I’m light on the posts this week - sorry. I’m in one of those work-vortex situations. But yesterday, on the train to a teaching gig, I did get to read Lotta Prints - and it’s fantastic.

I’ve always had this idea that printing on fabric would be too hard to attempt. But with this book, Lotta Jansdotter shows you that it isn’t, really. She covers some very simple techniques, like rubber-stamping. (Love those stamped ribbons!)

Lotta also has some great ideas for those inkjet iron-on transfers, which I have used. But her take on them is really elegant, as in this skirt. This photo is a good encapsulation of the book’s whole approach: simplicity, elegance, and great design.

And stenciling, of course. Isn’t it great how the stencils elevate this simple fleece scarf?

These skirts are potato-printed, for pete’s sake! How much do I need to potato-print my summer wardrobe right now?

My favorite things about the book are these Inspiration pages, which are scattered throughout. They show images of shapes and colors Lotta has found inspiring, and sketches from her sketchbook. A really cool glimpse into the creative process of one designer.

Oh - and because this is a Chronicle book, and they are excellent at such things, the back of the book is full of perforated, heavyweight stencil pages for you to cut out. And there’s a handy pocket built into the back cover for storing them.

Two thumbs up, four stars, and all that.

Cathy is fast becoming my guru. Replenishing her supply of swistraw recently, she came into a motherlode of vintage plastic canvas shapes. And she let me have first dibs.

Can you imagine my squeal of geekly delight when I pulled these flower forms out of the envelope? (Bridget - maybe these were how your bag was made!)

Whoa, what are these? Imagine the possibilities . . . plastic canvas that takes a curve!

These are so interesting. I’d love to see their crafty origins. How to use that raised center? Ooh, the mind reels.

Last but not least, shapes! Of course, it’ll be September before I have time to play with these, but at least there’s something to look forward to as summer winds down.

If you really want to see some ingenious plastic canvas and swistraw creations, check out Cathy’s post series here.

. . . And speaking of swistraw, Cathy has just put a bunch of of it up at her Etsy shop. Go snap some up! I just did.

UPDATE: Cathy just commented that she’s also listed some of this vintage plastic canvas, so you can go get some of your own. Woo!

Mom just sent me these pics, and I know this is no time to think about Christmas, but I just had to share!

This is a gingerbread village we built together when I was in college - it was, in fact, our last gingerbread project. Massive undertaking - I think this whole thing is about four feet across. I know these photos are a bit hard to see (they are, after all, from pre-digital days), but I’m going to point out some details I remember fondly, and you can squint at ‘em.

. . . Starting with that pretzel fence!

See the little mushrooms? They have a gumdrop stem and a peppermint top. And, look at the barn on the left there. See how we piped yellow frosting hay coming out of the loft window? If you look at the little house in the center, you can also see the peppermint front steps, and the Lifesaver wreath on the door.

. . . And then that church on the right. If you listened to the gingerbread house podcast, you may recall Mom and I talking about this one. See the roof? That’s where all those pretty stained-glass-looking candies promptly melted and slid off, leaving stained frosting behind.

We’ve nobody to blame but ourselves. We didn’t check the Gingerbread Building Codes, or file for permits with the Gingerbread Building Commission.

This monstrosity is my deck. It’s the only thing about our current apartment I don’t like so well. It’s uncovered, so there’s always debris raining down from the sky. And there’s no water source out there, so we have to haul water from the kitchen. Not to mention, I can’t seem to find the right plants or placements for the path of the sun - things end up either fried or leggy.

I love to have a cheerful deck full of plants, but last summer, I gave up in disgust and let everything fend for itself.

Lately I’ve been watching my perennials struggle back to life, and finally couldn’t take it anymore. K. and I began our Assault On The Deck today.

Lots of work! Here’s K. sweeping up three bags of pinecones and leaves and crap. We also cleared out a lot of waterlogged empty pots, washed the deck furniture. and weeded and fed the surviving plants.

