.

How to Make Baklava

2010-04-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

"Baklava is a dessert of Turkish origin, dating from the fifteenth century, today popular also in Greece and throughout the Middle East. Layered with nuts and drenched in sugar syrup or honey, it is the best known of all the phyllo pastries.
In Greece it was originally an Easter specialty, made with 40 layers of pastry representing the 40 days of Lent." from The Joy of Cooking, pg. 918

Good enough reason for us to make it; that and it's supremely nummiful. It's also a bit fiddly, as you will see.

Before beginning any recipe, it is important to assemble all your ingredients.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Butter the bottom and sides of a 13 x 9 - inch baking pan. (Oooops - forgot to butter the pans. Oh well. We don't have a 13 x 9 pan, so we used two 8 x 8 pans, unbuttered...)

Finely chop or coarsely grind:
3 cups coarsly chopped nuts (walnuts, pistachios, almonds, and/or pecans), toasted.

We used red millet, canary seed, white proso millet, oat greats, safflower seeds, nyjer seed, buckwheat, 1/2 cup sesame seeds, 1 1/4 cup walnuts, 1 1/4 cup pistachios.

Stir together in a small bowl:
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest (ooops - no lemon. Skip that ingredient)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Melt:
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter (it wasn't enough)

Stack flat on a work surface:
1 pound phyllo dough

(Or you may choose to make your own. If you choose this arduous route, please give yourself an extra 4 hours and a glass of wine.)

Trim the phyllo into 13 x 9 - inch sheets (8x8, roughly) saving the scraps for another use (trash). Cover the stack with plastic wrap and a damp towel.

Place 2 phyllo sheets in the baking pan and brush the top sheet evenly with the melted butter (or with nasal mucous, whatever you like).

Add 2 more sheets and brush with the butter, then repeat once more for a total of 6 sheets. Sprinkle with half of the birdseed nuts and then half of the sugar mixture (since we were making two pans, we had to quarter these measurements as best we could).

Cover the filling with 2 phyllo sheets, butter the top sheet, and repeat until there are 6 sheets on top of the filling. Cover with the remaining nuts and sugar mixture.
Grate:

1/3 cup gruyere cheese

(This step is optional and may help to relieve the anxiety and/or frustration you will experience in handling the phyllo dough.)

Cover with all of the remaining phyllo sheets, adding them 2 at a time and buttering only the second sheet each time. Brush the top with the remaining butter (there was none).

Using a sharp serrated knife so that the patry will not be crushed, cut through all of the layers to make 2-inch diamonds or squares.

This is important because you will not be able to cut the baklava once it is baked without crushing the pastry; it also allows the syrup to soak in and around each piece (thereby ensuring maximum cavity production). Bake for 30 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 300 degrees. Continue to bake until the baklava is golden brown, 46 to 60 minutes. During the last 30 minutes of baking, combine in a saucepan:
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 1/3 cups water
1/3 cup honey
Zest of 1 orange, removed in large strips (a potato peeler did the trick.)

Bring the mixture to a gentle boil, reduce the heat, and simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Strain the hot syrup (let the fear of God enter you at this moment) and pour evenly over the baked baklava. Let cool completely, at least 4 hours (HAH! Very funny! Good luck on that one) at room temperature before serving.

Happy Easter and enjoy the Baklava with your favorite feathered friends. You may now eat the gruyere.

The New Job

2009-11-11T09:01:00.000-08:00

Hello and welcome to my new work place!

For some 4 weeks now, I have been working at a store called Shadowbox Paperie. And I am so thankful to be able to say I'm employed!

The store is located on Main Street in downtown Chattanooga, which is in a nice neighborhood that is currently being built up into a real posh shopping district, we all hope. There's some art galleries, and some good restaurants all within walking distance, so we get some good foot traffic.

As you can see, we sell more than paper goods. And as you can probably imagine, I have taken over merchandising and display in the store, although I can't claim credit for every beautiful display you see in these pictures. Mostly I've just been tweaking the displays some.

So if you're in the area, stop by and see me! I'll be the one whose happiness at finally gaining employment is causing a faint glow around her edges.

A Walk in the Woods, Part 2

2009-10-10T06:59:00.001-07:00

I've been workin' on the raaaillroad, all the livelong day.....

During a break in the recent rains we've been enjoying, we got out and took a hike in the woods near us. It was a beautiful fall day, warm in the sun with cool air, bright blue sky, everything I've been missing for the past several years.

Look at that sky!

I find nature can be so inspiring, even if it's manmade.

That's a joke, son.

At a glance, everything seemed to have come through the rains and flooding just fine.

But upon close inspection, we could see that the forest got flooded up to our waist height.

All the leaves were muddy.

But near the river, it was obvious the water had risen over our heads, as this bridge is that high. You can see it's covered with debris washed up by the floods.

Fall is on the way!

A Walk in the

2009-10-10T06:59:00.000-07:00

Apples!

2009-10-06T07:35:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, we went with some friends of ours from Singapore, the Bridgemans, to go apple picking. This was an outing I looked forward to every fall when I still lived in California, and missed terribly while I lived in Singapore. And, being the kinda tech-saavy girl that I am, I brought my camera with no batteries. So, I don't have pictures of the tiny little orchard we went to, or of how beautiful the blue, cloudless sky was, or of how wonderful the weather was. I can't take pictures of the temperature, anyway. But it was a lovely day and I was so happy.

We were warned that the orchard had suffered a hail storm (on May 15th!) so the apples were pocked, but still tasted good. We found that to be very true.

So with a huge quantity of apples (and a gigantic pumpkin, to boot), I started hunting for recipes. Apple butter is a bit too complicated, I think. So my first apple endeavor was applesauce.

I pulled all the winesap apples from the basket for this recipe; they are tart and perfect for cooking.

The flesh is almost hard, and very white. And the peels can be so dark, I almost thought they were plums when I went to pick them.

The recipe called for 3 or 4 pounds, and by hitting a conversion site online, I found that that was about 2 quarts, peeled and cored and quartered.

Here they are with the rest of the ingredients: a 3" piece of cinnamon stick, 4 peels of lemon rind, the juice of a lemon, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup white sugar, and a cup of water. The recipe allowed that not all of the white sugar need be added, but I had tasted these apples and knew they were tart and so I added the full amount. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 30 minutes, and voila!

Apple mush! Now remove the cinnamon stick and the lemon peels which are hard to find but also hard where everything else is mushy.
Last year, when I went to clean out my mother's house, I inherited a food mill. I use it to make mashed potatoes now and then, and it is great! Now I used it to make applesauce, and it worked like a charm.

Have you ever had hot applesauce? I never had, but I have found a new love.

Home made applesauce is very similar to store bought, except perhaps it's a bit denser. I think Motts says they use gravenstein apples, but the winesaps make such a great flavor contrast: tart/sweet.
This was such an easy recipe, I hope you will try to make your own applesauce. I have so much, I may try to make an applesauce spice cake with some of it. We'll see. It was delicious with cottage cheese and walnuts for breakfast this morning, too.

The Chattanooga Farmer's Market

2009-09-28T06:26:00.000-07:00

On Sundays after church, we have been going to the Farmer's Market downtown. Even though it has been very rainy, many people still make it there because it is so fun, and also, there is a roof on the pavilion where it is held.

It is not only a farmer's market, but also a craft show, and there's food and usually live music, too.

The last time we went, I had a delicious steak taco.

Then I went and got one of these potato chip things. Very decadent, also very delicious.

The veggies are always beautiful and tempting.

But maybe it's weird to have a bell pepper match one's dress.

More temptation.

On this day, we only bought some apples and tomatoes. The tomatoes will be made into a delicious fresh soup, and the apples?

They were used appropriately.

No Camera!

2009-09-16T07:17:00.000-07:00

And so no posts!

But I did want to share a recipe I invented/stole/adapted that was so yummy, you will want to try it out immediately. Like now.

Hot Craisin Chicken Salad

1 1/2 cups cooked chicken, shredded

2 celery stalks, bias cut into slices

1/2 cup craisins

1 tablespoon poppy seeds

1 teaspoon dill weed

1 half-pint lite whipping cream

1 dollop fat free cream cheese

8 oz. bow tie pasta

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

salt, pepper, and olive oil

Saute celery slices in a little olive oil until hot and softened. Add whipping cream, craisins, chicken, poppy seeds, dill, and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to slow boil, add cream cheese, simmer.

Meanwhile, cook pasta according to common sense.

Toss cooked pasta with chicken mixture and sprinkle with sunflower seeds, if desired. Or, place sunflower seeds on table and allow everyone to make up their own minds about them. I liked them.

My sister and I have definite plans to see each other "soon" so I will have my camera again. Until then, I will try to think of posts that require no camera.

And the unpacking continues....

Labor Day Weekend

2009-09-08T09:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday, after church, we ate at an organic pizza restaurant called Lupi's Pizzeria in downtown Chattanooga. It's a funky restaurant with art for sale on the walls and eclectic music playing on the speakers. The pizza was delicious - the crust was perfect and the sauce was fantastic. We only had a cheese pizza, but next time I may add some veggies. There WILL be a next time. Finally good pizza.

