Drawstring bag

Lately I feel as though I've started a dozen things and not finished any of them. I have WIPs sitting all over the house. But today I started AND completed a little project.

Just to be clear, I did NOT make
this muslin for the fitted jacket!

Back in May I got a new sewing machine, but I haven't had a chance to even open the box, the summer and fall were so crazy. It's been years since I sewed anything, so I had nothing in particular driving me. But now... my youngest needs a costume in about three weeks' time, and I'm out of practice and unfamiliar with the machine. A very skilled sewer and wonderful person is doing the design work, but I'll have to take her model and use it to construct the costume, which is a sort of a steampunky Victorian-inspired dress. Petticoat, skirt, draped apron, fitted jacket.


I was watching a free mini-class at Craftsy which was about different sewing machine feet (a great refresher) and spotted another free mini-class on basic bag making. Whee!

I had some quilting cotton around, so...






...I made a
drawstring bag. It's lined, with a sturdy channel for the drawstrings.

The first attempt at making a drawstring in matching fabric was a failure - I think the pull cord made from folded bias tape was too wide, so I sewed too close to the edge. So instead, I used a couple of lengths of four-strand braided twine from a macrame disaster a few months ago for the drawstrings. That worked!

Later, I managed to make a drawstring anyway, by using a length of twine as the pull cord instead of the folded bias tape. Couldn't let the failure go. Re-learning sewing and learning this new machine have both been frustrating today, but finishing a simple little sewing project and succeeding on the drawstring felt good.

My skilled sewist friend set me some homework so that when I get to the fitted jacket bust curve, I don't screw it up. I am to sew spheres from felt, as it's a forgiving fabric. Since it's the winter holiday of course I feel more ambitious than that, and I'm going to make a snowman.

Sweet Potato Chocolate Cake and Soul-Destroying Custard

I just finished a sweet potato chocolate cake for my daughter's birthday. I loosely based it on a recipe from Betty Bake.

First, I roasted sweet potatoes. Mmm! That caramelizes them. Then, I put 1/3 cup dry baking cocoa, 5-6 tablespoons of coconut cream, and a dash of salt into a bowl and microwaved it 10 seconds at a time, whisking between each heating, until it looked smooth.

Then I beat together 3 eggs, a cup of mixed coconut and olive oil, and a cup of brown sugar. When that was fluffy, I added in about a cup of mashed roasted sweet potatoes.

Then I added in the melted chocolate mix. After all three were well mixed, I added in one at a time: about an eighth of a cup more dry baking cocoa, a teaspoon each of baking powder and baking soda, a good dash of salt, a cup of mixed brown and white rice flour, and a half cup of tapioca starch.


The batter was very thick and sticky. Poured it into a prepared 10" pan and baked at 325 for 25 minutes. It turned out really well, a delicious, dense cake a little like a cake brownie.

I tried to make a custard to go with it, but that was a disaster. I'm not sure what went wrong.

I used two quarts of almond milk and six tablespoons of vanilla extract, and heated it to a low boil. I took it off the heat, and slowly added in a whisked mix of 6 eggs, 8 tablespoons of maple syrup, 3 tablespoons of rice flour, 4 tablespoons of tapioca flour. It started to thicken, and I stirred, and everything seemed to be going well. I put it back on the heat on low, and stirred for a few minutes, but it didn't get any thicker. Nothing. I added one more whisked egg. Nothing. I added another whisked egg. Still nothing. I added another tablespoon of tapioca blended with a little dribble of water. Nothing. It was almond vanilla maple egg soup.

Despair.

After consulting Google on "custard problems" and "how to rescue custard" I realized the chemistry was more complex than I'd thought. No saving it. At least it hadn't curdled.Yet.

I dumped two packets of plain gelatin in, whisked hard, and put it in a covered bowl in the fridge. I don't know how to describe it now. It's some sort of gloopy suspension of particles.

Tastes good, I guess.We spooned it over the cake as a sauce.

Felting and spicy maple pecans

Most of my work projects wrapped up in the last two weeks, so I've been head-down on that lately.

I've found some time to continue working on the felting projects, though I'm struggling with the knitting side of the experiment. Until I can get a consistent loose stitch knitting, I don't think I'll be able to create a fabric suitable for felting, so that's a work in progress.

I've made these pecans three times this week. The first two times I used honey instead, and not quite enough spice. Still good! This last one is deliciously maple-flavored. My oven heats unevenly, so I've burned a good number of them each time, which is disappointing.

Felting prep

I've continued to work on the afghan off and on, but since I keep having obsessional felt-project thoughts, I switched to some experimenting in that area today.

I've felted a couple of crochet pieces before with an eye to making a padded drum bag, but I haven't been entirely satisfied with them. Perhaps crochet stitches aren't as conducive to felting as knitting stitches in general, or perhaps it was that I was using double crochet stitches rather than the half-double which is said to be the best crochet stitch for felting. Or maybe I crochet too tightly.

In this red felted crocheted circle, which I do use to pad drum heads but have yet to incorporate into any fitted cover, the stitches are still too well defined for me to be happy. Bucky likes it, though. He's a little weird about wool. I've often wondered how he'd react to a whole sheep.



I poked around in my stash and found this nice harvest-berry colored ball of thick and thin fiber. It crunched like wool when I squeezed it, and the fibers seemed loose, so I thought it might work for a felting trial. When I put a snippet through the burn test, it smelled like wool and the flame went out immediately, but then left a hard black lump. I thought maybe it was a wool acrylic blend, but when I pressed on the lump, it shattered into powder all over my desktop and working papers. Ugh. Well, at least that question is answered - it's wool.

I thought I'd knit a big swatch instead of crocheting it, and see how that turned out. Ha ha! That was optimistic. It's been more than a year since I practiced knitting. By row 2 my stitches were too tight to get the needle tip in. Riiip!

One crochet swatch with a more-or-less N sized hook (about #14 needle), and one knit swatch with #10 needles (about J hook). I think the crochet swatch will still turn out to be thicker when felted due to the thicker stitch, despite the larger hook size.
pix pending