Spring Season

My first two events this year have seen a 10% and 20% increase in sales over last year. Will be nice if this trend continues. I managed to get my two tables for my biggest convention of the year (they sell out in about a minute and a half once online sign-ups open). There are so many people who want in that con that they're complaining when they get waitlisted or don't even make the waitlist. Enough people are clamoring for a random draw that the person in charge is actually considering it for 2013.

This would suck, a lot, because chances of getting in would be roughly 1 in 10. I'm on the waiting list for the dealer's room for this con (once you're in there, you're in), so hopefully either there will still be a portion of tables that are FCFS in the artist alley in the future, or I will pop off the wait list for the dealer's room soon. This con makes up about 20% of my income. Not sure what I will do if I can't get in in 2013, other than to assume that it's not going to happen and start doing what I need to do to fly to large conventions on the east and west coasts, and bring in more income. I've doing almost everything worth doing in TX right now.

I've got two more events back-to-back in a couple of weeks, and then a bit of a break in April through mid-May in which I may do some stormchasing with a friend when I'm not doing business stuff.

Over the next couple of days I'm going to do some weeding in the beds front and back, and start planting stuff. Last freeze date down here is St Patrick's day, but the 10 day forecast says it's not going to freeze between now and then, so I'll get a bit of a head start. Going to try corn, beans, and zucchini in the the back (spaghetti squash was a no-go last year), along with more carrots (much success last year) and beets. The beets are puzzling to me - I planted a patch, and only the ones along one edge actually grew beyond seedling size. But, you can plant them in the fall and overwinter them, like carrots, and I just ate some for the first time tonight. Wow those were good! Just boiled them and buttered them.



My other winter crop besides carrots (not mature yet) and beets was sugar snap peas, which I'm happily munching on every time I'm out in the back yard. I've even got a couple of mutants, which are making extra-large wavy pods. I ate one to make sure it was good, and the rest of those I'm leaving on the vine to go to seed (bigger pods = more to eat). The snap peas are the one crop I can reliably get seeds out of; I'm on my second generation. I left carrots to bolt last year, and only two of them did. I've read that carrots tend to lose their genetic identities fairly quickly without a lot of mixing, so I'm curious as to what this limited second generation will produce.

The rest of the back garden is going to be parsley, cilantro, dill, and whatever else I can squeeze in. Giving up on tomatoes and peppers in the back - too much sun / heat. Might work in a mild year, but not another summer like the last one. The basil did great in the front flowerbed up against the house (house faces east), so I'll try my pepper plants there too and see what happens. I got two or three bluebonnets to come up in the front yard from seed. They're not blooming yet. Should be a spectacular year for wildflowers what with all the rain we've had, as long as it's not 100 degrees with no rain every day in April (that happened in '06).

Speak Out Against Internet Censorship - it's real and it's about to happen

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/how-pipa-and-sopa-violate-white-house-principles-supporting-free-speech <-- A good summary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more

Today is "blackout" day, in some form or another, for a number of the web's most highly-trafficked sites. These include the likes of wikipedia, reddit, cheezburger network, mozilla, wordpress, minecraft, and google. There are around 7,000 domains participating, showing solidarity against the ill conceived (and yet well lobbied) SOPA and PIPA bills. If you haven't done so already, consider signing one of the many petitions or personally contacting your representatives. Barring that, at least read up on the bills and find out what this is all about.

Call your Senators:
http://lifeaftersopa.cheezburger.com/
An idea on what to say: "I'm calling to register my strong opposition to the Protect IP act as a citizen and voter of [your state]." It really is that easy.

Send an e-message:
http://americancensorship.org/
They already have suggested text filled in; you can change it if you want.

New Year

I didn't get to make it to Oklahoma for the holidays; I flew to Vegas to see Jason and family, and it was a blast. We found mountain lion footprints in the snow up in the Mt. Charleston area! Eventually I will figure out how to post pictures here...

I had a convention over New Year's weekend, and it went well. I've got 2 months of down time (more like prep time) before my spring season starts. My goal: organize *everyting*. I've lived in this house for a year and a half, and non-essential things are still where I stowed them to get them out of the way when I moved in. Which means a lot of my materials for making the more interesting jewelry and leather items are not accessible, so I want to change that so I can really engage my creativity with metal and leather, rather than just only making the simple stuff that sells (and pays the bills, albeit). I've bought a bunch of plastic storage bins (conveniently on sale, at least the ones with red or green lids, post-Christmas) and will get a few extra shelves here in the next couple of days.