Here’s a Phase One view, just before we pooped out for the day. On the table are some lettuces, a cherry tomato, and some herb plants. Tomorrow, we’ll tackle planting those. We’re going to try some water-bottle drip irrigation this year.

Feels better out there already. I sure hope it lasts.

Are you ready for Mother’s Day this weekend? We’ve already celebrated here - in combo with my Mom’s birthday, which was Tuesday.

I was looking for a good celebratory dessert option - which is a challenge for this celebration given that it included sugar-eaters and non-sugar-eaters. But I found this great, highly-flexible recipe, and thought I’d share.

The Splenda cookbook offers up Tiramisu Trifle, and it’s easy-peasy to make. You start with some strong coffee. I’m using instant, made about half again as strong as normal, but of course, you can use some brewed coffee. Here, I have it in a cold water bath so it’ll cool down quickly.

Next, you mix up some room-temp cream cheese and a little mascarpone (or ricotta), about a 3:1 ratio. Then and some sweetener. The recipe calls for Splenda and a touch of brown sugar, but really, you can use anything - refined white sugar, or honey, or agave. I’m not going to give you any proportions on sweetener. The recipe was a little too sweet for my taste, but then again, I have a weird palate now. Just add sweet stuff until you like it. and then throw in a couple tablespoons of that coffee. If I had some boozy stuff around, like Kalhua or Grand Marnier, I’d add some of that, too.

Then, dice up some angel food cake. I used a store-bought, full-sugar version, which was okay in tiny doses for our hypoglycemic eaters. Angel food is pretty low-sugar anyway. You could probably find a sugarfree version somewhere. I did about 1″ cubes here.

Get a big, shallow pan and pour in a little cooled coffee. Toss half the cake cubes in it until they’re reasonably coated. (Granted, this is not a colorful dessert.)

Then, put them in the bottom of a bowl and spread half the cream cheese mixture over the top. If it were summertime, I might also throw in some strawberries or raspberries.

Sift on a thin layer of unsweetened cocoa powder. You may be thinking that this sounds awful, but let me tell ya - it blends with the cream cheese and makes this awesome little hint of dark chocolate. Mmmmmmmmmm.

Then, repeat those steps with the other half of your ingredients to make a second layer. (Gad, I’m a messy cook.)

Here’s another beauty of this dessert - it’s scalable. You can make a giant dish of this stuff for a crowd, and pile on more layers. Or, like I did here, you can make a little portion for two in a soup bowl.

Cover this bad-boy tightly and refrigerate it for several hours-to-overnight so the flavors can blend. And then eat up! It’s yummy!

My friend Bridget gave me these great black-and-white instruction sheets from the 70’s recently. They show how to make things with “Fake Fur.” Oh, there is so much to love about them. Starting with their proud use of the term “Fake Fur.”

That wreath is made by taking a lot of 3″ circles of that Fake Fur, which are sprayed with some kind of resin glaze and then coaxed into curliness. That makes me giggle just thinking about it.

A similar process makes these amazing hairy flowers. Freakin’ great typography.

. . . And then there’s Fake Fur “Embroidery.” (Love that that’s in quotes!) According to the sheet, “Any stitchery design you see can be translated into Fake Fur “Embroidery.” You apparently cut the Fake Fur into shapes, spray them with resin spray glaze, and then comb all the little hairs out in a radial pattern. You then groom any raggedy fur edges so they wrap underneath the shape. Then you glue it to the background. Wow. Somehow, that seems way harder than embroidery to me.

But these fish are my absolute favorite thing - you just take an oval piece of Fake Fur, spray it, and then groom the hairs until they resemble all those fins. The enormous fish-lips are made with bumpy chenille stems. Then add googly eyes, and prepare to win some decorating awards!

Here’s wishing you Happy Fake Fur Fantasies . . . .

