a p p a r e n t l y

Click for a closer view

You know what I loved as a kid? Shrinky Dinks. I think they were second only to stained-glass suncatchers as a crafty activity. Why was I so drawn to crafts that required melting stinky plastic in the toaster oven?

Many years later, I’ve discovered Shrinky Dinks again, thanks to Etsy and the blogosphere, although now that I’m a grown-up I’m probably supposed to refer to the material as “shrink plastic.” These Etsy sellers make lovely rings, and these two sites demonstrate how supposedly easy it is to make them. Can you see where this is going?

I have now spent three two-hour naptimes playing around with shrink plastic (in addition to several hours sourcing materials and scouring the web for tutorials), and this is what I’ve learned so far:

• Grafix inkjet shrink plastic does not work very well.
• Shrinky Dinks brand inkjet shrink plastic works considerably better. I bought the opaque white.
• Neither is much fun during the shaping process. You have about four seconds to work with the hot plastic before it hardens, and it’s nearly impossible to get any control if you’re wearing oven mitts. So I took them off. Plastic gloves were useless. One could probably use the thin cotton gloves used in darkrooms, but I can’t find ours. My fingers feel just the tiniest bit burned.
• Take off any metal bracelets before you go sticking your arms repeatedly into a hot oven.
• A toaster over would probably be easier, as it contains the heat in a smaller area and you could work on the counter right in front of the oven. But we have a pop-up toaster.
• You can reheat your project a few times before it gets discolored and cranky. The Grafix shrink plastic showed more damage quickly and the image deteriorated.

Click for a closer view. That's my fifth-anniversary ring on the bottom. It's wood and titanium.

Even under the best conditions, my rings did not end up smooth and round and lovely. Even when all the parts lined up properly and I was able to form the ends quickly around a wooden dowel, the rings look wonky. If you look at the shrink plastic rings on Etsy, they tend to look great from the front and uneven from the top. They are also really light and feel like, well, plastic. This makes them fun, but not really sale-able. I had been hoping this would be my quick-and-easy craft for my annual local craft fair, but that is just not going to happen.

If you’re feeling experimental and resourceful, however, see what you can make from your scraps. I had a box of straight sewing pins nearby and discovered that little flowers make charming pin heads! I had much more fun drawing these little freehand flowers with a sharpie and coloring them in with colored pencils. They bake up in seconds and require no shaping. I also tried printing flower images onto the inkjet plastic; those are the larger ones. They’re cute, too, but I like the freehand flowers better. So there’s my silver lining.

pins!

If you have ideas as to what else I can make with my shrink plastic, please leave them in the comments! I have a few more sheets of the opaque white inkjet and 10 sheets of frosted non-inkjet. (I plan to sell/trade the rest of the Grafix inkjet sheets, so if you’re interested even after my lukewarm review, let me know. Maybe others have had great success with them?)

I’m behind on sharing my crafty output, as I’m slightly frustrated with my photos lately…

Two weeks ago we visited friends at their country house upstate. This upholstery fabric just kept saying “table runner,” and something about “country house” insisted “table runner” as well, and so I made this lovely table runner with matching coasters. It’s about 4 feet long and the panels to the left are all blues.

Another custom order of two pincushions became three because that’s what you do when your mother likes your stuff. (In general, I tend to include little presents in with my orders.) I’ve started packaging them in handmade origami boxes and plan to update my Etsy listings with photos of the boxed pincushions. I still love this design and would make nothing else…except they aren’t selling. That’s okay – I will use them!

Also completed: one green striped cotton knit hat, one mustard and teal striped wool knit hat, six tassels and a bunch of quick capes for preschool. As fall approaches, I’m starting to knit again. Can’t wait to finish a pair of gloves (Ravelry link) – for me!

I have a little blog/website crush on my friend Christian’s wife. I’ve never met her, but she designs typefaces. Lovely, hand-lettered typefaces suitable for invitations and stationery and whatnot your next whimsical advertising campaign. Wouldn’t Silverstein look sweet on the cover of your next novel? Or Seasoned Hostess on a package of homemade cookies?

One can even purchase a complete stationery kit for tarting up your own beautiful correspondence with the charming Carrotflower font.

You can check out her web site, Tart Workshop, or her blog, where she displays some of her custom illustration work.

And look at this sweet little signature she sent me. Thanks, Tart Workshop!

I’m trying to complete all the items in my unfinished project pile. This includes capes for the preschool, a custom order of pincushions, a pair of pants to shorten, several half-finished patchwork hats (I’m willing to jettison these, or at least set them aside until next spring) and a strap-shortening job on a cute dress a friend gave to me. So instead what am I doing? Making tassels.

The September issue of Martha Stewart Living arrived this weekend, and I’ll confess that the first thing I do is turn to the Crafts section. This month: one tiny tutorial for tassels. And here I am with a bag of yarn ends and neglected novelty yarns languising in the closet. So I’ve made six tassels today: two in green bamboo, two in rayon ladder yarn and two silk (if I recall correctly – this was one of the very first yarns I purchased seven years ago. It’s lovely stuff, but completely useless for knitting).

Now what am I going to do with them?

Roosevelt Island fascinates me. Currently a car-free community to about 12,000 residents, this small island in the East River has previously housed a prison and an insane asylum, but now serves as home mostly to Manhattan office workers.

Wired has a fascinating photo essay on the pneumatic trash system used to keep the island free of garbage-collection trucks. The only other system of its kind in the U.S. is used at Disney World. Europe and Asia, of course, are full of such progressive systems.

New York City’s Trash-Sucking Island | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.

