Paper Robot

I decided to start a real textile arts blog, Paper Robot! Over there, I'll be writing some basic fabric and sewing tutorials, projects I've worked on, as well as patterns I hope to sell. Come on by!

Pinkerton Shawl

Time for a knitting post! This is a purple Pinkerton Shawl, knit with Cascade Heritage in plum. I didn't check gauge, and that might be why this version isn't as big as it ought to be, as I ran out of yarn. It blocked out pretty nicely, though! I do wish I had knit a border along the top and side, though, since no amount of blocking would stop the edge from rolling, but I think in the end it was OK! It was a pretty gorgeous shade of purple, too!

Placemats!

This was a simple placemat project for a friend. I made two of each of these designs, sized around 14"x18". The panels on each are the same size, just arranged differently. With a seam allowance of 1/2", the larger rectangles are 15"x9" and the green strip is 15"x3". 

Action shot! 

Yarn Boxes

I made these little bags sized to hold a single ball of yarn, with sides sturdy enough that when open, they would sit upright. They start with a simple shape base: square, hexagon, and octogon. The octogon proved to be a bit tedious to sew, and didn't stand up as well as the other two, but I'm planning on turning the squre and hexagon into actual sewing patterns for other people to use.

Square Tablecloth

Our dining table is 48"x48" square, which is actually fairly irregular. We had it custom made from Room and Board, sized to be the perfect board game table–and it is! The only problem is, it's difficult to find square tablecloths that fit. Rectangular ones are both too long and too narrow, and circular ones look a little bizarre on the square. 

I did a few quick searches, and found that standard table widths are around 35"-40" wide, and tablecloths drop around 10", give or take a few inches. So if I want a 12" drop on each side of my table, I would need a tablecloth that is 60"x60".

I've had this blue and silver batik fabric around for quite a while; I had bought it two years ago at Christmas as a furoshiki cloth, and I think I used it for that purpose just once. At 44" wide, however, it was still too narrow, but I found a mostly matching blue cotton in my stash to fill out the ends. A bit of measuring and cutting (OK, I got lazy and ripped. At least I was on grain as a result!), and I was ready to sew.

Sewing the ends together

Trimming to move the seam allowance under the more opaque solid blue.

Topstitching with some silver thread I found.

Add a simple hem to the edges and voila!

Really Ending Radio Silence

Kind of funny that I would write a post claiming to end radio silence, and then not actually post anything. But here I am, making similar claims yet again, three and a half years later. But I mean it this time! I already have some sewing posts queued up, and I've been diligent in the past few months to actually document some of my projects. I just keep getting distracted by actually making things and forgetting to write about them.

A lot has happened in the last few years. Most significantly, I started my master's degree at the School of Information at UC Berkeley in August 2012, and I have just graduated as of this May. I am looking forward to having weekends again, and have a bunch of projects lined up and ready to go. And they're going to show up here! For real!

Ending radio silence

The lack of posts does not mean a lack of crafts, cooking, or grammar fixing--in fact, there is more of it than ever, now. I have been so busy with grad school applications and most recently, an elopement! I haven't even started Christmas cards, which is a total shock to me. Presents and cards are going to be late this year!

Placemats, Part I

I always forget how time consuming it is to use fusible interfacing, especially to multiple large pieces at a time.  In the time it has taken me to iron on 4 pieces of interfacing to 4 pieces for placemats, I could have sewn in all 4 and maybe finished one or two entirely.  Although it's been a while since I used sew-in interfacing, too, so maybe I forget the drawbacks of sew-in.

Here is the front of what the placemats will look like:

While we were in Portland for the Labour Day long weekend, I went into the Pine Needle Quilting Shop in Lake Oswego (apparently the "hoity toity" neighbourhood of greater Portland; we thought the downtown area looked like Whistler) and found some Ducks fabric. They had some placemat kits, and I thought it would be fun to make a set for Ben's Aunt Sandy, to bring up next Thanksgiving.  The lady helped me put together a placemat kit with Oregon fabric, although her version had the left panel using Oregon fabric that faced to the left, which I didn't realize until yesterday.  Luckily Eddie's was having a sale today... rather, unluckily for my wallet, since I found this pattern, and then decided to get fabric for it, too.

