I've been busy listing some naturally dyed silk shawls on my etsy store. It's getting cool, and time to break out the lovely warm silks and shawls!

I've also started listing some furoshiki - I have quite a few, 12 or 15, which I will be listing (again, in my etsy store) over the next week or two. They are mostly cotton, but some are silk. (the one shown above is rust-dyed cotton). I'm quite in love with the art of furoshiki and have been buying fabric for dyeing and sewing into assorted sizes of furoshiki.

Here is one of our cotton squares wrapped around a book.


And another one wrapped around a wine bottle. I just think they're so elegant, functional, and, best of all, totally reusable and recyclable. SO cool. Visit furoshiki.com to learn more, and get great wrapping information.

Thanks to John for both is fantastic photography skills (he took all those pictures) and his mad furoshiki skills!!!

In other, unrelated news: I created a really interesting cake recipe last night. I hacked the "Beet Bundt Cake" recipe from allrecipes.com, to suit my tastes, and what I had on hand. Here's what I did:

• 1 cup sour cream
  
• 1 1/2 cups turbinado sugar
  
• 3 eggs
• 4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate
• 2 cups pureed cooked beets
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 tbsp. cocoa powder
• 2 tbsp. olive oil

Bake beets; puree them. Melt chocolate and oil together over low heat; add eggs, sour cream, sugar, vanilla, olive oil, cocoa powder. Blend well, and add other dry ingredients. Pour into greased bundt pan and bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, or until done. Cool. Serve with sweetened raspberry puree, OR, raspberry jam thinned with brandy or congnac.

In my opinion, the raspberry (esp. the jam/booze mix) REALLY tie the cake together. It is really quite a heady mixture of tastes. I think it would be divine with black coffee or espresso, after dinner.