girl needs her nice leather…case | Ask Metafilter.

Tracy Reese: For The Bold, Girly Sophisticate In You. I love the polka dotted dress, #13.

Parlour Party Old Fashioned Celebration Garland available at Delight.com. This is so pretty, and reusable too. I like the idea of sending somebody the extra Happy Birthday garland as a really cool birthday card.

shelterrific » kymera magic wand casts a spell on your tv. Snicker at the name a bit then wonder at how cool it will be to change the channel on your TV using a magic wand.

Case-Mate I.D. iPhone Case | Uncrate. This is for all the people I know who slide their IDs into the back of their iPhone covers already.

The best bubble-blowers on the market. – Slate Magazine.

The Small Object: The Miniature Mustache Magnet. See also the Stick ‘Em Up Scratch Pad

swissmiss | 2010 Year Planner.

I’m seeking out waffles in Seattle. I want to find a few examples of good, or correct, texture, in this case the toppings are not important. Here’s why: we were given an expensive waffle maker recently and after using it a few times I’m fairly convinced it doesn’t actually work that well. But, before I condemn it I’d like to have an ideal waffle texture to compare, a control group if you will.

Here is what I have so far:

– Arosa in First Hill, according to Yelp Hans came out of retirement to serve snack waffles once again.

– Rusty Pelican in Wallingford, a few steps away from my first house in Seattle.

– Vera’s in Ballard.

I’ve also dug up this list at Seattlest and this one from Yelp. I’ve never heard of Walter’s Waffles and wonder if it (still? actually? exists. And I’ll be sure to visit Sweet Iron Waffles this Autumn — “Introducing the Liége Waffle, a sumptuous combination of brioche style dough, pearl sugar and the perfect iron to seal the authenticity of this treat.” Yum.

But I’m hoping to get a first person recommendation for a solid example of a good waffle, got one?

GiantSphereFilter: Help needed creating a 4 foot wide tennis ball. | Ask Metafilter.

Pretty desktop wallpapers | How About Orange.

36 Hours – Cleveland – NYTimes.com.

Probably something you would like… Wednesday Edition : Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm | Hudson Valley Fiber Farm. A bunch of great stuff.

Meta Ask: Share your favourite “Ask X” site for particular specialist topics. | Ask Metafilter.

Clever science-y tricks | Ask Metafilter.

Help me send my friend in Ireland some very American things. | Ask Metafilter.

Bio-Accessories. At Into the Fray. I’m fond of this as a new fangled posie.

I had a great time at BlogHer Food this past weekend. It helped a lot that all the events were located in my old stomping grounds so I (sort of) knew my way around. I stuck to the photography classes for the day since I have this very nice DSLR that I, shamefully, still don’t know how to use properly. I learned a few new things, and heard the phrase “read the manual” in all three classes. (I did! None of it stuck.)

I was grateful to the people in the audience who pushed the question – what is a good light source for those of us who live in places where it is dark in the winter months? The answer was these Lowel EGO tabletop fluorescent lights. They stand on their own and cast light that makes everything look nice. This tip comes from Jaden at Steamy Kitchen, who talks about them and shows off some photos taken with one Lowel EGO and two lights on either side (which she prefers). She also points us to this set of two Lowel EGO lights with a seamless background sweep and set of background papers for $200.

I want to say hello to people met and ran into at the conference. I saw a whole bunch of Seattle people including Gluten-free Girl her husband The Chef and their adorable daughter, Tea and Cookies, Not Without Salt, Savory Sweet Life and Cook & Eat. (Lara taught the Advanced Photography class with Matt Bites and the notes are up right here at Still Life With.)

It was really lovely to run into a few people I’ve met before: Patricia from Brownies For Dinner and Carrie Oliver from Oliver Ranch. And I was pleased to bump into Recipe Girl, The Food Librarian, Just Jen Recipes and Inuyaki. (I know I met more people, but my ailing memory fails me, please email to remind me!)

I was completely overwhelmed to meet Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks whose site I’ve been reading forever, and has been an internet presence longer than that. (Did you know she was one of the people who started ChickClick? Memories!) I practically attacked David Lebovitz in the hallway when I managed to find him in a moment when he wasn’t mobbed by fans. I had a few too many Silver Fox cocktails when I finally got to say hello to Elise of Simply Recipes at the after party. I wish I had found Ree of The Pioneer Woman because I wanted to tell her about my summers spent on my uncle’s ranch outside of Amber, Oklahoma.

