Meia Draws...

I've been doing some drawings with markers lately, too. I felt like doing a chocolate version of my usual pink frosting-inspired shapes:

This happened very randomly, without even choosing which colors would go next. (I would close my eyes and dip them into my marker bag and use whatever came out.) I thought it ended up looking like a melting flower:

And then while Dan was working I caught sight of our reflection in the TV. It seemed moody and alienated, so I thought it would make a good drawing:

Meia Makes ...Frosting Sculpture

Well, it was time to play with frosting again! So on Friday I got out the butter and powdered sugar and food coloring and made a mini cake out of two chocolate brownie cookies.

I took about a hundred pictures, so I posted them on a page so I wouldn't fill up my front page with a ton of pictures that may look exactly the same to some of you. ;p Here they are:

Playing with Frosting

And something to tantalize you.

No, I didn't eat it. The frosting still is sitting, still is sitting...upon the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door...and its eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming...

Oh wait, that's Poe. Sorry, I get a little carried away sometimes...

Meia Makes ... Fluffy Skirt!

I finished my fluffy pink skirt just in time for Fair!

It had a drawstring waist, so even though it was a bit too big, I was able to cinch it up tightly enough. And, it was comfy!

Next, to add the flower details onto the drawstring:

STRIKE A POSE! I loved wearing this skirt at fair. I was worried it would be too hot, but it was surprisingly cool.

Crochet Skirt Update

I'm making a lot of progress on my fluffy crochet skirt. Look at this big pile of fluff!

I still hope to get it done by Fair, which is only a week away! Luckily I don't have much work this week, so my goal is to finish by this Friday. Stay tuned for more pics!

Meia Makes...Frog Cakes!

I wanted to do something very special for Amber's birthday, so I tried the recipe for frog cakes from my World of Cake cookbook.

Step one: make genoise cake. I don't know how to pronounce it, but this cake had 12 eggs in it! And one end of it curled up in the oven. How cute! I hope cutting it in half horizontally won't be too difficult...

Yum... smooshed raspberries. These will make a glaze for the filling.

The cutting. Oops!

But the cake looks really beautiful anyway...would have been good to eat on its own! But everything is better with frosting in my opinion.

Each square gets a small ice cream scoop of buttercream! And then, a couple of coats of liquid yellow or green frosting on the outside.

Uhh...agghh!!

I learned that frosting should NEVER be made with skim milk. Ugh!

Take two, after running down the block for some whole milk. It looks better...but...

Are these even going to look like frogs?

It's amazing what a little eyes and mouth and a pretty dress can do. :)

Here is a whole frog family!

I hope you don't mind a few individual portraits.

I had been thinking these were going to look more like badly deformed toads than cute little frogs, but it's interesting how a little deformity adds an even more endearing quality. Kind of like real humans. We're all deformed in one way or another, right? ;)

This one seemed to have a bit of a case of cracked skull. :)

And this one seems to have an eye problem.

In the end, I was very happy with these!

We're ready to go!

They came along with me to Golden Gardens for Amber's birthday party. KT got a lot of great pics of decapitations and mutilations as they went into our friends' mouths. And when we'd had enough and there were still sooooo many frogs left, Ben carried them around offering them to random people who were enjoying their bonfire parties, who cheered Amber's birthday and helped us decimate the bunch.

And I still have three in my fridge just waiting to get nommed!

Meia Makes...Steamed Buns.

One of the things I decided I wanted to do this year was to make a dessert recipe from the beautiful book A World of Cake by Krystina Castella once a month until December. The recipe for Peach Buns looked really fun and different and delicious...and easy!

One of the problems I'd had with any kind of intricate recipe in the past is that I tend to get overwhelmed, forget to eat, and by the time it's over, all the creativity has been leached out of me and I become a quivering crashing mound of goo that has become so jaded that even if the recipe is a success, it no longer looks or tastes good to me. So for the cake recipes this year, I plan to do a little each day, hopefully giving me time to recover between bouts of creativity and keeping myself fresh and upbeat in the process.

Back to the peach buns, which are not actually peach flavored; they just have the adorable appearance of peaches. This is what they're supposed to look like:

Aren't they cute? They are supposed to be stuffed with either lotus seed paste, sweet bean paste, or chocolate pudding. I couldn't find lotus seed paste at Uwajimaya (even though I vividly dreamed I did), but I did find a can of mashed sweet bean, which I ran through the food processor to improve its texture.

They ended up...decidedly very different than the original:

Hmmm. Maybe this would have been better for Halloween?

Oh well. Taste test!

Just close your eyes.

The bean paste is good, but the dough tastes...fermented? Maybe you're not supposed to let yeasty dough sit out overnight? XD

Well, it was fun to make, but I think I'll stick to the kind you buy already made at Uwajimaya in the future. They're not bad, just a little weird. I'm sure someone who knows what they're doing would have made them much better than I did! At least I had fun making them, and I'm really looking forward to some of the cake recipes later...that have frosting!

Meia Makes

I sewed my first skirt the other day.

From there, I decided for some reason that my next project needed to be a pink faux fur skirt for Fair. So I went to Jo-Ann's, but the only faux fur material I could find was brown, white, black, or a very dark purple. So, I decided that I should knit or crochet a skirt instead out of fluffy pink yarn! Leafing through the books at the store, I found my favorite in Stitch 'N Bitch's crochet book, The Happy Hooker:

Use really fuzzy yarn for my most complicated crochet project since high school? Why not. :)

I did have one false start. It was too big (I was using the wrong kind of yarn for the project; that's what I get when I don't make a gauge), so I turned it into a necklace instead.

And it also became a tutu for Solo. :D

This is what I've got so far. It's hard to see (it's so fuzzy!!), but its length is about a hand-width. It's going to be pink, lime green, and off-white. Wish me luck!