Monday, April 20, 2009

a crooked little boxy pouch

today i decided to make this. it turned out alright, but it's not perfect. let's examine what went wrong.

let me be honest, this is where i failed: at the very beginning. how? i picked the wrong effing fabric. it was chosen because i have an ass-load of it, but it's a jersey knit. terrible for this project. i would recommend a quilter's quarter or some linen or whatever else other that jersey knit.



welcome to the next moment of failure: i didn't line up the two pieces of fabric evenly when i attached the zipper. oops.

i also didn't do a very good job of sewing the two pieces of fabric together at the bottom. in fact, it is here that you can clearly see that the bag is going to turn out crooked.

non-sequitur: the picture above looks very similar to kleenex carrying cases i've had from japan.

i did clip the "ears" off, but i didn't use the correct scissors (i.e., the ones that are zig-zagged) because i don't own a pair. we'll see how that goes over time.

and here is my completed project; a wonky little boxy pouch. i'm gonna try again and i'll let you know how that goes.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

banana nut muffins

i had some bananas that had seen better days so i figured it best to make some muffins rather than waste. i googled recipes and settled on one by tyler florence that seemed easy enough. also, this project gave me an excuse to use my heart-shaped cupcake/muffin pan for the first time.


mashing the bananas was my favorite part, but it made me think of the wiggles.


so, you may have noticed if you checked out the recipe that it was meant to make 12 jumbo muffins rather than twelve cupcake-sized muffins. after filling up my muffin pan i had enough batter left over to fill a mini loaf pan...unfortunately i don't own any of those so i made due with a mini heart-shaped springform pan.

the results were mixed. while the regular muffins were really yummy and cute and stuff, the giant muffin in the springform pan took forever to bake and rose too much and made a fat mess in my oven.

my old man got a bit zealous and took a muffin before i could take a picture of my completed product.

you could only tell they were heart-shaped if you looked at the bottom. oops.

there is a pan under all that mess.

overall i was satisfied with what i made and recommend the tyler florence recipe to y'all. it was delicious and ridiculously easy. just make sure you have the proper pans.