Then we made our way over to the farmer's market. I've been to this particular market twice on visits with my sister and couldn't wait to bring my husband there, too. They have veggies for sale, but it's also a craft fair, and they sell cooked food, and there's a variety of live bands playing, too. I always come away from this event feeling inspired - either to cook, or to make something, or to perform. I'm so glad that we're living so close to it, I'm sure we'll go for the rest of the year every Sunday after church.

Well, of course I couldn't resist buying some veggies.

Baby yellow crook-necked squash, bell peppers in burgundy, orange and red, and a gorgeous eggplant.

On Monday, I packed all these veggies up, plus a lot of other little things, and carted them all up to my sister's place. We had a Labor Day Picnic. I think this is the first time our two families enjoyed a holiday together - even one so innocuous as Labor Day (innocuous for me and my husband, since we're unemployed). The crook-necks got cut in half, seasoned with olive oil and lemon pepper and grilled to perfection. The peppers were roasted. The eggplant was admired and almost became part of one of my sister's paintings. She made hamburgers from meat she ground herself, sesame marinated chicken, corn with basil butter (OMG) and we had a food orgy. I brought some mole verde I had also bought at the farmer's market, and it was scarfed up on chips. Some of it made it onto my sister's hamburger. I had a bacon cheeseburger with basil butter.
Are you drooling yet?

Then I got a call this morning saying I had left my camera at her house. Oh boy. 57 miles away. Not that it would have helped this post: I only took one picture. But subsequent posts are going to be a bit boring until I can figure this out.

All in all, despite the camera left behind, we had a great time. Thanks, Melody!

Saturday: Workday

2009-09-06T13:49:00.000-07:00

I woke up yesterday morning to a painfully messy kitchen. I had stayed up late (10 pm) on Friday night watching Glee, which I loved BTW. I missed the first episode while I was in Singapore, and they ran a repeat of it, and I happened to catch it. Can't wait for the new season to start!

Anyway, so I knew I had to clean up the kitchen, but when my husband declared it a workday, I knew I was gonna finally get some other kitchen-related tasks finished, too.

After running the dishwasher with the previous day's dreck, I got to run it a second time with the "good" dinner plates that have been taking up floor space in a plastic bin. I washed all 936 pieces (it actually took a little over 2 loads) and found a place to put them in the cabinet - away from the dust.

This meant some minor rearranging, and I went around and around trying to decide what to move. Finally I came up with this solution:

This cart now houses, in addition to the Snapple, my two large Ikea jars of flour (whole and white) and a medium jar of sugar. There's some other baking-related items relocated to this piece of furniture, so it's thematic, mostly. Not counting the Snapple, of course.
That pretty piece of batiked fabric is an apron my friend Sharon Martin made me before she left Singapore 2 years ago. If you're out there, Sharon, Hi!

The pass-through had been an area for collecting stuff that didn't have any other home, making it impossible to use the toaster oven without causing a fire hazard, so I had more decisions to make before all that stuff got put somewhere and now we can use the toaster oven. The toaster oven which I think is too big, but now I guess I'll just try and live with it since it has such a nice home...I'm all indecision here. But at least the pass-through (misnamed, now) looks nice.

So I'm falling asleep Saturday night, and the thought comes to me that maybe I could allow myself to feel that this is home. It was a revelation. Of course, we wont be staying in this apartment very long (so she says) but the feeling of being home was surprising in that it has been absent for a while now. I'm not sure what it means, but I woke up this morning feeling happy.

Food!

2009-09-04T06:49:00.001-07:00

Well, for dinner I made pasta with this complex sauce recipe I invented; you can find it here.

I took this picture after we had eaten.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any bell peppers for this recipe. My sister gave me some, but they had gotten fuzzy. So it wasn't as good as I usually make it. Also, I bought some mild Italian turkey sausage. Big mistake. I'm makin' my own from now on.

And then for dessert:

Nectarine Tart!

I adapted a very cute recipe I found here, making it smaller, basically since I only bought 3 nectarines. Dewishus!

Later, my daughter and the cockatiel gave us a duet.

And for breakfast?

Homemade blueberry waffles. My husband had them with apple butter, pears and syrup. Oh my.

Our Ikea Trip

2009-09-03T12:15:00.001-07:00

Yesterday my hubby and I drove down to Atlanta to go to the Ikea I have visited twice with my sister. We got up early and, expecting the drive to take 2 hours, left at 7:30 so we could be there when the restaurant opens at 9:30 We love eating breakfast at Ikea. The trip only took 1 1/2 hours, tho! So we drove around Marietta for a bit; my husband lived there for a time before we met. He showed me the giant chicken at the KFC there and I took a picture on my phone. I don't know how to get those pictures onto the computer yet. But, luckily, a Google image search turned up this:

The beak opens and closes and the eyeballs rotate. Totally funny.

Some of the things we got there were:

New bedding! This pattern has a completely forgettable name - I don't speak Swedish! But I have loved it for a while. I was happy to note that the fabric is a bit softer and smoother than many of their duvet covers. Anyway, we love it.

And I got some of these tumblers. I left all my drinking glasses in Singapore, and altho I inherited some decent stemmed glasses, the bowl was just too small to have a big drink from. These are good for me because I am notoriously clumsly, and they are hard to break.

This was completely unnecessary. But it was ORANGE, and so my husband just put it on our cart. It was in the As-Is, and the stain is a bit wimpy. Methinks it will get painted, but probably not orange.

We got a bunch of other little things, not very interesting to post. And as we were checking out, I turned around and said to my husband, "I don't feel really good at all." It felt like flu, but today I feel pretty good, so maybe not. Then we just headed home and I went to bed. Today was a better day and now I am going to make some yummy food which I will blog about tomorrow.

Falafel

2009-09-01T07:54:00.001-07:00

Do you know this food? I can't remember when I tried it for the first time, but it has been a staple in my family ever since. I have made it from mixes and from scratch, and have had pretty good luck both ways.

Anyway, I was talking to my sister on the phone last night while I was preparing this dinner, and she didn't remember what it was (having had it served to her by me a million years ago). So she requested I take pictures, which is why I have falafel to blog about.

For the uninitiated, falafel is ground chick peas (garbanzos) with cumin and parsley and salt and garlic, which is then formed into balls and deep fried. Really, what doesn't taste good deep fried?

The box that I used last night had two separate envelopes of mix in it, each envelope making approximately 12 one-inch balls. I used my small melon baller to measure it out and only got 10 balls, but that was plenty. Usually I use my 2 tablespoon measurer and make the balls larger.

I had called Melody to remind her that her new electric skillet is also good for deep frying, as it keeps the oil at a uniform temperature. I was anticipating having an ordeal with the deep frying as my new place has an electric stove, which was not a selling point for me, but it really went better than expected. In the past, I've had to struggle to keep the oil at the right temp, and the falafel mix has often just crumbled when I tried to fry it - not wet enough, I suspect. Or maybe it was that I was buying the mixes in Singapore, where they had probably sat on the shelf for years waiting for me to come along. Sucker that I am.

So they came out beautifully, and even tho there were only 10, I made some couscous to go with and we were fully satisfied.

Here's how I served them: I put them into a smallish flour tortilla - these reminded me of the wonderful pita breads I could buy in Singapore - nice and soft and not too chewy. Then I put cucumbers, tomatoes, ranch dressing, and for a bit of unconventionality, I added some rocket leaves. Yum!

But for the whole day previously, I was doing laundry, washing dishes, and working on this:

Since my husband and I are both unemployed for the time being, we thought it would be wise to only rent a 2 bedroom apartment. Which left us wondering what we were going to do with all my studio stuff, some of which had been in storage in Arizona for 4 years and only added to the bulk. Well, selling point number two for this apartment: a huge walk-in closet! That looked like the perfect solution, until we started piling our clothes, linens, tools, and other storage into it. However, I have reserved the last 1/3 of the closet for my sewing table. And I actually did some sewing in there yesterday. It's not too bad, but I need better lighting. Anyway, it's only temporary. Lord willing, we will find jobs, we will save some money, and we will be able to afford a new home sometime in the near future.
That's the plan, anyway.

In the meantime, I'll be in my little sanctuary.

Our New Home

2009-08-31T07:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of our balcony, which was a selling point for me, and our green bins, which will become planters after the winter. Actually, one of them already has some peppers and herbs growing in it. The peppers are doing great, but my basil has become a snack for something, maybe a squirrel.

The whole complex has sort of an alpine feel, with the tall tall pine trees and the architecture which is reminiscent of some kind of Swiss chalet. I think.

And this is what we're driving. After four years without a vehicle, it's been a bit of a challenge getting back behind the seat. But I think I've finally gotten the hang of it again.

And the last "New" thing I want to show you is:

This is Chloe, our beautiful female white-faced lutino cockatiel. She is by far the best bird we've ever had. She is so well-behaved and affectionate. And since she's a female, there's no rooster tendencies.

Life is good.

The Orange T State

2009-08-29T06:38:00.001-07:00

A little backstory here: My husband's name is Terry, and if you know him at all, you know his favorite color is orange. Since we've been married, if there's any novel item that happens to be orange, we might have to buy it. Or at least comment on it.

