Oh boy Christmas!
In case anyone was looking for recommendations on Christmas gifts, I thought I'd share the online stores where I did most of my shopping this year, and to ask others to do the same.
I bought a set of prints from James Jean's "Kindling" show here, and his shop includes some more gorgeous prints, several postcard books (I bought one last year, too), a beautiful triptych journal, teacups, mint tins, and skate decks.
An example of his work:
I got several gifts from The Bone Room, which actually has a storefront in California. The don't have an online merchant account, but there's an e-mail order form you can fill out and send in, and they'll call for your card information the next day. As you can possibly guess, they're a natural history store, and they sell real bones and skeletons, human and animal, articulated and not, and high-quality casts of same, as well as jewelry and such made from various animal remnants, fossils, preserved bugs, and the like. I got my sister-in-law these stylish beetle-wing earrings, and a few bracelets with insects preserved in lucite.
I've mentioned her before, but I got two little sculptures on clearance discount from Bathsheba Sculpture (clearance page is here) and two light-up LED DNA keychains like so:
And of course the full run of Templar, AZ books on sale 
Templar Connect » Inconsequential Prattle
Christmas spirit!
(23 posts)-
maecrab
MemberPosted 9 months ago # -
If I had the money, my list would be filled exclusively from ThinkGeek.com , but alas y'all are gettin' handmade gifts that'll be running late (can't sew until I get my contract work done).
Posted 9 months ago # -
pencilears
Memberwell I bought books for my folks Tiny Houses for my mom, The Art of French Cooking for my dad,
I don't usually get them nice things so that's ok.my sister and I usually exchange the gift of not buying crap for one another or we go out and pick something out for the other one to buy for us then act all surprised when it's handed over after checkout.
my friends are getting some of the candy I'm making for my family, and some stickers.we (me and my sister) have been making hand rolled chocolate truffles for our family since I was 8 and she was 7, this is going to be the first year of me doing it without her and I'm going to miss her even if she's going to be in Hawaii with her boyfriend (who is otherwise a perfectly reasonable person) and will not be missing me much at all.
also, I'll be making peppermint bark and maple butter. so simple and so good.
peppermint bark is just super dark chocolate melted and poured out then embedded with peppermint bits then cooled and spread with white chocolate and more peppermint bits on top.
maple butter is [REDACTED].
Posted 9 months ago # -
birdtongue
Member... this is going to be the first year of me doing it without her and I'm going to miss her even if she's going to be in Hawaii with her boyfriend (who is otherwise a perfectly reasonable person) and will not be missing me much at all.
she may be having the time of her life, but i can guarantee that she will lament missing that activity with you. gah-ron-tee.all of that bidness with the chocolate sounds excellent. mebbe i should do some cookery for gifting...
Posted 8 months ago # -
well I bought books for my folks Tiny Houses for my mom, The Art of French Cooking for my dad,
I don't usually get them nice things so that's ok.
my sister and I usually exchange the gift of not buying crap for one another or we go out and pick something out for the other one to buy for us then act all surprised when it's handed over after checkout.
my friends are getting some of the candy I'm making for my family, and some stickers.
we (me and my sister) have been making hand rolled chocolate truffles for our family since I was 8 and she was 7, this is going to be the first year of me doing it without her and I'm going to miss her even if she's going to be in Hawaii with her boyfriend (who is otherwise a perfectly reasonable person) and will not be missing me much at all.
also, I'll be making peppermint bark and maple butter. so simple and so good.
peppermint bark is just super dark chocolate melted and poured out then embedded with peppermint bits then cooled and spread with white chocolate and more peppermint bits on top.
maple butter is maple syrup heated and boiled to soft ball (turns to goo when dropped into cold water, instead of dissolving or going hard) then blended in the blender with lots of butter. last year I applied my newfound knowledge of crystal formation in igneous rocks to figure out that if we cooled the mixture fast it stayed creamer than cooling it slowly which went crunchier.Do you crunk up your own peppermint bits, or do you buy peppermint bits? If you crunk them up yourself, how do you do it?
