Happy February!

I have two new crochet patterns for you at Michaels.com. The diagrams are kind of messed up (either missing or out of place), but I’ll see if anything can be done about that!

The first pattern will look familiar: it’s the heart-shaped sugar cookie brooch we do for Valentine’s Day, but it’s the first time I’ve shared the pattern. Go here!

The second pattern is brand new (to me, too!) It’s a Chocolate Truffle Scarf and is inspired by me wanting you to feel like a yummy box of chocolates! Pattern here!

I hope you guys have fun making you and your sweethearts some Valentine’s goodies!

I know I said I would re-open my shop with V-Day stuff on Feb 1, but I found myself caught up in some surprise deadlines! But I will work on finishing up cute stuff this weekend and try to post on Monday. I want to work on a new pattern for a fun new brooch/hair clip, so cross your fingers that the project won’t give me a hard time!!! 😛

Remember, if you guys end up making stuff from my Michaels patterns, let me know! I’d love to see!

I am working on pulling the third out of 3 of this week’s work miracles within the next 18 hours, but let’s take a quick break and check out the super cute cupcake pins that ClaireyLou sent me!

I know you might be all like, “Not another cupcake pin!” but her work is so cute and delicate and ladylike and well-made. You will not be disappointed! I was afraid that I took so long to blog about them, that Claire might think I hated them, but really, I love them and have just been so super crazy lately.

Can you tell that I still haven’t cleaned up my craft room? EEP? Uh, maybe NEXT week!! 😛 In the mean time, check out Claire’s shop and say hello! She has a coupon code right now, too, that ends tomorrow!

My friend is starting up a new crafty blog and asked if I would answer some questions. One of the questions involved a sketch of a certain hat from many many years ago. I didn’t think I would be able to find this random sketch, BUT I DID. In an old Photobucket account. You’ll be able to see this infamous sketch on February 19th when my interview goes live.

I think my sketches are funny because they are really bad, but they are actually really helpful to me while writing crochet patterns and planning ideas. When people commission me to make things for them, I say, “Draw me a sketch!” so I can see what they are talking about, but they say, “I can’t draw!” I can’t either!!! I don’t think we all have to be genius artists to get an idea across. Even cave men were able to tell stories through their primitive drawings, so sketch away! No fear!

I have learned a few things about myself and baking:

1) I might over-mix batter because I am afraid of lumps and under-mixing
2) I might over-bake things because I am afraid of under-baking
3) I break a spoon every time

Let’s see if I can avoid doing these things while making…. POUND CAKE!!!

I had leftover buttermilk from making blue velvet cookies and googled recipes using buttermilk. There were 3 possibilities: pancakes, fried chicken, pound cake. I don’t ever cook meat and I wasn’t feeling the pancakes, so … pound cake! I have a lot of fond memories of pound cake. My mom would buy the frozen Sara Lee ones. I always thought they were called pound cakes because they were heavy like bricks that weighed a million pounds, but it turns out they are called that because in the old days you used a pound every ingredient: a pound of butter, a pound of flour, a pound of eggs, a pound of sugar. These days, we don’t make such humongous pound cakes, but that’s a pretty cool recipe if you ask me.

The Sarah Lee pound cakes were dense but soft and delicious and just kind of perfect-looking. This was my goal.

I used Ina Garten’s recipe.

Here we go! Here are most of my ingredients.

I didn’t have a loaf pan, so I greased and floured up my bundt pan. I hunted around on the internets, and it seemed to tell me that my bundt would have the same cooking time and temp. as the loaf, so I was set!

And, bearing in mind #3 on my list of Bad Baking Habits, I decided to use a giant metal spoon for all my spoon-related needs. No spoon-breaking this time!

The magic begins when you cream together the butter and the sugar. I want to smell like butter and sugar all day.

I have tried to purchase various cake/vanilla/buttercream fragrances, but I have yet to find one that I think actually smells good.

After mixing up all the ingredients, I found another great use for my giant spoon: EATING BATTER.

I had to stop eating the batter so I’d have enough to put in the bundt.

And then, I crossed my fingers. I set the timer for an hour and started eating Cheez-Its cuz I hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Yes, it was about 9:20 pm, but I was waiting for Hairy to get home from the art gallery, since I didn’t know if were going to eat dinner or not before seeing “Mama” that night. As it turned out, we didn’t have time to eat dinner, and we ate hot dogs at the movie theater….

Anyway, I checked in on my pound cake when it was close to one hour, and I was a little scared to see LIQUID batter bubbling at the surface, cracking through the cake, seeping out like hot delicious buttery lava. There were still about 5 minutes left on the timer, so I figured that would settle the geological rumble inside my pound cake.

When the timer went off, I took the bundt out of the oven and let it cool on a rack for 10 minutes. The house SMELLED SO GOOOOD!

Then I popped a plate over it and flipped the whole thing upside down. I could feel the cake slide out easily with a satisfying THUD. And then I sifted powdered sugar all over the top.

It was so beautiful, I almost cried. My baby. My beautiful. My pound cake.

But we didn’t have time to taste it because it was movie time!

Unfortunately, this pound cake was a lesson in “don’t judge a book by its cover.” My pound cake was dry as a bone :(. I probably should have taken it out of the oven while it was still oozing or something. I don’t know! Sigh. I kept trying to eat a few pieces, but it just wasn’t the Sara Lee experience. Oh, Sara Lee, tell me your secrets!!!

Sorry I totally forgot to tell you guys about this! I got the PDF emailed to me while I was in L.A.!

There’s a little bit about me and what I do in the current issue of Girl Talk magazine in the U.K. Their website is 100% adorable, and I can’t wait to get my hard copy in the mail!

Back in the day, I was quoted in INKED Magazine saying I didn’t consider myself an artist. That sounds kinda self-deprecating, but I guess I was creating a hard line between my idea of “crafting” and my idea of “art.” I still don’t really know where I believe I stand in those areas, but the top corner of the magazine page where it says “Real Artist” kinda puts a smile on my face, and I’m happy to inspire girls – young and old – to get creative and pursue their wacky dreams. After working almost 10 years in book publishing, I was really surprised when  Angel introduced me to someone a few years ago and called me an artist. That was a first! I think the funny thing, too, is that her day job at the time was something tech or computer related, but I’ve always thought of her as an amazing photographer first. And now she takes fancy snaps of musicians and is rep’d and everything. It’s fun to see us all grow.