Week 4: Goodbye, January!

This week, I…

Made a 3 mushroom risotto, with from-scratch chicken and vegetable stock. Yum. Risotto is such a delicious and relatively uncomplicated dish, I should post a recipe sometime. I usually use pre-prepared stock, which makes it even easier.

Did a little more work on the sweater.

Started a new project, iPod earbud sleeve. It's knit, so it's kind of like a sweater for the earbuds.

Week 3: Happy Birthday, M!

This weekend, my friend M brought us all to an art studio where one can work with glass and ceramics. She's very creative, and we all had a lot of fun making things. I wish I’d gotten a photo of everyone’s work - flowers, abstract art, fireworks!, an adorable Pac Man ghost, a fancy cereal bowl, and more great things. We have to wait a bit for the people at the studio to fire our projects, so it’s exciting to anticipate how everything will turn out.

I decided to make some fused glass jewelry. A pair of cuff links - the letters in the SF Giants logo are separate instead of overlapping, in case there’s any loss of detail. Some pendants. And, it’s super dorky, but the one on the bottom left is meant to represent Boron, a component of some glass! The dichroic glass kind of looks like chunks of boron, and the copper loops on the left are a p orbital.

Week 2: Oh, January

It’s only January, and I’m already behind with the New Year’s resolutions of a) working regular hours, and b) completing and posting projects every week. Oops! I actually have to get some work done this afternoon, but before that, I will try to rectify the situation a bit.
Here’s what I’ve been working on:

I started knitting a purple shrug / cardigan.

Completed Project #3: A charm and a little box to hold it. For scale, I think the cupcake/acorn is about the size of a dime.

Edit (01/23): The recipient thought the cupcake looked like an acorn, and it kind of does! 

Completed Project #2: Rainbow Curtain (with morning sunshine streaming in).

Can’t remember what I originally intended to do with this fabric, but now it cheers me up on dreary winter mornings! Definite help from mom on this one.

Week 0: Happy New Year!

"I'm Bill Cosby. Jello. Sweaters"

- Tracy Jordan, 30 Rock

#1: 6 layers of Jello, molded in a bundt pan. Not a great photo, but it was lovely and delicious!

Directions from Manhattan Craft Room (click to see her gorgeous 9 layer Jello).

52 Projects in 2011

It’s very simple: 52 weeks, 52 projects. It can be easy to get too focused on work, so this is a way to bring a little balance. Anything that can be started and finished counts as a project.

Some of my project goals for this year:

• Cook more from-scratch, healthy, or fun foods. I like cooking endeavors, they're like chem lab but you can eat the results, so I'm trying to do more of that this year.
• Garden projects. Who read the Little House on the Prairie books and didn’t want to be a farmer?  
• Do more hands on craft projects. I’d like to pick it up knitting again because it’s something that can be worked on while on public transit or watching a baseball game.
• Read more. Or at all. It's been months since I've read anything unrelated to Chemistry.
• Build something, from scratch or close to it. Something that involves a hardware store.
• All those responsibilities that come with being a real adult. Taxes and time at the DMV, here I come! 
• Et cetera, et cetera.