I took a whack at candy canes with a rolling pin, then a hammer. They were double bagged. It mostly just made a mess. Also they went stale/sticky almost immediately. I figure I did something terribly, terribly wrong. Advice?
Posted 8 months ago # -
maecrab
MemberDo you crunk up your own peppermint bits, or do you buy peppermint bits? If you crunk them up yourself, how do you do it?
Don't you know, Brigid? Pencilears always crunks it up. I'm interested too, though. A friend of mine that just got her baking certification handmade her grandmother's lemoncello truffles for part of her final, and they were so delicious I almost died. I would really like to know how to make candy that doesn't take any special equipment.
Also, is the maple butter, like, candy? Or do you put it on things?Posted 8 months ago # -
pencilears
Member
Don't you know, Brigid? Pencilears always crunks it up.it's true I do.
the trick with peppermint bits is to keep everything really really dry and (as that is impossible in my climate) to move as fast as possible with them. double bag unwrapped peppermints and/or candycanes in tough frezzer bags and carefully whack them once or twice with a rolling pin or the back of a big spoon, try not to turn them to dust because the dust turns to cement faster than larger bits do. not that there won't be dust. there is always dust.you just have to use them immediately, they will cement to your fingers and that is delicious. trying to keep extra in a bowl has always resulted in a mass of peppermint which then had to be chiseled out again.
from Maida Heatter's book of Great Chocolate Desserts, as made by the Powell family here's how to make our truffles.
warning: after doing this you may hate chocolate for some time afterwards.
the special equipment you will need is a double boiler, this is because chocolate likes to burn, particularly white chocolate, which likes to separate, into what looks like curds and whey, then burn.
also a good spatula, but that seems basic.
so our recipe is take 6oz of dark or milk chocolate, which should be half a bag but not always Gharadellis likes to make bags now that are 11oz, which is a travesty.
melt it,
put in half a stick of butter that has been chopped up so it melts faster, stir it in until it's all melted and uniform. this can done while the chocolate is semimolten but be careful they are smooth before the next bit.
then add two egg yolks, mix them up before hand and grab what would be the embryo off them, nobody likes egg chunks in their chocolate,
stir fast and hard for 2 minutes, again, we're avoiding egg chunks while cooking everything enough that nobody gets sick from eating them.
chocolate should be uniform in color and texture.
now it needs to cool, decant the mixture into a bowl and put that bowl in an ice bath if you want it to cool faster.when it's cool but not yet set up is when you add the extract or coconut flakes or almond bits to it, extract is mostly alcohol so if it's added to a hot bowl it mostly evaporates.
let it harden up a bit in the new bowl, this takes a while, which is why we make so many batches by cooking up more during the cooling-down time.
take a spoon, and a sheet of waxed paper labled with the flavor of the batch that is going on it, spoon out the centers and let them harden a bit more, after they are firm enough to roll in your hand with out turning immedeately to goo roll them into spheres with your hands coated in cocoa powder.
let them sit again
now, melt up some high quality chocolate, or lower quality and a bowl of chopped nuts, coconut flakes, or peppermint bits. do not mix the dipping chocolate and the bits of stuff, keep them as sepprate as possible.
to dip, plop a center into the still hot top of the double boiler with the dipping chocolate in it, roll it around with a fork really quickly and then take it out again, and plop it on a fresh new clean sheet of waxed paper.
second stage of rolling it in stuff is for master class dippers which is why I make my dad do most of it.
you can also sprinkle the stuff on it shortly after dipping.we make salted caramels by rolling store bought caramels in good chocolate and sprinkleing kosher salt on them afterwards, we did tutles one year but they don't ship well.
allow to cool again and that's it! basic truffles!
advanced truffles are ones with white chocolate centers.
