Sunday, December 28, 2008

Cross stitch

I've been doing cross stitch since college, when Rachel helped me complete my first project, a snowman wall hanging from a kit. That project took two days total to stitch and assemble.


Then I started a scene with killer whales, also from a kit, which took about 5 years, give or take. It took so long mostly because I would spend months (or years) not working on it all. Once I finally finished the whales they became a gift to my mom.


In 2005 the whales were followed by butterflies on a background of flowers, still in progress. It's my first project that is not a kit, so I had to buy all the individual colors I needed, including several colors of "Glissen Gloss" thread that I couldn't find in a store and ended up ordering online. They give the butterflies a wonderful shimmer, but they fray very easily and I can guarantee you that they are frustrating enough to work with that my next project will use only normal thread. I made a lot of progress on the butterflies in the last 3 months before I left LA, since I had shipped almost all worldly possessions to the garage at my parents place. I had no bed, no chairs, no TV. My realtor left a small camp chair at my place for her to use during open houses, and I sat there and did cross stitch most evenings. I also worked on the butterflies when I first moved back to Nor Cal, until I adopted the kittens, and I became concerned that the moving thread would be too tempting for them. And then Patrick came along, and I spent most of my extra time with him. Now, after some encouragement from Mom, I've started working on it again, while he's watching a football or hockey game in the evening I can sit on the couch with him and stitch. I'd like to document my progress on this blog to encourage myself to keep working, so here it is, as of 12/23:

There are 4 butterflies total, the cross stitch is done on the bottom one and most of the second, but you can hardly tell where the 3rd is going to be, and the fourth hasn't even been started. I realized this past week that one of my colors of Glissen Gloss is going to run out before I can even finish the butterfly I'm working on. When it does I plan to leave gaps and move on to the other colors until I can tell for sure what I need to order to complete the project. Once the cross stitch part is done, I have to go back and do the backstitching, and it seems like there's a lot of it on this project.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Ice Cream Cake Mess

In response to my last post, Rachel sent me the link to a webpage with beautiful, intricately decorated desserts: http://bakerella.blogspot.com/. It inspired me to make a cake for Mom's birthday last week. I didn't want to do a frosted cake with two layers and filling, so I tried to make an ice cream cake. It turned out reasonably well, other than a little bit of the melted vanilla ice cream making its way through the frosting. And in case you're wondering, that dark splotch is a butterfly made of cake crumbs (I copied the idea of using crumbs as decoration from some cupcakes in the Williams-Sonoma catalog):





The whole thing tasted fine, but it lacked the sophisticated, professional appearance I was going for. In case anyone else is thinking about making one, I'll share my technique and some lessons learned.
1) I started with a box of chocolate cake mix and made a single 9" cake (I used the excess batter to make some back-up cupcakes in case things went really wrong).
2) I cooled the cake on the counter, then in fridge, then the freezer. My first tip for success would be to not try to do make the whole ice cream cake in one night, because I think completely freezing the cake would have made things easier.
3) Once the cake was reasonably cool, I cut off the top to make it level (my cakes are always shaped like little volcanoes), set it on the platter (in my case it was a dinner plate) and put my 9" springform pan wall around it.
4) I had thawed some ice cream on the counter (next time I'll thaw it in the fridge to make it a more uniform consistency, not frozen in the middle and liquid on the outside). I used a spatula to spread the ice cream over the cake, making a layer about as thick as the cake portion. I put it in the freezer for a while to resolidify.
5) In the meantime I made some whipped cream (whipping cream + powdered sugar + a few minutes with my wonderful stand mixer). I removed the springform wall from the cake and started frosting and decorating it. This is where things went wrong. I knew it was extremely important to keep it cold, but I was having fun with the decorating and I was running out of time, and before I knew it I had little runnels of ice cream breaking through the whipped cream. Looking back I really should have paused between the frosting and the decorating and put it back in the freezer for a while.

Okay, I've wasted enough time at work, my boss said we should leave by noon (since it's Christmas Eve).

Merry Christmas!

Saturday, December 13, 2008

"Do you prefer flowers or chocolate?"

I prefer flowers made of chocolate...

My favorite entries in R's blog are about desserts, so I'm going to steal her idea and post some photos of the most attractive desserts I've consumed recently.

At my work's holiday party in November they had several kinds of desserts, but the most beautiful (and tastiest) by far were the tulips: white and dark chocolate petals, chocolate mousse filling, and little dark chocolate spheres sprinkled on top.



Last week when I got to work this box of chocolates was sitting on my desk, a Christmas gift from my boss's boss, made by his wife. She makes candy as a hobby (although she's considering starting her own business) and periodically her husband brings in samples for us to try. I think he's trying to get us hooked...



