Still making stuff...

It seems like every day I don't make something is a wasted day. I feel so much happier when I know I'm being productive and getting things done, even if it's something small like making dinner. Dennis and I had a lovely evening a few weeks ago when we decided to stay home and be creative. He wanted to make a knitting needle case, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to show him how to use the sewing machine. So we spent some time thinking about the construction and ended up basing it on the case that came with my Klutz knitting kit, pretty much a long 3 by 3 inch rectangle. He cut out the pattern pieces from an old piece of wool suiting I had in my stash, then he cut the lining from a cool skull and crossbones material. For Christmas I had made him one of those classic mason jar sewing kits, and I used this same fabric to make the pincusion on the lid. Now he has a complete set! He snagged some buttons from my stash as well to make it look like the fabric was from an old coat sleeve. I think it turned out great, and he picked up the sewing machine stuff really quick! While he was hard at work making the case, I was making ravioli from scratch for dinner.

I've never made pasta before, but it seemed easy enough so I just went for it. In the end they turned out okay, mostly because I forgot I didn't have my pasta roller anymore *d'oh*, which makes it really hard to get thin pasta dough.Another problem I had was that my beautiful measuring cups from Anthropologie are actually completely inaccurate. They're a pretty little set of nesting blue bowls, and I use the 1/2 cup measure for most of the flour measuring because it fits in my flour container better than the 1 cup.But I kept ending up with what seemed like too much flour for a lot of my recipes so I bought a standard Anchor cup and guess what? The 1/2 cup is more than 3/4 of a cup! So they're pretty, but useless now. That explains why my cakes have been coming out so dense as of late. So in the end the ravioli came out huge, too thick, and took forever to cook. Many lessons learned though, which is good.