Bundle of Lime

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the Star Wars saga. One of my first memories as a child is of going to see A New Hope in the movie theater. I even have a little nook in my living room which once upon a time served as a telephone area, but as the wires are no longer functioning and I got rid of my landline long ago, it now serves as...for lack of a better term, a little alter where I keep Buddha and Yoda together. Somehow the whole philosophy behind Star Wars resonates with me. I don't expect to move objects with my Jedi powers or use mind-tricks on the weak-minded, of course, but I can certainly relate to the idea of the Force. I have created a personal tradition of watching all 6 movies (yes, all 6) in numerical order at least once a year. That is, until I was introduced to an alternative viewing concept, and I decided to give it a try. This full post on "machete order" prompted me to want to give this a try. Instead of watching the movies in chr...

If you don't know what a soft cloth funnel is, I present to you this clip from The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra . If you like quirky movies, this one should definitely be on your list of movies to watch. It's an homage to every sci-fi creature-feature B movie ever made and it's done brilliantly. It's a must-see and one of my favorites. But I digress from my main topic... Yesterday I made a skirt out of some Italian Wine and Ivory wool tweed that I ordered back in February from Mood Fabrics . Purchases from Mood are always a guilty pleasure of mine, and I try to restrict myself to items that go on sale but I have never been disappointed with the quality when my fabric arrives. I bought this wool tweed specifically for the skirt in Vogue V8718 , which is now out of print. This skirt requires 1 yard of fabric and 1 yard only. It's basic and classic, which I felt was perfect for this particular tweed.   I've been working on my skills at fitting whenever I se...

The only thing better than knitting with Malabrigo is spinning with Malabrigo and then knitting with it. I purchased this roving (pictured below) at Personal Threads in Omaha a while ago. In fact, I sort of started collecting all of the different colorways. Roving is always somewhat more cost effective than buying yarn in my opinion. In this case, $12 gets you 4 oz of hand-dyed roving and you get twice the time with it...however many hours spinning it up and plying it, and then however many hours knitting it on top of that. You can't beat it when it comes to playing with yarny goodness! Nube is the name of this Malabrigo roving. It's 100% Merino wool and super-soft to the touch (just like Malabrigo yarn). This particular colorway below is "866 Arco Iris". I love this color combination...but who am I kidding? I love all of their color combinations. I like to spin my yarn fairly thin. It started out as a challenge to myself to get it as evenly thin as p...

I have worked at my place of employment for quite a few years, and as a result, I have accrued much vacation time. During the Summer months, I often try to take at least a couple of weeks off, regardless of whether or not I go anywhere special (typically during one of those weeks, I have my annual Star Wars and/or Harry Potter marathon, complete with sweater knitting). By a stroke of luck, I happened to choose my first vacation week of this summer during the week before Memorial Day. This means that I have my normal week of vacation plus one additional paid holiday to enjoy. And this year, I have decided to blog about my daily creative activities. Today I made Homemade Creamy Ceasar Salad Dressing using two separate recipes found here and here . I love many of the recipes that I find on ruled.me . While I have only tried a handful, they have always turned out tasty and satisfying. Craig's Ceasar Salad Dressing recipe calls for 3/4 cup of mayonnaise. Most commercial mayonnaise...

Back in March, I posted a recipe for Citrus Tahini Dressing that is really tasty. After making several batches and consuming it for the last few weeks on my salads, I decided that it was time to branch out and look for other dressing recipes. I don't miss store-bought dressings but I do miss the variety available. The other day at the grocery store, I struck up a conversation with another shopper about vegan dressings and sauces (which seems really random, but it was actually pertinent to the situation at the time). She told me about a tzatziki sauce that she had made recently using soaked, raw cashews and how good it turned out to be so I thought I would give the idea a try. Using this recipe as my main base recipe, here is what I came up with: 3/4 Cups of raw cashews 1/2 Cup of unsweetened coconut milk (or almond, soy, etc) Juice of 1 large lemon, or of 2 Meyer lemons 1 Tablespoon of chia seeds 1 garlic clove 1/8 teaspoon of sea salt 1/8 teaspoon of fresh ground pe...

With so much going on lately, I have felt really scattered and unfocused. I haven't had much time left at the end of the day to do anything creative but just today, I managed to finish an art quilt that I have been working on for a while. You might recognize this first picture from this post back in March. I started with fusible interfacing and some silk and cotton scraps from various other projects, and began creating a background by just playing around with the overall layout. Once I was satisfied, I filled in the holes with more scraps in a contrasting color and then ironed the pieces to the interfacing to hold everything together. In this process, I was careful to maintain the frayed edges of my fabric scraps in order to keep them as part of the composition. Next I began experimenting with free motion quilting technique, using an orange thread to contrast the fabric pieces. This was my first attempt at free motion quilting ever! I like the end result but I had...

I recently returned to the idea of completing my thesis (and therefore my MA in Geography). Literally just a couple of days ago, after about 10 months of hemming and hawing over what I had written and what I still have left to do and thoughts of maybe scrapping the entire thing to find another topic, I decided that it's time. And I'm serious. And this level of seriousness calls for cookies. This is one of my favorite cookie recipes of all time. It's simple to make and the cookies have such a wonderful texture to them once they're baked and even after they have cooled off. The original recipe came from the side of a shipping box from Vitacost , of all places. It caught my eye immediately because it's gluten-free. The original recipe has no flour whatsoever, which had me intrigued. Here is my slightly-tweaked version of these oh-so-yummy-tasty-mouth-watering morsels of chocolate chippy goodness. Ingredients; 1 cup of nut butter (I used almond butter but an...