The Vampie’s at it again! The folks over an Instructables.com sent me a note that my Twilight-inspired sweet treat would be a great entry to their DIY Halloween Contest. In case you’re bored and have nothing else to do online, head on over HERE to rock the vote for my Vampie. (And thank you again to those of you who helped make the Vampie a winner at Instructables’ Pie Contest!)

There are so many wonderfully gory entries in the current contest that I doubt I’ll even place, but it’s great how much interest my little experiment has generated nonetheless. Voting runs through November 16, 2008, perfect timing for when the Twilight movie hits theaters on November 21.

All the luck to the Vampie, and I hope you have a great weekend up ahead to sink your teeth into!

“Fabric-Induced Fainting” should really be an actual condition in medical books. It occurs when a crafter passes out after seeing that holiday fabric is on sale at the local crafts shop.

(I am ok. I just hyperventilated a teensy bit. Hee.)

I’m jumping out of my skin and my curls are frizzing out! I have three great stories to share.

SPOONFLOWER NOW OPEN TO ALL

Spoonflower is a genius project: a website that allows you to upload fabric designs and have them printed for you. The site was beta-testing in May 2008, and would only print fabric by invitation. I signed up, wishing, hoping I’d get an invite. I thought it was too good to be true! I finally got an email that made me squeal, because it said this:

We are writing to thank you for signing up for the beta version of our site, but more importantly to thank you for your support and help as we have tried to turn a fabulous idea — affordable, on-demand fabric — into a real, functioning company. It’s not that we don’t still have a lot to learn (note that the site still says beta), but once you have over 10,000 people signed up as testers you may as well open it up to everyone.

My mind’s spinning. The possibilities! Girl With A Curl dishtowels, anyone?

JAY MCCARROLL DESIGNS FABRIC FOR FREESPIRIT

Project Runway Season One winner Jay McCarroll has cobbled two fabric collections together for FreeSpirit Fabric Designs. I’ve been kind of stalking Jay online because he was my favorite contestant from that season of the show, and partly because he and I share the same name! (I’m silly like that.) His two lines (Woodland Wonderland and Garden Friends) are whimsical and remind me of printed Japanese fabric.

Jay says:

My mother had a delicious hall closet stocked with remnants of fabrics and tins of buttons and bags of yarn. This was my favorite place in the house.

It would be mine, too!

SATC- IT AIN’T OVER

And to put the FAB in these Fabricated News tidbits, did you hear about the definite sequel to the Sex And The City movie? I admit that, even as a fan of the show, I have my doubts. Don’t get me wrong, I think I’d enjoy all the new fashion that’s bound to be in the movie but, story-wise, what more can they possibly write/tell? Maybe, then, I should just prepare (but not expect) to be pleasantly surprised?

And since I have quotes for the two previous stories, I’ll end this with of my favorite ones from Carrie Bradshaw (a curly girl herself!) :

Maybe the best any of us can do is not quit, play the hand we’ve been given, and accessorize the outfit we’ve got.

You have a fab day, folks.

…is make you brave enough to say, “Yes, I can.”

Back from dance class—my first real one in 11 months—tired but unbelievably happy. I looked like a hippo as I lumbered around in my leotards, but all I knew was I’d worked up the courage to rediscover a craft I’ve been too scared to go back to, buoyed by the hope that anything is possible. (America woke up to a new president today. ANYTHING is possible!)

I was a hopeful hippo, at least!

May YOU have the chance to say, “Yes, I can,” today.

Apps that I’m currently aping over on my new toy for their crafty or kitcheny usefulness.

WordPress - easy to use and includes the ability to embed pictures into posts. I’ve actually gotten the hang of typing on that keyboard with my fat fingers.

Grocery IQ - a running grocery list that allows you to add to it from a huge database of products, sorting them by aisle and allowing you to tick them off as you shop

Little Chef – a handy little helper for kitchen conversions (there are eight fluid ounces to a cup!)

StitchMinder - a counter to help you keep track of the number of knitted or crocheted stitches in any project. Especially helpful if you’re increasing or decreasing stitches.

Diner Dash – a game that’s kept me up till 2 am. You’re a career woman who breaks free from the shackles of corporate life by putting up your own restaurant. The better you serve your customers, the more you’re able to spruce up your place. Hee. I love this game. My restaurant chain is called Kurdapya’s. Ahaha. (It’s a nickname from my parents.)

SnapTell – I used to snap cookbook covers on my phone in bookstores so I could hunt them down on online later on (Amazon has the best deals on books.) This ingenious app allows you to take a picture of a book, DVD or CD cover, recognizes the media from the picture and finds it on Amazon, Google or Wikipedia for you. You’re able to purchase it from Amazon if you wish and stores all our snapshots in its memory.

Uhm, the book above isn’t mine. I am nowhere that nerdy. Currently on file for me are Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners and The Sugar Queen.

Style.com – streams the latest runway photos directly to your phone, from Abaete to Zac Posen. As someone who sews, I love looking at the workmanship that goes into all the latest runway designs and earmark design and color elements for my own projects.