GRE

Tomorrow is Friday the 13th.  Hello, GRE, at 12:30pm!  I will surface at 4:30, hopefully not too smushed.  And then I need to start grad school applications, and begging for reference letters.  Gee, this year has gone by quickly...


On a related note, I learned this week that to get into the US armed forces, you have to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery Test.  There appears to be a standardized test for everything, and textbooks to match!  I am waiting for the standardized test for preschool kids wanting to get into Kindergarten.  Oh, and the textbooks to help them study, of course.


(I think that test would have to go something like this: "You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out...")

mmm, cake.

Here is a rare occurance: I wrote out an actual recipe, with timing and measurements.  But this slightly altered Betty Crocker recipe has become my current favourite basic cake recipe---it's simple, and while very tasty by itself, you can add anything to it to make it more interesting.  I dedicate this post to Tessa and Ifi, because they said words that made my heart flutter: "It's so yummy! Can I have the recipe?"


San's Betty Crocker's Silver White Cake
Prep: 10 minutes (yeah, right). Bake: 45 minutes. Cool: 1 hour 10 minutes.
Servings: ~12. Pans: 13"x9" rectangle, two 9" round pans, or three 8" round pans.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups cake flour
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 2/3 cup butter
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 5 large egg whites

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 F.  Grease and flour bottom and sides of pan(s).
2. Beat everything except egg whites with an electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds.  Use a spatula to scrape the bowl, then beat on high speed for 2 minutes, scraping the bowl occasionally.
3. Beat in egg whites on high speed for 2 minutes, scraping the bowl.  
4. Pour into pan(s).
5. Bake times:
   13"x9": 40-45 minutes.  9": 30-35 minutes.  8": 23-28 minutes
   Bake until toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean, or when cake springs back when touched lightly in centre.  
6. Cool rectangle in the pan on a wire rack. For rounds, cook 10 minutes, then remove from pans to wire rack and allow to cool completely.

Variations that I have done:

• Chocolate glaze: Cover pan with a chocolate glaze. ...I bet this would be deadly with a ganache.
• Blackberry chocolate: fill layers with blackberry filling and cover with chocolate glaze or chocolate buttercream. Make sure the blackberry filling is not liquidy, or else you end up with what looks like a beheaded cake.  Behold:

• Cinnamon swirl: sprinkle (okay, I mean dump) a bunch of cinnamon on top of the batter before baking, take a chopstick and swirl the cinnamon around.  After cooling, cover it with a simple powdered sugar icing.  Here is a quickly taken, phone-quality photo:

Ones that I have thought about, but haven't tried yet:

• adding dried fruit, especially raisins and pineapples, or mangoes!
• pumpkin cake!
• apple cake!

Some notes:

• instead of cake flour, substitute 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (not self-rising). This is the original recipe, and I haven't tried it, to be honest. I bought some cake flour a while ago to make a birthday cake with this recipe, and it turned out so well I didn't want to mess with it, and bought more cake flour to have around.
• instead of almond extract, use vanilla extract. Mmm vanilla extract.  I love the almond flavour in this, because it gives the cake itself some character. Also I don't normally give it 1 tsp, I give it 1 tsp and a little tiny splash.  This is me cooking, after all.

small world

Ben and I were both born in Vancouver, but didn't meet until we were in university, 18/19 years later.  But imagine this: my mother, who has been in the hairstyling industry for over 40 years, used to own a hair salon, and Ben's parents, having lived nearby for a year or two when they moved to Vancouver, both had their hair done at that very salon! Not only that, but after they moved to a different neighbourhood, his mother liked her stylist--one of my mom's employees--enough to keep going back.  I wasn't born yet, and my mom took a couple of years off once I had been born, so I don't think Ben and I met as babies, but it's still boggling to me. It's a small world after all!

