This weekend's menu (the first chance I've had to cook in over a month!):

mojitos
chocolate zucchini cupcakes, talk about delicious!
Zelda's Pizza
summer fruit from the farmer's market - peaches, heirloom melons
mushrooms over polenta, the mushroom part based on this method criminis work just fine

Hello! I am moving this weekend so I plan to have a little more to say in about a week. Since we are moving and incurring the attendant stress, cocktails have developed a position of extreme importance in my daily routine.

I finally came up with a very easy way to make mojitos. It takes some prep but then you can make mojitos any time in only a couple minutes. I'm sorry that we are moving now that I've developed my method since it works better if you have your own mint growing on the premises. Here are the prep steps:

1. Get a bunch of limes and juice them. We have a citrus juicer attachment for my mixer so whenever limes go on sale I buy like 30-50 of them and then freeze the juice in ice cube trays. I make Thaddy help with the juicing.

2. Make simple syrup. Just dissolve a cup of sugar in a cup of water and keep it in a pour container in the fridge. We use one of those bottles people keep for olive oil with the pour spout on top. This is actually super easy to do in the microwave but they never tell you that.

Then whenever we want to have mojitos I just mash up a couple of the lime ice cubes with the mint then add the simple syrup, rum, ice, and fill up with soda water. The lime juice does not freeze super solid so they are easy to mash up with a fork right out of the freezer.

Also, this makes it easy to make a bunch of mojitos for a party. Just put the lime, mint, syrup, and rum in a big pitcher in the same ratio that tastes good for one glass. Then people can fill up glasses with ice and use about half the mix with about half soda water.

Here is the ratio I use for one mojito: 1.5 lime cubes (this is variable because it depends on your ice cube try, mine makes smallish cubes), about 10 mint leaves, 1 oz. simple syrup, 1.5 oz rum (shot glass). Add ice and about an equal amount of club soda.

Happy mojito summer!

Along similar lines, check out this Basil Lemonade on Orangette.

Edited to add: since the move, I've been making this same cocktail with the lemon basil combination instead of lime and mint. It's also very delicious and just as refreshing. Lemons are easier to juice so this is easier to put together when you are exhausted from moving a bunch of boxes.

I love this system for organizing recipes in a moleskine, featured at Delicious Days. I'm a fan of the handwritten cookbook, but my current blank book is quickly getting difficult to search now that several pages have been completed. This way is still very personal but organized.

These are some hand dyed pieces of cotton lawn drying in the backyard. They are so soft and ethereal in person. This may not be our backyard for much longer so I wanted to capture a little bit of it to take with us.

This is a pillow top I put together with some scraps one evening when I needed a little inspiration. This is about to be part of a larger whole, I am putting together a collection of handmade things incorporating my handdyed fabrics and embroidery.

Baby Jayne Cobb Dietzen, adopted 5/25/2007. He is the best little kitten and we feel so lucky to have him as part of our family.

This is the complete gift set I made for my sister-in-law who is having a girl. I used Angry Chicken's instructions to make matching onesies to go with the quilt. These were super easy with the fancy stitch on my new machine. I am inordinantly proud of the whole set.

I used more of my pink hand dyed fabric for this one. This time I divided up the cut squares into a light pile and a dark pile to make two different colored stripes that look like they are actually different fabrics. It's a pretty cool effect that I will use again on future projects, maybe to get an ombre type effect.

Here's a shot that shows the embroidery and the Beatrix Potter fabric I used for the back, the pink toile is also Beatrix Potter. I'm not usually one for licensed character fabric, but this stuff is adorable.

Click here for a rather dubious shot of the whole finished quilt and here for a closeup of the squirrel appliqued onesie which features a Fussy Cut. Hee, that's really what it's called when you cut out a certain part of the fabric design on purpose.

Actually all of this photography is terrible but I wanted to make sure I had some pictures before this is gone forever at the shower tomorrow.

Here are two quilts I've been working on for my two sisters-in-law who are both pregnant. I hope they like them, neither of them have been exposed that much to my quilting.

Did you know that Ann Patchett writes on the Gourmet blog? When worlds collide! If you haven't read every single one of her books, go to the library right now. I'll wait.

via Smitten Kitchen, my current food blog crush

Plenty of celebrating this weekend, but no pictures. Thaddy got a new job and we celebrated with a bottle of champagne we'd been saving for over a year and indian food. We also got to meet a friend's new three day old baby and help fix up a nursery for another baby on the way. I sandwiched the embroidered quilt and finished most of the quilting. Above all, we ate plenty of in-season strawberries with whipped cream.

