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Things I Want to Make (But There’s a Good Chance I Won’t)

1. Some variation of this embroidered “messy tablecloth” by AZEdesign
Why I love it: it’s so perfectly embroidered to look like a complete mess
Why I won’t be making it: no patience for embroidery, at all
Why you should make it: so you can have me over for a dinner party

2. A smaller sized version of this cascade chandelier made out of recycled bottles by Michelle Brand
Why I love it: because at first it just looks like a classy, shimmering chandelier but also because it makes you look at plastic bottles in a whole new way
Why I won’t be making it: it looks best as it is, in its grandiose form, and I can’t seem to find a ballroom in our house in which to hang it
Why you should make it: because you have a ballroom

3. A record player made entirely out of paper, like Simon Elvins’
Why I love it: it seems like if you mastered the making of it, you could just whip one up on a camping trip and (assuming you’ve brought your favorite records) voila! you’ve got yourself a dance party in the woods! (I’m all about the parties today)
Why I won’t be making it: because I can’t even fathom how it works
Why you should make it: because you are much smarter than me

4. These super cheap top-down blinds using the important gizmo-y parts of inexpensive plastic blinds and those paper temporary blinds
Why I love it: you get sunlight, sans neighbors staring into your house
Why I won’t be making it: actually, I just might make these. We need something better, especially in our living room, and have you seen how much wood blinds cost?
Why you should make it: so we can both brag about our awesome blinds

5. This adorable happy star ipod cozy
Why I love it: um, because it’s adorable
Why I won’t be making it: our 80G ipod was stolen! (this destroyed my trust of my fellow Nelsonites)
Why you should make it: because you have an ipod (*wistfully glances at your ipod*)

6. A paper cut-out as awesome as this one at skinny laminx
Why I love it: it’s so intricate and delicate and it would be prove to be evidence of my patience and determination
Why I won’t be making it: because I already tried and got frustrated and quit
Why you should make it: because it’s pretty

7. My very own hoodie based on this tutorial
Why I love it: because it doesn’t use an actual pattern and looks pretty good (with different fabric choices)
Why I won’t might be making it: because my dearest brown hoodie leapt out of my bag and twizzled its way out of the trunk of our car while we were on our honeymoon and now I am without a comfy, go-to hoodie
Why you should make it: it’s cheaper than buying one. oh, and bragging rights (”nice hoodie you have there” “oh, this? it’s nothing, really. I just made it myself. in my spare time. with some scraps of fabric I found laying around.”)

8. An art piece made out of a damaged book like these book autopsies by Brian Dettmer
Why I love it: c’mon! They’re fantastic! And they give new life to old books and get rid of all those pesky words.
Why I won’t be doing it: it looks like it would make a mess. And it would probably be a lot harder than I imagine.
Why you should do it: because you just saved a whole set of encyclopedias from the trash but some of them are water-stained and they’re just sitting in a corner of your living room now

There you have it. Some of these things I have had vague hopes of creating for a long time now. But here I am, confessing that I most likely won’t make them and giving you compelling reasons to do them for me.

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Etsy Store

I just couldn’t throw it out. It was a huge vintage poster from a school in Kaslo, with a scene of a park on one side and a kitchen on the other. The walls of the kitchen were a delightful pistachio colour. A friend of ours saved it and others from the trash and passed it on. But it was too big to hang anywhere in our tiny abode. So I lovingly selected my favorite scenes from within the pictures and turned them into postcards with rounded edges (which are, in my opinion, the best kind of edges). Ryan designed a nice little backing sticker for the address, stamp and message.

They are listed for sale in my new store on etsy (you can click on the images in the sidebar or go to www.cucumbersome.etsy.com to check it out) in packs of three.

My store mission is simple: Sell the things I make because we just don’t have room for them all. And then make some more.

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Baby Giraffe

This is the giraffe that I made for a baby gift. We have to ship it off right away but I thought I’d post a picture because I’m pretty proud of this, my first attempt at a stuffed animal. I really love the ones I saw at Wren Handmade, but they were $60 each. One of my lines is “I could make that” but I rarely follow through. Hurrah for finishing a project!

I think he needs a name… hmm…

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“It’s Like Escher Got Lazy”

(…said Ryan when he saw these stairs at the hospital.)

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Happy Time Indeed!

I love espresso.

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(A Little Less Faux) Sushi

There is this amazing raw food restaurant in Nelson called Raw Freshing. The owner makes hemp and walnut crust pizzas, truffles and macaroons - all raw, of course. She apparently teaches courses, too, which I think would be fun. When we were on our honeymoon, I picked up the Raw “un-cookbook” by Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein. It is probably the most sophisticated cookbook I own, and there is no actual cooking involved. The photos are absolutely gorgeous. In a flurry of zeal for the raw food philosophy, I attempted to make the bleeding heart radish ravioli with yellow tomato sauce and the heirloom tomato soup with olives and shaved fennel. Just flipping through the book makes me salivate.