Kitchen Gadgets

Yesterday my rice cooker got a little bit of blog attention, but it's not the first fancy kitchen gadget I've discovered I absolutely love, nor will it be the last!  Here are some others that I've come across, since I started cooking for myself while having a real paycheque, to the joy of the kitchen store owners.

on Rubber-Ended Cutting Boards
As a rule in this household, our plastic cutting boards are used for meat, and the bamboo ones are used for vegetables only.  In a pinch, since we frequently live more slovenly than I would like to admit, the plastic cutting boards are dual-purpose, here-this-board-is-clean-just-use-it backups, but generally not.  When we moved down and were setting up, we basically lived in an IKEA showroom, and nearly all of our cooking utensils were gloriously "Swede."  But cheap plastic cutting boards warp a lot when used and washed over and over, and we ended up with a convex board which would spin and leave trails of chicken juice all over the counter, whenever I tried to prepare dinner.  This irritated me to no end; I broke down into countless swearing fits while trying to chop chicken.  Since I picked up an OXO Good Grips cutting board with rubber on the ends, this has not happened.  The plastic is thick enough that it won't warp for a much longer time, and the rubber on the ends keep the board still.  I probably still swear while cooking ("Ahhhh shit I burned my chicken!"), but at least not at the cutting board.

on 3-cup Food Processors
I forget why I bought my Cuisinart 3-cup Mini Prep food processor, as I got it a very long time ago, and rarely used it.  But then we started doing "Nom Bowls," which is a variant of the home-made Yumm Bowl, and I also started experimenting with chicken marinades.  Now I use it so often that the lettering on the buttons are completely worn off, and unlike many other items in the kitchen, it never has enough time to let dust settle on it.  Mostly, I use it for chopping up nuts and beans, and the 3-cup size is perfect for the 2 of us; very likely I will break it down long before there are 3 of us.  I had been toying with the idea of getting a larger one, so that I could also grind up vegetables for yummy soups, but the last time we visited Vancouver, I made some Nom Sauce in my mother's 14-cup food processor, and it is seriously a pain to clean all the parts involved.  Not so with the 3-cup!  We're literally bonded by blood, those little blades and I.

on Citrus Juicers
My mother also has an electric citrus juicer which is apparently older than both my brother and me, which is extremely easy to use, and very efficient.  I think it's similar to this one, only it was made in the 70's and therefore will last much longer than that one will.  But if I had not picked up my manual Chef’n FreshForce Citrus Juicer, I would definitely consider getting one anyway.  As it is, I love that citrus juicer.  Lemon halves go in, juice comes out, and the things that remain are unrecognizable as anything but plant matter.

on Silicone Spatulas
Though I used to only use them for baking, silicone spatulas are fantastic for everything else, too.  Plastic cooking tools have been one of many banes in my few years thus far, and the prospect of eating little plastic bits in my scrambled eggs is never appealing.  There are many silicone spatulas around in my kitchen, in various sizes (little silicone spatulas are better in my food processor than the tiny plastic scraper it comes with), and my current favourite has a very nice stainless steel handle.  Some day I am going to add this silicone-coated thin metal spatula to my collection, and perhaps I will know nirvana.

on Cherry Pitters
My most recent acquisition was this OXO cherry pitter, which I used on Sunday to bake a yummy cherry pie. As a side note, said pie was made in a glass pie plate, which I also required recently, and though this is no revelation to me, it is a far cry from the metal pie tins that come with the frozen shells I buy (I am lazy, okay).  Given that I can't ever have fresh cherries, even organic, pesticide-free ones, without having my lips, tongue, throat, and occasionally gums (??) swell up, cherry preparation requires cooking, which generally includes pitting.  But until this weekend, pitting cherries meant cutting them in half and digging the pits out with my fingernails, resulting in itchy, red fingers.  It finally dawned on me that I could buy a specialized tool to help me with this, and what a difference!  A pound or so of cherries, minus fresh ones set aside for Ben to steal, pitted in no time.  Mmm, pie.