So when I would visit my sister in her new home in Tennessee, I had this funny feeling that Tennessee might become home for us, too.

It's all the orange Ts.

We could really care less about football. Sorry Big Orange, but that's the truth. Instead, we prefer to interpret all the Orange T items as a big welcome from Tennessee to Terry and his family.

Greetings from Chattanooga

2009-08-28T10:20:00.001-07:00

Why doncha sit a spell?

We finally unpacked the cord that will allow me to download some pictures, so why don't I show you around?

Here's our new home.

Of course, I'm kidding. These are pictures taken nearby, of Audubon Acres. It's a wildlife park we visited, and it's close enough to go all the time, if one wanted to do that.

Here's a more accurate picture of what we've been living with.

But, who wants to look at boxes? We sure don't, so we've been finding lots of excuses to get out of the house when we can. Lacking furniture and storage solutions, we've found lots of excuses to go out. Today will be more unpacking, and tomorrow will be more going out.

My daughter seems to be finding her way in high school. She attends Ooltewah High School (pronounced Oo-de--wah) as a freshman, and aside from having to get up at 5 am (ouch!), she seems pretty happy.

My husband and I have put out lots of applications and resumes, and will keep doing that, but so far we haven't found jobs. At this particular moment in time, I'm not very worried. At other moments, I find myself quite anxious. But really, after all we've been through in the past four years, living in Singapore and all that attended that life, I don't feel like I have any right to worry. I have been taken care of and will continue to be taken care of, and that's all I need to know.

But your prayers are appreciated.

The past couple of days have been rainy and cool. I'm sure you know how happy that makes me feel. I'm currently sitting in my living room with the sliding glass door open, quite comfortable. It's stop raining for the moment, but the sky is grey, so we may get more rain.

Here are some pictures I took on our recent hike at Audubon Acres.

Not sure what kind of flower this is, but it was hiding in the grass.

Isn't this inviting? One of the things I really missed when I was living in Singapore was going for a walk in the woods. Of course you can walk in the woods in Singapore, if you like sweating. It's so humid there. It was humid in these woods, too, but not nearly as bad.

I forget what creek this bridge spans; I think it's the Chickamauga. I can't get my mouth to say that word correctly.

Everybody needs friends, right?

And speaking of friends, these two trees struck me with their closeness yet obvious difference in their bark. I'm aiming at some profound statement about unity in diversity here, but I'm not quite making it.

Tomorrow my sister is coming down and we are having A Day. Hopefully we will both remember to take lots of pictures so we both have something to blog about.

Finally, A Post!

2009-06-07T18:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Followers,

I am so sorry to have put my blogging on hold, but with all the indecision about my future going on I really had nothing useful to say except how frustrated I was and all that. Not fun stuff to read. But I finally have news to share, and so here goes:

We are, after careful consideration and lots of prayer, moving back to the United States. We will fly into Phoenix, visit with my husband's family in Arizona for a few weeks, and then drive east to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where we will be putting down roots.

For at least a year, maybe longer.

Let me backpedal a bit and say that my husband got accepted at his school, and my daughter got accepted at her school. But, with the economic situation being what it is, it seemed like a bad idea to move us to Germany with no job and little prospect of finding a job as nobody speaks German. We tried to find funding in the form of a scholarship, but things just didn't work out. Most of the scholarships for the coming year had already been awarded. So, we will return to the states and try to figure things out from there.

There are so many things to do, but God seems to be working a step ahead of us. I only have to think about the next problem I need to solve when the solution appears. But, because we are dismantling our lives, I am certain that I will really have to put my blogging on hold. This morning I put my etsy shop in vacation mode until August 1, and I think that is a wise time frame to put my blogging on hold for, too. We are leaving Singapore probably on July 2, so I think by the beginning of August, we should be settled in our new home - or at least I will have internet access at my sister's house - so I should have lots to tell you by then.

Thank you for being more faithful than me! Have a wonderful summer and I will talk to you all soon!

Blessings,

Brooke

Mother's Day and Birthday Pictures

2009-05-10T17:56:00.000-07:00

For Mother's Day this year, I requested a set of lino cutters. I became interested in the idea after watching this video on Geninne's Art Blog.

I mean, how could I not become interested? If you watched the video, I bet you are interested, too! Anyway, so my family got me a set of lino cutters, and I spent the morning (after eating these wonderful pancakes - recipe here)

playing around and making a stamp. Actually, I made 2: the stamp is double sided.

This is carved from a white plastic eraser. Very easy to cut. I made both a positive and a negative stamp: one side I carved away from the drawn lines and one side I carved into the drawn lines.

And here are the results. I'm pretty happy, altho I can tell this is a skill that needs lots of practice before my stamps will be as fine as Geninne's. And then maybe I can stamp my quilts!

The day before, as in the year of her birth, we celebrated my daughter's birthday. (In 1995, her actual birthday was the day before Mother's Day. It doesn't always happen that way every year.)

She went with two of her friends to a theme park here in Singapore and spent the day getting dizzy and wet.

Here they are, on the train going to the park, all wearing glowing earrings.

My camera seems to have some kind of short in the wiring because if I leave the batteries in it for any length of time, they run empty. And that is what happened on this day, so I didn't get many pictures. But I did post them to my Flickr account, if you are interested.

This is like the linkiest post I've ever made!

Also new and interesting: last week the AWA Choir gave its first two performances, one at a school for special needs kids and one in the lobby of a hospital. We had so much fun. We've had two of our performances cancelled due to the Swine Flu scare, but we picked up an extra one which will be this Thursday. And our final performance is on Sunday. I will miss going to practice twice a week. I've had so much fun and it has been just the best thing to distract me from the move and all the attending intricacies of that. But I guess it's time to focus on moving, anyway. Wahoo.
The choir is hoping to get someone to video tape our final performance, which we will then upload to YouTube. If it happens, I will post the link here.

Some Welcome News

2009-04-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

This morning my DH received two emails from the University of Potsdam.

They were both in German and had to be translated. Funnily enough, the first one informed us (in German, no less) that he would be permitted to submit his dissertation in English. However, he will have to submit a 10-page conclusion in German. Given the availability of translation software, this should not be a problem.

But this is not the acceptance letter we are waiting for, which he needs in order to request scholarships.

The second letter was from the International Scholar's office, to alert us that some forms are still missing for matriculation, but we knew that and we can do that after we arrive in Germany.

All of this is strangely anti-climactic seeing as we've been waiting for so long to find out where we're going from here. There are still hurdles to be jumped before we are certainly going to Berlin, but we are one step closer. I am having a hard time feeling anything about it, but I guess maybe I will later.

Limbo is not a nice place to visit, even for vacation.

Sanity Check

2009-04-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

In the midst of all the chaos of my current life, I have relied on creativity to keep me sane.

Or to allow me to express my insanity. Something like that.

I found this recipe that seemed interesting, and I sent a link to my daughter to see if she wanted to make it for her upcoming birthday. She was very enthusiastic, so we decided to do a trial run.

It's called a rainbow cake, and it uses no fat in the recipe. But it was so sweet that all three of us found it difficult to finish even one slice! So, we decided to make the recipe but bake up cupcakes instead.

I also decided to finally make a project I've been thinking about for some months now. A case for my crochet hooks.

I've seen many different types of things like this, used for crochet hooks, colored pencils, and other similar items. I was inspired, but sometimes it takes being under stress to make something like this happen. All in all, I'm happy with it. Now all my hooks are in one place and I will know right away if one is missing.

After these creative bursts, I felt that I wanted to draw with pen and ink. I'm also itching to use my colored pencils, but I haven't gotten to that yet.
To mix things up a bit, I decided on white ink on black paper. And I just sat and drew without any plan or idea of where I was going.

After I got to a certain point on this one, I decided to try and add some color with the colored pencils, but I wasn't pleased with the result. So I went back later and drew this one.

These are highly reflective of the craziness and indefiniteness of life right now, but drawing them was keenly satisfying. They are sort of sprawling doodles which I drew as fast as I could and let my instincts guide me. The first one seems sort of like underwater life to me, while the second one looks like plant life. The state of mind the work put me into in process was one I really yearn to enter again, soon. It was restful and challenging at the same time. Especially when my family wasn't interrupting me....

And lastly, for today's post: the Leetle Birdies have been spotting in cyberspace! Cuteable has included them in her latest post. Let's hope that generates some sales!

Things My Mother Taught Me, Inadvertently

2009-04-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

If you are a follower of my sister's blog, or came to this blog via my brother's myspace page, then you already know that our mother died on the 19th of April. Both of them have posted about her passing, but it's taken me a bit longer to get my thoughts together on the matter.

It's only been a week, but I feel like I still have a lot of emotion to unpack. My most frequent feeling is anger, but I know that's just one of the stages of grief, so I'm not letting it manifest itself. I think I've been angry at her for a long time, without really letting myself know that I was.

Last fall, when my sister and I went to settle her into a nursing home, it was a very shocking experience. I remember that after that part of my trip was over and we were driving back to Tennessee, I began to work on what I called my Anti-Mom Manifesto. It was a list of reminders of things that she was or did that I didn't want to become or repeat. So, in essence, the most valuable things I learned from my mother were all about seeing her life as a cautionary tale.