In addition to making room for the second motorcycle in the garage (I find myself loathe to part with my first bike, as it is so much fun to ride... it's like the difference between being a falcon and being a horse - the new bike is a workhorse and will get me places far away in relative comfort; it just doesn't accelerate or corner like the first bike), I would like to have easy access to my many cubic feet of lego bricks. They remain my sculpture medium of choice.

Today the temp was in the high 60's, so I got some gardening done... got the tulips planted (they had sat forgotten in the garage until today, when I noticed they were sprouting - oops!) and cleared out all the dead stuff from the veg garden. It is now a carpet of green, with much of it juvenile carrots (nothing like eating fall-planted carrots in the spring!), and volunteer cilantro and parsley. Those two herbs do fantastically down here, and like the carrots and sugar snap peas, don't mind getting frozen at all.

I'm about to dig up a strip along one side of the front yard and move a bunch of the herbs there; the neighbors took out a fine mature hedgerow for no apparent reason, and now the yard looks like a wasteland. I have a handful of mature beets I am going to harvest and eat within a week or so; it's weird, they only grew along the edges of the garden... guess they didn't like something with which I amended the soil? No idea.

Made some vegetable soup to eat during the convention:
8 cups water or stock
2-4 T. olive or vegetable oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
6-8 cloves garlic, minced / pressed
3 carrots, chopped
1/2 cup uncooked pearled barley or brown rice
1 14.5 oz can of tomatoes, however you like them
1 small potato, diced
4 oz frozen green beans, steamed to almost done in the microwave
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 zucchini, chopped
1 15oz can peas or beans (I used baby peas)
2 tsp dried herbs, at least two different ones (I used thyme, sage, basil, oregano, parsley, and rosemary, in order from greatest quantity to least)
2 bay leaves
1/2 t. ground black pepper
1/4 t. cayenne or red pepper flakes
salt to taste - depends on whether you had any in your stock to begin with. I think I wound up with a teaspoon of salt from the stock and added another 3/8 t. after that. If you use 8 cups of regular store-bought stock, you will not need to add any additional salt at all. I used 4 cups of low-sodium store-bought stock and 4 cups water.

Saute onion and celery in oil over medium heat for at least 3-5 minutes. Add garlic, herbs, and spices, and saute for another 2 minutes. Add water/stock, barley, bay leaves, tomatoes, carrots, and potato, bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to med-low and simmer for ~35-40 minutes, until the barley is almost done.

Add bell pepper, zucchini, and green beans. Simmer covered until these vegetables are as done as you'd like them and the barley is done; I did 5 minutes. Add the can of peas / beans at the very end, stir, turn off heat, let sit 5 minutes before serving.

Any vegetables will do, you just have to get them in the pot at the right time so they're cooked but don't turn to mush.

Best chocolate cake in the world

My mom found this recipe in a newspaper years and years ago. It was the groom's cake for my brother's wedding, and for mine. The thing that makes it special is the raspberry liquor poured over the cake after it's baked; it also does not skimp on the cocoa - it will appeal to those who like dark chocolate. I made it last night for the first time ever, and served it tonight for a friend's birthday; everyone said it was spectacular. My friend said, "It was beyond anything I could have hoped for." Next time I make it, I'm going to try orange liquor, as orange + chocolate is one of my favorite combinations.

Mom's Chocolate Chambord Cake

1 cup milk
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar (try evaporated cane juice - supposed to be a bit better for you)

1 3/4 cups regular flour (do not use cake flour)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 cup boiling water

1/2 to 2/3 cups Chambord raspberry liquor

Heat oven to 350 F.
Grease and flour (I use cocoa instead of white flour) 2 round or square cake
pans (9") or a 13" x 9" pan.

Beat eggs on medium speed for 2 minutes. Add milk, oil and vanilla and beat on medium speed for another minute or until combined. Stir in sugar and beat over low speed until you can scrape the bowl without encountering a big blob of sugar at the bottom.
In a large bowl combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
Stir cocoa into the cup of boiling water until smooth - this is 'blooming' the cocoa.
Add flour mixture and cocoa mixture to the liquid ingredients, alternating about 4 times, stirring by hand between each addition. I started and ended with the flour mixture.

