today I am sad

I really want to take this sewing class offered in Brooklyn. Back when I lived in LA and she lived in Kansas I didn't ever think I'd have a chance to meet her or take a class from her. Now I am in Stamford and she's in NY. Dudes! How awesome would it be to take a class to learn sewing techniques from Jenny Gordy??

This morning as I was getting ready for work I said to m: I want to take a sewing class in Brooklyn and I have a feeling that I am feeling unreasonable about this. Talk me through the pros and cons.

And of course, wouldn't you know it, the cons outweighed the pros.

Anytime I say that I'm not thrilled with living in Stamford, CT because there is nothing to do, it's so suburban, it's out in the middle of no where, etc. People always say: yeah, but you've got NYC so close by!

F-you random unhelpful suggesters.

It's just close enough to present a glimmer of hope but far enough away that it makes getting to and from it a little unreasonable.

I could get a ride from my co-worker who lives in Queens each Thursday that the class is offered. That would be easy. He leaves here at 3:30 and says it takes him about 45 minutes to get home. I would carpool with him. Take the bus from Queens to Brooklyn, find a cafe to get a snack/early dinner and then head over to the class.

It's only an hour and half long class. It's only 4 Thursdays. I'd be done by 7:30. But then I'd have to take buses and trains to get back to Stamford and according to google maps that would take about 2 hours. Yikes. That's unreasonable, right? Like a little obsessive/crazy? Right?

See? That's why I'm sad. So close, yet so far...

more random and more of no photos

Wow. I have been really behind on blogging. How lame of me.

-- M and I went apple picking on Friday. We both took the day off to drive up to NH to see his parents. We decided to take a detour and pick apples. It had rained earlier and it was still gray and wet but it was awesome. Like we had the whole orchard to ourselves. Us and the people who work there that is. We picked something like 20 lbs of apples. I am in love with the Idareds (I think it's spelled all one word but I called them Ida Reds). Though let's face it. All fresh picked apples taste awesome. Except Red Delicious. Still couldn't get into that one. The farm we went to was great. I'm not sure if we'll be able to be back since I'm hoping we move away from this area next year. But I'd recommend it to anyone who is in this area. Very reasonable prices and a wonderful selection. And organic practices in their farming. Yay!

-- M and I took his mum to see Young@Heart in concert on Sunday. It was a belated birthday present to her. The show was so kick-ass. See the documentary if you haven't yet. Try and catch them in concert if you can. I do believe that their cover of Bob Dylan's Forever Young is probably my favorite of their numbers.

-- It snowed in Worcester, Mass which is where the concert took place. SNOW! I kept my cool over my excitement. The locals get a little grumpy when Californians get all excited about snow. My in-laws are no exception.

Reasons for why people get mad at my excitement over snow:

It's freaking October 18th! When does it ever snow in the middle of October? (more or less a direct quote from M's mum).

They have had some pretty nasty and/or long winters the last few winters and so they're all sort of sick of winter. Snow=winter.

Snow also = shoveling. And scraping. Angelenos and other warm climate friends: This means shoveling your car out of the snow bank so that you can get into it. And scraping the windshields and sometimes windows so you can see through them. Apparently this is not fun or exciting or magical. It's work. And sometimes you have to do it 2 or 3 times a day (before you head off to work in the morning, sometimes after work when you get back in your car to drive home, and sometimes anytime in between when you need to get to your car -- hmmm... seems to me that if you didn't have a car, this wouldn't be such an issue. Another point for public transportation, my friends.) Multiply this by 5 months and you can see why there are so many haters when the first snow hits.

-- I'm starting to freak out about the holidays already. I think I am behind on my handmade gifts. This is because I haven't started making any of them yet. And my sister-in-law has already begun her holiday shopping. Eep!

random and no photos

--I decided to give the no-shampoo thing a try. The last time I shampoo'd my hair was last Monday. I did a baking soda/vinegar thing over the weekend. So far so good. I wondered how my long thick asian hair would fare with this but like I said: so far so good. I asked M to smell my head the other day just in case I did smell bad and didn't know it. He said my hair/head smelled fine. Then again he's gone shampoo-free too. He said he wanted to support my cause. I think he wants to shave another minute out of his shower time :)

If you're interested in trying out a shampoo free life, I got my inspiration from Amy and her resources (the shampoo-free link is towards the bottom of the post). Also the folks who shout out in the comments offer some interesting advice too.

--I'm so in the mood to bake these days! I think the apparent fall weather has something to do with it. The smell of the oven going with that crisp autumn air is just super. I made this banana bread into muffins a few weeks ago (following the suggestions of reviewers with the 1/4 cup brown sugar+1/2 cup white sugar combo). They were killer! Sorry, no photos. I brought half of them to work and ate most of the other half myself (M's not much into bananas. He showed quite the restraint even though I kept mmm-ing and such over how awesome these muffins were). And I learned the hard way that bananas do not agree with my pregnant lady state. (I'd always heard that they bind...)