A huge, huge thanks goes out to Ugly Green Chair for spending all weekend with me, shuttling me to and from the airport, shopping for emergency jeans, eating at Town Hall, witnessing a girl fight outside of the W (?!), regaling me with tales of Burning Man until late into the night and amusing me on Sunday when we were both too cranky to wait in line for brunch (the brewery was a good idea!). It was so very awesome to finally meet Formation of Me and Shutterbean and it was a huge awesome surprise to meet Joy the Baker. It was a pleasure to get to accidentally rename a cocktail with all of you.

Some thoughts on throwies – Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. I’m glad to read this, though I admit I don’t fully understand most of it. I wondered about this when we were doing LED experiments for the reception.

Making the web faster. at Kottke

Quality Still Matters: Public Radio’s iPhone App | Wired.com. From the article: Another change Shapiro hopes for is that Apple would alter its policy regarding charitable contributions. “Until Apple resolves this gap between their interest in hosting other kinds of financial transactions but not charitable giving, we’ll have to come up with workarounds,” I would be more likely to throw NPR $10 through my iPhone than to call in during the pledge week I usually just avoid. Here is to hoping Apple allows them to accept cash money through their app soon.

Screens and Details of ‘Beneath a Steel Sky’ for iPhone | Touch Arcade.

FingerGaming » Serial Killer Sim Dexter: The Game Debuts in App Store.

FingerGaming » Silent Swords Brings Stealth-Action to the iPhone.

Crystal Cave Classic Review for iPhone | Touch Arcade.

HTML5 For Smarties – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report. The bits of HTML 5 website makers need to know.

Electronic Catan | Ask Metafilter. Question on going about making a game board that triggers game pieces to light up when they are set down.

I’m off to the BlogHer Food conference in San Francisco this weekend. If you’re going to be there say hello. I’ll be the shy one in the corner.

The Perfect Burger – Restaurants – The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper.

Joy the Baker » What the Heck is Farro…?.

Joy the Baker » Peanut Butter Bacon Cookies.

Bacon jam recipe: make it at home | Homesick Texan. via Metafilter.

Apple and Pumpkin Pocket Pie Molds | Williams-Sonoma. I know these are unnecessary, but I think I want them.

Business & Technology | Northwest farmers have banded together to market their own flour | Seattle Times Newspaper. A news story on Shepard’s Grain flour, which they use at Delancey!

Stuffed Bread – Not Without Salt. I must find a reason to make this, love the giant bagel shape.

Coconut Lime Chicken Soup | Joyful Abode.

“Cadbury Creme Brul’egg” from Pie of the Tiger · Edible Crafts.

Sugar Work Lesson 1: Casting Sugar » Pie of the Tiger.

Homemade Vegetarian Marshmallow Peeps » Pie of the Tiger.

What’s the difference between good buttercream icing and old fashioned birthday cake icing? | Ask Metafilter.

Here are the pies entered into the recent Pie Off at Curio Confections here in Seattle. They were all delicious and judging was tough. I was honored to be asked to be a judge along Jessie from Cake Spy and Ashely from Not Without Salt. Thanks go to Maria for such a great event!

(The two images above are two parts of a sweet potato avant garde pie with caramel sauce.)

Let’s take another look at that lattice, shall we?

Shutterfly wants to give you a free 8 x 11 photo book! You can enter by leaving a comment with this entry, if you’d like something to mention tell me what you’d make a photo book of (not necessary if you don’t have something in mind, no worries). The Fine Print applies, I’ll be picking the winner at 12 noon PST on Thursday, September 24th so you only have two days to enter. added: Note: you will have to pay for shipping.

Why the hurry? The code for the photo book ends on September 30th. But don’t worry, Shutterfly gave me a code to use myself and I assembled a photo book of us getting hitched in Vegas for my mom. The book took one evening to assemble and, I’ll echo Mighty Girl here, the largest chunk of that time was deciding which photographs to use.

Assembling the book was easier than I expected, and there is one feature I highly recommend — the Storyboard feature allows you to load photos onto pages (one here, three there, etc). Then you hit go and it automatically comes up with the best way to display those images on each page (you can change the layout on individual pages later if you’d like). People, this saved me so much time, I was very happy.