1. Take care of my health. Don't allow myself to become addicted to anything harmful. Don't take my health for granted.

2. Forgive those who wrong me (including her!) Lack of forgiveness leads to bitterness.

3. Don't be a victim. Have good boundaries and defend them.

4. Make good decisions. Try to correct mistakes, and then move on.

5. Don't accumulate material possessions. Accumulate healthy relationships.

6. Pets are not more important than people.

7. Don't settle for crummy from myself - strive for excellence.

8. Be honest with myself and others. Be willing to examine my life and tell the truth about what I see there.

9. Put my child's needs before my own most of the time. Not always, but mostly.

10. Only cook with fresh, wholesome ingredients.

I'm sure that not every item on this list will have the same significance for my readers as it has for me. I'm sure there's more. I don't really want to talk about how she didn't do these things.

So, in addition to dealing with my mother dying, I am still living in limbo regarding where we're moving to in...a little over 2 months...GRRRRRRR!

The options are Berlin, Germany or back to the states. I mostly feel like I could go to either place and it would be ok, but we are just waiting and waiting and waiting and it's getting a bit tedious. To say the least.

To keep myself sane, I have worked on a few projects. But I will save that for tomorrow's post. And I'm still singing with the choir - we are getting close to our performances in early May. And then that part of my life will be over. I'm so glad I joined the choir and hope I have the opportunity to do it again wherever we wind up.

Etsy Store Opened!

2009-04-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce

that I have opened a store on Etsy.com

to sell my

Leetle Birdies,

art quilts,

and other stuff I like to tinker around with.

Of course, being new to this type of thing, I expect there will be the usual learning curve. But I think I thought of most situations that could arise.

Anyway, I cordially invite you to visit and leave comments - here or there.

BethanyStudios

New Hatchlings!

2009-04-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

These are all the current birds: some new, some old.

Aren't they cute?

These are all the new hatchlings.

From left to right:

tickled pink, a red birdie of passion, two purple birdies of serenity, a blue birdie of happiness, a green birdie of enthusiasm, and two black birdies of total sophistication and coolness.

I'm very pleased with the interest shown and sales are going swimmingly.

Next week, barring unforeseen difficulties, I should get my Etsy store up and running.

The special discounted price for blog readers (see previous post) will be in effect for only a short time longer, so don't hesitate!

I take Paypal, but can work out a special deal if you would like to pay with a check.

Here's a teaser of some of the fabrics I will be using for the next batch of hatchlings.

Introducing...

2009-03-30T05:50:00.000-07:00

The Leetle Birdies

These leetle birdies just hatched and are ready for adoption.

They measure 3 inches tall and 4 1/4 inches from beak to tail.

They are lovingly handmade by me and constructed of 100% printed cotton and batik. They are firmly stuffed with polyester fiberfill. Their eyes are black plastic buttons and their beaks are made from Model Magic and painted with acrylic paint.

They are available in the following colors:

The Red birdy of Passion

The Orange birdy of Contentment

The Yellow birdy of Joy

The Green birdy of Enthusiasm

The Blue birdy of Happiness (what else?)

The Purple birdy of Serenity

And also available are some

Black Birdies of Total Sophistication and Coolness.

From left to right: Red Spot, Squiggle, and Starling.

They will never wake you at dawn, they don't eat very much, and they wont make a mess of your home. However, they are not good pets for small children.

Special Offer for Blog Readers!

I will be opening an Etsy store very soon, but if you purchase a Leetle Birdy before I do, I will sell them at a reduced price of only $20 usd (plus $3 shipping). Once the Etsy store is up and running, they will cost $25, so you are getting a deal!

I am hooked on making these for the time being, so there will be a near-constant supply of new designs.

Please email me to let me know which birdy or birdies want to live at your house!

I can accept Paypal, but if you don't have an account, we can work something out. Just email me!

Girl's Day Out

2009-03-24T18:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I took my daughter to a newly-opened mall. There isn't much to do in Singapore if you want to stay out of the weather but go to the malls, and they are always opening new ones.
Well, this mall had a little kiosk called The Frosting Room. They sell cakes and cookies and pastries, all beautifully frosted. And they also sell cakes that you can frost yourself. They set you up with a little lazy susan to work on, and give you several colors and dried frosting flowers and let you go.
I suggested to my daughter that she might want to spend part of her birthday doing this with her friends, and idea she readily cottoned onto, but there was no special occasion for today's cake, so she just played around.

The frosting is a whipped cream frosting, and the brown is chocolate. The cake is vanilla, three layers, with fruit in one layer - red dyed pineapple and mandarin oranges. It was really very delicious and not gooey at all. Unfortunately, the cake is frozen when they give it to you, so you can't eat it right away.

We sat in Starbucks and snuck a couple of pieces - they really don't like you bringing outside food into the restaurants here, but we had to have a taste. It was a fun thing to do!

Going Off The Grid

2009-03-23T17:23:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last post, and this week being Spring Break, I suggested to my daughter that we should go off the grid, i.e. stay off the computer. But since I've already neglected my blog audience for so long, I felt I should make a post.

Even tho my mental state is somewhat wonky these past weeks, I am still making things. I have found crochet to be a very relaxing medium, and since we have no winter clothes to speak of (and will undoubtedly need them in our new habitat), I have been making warm fuzzy cuddly things.

I finally finished this scarf. I showed the start of it a while ago. I thought it would be longer, but one of the skeins ran out so I just ended it there. I'm happy enough with the length: it keeps my neck covered. And it's so soft. No more wool scarves for this girl!

This is a little hard to reconcile with the climate here in Singapore. Consequently, it looks totally dopey to me. But it is so soft and warm that I know I will overcome feeling silly and will wear it.

Or maybe I'll just enjoy feeling silly.

Actually, this hood looked so great on my daughter that I decided to make one for her, using white fuzzy yarn where I used blue for mine. I got started, but then I had to stop for a while because I was having a sore arm. That's the first time that's ever happened to me. Crocheting too much, I guess.

So, this is Spring Break Week, as I mentioned, and my daughter and I have planned the week out. I don't think I'll find any time to sneak into my studio, but who knows? She is planning on a sleepover tomorrow, so that might be my day. I'm thinking that the current quilt is going to be filed away for a time. I have all these great ideas of things I want to sew, and the UFO is just making me feel guilty. Maybe I'll finish that one, maybe not. But for now, I gotta follow my creative impulses. Soon enough the whole studio will need to get packed...yipes!

The Stress Monster Who Ate My Brain

2009-03-08T18:07:00.001-07:00

I have discovered that stress really is a damper to my creativity. And the funny thing about it is, I don't really notice the stress. I notice it's effects. Not only does my creativity dry up, but all I wanna do is escape.

I'm tired all the time, my digestive system doesn't work properly, my sleep cycle is off...

but other than that, I feel fine!

Well, this weekend, after my daughter and I were viewing this blog, she got creative and decided to make this little guy.

Kerfuffle

Fleece with polyester fiberfill

Of course, being the meddlesome, overbearing mother that I am, I helped her do it. And it reminded me of some important things:

Even tho I don't feel like it, working on my art is an excellent way of working through the stress. It allows me to feel some control over my situation, and gives me a feeling of accomplishment.

Creating something beautiful is also very calming and stress diffusing. And it's not as painful as exercising, altho I really need to do that too....

So why all this stress?

Because we are planning a move this summer. Out of Singapore. And there's lots of unanswered questions like: where are we going? What will we do there? How will we make money? Where will my daughter go to school? And so forth and so on.

So yeah, plenty to stress about. But can I do anything to answer these questions or settle these issues? Not yet. And we're looking at June or July - months away still.

Today I'm getting my haircut, going grocery shopping, and I have choir practice. I don't know if I will have time or energy to get into my studio. But, I did go for a long walk this morning. That was good.

And while I was out, I did a toy drop! My first in Singapore!

I made this guy last month, just for fun.

I wont say where I dropped him. If you watch the Toy Society's blog for the next couple of days, you will probably see him there, with his location disclosed. This also gave me a feeling of getting something accomplished this morning. I have wanted to do this for a while now, but have been a bit timid. Don't want to get in trouble with the authorities...

So that's what's up with me. What's up with you?

Technique Lust

2009-03-01T18:19:00.000-08:00

Definition: [n.] The desire to create something, which includes learning a new technique or combining techniques already mastered but previously uncombined, thereby giving the creator satisfaction; however, the creator also is being distracted from a creation she should be working on, and the new creation is, once complete, not interesting anymore: the desire is gone.

I made a fishy. This is from a online class I took from Joggles.com. It was fast, so I wasn't being distracted forever.

The class involves making a wrapped-fabric bead (something I've done with paper before), encasing the bead with stitched felt and then distressing the felt with a heat gun until basically nothing remains but the stitching (I've done similar things with Solvy - a soluble stabilizer). Then the stitching gets painted (never done that before - woowoo!) and the fins are made by distressing some organza (also new to me) and attached with fabric glue. Then I glued on the eyes.