--I've gained way too much weight in this past four weeks. Overall I'm where I need to be with my pregnancy and weight gain. But I can't keep gaining at the pace I've been doing lately. I blame the desserts. My first trimester I barely gained any weight and there was a little concern. So I figured I owed it to leftie to fatten up a bit. Usually I'm careful about how much sweets (and how frequently) I consume. Whoops. I guess I went a little too wild with those desserts. So even though I totally want to bake this amazing sounding carrot cake (into cupcakes of course) which I have been craving for like a week, I'm going to have to resist the urge. When I made those banana bread muffins? There was one day when I ate 4. Poor digestion is the only thing that kept from repeating that experience.

--I finished two pairs of socks this week. A third pair forthcoming too. Yeah! One was started back in February or something and the other back in June. One for me and the June ones were deadline socks (long missed) for a special someone. Deets and photos to come.

--I'm also really in the mood to sew inspired by this gal. I recently finished stalking her via her blog. Her clothes are so cute and then I got absorbed into her thoughts about motherhood/parenting/being pregnant/etc. Plus she lives in New Zealand which feels so glamourous.

--I finally got my library card and have been putting it to good use. My local branch does not have a great crafts/sewing selection. Too bad. But they have a decent DVD selection and so I've been picking up dvd's that I mean to watch but haven't gotten around to. Ones that M will never watch because they are too girly. Or ones he's already watched and I wasn't in the mood to see it that night and then I regretted it when he sent them back to netflix. It's a good way to pass the time while dinner's cooking and I'm waiting for him to get home from work so we can eat.

Confession: I still haven't watched Dirty Dancing and after Patrick Swayze passed I was reminded to check it out. Me and probably 30 other people who borrow from my library. I still haven't found it at my local library.

--M's office is having a fancy holiday party the first week of December. I told him I didn't want to go but he said we should postpone this discussion to another time when I was less grumpy. True, I was a bit grumpy at the time. But I'm not grumpy now and I still don't want to go. I think I am going to lose this one. He forwarded the invitation to me via email and it said that it's formal wear. Eep! What sort of formal wear am I going to find for this pregnant booty?

--I really hate shopping for clothes these days. I can't afford any of the stuff I'd like to buy. And the stuff that I can afford is made so cheaply and usually looks like crap on the body that I hate spending any money on it. The solution of course is to sew my own clothes. Or win the lottery. I'm currently looking for maternity formal wear patterns for a dress for that party.

fluffy pancakes

I was having issues with my pancakes. I used the recipe from m's second hand copy of The Joy of Cooking. I don't know what I was doing wrong but the pancakes were so dense instead of being light and fluffy. Last weekend I did a search for pancake recipes and found one to try. I can't remember where it came from (sorry recipe source! If you recognize this recipe, please let me know and I will give you credit) and I certainly don't want to lose it because it made the BEST pancakes EVER. Light, fluffy, soaks up the syrup. So good!



The photo is blurry because my rechargeable batteries don't hold their charge long and within a day of putting freshly charged batteries in my camera they give up and the camera says I need to change the batteries again. Argh.

Also I put too much butter in the pan for this batch so they sort of fried in butter instead of searing on a hot pan. Still tasted good.

Fluffy Pancakes

1.5 cups of flour
3.5 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 1/4 cup of milk
1 egg
3 Tablespoons of melted butter

Melt the butter.
Mix all the dry ingredients together with a whisk. Make a well in the middle and crack the egg into it. Pour the milk into the well and then the melted butter. Mix well. The batter should be thick and a little lumpy. That's okay.

Heat a pat of butter on a skillet on high heat. I usually turn the skillet to spread the butter around. Sometimes I'll use the spatula to help out. When the butter starts to make a little noise, turn the heat down to medium-high and add scoops of batter to the pan spaced out at least 1" apart.

I used a large soup spoon to spoon the batter into little pools. The batter spreads a bit and if it's not as big around as I like I add a little more batter to the top and watch the weight of it spread the pancake out further. When the edges start to harden and the pancake starts to rise a bit, I slide the spatula under the side of the pancake to test the give. If it feels sturdy enough, I take a chance and flip. I didn't time it to see how long it would take to brown enough for flipping, I'll try to remember and do that next time and edit the info here.

Once flipped, watch to see that the doughy sides have hardened/cooked through. That's when you know that the pancakes are cooked all the way through.

I place the cooked pancakes on a plate and stick that in my oven (unheated) while I make up the rest of the batter.

Serve with syrup or jam and enjoy.

crochet necklace

I don't wear much jewelry. I forget that part of getting dressed in the morning. Most days I feel like if I walk out the door and I'm not naked I'm doing a good job. But if I were to begin buying and wearing more jewelry I'd love to have one of these:

(image from wrenhandmade)

Isn't is just the prettiest thing you ever did see? Laura Normandin crochets these unique little charms by hand. Her crocheted flower pins are also pretty freaking awesome.

See more of Laura's work here. Her shop is here.