they are a pain and took years for us to perfect so I don't recommend them unless you like looking at huddles of separated white chocolate.if you must make them, keep the heat on lower,
have some powdered sugar on hand, put in pinches of it when the chocolate is about to separate and it may fix itself.
the normal amount of butter to a little less, but only one egg yolk. this will turn the white chocolate yellow. dye it brighter yellow or orange and flavor it lemon or orange and noone will notice the color being weird.
it will be chunkier and more moody if you are using poor quality white chocolate, but good quality chocolate is better used as a dipping chocolate so your call there.
roll them in powdered sugar and keep them cold thy have a tendency to puddle.*
flavors that work well in truffles: peppermint, orange, coconut, plain,
flavors that are hit and miss: lemon, mint, almond,
flavors to avoid: strawberry, cherry, banana,
*---
maple butter is a spread that can be made into a candy by rolling frozen balls of it in super dark chocolate. this is the crowd favorite of all the candies we make and the hardest to do because it melts so quickly and has the least strength. they must be immediately put in the freezer and cannot be shipped. and super dark chocolate must be used because the centers are so soft.
[REDACTED] maybe this is a very specific Vermont thing that they don't want to get out?
it is maple syrup [REDACTED] but I don't know the proportions.
we usually end up putting most of it into jars where it ends up on my dad's toast throughout the year rather than making candies out of all of it.
Posted 8 months ago # -
I've made truffles before and they didn't involve egg yolk (which is good, for me, because I have an irrational phobia about under cooked eggs). Just chocolate, cream, and maybe butter. I don't remember. And flavor. They were gooooooood, though.
Thanks for the peppermint tips. It's generally pretty humid out here, so I'll probably just plan to never work with peppermint bits because they will just turn into tasty, tasty cement.
Posted 8 months ago # -
pencilears
MemberI used to be more paranoid about raw eggs but now I eat them over easy in toast, living on the edge!
don't let me scare you away from peppermint bits, it's actively raining out here right now and that's not going to stop me from making bark.
Oh I forgot before, another thing you can do with them is to put a paper towel under and over the bags when you smack them, keeps the bags from ripping so easily.Posted 8 months ago # -
I just don't feel like chipping peppermint bits out of a bowl again, LOL.
I'm pretty lazy.
Your sweets production is pretty epic, and I am both envious of and exhausted by the thought of it.
Posted 8 months ago # -
pencilears
Memberwell usually it's me, Kenz, and Dad working full tilt at them for a couple of days. That's enough people that we can get into a rhythm and it's not too hard to make more than enough for all possible friends and family.
which can get bad, one year we overestimated by more than two hundred, but dad took the extras down to a homeless shelter, so that turned out ok.this year, well, it's just me.
I'll be doing more bark and no maples. so not that ambitious at all.off topic,
what else are people doing for Christmas? and is is true that arty people have better Christmas trees?Posted 8 months ago # -
I'm trying to coordinate logistics to host my family (two parents, two bothers), my husband's family (two parents, three siblings) my husband, myself, and possibly two cousins and their two kids (16 people) for Christmas dinner.
I own 7 dinner plates.
My husband's family is Eastern Orthodox and so don't celebrate Christmas in December, so I might just have my family over, which would make things a lot easier, but I also don't want to hurt his family's feelings.
My mom is sorting through dinnerware options. She thinks she might have a butt load of plates and silver plate in storage. Sometimes it's nice having packrat family.
We don't have a tree up yet.