There are likely others I could add to this list, like my rice spatula, which is perfectly shaped for fluffing and serving, and there are more I have my sights set on, like the cookie dough scoop I always look at and invariably decide against buying. But doubtless I could continue on in this vein for a very, very long time.

Miso Chicken

Miso Chicken is an experiment I tried out a long time ago, which didn't turn out quite so well.  I thought I might have posted it anyway, but obviously I am wrong, since I can't seem to find it in my archives.  I tried it again today, with some modifications, and the results were significantly better.

Miso Chicken for 2:
- 1 chicken breast, cubed
- 1 heaping tablespoon of miso paste
- 2-3 tbsp rice vinegar
- dash of salt
- dash of mirin
- water
- 2 fresh green onions
- 1-2 garlic cloves
- olive oil for cooking
- pinch of powdered ginger
*If fresh ginger is your thing, then I'd do that instead--we never have any around, and I doubt I would use it fast enough to warrant buying a whole root, so it would be rather wasteful for us to buy some. 

Mix the miso and vinegar together, until there are no clumps of miso paste left.  Shake in salt, mirin, and add water so that there is just enough to cover the chicken. Let marinate for a while.
Wash and chop the green onions, yum.  Crush the garlic, then heat up the oil and garlic together.  Pour in the entire miso+chicken, add the green onions, and sprinkle the powdered ginger on top.  Cook until the chicken is done, and the water is evaporated enough for the miso to be paste-like once again.  Serve over rice, with steamed green beans.

Speaking of rice! I got this little baby a few weeks ago, and I am completely in love. It was a present to me, from me, using up an Amazon gift card I redeemed with my Aeroplan miles--it only took a mere ~5 round trip flights between YVR and SFO to get a $50 gift card. But I love my rice cooker! We've done white and brown rice, I've made congee in it, and it all turned out beautifully. It has a fantastic timer function, especially wonderful since brown rice takes a million years to cook, and we aren't usually home until 7pm as it is.  Now I set it up in the morning, and by the time I'm home and preparing dinner, rice is already done! Rice consumption has doubled, if not tripled, since we got one.

Ben commented that it is very Asian of me to have the apartment smelling of rice, which it was when we got back from running errands this afternoon.  I guess the miso chicken recipe adds to that thought! All I need now is to start cooking Chinese soup (I think it's a broth?) all the time, and I'm sure my grandparents would be very proud of me.

Moving, gack!

Until we came to California, I lived in one house my entire life.  My parents bought a newly built Vancouver Special in 1979, when my brother was only months old, and they live there to this day.  

When we moved, it was relatively easy, despite the distance--we did a road trip down the coast, and filled the car with important items we didn't want to bring by air: computer equipment, video game consoles, Ben's guitar, etc.  Those we put into storage, and when we flew down later, we brought our personal affects via plane.  Setting up the apartment was more fun and exciting than hard work (although there was hard work and elbow grease involved in assembling our classy IKEA furniture), since we had to get everything brand new.

Last June, we moved into a very nice 11th floor apartment, and though the move was grueling (and I feared for Boris, my faux piano), we were excited to be there, and adjusted quickly to the horrors of having a gorgeous view.  However, apartments in high places come with high price tags, and with much consideration (not really) of my contract's end in November, living there for another year seemed like an unintelligent decision. Plus, given all the stuff we have, a 2br apartment didn't seem like a bad idea.  Using the wonders of Craigslist, we found a somewhat nice apartment not far from where we were living, and were set to move this last Memorial Day.  I write these lessons we have learned, the hard way, about moving.

