FO-Newborn Cupcake Hat

It seems rather plain without sprinkles or a pom pom, but I can't find any red yarn in my stash and since it's for a newborn, I doubt he'll mind (the parents won't). This hat was made out of Caron Simply Solids.

Better Homes and Gardens recipe for egg custard

It wasn't bad. Not too sweet, and custardy.

FO- dress for a Waldorf doll

My own design:

Pineapple Vinegar Saga

So the pineapple vinegar making seems to be progressing. It's been about a week, and I had lots of mold at the top of my jar:

I skimmed all of that off, reduced the amount of actual pineapple, and transferred it into a sterilized spaghetti sauce/mason jar. And recovered with the coffee filter. My mold looked different than the mold in the pictures of tutorials I've seen. Mine is red; theirs was green/black. The fruit flies are getting pretty annoying, they've infested the entire house it seems. I've moved the jar from a shady spot on the kitchen counter to a cabinet under the bathroom sink. I don't know whether that will help with the flies, but I can hope.

Cooking DIYs

So I've been a busy bee this morning, on account of someone kicking me until I woke up and fed him. It's not as bad as it sounds, I'm almost used to it. Anyway, I roasted a pan of tomatoes, baked another batch of savory muffins, and cut up a pineapple. Along the way, I also started pineapple vinegar from this recipe, and ground my own almond meal for the muffins.

All of my pineapple scraps did not fit into the glass container I was going to use, so I had to use a plastic mayonnaise jar I had instead. And, while I know I have a package of cheesecloth somewhere, I couldn't find it when I actually needed it, but read that a coffee filter will work as a substitute:

 This one cup of almonds:

 Became this almond meal/flour in less than 10 seconds:

Into a sieve it went:

To sift out the large chunks:

Leaving the fine meal:

This was a new recipe, "24-hour omelet" from an American's Test Kitchen cookbook. It's not actually an omelet; it's buttered bread, cheese, eggs and seasoning (onion counts as seasoning, right?), soaked for 8-36 hours and then thrown into the oven. The before pictures:

And the finished project:

It got the kids' seal of approval this morning, but let's see if they finish it as leftovers.

Another wig option (for Waldorf dolls)

So after I finished Bub's doll's wig, I saw other Waldorf dolls with more realistic hair. Hair that reminded me of the Cornsilk Cabbage Patch Kids (I know, I'm dating myself) instead of the yarn hair. And I found a tutorial. It's called mohair weft.

You buy locks of mohair, arrange it just so, sew one end of it together (unfortunately this seems to require a sewing machine as well as sewing machine skills, both of which I am sorely lacking), and then crocheting it into a wig cap. As in, you're already crocheting a wig cap, but this time instead of adding hair after the cap is completed, you add/crochet it in as you're creating the cap. Insane and brilliant, I know!

So while I've tried crocheting strands of yarn into a wig cap for both kids' dolls and most recently tried this tutorial that involves much cutting and sewing of loose yarn, then tacking that onto the wig cap I'd already knitted, I now have something new to try. Sewing the three layers of yarn onto the wig cap really didn't work for us; maybe SweetTart is just too rough, but the layers have been ripped out, the wig cap shows, and it looks like her hair will have to be redone AGAIN.

Alternatively, I've been toying with the idea of making myself a doll so that I have a model for when I'm trying to make little doll things. As a child, my aunt made myself and my cousin dolls with cotton interface for the body, and yarn for the hair. What was amazing to me at the time, in which Barbie and Cabbage Patch Kids reigned, was that this doll looked like me. I know part of it was just the pattern (as well as the materials on hand), but it was long-limbed and thin, pale-skinned and had black hair. It was my favorite doll. Waldorf dolls are not nearly as lanky, but still highly customizable (and not plastic like American Girl Dolls); I'm just not sure whether I'd want a doll that looked like me or whether I'd want to go out on a limb and have a doll that looked unrealistic--multicolored roving (or an unnatural color like lilac, if I'm planning on trying the mohair weft), grey or purple eyes. . . the possibilities are endless.

Another long overdue project

Everyone else jumped on the bandwagon long ago, but I. . . continued to knit socks. Or something. Anyway, with my impending due date, I'm trying to finish everything I can. So this:

Will become this:

Do you know which project this is? I bet you do!

Waldorf Wig Making (again)

When Bub asked for a Waldorf doll for his birthday last year, it was late. And when I finally finished, months after his birthday, I had no more energy for the hair. Until now.

Most instructions tell you to wind yarn around something x number of times, then cut, and loop onto the wig (or sew together, and then sew resulting piece on to doll's head). The problem I have with this is that when the strands are all (approximately) the same length, it's way shorter in one spot than the other, resulting in a funky looking hairstyle. So for this doll's hair, the longest strands were 12" long in the back, and 18" in the very front. I tried the blend the sides to slowly lengthen/shorten. Doing a french braid did not work, I lack the skills, apparently even with an immobile doll with sticky hair. But a pony tail is within my abilities. A few strands were a bit too long again, so I chopped about two or three inches off the front, but other than that, perfect!