Posted 8 months ago # -
birdtongue
Memberi keep meaning to start some tiny sweaters as ornaments/gifts ... i have yet to put it up, but i have a (4-foot?) artificial tree with a couple of the decorations that my tribe sends out every year, and a couple glass-looking (but plastic!) ornaments that my sister and her husband bought in Nuremberg. it's a bit spare, but the only reason my raised-Catholic beau even got a tree for our apartment (two years ago) was because of my quiet desperation when faced with the lack; our first holiday living together, and no tree? (;_;) i suppose that is reason enough, but still. tons of lights, though; they've been a regular lighting option in my dwellings for years.
i'm not any sort of religious, but my family decorated a tree on Christmas Eve for most of my life, and it's a tradition i rather like. then again, i have an unfathomable love for a decorated tree, so i'm likely to take a wild hair and toss it together in the wee hours between now and Christmas. the boyfriend doesn't care one way or t'other, but it just makes me happy to have a tree sparkling at me into the new year. and the cats look adorable sleeping under it.
um, lessee. still trying to hammer down a pattern for mom's scarf; i need to tone down on the perfectionism and just knit the damn thing. the yarn is scrumptious, though. gotta finish those necklaces for the sister-outlaw, and i'm thinking maybe a scarf for dad, my sister and her husband? everyone else has had gifts purchased for them, or the knitting is done. err, family, that is. blick! ah well, my friends know i work on indian-time, anyway.
Posted 8 months ago # -
maecrab
MemberI moved away from home and all my family to another state last February, so another thing I'm doing for various grandmas is putting together a photo album of the past year or so. 16 pages, double-sided, printed on matte photo paper with my laser jet. Also, this gives me an excuse to get 'regional' gifts for my little cousins, especially, like red pepper jelly and handmade ocarinas.
Posted 8 months ago # -
pencilears
Membersorry for replying late
uhh
@brigidkelly,
I know this is going to sound like I'm advocating killing the earth but I'd just get some paper plates, they're fairly cheap, you don't have to much with getting them back to their owner or doing dishes in the middle of dinner.@birdtounge
yeah my jokingly-paganish family puts up a tree every year. secular Christmas is the best bit. and yay for scarves, I like to knit them as a k2 p2 pattern, it avoids the rik-rak look while being the same on both sides, flipping back and forth does get a bit annoying though. and you should put up a picture in the art thread when it's done! (I want to see the sumptuous yarn)@maecrab
ohmigawd red pepper jelly is the best, my step mom put out some for thanksgiving orderves this year.Posted 8 months ago # -
birdtongue
Member@BrigidKeely: go to your thrift store/charitable resale shop of choice -- you can usually find some rather nice dinner sets on the cheap, as long as you don't mind half the table not matching the other. personally, i find it rather homey, but then again, i've also never had the money to do other than get hand-me-downs one way or another.
@maecrab: last year, we gifted a digital photo frame to the beau's grandparents; we'd also got hold of a bunch of photos, so it was given to them pre-loaded. this will be our third time to scan photos and add more to the damned thing. ah well, it's the gift that keeps on giving (and taking more of my life with it.) but at least they like it, and it is nice to have digital copies of all those photos.
@pencilears: i tried the One Row Scarf, then My So-Called Scarf, and now hopefully i've settled on a modded version of the Prismatic Scarf -- kinda wary of those long floats, but i do like the color pattern so far.
i'm in hyperdrive knitting mode at the moment, which isn't helping with my "i'm not crazy" facade -- i've decided that i need to knit a cowl (Bainbridge Scarf, slightly modded, is what i'm going with) to make a Dirty Santa gift somewhat more appealing. the above-mentioned grandparents found out a couple years ago that we like tea (as in, Earl Grey, Gunpowder green, the occasional Sleepytime -- we're very picky about our tea, in any case) and proceeded to give us a box or 3 of the Bigelow Chai and Vanilla Chai assortments for almost every gift-giving occasion since. upon the occasion of the youngest's birthday party a couple weekends ago (and another two boxes), i gently mentioned that we didn't drink tea that quickly; apparently, those boxes come free with whatever tea they get... O_o. anyway, the fully 7 (seven!) unopened boxes that i haven't managed to give away are going in the Dirty Santa gift. oh, yeah, the party is tonight. and it's my first ever cowl-thing, which i'm knitting flat because my only pair of circulars is neither small nor long enough. me = crazy.
i'm also going to knit two (...maybe one) gift bow/bow tie/hair bows to tie onto a stuffed monkey, which the birthday girl ought to be able to also use. i'm planning to have this done by tomorrow morning. crazy crazy crazy.
