plush you! Originally uploaded by not martha.

Loobylu's Big Kitty at the Plush You! show in Schmancy

This Friday is the opening of the Plush You! show at Schmancy, featuring a bunch of artists including Stuart, of Sew Dorky, maker of fine felt donuts, and Claire of Loobylu and all that Month of Softies goodness. The opening is this Friday, August 12th from 5 to 9 p.m. at Schmancy, 1930 2nd Ave., Seattle. A bit more about the show at Tablet and Seattle Metroblog.

Penzeys Spices is opening a store in Portland. I see more weekend trips in my future.

Unseen improvments have been going on around here. I have added a nice little Feedburner page to the rss link you see over there to the right, I have fixed all (I hope) of the broken images in the archives, and I have put up two not-really-new How To Make pages: itty cupcakes which as been waiting around since March (I know!), and lavender, which just consolidates the photographs of lavender at different stages of development that I had put as individual posts. I have also gotten myself some of that Bloglines goodness, finally.

A while back I wondered about sprinkles vs. jimmies - turns out I certainly wasn't the first. It appears that what you call them is something of a regional thing. This post at The Big Apple sums up nicely all the bits of research I dug up, and answers the question of whether "jimmies" is a rude term (it's not).

ask metafilter on the best places to get mail order spices

the cake bible - mousseline buttercream Originally uploaded by not martha.

"It's definitely not as slimy, but it's still slimy." This felt like it would have piped really nicely. Again, not too sweet, but not a texture I liked having in my mouth. This is uncolored and flavored with vanilla extract.

the cake bible - neoclassic buttercream Originally uploaded by not martha.

Neoclassic Buttercream made from The Cake Bible, uncolored and flavored with 1/2 a vanilla bean and a few teaspoons of vanilla extract. Not sure if I screwed up the sugar syrup part of the recipe but I did not like this very much. It was too soft, too buttery (slimy?). The gentle sweetness was nice, however. Next: Silk Meringue Buttercream.
Note: a 2.25 diameter, 4 tablespoon (1/4 cup) capacity half sphere ice cream scoop is a good size for filling cupcake papers. I exchanged scoops so many times at Sur La Table they told me I could come back and exchange it again, but they weren't required to smile next time.