SATC (Carrie’s Closet) – allows you to take snapshots of your clothes and accessories and put outfits together. While this caters to the obsessive-compulsive in me, what I’m really enjoying as a crafter are file photos from the series.

For the longest time, I’ve been wanting to sew a skirt inspired by the striped Sonia Rykiel top that Carrie wears on the balcony of her hotel when she goes to Paris. I was so happy when I discovered a high-res file of it on the app! Makes me want to ditch work and stay home to sew!

Needless to say, I’m enjoying my new toy a lot, and can’t wait for when the StitchMinder people come out with the Quilt2Go app, which promises to “keep track of your projects and swatches, calculate yardage and locate fabric shops, wherever you go!” Lord help the curly crafter in me!

I found her in a souvenir shop in Tijuana, Mexico and have since nicknamed her my Ms. Boo-llerina. She’s the only ballerina Dia de Los Muertos figure that I saw as I pored over all those shops’ shelves. Isn’t she scaryfabulous with her pink hair? She has an honored place on my bookshelf as she’s just too cool for anywhere else in the house.

Speaking of cool, how about this pumpkin that my friend Simeen carved? This heartbreaker of a little boy is Lawrence, her nephew. (Check out those curls!)

As any good aunt would do on Halloween, she carved his face into a pumpkin. Yes, my friends, THAT is love. (It took her three hours, I hear!)

Now if she carved MY face into a pumpkin and lit it up, THAT would be truly scary. Haha! 

Happy Spooky Day to all!

This is recipe #3 in The Girl With A Curl’s Fallin For Soup project.

Cioppino is a happy hodgepodge of all things seafood. It originated from seafaring Italians in San Francisco in the 1800s, when fishermen would contribute their day’s best catch to a communal soup pot. It owes its name to the Ligurian word ciuppin, meaning “to chop” or “chopped,” which is what you do to all manner of gifts from the sea to throw together for this spicy, tomato-based soup that’s perfect for cold weather. You know what else makes it yummy? Red wine. I don’t cook with alcohol that much, but this dish wouldn’t have been the same without it.

This version used what I found at the fish market on the morning of the day that I cooked this dish. There’s crab, shrimp, scallop, clams and cod.

And some other ingredients that I’d never think to use in daily cooking: crushed red pepper flakes, bay leaves and dried oregano, and other usual suspects like garlic, onion and green bell peppers.

CURLIFIED CIOPPINO

4 large garlic cloves, minced
2 medium onions, finely chopped
2 small bay leaved
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 cups dry red wine
1 (28- to 32-oz) can diced tomatoes
1 cup bottled clam juice
1 cup chicken broth

Seafood of your choice, like:
- crabs, cooked and cut in pieces
- clams/shellfish
- shrimp, heads trimmed
- scallops
- white-meat fish in chunks
- squid

1)    Cook garlic, onions, bay leaf, oregano, and red pepper flakes with salt and pepper in oil until onions are softened. Stir in bell pepper and tomato paste.

2)    Add wine and boil until reduced by about half. Add tomatoes with their juice, clam juice and broth. Simmer and season with salt and pepper.

3)    Add crab pieces and clams to stew and simmer, covered, until clams just open. Discard unopened clams as these mean they aren’t good for eating. Lightly remaining seafood with salt and add to stew, then simmer, covered, until just cooked through.

4)    Garnish with parsely or chopped basil and a sprinkling of cheese and serve hot.

You know what’s funny? I don’t even like crab or shrimp! And I wouldn’t touch lobster either, which is one other thing you can throw into the pot. I actually didn’t eat this for dinner (I had a cheeseburger and fries instead, ahaha). I know, I’m weird. I made it for the experience of working with seafood, and my seafood-loving friends and family said this hit the spot.

Cooking this made me remember Pappy. My dad’s an avid fisherman and used to take us fishing when we were kids. He would love this stew. I’ve made a mental note to cook this for him the next time he visits.

Hope you get the chance to warm up to your memories of the sea with this hearty dish!

This tag to tell you seven odd things about me came from Mai, who whips up her own brand of kitchen wizardry and documents it to torture people’s tastebuds through her blog. (Hallo, Mai! I’m finally getting the chance to do this!)

1)    I have a single letter for my first name—“J.” The period is included; not a dash, thank you very much. It isn’t short for anything. Some people think it stands for Juana, because there are lots of ‘em in my family on both sides, but not really. My parents were just weird about naming us. (My brother has “W.” as his first name. Talagang tinopak yung mga magulang namin. Our parents were just seized with a fit of the crazies.)

2)    According to Mama, the “Ana” from my second name is from the story of Anna And The King Of Siam. I like that my second name isn’t so random. I liked it even more growing up because in The King & I, that classic movie from 1956, Deborah Kerr gets to wear gorgeous dresses as Anna Leonowens, and Yul Brynner was actually kinda hot. Ahaha.