1. Cleanliness is next to Godliness

If moving from an apartment building owned by a large corporation (e.g., Avalon) to an apartment owned by private owner, either request that they have the place professionally cleaned, or else hire professional cleaners yourself. When we went to pick up the keys from the owners, one of them was there, ostensibly cleaning up and doing some paint touch-ups.  The idea of having the place properly cleaned never even entered my mind. That changed when, every time I went into the apartment, my throat would get itchy, and my nose and eyes would start watering.  I spent the first week of June in a veritable allergy coma.  It wasn't until this past Saturday, when we had finished mopping the entire place (the 2nd bedroom had to be mopped 3 times, and we also swabbed the walls), that I could finally go home and not feel like I needed to leave to breathe.

If professional cleaners aren't an option, or you are like us and have already moved in and started cleaning, and hiring cleaners seems futile, then pick a place to conquer.  Ours was the bedroom--we moved out all of the boxes, unpacked what we could, mopped the floor and vacuumed the rug twice, cleaned the windows thoroughly, and had the air purifier going with the door closed.  The bedroom became our sanctuary.  We spent one night doing no moving tasks at all, and instead just sat in the bedroom on our computers, and my allergies didn't make a peep.

Also, the air purifier seems to work fairly well, at least for dust, and a little bit for odors.

2. Don't underestimate how much stuff you have

This is actually something we learned during our move last year, when we rented a smaller truck and figured we could move the rest of our smaller things in our car.  This was true, but we ended up doing at least 3 trips between apartments.  This year, we made sure we had a ton of boxes, and packed up as much as possible to load into a slightly bigger truck.  We did still have to do some trips, but it wasn't as painful, and we turned in our keys midday instead of midnight.  We've both become a fan of freecycle.org, as I posted a listing for our empty boxes and had 3 replies in the course of 24 hours.

3. Curtains are fantastic

Our apartment is one of six, and one of four on the second level.  It's a very small building right off of a somewhat main street.  There are some nice trees right outside, which give us a little bit of privacy from people across the street, but that's about it.  When we moved in, the living room had curtain rods, but neither bedroom had any.  This didn't seem like a particularly big deal, until we tried to sleep the first few nights without curtains on the window, and discovered that the tree outside does not shield the bedroom from the orange glare of the street lamp right outside.  So much for sleeping!  I taped a bunch of bags to the window, until we got our curtains up.

This kind of makes me think of that TLC Life Lesson: "When buying a house, make sure you save money for drapes."

4. Floor cleaning

In the three Californian apartments we've had, we've had linoleum, carpet, granite, ceramic tile, and now bamboo hardwood flooring.  As such, I have collected a plethora of cleaning supplies, my favourite being nearly anything made by Casabella.  Our third broom is a Casabella, and my wonderful, amazing sponge mop is also Casabella.  Do you need to mop? Don't skimp on a crappy mop.  

When it comes to soaps, I'm pretty much covered, too.  

• Linoleum = Pine Sol.  
• Granite = Granite Gold; that stuff is amazing, just make sure you get the mix right, or else it will streak.
• Tile= Either of the above.
• Carpet = Foley's for spot cleaning, if I had bothered to buy any.    
• Hardwood flooring = Murphy's Oil Soap.  That stuff is also fantastic, but you do have to make sure the dilution is just right, as well.  I tested this by doing two small patches on the floor behind the toilet: one with just water, and one with a diluted mix.  Because how often do you look behind the toilet?  Also, it smells so good.

I'm not sure what kind of typical flooring is left to deal with, but if there's a soap for it, I'll get that to mop with, too.  Anything to avoid having feet so black from built up dirt, just from walking around your apartment. Yes, it was that gross.

5. Screen doors

Did you know that screen doors can be very filthy?  Ben spent at least an hour cleaning the screen doors and rail with a dirty rag, and the water went from colourless to black.  YUCK.

6. How to wash the walls

After telling my mother about my allergy problems, she suggested we wash the walls, and I brushed it off as a silly suggestion.  Who washes walls?  But considering that the previous person used the 2nd bedroom as some sort of meditation room, complete with incense, we decided it was worth a try.  We took a (relatively) clean mop, and a bucket of clean water, with a very little bit of lemon castile soap mixed in, and used that to gently swab the walls.  Turns out that we wash walls, and we aren't the only people to have done so.  I'm not sure that it really helped, and that room still stinks, but after wall washing and triple mopping, it is actually starting to be livable in there.

