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Oops (and Japanese craft books)

45 minutes later I just realized I put Biscuit to bed a full hour early. She fell right asleep. I'm thinking we all need more sleep around here.

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On a separate topic, as promised, here are some Japanese craft book images for you:
ISBN: 978-4-391-62449-6 Conveniently called, "Book" (in English anyway)

This book has very detailed instructions for 18 projects in a range of mediums from crochet to wire work to sewing. Mostly sewing:

Images from the inside (sorry all these are so blurry)

And another book, ISBN: 978-4-579-11133-6 "All Your Kids Need"

I like the little rubber stamp ideas:


These are all the categories in the book (not sure if you can read them, click to enlarge):

That's it for tonight. Happy Wednesday to ya!

A lot bit excited and a little bit bummed

See this book? It just came out.

Now lets see page 142 of said book:

Recognize my favorite model? Yep, I'm excited. Even got a blurry (not blurry in real life) byline in the list of contributors:

So that's the excited bit. I've been (mostly) keeping this under my hat since last March!

And one reason I'm glad I kept it under wraps and that I'm a little bit bummed is because I was supposed to have two projects in this book but only the bib (my less favorite project) showed up. Since I never got an email about it since the, "yes, we definitely want to include this project in the book, here's a contract" email I'm assuming the book clock project got lost in the shuffle of 3 editors and several months of production delays. Ohs wells. You can see that project here anyway.

Moral of this story: if you see an open call for submissions of ideas, it's worth throwing your hat in the ring. And, if you haven't heard from an editor in months and have a feeling they might be a wee bit swamped, a friendly reminder might not hurt. (although, for all I know, they may have not used that project for some other reason and just forgot to alert me)

Summary: it's super cool to see your project (even if it's kinda dorky) in print

And speaking of super cool. It's also super cool to get a mention on a list of 10 blogs that are cool that might not be on your blogroll yet. Thanks, Claire.

Bon App! Clotilde

As a regular reader of Chocolate and Zucchini, I've been excited to get my hands on a copy of Clotilde's cookbook. I read every post about her USA book tour and her segment on the Today Show and I was so bummed I couldn't be at one of her book signing events in California.

But over the weekend, we left Biscuit in the good care of her grandparents and went on a 90 minute date to the local bookstore that just happened to have a whole stack of signed copies of the book. Yippee!

So, about the book. I had planned to test a recipe tonight and then write a well composed book review but oh. my. gosh. I have been at this computer way too long and it is way too late and I am way too overwhelmed (although not too overwhelmed to make a cake). So here's the quick'n'dirty review: buy this book. It's cheap on Amazon. You'll like it.

Here's a bit more detail: First off, it was smaller than I imagined so it'll fit well on my bookshelf but it doesn't stay open very well on the countertop during actual cooking. Despite it's size, it's packed with Clotilde's lovely writing. Since Saturday I've almost read it cover to cover like a novel. I love the stories that go with the recipes and the whole thing makes me want to take a trip to France. About the recipes, a few are probably too adventurous for my boring American palate (chicken liver and figs anyone?) but the baking section alone was worth the purchase price. I made the apple cake this evening (substituted apricots as Clotide suggested I could). It went together in less than 10 minutes (like 5) and tastes great despite my sincere efforts to burn it to a crisp. Mr. H and I agreed it wasn't at all embarrassing that we ate fully half of this cake in one sitting.  Next up I'm trying the lemon cookies!

Hope you had a delicious day too!

Bringing together various childhood hobbies

Found this Nancy Drew Fabric! via Craft.  Any other Nancy Drew lovers out there? Hardy Boys? Bobbsey Twins? Boxcar Children? Cherry Ames? Anyone?

I should start collecting now for Biscuit. 

Oh, maybe I already did...

And in a related story: when I was in sixth grade or so, me and my friends Katie and Keri started a club called the Just Have Fun Club. We had a theme song. And hats. And nicknames. Sounds fun, huh? Mostly we just played on top of the grape arbor in my backyard where we could look into Keri's backyard. And I guess we just had fun.

But one weekend we had a fundraiser where we sold our old stuff at the local swapmeet. At the time I was just coming off a major Nancy Drew phase and I had a TON of the yellow, hardcover editions.  Probably almost all of the books that were out at the time.  And I took them all to the swapmeet and sold them for a quarter each. 

I realized my mistake pretty quickly when I sold them all at once to the first buyer of the morning.  And later saw them for sale at his booth for fifty cents each. And by the end of the day the whole lot was at booth number three for seventy five cents each.  At the time I was sad about lost profits. Now I'm sort of sad to not have the books (since I had to pay like $3 for this one Nancy Drew).  Oh well, there were plenty of heavy boxes full of books to move when we moved to this house in 2005. And, despite missed profits, we still made enough at the fundraiser to take the Just Have Fun Club membership out to a very fancy lunch at Red Robin complete with Oreo Cookie Mocktails. 

So anyway, I think I may need some of the fabric.

Coconut cake report and a book report

Just checking in during an unexpected nap:

• Dad is back from India. Survived. Took 400 photos. Glad to be home.
• Coconut cake received rave reviews at work. I was disappointed. I used coconut milk and about 2/3 can of condensed milk and found it unexpectedly dry.
• Tried making this rice pudding with brown rice. Crunchy texture, decent flavor. I left out the raisins.
• Working on a little Easter treat out of this new (to me) book.
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• Mr. H loaned the camera to his parents; new photos tomorrow.

Hope your weekend is going smashingly.