a dissertation on cake, followed by the great midwestern roadtrip 2006

i baked these last week (from the september living, one bowl deserts, they're vanilla cupcakes with DARK CHOCOLATE INSIDE and they were EASY). aaron was eating one and he asked me "what is it with you and cupcakes?"
what it is with me and cupcakes:
1. the answers:

a. cake is an indicator of celebration. right?!! cake means happy party time. that's why i like cake. cake is comforting and it makes you feel five in a good way.
b. cupcakes are little single serving CELEBRATIONS. they are miniature cakes. everyone knows MINIATURES are CUTER.
c. the cop-out: "uhhhh. i don't know. you came with a muffin tin. and i don't really have any cake pans." (when i moved in with him, he just had this muffin pan. there is was. poor aaron is fated to a lifetime of cupcakes of his own doing. i can think of worse things, can't you??)

cupcakes. cupcakes are an excellent way of saying THANK YOU! or, I LIKE YOU! with cupcakes around, you'll never have to say I'M SORRY. say it with sprinkles.

so anyways. speaking of cake we drove 39058387583uwtushyt89 hours on an epic midwest weddding adventure this weekend. i finished 90% teva durham's yoke vest from loop-d-loop in the car and read "the partly cloudy patriot" by sarah vowell in two sittings. we stayed one night in chicago with the BIL and the uber-preggers wifey and ate crepes and talked about swollen feet. QUILT UPDATE: baby is due in eight weeks. quilt is due in like eight years. so then we drove all over freaking eastern iowa. then the wedding stuff began. a served as the best man as his best friend tied the proverbial knot. after fifteen years and three kids, they got hitched. who'da thunk it. but it was cute. here's the good stuff:



i can't honestly say that i think purple and orange are a good idea together, but what do you do when the bride's a redhead who loves purple. there was a cake. there was a watermelon carved into a basket full of fruit, and there were cream cheese mints (a weird midwestern thing if i ever heard of one?). it was nice. and then we got to drive back. driving back is worse, cos you lose an hour, vs. headin' west, where you gain one. and cos we took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in michigan. and cos work called me and said WHY AREN'T YOU HERE? and i had to call them back and say COS I'M IN INDIANA AND I ALREADY TOLD YA TWICE I COULDN'T DO TODAY. silly girls.

i didn't get to go to ikea or any yarnstores or even hobby lobby or dunkin donuts or get a tattoo or anything i wanted but that's ok. it's good to get away for a spell. i'll talk to you later. keep it crafty. xo.

p.s. still no news on the secret underpants front. she's killing me.

ONLY 692 TO GO.

my brother-in-law and his darling wife are having a little girl, due on halloween. i am going to be an aunt. imagine the trouble the poor dear will have when she realizes her only aunt and uncle (my BIL's only sibling is my DH and katy is an only child) are called by the same name. oh jeez. so anyways i have embarked upon my First Ever Quilt, to commemorate the child's birth. i wanted to do hexagons, but quickly realized this was a terrible idea. so i am doing squares. little 1 and 1/4 inch squares.

list of reasons this is a bad m-f-in' idea:
1. to compose a 36ishy inch square baby blanket is going to require a dizzying 784 of these dainty squares.

2. that means that i cut out 784 little paper squares and am now in the process of basting the calico to them.

3. the next step is acutally piecing the thing, so whipstitching 784 squares together and then removing the previously mentioned basting stitches and discarding the 784 paper squares.

3. a guest i was cutting stuff for and discussing quilting with (90 PERCENT OF THE SHOPPERS AT THE STORE QUILT) asked me why in the hell i was piecing it by this stupid stupid method and why wasn't i strip-piecing it (she was much more polite than that, i just am feeling like a boner at this point for not seeing that this would have been a Good Idea and i didn't think of it). this exchange happens the day after i have shredded my fabric into little 1.5 inch squares aka Point of No Return.

4. upon hearing the story, aaron says "ok then start over if it's going to be a pain, and do it the other way". i think i made a face at this point and said NO. i'm too stubborn and resolute in my silly ways and also too cheap to start over.

so maybe it'll be done when she starts kindergarten. kids still like blankies when they are five, right? or does that make them wussies?

cos i've been working on this thing almost a week now. i have a hole in my finger from handstitching without my thimble (i swear when i wear the thinble i find a new way to sew so i'm not PUSHING with the thimbled finger, thus purpose = defeated), and 692 left squares to baste. oh kill me now.

5 things about me, followed by some other stuff.

