Weekend

Having the Job from Helltm means that weekends (as well as evenings, lunch hours, that time before you get to work, bathroom breaks, and the few moments no one's ordering me around) take on a greater-than-normal importance. I come home on Friday night needing time to recuperate, time to languish, time to surf the internet (about the biggest problem with the Job from Hell is that they don't let me at the computers on a regular basis, even during lunch).

But I also need time to bake things; to sew up a bunny's head, to think about what I want to do with the pretty coloured paper I rescued from the recycling bin. This weekend was spent on strawberry shortcake casserole and peach iced tea (both from Katie Brown), and various knitting and crochet projects.

Baking eggs

A couple days ago I had the most confusing conversation with a coworker about eggs. I had run out of this most essential staple, and was running to the grocery store to pick some up. "Because I want to bake" I told her. "You want to bake eggs?!" "I want to bake cookies." "Oh, right."
At the time I wasn't really thinking about the kind of cookie I was planning for, which turned out to be a bonus because trying to explain that they do look rather like eggs would have added a level of confusion to my day that I am generally unprepared to deal with.
The egg-cookies were put on hold for 24 hours in any case as I am currently without microwave, and therefore lack a 30 second method of achieving softened butter. The truth is I love the little ritual of pulling out a bit of butter in the a.m. and knowing it'll be yummy baked goods by that night. It's a small promise to myself.
But they finally emerged this morning, warm and lemon-scented, from the oven. Being a kid who likes to follow the pattern, I stuck pretty closely to the recipe, with one small exception. The lemon curd is meant to be dolloped on after baking, while the cookies are still warm. I took the obvious step of baking some with curd already added, in deference to the jam-jam, a cookie loved by my mother (in honor of whom this whole experiment was originally undertaken). I have a definite preference for the gently baked jam, especially if you're gulping the cookies down still warm, standing by the oven.

The inevitable crafty blog

Having wandered in the back door via a knitting blog, I am becoming dissatisfied. My crafty life is all over the place right now, in baking and gardening, and I have a pile of beautiful coloured paper waiting to be transformed into something lovely.
I had a free morning at work a couple days ago, and I was immediately drawn into the crazy-creative lives of a number of bloggers who sew and paint and build, nary a knitter among them. Blogging for me is a constant search for an identity, who do I want to pretend to be? I keep remembering that I am not a knitter first, that I love embroidery and cross stitch, that knitting was the chosen outlet only because it was winter and cold and you have to have somewhere to set up the sewing machine (and it has to actually function).
There is a pile of quilting cotton hiding in the closet calling my name, my fingers itch for an embroidery hoop, and floss. And, even worse for a knitter, I've been at the crochet, which doesn't come easily but provides results I can't ignore.