So busy, top secret for now... and an update

So I haven't been posting regularly lately.  Sorry about that oh ye few, but faithful.  I promise to try and do better.  My real job has been crazy busy up until recently with long hours.  But freedom is mine!  Or at least normal employment hours are.  It feels a bit like freedom though.

I've been working on a super secret project whose details shall be shared in time.  I don't want to jinx it, so I won't give particulars.  But wish me luck!  I am hoping it turns out well.

Update!  I started a side business for hemming and mending.  I figure I have the skills, why not try to make a little cash right?  So many people these days don't want to learn how to do it themselves and would rather just pay someone else.  I even had my first customer!  Paid and everything.  I was so excited.  I'm a real businesswoman now, hehe.  I feel a twinge of guilt charging people I work with, but kindof defeats the purpose of having a business if you just waive the charge all the time.  I offer for free as a favor to friends though.  I like to help out my friends.  If they want to pay me, that is their choice.

I'm really trying to crack down and clean up my place so I can get my craft table out and start some real projects.  I have patterns calling my name for some nice summer skirts and shorts.  Since it has been killer hot here lately I could use them.  Maybe even a sundress or two.  Craziness!

Something a Little Different

I don't normally post food stuff on here.  But this recipe is the first one I've tried altering to be gluten free and it worked!  Long story short I have digestive problems and supposedly eating gluten free is helpful so away I go.  The recipe is below with my substitution in parentheses.  It originated from a Pampered Chef cookbook I used to have.

Beef Tamale Bake

1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup all-purpose flour (I used brown rice flour)
1/2 baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup hot water
2 egg whites
3 tbs butter (I used oil so the "crust" came out a little heavy)
1/2 lb ground meat (I left this out because I didn't have any)
1 jar salsa - approx 16 oz
1 can beans, rinsed and drained - approx 15.5 oz (I left these out)
1 garlic clove, pressed (I just spooned in some pre-minced garlic, probably a bit more than a clove's worth but I like garlic)
1 1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 cup shredded Mexican cheese (I left this out because I can't eat cheese)

1. Preheat oven to 400F.  Spray your baking dish with a nonstick cooking spray.  (I used a 13x9 and the crust seemed thinnish, but I was also substituting the flour and butter so that might contribute to it not rising as much.)

2. Combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt.  Whisk in water, egg whites, and butter.  Stir until smooth.  Pour batter into the baking dish.

3. Cook ground meat until no longer pink and drain.  Add salsa, beans, garlic, chili powder, and cumin to the cooked meat.  Mix well and bring to a boil over medium heat.  (Since I didn't use meat or beans I just mixed the salsa, garlic, and spices in a bowl and skipped to the next step.)

4. Spoon the meat mixture over the batter to within a 1/2 inch of the edge.  Bake 20-23 minutes, or until crust is set.  Remove from oven and sprinkle with cheese.  Let stand 5 minutes.  (I baked mine for approx. 30 minutes, probably because of the oil substitution making the batter a bit more moist.  Obviously skipped cheese step.)

5. Cut into pieces and serve.

Yields approx. 8 servings

No Time!

So I've worked 162 hours in the last 14 days.  Which has unfortunately left me with no energy at all to do any sort of crafting.  I had some projects lined up, but when I had time I felt like a zombie.  Nobody likes to see what a zombie would do to a crafting project.  Better all around to wait.

I did get a bit of mending done today though, none of it mine!  Apparently sewing is one of those skills like troubleshooting computers.  Once people know you can do it they bring stuff to you whenever they need fixing.  I've never considered sewing to be a difficult thing to do, I was just lazy when I was younger.

For one coworker I hemmed a pair of dress pants.  By hand, thanks mom for teaching me to catch-stitch, because I am too lazy to figure out how to use the blind hem stitch on my machine.  That's right, too lazy to learn a time saving skill.  That's irony.

For the other I reattached half of the zipper fly of a pair of dress pants.  No idea how it came loose, but it needed to be sewn down.  Luckily it wasn't sewn directly to the front of the pants.  It was attached to a small flap of fabric that was in turn attached to the pants.  Sewing down the zipper with a back stich was a cinch.  Sewing back down the flap of fabric was another thing.  Without matching thread I couldn't topstitch it back down (it had originally been topstitched down), so I decided to catch-stitch it around the edge instead.  I made the stitches closer together than I normally do to increase the stability.  Hopefully it will hold.  The slight puckering you sometimes get on the front of a catch-stich was minor so I'm hoping the owner will be happy.  If not I'll have to go buy matching thread and I'd just rather not.

