Crafts and Cooking

Everything you could want in a news story — old world crafts, commercial innovation, and sex — is wrapped together in this article about traditional Polish lace makers selling handmade lace G-strings instead of the more usual but poorer-selling alter clothes and doilies. If you follow the link in the article to the town’s website, you can see their gorgeous “stringis” (warning: photos of underwear … of course). The quality of the lace making seems, from the photos, to be phenomenal.

How can you not love a Darth Vader Hot Sauce Bottle Cover crochet pattern? I really hope that she follows through with her plan to design an R2-D2 version as well.

I’ve found a new favorite comfort food, in line with my recent obsession with curry – although this is an entirely American dish with just some curry powder thrown in to save it from blandness: Baked Shrimp and Crab Curry. It’s tuna noodle casserole hidden under “exotic” spicing and slightly better seafood – one suspects it’s the white trash version of foreign food. But it’s yummy. I’ve made it with just shrimp, and you can cut down on the amount of butter so long as you leave enough for a decent roux base.

I’ve made some variation on this recipe for Curried Mushroom Soup a few times in the past month, and it’s absolutely wonderful. It’s good with any kind of mushrooms so long as you end up with at least three cups worth total (I use as much as four cups, or cut the milk to make it have a density closer to stew). It thickens up nicely, particularly overnight as leftovers. Definitely eat this with a crusty bread to sop up the broth.

As I did the past two years, I’ve collected together all of the images that I put in my weblog during 2003 into one album of photos. Almost half of them are from my participation in Photo Friday last year, and it’s pretty easy to locate the point in time where my camera broke. All in all, I’m pretty happy with my collection. Last week’s Photo Friday asked for one’s favorite image from the past year. I just selected from the ones I took specifically for that project and chose my entry for Multiples.

In my ongoing quest this year to convert my yarn stash to finished projects, I finished off a couple of new items this past month. I’ve been working on this flowery crocheted afghan for a few months and am very glad to have it done before the warm summer months: Grand Gardenias Afghan. This past week I knocked off this fun little summer sweater for myself, and now I’m just waiting for summer to finally come along so that I can wear it: Braided-Rib Crop Top. Follow the links for larger images and more details about the making of the … Continue reading Finished Projects

Years ago, Duct Tape Creations was selling duct tape wallets in a couple of styles and one variety of purse, but they have expanded into a wide range of accessories, including really cute multicolor checkbook covers, and a fullsize duct tape backpack made out of three rolls of duct tape! The Hanna, with “pinking shear detail” is awfully cute too. [via #!/usr/bin/girl]

I took some pictures for Photo Friday of “spring” yesterday, but I hadn’t gotten around to uploading them yet when I got a chance to take a whole different set of spring photos today, visiting the same locations. Here’s a before-and-after shot of one of my runner-up photos.

Many of the journals and weblogs I read have been sharing their pictures of spring, celebrating the warmth and flowers and green, and I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon. There was a particuarly lovely view off my deck this morning, I think. We’d only accumulated three to four inches by this time, but don’t worry, it didn’t actually stop snowing until early evening. The sad thing is, I honestly did still think it was really pretty.

On the one hand, I hate the idea of perfectly good books being destroyed, but on the other hand, I can’t help oogling the old books rebound as blank journals being sold at Ex Libris Anonymous. I love the one from The Secret of Skeleton Island, and the bizarre Hair Styling cover featuring a woman aiming a gun.[via not martha]