In retrospect, these are basically all about cleanliness.  Possibly we are very picky people who enjoy clean apartments, especially compared to whomever lived there before--given the state it was left in, obviously it did not bother them very much. I don't think it's too much to enjoy the luxuries of good hygiene, but given the amount of work we have done so far with this place, I feel like we might as well have moved into a small house!

Mother's Day Craft Carnival

I submitted my post from yesterday on my Mother's Day card + towel roll cover to the Craft Critique Mother's Day Craft Carnival, and it's currently listed there amongst some very cool Mother's Day projects.  Check it out!

Here are some of my favourites from a quick glance: a very cute little hat (and a more stylish card than mine), a dish towel tutorial that seems like a good reason to finally use my gathering foot, tea and a card--which is what I did the first time I made a Mother's Day card, and a purse made with fabric and crochet--now that's a combination I could get into!  Not that I need more projects...

Happy Mother's Day to moms everywhere!

Mother's Day!

Mom, do NOT read this blog post!  I MEAN IT!

The Paper Source is currently having a Mother's Day card competition on Facebook.  Submissions are closed, and the winners are going to be chosen by popular vote, so I don't have my hopes set too high, but you can vote for my submission on Facebook, and I can always dream.  I didn't have a whole lot of time to make it, since I was away (visiting my Mommy instead of crafting for her) for the end of April, and didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it. In any case, I do like my card a lot, and it's currently on its way to Canada.

Materials:
 - A2 foldover card in PS Poppy
 - vellum paper
 - paper in PS Blossom for the mum petals; PS Beet for the mum center
 - vine ribbon by the yard from PS for leaves
 - my favourite American Crafts rub-on letters -- this one is "Molly" in charcoal. I love these letter rub-ons.
 - VersaMark ink
 - Zing! embossing powder in blush
 - Paper Source mum (as in, chrysanthemum) stamp

One of my main problems whenever I make a card is with the background; plain paper is too boring for me, but patterned paper is too busy and takes away from the main decoration.  For this card, I stamped mums semi-randomly over the paper with VersaMark watermark ink, used a heating tool to darken, and fit the coloured flower directly over one in the background--you can kind of see it (maybe) if you click on the full version.  It's like my mom standing out amongst other moms, hey! Metaphors.

While I was visiting, Mom actually decided she wanted a (badly needed) electric kettle replacement for Mother's Day, so now my brother owes me $20. But I had already thought of something I wanted to make for her: a towel roll cover. My mom usually sleeps with a hand towel rolled up to act as a neck bolster, to alleviate pressure on her neck while lying down.  I think normal bolster pillows are too large for this purpose, and the nice thing about a towel is that you can just wash it and get a fresh one whenever you want.  Plus, when she travels, she can grab a towel from the hotel washroom to use, or from my linen closet when she visits.  I thought of making a nice cover for her, that she could wash just as easily as a towel and pack easily when she travels, but felt nice and silky and looked pretty.

Et voilà‎!

A towel roll cover amongst my messy work space.  Roll up the towel, roll that up in this cover, then use the elastics at the ends to secure the cloth in place.  I didn't think of taking a picture of it in action, and I didn't photograph the illustrated instructions I drew, and now the entire package is somewhere between here and Vancouver, sorry!

Construction of this was quite simple: cut two pieces of pre-shrunken, easy-care cotton fabric 15" by 17" large, and two pieces of elastic about 7.5" long.  Baste the elastics as a loop, to the right side of one long edge, with raw edges matching.  Sew the 2 pieces right side together using a 1/2" seam allowance, and leaving a hole for turning.  Turn out, poke out the corners (FYI pointy chopsticks are great for this purpose), iron, then edge stitch all around.

