I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had a great one!
This was a productive weekend for me. Of course it helped that I didn't have to hostess the Thanksgiving meal but, instead, enjoyed a gathering at a friend's house. For the meal, I decided to make two items. First, I made maple cheesecake, which I overcooked by at least 10 minutes until it was golden brown – it then collapsed (that has never happened to me before!) so I couldn't bring that. My second contribution was the dinner rolls, but the yeast (which I had just bought) was expired. The dough did rise, kinda sorta, but it took all day and was definitely lackluster, so the resulting rolls, while edible, were a bit disappointing. My friends graciously overlooked my cooking foibles and it was a great evening. I want to track down the Chipotle Sweet Potatoes recipe one friend brought – those were truly yummy!!
The rest of the weekend was dedicated to holiday sewing. I completed the gift for my sew group's upcoming holiday luncheon. (Phew!) Some of them read this blog occasionally so I can't post it quite yet.
DD2 has her Winter Concert performance next Friday, and she has to wear black: a long black skirt or slacks and a long-sleeve black top. How funereal. For the bottom, I made a skirt that I had drafted for myself, but scaled down to fit her. For the top, I made my first pattern from Burda magazine and experienced the joys of tracing off a pattern with zillions of lines in different colors. Getting DD2 to dress up is not unlike herding cats, so I had to make it as easy as possible for her, meaning I didn't get as many fittings in as I would have liked nor did she have a lot of input. (She prefers a line item veto sort of approach.) I hope to post photos later this week when she dons the whole outfit.
I have one more Christmas gift to sew, and the fabric is on order. So I feel like I'm doing pretty well, all in all. :)
I'm still dithering on whether to enter the 2010 SWAP (Sewing With a Plan) contest on Stitcher's Guild. I think about my own [potential] plan every day. The swap would require me to sew more bottoms than I really want to, at the moment, and it limits me a bit. For example, I would like to sew up a few jackets and I couldn't make more than one for the swap, so I don't know... On the other hand, it could push me a bit and would be satisfying to complete it (I have no illusions that I would win any prizes)... I may just sew alongside the SWAP participants without actually entering, so we'll see.
The Vogue/Butterick/McCalls pattern site is having a very good pattern sale tomorrow, Monday, only. Butterick and McCalls are $1.99 and Vogue are $3.99, before the member discount. And shipping is free for members. The sale ends tomorrow night (Monday) at midnight CENTRAL time. That has bitten me more than once, when I sat down to finish an order after 10pm Pacific, but it was too late to get the sale prices.