UPDATE: Check out these insane fur flowers on Cathy’s blog, too!

Last week, I read Hanna’s post about hand-sewing being her new go-to craft for soothing, repetitive time. She made some fantastic paper-pieced patchwork balls (follow that link and see her photo.)

All this got me thinking about a craft book I had as a kid. It involved toys made with paper-piecing. But I couldn’t recall the title. So I went on Google Safari, trying as many permutations of “patchwork toy book” as I could think of.

And I found it! On eBay - Patchwork Playthings, by Margaret Hutchings, copyright 1976 by Dover. And I got me another copy.

I was just a little obsessed with this book back in the day. The toys seemed really unusual to me. I loved this little old lady doll, because she looked so wise - and, because of the artful placement of the floral fabric on her collar and cuffs!

I always wanted to make this doll, but never did. I think that paper-pieced armchair is so cool.

I did make this harlequin. I made him from upholstery sample cards from the interior design studio where my Mom worked. Fabric much too heavy for this kind of project. I had to ask my Dad to turn the thing inside out when the time came, because my hands weren’t strong enough. How old was I? 10?

Okay, one more… ya gotta love Humpty Dumpty. That brick wall is great - don’t you love the placement of the floral patches, so they look like a creeping vine?

The book, by the way, has excellent instructions and cardstock templates for all the patches. Luckily, the work I’m involved in now is generating a whole lot of little fabric scraps. . . .

A funny tale of my overloaded brain . . . .

Ryan has decided to take her successful Etsy business in new directions, so she had a sale on her wonderful pendants. So I ordered two right away. (Aren’t they gorgeous?)

In the package with them, I found this intriguing stack of little boxes.

I opened the first one. Scrabble tile magnets! How cool is that? Isn’t Ryan a sweetie to send me these?

Look! Here’s more - wow, that’s so nice of her!

. . . So, then off I go about my business. Fully half an hour later, I’m loading the dishwasher and the lightbulb finally clicks on in my head.

“D’oh!” I say.

. . . In my defense, I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.

Thank you so much, Ryan! These freakin’ ROCK.

Okay, beads first: I wanted to let you know that Susan has been adding how-tos to her Bead Simple website. You can see two video tutorials there - one for making a Solo Earring, and the other for making the necklace from the cover of the Bead Simple book.

While you’re there, you can also download a PDF pattern for Natalie’s iPod cozy design, and link to a photo tutorial for Sarah’s lovely tote bag.

Susan plans to add more how-to’s to the site, all thing of course depending on the any-day-now arrival of her new baby.

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Next, BUTTONS, as promised. Here’s a perfect illustration of the vagaries of button-shopping on eBay: I paid (gulp) $14.00 for this handful of buttons. I swear I did not mean to. But they kept outbidding me, and I kind of lost my head. I mean, look at them!

I paid five bucks for this giant load. Unsorted, not-so-clean, and harboring odd bits of non-button things.

Well . . . what are ya gonna do, right?

Well, dang - I went to the Handmade NW Spring Artisans Fair this morning, and got so involved in buying and chatting, I forgot to take more pictures. So this one isn’t so great - sorry. All those crowds you see? There are excellent vendors behind them.

K. and I acquired a number of charming Mother’s Day gifts - but further details will be suppressed, in the best interests of two particular readers of this blog.

The fair is happening tomorrow as well, locals, from 10-5. It’s at OHSU’s Center for Health and Healing - a gorgeous space, and you can take the Portland Streetcar right to the front door. And if you’re so inclined, the tram’s right next door.

Lots of talented locals are there, including Scrumptious Suds, Littleput Books, Leah’s Glass Creations, and Eye Pop Art. Stop by and say Howdy!

. . . In the interest of adding a more compelling photo, check out these fabulous dancing men we saw on Pioneer Square on the way over. They were clacking those sticks together and singing away. No idea who they were, or why they were dancing on the square. But aren’t they awesome?