Here are two kitties playing on the results of a big dye party I had recently with the lovely Charrmer. I did two more of these big pieces and then a few small, one yard, pieces as well.

and

I think this blue and green one looks like a contour map.

This red one is the best of the small pieces, the other two turned out like just nice blue tonal pieces that I'm sure I'll use, but nothing special. I can't believe it but I bought 25 yards of the fabric I've been using to dye on and it is all gone now. No idea how that could've happened.

Here's another picture of my adventures in the wonderful world of embroidery! Since I still haven't gotten the iron-on patterns I ordered, I drew these birds based on images of Ms. Hart's patterns that appeared in Adorn. My college contour drawing came right back.

Last night I discovered the wonderful world of embroidery. I am embroidering decorations on the quilt top from my last post. So far just words and hearts but I ordered some of these so whenever they come we will see even more exciting embroidery.

Here's an in-progress shot of the "whole cloth" quilt I am making with my self-dyed piece of pink fabric. I put the "whole cloth" in quotation marks because, as you can see here, I actually pieced the top. But I pieced it so that as much of the original design is preserved as possible except for little bits that went into the seams.

Here's another shot that shows this cool hot air balloon fabric that I think is perfect for the intended recipient of this quilt. I have no idea where I got this fabric, I only had a little piece. So if you gave it to me, thank you!

This is a skirt I made by altering a pencil skirt type pattern to be more of an a-line. Again, I think we are seeing a pattern in the bulky and shapeless department. I actually do have a nice figure, but you'll have to take my word for now. The trim does look cute with the grey corduroy though and check out my shoes, they are really cute and have great arch support. I think this skirt would look better if I had started with more of a flared skirt and then scaled it in if it seemed too big. This is another one to file under great learning experience.

I did a lot more dying this weekend. This is a large piece I dyed using a low water technique for a whole cloth quilt project I have in mind. I love how this looks although I had wanted more of the lighter pink and only a little bit of the fuschia color.

This is a polka dot I made to use on some pillows. You can see that I didn't have time to finish the whole piece but I think I will have plenty for my project. Sometimes you have to go and taste wine instead of printing 100 more polka dots.

Here's a picture of how the dye printing is going so far. There is a lot more yardage with all different patterns but this is a small section. I have 2 problems with this stuff: 1) I don't like how the patterns are turning out, and 2) the dye is bleeding and creating smudges even though I am washing it with synthrapol. Actually, I guess 3 problems total because I am also not thrilled with how unvibrant the images are.

My next idea is to do a base dye on the fabric then stamp on top. I won't be able to get the effects I was originally after but it would negate the smudge problem.

I just got this book last night and boy is it beautiful. It's the most gorgeous book I've ever owned. In the Acknowledgements the author identifies the book's designer, Toni Tajima, especially. Now I know who I would ask for if I ever wrote a book. And of course I'd have to get Heidi Swanson to do the pictures, just beautiful.

I am working on another scrumble quilt! The process is very addictive and makes me wish I had a stand-up sewing station as I race between the triangle points: ironing board, sewing machine, scrap bin. Maybe I can count this as exercise to get down and up from the sewing chair so many times? New rules for these scrumbles, since there must always be rules.

This is a baby quilt I made for my friend Keirsten's second baby. It needed to be a little fancier than my usual because I had tried paper piecing (my first and only attempt, turns out I hate paper piecing!) for her first baby's quilt and I didn't want the second baby to feel slighted if I showed up with one of my now-standard, simple patterns. This top is made entirely from scraps: I just sewed one piece onto the first and so on to make what I was referring to as "scrumbles" in my head. I trimmed a little to put the scrumbles together but since the pieces were not uniform in size this was probably my most technically challenging quilt to date. And of course my scrap bin is still totally overflowing, this quilt did not make the slightest dent.

I had so much fun with these little felt appliques! Also, you can kind of see that I used my fancy new sewing machine with the embroidery stitches to handle an awkward set-in seam by just embroidering over the top around the marbled piece. And by the way, I made that marbled fabric myself when I got to do some marbeling one time with the fabulous Charrmer.