Let's just drag birthday week out as long as possible, shall we? I didn't get home until nearly 9:00 on Friday night, after running all sorts of errands, and I was still so pooped on Saturday that I took a three hour nap. That may have had something to do with the fact that I also cleaned out the chicken coop, and swept off another big section of driveway. Enough with the excuses, however, I have another giveaway to tell you about.

I felt the need to make something with paper today, so I made a little set of pamphlet-style notebooks, and experimented with an accordion book. The accordion book is a little wonky, but I like how it looks standing up like this, and the pages are my favorite printmaking paper. I know I've talked about my old red book for sketching and ideas and quotes, but I also usually have a little notebook in my purse for to-do lists and grocery lists, and other sorts of temporary scribblings. So I hope you will find these handy, and very usable. They all have Amy Butler cardstock covers, and two of the notebooks have brown paper pages and for the third I used ledger paper. 

Speaking of Friday night errands and grocery lists, lately I'm all about visiting ethnic grocery stores. This week I did the bulk of my shopping at 99 Ranch, a local Asian grocery store. It's gigantic, and they have all sorts of interesting things, including a deli with my new current obsession, banh mi (Vietnamese/French-style sandwiches). I also got ingredients for my gyoza and vegetables for a couple stir-fry dinners this week. Last week I visited a Mexican grocery store and made a big batch of Chile Verde. Their produce was so cheap (tomatoes for 59 cents a pound!), and I even treated myself to a carnitas taco from the taco counter at the front of the store that was one of the best I've ever had, and only $1.50. Of course I can't forget my favorite ethnic grocery store, Mitsuwa Market, home of all sorts of wonderful Japanese deliciousness. Between these three, Trader Joe's and Fresh & Easy, I almost never have to go to a regular grocery store, and I definitely spend less. So today's giveaway question is: Where do you do most of your grocery shopping? Any hidden gems to share? 

I'm also really excited to show you this book (Quilts, Baby!), which arrived this week:

 

I think the official release date is May 5, but Amazon says it's shipping in 1-3 weeks. I have two patterns in here, but even if I didn't, I would still want to buy it, there's a whole lot of cuteness inside. Here are my patterns, a bubbles quilt, and one with little crosses:

 

 

And here are some of my favorites by other quilters:

 

I think I'm going to use this pattern for the bird baby quilt I'm making, and will use the bird print instead of solid yellow for the big rectangles. And holy moly is this one adorable:

 

I love this one so much, those little cats climbing the stairs just kill me:

Okay, thanks for looking at all those pictures of books. There might be one more giveaway tomorrow, I'm working on something and I'm not sure if it's going to pan out, fingers crossed!

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I think I have the blahs tonight, so this might be a really boring blog post, but apparently I'm not letting that stop me from jabbering away anyhow. I took some pictures of things I've been making, but they are all so boring and uninspiring. Here are the pickles I made, I'm not sure how we'll be able to wait another seven weeks (at the very least) for them to cure.

I have a stack of fabric for some fun Spring projects, and I'm too blah to work on any of it.

 

Left to right: a light, Spring-y top, grey linen for a skirt with rickrack around the bottom, and some birds for a quilt for a baby girl on the way. I have no idea what sort of quilt yet, once these blahs go away, I'm sure I'll think of something.

Maybe Winston can perk me up, what do you think?

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I pretended to be a pioneer this weekend, except for the electricity and indoor plumbing, oh, and the washer and dryer and gas stove, but other than those little conveniences, it was just like being a pioneer.

I haven't been cooking much more than dinner lately, so I decided to spend a little more time in the kitchen this weekend. When the Angry Chicken mentioned making butter, and 70-some comment-ors shared their enthusiasm, I had to jump on the bandwagon and try it too. I did it in a more pioneer-like way, and shook a pint of cream in a quart-sized mason jar. It was fascinating how the texture changed. First it just got all thick and frothy, and I was worried my jar was too small. Then I could hear it sort of thunk-ing around, and then suddenly it was a solid mass and finally, it turned pale yellow and there was a chunk of butter sitting in a pool of milk. This would be a great home-school science lesson! I recently scored a bunch of mini jello molds, which will soon be turned into pincushions, so I pressed the butter into one of them and let it harden in the fridge for a while and then turned it out on a plate.

