The Plaid Pladd

I’m a little late checking in with my yearly goal progress, since we’re already well into October. I was trying to give myself a little room to catch up on some things, but I’m finally calling it.

1. Cook Every Recipe in Sally’s Baking Addiction: 89%
I have 8 more to go! Unfortunately I haven’t been taking as many pictures, but here’s one:

I was really proud that this pound cake turned out because I have a terrible history with quick breads and pound cakes where the middle will be a soupy mess and the sides will be burned. Probably my favorite of the recipes I made this time was Maple Pecan Granola. I was expecting it to just be kind of whatever, which is how I usually feel about granola, but when you home make it and eat it fresh this “kind of whatever” food turns to AWESOME! It’s so much more flavorful and delicious than kinds of bought before.

2. Finish All my 2014 Goals: 95%
The biggest development here is that I finished Brewer’s!!!
2a) Read T-Z in Brewer’s: 100%
For some reason it took me forevs to power through those last 30 pages, so I live-tweeted it a little bit.

2b) Make 7 Pies: 100%
Yep, still 100%
2c) Make a new fancy drink every month: 75%
This is the only one I’ve got left, but I think I’ll be fine. Last month I made a punch for my book club from my international cookbook. It’s called Gnamacoudji and is popular in West Africa. You make it by boiling pineapple skins with ginger and lemon grass. It was kind of weird but also kind of good? It received mixed reviews from my book club.
2d) Get everything then on my to-read list off it: 100%
I know I keep repeating the ones I’ve done every time I do these updates, but I like to inflate my own sense of accomplishment, okay?
2e) Update my blog 7 times: 100%
Ditto
3. Finish all my Craftsy classes: 80%
I tackled the Sewing Vintage class. I learned a lot, but apparently not enough, because the bodice part of the dress I constructed ended up being horribly deformed due to my attempts at adjusting the pattern for boobs. So instead I ended up with a nice skirt:

4. Complete a temperature scarf: 79%
I was behind on this for a while, until one day I binge watched all the Harry Potter Musicals and knit like two months worth. Now that the temperature isn’t the same hot nonsense every day it should be more interesting to knit.

5. Read at least one book a month someone else recommended: 83%
I had a lot of Shakespeare in my recommended books this time! In July I read:

This was recommended to me by someone on facebook, and I really liked it! A short book about basically everything we know for certain about Shakespeare and then all the different theories people have proposed over time. It’s really interesting to me how little we do know about him–even what everyone “knows” about what he looked like may or may not be right.

In August I read:

Timothy Egan is a really engaging writer–he’s won both a Pulitzer and a National Book Award–so it’s no surprise that this book has a very compelling sense of story despite being non-fiction. It’s about Thomas Francis Meagher who was transported for life to Tasmania for his part in a failed Irish uprising during the potato famine. He eventually escaped to America where he fought in the civil war and became territorial governor of Montana. He was a supremely interesting person who never stopped fighting for what he believed in despite truly insurmountable odds. This book was recommended to me by a coworker at the library and I really enjoyed it!

In September I read:

This book is two stories interwoven: the “historical Juliet” and her modern-day descendant trying to uncover the truth about her and escape some bad guys who want to steal her ~buried treasure~. The historical Juliet story was a pretty interesting take on life in Italy in what would have been a plausible setting for the Shakespeare play. The modern Juliet was an idiot bumbling around various historical buildings and falling for a random hot guy who of course turned out to be ~Romeo’s descendant~ blah.

As always, time to check in with Steven about his goals for the year:

1. Cook one vegetarian meal every week
“Yeah that’s fucking lost”
2. Learn a new violin piece every month
“Also lost. Although I suppose some of the stuff for orchestra kind of counts? It’s still not really”
3. Finish all craftsy classes
(laughter)
4. Make at least once case or bag out of leather
“The plan is there I haven’t done it yet. I need to get on that. I’m thinking a knife roll. It’s an extremely simple case but a great piece of practice work.”

Previously: Halfway