Dixie's Dragon

Jane's Crispy Crackolates

I love cereal. In fact one day I plan on hosting my dream party: Bring your favorite box of cereal. I will supply milk in every catogory and everyone invited would bring their one favorite cereal. I would select Honey Nut Cheerios, those delightful little o's that nourished me through law school, plain, with milk, or on top of frozen yogurt. So when I saw Jane's recipe for  Cripsy Crackolates  which includes cornflakes, chocolate, butter and golden sryup, I promptly copied the recipe and tried to make my own. I couldn't find Tate & Lyle's Golden syrup for the first round and so subsitituted that old Southern stand-by: Karo light syrup. Karo simply didn't sweeten up the the dark chocolate for my taste. Round two, add marshmallows and peanuts and substitute fine dark chocolate for nestle toll house chips. Much better, but still refinement was required. I finally laid my hands on some Tate & Lyle's Golden Syrup which has a wonderful sweet nutty taste without the bitterness of molasses.

The golden syrup made a total difference. I will never be without it in my cabinet again. I still added peanuts because I am a fool for nuts and chocolate. Thank you Jane!

In an effort to generate some comments from those who visit and never comment, let me know what your favorite cereal is!

Good bye Dorry

Last night we suffered the loss of Dorry, Delaney's beta fish. We   Delaney gave her quite the send off, or flush off rather. This is all of Delaney's doing:

Part of my morning ritual (obviously prior to waking up the itty bitty) is to bring coffee into my office and sort through email. This morning Daily Candy featured this wonderful site with wares from Scotland:  Papa Stour . I was absolutely fascinated with this handbag which is described as Knitted, felted jacquard handbag with circular handles. Any idea as to how they made this?

French food, Charley the dog and lace sushi

Friday night was our gourmet club dinner and the theme was French food. Lynn, the host, surprised us all by having a French chef, Patrice, prepare our dinner and give us a tutorial on decoratively carving vegetables as well as preparing a tarragon creme sauce. Patrice looked exactly as one would expect a French chef to look and sound.

Our dinner club is rather rowdy, as I have mentioned before, so, naturally there was plenty of red wine. NellieBell, my craft supply hoarding friend (who is also quite generous with sharing her ginormous stash) brought boxes of sundry vintage buttons for the ladies. Kate another member of our dinner club is a real live button collecter and fabulous repository of all information related to buttons so she happily sipped champagne and tapped buttons on her teeth.

Anyhoo, back to the food, It was fabulous. First we had, mushrooms a la greque (made by moi)and haricots vert made by Nelliebell which were also fab. Next, we had scallops, shrimp and salmon with the fabulous tarragagon cream sauce accompanied by potatoes Diane made by my husband which aboslutely melted in your mouth. We finished off with creme brulee and apple tart tatin, coffee and French brandy. Yum-o.
Lynn's dog Charley remained outside, but showed a definite interest in becoming a saucier. ( which reminds me of one of my favorite movie quotes from The History of the World: "Don't get saucy with me, Bearnaise"

After dinner, Lynn got out the vintage jewelry collection that he inherited from his spinster auntie. We all modeled it and played our own little wine drenched game of self portrait Saturday which resulted in some pictures that will never been shown publicly.

On a crafting note, remember that I challended NellieBell to make catnip stuffed wonton from knitty.com?  Wellelll, We she made the wonton, much to the glee and ensuing drunken rampage of Knox her cat, and she also one upped me by making this California roll out of lace, batting and felt. Eat your heart out Amyville! Go NellieBell.

Vintage stocking swap

For those of you who don't know me, I have a tendency to get really tickled at the silliest things. So it's the middle of the night and I am up because I went to bed too early. I was just cruising around checking out  Oh Joy the most prolific of bloggers and from there moved on to check out some French Bull at Plum Party. Then it happened. I saw this thing and got tickled. You see,  I'm in a vintage stocking swap, hosted by the sweetest of bloggers Ms. Robyn of  Daily Parcels ( Ms. Robyn is my buddy in the swap too.)  She is The Vintage Girl and so I have been searching for just the right pattern. During my nocturnal wanderings I came across this thing that is called a stocking for $95.00. It's made of fine materials  which surely justifies the price. If one were in a vintage swap and one received one's package round about Christmas time wouldn't one be astounded to receive this hideosity? I cannot keep laughing at this thing.

radishes, cats, etc.

For oodles of fun drawing lessons that are extremely user friendly here is the site for you: How to Draw a Radish .

Here's my favorite lesson: kittycat lesson

back tack revealed

My back tackee was Kathreen at Red Current . Finally, her package arrived and so I can post what I made for her. Surprise, it was a felted bag. It's quite a bit larger than the hand bags that I make. The reds required about five trips to the washing machine. This was take two, because the first bag that I made - a ginormous checkerbard duffle bag was ridiculously huge and the purple that I used  to offset all of the reds and pinks got all flat and dull in the wash. The craft I chose for her was water color pencils, but threw in some other drawing goodies. That kooky thing you see is a keychain with a lavendar sachet- I was struggling for the bag accoutrements and successfully avoided having to deal with a zipper. Doesn't every girl want a scented key chain?

Here is a shot of the inside of the back, which I kind of liked (especially the pocket):

The Halloween decorations are down ( I was getting kind of sick of them) and now its the mad dash to Thanksgivng and Christmas.

Remember my friend NellieBell, the craft,knitting, sewing supply hoarder? Well, we are on a mission to actually put the myriad supplies into use. Using the 1000 wooden balls is going to be tricky, but my devious little mind is hard at work for the appropriate project. This weeks task for dear ole NellieB is to make the feline  dim sum at Knitty . Can she do it? Well we shall see........ Stay tuned.

Back Tack is here and I win

My Back Tack goodies arrived on Monday. I am so thrilled and so lucky. Kiri from Kiriosity was my Back Tackor. I received this wonderfully well made Amy Butler Bag in my favorite color. The outside is heavier fabric from the home decor collection and the inside is my all time favorite fabric. I am so pleased.

The craft she chose for me was SPINNING. Yippee. I am going to make some yarn, uncoordination be damned. She packed in two drop spindles and some gorgeous roving. The roving is from Tennessee, oddly enough (I'm in TN). She also gave me "Spin It" a book with easy to read directions, which is a must for someone like me who has difficulty translating from the second dimension into the third.

I also got this glorious sari silk yarn, very much like some I was admiring in the yarn store last week. The colors are simply brilliant.

Also snuggled in my back tack box was this skein of Colinette point 5 chunky called Tapis. I love the bright eye catching colors in both the wool and silk yarn. Thank you thank you sweet Kiri!!!