I’m getting distracted (*closes book*). I was going to blog about the sushi that Chantale makes at Raw Freshing, using sprouts instead of rice. I’m not a vegan but I do love my vegetables and this sushi tastes like… sunshine and laughter rolled up tightly in nori and sliced up. Too much? I looked around on the internet and found that it is really easy to make. Easier than normal sushi (but slightly harder than candy sushi). Today I’m making it (this will be the third time). Warning: The integrity of the ‘rawness’ of this recipe is questionable because I make substitutions in a few places, but I’ve made a note of them.

First you have to make the pecan pate:

Throw 2 cups of pecans in a food processor and let it do it’s thing. When they’re nice and small, add in half a red onion, minced, a big handful of parsley, the juice of half a lemon, and 1 clove garlic (chopped, or 1 tsp powdered if that’s what you’ve got), 2 tsp nama shoyu (this is a raw organic unpasteurized soy sauce but we couldn’t find it in town so we ended up buying an organic shoyu, which is just the japanese name for soy sauce, but if you want it to be fully raw, you can buy nama shoyu here) and 2 tsp cold pressed sesame oil.

Mix 1 tbs of miso with a pinch of cayenne and spread a layer of this paste of a sheet of untoasted nori leaving an inch or so at the bottom edge and 2 inches at the top (toasted nori isn’t raw but it is readily available so sometimes I just use it instead). Then cover it with a handful of sprouts (I used a mixture of regular sandwich type sprouts and daikon) and layer on whatever else you want: sliced red bell pepper, avocado, cucumber (of course I would add cucumber!), and I think mango is essential here. Then add an even amount of the pecan pate in a line on top of the veggies.

Roll it up, and voila! You could serve it as is but I like to cut them into about six pieces with a super sharp knife. Serve it with shoyu and, if you want, wasabi (I don’t want).

I asked Ryan what he thought it tasted like and he said “Dirt, but the most flavorful dirt ever. Like Amazonian dirt from an orchard that used to be a coffee plantation, and you’re scooping it up with your hands and there’s berries in it…”

A compliment? I’m still trying to decipher. But he assured me that he loves it, and his “mmm’s” did too.

So there you have it: raw sushi that, tastewise, is somewhere on the scale between Amazonian dirt and laughter.

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Goat Cheese Covers a Multitude of Sins

We had a delicious greek salad with our dinner. Cucumber, tomatoes, bell peppers with goat cheese, fresh lemon and a drizzle of olive oil. And, lastly, a sprinkle of thyme and a heavy dousing of… curry?! Sure, those stainless steel spice jars look nice but, functionally, it’s nice to have labels. So I decided to just add some more goat cheese.

Maybe I’ve stumbled upon some culinary masterpiece. Okay, upon eating, I can safely say I didn’t. But what if I had?

In any case, it would pale in comparison to these:

So… maybe if I serve it on a slate tile or something…?

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White Scarf

My love of sharpies + my compulsive desire to draw patterns = this girl

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Music for Everyone

For the last two months that I lived in Calgary, I worked in the coffee shop in the main library downtown. One day, on a break (from the hard job of doing the Times crossword with my co-worker and occasionally making a latte or two), I wandered into the basement and found a rack of books being sold for pennies. I bought this choir book. Then I took it home and ripped out all the pages, covered the inside with a neutral paper and made it into a CD case for Ryan.

Each sleeve is just taped inside, so it’s not the most sturdy thing.

A friend of mine back in high school really liked Brand New and this quote (from their song Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t) that I wrote in the spine has been swimming around in my head for years: “I hope this song starts a craze, the kind of song that ignites the airwaves, the kind of song that makes people glad to be where they are, with whoever they’re there with.”

Anyway, I forgot about this CD case until I saw Ex Libris Anonymous, a site that sells journals made from old book covers. Even the coil bindings look good. I want one.

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Mix Tapes

This CD label is the sum of my accomplishments this Saturday afternoon. I’m going to share it because it might make me feel slightly more productive if it makes it onto one or two more mixdiscs (which is hard to say).

Suggested Track Listing:

• Architecture in Helsinki: The Owls Go
• Christine Fellows: Paper Anniversary
• Chromeo: Fancy Footwork
• The Cure: Close to Me
• Feist: Sea Lion Woman
• Iron and Wine: Flightless Bird, American Mouth
• John Vanderslice: White Dove
• Shapes and Sizes: Island’s Gone Bad
• Of Montreal: Everyday Feels Like Sunday
• St.Vincent: Now. Now.

So just click on the thumbnail below and print it on sticky paper (you can get templates here, if needed)