It's nice to help people out and save some clothes from getting tossed by making them usable again.  Now if only I could get my own mending projects done I'd be in good shape.

Altering everything

So I get home from work tonight and think, I should get some sewing project done tonight.  I haven't been too productive the last few days.  So suddenly it is several hours later and I've altered three pairs of dress pants by taking them in at the waist and made more "no progress" on a pair of grey dress pants that might wind up going back to their original state if this keeps up.  Three more pairs of pants wearable without worrying about how tight my belt is.  Thus I can keep avoiding buying new clothes.  Why buy new when you already own something that can fit with a little tweaking?

No pics yet, but I was trying to alter them from the inseam instead of the outer seams like I usually do since I wanted to take in the leg width as well.  It is turning into a disaster, and I may give up altogether if I can't figure out what is going wrong.  If I can remember to I will try to take more pictures along the way.  The fact I haven't torched them in frustration should be a win all on its own.

Mom Skirt, AKA Butterick 4817

I had promised my mother as long ago as sometime last summer that I would make her a skirt from Butterick 4817, which she picked out online and I purchased for this purpose.  I had made myself a top for a tea party themed bridal shower.  She loved the fabric when I showed it to her, so I offered to make her a skirt.  I even bought the fabric right away since it was on sale at the time.  I hope you can see the details.  It is black with grey flowers.

The fabric sat in my stash for months and months, through a move that rendered it wrinkled and misfolded beyond belief.  Finally I decided enough was enough.  The pattern pieces were cut out, this had to happen.  Much laborious refolding and ironing later, I was ready to cut the pieces out.  Except apparently I forgot how wide my fabric was, and 45" is very different from 60".  I had 45", but started cutting as if I had 60".  Luckily I realized it after the first cut piece.  So, so creative just-off-grain cutting later and I had managed to get all the pieces out with a foot to spare.

The pattern itself was so simple I wondered why I hadn't just made the skirt back in the day.  Straight seams for the 6 panels, and a simple hem at the bottom.  I didn't do the waistband since it is an elastic waist and my mom wanted to do that herself.  Here is the skirt done and laid out on my floor.  The fabric looks black, but trust me it is the fabric above.

I am sure it will swish nicely, since the pieces curved outward, but the seams were sewn straight down.  Lots of lovely fluting at the bottom.  I hope she likes it.

Sadness Yarn

So I've been dealing with a lot of serious personal drama, which distracts me from lots of things including posting here on a semi-regular basis.  Part of this involved visiting a relative in the hospital every day for about 2 weeks.  Not too much to do there, so I brought my largest knitting loom and some boucle yarn to work on a wrap/shawl thing.  No recipient in mind, just something to keep my hands busy.  I was about halfway through when the visits ended, and just recently remembered the project and wanted to finish it.  Imagine my surprise, and extreme irritation, to find that my loom is mysteriously missing a peg.  Somehow it broke clean off!  The shawl was only 38" long, not nearly enough to be useful.  And I had no immediate way to fix the loom to try and finish it.

So this:

Became this:

That's right, I had to unravel it all to make into something else.  I sent the picture to my mother, who I had told about the situation, and told her "This is what sadness looks like."  So this is now my "sadness yarn" that I am currently working to turn into a scarf on one of my shorter looms.  That's right.  I'm making a "sadness scarf" that I will probably give away to charity to get the thing out of my sight.  I am just beyond frustrated with the whole situation that I've been spotty in actually working on the scarf.  Hopefully I'll have some time to sit down and work on it.  I just haven't been in the mood lately.

Have you ever had a project just turn into a disaster that it made you want to chuck the whole lot right out a high window or something?

Matching bib? Of course!

SO my coworker was so in love with the baby bonnet, that I offered to make something to coordinate with it.  I still had a decent amount of butterfly fabric left to make something small.  A skirt was out, even for a 6-mo old.  I was able to whip up a bib in a night start to finish, however, using the same kind of construction.  Coworker donated a white knit shirt for backing since I had finished off my stash on the bonnet.  With more white cotton curtaining inside and white bias tape binding, the bib came together pretty easily.  I used the same kindof inside-out construction as the bonnet to attach the ties, also made of white knit.  The ties came out not quite straight from the main part of the bib, but oh well, it still looks adorable.

And I still have butterfly fabric left over.  Not sure what I'm going to do with it.  Probably save it for another baby project.