Assortment of New Fabric

Got some fabric in the mail!

I only have concrete plans for the blue floral in the upper right - a blue & white quilt. The cotton pattern is a really great print, the frogs and farm animals were too cute to resist, and the yellow fabric is funny - it has little laundry care symbols on it!

A Successful Holiday Season

I am back home tonight after a week of visiting family for Christmas and Chanukah. I didn't manage to give any truly handmade presents this year. However, I did give a few somewhat crafty things - my sister-in-law got a gift certificate to Spoonflower, and I gave my uncle some postage stamps from Zazzle with an image I drew myself:

I've really been wanting to try Spoonflower, but haven't come up with a really thrilling idea for a custom print yet - so let's see if I come up with something before my sister-in-law does!

As far as GETTING crafty presents, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law (from Mr. Moxie's side) gave me some craft books from Kumiko Sudo I've been really wanting to get: East Quilts West, Fantasies & Flowers: Origami in Fabric for Quilters, and Folded Flowers: Fabric Origami with a Twist of Silk Ribbon. I love love love Kumiko Sudo. Really neat graphic designs, combined with 3D elements, combined with cool color combinations. Sadly, I haven't had a chance to actually make any of the projects out of any of her books, but perhaps 2009 will finally be my year. :) I would love to make a soft "book" out of a sequence of her designs, especially the ones in Folded Flowers, but I don't know any little girls of the right age to give that as a gift.

They also got me Threadbared: Decades of Don'ts from the Sewing and Crafting World, a book published by the people behind the hilarious, and sadly defunct, Threadbared website.

And finally, they gave me Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking, a bread cooking book I've heard good things about.

Overall, quite satisfying!

Presence of presents

Today, I wrapped all the Christmas presents we're giving. Looks pretty festive! I went a little overboard with adding strips of contrasting paper, but I really had fun.

I enjoy doing quick, impermanent crafty things like this when I have the chance. I also got to help my sister-in-law decorate a cake a few weeks back. I like being able to be creative without stressing as much as I do over a "permanent" object.

More Basil At Once

The basil is finally taking off, so I'm able to get a good amount at once if I let it go a few days between trimming. Here's the amount I was able to get one day to sprinkle over salad & pasta with dinner:

We left town for a week for Thanksgiving and I was a little nervous how it would go with us gone - would the basil take off, grow into the light, and burn down our apartment? Happily, no. I trimmed the heck out of it before we left, so it looked like this:

And after we got back it looked like this:

Another Dinner

Yet another recipe from The Healthy Slow Cooker!

This is mushroom and chickpea stew with roasted red pepper coulis. It came out a bit spicier than I was expecting. I guess from the turmeric. I hadn't realized turmeric was spicy - I thought it was just, well, yellow! The vinegar in the coulis is a nice contrast to the spiciness, though.
I love chickpeas. I can eat them plain, right out of the can. So it's nice to find a recipe to put them in. Too bad it used up the whole can and there were no leftover chickpeas for me... ;)

Dinner

This is Moroccan-style chicken with prunes & quinoa, another recipe from The Healthy Slow Cooker. The chicken & prunes are also flavored with lemon zest and some other spices. It's especially tasty if you get a bite with chicken, prunes, & quinoa all together. I also think it's a little better leftover, when the flavors have blended together more.

New Fabric

I finally got this fabric, which I had preordered from Heather Bailey when she launched her new store. It's all from the Pop Garden collection. I had a vague idea in mind of making a quilt from it - with some fussy cutting to highlight the fabric design - but now I'm not so sure if that's what I'll do. I think I bought the fabric in a sort of fugue state induced by the bright colors. Well, there are worse things to have lying about the place than cheerful fabric.