The pint of cream made that-which I would estimate is 3/4 to 1 cup, plus another half a stick. I salted it very lightly, really just a couple shakes of kosher salt, and when I tasted it right after it was finished I was worried that I put way too much in, but today it's much better. And I have been eating a lot of slices of bread and butter.

So that was my weekend to-do list up there, and I didn't get it completely finished, but I did make quite a lot of progress. Make Butter: check!

Next up was Make Pickles. I will not be able to tell you how successful that venture was for two or three months, however. Here's a little more pickle backstory: Mr. HeyLucy loves a good antipasto salad, and the last time we had pizza the salad was a little disappointing. We are also trying to be more thrifty and not eating out, so this will be a good thing to try and make ourselves at home. Summer garden plans are in the works, so if the homemade pickling thing works out, we'll plant lots of pickle-friendly vegetables. Also, I was talking to a couple Persian friends at work who told me all about torshi, Persian pickles. One of found this recipe and sent it to me. I modified it a little, and made it a bit more Italian style (because I'm such an Italian cuisine expert). Here are all my vegetables, ready to be mixed and put in jars. The bowl is full of herbs and vinegar, and it smelled delicious, although now I need a break from the smell of vinegar for at least a couple days.

 

Vegetables are pretty! Clockwise, from the top left we have green pepper, cucumbers (the little persian ones), herb-y vinegar, cauliflower, carrots, cooked eggplant (not too much of that, I wasn't sure if we would like it), whole garlic cloves, and celery. I ended up with five quarts and one pint. Now it has to sit for a couple months and then we can enjoy it! Make Pickles: check!

Next up, Sew Skirt. Didn't happen. I have some pretty grey linen for a Summer skirt, and I want to sew lots of rick-rack around the bottom, but the fabric store I went to on Friday only had purple, so I will have to go on a rick-rack hunt next week. Sew Skirt will move to the top of the list for next weekend.

Gather Moss. I don't think I'm ready to take the dogs out again, my hand should be healed by next weekend, however, so that stays on the list. The dogs each got a little brushing, and therefore quality one-on-one time with me instead, and it's not like there was a moss emergency. My terrarium in the little house studio is doing quite well, I will have to take a progress picture so you can see how pretty and green it is.

Sew Blouse. Well, it's cut out, so that one gets a partial check. I hope to work on it this week, so expect to hear more about this later.

Sweep Driveway. We have a big driveway. Between dogs digging and chickens scratching, and wind blowing, it gets messy. I got a lot swept, so I'm giving myself a check mark, but there is one more corner to do, so it will be back on the list next week too.

Do laundry. Done! Although not yet put away, at least it's all folded. Maybe tomorrow I will finish putting it away, and then I will get my check mark.

Make Pincushions. Well, I tried, but more experimenting is needed. I did make a strawberry with emory sand, so I'm kind of excited about that. I made one attempt with the aforementioned mini jello molds, but I have to try again. No check mark, back on the list.

 

I'm excited to make some new little sets, with wool-stuffed pincushions and emory-filled strawberries, and maybe even matching needlebooks.

Bake a Cake. Specifically, Nigella's Clementine Cake. I've been wanting to make this forever, or at least for the last three months. So forever might be an exageration, but I finally did it today. And it's good, but not quite as outstanding as I was expecting. She does say that she prefers it the next day, so maybe my opinion will change tomorrow. I think I might like it more with a simple orange glaze. It's flourless, so it might be a good recipe to add to your reportoire if you need a gluten-free cake. Also, it's not all that exciting to look at:

 

So that was my weekend to-do list. I should have included Pick Flowers, because that would have earned me another check mark.

 

I hope you won't mind just a few more pictures of daffodils and grape hyacinth, but we have to enjoy them while we can!

 

I love that bright orange center, and how about that extreme bokeh, eh? 

 

I just love these tiny things. That photo is worth looking at full-sized. This version is straight out of the camera, but I played with some Photoshop actions and added those versions to flickr.

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I had some of these, and so I made this:


And it was just as good as you might imagine a ginger pear upside-down cake would be.

I used the recipe I found at this link, and I will be making it again, for sure.

This cake is the sum total of my accomplishments for this week, including the weekend. Actually, I made a very delicious dinner on Saturday night. I took pictures and everything. Sadly, I will never be able to make that meal again, nor will I be able to share those pictures, because just an hour or two after eating my dinner, I became suddenly, horrendously nauseous and then I threw it all  up. And then I threw up every hour for the next seven hours. And spent the entire next day laying pitifully on the couch, with painfully aching joints. I managed to sit up now and then and sip some Pedialyte and gnaw on some toast, and then lay down again to shiver uncontrollably under my blanket.

