I have loved the stuff at Loop-d-Loop for a while now and I’m excited to see Teva Durham has put out a book!

I recently discovered that I love oatmeal. I don’t know how I made it through my life so far without ever having actual oatmeal. I mean, I’ve had a few packets of sickly flavored instant oatmeal (my favorite being the kind with tiny brown sugar treasure chests that melt to reveal tinier candy keys and jewels, but I didn’t love that for the taste, I loved that because it was the food equivalent of a kids video game). But for the last few weeks I’ve been eating steel cut oats and I love it despite the time it takes to prepare. Next week I’m going to experiment with oatmeal and dried fruit pairings, I’m ridiculously excited about this.

Yesterday I bought myself a really early birthday present – KitchenAid stand mixer, hooray! I got the basic basic model because I know I won’t be using it all that often, very likely just for cupcake frosting and Christmas cookies, and because it’s on super sale at Amazon, at least I hope it’s a really good price. It was on sale enough for me to forgive it for not being orange. Found via the Cooking For Engineers Deals Blog, whom I thank greatly.

These design student concepts for new candy and confectionery are charming. The site includes a full explanation of the project and links to more stories. I especially like the pop ups, noobs and trick n eat.

Tricks of the Trade on uses for, brace yourself, nose oil — for beer foam and fly fisherman, for film developers and costumers, and for clockmaker, woodwinds musician, computer consultant, and (oh dear) lip balm.

It’s airtight, colorful, you can jostle it and hold it upside down and it will protect the precious cargo. It is the Cup-A-Cake: The Cupcake Container Of The Future. (Thanks Conny!)

I don’t get too excited over most quilting fabric shops but I had the occasion to visit In The Beginning Fabrics the other week and was impressed. There were lots of neat colorful prints and a great collection of books, notions and tools.

Where to shop for fabric, and park for cheap, in LA.

My first attempt at boiled icing didn’t turn out – it’s too runny, but very yummy. Mmm. I’m going to try to follow this recipe for Lady Baltimore Frosting to the degree and see how it turns out. (Note to self: the recipe I tried today said to boil the sugar mixture to 220, see how this one at 248 compares.) So far I’ve seen recipes called Boiled Icing, Seven Minute Frosting, Divinity, and Lady Baltimore Frosting which all basically have the same instructions. Must investigate.

Otherwise the gloriously long days and MI-5 on DVD are working to distract me from baking experiments.

These laptop bags for woment from Lin&Leo are the nicest I’ve seen so far, but I’d really need to get a laptop to justify buying the bag. More about the bags here at Red Direct. Thanks go to The Bag Lady for finding them.

A bunch of people wrote to point me to the automatic handbag lighting system which you sew into a bag yourself and senses when the bag is open or closed. Pretty neat.

The Kim Hargreaves Out of the Shadows collection is really nice, and I’m not just saying that because all of the patterns use cotton or cotton and silk blend yarns. I especially like Glimmer. Too bad they only come as complete kits, I cannot afford it right now. via Pinku.

I’ve seen a few different handbags with lights inside, including one that had something like an indiglo panel on one inside wall. The other day I found a bag at Target that had one of those tiny squeeze keychain led lights attached to the inside. Definitely something you could rig on your own.

How to freeze cilantro. Includes a little bit of helpful information on the difference between cilantro and coriander.

Korean barbecue dos and don’ts at The Food Section, which I heart.

Saucy magazine recently started up and it’s great. This blurb is from Orangette: “updated daily, Monday through Thursday. Saucy pulls together a bit of something for everyone, from (cook)book and magazine reviews to columns on drinks, gardening, baking, host(ess)ing, and practical cooking. Plus, there’s a cheese of the month feature! If that doesn’t make you happy, you’re just a very picky eater. I hope that you’ll make Saucy a part of your daily rotation.”

scan of the dishes from the Feb/Mar 2005 Budget Living magazine.

update: Thanks to those who wrote in! I have enough people to do two complete swaps but I’m going to leave this post up for posterity — or something like that.

I really like the Essential Home Chromotherapy dish sets from Kmart – you can see the reds and greens online. However, they are sold in sets of 16 pieces all in the same color group — four each of mugs, bowls, salad plates and dinner plates. What I’d like is one place setting of each color (blues, reds, greens and oranges), but I’m not willing to buy four complete sets which would leave me with 64 pieces — 16 bowls, 16 mugs, etc. So, I’m looking for three other people in the Seattle area who are interested in the same dishes. This is the plan, we each buy one complete set of the dishes, then get together and swap so we each end up with four place settings, each in a different color group. The dish sets sell for around $25 each.

This would also work if one other person wanted to get a total of eight place settings. We would each buy two sets of dishes and swap colors, each ending up with two place settings of each color group. Total cost per person would be around $50.

New things!

Todd Oldham’s new craft book Handmade Modern. Lookie! A book jacket quote from Amy Sedaris.

The ever fabulous Knitty has put up it’s Spring Issue.

Lauri Smith of Trading Spaces has a new fabric line at Hancock. Be sure to check out Pacesetter which comes in three colorways. via Design Sponge.