Showing posts with label organizing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organizing. Show all posts

Food and Fall


The other night I went through my recipe box and in the interest of simplicity, tossed away most of its contents. Pouring over those cards and clippings was like taking a trip through the different ways I've chosen to eat over the last 20 years. My meals of today are (mostly) meatless so if a recipe could not be adapted to my current lifestyle, it was a goner.

Brandy slush is meatless.
But even in throes of therapeutic purging there were some recipes that I couldn't possibly get rid of... my Grandma's. While I may not be making these mostly beef and veal dishes anytime soon, they are close to my heart. The food I grew up eating was home-made, simple, ethnic, and delicious. As a matter of fact, I have had big plans to gather all of my Grandmother's recipes and create a family cookbook to share with my cousins. I need to make that happen soon.

Slovenian beef-broth soup just like my Grandma's.
For now, I am evaluating, sorting, and organizing what I have chosen to keep out of my own collection. The plan is to type them all up neatly into Word docs to store electronically so I can easily reprint a damaged copy or be able to share with a friend. I have a spiral bound notebook with plastic pocket pages that I will neatly fill with all these recipes. Eventually I will embroider a pretty heirloom book cover that hopefully last 100 years.

Fall makes me sentimental about food. What can I say? :)

–Cassandra

Practical, yet alluring.

Hi again everyone! I hope you had a wonderful holiday this year. My post-holiday has been spent decompressing and thinking about what I'd like to do next (craft-wise).

After the insanity that was Christmas morning at my house, the realization hit me that I had nothing on the needles. That is one weird sensation. You see, I am not one of those knitters who has 8 projects going at one time. I am more inclined to take one project from beginning to end, then begin again. So when I finish a project, I get a bit stressy until I cast-on for the next. I'd kind of like to use some yarn that I have in my stash for the next project. The front-runner is 1100 yards of Black Water Abbey 2Ply Worsted in the colorway Autumn. The color is so me,  love it. I had purchased it to make a vest that is not going to happen... so I'd love to find a good use for it. I have a few ideas and I will let you know which is the winner soon!

Black Water Abbey Worsted in Autumn.

Christmas night, relaxing on the couch after the boys went to bed, I cleaned out my knitting bag. Extra yarns from the holiday sweaters, needles, patterns, etc. Everything needed to be cleared out in anticipation of the next project. During my organizing, I took a good look at my accessory case. It's felted wool and was kinda cute at one time. I had purchased it a few years ago from a yarn show vendor. Today it looks a bit tattered and frankly isn't really my style.

Not really my style, but functional.
So my next project was obvious. I was going to design my own knitting accessory case. I set pencil to paper and began my design. I knew I wanted all the same functionality of the case I already had, but with a bit more panache.

From my sketches, you can see that I am don't improvise much!
I knew I wanted to use the linen-looking cotton by French General in my fabric stash for the body of the case. I dug that out and started thinking. The fabric is beautiful, but plain. It really called for some embroidery embellishment in the design. After much sketching, I decided that I wanted to do a robin and a robin's nest. In my searching for images of robins on the internet, I ran across a link to Martha Stewart's site that had a robin embroidery template all ready for download. How lucky was I? No need to draw it out myself. I downloaded and got cracking:
Robin embroidery template courtesy of Martha.
About halfway through the embroidery, I was a little disappointed. It's more traditional than I thought initially. It's the pose of the bird more than anything. But, I might be over-thinking this. I will press on. I will finish up the embroideries, and then break out the sewing machine and sew up the interior pockets and edging. Once I get to the sewing, I am assuming that the project will fly... famous last words! My next post will (hopefully) have a finished product for you to see!

Take care,

–Cassandra