Project 365

2011.02.09- Tiny Buttons

2011.02.10- V-Day Cupcakes

2011.02.10- The Amazing Sleeping Duo!

2011.02.12- Peekaboo!

2011.02.13- Needle Vase

Etsy Craft Night

As many of you probably already know, every Monday Etsy hosts a craft night broadcast live in their Virtual Lab.  They of course are streaming live from DUMBO (a neighborhood in Brooklyn- Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass- which it literally is).  So a perk of living in Brooklyn, is I finally had the time to go.  And now my picture is on their website!

See it on their page here

I'm on the right, blocking Claire, and that's her boyfriend in the green shirt.  Claire is awesome.  I not-met her at the WWKIP Day Event (I was so busy running around that I didn't get to meet anyone there) but then actually met her at La Casita's 6 month anniversary party.  She's interning at SoHo Publishing (ahem Vogue, Sixth & Spring- ring a bell?), writing a blog about her city adventures and is dorming where I stayed when I did my internship with the NYCDOE so we had lots to talk about that night.  We've been saying we were going to go to a Craft Night for weeks but couldn't get it arranged due to other commitments but it finally worked out.

The theme for the night was "cupcakes" because the night was hosted by Cupcakes Take the Cake, a blog about, well, cupcakes.  I only had time for one craft because I had another commitment after (of course, right?) so we made felted cupcake pins.  Here's mine:

They're made using store-bought felt and pieces of roving.  Then you fit your felt base around a bottle cap or jar lid.  I had to use a jar lid because I made that candle a little tooooooo big I think :o)

Soooo now I'm in love with needle felting.  What a great way to use up small bits of roving or loosely spun wool!  Good to keep in mind when I eventually attempt my drop spindle and the products don't come out as expected.

So if you're ever in the area, I highly recommend heading over to Washington St to check out a Craft Night...or to just stand in the creative center of the Etsy world.

On to the knitting...

I have made hats now for Tijah, her cousin Jenny, and another Red Lobster friend Dawn.  OTN now is two hats for Jim and Branding who (thankfully) wanted just the opposite of each other:  one black with gray stripes and one gray with black stripes.  I made it through tangled knot portion of knitting because I refuse to cut the yarn between stripings.  I'm working on the decreases for the crown now.

I completely forgot to take a picture of Dawn's pink and white hat :o(  I'll have to have The Boy get a picture of it on her when he gives it to her (if he hasn't already).

With the leftovers from Dawn's hat, I'm making one for The Boy's little sister.  Her birthday is coming up on Friday- she's going to be 6!  We've still got a couple cold months ahead so she's get some use out of it.  And it will perfectly match the colors of her coat :o)

Yesterday's snow day was spent baking for Valentine's Day and shoveling snow.  I shoveled our stoop and sidewalk 4 times (and I know 2 girls in the other apartments did it at least twice) and I shoveled the car out 3 times.  And it was still piling up when I went to bed.  I actually had to turn down subbing for fear of not being able to get my car out/get the car started/make it out there if the roads weren't cleared.  Of course when I woke up they were perfectly cleared, but I'd still have a lot of shoveling to do before leaving which would have taken forever.

Time for some yummy goodness.  I've been planning on making baked goods for Valentine's Day to share with The Boy, his family, Dad and Brother, and Bonnie at the card store (I'll be working that day).  Plans were:  sugar cookies, chocolate mini cupcakes and white mini cupcakes.  The mini cupcakes were to have secret surprise pink centers and either chocolate or vanilla frosting.  Cookies will be glazed and I bought a bunch of sprinkles and confections for the tops of everything.

I wanted to do the sugar cookies yesterday but didn't have enough butter (and did not feel like walking to the store just after an hour of shoveling).  So instead I made two batches of cupcakes.  For the chocolate ones, I used the Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Cake (it's on the back of their cocoa powder boxes) and for the white (and pink filling) I used a basic recipe I found on allrecipes.com.  The way things worked out, it was much easier to pipe the pink filling first and then cover it with the regular chocolate or white batter. 

 I had a lot of  chocolate batter left over when I ran out of the cupcake liners so I figured throw it all in a pan and make a small cake with it.  Since it's someone's birthday this week, I wrote her name with the leftover pink filling batter.  

But that didn't work out so well during baking.

That's ok though because obviously it's going to be covered in frosting.  I might fill it too...we'll see.  But I'll re-pipe her name on it after it's frosted when I'm having fun playing decorator (that's all for Saturday).

This morning I went out and walked (over ice since some people are inconsiderate and don't shovel the sidewalk in front of their apartments/stores...ugh!) to the store to get milk and butter.  Once I'm done catching up on blogs and drinking my coffee, and the butter gets soft it's off to baking sugar cookies for me!