SuperEggplant

lip talk

Posted on February 1, 2007 by mariko

So I’m in my superbuzzy work area (okay, so it’s the basement), packing up orders, and I get to thinking about long-lasting lip glosses and the like. We haven’t had one of our beauty roundtables in quite some time, so hey, how about we talk about these long-wearing lip things? Yesterday I thought I’d experiment and bought a Maybelline one, but the color I got turned out to be too light and frosty for me, and dang if that stuff doesn’t completely dry out my lips! So, which, if any, do you recommend and why?

Posted in General | 32 Comments

chocolate blobs

Posted on January 30, 2007 by mariko

I packed and packed, and I finally got through the Thursday superbuzzy orders! Of course, I still have many, many more to go, but hey, I’m making progress.
Anyway, I read about these chocolate bouchons on the Orangette food blog a while back. She first had them at the Pearl Bakery, which is right here in my fair city, and the recipe is in David Lebovitz’s The Great Book of Chocolate, which I have, so it’s like I was destined to make them (David Lebovitz also has a food blog that I regularly read). The book is great, because Mr. Lebovitz (or can I call him David, since, you know, I read his blog?) discusses the origin and history of chocolate, provides interesting anecdotes about chocolate, introduces us to a number of chocolatiers, and arms us with a slew of recipes. The only beef I have with the book is it’s tall and narrow, so it’s hard to prop open to read the recipes.

These things are pretty darn yummy. The first bite I took, though, it seemed kind of dry and crumbly and kind of made me choke, but then the flavor of the chocolate kind of slowly explodes and saturates your whole mouth, and then it’s just crazy delicious. You definitely need a good cup of coffee, or a glass of milk if you’re one of those weirdos who doesn’t drink coffee (no offense. Some of my best friends are weirdos who don’t drink coffee).
Read on for the recipe …

Continue reading →

Posted in baking | 6 Comments

drowning

Posted on January 29, 2007 by mariko

Hey y’all, I am buried under superbuzzy orders over here! I really try to get orders out in a timely fashion, but I’m afraid these are going to take me a while. Please be patient, and I really apologize for any delays! Kelly and I are completely overwhelmed by the overwhelmingly overwhelming response to the latest shop update, and we thank you and hope to continue offering cute fabrics and zakka goods that will make you all scream with glee!
As you can imagine, I have had no time to sew or knit or bake, so here, you’ll just have to have a gander at some Japanese candy I recently acquired:

I knew I was taking a risk purchasing strawberry-flavored chocolate, but the whole “Cake Shop” thing was just so appealing to me, plus I’ve been on the strawberry kick lately, so I just couldn’t resist.

They’re actually pretty good. It’s a relatively crisp candy (I thought the center might be kind of soft and fake creamy, but it’s not), and there is no chemical taste to the strawberry part.
And I haven’t been able to locate bags of Cubyrop since I managed to find some at the Fubonn market. So sad! I did, however, find some rolls of Cubyrop, which is better than no Cubyrop at all:

Posted in candy/chocolate | 8 Comments

strawberry fields forever

Posted on January 25, 2007 by mariko

Wow, I guess you guys really liked the new superbuzzy items! Suffice it to say I’m going to be very busy for the next several days. Thank you all so much for your support! Kelly and I really love all the fabrics and zakka goods and are thrilled that you do, too!
So anyway, I am totally into the whole strawberry theme these days. In Japan I picked up some nylon with a strawberry design, and I thought maybe I’d make a hooded rain poncho with it. After seeing Action Hero Melissa‘s awesome corduroy apple cape jacket, though, I was inspired to use that pattern (it’s this Built by Wendy Simplicity pattern).

Things went pretty smoothly until I got to the sleeves. They were a bit of a bear to put in, since there is no give to the nylon. I ended up with slightly puckered sleeves, but I have decided to pretend that’s the look I was going for. Also, I accidentally burned some holes in the hem of the sleeve with my iron! Doh!
Here are some close-up shots:

I think it’s a pretty crazy jacket, and it’s not very practical, really, but I like it. It’s fun and kooky and has strawberries plastered all over it, and things just don’t get much better than that!

Posted in sewing | 22 Comments

get yer motors running

Posted on January 24, 2007 by mariko

Superbuzzy‘s biggest update yet will go live Thursday at 1pm Pacific Time, so get your credit cards ready, ha ha. It actually got to the point where I would start sweating and get a little panicky feeling whenever the UPS guy drove past the house. I can’t tell you how many times he had to carry 70-pound boxes up our two flights of stairs! I also started trolling Craig’s List constantly to search for bookcases to hold the growing bolts (or boltage. Hey, that’s kind of a good fake word). My building manager (aka Peter) was kept quite busy!
Anyway, you don’t care about that, right? You just want to see the goods! I can’t even remember how much new stuff there is. Among our new items are lots of new canvas fabrics, some very sweet cottons, a lot of that great linen-cotton blend stuff, new magazines and books, TONS of Shinzi Katoh items (especially bags), the Clover yo-yo makers, etc. Here’s a sneak peek:
Really cool canvas:

I know there are some matryoshka freaks out there. We have the matryoshka canvas in three colorways, I believe. I totally dig the button card fabric. I’m thinking it might make a cute skirt!

I have a weak spot for kitchen themed fabric. I also love anything with fruit.
And speaking of fruit, I am totally nuts for strawberries right now!

