Hello, Pretty.

I finally succumbed to my urges, and brought home my very own iPhone today. She is everything I ever hoped she'd be. I've rationalized this upgrade in a number of different ways.

1. This is the first phone I've ever paid money for. Sooo, I deserve a nice one. Yeah. That's how that works.
   
2. My current (woops, I mean, former) phone, a dinosaur Nokia flip thing, has to be rigged up very carefully with the wind blowing on it in exactly the right way in order for it to charge. At one point it didn't ring, it warbled. Which was especially interesting when my rooster alarm clock went off.
   
3. This is not just a phone. It's a tiny computer! And an iPod, a digital camera, a video camera, GPS, and has applications that tell me where to eat and what constellations are currently overhead. How did I ever live without this?
4. I've already canceled out the additional monthly cost from my budget by threatening to leave my internet provider, which they responded to by cutting my bill in half for a year. Boom. Try it.
   
5. I just want to feel fancy.
   

I just worry about this purchase turning out like the dreaded Guess sunglasses incident of 1997. I was working as a lifeguard at the ole municipal swimming pool and went against all of my better judgment and spent $70, which is a fairly shocking figure when you're a 16-year-old lifeguard, on a pair of sunglasses. To go with my whistle. I lost them within 72 hours, and have been pretty cheap as a rule ever since. Here's hoping that my new precious gadget doesn't find itself underneath a zamboni, or in the belly of a wild beast. Which is where I can only assume my sunglasses are.

I'm a bag lady!

I decided that I've graduated from Aprons 101, and have quickly moved on to Totes: A Cultural Study. And now I can't stop making them. Bag manufacturing has turned out out to be pretty easy, and instantly gratifying. A nice combo.

This is the first one that I made, based on some instructions in Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing. I love this woman's style - and adore every project in this book, however I'm starting to think that they skipped any form of user-testing.

This bag is the first of her projects that I attempted, but I found a good amount of instruction to be missing. Like for instance, Lotta never tells you to cut your fabric in half at one point, which perplexed me for longer than I care to share, and then a couple steps later, she tells you to pin something, then trim it, watching for the seams that she never told you to sew. I know, these are things you can figure out on your own, but for a beginner like me, filled with self-doubt and all sorts of other strange sewing hangups, it was kind of annoying. Take a crack at the instructions yourself, here.

Nonetheless, I've already got my next 15 bags planned out in my head, and got further inspiration from an intense fabric acquisition mission yesterday. I've even started to fine tune the tote a bit - I added a liner to bag #2, and have a pocket planned for #3. What's next!?! Well, probably not much. But I'm toying with the idea of opening up a little Etsy shop once I've cranked out enough and feel the quality is up to snuff. Which translates to: when I can consistently sew in a straight line. I'll keep you posted.

Why June would beat January in a cage fight:

Top sirloin, horseradish mashed Yukon Golds, sauteed zucchini + asparagus. Almost all of it from the farmer's market.

My operation is thriving + the arrival of the "mystery hose"

As you can see, I am not messing around. The hillbilly garden currently contains a lettuce drawer, a jalapeno pepper, the Yukon Gold potato pot, two cherry tomato plants, one large-ish tomato variety, some strawberries and the chive tray up top. I'm guessing I probably crossed the dirt-claiming boundary at my apartment building awhile back, but until I hear otherwise, this earth is mine.

So far everything seems to be going pretty well. My lettuce had been choking itself off a bit, and I cut it back and now it appears to be doing pretty well. Still harvesting some outer leaves about once a week, making some delightful little salads. The leaves at the bottom of the potato plant are turning yellow, which my farmer friend Marven says means that the little spuds are developing. He even said that I could start digging some out, but that could go horribly wrong in a number of ways, so I'm going to hold off.

And then there's the mystery hose. I can't be sure that the following two incidents are linked, but I've read enough formulaic popular fiction to secretly hope that they are.

So. A couple of weeks ago the lettuce was looking kind of haggard, and I decided (or Google told me) that it might have been getting too much direct sunlight, so I rigged up a cheap umbrella before I left for work in the morning to give it some shade. I didn't really see a reason anyone would want to steal it, but after a couple days, I returned home from work to find it gone. This was discouraging.

But then yesterday, I came home to find a small length of what appears to be a new hose on my steps. Since I often make about 7 trips out there with my watering can, it would prove to be helpful... if there was an outdoor faucet to attach it to. Which there is not.

This raises some questions.

#1: Did the umbrella thief just trade me for a hose?
#2: Is some creepy person watching me water my plants?
#3: Was this hose even intended for me?
#4: Who put the fricking hose there?!
#5: Where the %&*# is my umbrella!?!?!?

Berries. Berries!

I luuuuurve Oregon's berry season. What we lack in sunshine, we definitely make up for in well-endowed fruit. Some of you might have heard that I have a teensy bit of a sweet tooth. Or a gigantic Paul Bunyan sized bicuspid of one. So when the berry bounty is in full swing, I feel good about satisfying my urges in a more natural fashion. Like more natural than a jumbo box of rainbow nerds, for example. Or a half pound of salt water taffy. You get the idea.

It starts with the rhubarb. Then come the strawberries. Then the raspberries, followed by my favorite: The jumbo Oregon Blackberry varities. I'm pretty sure no other berry will ever compare, and I've come to terms with this.

All summer long I come up with different ways to manipulate all this fruit into desserts, my favorite being the Crisp. They're easy, you can virtually mix any kind of berry together and it will meld OK, and I usually have all of the ingredients on hand. I'm a firm believer that if you take some berries, mix them with a little bit of sugar, then top it with some semblance of oats, sugar, and butter -- it will turn out amazing and stun everyone you feed it to. Of course, you can add little variations - a little cinnamon here, some walnuts here - but seriously, it's pretty hard to screw up a crisp.

Plus, it's the perfect dessert to show up with at a BBQ. Here's the recipe I based my most recent crisp adventure on, from Molly Katzen's Dessert book.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp

2 lb fresh rhubarb, cut in 1-inch chunks
3 cups sliced strawberries
1/3 c sugar
1 1/4 c rolled oats
1 c flour
1/4 c brown sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
dash or two of allspice and nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup melted butter

Preheat oven to 375. Mix your fruit with the white sugar. Mix together remaining ingredients. Put this on top of the fruit. Bake for 40 minutes. I told you it was easy.

Aces

During the epic road trip, we decided to treat ourselves to a little pampering and spent a night at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs, CA. Keep in mind that at this point we were bathing with Wet-Naps and shaking ticks out of our hair -- so it wouldn't really take much to make us feel fancy. My oh my, the Ace was a treat. We adore the one in Portland and have a buddy on the inside, so we got the room at a discount - but even a room at full price is pretty affordable - 100 bones or so. And we had our own little private patio, free bikes, three pools, and the bartender delivered drinks on a longboard. AND there were Have' a chips waiting for me in the room PLUS they serve Stumptown coffee! If you don't mind embracing your inner hipster, I highly recommend visiting them in New York, Seattle and Portland too. Good stuff.