Pour into pans and bake for 30 to 35 minutes for round pans, or 35-40
for rectangular pan, or until metal cake tester inserted in center
comes out clean. Glass pans need 5-10 minutes longer. Trust your cake tester. This batter is super thin and the cakes jiggle more than you would expect when they're done.

Cool cakes in round pans for 10 minutes, then remove from pans and
cool completely.

Wrap and freeze for a couple hours at least.

Remove from freezer, let thaw ~15 minutes, and use a toothpick to poke holes in the top of each layer. Spoon (I use a teaspoon to better control the even distribution
of the Chambord) 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup of Chambord raspberry liquor on each
layer. Pop the layers back in the freezer or fridge for 30 minutes to soak up all the Chambord. Frost with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.


Chocolate Buttercream Frosting


6 tablespoons butter at room temperature or close to it
1/2 to 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa, depending on how dark you want it to taste
2 2/3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk (may need additional milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream together butter, cocoa, and powdered sugar. I had to cut in the butter with a fork; it kind of got lost in all the cocoa / sugar. Stir the vanilla into the milk and then over low speed add that to the bowl.

You can make this frosting ahead of time and store it in a sealed container at room temperature. Don't refrigerate it - this seems to permanently alter the texture, and you want it at room temp anyways, for ease of applying to the cake.

This makes about 2 cups of frosting.
Double the recipe to do a two-layer cake, though you will have almost a cup of frosting left over. Great for graham cracker dipping.


Notes from Mom:

This is a very moist cake and will freeze well.

This also will freeze nicely after it is frosted. Just be sure to
uncover it as soon as you take it out of the freezer so moisture
doesn’t condense on the frosting.

I have also decorated and served this cake with chocolate covered
strawberries on the top of the cake and around the base of the cake.
You can also dust powdered sugar on top of the strawberries and cake.
The strawberry and raspberry flavors are great together.

Notes from me:
I changed up the mixing sequence from the original recipe, and it turned out fine. The original recipe had the cocoa added to the dry ingredients, and then all that added to the wet, then the boiling water added last. I changed it to be a little more like Alton Brown's creaming method below.

I wonder how this cake would be different with butter instead of oil, creamed into the sugar a la Alton Brown (Excerpted from 'I'm Just Here for More Food,' 2004):

*Here's how the Creaming Method works:

Sift together the Dry Goods. That means any and all flours, your chemical leavening, salt and other dry spices – basically, everything but sugar.

Cream the solid fat and sugar(s), preferably with a stand mixer using the paddle attachment on medium speed, until light and fluffy. Okay, there I go using those vague terms of "light" and "fluffy." Here's when to stop: when you're no longer able to see sugar granules, but you can still feel them if you rub a bit of the creamed fat between your fingers. Although you can overcream (and you'll know that you have when your mixture moves from a smooth and homogeneous mixture to something akin to curdled milk), inadequate aeration (i.e. undercreaming) is far more common. As a rule of thumb, I like to see the volume of the fat increase by a third.

Add the eggs slowly. Many recipes call for adding eggs one at a time. I think that's kinda silly, because in most cases that means adding water (in the form of egg whites) directly to the fat. Since fats and water don't get along very well, batters mixed this way tend to come together slowly. To get around this, mix the eggs together first so that the water in the egg whites can hook up with the emulsifiers in the yolks. Add them in a steady stream and the eggs will be absorbed in no time.

Drop the mixer speed to low and add the dry goods slowly, alternating the addition of the dry goods with any other liquid ingredients. Then stir in any bits and pieces like chocolate chips at the end.

Depending on the amount of liquid involved, the mixture produced may be a pourable batter (a cake) or a thick paste (a chocolate chip cookie). So your final step would be to pour the batter into or "drop" the cookies onto a pan and bake.

Finally a decent amount of rain!

Old Man Winter has had mercy on us, and brought rain at least 3 times in the last month or so. The last episode involved almost an entire week of cloudy, damp weather, complete with fog and 2" of rain total. It has been lovely, though I could do without the cold. No riding when the high is 40F.