...it's working...

Friday, December 12, 2008

Thanksgiving

So, it's probably time for a second post ... but I wouldn't want to rush into anything.

Just before the first post I was in Denver for Thanksgiving (with P's family), and I had a great (and slightly chilly) time. I got to see prarie dogs and snow, two things we don't have in Sebastopol. Technically, we do get snow on the ground every 20-30 years, but I was living in LA for the only time it's happened in my lifetime.

Day 1 (Wednesday): We left the house at 3am, just after I realized that we were flying out of San Francisco, not Oakland. I had been telling everyone the wrong airport, including P! We started off the visit to Colorado with our traditional feast at Chipotle. It's P's favorite restaurant and there aren't any within about an hour drive of home, so we make up for it when we travel. After that we visited the Columbine Memorial and walked around the lake, watching the prarie dogs and chatting (it was the four of us: P, me, and P's parents). We stayed with them in Littleton for the first two nights of the trip.
Day 2 (Thursday) : We drove to Boulder on Thanksgiving Day for some sightseeing and dinner at P's aunt's house. She has a beautiful house right up against the foothills with tons of windows and a great view of the city lights at night. There was a lot of delicous food and conversation with relatives, but since I'm not including the names or photos of people at this point, there's not much else I can say about it.
Day 3 (Friday): The day after Thanksgiving we took the long way through the mountains to P's aunt's cabin in Eldora. Lunch was at Beau Jo's pizza in Idaho Falls, very tasty "mountain style" pizza. Then we stopped in Central City to gamble for a an hour or so (I put $1 in a penny slot machine - I bet one penny at a time - and left with $2.75, a 175% return on my investment!). The photo below is of pretty much the whole town, the casino we went to was one of the old-fashioned, multi-story buildings straight ahead.


It started snowing as we got closer to the cabin, not too hard, mostly the wind was just stirring things up.
Day 4 (Saturday): In the morning it was really windy and snowy (notice the tree with all the branches on one side and the covered rental car).
We flew out later that day, and, although I had fun when I was there, the constant action wore me out and I was glad to be home and very glad we had Sunday to recover before returning to work. We left home at 3am Wednesday and got back at about 1:30am Sunday, so the whole trip took just under 4 days!

Monday, December 1, 2008

Seven years in four paragraphs

I don't have an account on myspace, I still don't know how to text, but after years of enjoying other people's blogs I finally have my own! I was fascinated by my grandmother's Depression-era journal that I read recently, and I'm hoping that although my life may not seem very exciting now, maybe it will in the future. Also, I have so many people from Tech that I would like to keep in touch with, but I never write to them, regardless of how many times I make it a New Year's resolution to keep in touch. I'm thinking that general posts may be easier than multiple individual emails. And I love reading the blogs of people I went to school with, especially my former roommate R who always has great posts on delicious-looking desserts, and the ones with kids now, like Eeep, L&M, K&D, and J&C.

Here's an update of what I've been doing since I finished college: I worked for Boeing in LA for 4+ years, eventually moving to Culver City after I was laid off and rehired by a different part of Boeing. In early 2006 I sold my condo, moved back to rural Nor Cal where I was born and raised, and bought my grandparent's place from my parents. It's ~4 acres with a 50-year-old house that my grandpa built himself, plus half a dozen other structures (barns, etc) that are in varying states of disrepair. The plan is to build a new place on the property in a few years, the actually date will be depend on how the housing and stock markets behave. Shortly after moving to the country, I adopted two kittens, a brother and sister, both black and white, named Sam and Sophie. They're grown now, but they'll continue to be my only babies for a few years until we build a place suitable for less furry children.

I left Boeing on a Friday and started working for Medtronic the next Monday, first in Supplier Quality, and now as a Design Assurance Engineer. My first week at MDT I didn't know anyone in the cafeteria, so I sat next to a couple guys who looked like they would be friendly (it didn't hurt that the younger one was quite good looking). It turned out that the older one was the manager of the younger one, Patrick. After 6 months of me flirting shamelessly, P finally asked me out and we've been together ever since. We got married in Vegas in January of this year, so we've almost been married a year. It's been a busy one: we had receptions in Denver and Sebastopol in April (one for each side of the family), finally moved in together in May, and my sister got married and had a baby this year. I still haven't seen my new nephew, since they're currently living in the UK with her husband's family, but they're planning to move to Eugene next summer, so I should get to see the little guy then. I also acquired a brother-in-law and a niece when I married, but they're in North Carolina, so I don't get to see them much, either!

So, that's what's been going on in my life for the last few years. I'll try to keep this up with regular posts, hopefully I'll be better about posting than emailing!