Lots Going On!

There is a lot going on around the shop and life lately. I have been so busy between crafting, Fabulous Pants, gardening, and watching the World Cup. I have been uploading items to the Fabulous Pants shop lately. I finally have the olive filigree pants uploaded to the shop. I have to say that I am really in love with this fabric. It is a very beautiful tone of olive, and the border on this sari is really quite stunning. I am hoping to get my costuming done for Chaos Wars quickly so that I can move on to another pair of pants for the shop. I am thinking about starting on another pair of purple pants, but there are also some red and raspberry fabrics that are also calling for my attention. It is hard when you are surrounded by such beautiful fabric to pick the next one to work on.

On Friday, I met up with the lovely Dreah, and we worked on making some pickles. It was her first time pickling, so it was a fun experience. We made a sandwich slice style pickle, and I think I may really like these as they have a slight sweetness to them. The brine has both brown and white sugar in it, giving it a real depth. There is also mustard seed and celery seed in the brine, which are also favorite spices of mine. I cannot wait for them to cure, so I can pop them open and try them out. I did not find the pickle crisp in time, so hopefully they are not too soft. We did soak them in ice water for a while, so hopefully this mitigated this a bit. I wished we had more time that day to do the full three hour soak, but that just was not possible. We would have been canning long into the night had we followed that.

On Sunday, we had some culinary goodness. We started the morning off with crepes and World Cup soccer games. I had mine filled with Nutella and bananas with chocolate sauce in one and homemade apricot jam in the other. Dusted with a little powdered sugar, it was a delicious way to start off a day. I am a big fan of crepes, and they are not as hard to make as people make them out to be. I make my batter the night before or even the morning of if I have enough time to let it sit for a hour in the fridge before it is time to make them. I like to spike the batter with some amaretto liquor for a great overtone to the crepes. Perhaps someday I will make a tutorial for making them.

We then moved on to a great pizza! I think it was one of the best pizzas we have made to date. I used a ball of the lean bread from the freezer for the crust. It works out well and is really convenient. We used store bought sauce, and I hope to change this soon. I have a recipe from one of my canning books that I would like to try out. I hope that it is a sauce we like because I would love to find a sauce that we really love that I can make rather than buying sauces that we just find okay. Once I find a recipe I love, I will share it.

Today I am hoping to make some actual progress on my newest 25 yard skirt. I have been "working" on it for a long time. Today I need to actually work on it... that is if World Cup does not get in the way too much. I hope to get my arrows repaired during the game and get them packaged up for shipment for Chaos Wars. Also, I want to get my new belt design started. I want to test it out at Chaos Wars before introducing it into the shop. I am taking some balcony garden pictures and will have them posted for you all tomorrow.