Baking Therapy

Baking has always been therapeutic for me, especially when I feel like I am in a creative rut. Making something delicious out of flour, eggs, sugar (or agave or honey) and other ingredients makes me feel like I have achieved a minor yet tasty victory. I bake cakes when I feel particularly creative; I feel more challenged making these desserts over cookies, cupcakes, or brownies. When my efforts don’t turn out the way I want, I do get discouraged, but the feeling is only fleeting. I never think after an unsuccessful effort that I do not want to bake something else, which will hopefully exceed my previous creations.

I have been avoiding sweets during the Lenten season, but I still manage to bake and share what I have made with family and friends without breaking my ban. I luckily have taste testers to help me out, so I never give out anything that would make me feel ashamed. I will never be Martha Stewart when it comes to baking, but I am proud of some of the recipes I have successfully created from scratch. While some people I know feel constricted by the measurements required to create baked goods, or the waiting it takes until they are finished in the oven, I actually like the parameters given. I enjoy cooking meals and being creative by adding spices and other touches that are unique to me as well, but sometimes having the measurements required for baking fixed and ready to go is a comfort to me.

Even after my sweets ban is over, I am not going to indulge in them as often I have been before. If anything, I am moving more toward healthier alternatives to baking, such as gluten-free and wheat-free cookies, cupcakes, brownies, and cakes. I look forward to the possibilities, as do those who offer to be my taste testers. The compliments I do get on my baking prowess make me want to continue to improve my skills, and never give up. It is the way we should approach most things in our lives.

Madame's Legacy

Last week I went to visit the Madame Alexander doll factory, which I was excited to learn is located in NYC's own Harlem neighborhood. I know someone who collects dolls, so I thought it would be fun to take her there. Not only is it a doll factory where the prototype dolls are handmade, it is also a doll hospital where people can send "injured" dolls for repair, and a Heritage Gallery displaying hundreds of classic collectible dolls from the Madame Alexander line.

I don't know much about dolls (that is to say, not any more than I knew back when I was six) but regardless, it's always fun to see something behind the scenes. My favorite thing was learning more about Madame Alexander, the company's founder, who was a pioneering business woman of the 1920s. She founded her doll company in her kitchen in 1923, and over the following decades nurtured it into an internationally respected business.

It turns out, she also developed a lot of the features I took for granted in my own childhood dolls. Madame Alexander was the first doll maker to license literary and film characters for look-alike dolls (like Rhett and Scarlett from Gone with the Wind). She created "sleep" eyes, which are eyelids that close when the doll is lying down. She manufactured the first line of hard plastic dolls in the 1940s. Madame Alexander's Cissy dolls were the first to be modeled after an adult woman's body as opposed to a baby or young girl. (Yes, this was several years pre-Barbie, and Cissy is more properly-proportioned!)

Bottom line: the dolls are really cute! And for me, they become more so when I realize they represent the legacy of a woman who must have faced every challenge the early 20th century posed to talented ambitious women, and still rose to the top doing what she loved. That's inspiring.


Images from madamealexander.com

Knot My Problem

Every once in a while, it seems, I take up knitting again. I've been spending time with a few friends who knit heavily--and much better than I do!--and it has inspired me to get to work on my small projects again. It's a good thing to jump start in advance of the holidays, when I'll be traveling a bit and probably sitting around watching football games and bad TV specials with my parents for a period of days.

I like knitting. Supposedly, once you get moderately comfortable doing it, the repetitive motion becomes meditative and soothing. I'm finally getting to that point, and it's become even more enjoyable. The problem I'm currently having is finding a balanced project that will look nice in the end but not drive me crazy learning new stitches.

In talking with my knitting friends, I've realized that the way they experience satisfaction after finishing a big, cool knitting project is similar to the way I experience satisfaction after completing a novel manuscript. One of them told me there are "process knitters," who just love the act of knitting, and "project knitters," who do it to end up with a neat homemade item.

I suppose the same could be said of novelists--some of us just do it because we love spitting words onto the page and the process of honing a first draft to a manuscript is painful, while others love the revision process because they want so badly to see a finished book.

I'm struggling through copyedits on my latest manuscript, a laborious process that has taken me many days of work. It usually goes faster. But it's the end process of more than a year's work on this book. How does this relate to my knitting, you ask? It's shown me why I am definitely a project knitter. And small projects, at that! You'll probably never hear of me tackling a sweater--if I'm going to spend a year's creative energy on anything, it's going to be a novel. But when the going gets rough with my writing, it's soothing to know I can grab a ball of yarn and knit up a pair of gloves or a hat in a weekend. It reminds me that creative projects can and will be finished!