The Wine Offensive is the last person in Seattle to realize that barista is Project-Runway-Blayne, I say this with love! Love you The Wine Offensive!

It's nearly Park-ing Day (see the bottom of that post). I hope there is a space near us. More here at Rainier Valley Post.

Here's one for Dan Savage's files: Rottweiler fights pit bull to save boy

Neal Stephenson book tour dates for the release of Anathem


weekend trip planning:

Bike a trail, listen to chamber music in the Methow

Methow trails draw crowds, but solitude's near

Autumn in the Methow: Where road biking feels like hiking

Travel for Beer: The Methow Valley

really beautiful scrap bag at M. Patrizio Illustrations

So you want to study Knitwear? at Making Things

The Association of Sewing and Design Professionals

Know Your Weaves II at True Up

reusable sandwich wrap at The Small Object

Free Gift Box Templates at Bleu Arts

Help Create a Worldwide Map of Local Fabric Stores at True Up

The Thrifty Knitter has pictures of just shorn alpaca, they're adorably skinny

How to Make Japanese Papercraft Boxes at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Where I Buy Decorative Paper


at Craftzine:

crocheters on the quest to interview Joss Whedon

BurdaStyle Launches How To Series

yoga mat strappy sandals made by Sami Sue

How To Make a Vintage Fabric Basket with Grommets at Perpetual Plum

How To Make A Post Office Bag at Elsie Marley

How To Cut Rags for Knitting at Coco Knits

How To Make a Pinch Pouch at The Small Object

I got a Vermont Country Store catalog in the mail, the first one in years that I've been sent, and among the treasures from the past the Sweet Earth Solid Natural Fragrances in compacts caught my eye. They are three separate fragrances that you can mix on your skin if you'd like. Looking around a little these were originally made by Coty, the ones sold by the Vermont Country Store are reproductions, and I've found some good memories and some excitement to see that they are back. They have Woods (sandalwood, amberwood, patchouli), Flowers (hyacinth, honeysuckle, ylang-ylang), Rare Flowers (tuberose, jasmine, mimosa) and Grasses (clover, gingergrass, hay). I'm intrigued by these. Does anybody remember them?

The kind people at Chronicle Books have offered two copies of Amy Butler's Little Stitches for Little Ones. It's a fantastic book, filled with clothing, toys and accessories for baby and for you. (There is a bag I'd like to make for myself.) The book is very sturdy with a pocket to hold the patterns, clear illustrated instructions and a spiral binding so it will stay open on it's own. Projects are marked on a scale of easy to difficult, but everything is equally charming.









If you'd like a chance to win a copy of Amy Butler's Little Stitches for Little Ones please leave a comment with this entry. The winners have been notified, thanks to everybody for entering! The usual fine print applies. I'll let the Random Number Generator choose the winners at 12 noon PST on Monday, September 1st.

Good luck!

The Bring & Brag event at The Lab at Velocity Art and Design here in Seattle last week was fantastic. The Lab's site will have a list of all the bragees soon but two that really stood out for me were Suspect and Fugitive, a year long project combining edible or temporary materials with fantastically bad puns, and Good Stock, custom books made from family photographs and writings. I suspect we'll be seeing Good Stock will be in Martha Stewart Weddings magazine before not too long.

Also! You can listen to the recordings of past Labs here. You can also sign up to receive the Lab podcasts on the main page.

Our laundry room is cramped and has two doors which access it, so if you leave the hard plastic cheapo laundry basket we used to have sitting on the floor and exit via door #1, somebody coming through door #2 would find the door was blocked by the basket. This made for a bit of unnecessary frustration. I thought all was hopeless until I came across this laundry basket at a Storables. It's tall and holds a lot, but most excellently it is flexible, so not only are you able to grab it by the handles to take it downstairs but it will squeeze out of the way of door #2. Also, you will not bruise your shin if you stumble into it while moving laundry through the very cramped laundry room. Yay.



Seriously though, being able to carry it like a large tote makes it really easy to bring up and down stairs, rendering all other laundry baskets useless to me.

I've been meaning to follow up on making the NYTimes chocolate chip cookies (here on the NYTimes site) but the weather turned too hot for cookies for a while there.

So, to catch up, I finally located the Valhrona feves that the recipe mentions at a Whole Foods. They were fun to locate, they are not in the baking aisle, not the chocolate aisle, not the bulk foods aisle. No, these were displayed in front of the aged cheese cave. But of course. Now, I get it, dark chocolate, good cheese and wine go together but I felt like an idiot for a while there.



The Valhrona feves are huge. I used larger than normal chocolate chips the first time, but I worried these would simply be too large for the cookies. Here is a picture of a feve scoop next to a chip scoop:



The special thing in this recipe is that you let the dough sit chilling in the fridge for 36 hours before you form and bake the cookies. This allows the dough to absorb all the liquid and reportedly gives a caramel-y depth of flavor to the cookies. I read a lot of people suggesting you form the dough into scoops before you chill it and I wondered if this was missing the point. So, I made one batch of dough and pre-scooped half of it, left the rest in the bowl and let everything chill for a couple of days. Then I scooped the remaining dough, and froze half of the pre-scooped and half of the post-scooped dough, just to see if scoops out of the freezer would make noticeably different cookies. It didn't, so that whole step was beside the point.

Anyhow! There was a difference between the halves of dough. The dough that was pre-scooped was noticeably lighter in color than the dough left to chill in the bowl:



This batch, sadly, spread too much when baked and I know why, it was too warm the night (way back) that I made the dough. Not pretty, but they still taste good. We, amateur cookie tasters that we are, couldn't taste a difference between the pre and post-scooped dough.



Obviously I'll have to do another batch to see if I can get the consistency right next time. Valhrona feves, by the way, are expensive. I used just under a pound, and that seemed like it was a lot of chocolate so you could probably get away with a little less. I prefer the flavor of the Valhrona chocolate, but I think Scott liked the Ghirardelli chips a bit better. Either way, yum.

Yesterday Scott and I found ourselves in a Target so new that Google Maps refused to believe that the address existed (so much for the convenience of being able to look up driving directions on the iPhone). While we were looking for the aisle where the doomsday-sized packages of Ivory soap are kept we passed some things marked clearance in the kitchen area. So, we bought a big 2 quart brother for the tiny 1 quart saucepan I bought a while back instead of spending a lot more on a shinypretty All-Clad. I'm giving some serious consideration to the 3 quart saute pan with a lid, something we've been improvising a lot lately by wrapping a splatter screen in tin foil and weighing it down with a plate. An actual lid would be way safer than our current method, don't you think?

So, while the Calphalon Kitchen Essentials aren't quite as sexy as All-Clad I've been pretty darn happy with the one I have. If you need a saucepan I can recommend getting yourself to a Target and seeking out one of these while they are on sale. The 2 quart size is on sale for $28 (instead of $40) and I forget the sale price on the 1 quart size, though I think I bought mine for $17 earlier this year. They are heavy enough to hold heat nicely and clean up easily and, happily, these are dishwasher safe.