Edge stitching is my new favourite technique--I don't bother slip stitching turning holes, and it looks so clean when I use my edgestitch foot.

The labels are really old--I got them when I was a kid, and my mom found them recently, so when I left Vancouver, I left with that package, as well as the Olfa mat and cutter she doesn't use any more.  I would love to get more, so if anybody knows of a good place to get nice, woven labels, please let me know!  Seems like the ones I can find online are either printed, or can only be ordered in multiples of 100.

Apricot Chicken

Here is another chicken recipe I tried out and really liked, but didn't write down.  I didn't even measure amounts, so there's no way I can replicate it exactly, but I assure you it was delicious. 

- 1 chicken breast, cubed
- ~1/4 cup of white wine
- salt + pepper, to taste (to me this is a few shakes of salt, and a couple turns of the pepper mill)
- ~1/4-1/3 cup apple juice
- 4-5 dried apricots
- small handful of dried cranberries
- onion (minced) and/or sweet pepper (chopped)
- garlic powder
- dried parsley

Marinate the chicken in wine, salt, and pepper. Chop the apricots into thirds; heat apricots and cranberries in apple juice until it simmers. If using onion, add them at this point. Add chicken (don't pour in the wine) and garlic powder. When chicken is mostly cooked, add the pepper and parsley.  Cook until the juice is almost all evaporated, and everything looks nummy.  Make some cheesy parmesan toast for starch.  Eat! 

On the craft front, I finished a cotton scarf in a knitted lace pattern a while ago, but I've been getting confused on what makes a good blocking pin.  I picked up some pins today from my favourite yarn shop, yay!  So I'll be blocking that tonight... probably on the sofa, which is currently the only free surface, as the desk has my sewing machine and iron, and our "dining table" is covered in fabric from various projects (not just mine, though!).  But we'll see how well that goes.  Currently, my only decent spray bottle is outside in my bucket, underneath a bag of potting soil.  Hmm...

From the desk of Sandra Ewing

Whenever anybody asks me for my last name, I spell it out for them--I don't even bother saying it.  If I'm in a store, and they want to look up my name to see if I'm in their database, I just hand over the debit card I'm going to pay with--they can read it for themselves, and hang on to the card to charge me.

I'm not exactly sure when I started doing this, but I suspect it was in high school, when I was discussing a volunteer opportunity over the phone, and the lady asked for my name. "Sandra Yuen," I replied, oblivious to the aural turmoil it created on the other end. "Could you say that again?" she asked, and I obliged.  "Sandra Yuen."  When I reported to the volunteer office later that day, I noticed that she had written on a piece of paper, "Sandra Ewing?"

Saying it letter for letter doesn't always fix the problem, either: I say, "Y, U, E, N," and I see them writing down "Why" and then stop.  And then they realize they made a mistake, and they change it to "Wuen."  I have had to make clerks stop and really look at what was written, and still they thought they had it right.  "No no," I would say, "It's Y-U, not W-U." "Yeah, that's what I wrote, I don't understand the problem." "You've written W-U-E-N."  "No I haven't--OH."

Many people who read my last name, but have no idea how to say it, eventually come up with their closest guess, with "yen," "yoo-wen," and "y'wen" being the most common mispronunciations.  Plus two for effort and creativity, but sorry, no dice.  "Yoo-wen" might be the closest, except that's two syllables, and the name is meant to have only one.  Think of the name "Ewen."  A "Ewen Yuen" would be teased mercilessly, growing up.

My mother and I have had discussions before where we figure that "Yune" or "Yoon" would have been better romanizations, as they would provide far less confusion when reading it aloud.  Neither of those are particularly attractive spellings, however, and they don't exactly apply the nuances that exist in the pronunciation of my last name.  It might be better if I could write it out as "Sandra Yueⁿ," but it might be difficult to indicate that on the census form. Or any form.


"Yuen" isn't a common last name compared to many others in China, but it isn't rare, either.  In Mandarin, it would be "Ruan," and in Vietnamese, it's the surname "Nguyen."  Some interesting information on the character, 阮, can be found on this page. If you know how to read proper romanizations of Asian languages, the Cantonese section is relevant for my last name.

