first, I was super excited to use this particular shirt for my project, I was at the same time sad and afraid because this shirt is from our friends' now-shuttered pizza joint and the thought of totally jacking up this blissful memory (oh tiled pepperoni pizza, how I loved thee) made me queasy.

Typical understatement. This pizza is THE best pizza. I swear it.

But I forged ahead (obviously) with my rotary cutter and Bubba turned away while I started slicing off sleeves and things.

We'll not go into how I tried my hand at creating a shirred dress from this shirt because the complete FAIL that occurred was nothing short of soul-crushing and has lead me to believe that it is my machine's fault that I can't perform this particular sewing Magic because of its stitch lengthening limitations.

ie. The longest stitch length is 4, and I do not believe this to be adequate. I think I need 8, as noted by a random tutorial I found on the innernets.

ANYWAY, not to worry, I only tried shirring the bust OH THREE TIMES before I gave up in a rage and went to my sewing box for the elastic.

Frankly, that might have been the best decision I made all weekend. Because I can say that the best decision was not the one I made on Friday night when I chose to fill my body with a wide variety of booze with the knowledge that I'd be running 7 miles in the morning. That's right folks, the genius moves don't stop coming.

Anyway, after making the move from elastic thread to elastic band, the transition from Enormo Tshirt to useful Swimsuit Cover-up was rather swift. Like, 5 minutes swift.

The only other mods I made were to cut in some shaping along the sides so that I didn't 100% appear to be wearing a shapeless grocery sack and then I cut some side slits in there which are reminiscent of my favorite, albeit not pictured, swimsuit cover-up that I'll have to show y'all sometime.

It's got this great throwbacky "Hawaii" screenprint on the front that makes me think of the Blue Hawaii days and what not. Plus, it's super comfy, not too dowdy with its side tie and spaghetti straps and despite this awful description of mine, it's way beach cute.

I should just delete that whole last paragraph, shouldn't I?

Anyway. This is my entry for the Singer Swimsuit Cover-up Contest and also one of my contributions to this month's Craft: along challenge.

Notice that I said "..one.." because I did them both. OH YES.

So I took this picture in the bathroom after a particularly hot day that rendered my hair so annoying that I had to pull it away from my face no matter how ridiculous it made look? SO WHAT?

After much noted soul-searching, I managed to make peace with this "super easy" lace pattern and actually produce a lacy summer scarf sans shimmer. Because I find shimmery knitted items somewhat barftastic. Sorry if you're a shimmer person. I just am not.

And since I've spent much time already boring you with the mind-numbing details of how this scarf came to be, I will spare you further detail except to tell you that the tip Zarah gave me in the comments was crucial to its success.

So, if you're going to knit this fucker and you start losing stitches, just make sure that you're adding that crucial YO at the beginning or end of the line. And, if you're not sure which end should have the YO, just check to see which direction your stitches are slanting because that's where your YO should go. If you're on a Slant Right row, put your YO on the right end of the row. If you're on a Slant Left row, put your YO at the left end of the row.

Then knit for a while until it's long enough and you're done.

Then you, too, can go to your bathroom and take a photo in inadequate lighting so that you can put this project to rest even though the photo doesn't do the lace pattern justice because it actually came out quite nice.

It was 90 degrees in our house, people, whaddya want? I'm already wearing a scarf in summer, isn't that enough? I think so.

On a separate note then, how are your projects going? I see some of you have been mighty busy.