That sure was a fun weekend. It wasn't until Wednesday that I managed to feel somewhat normal again. I don't know if it was food poisoning or the flu. Either way, Mr. Heylucy got very lucky, because he works some odd hours and was sleeping when I made my dinner, so I had planned to make his when he woke up. Once I realized how sick I was I made him throw the rest out, and he was fine.

So sorry my blog has been so boring this week, I had to take a few sick days. But that cake sure was good.

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I'm tired of that apple pie post, so it's time for something new. Unfortunately it's almost 10 p.m. and I'm tired, so I'm going to write a short post about fungi. I like mushrooms, but I don't know much about them. Interestingly, we have quite a unique specimen growing on one of our oak trees. We know it is interesting because one day we found a note on our front gate from a gentleman who was making a documentary about mushrooms and he asked if he could return to film our Chicken of the Woods mushroom for his movie. We called him to let him know we were happy for our fungi to have it's 15 minutes of fame, but sadly, his funding fell through and the compelling drama of the world of fungi has yet to be made.

Our tree has since died, but we left the massive trunk standing, and the Chicken of the Woods are still growing.

Last week, Jamie Oliver made Wild Mushroom and Venison Stroganoff and he used a chicken of the woods mushroom. I'm not sure if my culinary skills are up to something so exotic. I've never cooked venison and don't know any hunters, but it did look pretty good.

I also got some macro filters for my camera last week and took some extreme closeups.

For those of you not fond of fungi, I'll leave you with a little Winston shmoopie love.

How can you not love that little furry face?

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Growing up you could get red apples and green apples at the grocery store. We always had red delicious apples, oranges or bananas in our lunches and in the fruit bowl. I was never really a fan of that fruit trifecta. I’ve long thought of myself as a vegetable person, but with my determination to eat healthier this year, I decided to eat more fruit. You can probably guess what happened. I now love fruit, and regularly get cravings for it. Now that there are more varieties of apples to choose from, I find myself eating them more and more often. I think the apple love really started when I began thinly slicing apple quarters to feed Sally and the chickens (and the dogs, who think they should get everything the chickens get), and would eat a slice or two while handing them out to the poultry frenzy. Fujis are my absolute favorite, and they seem to be tasting even better now that apple season is in full swing.

I’ve also never been a huge pie fan. When it comes to desserts I’m more of an ice cream and cookies kind of girl. Cake is good too, but pie is a little more risky, what with the crust, which can be too doughy or too burnt, or too soggy. And then the filling-too sweet, too runny, too sour. There are just a lot of variables that all have to work together, and if one falls short, the whole thing is ruined. Of course I can never say never, I mean Thanksgiving would just be off without pumpkin pie, but that’s just once a year. And then I also just saw this. Sour Cream Apple Pie, it’s just too tempting, isn’t it? Well, it was too much for me, so I made it yesterday.

Making a pie is a lot of work, but this was worth every bit of it.

I think you should go make one now, because this one is almost gone.

I made a very small bit of progress on pincushions and chicks, but I spent most of the weekend cleaning junk out of  my workshop/guesthouse/studio/sewing room. I need to decide what to call it and stick to one name for it. Anyway, I’m trying to do the Fall Apartment Therapy Cure on my room, so I’ll have a functional, useful space. I can work out there now, but it does require frequent moving of piles and leaning at precarious angles to reach things. Also, the previous owners got creative with paint, and the walls are a patchwork of really bad colors, so I’m also planning to finally, finally paint over all of it. If you’re interested in following my progress, I have a set of pictures on flickr. Of course there are just before pictures so far, and they are actually quite old, but you’ll get the idea. They’re so ugly I don’t want to post them on my blog. I made a style tray with a few ideas for the finished space:

I’m planning on painting it all white, and then adding bits of bright color. I think it will be a nice place to work.

My legs are killing me from all the bending and crouching, specifically the muscles up the backs of my thighs. I need to find out what exercises to do for those muscles. The last five weeks at work our department has done a stair challange-no riding the elevator at all! I may have gotten a little competitive at the end, when I did 100 flights of stairs on the last day. So I thought my legs were pretty strong, but apparently stair-climbing does not work the back of the thigh.  I guess stretching exercises should be done before any extreme cleaning.

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