Productivity has been fluctuating these past weeks and I haven't gotten as much done as I would like. Life throws stuff at you and you deal with it. I get in what I can fit it. And it is what it is. I know I've fooled you into thinking that I haven't done much of anything especially with the blog content as of late. Okay, well, yes, maybe I haven't.. but I'm working slow and steady over here. But before I show you what I've been working on or not working on, let me introduce you to a knew crafty friend. She's going to be helping me get a lot done over the next few months, especially for my Brazil SWAP.

She is yet to be named but something will come to me sooner or later. Or, I'll just have a contest. My friend, Dutch Girl, gave her to me over the holidays. I was so stoked! She was upgrading to a better form and one that's actually her size, so she wasn't in need of her anymore (which reminds me, I need to get her a token of thanks). But to be perfectly honest with you, I haven't touched her since I took her home and I have to size her up. I think she's pretty spot on up top. But boy, she's got some junk-age in her trunk-age that I'm seriously lacking. I just need to get my measurements and pad/unpad her as needed. That's priority number one before I start putting her to work.

Check out that bootay.

So this is what it is. Have you ever been in a situation where you're so close to being done, but there's only one thing standing in your way? How about if you knew the solution(s) to that one thing standing in your way and you still have yet to take any action? What would you do to make yourself do it? This is what I'm doing, calling myself out in front of all y'alI. I started this Build by Wendy top (Simplicity 4112) over the holidays and I'm only two steps away from having a new top to wear to work, putting in the button holes and putting in the buttons. So, what's the problem? My machine's button holer is tripping out. So why not take it into get serviced? I needed its non-button hole related functions to complete two quilts. So why not learn how to put in button holes by hand? I looked up the directions. They just scare the bejeezus out of me. So this is it, I will be wearing this shirt by the end of the month!

Finish and iron me, please.

And lastly, onto knitting. Yes, knitting! I started the Puff-sleeved Feminine Cardigan from Fitted Knits when mamaFasu got her new knee last month. I made a great deal of progress on it and the just kind of stopped. I'm now at the point where most of the main knitting is done. I'm just stuck on where to go from here.

I wasn't really feeling the peplum and decided to change it up. Instead of the lace panels, I decided convert it to ruffles ending in a seed stitch band to match the collar. I've already finished the increases and just need to decide how long I want them to be. The next thing I'm debating on are the sleeve cuffs. I substituted Cascade 220 has a larger gauge than called for in the patter. The sleeve cuff as written, three horizontal ribs, seem like they're rather big. My choices here are to either take out one of the ribs and make it only two or knit a simple seed stitch cuff to match the collar, button bands and bottom band. Thoughts?

Apologies for the blown out photo, but does this cuff look to big to you?

Hopefully both of these will be done by the end of the month and then I can start working full time on my Brazil SWAP. I'm thinking about it every day and hopefully I'll be able to have something more to show you in March.

I have no major crafty updates for you today. But I will let you know that I got some really good ideas for the sleeve cuff treatment. Thanks for everyone who responded! I'll be testing them out this week and into the weekend. The one thing I do know is that I'm going to modify the sleeve length. In between the time my post went up and I received your comments, I worked on the second sleeve with just a plain seed stitch cuff. I thought the sleeve as written didn't look so puffy on me and also looked a tad long, so I eliminated the even rows on the sleeve and went straight to the decreases. This didn't increase the puffiness, but I do like it better. My next steps are to fix the length on the first sleeve and then test out the different cuffs.

So now that the crafts are out of the way, let's talk pie. Why? Because it's Wednesday, it's hump day and we need a little push to get us to the long weekend ahead.

Recipe: Lemon Meringue Pie, Gourmet January 2008

Notes:
I've never had lemon meringue pie or any kind of meringue pie for that matter, so this was a first for me on many levels. The pie itself tasted great. But I'm not positive on my execution of the pie. The I expected the filling to be more solid than it was. So I'm not sure if was supposed to cook the filling longer so it would be more set. It had the consistency of lemon curd when I stopped cooking and I cooked it for at least 10 more minutes than indicated in the recipe. The pie had also cooled for a bit over 3 hours to just about room temperature. When I sliced it up, the filling didn't run, but it just wasn't as solid as I was expecting.

Does this look right?

The meringue was also more delicate than I thought. For some reason, and again this is my meringue pie naivete speaking, I thought the meringue would solidify a bit. The photo above shows "air bubbles". I'm assuming it "self steams" itself. The other thing I also learned during my first meringue experience is that it shrinks as it cooks. I spent a good amount of time smoothing it out to the crust to make it nice, and it shrunk back, leaving tracks. Boo!

