Oven Mitt Part One

I was determined to make something this week, other than excuses.  I'm still trying to keep this craft challenge from filling my house up with worthless (though pretty) mess, so I settled on something that I needed anyway-- a new oven mitt (I have only one pair, which were ugly to begin with and now are also burnt and worn through in places, they have begun to let heat through-- ouch).  I found a 'hot pad and oven mitt' round-up on Pinterest (see here) and chose a simple glove style mitt, tutorial here. 
Another sub-goal of my challenge is to use up the craft supplies I have lying around, whenever possible, instead of buying more.  I went through my fabric stash and found some pretty-enough cotton to use as the main fabric and liner.  All I had to buy was some Insul-Brite insulated batting, and heavy duty needles to sew through all these layers!



Cutting the layers was quick and fun-- using the rotary cutter reminds me of quilting, which I love the best of all sewing (if only quilts didn't take so much of everything-- fabric, time, money, space).  I didn't bother cutting out exactly 9 x 15 as the directions say, my fabric scraps were already around 11 x 18 and I didn't waste time cutting off the little bit extra.



Above are the layers, with the lining fabric face up (only after I started this project did I fall in love with that fabric a little and wish that it wasn't about to disappear inside an oven mitt).  The darker pink is for the bottom edge.  Next I quilted one half (so, one whole sandwich of outer, cotton batting, insulated batting and lining) with diagonals of whatever thread happened to be in my machine.  I thought this step would go faster than it did, and that I could finish the project today, but instead I think I'll just get around to quilting the other half. 



More to follow when I get this finished up.  When I started this project I chose a different fabric for the outer, but while ironing it I realized I had quite a big piece, and I didn't want to waste it on a tiny little quilted thing like this oven mitt.  In fact, I wish I could think of something easy to make that we would use outdoors, because the print is so happy and evocative of spring.  I'm stumped though-- what can I sew with this piece of fabric, not sure the size but I think less than a yard, which I can then use outside in the spring?  Help me with this if you have an idea, otherwise I've got next week's project decided already-- an apron.
Here's the fabric, my current crush:

Challenge Update

For this past year, I gave myself an unofficial challenge (unofficial because I wasn't yet blogging, to make it official ;), to finally figure out how to make a delicious, light cake.  I'm a bakestress, and know my way around cookies of all types, yeast breads, quick breads and muffins, rolls, and many other confections.  Somehow I just couldn't wrap my head (or hands) around baking a cake that didn't turn out dense, heavy and unpleasant to eat.  My challenge then: learn how to bake a good cake by the time Snorzy's first birthday rolled around.  Up until late in February I didn't think I would be successful-- throughout the year, for every occasion and sometimes no occasion, I baked cake after cake, following all the advice I could find online and in books.  Still, each of my cakes turned out a bland brick.  Finally, I had a partial success with the Birthday Chocolate Cake from The Mom 100 by Katie Workman-- I made it for my father's birthday on February 19th, and it baked up perfect at first, and then got a little heavier when I put it in the fridge.

For Snorzy's birthday I made Zoe's Cupcakes from C is for Cooking (the Sesame Street cookbook), after a friend came over for dinner one night bringing those and they were the most delicious homemade cake I've had *ever*-- and from a kid's cookbook no less!  I think the secret to baking a tender cake for someone like me who just doesn't naturally have the touch with cakes is this: lots of dairy.  I used whole milk plain yogurt (the recipe called for a full cup, and this in addition to butter, not instead), and they came out soft and pillowy.  I also re-visited the chocolate cake from the Mom 100 (speaking of dairy, it calls for both sour cream and whole milk in addition to two sticks of butter) being even more careful to get all my ingredients room temperature and not over-mixing (my downfalls as a bakestress are absolutely over-mixing and over-baking), the cupcakes turned out lovely underneath but with overdone crunchy cookie-like tops, despite the fact that I baked them for 1 minute less than the minimum time given-- I think it's time to invest in an oven thermometer.  Overall, I was pleased with my progress, and now I believe that I can bake a yummy cake whenever one is called for (though I still would like to learn how to make a perfect butter cake, without all the added dairy).

All this by way of saying-- I can rise to a challenge, even when I don't do so well with it at first.

After a good start on my craft challenge, here have been my contributions to it for the past few weeks:
1. skipped, trying to believe that 'making' the list of curricula we'll use for the year really counts as making something
2. cast on and knit the first few rows of the right, front panel of Snorzy's rainbow sweater-- another case (as when I finished the back panel) of using my challenge to motivate a dull little piece of a project that otherwise would have caused me to stall
3.  used my craft time to send all the pictures in my phone to Walgreens so that I can print them and 'make' photo albums-- I don't know what other people do with their pictures, but I feel like I need an actual, paper photo record of every important moment (and some cute, less-important moments) of my children's lives

So now, I'm determined to actually, factually, un-ironically, make something in the upcoming week, start to finish, using yarn or fabric or art supplies.  Wish me luck and a visit from a muse, pictures to follow.