1. although my twenty-third birthday will be here in not four months, i am frequently mistaken for much younger. how often i have had to inform people that, actually, i recently graduated from college, not high school. i don't know exactly what they base this assessment on, but it can be rather embarassing. which leads me to item two.
2.
on june 4 2005, i married my favorite, aaron david. there was cake and gingham and pink ribbon and christmas lights and country music and hot dogs and beer and it was lovely. we are alike in too many ways to list (we have, phonetically, the same name!, our birthdays are one right after the other, we've both quit smoking, are liberal and vegetarians and behave the same way when we are nervous, to name only a few). i love him to death and he is my very best friend. and if one more person tells me "OHHHHH you're too young to be married", i'm gonna punch them in the mouth. we're terribly happy together, and i think when it's right you will just Know. so they can cram it.
3. my ipod's name is shirley temple. my ibook's name is lappy. my hard disk's name is edna. my bike doesn't have a name but maybe it should.
4. i burst into tears when the topic of moving away comes up, but i know someday we will have to. i have lived in rochester ny my entire life and it's getting to be about that time to Go Do Something Else. just to see. but don't worry cos i'm not going anywhere yet.
5. if/when i start my "line" of "things", the working title is "terrible delicious", which is ganked from a recipe for barbequed tofu, from an incredible cookbook by cresent dragonwagon. i want to make the recipe but am intimidated by it's extremely long ingredients list. someone has to have a cookout to motivate me (and they better not say EWWW TOFU GROSS before ever even trying it. tofu is super)!

so there it is.

in other news, we are buying a scion Xa. a red one!! so last night, we were sitting in a cubicle at the desk of our sales guy, who was going to get something from somewhere else. i'm a world away, knitting the front of the secret underpants with renewed determination (still no word from d. stoller), when aaron leans in and asks me "what are you making?". i answer, without looking away from my needles, "you know, secret underpants two point oh to see if this yarn will sub my first yarn was discontinued". he says. "oh, right", sits up, and says loudly "UNDERPANTS." alarmed by my husband yelling UNDERPANTS across a room full of toyota salesmen, i look up in horror to realize that my knitting had sparked the curiousity of the sales manager across the way, who apparently couldn't get my attention to ask me directly what i was working on. so he asked aaron. AARON. HE OF NO SHAME. i must have turned same color as the underpants in question (4227). god bless him but i would have answered SHORTS.

hello dears. hey so there's a record-breaking heatwave currently kicking the east coast's ass. you might be asking yourself, who the heck is baking in this kind of weather? only me. only me. chocolate chip gingerbread cookies from feb06 living, with fresh ginger from the illustrious public market. and darn it they are fabulous. even though opening the 350 oven to remove them kind of makes you want to kill yourself. at 350 that makes it only like 3 or 4 degrees hotter inside the oven than the rest of the apartment.

speaking of killing yourself, yesterday i walked like four blocks to the VOA and viet nam vet thriftstores on main, in the 3457637 degree heat i trekked over, bravely, in search of like 3 key items. let me also mention that binet and jenna and i visited these stores a couple weeks ago. the vet store had like literally 6 cakestands. so i go in yesterday, determined to buy myself a cakestand and oh they only have two in the whole store and they are both fugly. i didn't buy anything and it was really sad. i risked heatstroke for a recipe card box and was rewarded with nothing. MORAL OF THE STORY IS NEVER PASS UP A SWEET YELLOW CAKEPLATE THE KIND WITH LIKE THE WEIRD GLITTER NO MATTER HOW LITTLE SPACE YOU HAVE TO STORE AND DISPLAY YOUR CAKEPLATE. i wont make that mistake again. cakeplates of the world i will make you mine.

also sorry for the whiny disatisfied last post wheeech that was a weinerized moment. ill try not to do that too much. my dad says dont wish your life away, so i wont. it's kind of lazy to be like I DONT WANT TO DO THE WORK I JUST WANT A LOVELY LIFE WITHOUT PUTTING IN THE EFFORT.

anyways im taking the wilton 1 cake decorating class at my store in september with two cute girls that i work with (here's how it works at joann: there are basically two kinds of employees: ones that are prolly old enough to be my mom and ones that are in college slash recent grads trying to get their shit together. there are a handful of exceptions, but not many). unfortch, its going to be on thursday nights also known as knit night. oh no, you guys. when two of my unhealthy loves collide: CAKE VS. KNITTING. death match.

i'm going to become auntie erin in a few months when my little husband's little brother and his little wife have a little baby girl. so i am planning a baby blanket for the anticipated child. i was all about the HEXAGON until today i did a little math and found that i would have to cut out, at minimum, 896 hexagons, baste them all, and then whip them together by hand. a little too ambitious for a first quilt. i'm switching my sights to a postage stamp quilt top. 896 hexagons ain't going to happen. freakin baby would be like graduating highschool by the time her crazy aunt finishes her babygift.

blogger doesn't seem in the mood to upload my pics. lovely. im gonna go, my iced mocha is melted and i have to work in a few hours. damn you blogger. xoxoxox bye friends stay classy.