Last week, reader Josephine (hi Josephine!) commented that I should post more, and I absolutely agree. On any given day, I always have at least a couple of things banging around in my head that I'd love to tell you about and it kills me when I don't get time to spill it. But lately I have been consumed...overwhelmed with work, and it's all because of this:



It's my debut! My very first ever appearance at a real live art show and I could not be more excited!
Save the date, because you're all invited, of course!
It's shaping up to be a fabulous event, with food, wine, music and a great variety of hand crafted goods by some really amazing local artisans.
You'll come, right?

If I have your email address, you'll probably get an official email invite shortly. If you'd like me to send you an actual email or snail mail postcard, email me the appropriate info (splatgirl at gmail dot com) and I'll add you to my list. Regardless, do make plans to attend to get a nice, relaxing jump on your holiday shopping, and be sure to stop by the Splatgirl Creates booth(?, table?, kiosk?...um, something) and introduce yourself, no purchase required :)
So far, it looks like I'll be unveiling at least three or four new bag and accessory designs in a range of prices and materials.
Yippee!!


p.s. in the mean time, please forgive the lack of posts. I'm working like a psycho little squirrel trying to build up enough stock to at least look like I know what I'm doing. The display, however, is likely to be another story....any show experts out there that want to give this newbie some advice?

Pretty much the only vegetable I won't eat is peas. And in case I haven't mentioned it recently, I DETEST them.
I detest even the thought of them...round, green peas that pop when you bite them are like the gack-est thing EVAH. But every other veggie I pretty much love, including the weird and maligned stuff. Towards the bottom of my vegetable popularity chart, however, are things like winter squash and sweet potatoes. I'm just not crazy about the sweet, starchy vegetables. But because I feel a moral obligation to eat every last bit of everything we get in our CSA box from week to week, I decided I needed to find a use for the sweet potatoes we got last Tuesday.
So when I met up with Ms. Knit-Whit, my partner in farmshare, last week, we were going through our usual routine of brainstorming about what we want to do with everything in the box and she told me about a thing her friend who lives up north told her about: sweet potato fries served with a dipping sauce made from maple syrup and marshmallow creme.
Um, yea. That'll work.

So I didn't have a recipe for the sauce, but I just mixed up a gob of marshmallow creme with about 1/4c. of maple syrup and then seasoned it with salt, black pepper and cayenne. The sweet potatoes I cut into fry-shape and then twice-fried them, meaning I blanched them in oil first, let them cool to room temp and then fried them again to finish them up and get them crispy. (This is a standard French fry technique.)


Sweet Potato Fries with Maple-Marshmallow Dipping Sauce

Boy, also a sweet potato hater, said "About the only way these could be better is if you had fried them in bacon grease."
So, high praise from Boy (and actually, the bacon grease thing is a really good idea). But yea, they're good. We ate every last one of them. They didn't really get crispy, and I realize now that the times I've had good sweet potato fries at a restaurant they seemed to be battered, presumably as a way to overcome the fact that sweet potatoes are too wet a potato to ever produce a really crispy fry.
Anyway, a tasty little treat to go with our all-CSA salads for dinner, and I have plenty of dipping sauce left over which Boy suggested would be good on French toast.
Um, yea.

There's just way too much going on here at Splatgirl Creates. This morning I woke up to the unfortunate task of writing myself a bio for display at Pursecution. And for someone who has the annoying habit of talking about herself constantly, I found writing about myself, like in a semi-professional, non-uptight kind of way, impossibly difficult.
Argh.
On the bright side, Pursecution's grand opening is this weekend and you'll be able to see my stuff and laugh at my lame bio in person!
Go check it out, won't you?

On to a couple of new things to show you. First is a brand new design inspired by reader Lisa, who emailed me a while ago with a request for a non-sporty, cool urban sling pack in a cute fabric. I'm a huge sling (aka single strap backpack) wearer myself, what with my motorcycling and dog walking habits and all, and it's right up my cute+practical alley, so I figured I'd give designing one a whirl. Here's a version of what I ended up with:


LOVE it! So now I'm thinking I'll use my official Spoonflower beta test invite to make some cool greyhound-themed fabric to make one for myself for dog walking. Or motorcycle themed fabric for motorcycling...
Anyway, the one above and hopefully a few more are going in my shop just as soon as I have a minute.
And here's another version of the Cutest bag style I showed you a couple of weeks ago:

Perfect for you non-crazy bright fabric kind of folks, in dark denim with red contrast stitching and tan leather. I just couldn't resist that gorgeous floral.