We also got some Shinzi Katoh trim with strawberries on it. SO YUMMY.
We have some fabric that we are selling by the panel. Check out this gorgeous cotton lawn with vintage hankies, plus the crazy Spanish-themed cotton!

And some unusual designer fabrics:

That first one with the trees? That design covers one half of the fabric. The other half also has trees but with yellow ducks flying around instead of apples! Who thinks up this crazy stuff!
Books and magazines. Here’s the cover of a cool embroidery book plus a page from a “mascot” book, because one can never have enough stuffed donuts.

Oh, we have zip totes, large totes, short totes, and new round bags, which are purse-like, from Shinzi Katoh. They are all so cute that it would be very difficult for me to choose one … or two … or three.

Okay, how about just a couple more.

Who can ever get enough dots? We have several different colorways of the honeycomb dots, and the colors are so great. It’s really hard to put into words, but they are the hues of Japanese candies or something. The poison apple fabric is interesting–the apples are actually embroidered onto the fabric.
Okay, all this uploading has exhausted me. Please take a look at superbuzzy if you’re interested in Japanese cute fabrics and zakka goods! If I’m not too busy packing up orders, I should have some strawberry craziness to share with you tomorrow.

Posted in zip | 13 Comments

run away

Posted on January 23, 2007 by mariko

It got chilly here a couple weeks ago, so I decided it was time to sew up some more running tights. I was excited to try out the flatlock stitch on my new serger (the BabyLock Imagine), but I couldn’t get it quite right, so I had to take it in to the shop and get a little lesson. Turns out the tension was slightly off, so it wasn’t chaining correctly. Darn machines! Anyway, the flatlock now works quite nicely, and I was able to whip up a pair of warm tights.

You should be relieved you aren’t being subjected to a photo of me busting out of these. The tights are very warm and fuzzy. The flatlock had a little bit of a tough time going over seams and triple thicknesses, which means the front part now looks like a codpiece. It’s not like I want to bring attention to my crotch. I always try to wear long shirts, anyway. Anyway, check out the pretty flatlock:

I used Wooly Nylon in the upper looper for some decorative fuzziness. The tights fabric is from Rose City Textiles. It’s very stretchy and is slightly furry on the inside. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the weather warmed up, so now it’s too warm to wear these!

Posted in sewing | 9 Comments

junk in the … desk

Posted on January 21, 2007 by mariko

My brother cleaned out one of the drawers of my old desk and handed me the contents in a brown paper bag.

Talk about a lot of junk! I ended up throwing most of it away, though I must confess it was difficult to part with the Mr. T rubber stamp (it was all dried out, though).
So I have a Quicken question. I just got Quicken 2007 Home & Business and am confused (it doesn’t take much) about how to track my expenses. Are any of you self employed but don’t have a separate bank account for your business? Do you have to track personal and business accounts in the same area? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Posted in General | 15 Comments

restraint

Posted on January 20, 2007 by mariko

I went to Kinokuniya today with my mother and discovered that they have expanded the Japanese craft book section from two bookcases to FOUR, yet I only purchased one book, thank you.

ISBN 4-579-10873-6
The book contains one-piece dresses and skirts. I can’t explain why I selected this book over any others. As many of you know, it’s nearly impossible to make decisions when faced with a big wall of Japanese craft books.

Humongo flaps on the front, but I still think it’s rather cute.

The skirt is a tad on the short side for someone my age, but I like the style.
Guess I’d better get to sewing now!

Posted in sewing | 11 Comments

mushroom memories

Posted on January 18, 2007 by mariko

I have been looking through old photo albums lately, mostly to locate some mushroom photos. We used to go mushroom hunting up on Mt. Hood all the time when I was a kid, and I wanted to find proof of how many matsutake grew wild up there. Nowadays, you see, the mushrooms have been overpicked and are thus very rare (and very expensive). I was never good at finding them, but my grandmother was:

Browsing through the photos made me yearn for the wardrobe of my childhood. There were some crazy colorful outfits and many sweater vests. I think this is my favorite outfit:

I think I should duplicate it. The sweater vest shouldn’t be so difficult to copy.
Oh, and what’s this, another sweater vest?

Some green terry cloth shorts might be just the ticket this summer, along with a striped terry cloth t-shirt:

And a fancy new dress (my chunky legs haven’t changed much):

I love my mother’s outfit in this snow photo:

I thought it’d be funny to crop my head out of the photos, since I always chop off my head for photos. All the full images, along with a couple others, can be found at my flickr site here. I’ve totally been getting into flickr these days, mostly because I was shamed into it by Amy and Melissa, who chided me for being a lame flickr person.

Posted in General | 18 Comments

snow day

Posted on January 16, 2007 by mariko

I know all of you who live in areas that get REAL weather must laugh at us Portlanders who flip out when one snowflake falls, but, well, we like to get worked up about weather around here, and today was a great day for that. Snow started falling around 6am this morning, and it kept falling and falling! The schools were closed, which meant Peter and I got to watch last night’s episode of 24 during the day. Talk about decadent.

Poor Deedle was a little unnerved by all the white stuff. For her afternoon walk we put on her booties, but each of them fell off in the deep (well, deep to her) snow.

One thing that’s great about snow here is that everything comes to a stop. Schools close, stores close, businesses close, everything! There’s a reason for that, as evidenced by this video.

Posted in General | 19 Comments

lip talk

chocolate blobs

drowning

strawberry fields forever

get yer motors running

run away

junk in the … desk

restraint

mushroom memories

snow day

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