Lady of the Thread's Sewing Basket

(Reposting from last night because I decided I wanted to split off the fanfic portion into its own post in case I want to link back to it in the future. Sorry if you got this twice! ^_^;;)

Well, I started my new year with a baking goof. I got up early on Saturday and figured I would use up the half bottle of molasses that was left by making a batch of gingerbread cupcakes to bring over to my best friend’s house later that day. I forgot to put in the baking soda and didn’t realize it until they were ready to come out of the oven so they were hard and unappealing. -_-;

I ended up making a second batch of cupcakes from mix instead and brought those over and fortunately everyone seemed to like them. (I add an extra 1/4 cup flour, an extra egg, and substitute milk for the water when I bake from mix, which makes it less sweet and more fluffy.) My friend’s parents and sister were home and her boyfriend and her sister’s friend were visiting so I guess it was good I brought a dozen; they were more than half gone by the time I left! I also met my friend’s new cat, which is about 4 months old, named after Kero from Cardcaptor Sakura, and obsessed with food. XD My friend’s sister also goes to cons so she wanted to see my cosplay pics and we all went out to lunch together except for the parents.

Also finally exchanged Christmas presents with my friend. I got her a flowering tea set, an earring and necklace set, and some chocolate. She gave me a necklace and a digital photo keychain which I’ll have to figure out how to work; she suggested I use it to show off my costume pics!

Let’s see… This weekend was somewhat productive. Yesterday morning, I baked strawberry cornmeal muffins (http://bread.allrecipes.com/az/BrryCrnmlMffins.asp). They were good when still warm from the oven. ^_^ I also made a marinade for Greek chicken from a recipe on that site. (http://barbeque.allrecipes.com/az/GreekChicken.asp) We cooked ours in the oven instead of on a grill though. It was okay although my brother said it needs work since all he could taste was the oil.

I’ve got to dig through that site more sometime. My father complains often we never have anything new for dinner and I get tired of seeing the same dishes over and over all the time. It’s tricky finding new stuff to cook though because my siblings are very picky about food and there are a lot of things they won’t eat. -_- Plus, my mother insists on cooking rice every night so it has to be something that will go with that. Like it wouldn’t make much sense to eat pasta or sandwiches with rice!

I’ve been working on painting the fabric for the Count D costume. The peacock feathers I’m doing on the dress are larger than the test one I did and boy, they take a long time to paint! I’ve done 4 of the ones near the bottom of the dress so far and they’re taking a hour and a half to two apiece because of all the strands sticking out from the eye. I’ve got 4 more to paint on the front of the dress and I figure I should do some on the back too so it won’t be plain. So, it seems like I’m probably looking at 20 hours of fabric painting on this dress, more than I would have thought before I started. o_o

I’ve also started on a Q-Chan plushie. ^_^ He’s a little rabbit with horns and bat wings that normally sits on Count D’s shoulder. There are several different colorings for him on the manga covers and I think he’s beige and black in the anime but I’m making him yellow with purple wings like the cover from Vol. 8 since I liked that one best. It’s about half done. Nearly all the pieces have been cut out and quite a few have been sewn together, too.

And while I was out today, I found a fuschia eye shadow by L’Oreal that should work for the costume. (new shade, I think, since I hadn’t seen it before) Guess it was a good thing Lancome was out of the color I wanted last week. This was $10 cheaper!

I felt like messing around in the kitchen this morning so I baked chocolate cupcakes. Used a recipe on the back of my cocoa container and it came out pretty well. Light and fluffy. ^_^ Found a copy of the recipe online if anyone else wants to try it out: http://www.hersheys.com/recipes/recipes/detail.asp?id=184&page=9&per=10&category_id=13
I halved the recipe and made a dozen slightly larger cupcakes since there was no way I was going to bake 30 of them in batches of 6 in our toaster oven.

It had been a few weeks so my family wanted to go out for lunch and shopping today. I sat in Borders for a while and read some more Pet Shop of Horrors (have read everything now except for 2 chapters in vol. 8). And I now have another possible outfit to consider for Count D in addition to the ones I listed yesterday. ^_^;

I don’t have a copy of the picture but it’s one of those extra illustrations at the beginning of a chapter in vol. 8. The outfit is similar to a cheongsam (Chinese dress with mandarin collar and slits up the sides) but tailored to fit a guy. (I assume he also has pants underneath like he usually does when he has an outfit with high slits.) There’s a long sleeve with a bit of flare on one side while the other side is cut away at the shoulder and has a long glove instead of a sleeve. And the front is decorated with a large pattern of peacock feathers. *likes peacock feathers* *_* It’d be an interesting challenge to figure out the cut away part. I have the Folkwear cheongsam pattern, too, although I have yet to use it. Wonder how hard it would be to alter it to fit a less curvy figure…