Gifting a good feeling

I am completely besotted at the moment with the way making something captures and transmits positive energy.

I know that sounds weird, but surely you've dropped in at a friend's just in time to share fresh-baked cookies and chat and then gone home feeling just a little bit better than you did before? Or at least, enjoyed a meal as a guest at somebody else's house and come home with a little extra happiness to balance out the house envy?

(please tell me I'm not the only person who notices that everyone else has a bigger or better-organized kitchen and more space for books.)

In fact I am thinking about this phenomenon so much I can't help wondering whether I'm finally being led back to the little cluster of short stories I was writing before the inspiration dried up about 14 months ago and reappeared in the general region of knitting and sewing.

Hey, at least I'm creating something, right?

The side effect of all this is that every time I see a present-giving opportunity on the horizon, I want to make that present, or at least source it from somebody else who made it (most likely the genius woman behind tiny happy - the happy sewn into her things has lasted, in the case of the things I've bought for myself, for nearly a year already with no sign yet of evaporating.)

And that brings me to today's discovery: bread bags sewn from cotton or linen tea towels.

Of which I have a few, one of which looks like this and would probably sew up into a bag big enough to store 2 loaves and a dozen rolls:


Yes. Based on the mere thought of bread bags I would seriously consider repurposing even the Easter cutie, never mind that fresh bread has never lasted long enough in my house to need storage of any kind.

Worse, SouleMama is inspiring overall and now I want to make my own fresh pasta too. And buy more sewing books.

What else is new?

Heart-o-meter week 1

For me, Valentine's Day might as well be dedicated to the universal love of chocolate, rather than to love for any particular person. It's a celebration of the feeling of love, however it comes to you.


A day isn't really enough to mark a thing like that, so I thought I'd do something to celebrate Valentine's Day every Wednesday for the whole month of February. And what I decided to do is track the number of views for two of my most-frequented love-related YouTube videos.

(in my world, this is perfectly logical.)

Okay, first up: The Love Shack. Who wouldn't love this? It's been up for 8 months.
Arbitrarily-timed view count for February 3, 2010: 895,524

And just for contrast: Affairs of the Heart. The video isn't so thrilling as that of the B52s, but the music.... ahhhhh. And, okay, it's been up for a year.
Arbitrarily-timed view count for February 3, 2010: 7,567

Tune in next week when we see which one wins in weekly views. Think tortoise and hare, people!

The essentials

Back when I was being executor for my dad's cousin's widow and her third husband and clearing out their house after said husband's death, I found these tins in his workshop - full of odd screws and nails, of course:


Having worked in public relations and ad design I couldn't bear to throw them out; they are such masterpieces of Sales Pitch. Check out the heart on the front of the tobacco tin! And the big green bow on the 'Blue Ribbon' coffee! I look at that thing and see dressed-up couples gathering for festive rounds of bridge - do you think it was a special Christmas edition?

I also love the way the side view wasn't wasted:


I'm guessing the market for roll-your-own tobacco was mostly male, what with the legs on that girl, while coffee purchases were made by women - women who cared about quality.

Ah, don't we all?

Even the ones who define the essentials as milk and chocolate.

Cookie monster

I didn't sew this weekend and boy, did I notice it! No old movies, no nesting in the sewing room, no messy absorbing project that carries over from Saturday afternoon into Sunday supper... no way am I skipping that again.

But I did make cookies. Not my mother's recipe, but a different one that more people like: Toll House. And here is why I don't make Toll House cookies:


It's a big cookie tin, folks, and it's full. It's full after the four-person taste test feeding frenzy. A recipe that makes 7 dozen cookies has no place filling the tin of a person who works from home.

And yes, I do know that Toll House cookies freeze well.

Did you know that a frozen Toll House cookie is unspeakably delicious?

Good thing I'm seeing the trainer today... I can unload a few on her.

In related news, here's a glimpse into the dark recesses of my mind:


This probably looks like an egg carton to you. But to me, it's a persistent flashback to a tiny time-lapse vignette on a 1970s episode of Sesame Street, in which a child's hand reaches across the screen to fill the empty slots in an egg carton with Oreo cookies. The point was to teach viewers to count to twelve. The impact on me was to make me think of places to put cookies.

Or rather, not to put cookies. Even now, it's kind of a can't look, can't look away situation. Cookies in an egg carton - sort of cool! and yet not, because - Why would anybody put cookies into an egg carton?? They go in your mouth!

Scarred by Sesame Street... who'd have thought?