Posted 8 months ago # -
maecrab
MemberMy sister in law sent her 13 year old sister a ipod last year, loaded up with music and videos and stuff, which was cool both because she didn't have a computer and to introduce her sister to some good music. I thought that was a really neat present. This year she's giving her a hard drive full of more stuff, to use with her new laptop.
Posted 8 months ago # -
pencilears
Member@birdtounge oh is that this pattern? because that looks super cool.
winter always sets me into knitting mode something about the super cold weather we got last year made me think this super fuzzy electric blue yarn was a good idea, and now I've got the slightly ridiculous gauntlet project to finish before I start on anything new.
oh! so today I got some time with my dad yesterday to make some candies, I found out the reason why the recipe for maple butter isn't online. it is an actual damn family secret and I was not aware.
I can tell you I coated a bunch of store bought soft-ish carmels, dipped them in dark chocolate and sprinkled them with rock salt for salted carmels. and they are freaking good. and were very easy to do.
tomorrow, we finish candy-making and get a Christmas tree.
Posted 8 months ago # -
birdtongue
Member@pencilears:
"it is an actual damn family secret and I was not aware."
haha, awesome. well, at least you were somewnat non-specific to begin with; hopefully no one's coming for your kneecaps.yes, that's the original, and here's the mod i'm using, which basically consists of slipping purlwise with yarn in front instead of purling.
i'm using this stuff (Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande Hand Dye, in colorway #7); it's a pretty blue-green variegated, and the nicest (not to mention, most expensive) yarn i've worked with.
i'll post a picture of the scarf over in my thread when i'm done; i'm sure i'll have some other Christmassy last-minute thing i start, and i'll cross-reference it here.
i got into a conversation about crafting with an SCA dude last night; he's an old friend of my beau's who he randomly renewed acquaintance with at a murder mystery dinner party we attended. anyway, i've been invited to use his metal shop -- he has anvils and some torches, as he crafts his own armor. owait... Christmas thread, not art thread, oops. /facepalm
but clearly, the prospect is exciting.@maecrab:
i'm a huge fan of gifting music -- well, i'm a huge fan of music. i tend to think anything you're passionate about makes even an unliked gift more palatable to the recipient; the thought that counts, and all. and those seem like very useful gifts, too.Posted 8 months ago # -
pencilears
Member@birdtounge and dad's side is from new york
(upstate so really not threatening at all but still newyork = gangsters coming for my knees) but I've covered my traces here. 
even if I'm about as stealthy as the federal government.
ooooo yarn, oooooo patterns *mesmerized* so nice looking, I could do that, make my own socks, looks so cool.
*shakes it off*so, mom and I decorated the tree,
there it is!
delicate and old ornaments on top, sturdy plastic ones down where the dogs will run into them.
my sister got mom to switch to mostly a red and gold color scheme a couple of years ago so most of the new plastic balls are red or gold and the invisible decorating barbed wire is also gold with stars on it.
the portrait behind the tree is my great grandmother.Posted 8 months ago # -
maecrab
MemberMy gramma and I went hunting for half-price LED christmas lights the day after Christmas. We totally scored at a local hardware place, and bought a bazillion. They're REALLY low-energy-use, don't generate much heat, and are very pretty. She found a bunch of solar-powered ones to put in her backyard and enough for her tree for next year; I found enough to light my living room and garage/work-space-to-be year-round. (gonna cross-post this in poorcraft thread)
Posted 8 months ago # -
Christmas give not only physical happiness but also spiritual pleasure
Posted 2 months ago # -
Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace, love and goodwill to all. But with all the stress and commotion of the season, many of us end up feeling more like Mr. Scrooge than Santa Claus.
Posted 1 month ago #
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