les biscuits et les verres

Thanks to Pinterest, your average Joe can dream up all sorts of creations. Or mimick all sorts of others' creations. Here is my Peanut Butter Hug "cookie". 

I was going for a sweet pink so the hug looked more like zebra stripes but I got a humble rose color. I'm not disappointed. They taste pretty good. I used an idea that I found at dailynibbles.com. However, I did not read it well enough to find that I should have used gel food coloring. I used some target off-brand liquid drops. Probably the cause of the humbled mumble-bumble rosy pink instead of the hot look-at-me pink.

(That was just what I had at the house.) And when she refers to the Peasandthankyou.com recipe I again used just what was around the house. So dairy-margarine instead of not and plain creamy Skippy peanut butter instead of natural. Things like that...

I also tried breaking beer bottles down into glasses. I read about this technique in a magazine my cousin had last year or a couple years ago. Seeing it on pinterest reminded me that I wanted to try that. So I finally did. Once again, I used what was around the house instead of what was recommended. For this, I looked at about.com's several pages on "How to cut class with string"/similarly named topics to get the gist of it. I ended up soaking some pink kitchen cotton crochet yarn that has been sitting in my sewing room for a while now. After a few different trials -oh there were errors, obviously- I wound the yarn around the bottle a couple/few times, cut and tied it and took it off to soak in, in the end, lamp oil. I tried nail polish remover but it just didn't burn long enough. Maybe not enough acetone. 

I don't know why but there was an unopened gallon of lamp oil in the basement. It has to have been sitting there for at least five years. Probably. I used some machine-washable gloves that I bought for my printing and dyeing class to push the soaked yarn back into place. Sitting at the side of the bath tub with a metal tub full of cold water under my arms, I took off one glove to strike a match and light the yarn. While sliding my hand back into the glove, I watched and turned the bottle as the yarn self-extinguished. (Note to self: Oven mittens are not necessarily flame retardant. But I learned that a different way, don't worry.)

As soon as it was done, I dunked it in the cold water. After some attempts, I heard the "pop" that I read about and the glass was broken. But not neatly like I thought it would be. And repeat. ish. I'm planning out working on the kinks. I think the big chunkers of edgy glass are from the yarn-knots. I plan to trim/tuck them better next time. Also, I am thinking that it would create a more consistent/leveled break to put the glass in the water vertically instead of randomly rolling it into the cold. Trying to make sure that the hot ring goes cold all at once should work. Hopefully. We'll see. I gave up for the day after two failed-ish attempts. And then made the afformentioned cookies. That failed-ish.

 This was my first attempt (above). It went through a few different burning yarns and cold-dunkings. There were a lot of rugged edges left and as a result a lot of little pieces were still breaking off in the sanding process. For once in my life, I actually kept my gloves on for the project (except of course to light the match).

The one with the label was my second attempt. You can see that it is smoother but still not necessarily something someone will want to drink out of. Oh right, did I mention that instead of a diamond emery, I used a 400grit sandpaper? I'm looking into getting the emery. I sanded out the sharp parts, it is perfectly safe for rubbing your finger all over. Trust me, I did so again and again and again. It just needs a good sanding down for obvious aesthetic purposes, you know?