One of the things I was looking forward to finding the time to do post-reception was finally getting to eat at Delancey. Delancey, if you don’t know, is the restaurant opened by Brandon (whom you might know as the husband of Molly), and Molly (she who writes Orangette and the author of A Homemade Life). I’ve read updates with anticipation as the restaurant come together, all the delays and triumphs, on Molly’s site and on the Delancey Twitter stream, so the expectation was immense, like going to a rock concert you bought tickets for back in March.

We went under the worst possible conditions. I was hungry verging on angry (we call this hangry), and Scott was tired from getting stuck late at work on a Friday. It was getting dark earlier than we were used to and we had settled into what we shorthand as A Bad Date, an evening where we just accept that the mood will be cranky as neither of us has the energy to cheer the other up but we need to eat and since we are out of the house we might as well have dinner. Delancey, however, is magic and banished all traces A Bad Date. We left elated.

We were lucky enough to get seats at the bar where you can observe the pizza making in action and saw how much care they put into everything. The food was amazing and they truly love everything they offer. The service was warm and caring and they took fantastic care of us.

We got the burrata (you need to eat this, Molly talks about it here) and the very last of the tomato and corn salad before the season ends. I do wish we’d also had room for the vegetable salad made from things they had pickled themselves. We got two pizzas (each pizza could feed two, but we don’t shy away from leftovers) and the proscuitto was outstandingly yummy. The house made fennel sausage, however, was the one Scott was still talking about 24 hours later. (Our plan is to find a way to bribe them to have an available supply of fennel sausage somehow appear in our fridge on a weekly basis.) It was too dark to get a picture of the plum crumble we shared for dessert, but let’s just take a moment to remember how good it was. Molly is sweet enough to offer up the recipe.

Scott and I live in an area of Seattle sometimes called Garlic Gulch due to the number of Italian immigrants that settled here. It’s easier for us to get wood fired pizza than any other food, and we’ve had a lot of it. I say without hesitation that the pizza at Delancey is the best I’ve eaten.

I was pleased (and not at all surprised) to find a table full of Tea and Cookies, Simply Recipes, Not Without Salt, Seattle Bon Vivant and Savory Sweet Life relaxing after attending the Food Snap conference that day. It was the coolest to run into you all!

The other thing I took note of was the din of the happy diners. Delancey is small but the good mood was amazing. It was clear that everything was just right with the world for everybody there. Brandon and Molly have put a tremendous amount of love into Delancey and it translates very clearly, kudos!

I’ll be attending the Pie Off at Curio Confections this Sunday, I’m pretty excited. I won’t be entering a pie since I have nothing I know well enough to have ready between now and then. You can come too! It’s a $5 fee (prize money) to either enter a pie or just come and eat some. Sunday, 3 p.m., Curio Confections at 5509 University Way NE, Seattle. More details on the Events page on the Curio site.

This is cool, as part of the new Repro Depot stuff for Chronicle Books they are releasing two different surface pattern books with a CD containing patterns you can use to make your own stationery, crafts and anything you can think of. They have Folk and Flora, both with a foreword from Grace Bonney of Design*Sponge. The collection also includes stationary, notecards and a journal.

Here are the apps and games I love right now:

• TweetDeck You know, for Twitter.
• Monkey Island I never played the original and am digging playing this. You can switch between the new graphics and the original ones. I think the music is new as well.
• Spider, The Secret of Bryce Manor Super wonderful game, with a deeper mystery going on so playing it through a second time is still interesting. Spooky and a bit touching.
• Kindle for iPhone It isn’t as pleasurable to use as Stanza, but the ability to buy books easily has won over a few times.
• Skype for the iPhone Setting this up was easy and I was conferencing with no trouble.
• NPR News If only they had a “skip this segment” button. I think that is coming, then it will be the greatest thing of all things ever.
• Geared A nicely done gear arranging game. (I think it’s about to jump in price when new levels are added).

I consider it lucky that the post office had these love themed stamps that went well with our envelopes but don’t scream Wedding. They are also very appropriate for us since we ran off and got married in Vegas. Thank you, post office.

Here are the details on the Grassroots meeting coming up tomorrow (Wednesday night), see you there?

Small Business Owner Panel Discussion

Wednesday, Sept 16th, 7 p.m. at the Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122

Thinking of opening up a small business? Already have one and looking to expand? Want to be in the papers? Magazines? Don’t know how to start your brick and mortar? Find out from some pros. We will have a small panel discussion with a variety of small business owners. The panel will include the owners of Vain, Yellow Leaf Cupcakes and Immortal Dog.

Read more and let us know you’re coming!