Sylvi Berninasdotter

Tomorrow, at approximately 9:06 AM, I will be 24!  I've discovered that there is no lack of "Birthday deals!!!" down here, and since March 1st, I have acquired makeup from Sephora, a 20% discount from Green Planet Yarn, which is my favourite yarn shop, and a 25% discount on fabric from Eddie's Quilting Bee, which I have visited nearly every week this month, and for good reason--Sylvi:

I finally bought myself a sewing machine!  Much research has been done since Christmas, and for my birthday, I finally settled on the Bernina Activa 210.  It's the simplest (and cheapest) of the lowest models of Bernina machines (not including Bernette), and I felt very out of place during the Bernina "Eddiecation" class I took at Eddie's Quilting Bee.  It was a class to learn the ins and outs of your Bernina, and all around me were women with sewing machines that must have cost at least $1500-$2000--but I think I bought exactly what I need, and the class went through the basic stitches of the machine, which are all going to be very useful.

Bernina manufactures a bazillion different specialty presser feet, which are all listed online.  Since I bought my machine at Eddie's, I got that Bernina class, but I also get 10% off on fabric for a year, and more importantly, 20% off of presser feet for a year.  There is a possibility that I have already bought two: the #2 overlock foot, and the #10 edgestitch foot.  Feet aren't exactly cheap, but man those two are awesome already.  I imagine that by the time that year is up, I will have amassed a small army of feet.

This was my second project with Sylvi--the first being new placemats which I forgot to photograph.  This  tiny little dress is made using a pattern from Leila and Ben, and I find that I actually really like the PDF.  Not just this pattern, which was extremely simple, but PDF patterns in general--no messing around with tissue paper, worrying that it will rip, and realizing that you will never reuse that pattern because you basically snip it to shreds while cutting your fabric.  Our printer is currently out of commission, so I sent it to the nearby Kinkos/FedEx Office to get the pattern printed, and it worked out extremely well.

Side story: when I went to the FedEx last Friday to pick up my prints, having submitted my files online, I just happened to run into the dress recipient's father!  I was still kind of sick and we couldn't go visit the newborn, so I at least got some preview photos.

Anyhow, PDF patterns = good.  I'll be buying more of them in the future, I think.  I like the idea of having a digital version that I can re-print and chop up without keeping the extra sizes to tape on at a later date.

Kumquats and Cashews

I actually took a photo before I began nomming on this one, to make it a more difficult post to put up, but apparently that proved too difficult for me. to be just fine, thanks!  But here is the text, anyway:

Kumquats and Cashews and Chicken, oh my!
 - 1 chicken breast
 - ~10 + 2 kumquats
 - ~1/2 cup cashews, unsalted
 - 1/2 cup apple juice
 - < 1/4 cup white wine
 - salt
 - dried parsley

1. Let cubed chicken soak in juice, wine, and salt.
2. Grind cashews, set aside.
3. Remove seeds from 10 kumquats, allow the tiny food processor to mash them to a pulp.  Some extra apple juice may be helpful here.
4. Slice remaining 2 kumquats, remove seeds, and set aside.
5. Mix together kumquat mush and cashews.  Try not to eat any, but fail because it smells so good!
6. Place chicken into oiled, heated skillet. Note: normally when I make marinades fresh, I dump everything into the skillet together. This time I only placed the chicken into the pan, and unlike the failed lemon chicken recipe which I did not post, this one did not taste like wine.
7. Add kumquat-cashew mixture, cook until chicken is done, and the sauce is paste-like.
8. Add kumquat slices and stir a bit more.

I served it with parsley flakes on top, rice, and a nice salad.  You may pretend see that there is a photo here:

It may appear eventually was totally here all along!  The almond-plum is probably my favourite experiment so far, but this is a close second a long with apple chicken.  I should turn these into a book some day.