I've finally started working on my jewelry website. It won't have a database backend, because I can't find a free product that will let me feed multiple URLs off on the one database. For that matter, I can't find a free product that I can even decipher that is just a product DB and not the entire site + shopping cart rolled into one. I plan on having several sites, each targeted towards a different demographic, but there will be some overlap of products. Being able to manage those dynamically would be a boon, but it's a boon I think I'm going to have to pay someone to set up, and I can't afford that.

Depending on how you measure it, I did actually wind up in the black this year, on my own, for the first time in my life since having full scholarships in college. (I had been making up for the difference between what I needed and what I was bringing in with savings for a year and a half after moving out from sharing free living space with an acquaintance post-separation) I didn't pay for my health insurance this year but did pay for everything the insurance did not cover, which is substantial, as I did allergy shots throughout the year. There are three more vending events I hope to add next year, and those may enable me to pay for my own insurance as well.

Winter is Coming

... but I think it'll be awhile before it gets this far south. Which is fine by me. Maybe I'll be harvesting sugar snap peas this year instead of next spring, though I'm not sure if I got them in the ground soon enough.

I've determined that beets just do not grow in clay soil. 90% of them never grew past seedling size, and of the 10% that have decent-sized leaves, the roots are no larger than a quarter. I'll have to do a raised bed and buy dirt if I want to grow them, I think. Not sure it's worth the expense.

The carrots, on the other hand... looking forward to a nice spring carrot crop. I may have to just have a peas, carrots and herb garden, since tomatoes, peppers, and squash don't do to well when we have crazy-hot summers. I'm about to start harvesting, drying, and crumbling basil. I have an enormous amount of it due to the 100% sprout rate of the 5+-year-old seed I sowed in the spring. The rest of my herbs continue to amaze me with their extreme cold tolerance - lots of parsley and cilantro seedlings already up that will sail right through temps in the teens if I mulch or cover them with plastic.

It's cold enough that I've broken out all my winter layers for motorcycle riding. I can ride moderate distances down to about 40F (maybe 30 minutes), with 8 layers on top and 4 on bottom. The thing with riding is that one must dress for a 65mph wind chill! Wind chill of 60mph at 40F is 25F, and the wind is constantly looking for a way inside; any body heat that makes its way to the surface is immediately carried away.

I tell you what, if you want warm gloves for winter, look for Manzella or a similar high-quality brand, and find ones that say 'windproof' and are rated 2 or 3 out of 3 on their warmth scale. Then get a pair of those super-stretchy thin gloves (that look like cartoon character hands when you're not wearing them) to layer under the windproof ones. Keeps my fingers toasty at 40F, and decent at 32F, on the highway. And that combo is waaaaay better than waterproof/breathable (should be windproof too) ski gloves. For some reason the dense fleece of the windproof gloves is so much warmer than the poofy insulation of ski gloves.

I did the local Celtic Fest two weeks ago, and it was about like last year as far as sales. Some different bands, but they all sounded energetic this year, which is a relief - sometimes you get a group playing slow, simple, sad folk tunes, and those just kill the energy of everyone listening. But this year was good, though there were no true rock groups - not a single drum set graced the stage. Alas.

Awhile back the thought occurred to me that I might want to pick up another instrument. I've settled on the violin, because I love the sound of Scotts/Irish/Welsh music, and would love to learn to fiddle like that. Friend of mine still has his violin that he played in high school, so I might wind up borrowing that; I can't really afford to rent or buy.

I donated to Wikipedia today, and if you use it on any kind of semi-regular basis, I encourage you to do so too. It's kind of like an NPR radio station in terms of what they need to keep going, and in what they do for their readers. The information contained within isn't perfect and isn't 100% free of bias, but it is the only repository of information of its kind on the web (that I know of).

I'm recovering from bronchitis and a sinus infection. Went to the doc Thursday after losing two nights of sleep to coughing. Not fun. I think the hydrocodone-containing cough syrup has finally started working, so I'm off to bed.

Heading North / Meteor Shower

In 12 hours I'll be in Oklahoma. Looking forward to seeing whoever's there, and puttering around, talking, and relaxing.

The Orionid meteor shower peaks this year in the early morning hours of the 22nd. There are three people in our extended family who were born under meteor showers that I know of; I wonder if there's anyone else? This year will be ideal for viewing as there is only a waning crescent moon. Looks like Friday morning might be better viewing, as NW OK is forecast to have extensive cloud cover on Saturday.