A Lovely Package Exchange

This is the first year I'm participating in the {lovely} PACKAGE EXCHANGE graciously hosted by Danni from oh, hello friend.

Nearly 200 lovely bloggers signed up to exchange pretty presents by mail and I was matched with Carrie Koehmstedt from Carrie Loves and Sweet Faerie Designs. And oh happy day, her thoughtful gift was one of my favorites from Etsy: a Gourmet Sea Salt Kit from Cook Outside the Box.  

My offering was a bracelet from Wish by Felicity and little Moleskine notebook set since Carrie's favorite colors are turquoise and pink and she put the most adorable photo up on her blog:

[photo by Carrie Koehmstedt]

Thanks, Carrie and Danni for the holiday cheer!

Fun with Fruit

Happy November!  I've been so inspired by lots of fall fruits and events lately, everyone is as busy as little bees....I really enjoyed Pie Party Live hosted by Jackie & Ken -- great job, guys!  I even won a copy of the Sarabeth's Bakery Cookbook, hurray!!

I'd been meaning to make a pie (or 2!) but being sick for the whole month of October threw a wrench into my plans.  Eventually I got back to canning with some black grapes and red plums from a recipe in Canning for a New Generation.

Love how the kitchen smells when fruit is simmering...

Winnie suggested a way to use up a bunch of kumquats: 

candy them with cinnamon sticks and star anise, yum.

I also love her post because she rounds up some great DIY gifts.  

One of my favorite things about canning is that it makes such nice, little presents.

Back to the grape plum filling: got this Wilton pie press at Sur La Table 

and (I admit) used store bought pie dough to save some time -- NOT as good I agree, but infinitely faster.

And pretty quickly we had a bunch of hand pies!

They were best right out of the oven of course.

But I had to wrap up a few

for little breakfast presents the next day.

More canning adventures soon, I'm having so much fun!

Vanilla Peach Lemon Abundance

My 4th canning venture went pretty well.  Justin was away, so Kate came over for Chinese food, wine and to keep me company in the kitchen.

Peeling peaches was easier than I expected, just a little boiling water bath, then a plunge into ice water and....

gasp!  Naked peaches!  They kind of looked like big egg yolks.

Pitting them went well too, I guess they were just ripe enough.

Kate and I chatted and caught up while we sterilized the jars

and filled them up with the sliced peaches.  I loved the laughter in the kitchen as we looked at our old high school yearbook -- we've known each other since kindergarten after all!

Then just a little piece of vanilla bean in each jar, processing in the boiling water and the vanilla permeated the syrup quite nicely.  Mila observed and supervised of course.

Next up, zesting some lemons

and thus, yup, you guessed it: naked lemons!  And lots of butter and some sugar.

For a quick dessert from Canning for a New Generation, I broiled some of the vanilla peaches with some whipped cream and demerara sugar.

Kate even brought birthday presents!  Lovely hand-painted tiles for JOY, HOPE, LOVE and WISH with pink wine and a hand-stamped and punched card.  She knows how much I love the thoughtfulness of handmade gifts, especially when they're pink!

And Justin got home safely from his trip to Seattle, bringing back this beautiful Curtis Steiner necklace of black garnet, copper and mother of pearl.  Such good taste he has...

We've built up quite a canned collection: there's the raspberry jam from a previous post, but the strawberry and sour cherry preserves are long gone.  So I thought we'd be all set and stocked up for the coming autumn...

and then this morning my genius pastry chef friend Eric gave me some of his grape jam, still warm from the kitchen.

Such good, seasonal fun, can't wait for my next canning project!

Test Drive for Teeny Tiny Feet

A few weeks before my friend Allison's due date I took More Last-Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson for a book test drive: could these little baby socks really take only the suggested 3 hours a pair? Not counting the 12 minutes it took to find the right size needles in my stash, this 1st pic below was taken at 7:30 p.m.

Next by 7:45 p.m.

Then a break to answer some work e-mails that popped up and grab a snack.  By 8:13 p.m. there were 2" and the leg section was done.

I turned the heel flap the wrong way and had to take a few rows out, then look up the SSK (slip-slip-knit) stitch,

and how to pick up stitches along an edge

since it's been a while since I knit my last little baby project.

Once the heel was done it was on to the toe.

And by 10:11 p.m. finishing off.

And voila!  One done by 10:38 p.m.  So, already that's almost 3 hours (with various interruptions) and the 2nd one took about that long too: twice the quoted time, but I need to brush up on my speed.

In any case, I liked this sweet card to go with it.

And always love gift wrapping, especially for something so very small and soft.  It's nice to use a strand of the yarn for a preview of what's inside.

There are lots more projects in the book I want to try too: soft baskets (2 - 4 hours), spiral seat cushions (6 hours), socks (more than 8 hours) and more...maybe my time ratio will be a little better next time.

Crafty Holiday Wrap-up

Craft punches by Martha Stewart, cards from Papyrus,

pink wrapping paper from Target, white and red paper from 
The Container Store

Better a belated holiday wrap-up than never!  What with such a range of prices for gift wrap this year I got a few different designs for a little holiday splurge and wrapped up my gifts, handmade and otherwise.

When I knit a hat for my Dad last year from Lion Brand Vanna's Choice in Taupe Mist it only fit Guinness the dog, so I tried again for Christmas...it sorta fit, but quite snugly -- gee, a gauge swatch really is a good idea!  Off to buy more yarn and a new pattern, here's to hoping 3rd time's a charm.

I made my sister Emily a lace applique tank very similar to mine.

And used the Heather Prime Alpaca I got back in October from ImagiKnit in San Francisco

to make her a fluffy pink Diamond Knit Cowl from a beautiful pattern by Susan St. Martin.

And THIS actually fit (much easier)!  I whole-heartedly recommend Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off, a really nice finishing touch. 

The tank and cowl got wrapped up in little, pink packages with Martha Stewart craft punch Icelandic snowflakes.

I liked that her gift to me was wrapped so the penguin was peeking out around the little gold bow.

Feeling a little chilly myself I started a cowl for me with 2 huge balls of heavy grey wool my Aunt Jean sent me as part of a big box of craft supplies donated to my blog! 

It seemed the perfect yarn for the chunky seed stitch pattern of the GAP-tastic cowl by Jen Geigley.  I got about 1/3 through before running out of yarn (mental note: this and the hat fiasco proving I must work on more accurate yarn-age estimates...) but no worries, it's quite wide.

I can drape it twice around my neck and hopefully stave off these cold, cold days we've been having in NYC.  

Happy New Year crafting!