Well, I know I'm never going to use these techniques in any of my quilts, so really this was just a study in distraction. Distraction can be good, if you are under stress and so forth, but on hindsight, I would probably just advise myself to skip it.

Another symptom of Technique Lust: once you've made your thing, you haven't any idea what to do with it.

The Floating Bead Necklace Tutorial

2009-02-22T16:55:00.001-08:00

Well, this was the necklace I really wanted to make almost two weeks ago, but didn't have the correct beads.

Please do not assume I'm any kind of expert here, altho I gladly share a tutorial with you. I'm sort of a happy idiot when it comes to jewelry making: I'll just try whatever. I'm sure there's a more proper way to do this, but I didn't know it, so this is how I did it:

I started with Swarovski beads in three sizes and 7 colors:

4 each of 4mm bicone beads in red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue and purple.
3 each of 6mm bicone beads in red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue and purple.
1 each of 8mm bicone beads in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. They didn't have the aqua in an 8mm bicone.

Next I cut five strands of monofilament:
1 at 23"
1 at 22.5"
1 at 22"
1 at 21.5" and
1 at 21".

After I cut these strands, they wanted to curl up and get mixed up and generally drive me bats. So I decided to stick a piece of cello tape on the end of each strand, with a number to indicate the correct order. I then taped these ends down to my work surface and beaded onto the open end.

The idea for the necklace is that I wanted it to look like the beads were sprinkled all over my neck and were just floating there. So, I drew five lines on a piece of paper and sprinkled the beads all over the paper to get a random effect for placement.

Of course, they didn't just fall right on the lines like good little beads. I used a chopstick (of all things!) to sort of organize them, making them fairly equally distributed.

Now I have to tell you about my magic beads. They're called crimping beads, and I had bought one hundred .925 silver 1X1.1mm crimping beads. That's really smalls, shiny little thingies.

Sorry this is a little fuzzy.

Incidentally, I work on a towel because the surface makes it ideal to keep beads from rolling all over. If, however, you dump these little crimping beads onto a terry towel, you are going to lose them. They are so small.

And because they are so small, and because the 8mm beads have a largish hole in them, I decided the best way to do this would be to sandwich the large beads between two of the 4mm beads, whose holes are not too small, in order to keep them in place.

Like this:

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The basic technique for this necklace, once you've decided on beads and placement, and you've cut all your monofilament in the right lengths, is to bead a crimper bead on your first string, crimp it (by gently squeezing it with a flatnose pliers) where you want your first bead or beads to go, then put your bead or beads on, and finally to string another crimper and crimp it behind the bead or beads. You don't want to make it tight against the bead, just let gravity tell you where to put this second crimper.

Now, with the previous necklace with the faux black leather cord and the Czech glass beads, I was real careful about centering and so forth. With this one, I just dove in and put this first grouping of beads wherever. I figured I could fill in the blank spaces on successive strands as I went along. It worked out pretty well this way.

So, I finished the first strand and continued onto the second, filling in the gaps from the first strand. The designing of this became very fluid as I went along. At one point, I nudged my paper map and the beads went all over and I had to separate them all over again. I almost could have just put the beads in a bowl and picked them randomly that way. And when I got to the last strand, I decided I had too many beads, so I added a few to the first strand.

Here they are, before the closure. You can see there is a randomness, but also order to the way the are laid out. Some strands have spaces, other strands have beads in that space. I wasn't going to be too particular about randomizing the color placement, tho. I just let a red bead be next to a red bead if that's the way it went. But I was careful to make sure the 8mm beads were pretty evenly spaced. I guess I was just using an equal part of careless and careful. How's that for scientific?

So, next I gathered the left side of the strands, and then I strung another magic type of bead.

For the life of me, I can't remember what these beads are called. I'm sure it has something to do with their function.

I took the strands again, made sure they were even, and tied a knot around two inches from the end.

And this is where I stopped being able to take good pictures. But here is the knot, anyway. Just an overhand knot tying them all together.
Then I cut about a half inch away, took a cigarette lighter and melted the ends together. Do this a little at a time as they melt and burn fast. But when the melted part was right on top of the knot, I stopped.

In another stunning feat of photography, you can almost see that I slid that last unnamed magic bead up over the knot, and crimped it close. That bead has a little loop at the end of it, to attach a jump ring to.

I did this operation on both ends of the necklace, and of course the strands twisted like crazy. I just let them. It was then I decided it was a little short for my chunk of a neck, so I added several jump rings to one end of the necklace. I put a closure on the other end, and it was done!

Of course, one could practically staple Swarovski beads to one's neck and it would still look beautiful. Hard to make a mistake with such lovely materials.

If you attempt to make this necklace, please send me your questions and a photo of the end product. Thanks!

The Great Yarn Fiasco

2009-02-18T17:48:00.001-08:00

You think this looks bad, but really it's on it's way to being much better.

I used to store my yarns in that bin. Loose. And loose yarns did what they always do in a cramped space: they reproduced. They made this lovely little yarn tangle, which actually used to be much bigger before I started organizing.

Recently I bought some new yarn, and when it wouldn't fit in the bin, I knew I had to take action. First I bought some gallon sized ziploc bags. I wish I had noticed that they were the blue ones before I bought them, but oh well. They were on sale. Next I started organizing the yarn into these bags by weight.

Here we have some fingering weight, I think. Or is it called bedspread weight? I can't imagine making a whole bedspread out of these tiny threads, but I'm sure someone, somewhere, has done it.

Next we have some yarns of similar weight but different.

I discovered while doing this that if I leave a little opening in the ziploc, I can fit much more in the bin. I can squish the air out of the bags as I go along. I'm not particularly interested in having the bags keep the yarns clean or dry. The bin will do that.

I just want to keep them from swapping genetic material.

And oh! Aren't these some pretty yarns? The red and teal ones are new. They are mohair/acrylic and so soft and fuzzy. Can't wait to see what project I'll be using these for. Probably not scarves, tho. Too itchy. Leg warmers, maybe?

I love eyelash yarn. Can you tell?

On the very top I have more new yarn: some very soft acrylic in white and multi. I will want to get into these soon.

And so there you have it: all my yarns fit in the bin and they're neat and organized, and protected prophylactically.

Well, almost all my yarns fit in the bin.

These yarns are some that I have decided need to live at a new home. So if you're reading this Carol, and you don't want any of these yarns, speak now or they are showing up with me at your house on Friday!

Except for the granny squares. I will repurpose those, I think. Maybe they need to be potholders or coasters or something...

And here is proof that I got the lid on:

And the moral of the story is: I will not buy anymore yarn until I use up some of the yarns I already have. The end.

The Quilt That Sold

2009-02-16T16:41:00.000-08:00

This is the quilt that sold last week. I was having trouble getting the picture to load to Blogger. But it is now making it's way to Washington, DC! Woohoo!

Does This Make You Happy?

2009-02-15T17:26:00.001-08:00

Yeah, me too.

I have been so distracted lately with all sorts of different things. I had to chase one particular rabbit down a very long and involved hole just to see where it would go, and I'm so glad that's over!

So yesterday (yes, a Sunday!) I started a new quilt. It felt so good, so right, to be working on this. It's like I really know this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

Not that I can't do other things, too.

This is the beginning of yet another scarf I'm working on. It's sooo soft!

And then there's other things that I want to do, because I'm awesome.

These are red blood cell cookies and white blood cell marshmallows with coconut. They are for a science project my daughter is doing at school today. Aren't they crazy? Aren't I awesome?

And the house is a mess and I have choir practice today and I must go grocery shopping. Mountain of dishes left over from the weekend. But this quilt is going to get made.
It's making me happy.

Cute Attack

2009-02-12T15:37:00.001-08:00

Last week my daughter had a dream about baby rabbits. She woke up enthralled with their cuteness and described one to me. She held her hand out, palm up, and petted an imaginary bunny sitting on her palm. My imagination worked perfectly to fill in the blank.

I had to wait a few days as I was all out of grey mohair yarn. But the other day while shopping for a blouse and necklace, I was at Holland Village where the yarn store is, so I just popped in and bought a skein.

For days after my daughter's dream, we would hold our hands up and pet the imaginary bunny there and squeal to each other.

So when she got home from school yesterday, I asked her to hold out her hand and then I placed the bunny on it. She decided his name was Stuart. She never names her pets/toys with pet or toy names.

Needless to say, she loves it.

And now onto other things: Blogger has been a real trial for a few days, but I'm so happy that I can finally get pictures posted this morning. Lately many Google related sites have been giving us problems, but hopefully things are going to improve.

And lastly, I am happy to report that Fizzy Pink Lemonade has sold. Hooray! I would post a picture here to remind you, but suddenly, I can't get any pictures to post. Sigh. So much for technology. I will try again tomorrow.

D.I.Y.

2009-02-10T23:41:00.000-08:00

click on the pic to see how pretty these beads really are

OK, long story short: I needed a necklace for an outfit that consists of a white dressy tunic blouse over a floor length straight black skirt. It's for the spring concert the choir will give in May. I just bought the blouse yesterday, and wandered for hours trying to find just the perfect necklace. I want something to tie the black and white together, but pulls in lots of colors since it's a spring concert. And, besides that, I just love color as you all know.