Before: Pretty meringue edges flush with the crust

After: Meringue tracks, boo!

Now let me talk crust. This is the flakiest crust I've made so far and B even commented on it (photo below). According to the recipe, this crust will have people begging for more. Texture wise, I think I'd agree that this is the flakiest, but not the tastiest. To date, I've tried three crust recipes, Martha's Pate Brisee, CI's Foolproof Pie Dough, and Gourmet's Pastry Dough from the 1/08 issue. The difference between the three is that Gourmet's calls for vegetable shortening which I think is the x-factor for flakiness. I'm feeling a "pie crust-off" in the works. I've got a few more pie crust recipes laying around and I think it's time to test them out. Unfortunately, the one I really want to try, Alton Brown's, calls for lard. That's not too cool for me. Have any of you had success or experience substituting vegetable shortening for lard? What did you do for flavor?

Now onto pie #2. I did tell you I made two pies, right? Not only did I make two recipes of the Gourmet pastry dough, we had a bunch of brown bananas. You know what I'm going to say right? Banana cream pie beats banana bread any day of the week!

Gimme bananas!

Remember that thing I said the first time around about the filling and cream recipe being enough for two pies? Well forget I said that if you're using a deep dish. O.M.G. Heaven!!

And lastly, photo evidence of the flakiest crust.

No go forth and conquer the rest of the week!

Greetings from Charlotte, North Carolina! I'm on my very first "business trip" attending a conference for work. I love traveling but this traveling alone business is pretty new to me. While I do have other coworkers here with me, we all have our own rooms. And for the first time ever, I'm in a hotel room all to myself. It's so weird!

Hello, big ol' bed! I have no one to share you with.

So I've got this gigantor King sized bed, an insane bathroom with fancy faucet and square basin, a flat screen tv and wifi of course. The time I spend in my room is really kind of lonely. I checked in yesterday and kicked around a bit, flipped the channels on tv and versus had my favorite wintersport on!

Boardercross, how I *heart* thee.
Did I ever tell you I secretly want to be a professional snowboarder?

But have no fear, this trip will definitely be a productive one. I brought knitting with me, yes I did. And yes, the puff-sleeved cardi will be done by the time I get home except for blocking and buttons. The sweater will actually be done tonight. Is it worth it to start the blocking process now? I could do a dunk and rinse, though, dammit, I have no wool wash with me. Okay scratch that idea. I'll wash and block at home. It was a good time saving thought though. I do have shampoo, but don't want to risk felting it as I'm rinsing it.

How fluorescent you look, oh sweater of mine.

So despite the lack of a traveling companion, I'm doing just fine. I even brought my Hanami Stole with me! So there will be craft action in my down time. So thanks everyone for all your music suggestions. I'll definitely look into all of them. So in the meantime, I'll continue to plug away on the cardi. I'll be back home Wednesday afternoon with an almost FO and hopefully some updated SWAP news for you!

*Because I'm feeling extra generous and because I didn't get to bake this weekend (I'm feenin'!), if you can identify the song, the artist, and complete the line of the song that the title of the post comes from, you'll get some sweet treats, too! Send an email to yaiAnnknits [at] gmail [dot] com with your answer. Answers left in the comments will not be accepted (why, because you could cheat! -- not that you would. I just want to keep it fair). Same as the workout music winner, deadline is Thursday, 11:59pm PST and I'll do a drawing of all the correct answers to determine the winner.

In some ways I like that Daylight Savings came so early, and in other ways I don't. More sunlight, good! Dark at 7am, bad! I still can't seem to wake up and we're already over a week into it. Daylight savings makes you think like you have more time, but really, you don't. It's the same number of hours, there's just more access to sunshine. And at the end of the day, I'm still scrambling to try to get things done. It really doesn't do anything for my cause, especially as I'm sitting here thinking about the eleven, ELEVEN, garments I want to sew in less than two months time on top of all the other activities I'm currently committed to. Progress to date on the SWAP, still nil. I may have to seriously restrategize. But what is progressing is my puff-sleeved cardigan.

It's blocked and ready for buttons. Then it's photo shoot time.

Since time my time is running a bit short, it's Wednesday and of course I'll leave you with something sweet.

Recipe: Pear Crisp, Cooks Illustrated September 2007

Just the thing a really ripe bag of pears wants to be, or Nova's drool worthy pear pie. But a word of caution, don't use really ripe pears. The recipe calls for "firm ripe" pears, so try to stick to that. My pears were good, but on the mushy side because they were too ripe. The crisp still came out great, especially with ice cream, but the texture of the pears would have been better if they were firmer.