A lovely woman in my neighborhood is opening a childrenswear shop on Skillman Avenue, and Petite Legume will be well represented! I’m working on some new baby kimonos and bird mobiles for the shop, in addition to felt food, headbands and winter hats.

Some of the listings in my Etsy shop are expiring soon, and so I’ve put them on sale. If they don’t sell, they will be going to Petunia as well, and I expect they’ll be priced much higher there, so consider this an insider tip!

Stone and Thistle Farm, a family farm “located in a lush, quiet valley in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in central New York state,” is a charming place to spend a Sunday morning. Their lovely farm tour is followed by a delicious brunch at the communal table of their stunningly attractive yet simply built farm-to-table restaurant, Fable.

I planned to expound thoroughly upon the farm’s virtues in this post, but then I discovered this recent article from Chronogram Magazine that lays it all out in more detail than I previously knew. So read the article and then come back here.

Okay, did you read it? (No? Seriously. It’ll take four minutes. Go read it.) Here’s what I can add:

1. The farm tour was led by Denise Warren, who is charming and blunt as only a farmer can be.

2. We came face to face with dogs, hens, goats, sheep and bunnies. The bunnies are adorable but their red eyes are a little bit creepy.

3. Their brown Berkshire pigs are the most attractive pigs I have ever seen. And it was completely refreshing when Denise said she doesn’t really understand why people like Berkshire pork better than any other pork, but it’s what chefs want, so they raise it.

4. I understand that border collies are supposedly the smartest dogs, but even after a demonstration of sheepdog prowess, I still don’t quite get it. They had to be instructed a dozen times. Isn’t it just easier to herd the sheep yourself? I know, this kind of thinking is surely why I am not a farmer.

5. Stone and Thistle has one guestroom available. I was talked out of ever staying in it by Denise’s description of the sheepdogs working – that is, barking – all night.

6. Brunch was one of the best meals I have ever eaten. It was entirely simple, straightforward food: scrambled eggs, muffins, granola, ham, bread pudding. But the eggs tasted eggier, the mushrooms (local) tasted mushroomier, the ham tasted hammier. You get the idea. All the ingredients are from the farm or within twenty miles, except for the butter. (But you knew that because you read the article, right?)

7. And the granola was the best granola I have ever tasted. I expressed my enthusiasm to Denise on my way to the farm store to purchase some, and she told me, “It must be because it’s made with love.” She paused. She laughed. “And a lot of maple syrup. Probably more maple syrup than I should use, but it’s so good.”

Denise blogs here, in the rare moment that she’s not tending to animals, visitors, guests, batches of granola and the business of running a farm. And I am not telling you where the bag of granola is hidden.

Storkbite Stew nearly had a conniption when she heard that Hugue Dufour, formerly of Au Pied de Cochon, and his wife planned to open a new restaurant in Long Island City. Despite a complete lack of signage, the old dining car has indeed been transformed into a vibrant new diner called M. Wells.

Thanks to the complete ineptitude of my local branch of Bank of America, which does not deserve a link, I had the pleasure of pushing fifty pounds of stroller to LIC yesterday, where only the thought of some newfangled old-style Québécois food saw me through. (Yes, we could have taken the subway, but would you want your toddler loose in the bank while you signed all sorts of papers? I didn’t think so.) So we hiked across the trainyard overpass and squinted curiously at the unadorned dining car. A lovely server came outside and held the door while I carried the stroller up the steps, at which point I knew this was going to be pleasant in a way that the bank was not.

Let me veer off on a tangent to confess that I am a complete and total lightweight where alcohol is concerned, and the previous evening I had consumed an entire Corona (the horror!) followed by a 4-hour car ride marked by winding twists and turns. I also had not drunk enough water. So I’d awoken vaguely hung over and still slightly carsick, and the menu at M. Wells spoke deeply to me: in which form would I take my grease? Egg-Sausage sandwich? Bacon, Egg and Potato Hash? Oh no, gentle readers, like the wise Superfast Reader, whose visit we apparently had followed by mere minutes, I chose wisely and shared with Apparently Jr the Crab, Egg and Potato Hash, the subdescription of which promised “Corn Chowder & Hollandaise.” And this is what appeared:

Isn’t it lovely? Don’t you just want to paint it, or photograph it? I did. And then we ate all of it, along with a hefty slice of Blueberry-Banana Bread and a tall glass of lemonade, which I thought needed sugar but Apparently Jr deemed “not too sour.”

Consider this not a review but rather an impression, because obviously one cannot judge a restaurant solely on the basis of one trip and three items, but suffice it to say that everything was delicious, the Elvis on the stereo perfectly matched the old-style dining car and the service was a perfect blend of friendly/attentive and hands-off. They were not at all concerned about stashing my stroller in a corner, and although we happened to be the only party at our communal table, I would have found it entirely pleasant to share. The clientele was a diverse mix of hipsters, blue-collar workers and a dad with his son, twirling on the stools at the counter.

I fully intend to bring Mr. Apparently to M. Wells for a next visit, and I look forward to seeing what items they’ll add to the menu when they start serving dinner.

Did you know that the average American eats 29 pounds of French fries and 42 pounds of corn syrup each year?

via Food Consumption in America.

This CHOW article will make me think twice before trying to help…but only in nicer restaurants! I don’t think the servers at my local (and delicious) Korean noodle shop are whisking off my napkins to the linen basket. (In fact, they wheel a bus tub through the place, so my pile of plates is actually saving someone some time in this case.)

Does My Waiter Hate Me? : What you can do to make his job easier – CHOW.