3)    I recently bought a purple leather wristlet. I love it, but that’s a strange fact, because I used to HATE purple with a pithy passion. Purple in all its incarnations: ube-jalaya purple, lavender, Barney-The-Dinosaur-purple, etc., = EW. But then I saw this. And I wanted it. And I loved it with all of my shallow, girly heart. But it was PURPLE! My brother encouraged me to get it. His advice: “You should be color-agnostic.” And so, fine. Hello, new purple thing. I heart you.

4)    I was stuck in an elevator at work for an hour two months ago. I was (embarrassingly) dancing to my iPod alone in the elevator when it came to a thudding halt on the ninth floor (I was on my way to the 12th). Then it dropped about a foot, and I made like a crazy woman and plastered myself against a corner, my hands and feet splayed out against the walls like my life depended on it, worried that I was going to plummet to my death. I was stuck somewhere between the seventh and eighth floors. They pried the door open and I could only talk to people through a slit at the top (see below for evidence). I read a magazine to pass the time. After the whole thing was over and I stepped out of the elevator, some officemates who’d been there started clapping and snapping pictures. I was sufficiently mortified. The office maintenance guy now calls out when he sees me, “Hey, Elevator Girl!”

5)    I’m Protestant but was schooled Catholic all my life: Salesian in grade school, Benedictine in high school and Jesuit in college. I’m more Catholic than some of my Catholic friends. I love teasing them by calling or emailing someone (especially the more heathen ones!) randomly and saying, “Did you remember to pray to the Sacred Heart? It’s First Friday today!”

6)    I can’t groom myself in public. I blame Social Graces class in high school. We were taught that a lady is never supposed to fix herself out in the open. You’re to gracefully steel yourself to the safe ceramic confines of the ladies’ room to powder your nose or retouch your lipstick. In school, if a class officer caught you brushing your hair in public, you’d never see your beloved Denman again because it would be confiscated and sent to hairbrush heaven. People have started to think me weird and antiquated these days, so I’m taking baby steps with lip balm. Like on the bus, or at the table after a meal. I still cringe a little, though!

7)    I can cuss in Arabic. I can also say, “I’m fat,” in Arabic. There’s a Lebanese lady at work (see # 4 for evidence again—she’s the one peering down at me) who I pester for Arabic phrases. It’s such a romantic language, but so far, I’ve only succeeded in remembering how to say “I love you,” how to call your mother a name that will warrant washing your mouth with soap, and how to say that I’m rotund. I really should expand my Arabic vocabulary because that’s just majnoon! (Crazy!)

This was fun. Anyone interested can pick up this tag. Go and be random!

Nothing beats getting off work and getting sloshed on a cup of tea and a good book as you wait for a friend in a coffeehouse.

Currently getting drunk on Sarah Addison Allen’s “Garden Spells.” Enchanting and cheesy in all the right places. I’ve been sucked in because the main character runs a catering business and uses edible flowers and other crops she grows herself (rumored to be magical) to bake and cook with. This book is like Laura Esquivel, Alice Hoffman and Joanne Harris all sharing a pot of Earl Grey together.

Hope all your hours are happy today.

I’ve gone and stumbled down a slippery slope. I’ve spent approximately 354,876 minutes surfing the web trying to cure my fascination…for apronsI And not just any kind of aprons (please don’t bring out your “Thrilla Of The Grilla” apron, or I just may burn it, so help me God!). I’m talking about lovely vintage ones, handcrafted with retro prints and detailed with embroidery or lace or rickrack or pretty something-or-others.

I appreciate the workmanship that goes into a well-made apron because my first attempt at one was in sixth grade. It was disastrous. It was our first go at using sewing machines (the kind that you worked with a manual foot pedal) and patterns. I was supposed to make one for my 12-year-old self, and with my tongue sticking out the side of my mouth the entire time and my brows knit together, I sewed and sewed. I was successful…if the project was supposed to be to make an apron for a three-year-old with a 30-inch waist. I’ve never made an apron since, and always somehow feel the need to wear one in the kitchen, maybe because I know how much work it takes to make one (well, it was a lot of work back then)!

I  saw the movie Changeling last Friday night and realized that I wasn’t riveted by the drama onscreen when scenes like this came on. Instead, I was checking out Angelina Jolie’s kitchen duds.

Ok, so that one leaves a bit to be desired, but still, and maybe because the movie’s 1920’s costumes and sets reminded me of my love of all things of yore, it set me off on this three-day long apronfest that’s had me glued to the computer (or my phone). That’s the thing about the net: It makes you realize you’re not alone in your crafty obsessions, no matter how strange and specific they may be. If you like it, chances are, someone out there LOVES it!

These darling ones are from rickrackattack.com.

And these are from the Angry Chicken website, owned and maintained by my creative muse Amy Karol (whose Bend-The-Rules Sewing book is my bedside reading). The site even has entire Flickr photo pools dedicated to beauties like these.

And these are modern versions with a vintage feel—lovely apronology from Anthropologie! (Oooh, that was a bit of rhyme overkill, but, whatevs.)

There are also tons of vintage apron patterns on the web.

These aprons make me sigh and think about maybe making a go at sewing one again. I’m such a dork because I’m getting all nervous just thinking about it, remembering that ill-fated project from sixth grade.  But I’ll do it, someday.