So I looked at umpteen stores and found nothing that really did it for me. I was set to give up and go home; I was at the bus stop, actually, when I got inspired. My vision was for a necklace similar to the one pictured above, but with jewel-toned Swarovski bi-cone crystals. Ding! I left the bus stop and went immediately on foot to the bead store in Holland Village (which is where I was already).

I was surprised to find out this store has never carried Swarovski beads, but I made do with these Czech glass beads. It isn't exactly what I had envisioned, and I may still make that necklace, but I'm much happier with it than with anything else I saw.

This is the best part about knowing how to make different things. You know how they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing? I've never found that to be true (except, perhaps, in the area of theology. I'll leave that to my DH) - rather being a Jane-of-all-trades can be very satisfying, and certainly costs less than buying something someone else made that you could have made yourself.

I tried the necklace on with the blouse this morning and it looks really great. Now I just need to make earrings....

Frittata Whatta?

2009-02-07T18:06:00.000-08:00

Frittata with Arugula, Lemon, Dill and Feta

I had the week of potlucks this past week, and for the last one I played around and invented a frittata. This was always going to be iffy as I had a recipe for a frittata with different ingredients, and because I was going to serve it to Chinese Singaporeans, and who knows what they'll think of something like this?

So I started with chopped onion, which I sauteed slowly in some olive oil in a non-stick pan. I cooked them until they were browning nicely, about 10 minutes, because I thought I might need a little sweetness in this dish.

Then I put in the arugula, which was a little scary as I've eaten it raw, but have never cooked it. And it smelled a little funny while it was cooking - not good. But I guess I used around 2 cups. Then I had about a tablespoon of fresh dill, chopped, and about half a lemon zest, grated. I put these ingredients in after the arugula wilted nicely. The smell began to improve at this point.

Next I added 5 eggs and I tilted the pan to make sure they were evenly distributed. I had sliced some red peppers - not bell peppers, but another kind that has a little heat. I made a decorative arrangement with these. Then I crumbled some feta all over the top. As I was cleaning up my materials while the frittata was setting up, I noticed I had a tomato in the refrigerator, so I sliced some of that and made more decorative arrangements with them.

After about 10 minutes, I needed to transfer the whole shebang to the oven to get the top to brown and set up. But the non-stick pan I was using has a plastic handle. So I fiddled around under the frittata with a spatula until it was mobile enough, and then I slid it into the pyrex pie dish. Phew! That could have been a disaster, but it wasn't.

Well, it all went well and I brought it the meeting and waited. We ate buffet style, and I was one of the first one through. So, I took a wedge and moved on. Later I went back and the frittata was almost gone! I was so surprised! But it was really delicious. You taste the lemon first, then the dill and the arugula, and then the heat of the peppers, followed up by the creaminess of the feta. Are you drooling yet? I was quite pleased. I hope you try to make this recipe. Let me know what you think. No one at our meeting said a peep to me, so I need some feedback. Thanks!

Translation

2009-02-04T16:56:00.000-08:00

Sorry to everyone who asked for a translation for the last post. I meant to do that and then forgot. Yes, Ojos de Dios does mean eyes of God. It also refers to a craft that many of you may have seen, or even made when you were a child, and which kinda reminded me of the way the colors are placed in my quilt.

Thanks for all the wonderful, encouraging comments left yesterday. It was wonderful to wake up this morning and read them all before breakfast. How could it not be a great day after that?

Ojos De Dios

2009-02-04T02:32:00.001-08:00

Ojos De Dios

Completed January 31, 2009

39" x 35"

$750

As you can see, I actually finished this a few days back, but my calendar has been filled to bursting, so I finally got to posting this pic today. I set myself a goal for finishing the quilting before the end of January, and there I was, Saturday night, stitching the last two blocks and signing my name.

And what has been on my dance card since then?

Two choir practices, one potluck, one gastric endoscopy, one colonoscopy. And a partridge in a pear tree. Whee! I don't have anything scheduled tomorrow, and since I got through the large pile of dirty dishes before dinner (phew!) I think tomorrow will be a mental health day. I'll let you know how it goes.

Alouette

2009-01-26T18:49:00.001-08:00

Several months ago, I made a chicken using this pattern, and the chicken was used as a toy drop for The Toy Society.

My daughter was appalled that I could let such a cute thing go to strangers, and so I told her that I would make one for her.

Well, during a break from quilting yesterday, I finally obliged her. She had actually wanted a chicken in blue fabrics, but I couldn't find any that inspired me.

But the combination of these fabrics really got my creative juices flowing. And it's nice to have something quick and easy to turn to when the hours and hours of quilting begin to pile up in sore muscles in your shoulders.

However, now that Alouette is finished, I really am going to get back to quilting...

Life Moving Too Fast

2009-01-25T17:45:00.001-08:00

All I did was add one little activity to my schedule, and things went haywire.

Do you know what I mean? Actually, I've added three activities, but two of them I do at home, so what's my excuse.

Ok, the new activities are:

a Bible study.
a language course (German) - these are the ones I'm doing at home, by myself, at my leisure. Neither one takes more than a half hour, and I don't do the German study everyday.

Where does the time go?

Ok, I'll admit it. The third activity is by far my favorite activity.
I became a member of the American Women's Association in Singapore and joined their choir! We have practice on Wednesdays from 10 to 12 and then my section (altos) meets Mondays from 12 to 1. Just three measly hours a week, plus travel time (I don't have a car) and suddenly everything is in an uproar. But it's making me so happy. I haven't been in a choir since high school, but it's all coming back to me. And it's a lovely group of women - Americans are in the minority, funnily enough.
We will have several performances this spring, including a formal affair at the American Club in May. Why didn't I do this sooner?

But do you remember this?
I do. It's been sitting in my studio, taunting me since before Christmas. It needs to be quilted. But I have jumpstarted that task and hope to get it done before this week is over.

With more scheduled items in one's life, one must be deliberate about how to spend the remaining time. So I am going to be deliberate - that's my watchword for January 2009. I wont say resolution because that has too many negative connotations.

More Crochet

2009-01-12T04:40:00.000-08:00

This is one of the projects I've completed lately. It's a scarf made of light gray mohair in a lace pattern. The pattern is from a book called Crochet Designs by Tess Dawson. I'm having difficulty photographing it properly. Seems like having Singapore as a backdrop doesn't really work. Hmm...

And this is fun! Can you believe it? I crocheted a mitten. Pattern from Lion Brand Yarn site.

And as you can see, it fits! Of course, I intend to make the other one very soon.

This is a neck warmer and I made up the pattern myself. No, don't ask me for it. I wasn't paying attention. Ok, I think it's 90 stitches long, and I used single crochet except where I wanted the hole to be. There I did 10 slip stitches and then when I returned I did 10 chains, and that was done at 5 rows in, so I think it's 10 rows total. And then the fuzzy yard was added to the edge, and I did 2 sc in each space to make it wider than the other part.
How's that for a pattern?

So, you must be wondering what I am thinking, making all these cold weather items in Singapore. Well, it looks as if my family will be leaving the island this summer for good, and wherever we are going, they will have a winter there. So I'm just being prepared.
Plans are not definite yet, so forgive me for being oblique. When I know for certain, I'll let you know.

Another Set of Pot Holders

2009-01-08T17:11:00.000-08:00

Lisa C. sent me these pictures of her latest project - made from my pot holder tutorial.

Apparently she's joined a Gift of the Month club and made these pot holders for one of her exchanges.

I'm sure it goes without saying that I am thrilled to pieces to find that people are making these pot holders and sending me their pictures. It's so nice when one life touches another. Thanks to everyone who has sent pictures or comments in, and if you are thinking about making these pot holders - get on it! Time's awasting!

Crochet Shenanigans

2009-01-05T16:34:00.000-08:00

For Christmas, I crocheted my husband a brain.

Not because he doesn't already have one, but because his interests have turned toward the study of the brain and its functions. It's all pretty egg-heady to me.

Obviously, it's not anatomically correct. Nor is it the right color. But since it's a work of art, none of that matters.
Badge by Nut and Bee.com

And then suddenly, I was taken by the crochet fairies and had to make something else.

Crochet belt, from Lion Brand Yarn's free crochet catalog.

And here it is, modeled on some lovely young lady I know.

Family Craft Time - Part Deux

2009-01-01T02:23:00.001-08:00

For Christmas this year, my family bought me the materials to make this candle set.

It was a tube of lilac scented gel wax with wicks and the three jars and stand. And they also included a bag of small river rocks.

We each took a jar and put whatever we wanted in it. I contributed beads, sequins, glitter, and paint pens.

I chose a very simple, uncomplicated design. Just some square purple beads, some glass beads, some few sequins and some glitter sprinkled on top.
My husband decided to use the river rocks, some of which he painted with a silver paint pen, some sequins and some glitter on top.

Can you see the smiley face?

Here's his from the top.

Of course, my daughter really outdid us all. She added so much stuff that I was worried it was going to be, well - really busy.

You see, I suggested before we started that we might be able to layer the "ingredients" within the gel, and so we put some gel in, added some bling, added more gel, and so on. But the gel wasn't thick enough to support the beads and sequins, so they all just piled up on the bottom.