How to make my mum's chocolate chip cookies

When I was a kid, everybody went to Walsh's house for Kool-Aid and Keenan's for chocolate chip cookies. Since this is a Friday in January and I'm sure we could all use a lift, I thought I'd share the recipe that explains why.

The secret ingredient: coffee. (maybe we loved them because we got hooked on the caffeine?) You could probably use liquid but mum found this recipe in the 1950s so naturally it calls for instant:


Evidently I will be making quite a lot of these cookies this winter, since I seldom drink coffee and never drink instant.

The first thing is to haul out your mixing gear. I particularly enjoy my bucket of ludicrously expensive measuring cups - they've paid for themselves three times over in the two years since I got them just by making flour-scooping a therapeutic experience.


Another indulgence: vintage Pyrex mixing bowls like mum always used. Took a while to track down all the sizes but I love them and use them all the time.


And now that we're set up, it's time to cream the butter and brown sugar.


I let the mixer take care of that while I crush the coffee with the back of a spoon,


and then add it to the flour mixture.


It looks like a real mess by the time you get all the ingredients together but the aroma? Pure heaven.


You just drop them with a couple of teaspoons onto a cookie sheet.


Then let most of them cool while you do taste tests on the lucky remainder.


Mum's cookie tin is pretty battered now and she was actually about to throw it out when I snagged it for myself. Which means I could take a picture of it for you if I wasn't so lazy (sorry!)

I don't use it though, because I found my own special tin about twenty years ago. I tuck the cookies up in that,



And then I close the lid.


Isn't this a breathtaking image? I keep thinking I'll get so distracted by staring at it I'll forget there are cookies inside, but so far - no.


Mrs. Keenan's Chocolate Chip Cookies (makes 6 dozen)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Sift together
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp instant coffee, crushed to a powder

Cream
1 cup of butter

Blend in
1 cup lightly-packed brown sugar

Add
1 egg and beat in thoroughly

Stir in
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips

Add the flour mixture to the butter/egg mixture by spoonfuls, mixing well each time.

Drop batter by teaspoonfuls onto greased (or nonstick) cookie sheets, then bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

The trouble with tribbles

The other day I wrote about my ill-fated trip to the fabric store, and then left us all at the edge of a cliff.

Well, partway down the cliff was a ledge just wide enough for the following experience: the first attempt at sewing tribble-like Things.


As you can see, there are a good few supplies needed for such an endeavor. The actual process though is simple:


With a needle and, assuming you have foresight, contrasting thread, sew a running stitch around the outside edge of the square cut earlier.


Pull the thread to gather the square into a pocket.


Fill the pocket with stuffing.

Now draw the thread tight and secure with many many stitches. Using fluffy fabric but think you've sewn enough? Sew more.


The photograph above also shows the contrast betweeen 'Too Furry to Put a Face On' and 'Insufficiently Furry to Hide the Wrinkles.'

I might add that lump number one, the furball, was also insufficiently secured owing to my having perfectly matched the thread to the fabric so that I couldn't tell where I'd sewn. It left tiny fluffs all over everyplace it visited until I noticed and traced its departure path with a lint brush.

Stay tuned, but not on the edge of your chair because this could take a while, for the final installment of our story - the one with the the non-sheddy sewing materials and perfectly turned-out Thing at the end! (even if it means I just draw a picture of the ideal Thing and post that.)

Breakfast of Champions

Somebody I know - can't remember who - used to hold up a bowl of Fruit Loops and say "Breakfast of Champions!", and ever since I've associated the phrase not with hardworking people who set out to accomplish great things and start the day as they mean to go on, but with self-indulgent people who know what they like and just have it.

I'd much rather be the latter than the former, wouldn't you? But only if it means breakfasting on something like this instead:


Hard for me to trick myself into thinking I'm all noble and virtuous about what I'm eating if I'm looking down at sugar-encrusted artificially-flavoured and -coloured hunks. (note: this is not a problem when I'm looking down at chocolate, or slatherings of butter and honey apparently.)

Related thought, again with The Morville Hours. I know, I know, I'm taking forever to read this book and should probably stop quoting bits from it...

but honestly, how many garden books tell you that serotonin and noradrenalin don't just control mood, but also our sense of salt and bitterness?

Apparently if you're stressed or depressed, you may find you can't grasp either of those flavours (and oversalt your food etc.) or you may be one of the lucky ones whose sense of sweet is tied to those chemicals, leading you to eat too many Froot Loops.

But not chocolate, of course. You can't eat too much of that.