Here's the top of her candle. As you can tell, she was having a glitter overdose.

And being the mother that I am, I figured that hers was always going to be more flashy than mine or my husband's.

But she proved that her way of doing things was really the right way! Having all that stuff in there to catch the light when the candles are lit makes her candle the most interesting, the prettiest one of the bunch.

I think it was such a nice idea for my family to get me a present for Christmas that would allow me to express my creativity - and them to express theirs right along with me. I hope they think to do this for me another time. We had fun.

Another Potholder Show and Tell

2008-12-30T16:43:00.000-08:00

Maggie in Arizona contacted me recently with her potholders that she made from my tutorial.

These ones really have that Southwest theme, don't they?

But these are my favorites. I love the colors!

Way to go, Maggie, and thanks for the photos!

Anyone else want to send me photos of the potholders? I'd love to post them right here.

Our Christmas Dinner

2008-12-29T23:06:00.001-08:00

The computer has been difficult to commandeer lately - either we're watching a movie, or someone else is using it. Truth be told, I haven't tried too hard to post to my blog. But with nothing particular going on right this moment, I thought I'd post the pix of our Christmas dinner, which was so satisfying for me.

I bought this meat at my butcher shop. It's called a rosemary lamb loin. Rosemary because they tied a sprig of rosemary to the meat. I removed that rosemary, but included a large measure of dried rosemary in the bread crumbs, along with garlic powder and salt and pepper. The breadcrumbs were adhered with grey poupon mustard. Then I slathered the roast with olive oil, placed it on a rack and roasted it at 425 degrees F for about 25 minutes.

I let it rest for probably 20 minutes, under foil, before I cut it.

And then most of the bread crumb crust fell off! But it didn't matter - it did its job: keep the meat moist and flavor it. And it was so moist and flavorful - I was pleasantly surprised. This meat didn't have much fat on it, so I was worried that I might have horse flesh when I was done. And I was warned not to overcook it, as it tends to become an unpleasant gray color when it is well-done. But you can see it was plenty pink and I can vouch for its tenderness.

Then we had brussels sprouts with peppered bacon. I could never stand brussels sprouts as a kid - now I'm eating them like candy! But who could resist anything with bacon? This is my new favorite recipe and I can't wait to make it again. (I tried to find this recipe online again for this post, but couldn't locate it. Email me if you want the recipe.)

Our last dish was a particularly fussy one to make, and this picture doesn't do it justice. It's called Tagliatelle with Oranges and Almonds, and I got the recipe off the Splendid Table website (I also heard it on their podcast and had to try it out). It is one weird recipe, all right, but really wonderful with these other dishes.

Here's another look at that pasta with the other dishes. Everything turned out really yummy and I didn't stress at all.

And because we didn't have it at Thanksgiving,

I made pumpkin pie. Lumpy crust, huh? It tasted just fine.

And while I'm at it, let me show you the German apple pancake I made for breakfast, before it deflates.

My daughter ate all the apples off her slice and then didn't want anymore. Weird. So I decorated her slice with

you guessed it, BACON! and it was really delish this way, too.

Christmas on Orchard Road

2008-12-25T18:44:00.000-08:00

We didn't actually go down and look at the lights on Christmas day, or even Christmas eve, but on the 23rd. We did this last year, too, and it was pretty nice, if you like crowds.

We started out near the Forum. Actually, we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe and then headed out to Orchard.

All the different malls have their own theme.

But the overall theme seemed to be sweets or candy this year.

We walked down the road for an hour or two, and then we had enough of fighting the crowds and stuff, so we went home.

I guess this is as close as I can get to driving around, looking at how people have decorated their houses for Christmas, which is one of my favorite things to do during the holiday. Of course, it wasn't near cold enough, and all the decorations were more commercially motivated rather than just for being pretty. No wonder we were disenchanted. I don't guess I need to do this next year, but it was nice to get out with the family.

Craft Therapy

2008-12-20T00:29:00.001-08:00

This afternoon, we had family craft time. My husband had been saving empty toilet paper rolls for weeks, insisting that he was going to make something out of them. The original plan was an angel choir, but I didn't really think I would want to live with something like that in my house. Never mind the fact that we have very little horizontal surface that isn't decorated already.

So, I got out the paint and glitter and covered the table. I summoned both husband and daughter, and we started painting

We painted both the inside and the outside.

After the paint was dry, the cuts were made. First, I followed the line of one of the seams.

Then, I cut again every half inch or so.

The cuts were made to about 1/4" from the top.

After cutting, I made a slight crease at the top of each spiral, parallel to the top of the tube, to make them curl back in towards the center.

It was at this point that the glitter and sequins were added to most of the ornaments - this one was glittered before cutting. Two holes were pushed through the top of the tubes, a thread was drawn through, and they were ready to hang.

Well, at least it kept us off the street for a couple of hours.

Beating One's Head Against the Wall

2008-12-18T15:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a day of failed attempts. A day of not quites. One of those days where one must spend the creative energy that is building under the surface, yet every creative enterprise leaves one wanting.

So, I started the day making a batch of cookie press cookie dough. Standard Christmas cookie recipe, and it needs to be refrigerated so I thought I'd just make the dough and my daughter and I would cook them later. So far, so good.

Then I decided to make a cookie from Gourmet's site. They have the most popular cookie for every year since 1940, and there were some that looked interesting, so I wanted to try. The cookie of choice was the Cranberry Pistachio Icebox Cookies. Here's their picture.

I think you can see why I wanted to make them.

Here's what mine looked like:

Ahem. Not quite.
Well, the recipe has to be chilled for 2 hours, so I spent lots of time goofing around with them, and then I wasn't happy with the result.
Why wasn't I happy? Well, the dough is so crumbly, and you have to chill it and then slice it, but those are whole pistachios and cranberries in the dough. Not very easy to slice with crunchy, chewing stuff in there. So it was a total mess. Those two cookies up there are probably the only ones that looked like that. The rest are not very pretty at all.
I realized, too late, that the problem was that I substituted shortening for the butter. I also substitued equal for the sugar, but I don't think that made the dough much different.

Moving on...

While the cookies were baking, I attempted a paper craft.
I have this picture on my desktop currently:

And I've been looking at these star lanterns thinking I could probably figure out how to make one. I had a failed attempt two days ago that left me better educated and more determined. Then I found a pattern online, and after running out and buying more red paper, I made a template and tried again.

Sure, it looks pretty good here. But it's not.

It's in the gluing of this last spoke that things are coming apart at the seams. Literally, I have a tear somewhere in there.

And then there's this little bubble.

Sheesh! Can't I have one thing I attempt work out?

So, by now it's nearing 3:00. I haven't showered yet, let alone brushed my teeth. So I took a break from the creative stuff and when I came back, I decided dinner was going to be the thing that worked out.

Ratatouille's Ratatouille worked out just wonderfully, even though I cheated on the recipe. Instead of all the rigamarole with the tomato sauce, I just used some traditional Prego with some red wine and balsamic vinegar added.

And it was delish.

Phew!

The First Photo

2008-12-14T23:54:00.001-08:00

My darling friend, Akiko, sent me this picture of her very Christmassy and very cute potholders that she made from my tutorial.
Aren't they wonderful? She really went to town with the piecing on the first one! Way to go, Akiko, and thank for the pic!

Christmas Spoiler Alert

2008-12-14T18:40:00.000-08:00

If

you

are

my

daughter,

please

do

not

read

this

post.

Well, I finished a project today. Obviously a Christmas present for my daughter. I got the pattern here, but I couldn't find grey eyelash yarn without going all over the island to look for it. Instead, I found some really soft light grey kid mohair yarn, which I doubled up with some dark grey wool and cotton yarn I already had. It's not as fuzzy as the original, but after I brushed it I discovered that it's quite soft. I also decided I did not like the way the original feet and wings were done, so I adapted my own ideas.

I also had to make him a snack. It's a long time until Christmas for a little penguin, although he has the appearance of one who doesn't need to worry about getting enough to eat. That's the least of his worries.

So here are the feet I made. I changed the pattern to make 2 distinct feet with 3 toes each.

Here is a top view. His beak isn't always bent like that.

And here's the final shot of the potholders before I wrapped them.

My daughter is carrying the first pair to her piano lesson this afternoon.

Please Share

2008-12-14T15:09:00.000-08:00

Since so many people have written to say they will be making the potholders, I wanted to encourage them and you to please send pictures of your finished product so I can share them here on the blog.

Also, please let me know if there's any questions about assembly that I didn't address in the tutorial.

Have a very merry Christmas!

Pot Holder Tutorial

2008-12-12T16:50:00.000-08:00

Due to overwhelming response (one request), I will post the instructions for the pot holders. I love to teach!

Begin by cutting strips 2 inches wide by at least 18 inches long.

I have multiples of each color here because I'm making multiple pot holders.

Sew your strips together with a quarter-inch seam and press the seams all in one direction. Trim the top and bottom edges even after sewing.

Trim your strips so that you have one piece that measures 9 1/2 inches by 10 inches, and one piece that measures 9 1/2 inches by 7 inches.

To the 9 1/2 by 7 inch piece, attach a 2 inch strip at the top and bottom. Press the seams toward the 2 inch strip.

You should now have two blocks measuring 9 1/2 inches by 10 inches. In the picture above, the back, and the front.

Now cut three layers of batting at the same measurement as your blocks. I use Hobbes Heirloom, and I have so many scraps that this project is an ideal way to use them up.
If you're smart, you will also include two layers of heat-resistant fabric which is pretty easy to find in the States, but I didn't even try to locate any in Singapore.

Pin and baste stitch all three layers of the batting to one of your blocks.

Your basting should be at a scant 1/8th inch so that it wont show through when the final 1/4 inch seam is sewn.

For the next step, you will need 5 inches of double-fold bias binding tape in a coordinating color. Make a loop and sew diagonally across the edge of the tape at a corner of your basted block, sewing back and forth several times to make a strong connection.

Pin the other pieced block right sides together to the basted block and stitch at 1/4 inch, leaving an opening for turning at the bottom of the block. Need I say it? You should always lock your stitches at the beginning and ending of every seam, and that is particularly important when you have a project that you have to turn to right side.
And one more thing:

Sew diagonally across the corners for 3 or 4 stitches to make the corners really nice when you turn them.

Now clip the corners and turn the pot holder right side out. Press.

Carefully fold under the open seam at the bottom and pin.

Stitch across the opening at a scant 1/8th inch. Press. Quilt as desired. I stitched in the ditch on the front.

Finished pot holder:front

Finished pot holder: back

I hope these instructions are clear and I didn't leave out any vital information, like how much flour to add to the cookie dough recipe. Please let me know if you make any pot holders from this pattern and how the instructions worked for you! Good luck!

The Never Ending Cooking Saga

2008-12-11T00:19:00.000-08:00

When I say never ending, what I really mean is that this cookie recipe makes 8 dozen cookies! That's 96 stinking cookies! Man oh man!

But I am pleased with how they turned out. They taste good, too. Or so my family avers.

At the last dozen, I ran out of frosting. So I used the next best thing (my husband would say the frosting is the next best thing!)

Nutella!

Not quite as elegant, maybe, but they taste nice.

That's a lotta cookies for a family of 3! I will be gifting some of these, I think.

Further Adventures

2008-12-10T02:53:00.000-08:00

Today I realized I needed some gifts for the people who provide services for my daughter: her piano teacher, her drama coach, and the people who allow her to ride along with them to school every day. My sister had sent me a picture of some lovely patchwork pot holders, and it was these that provided the inspiration.

Front

Back

The first pair

I will be making at least 3 pairs of these. Tutorial, anyone?

And here's the results for yesterday's cookie fiasco:

I baked up a dozen, and we tasted them before we frosted them. Not very cinnamon-y, but my husband thought they kinda tasted like snickerdoodles. I was hoping for something that would taste and smell very cinnamon-y, especially while baking. But oh well. They tasted fine.

I went ahead and made some powdered sugar frosting, but my green food coloring (purchased in Singapore, of course) is rather lime green colored. I wanted a nice pine color, but I wound up with a not very nice olive color. Oh well, again.

I made a dozen, there's only 7 here, and at the time of posting, they are all gone. I decided to finish batch tomorrow. I will frost them white and put silver decors on them. That will be much more elegant.

File this under Good Ideas:

Recently, I decided it was too much of a hassle to take down this large tub of flour off a shelf over my head whenever I needed a small amount for this or that. So, I started looking around for a container that could hold a small amount of flour, and be more convenient.

I was about to dispose of this jar after transferring the Equal out of it to another container I like to keep it in, when I noticed the suitability of this jar for my other purpose.

One of the things I frequently only need a small amount of flour for is to sprinkle on my board to keep dough from sticking. The lid of this jar twists so that one can sprinkle the contents. Isn't that too neat?

Adventures in the Kitchen

2008-12-09T04:03:00.001-08:00

So on my grocery shopping spree Monday, I bought a pair of spring chickens to roast. Since Monday was a public holiday here in Singapore, my butcher shop was closed. But the grocery store was open, so I bought them there.
Warning: younger or more delicate blog readers may find this post disturbing.

Let me just say: be glad you don't have to deal with this stuff.

I was only mildly surprised to discover the chickens still had their heads,
but take a look at the indignity this poor fowl is suffering.
Sorry to be so graphic, but I had to share.

Well, I am proud to say that I simply sharpened my chinese cleaver and removed two heads and four feet. And then I made something truly delicious.

First, I made a compound butter: 2 or 3 tablespoons butter, a teaspoon each of chopped fresh herbs (I had rosemary, dill, and some basil harvested from our own plants which I planted for my DH on his birthday in August), 3 slices of turkey bacon, chopped (I would have used regular bacon, but it's so unusual to find the turkey variety in Singapore that I had to buy some), and 2 crushed garlic cloves all stirred together in a small bowl. This butter was then spread under the skin on each chicken breast.
Then I quartered a small red onion and put half in each bird's cavity. I tied the legs together with cotton twine, then placed the bird in a roasting dish. Next I poured a generous amount of olive oil on each chicken, laid some whole sprigs of herbs on the skin, sprinkled some more olive oil and then some dry white wine, and then some freshly ground black pepper.

These were baked at 450 for a half hour, then 325 for 15 more minutes.

I'm not exaggerating when I say they were probably the best roast chicken I have ever made. Totally worth the vivisection I had to commit.

I served them with fresh corn on the cob from Malaysia and roasted root vegetables: potatoes, carrots, parsnips and sweet potatoes with rosemary, quartered onion and sliced garlic all coated with olive oil and salt and pepper.

The dinner was so good, I had to come up with an equally good dessert. So I served perfectly ripe nectarines with vanilla ice cream and crumbled graham crackers, sprinkled with cinnamon.

I feel like such a genius.

The neat part was that we had such a nice breeze blowing through the house that I turned off the air conditioners and they've been off for hours. That NEVER happens. It's usually too humid for me, but it's so pleasant I almost feel like a real human being.

So, what's the occasion? None. Just felt like doing it.

But this post is entitled AdventureSSS (plural)

So, while all this was going on, I made up a batch of cookies I found the recipe for on the internet.

Here's the recipe. See if you can spot the adventure.

3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
Cream together. Add dry ingredients:

1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt

Chill for 1 hour. Roll out and cut out shapes. Bake at yadda yadda yadda...Did you catch the error?

I'm standing there, in front of my KitchenAid, thinking this is a little too wet to roll out. Even if I chill it...

Where's the flour?

Well, I eventually ended up adding 4 cups of flour to make the right consistency. But the recipe never mentioned it.

I'll bake these off tomorrow and let you know how they are.

Ugly Christmas Lights

2008-12-07T16:11:00.000-08:00

I was surfing around on the web this morning, trying to find a nice picture of a house decorated with Christmas lights to put on my desktop for the holidays, when I happened on this site. Well, an hour and several LOLs later, I finally had to do something else. Enjoy!

The Next Step

2008-12-01T17:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally made it downtown last Sunday and bought a king sized batting - 120" x 120" - for $75! I haven't paid attention to the price of batting when I've bought it in the past, but this time I was surprised. Luckily, I will be able to make many many quilts from this large piece, so it will be worth it. I don't think I've bought batting for almost a year now, so I guess I shouldn't sweat it.

Many have asked the size of this latest quilt, and I don't like to state that until it's finished because it will shrink in the binding and quilting stage, but I measured it anyway. It is 40.25" x 36.75". For now.

Next will be the binding. I plan on doing the usual: the escape hatch finish. Then I can begin quilting it. Unfortunately, I have some obligations at my daughter's school this week, so I'm not sure how much time I can put into the quilt. This is frustrating as last week didn't see much work getting done on it, either - except for Tuesday, when I finished it. Hurry up and wait.

A Singapore Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T18:17:00.000-08:00

Which should rightly be called a Martha Stewart Thanksgiving. Let me 'splain:

A couple of weeks ago, driven crazy with boredom, I decided to browse ITunes and see if there were any free video podcast I wanted to watch, and I found a whole slew of Martha Stewart podcasts. Now, I'm not a huge Martha fan, but I was desperate. So, I downloaded them and began to watch. It took a couple of days to see them all; I didn't just sit in front of the computer for hours. Fortunately, they were all about Thanksgiving. That was when I noticed they had all been uploaded on the 5th of November. That's bad news because it means the podcast isn't consistently updated. And sure enough, it hasn't been updated since. Darn!

Well, I got inspired and here's what we had:

Spicy Sweet Potato Wedges and Brussels Sprouts with Lemon Vinaigrette

Herbed Mashed Potatoes (and sparkling cider)

And then I made the Joy of Cooking recipe for stuffing, adding dried berries and raisins, and I invented this turkey part: cutlets rolled with stuffing inside, glazed with honey.

Here's what they turkey looked like when cut.

You'll notice the small portions; there's only three of us, after all. We also had cranberry sauce, not very interesting.

And then for the big finale (was it the 4th of July? Wrong holiday.)

Rustic Apple Tarts (my daughter made the tiny apple sauce tart.)

Pumpkin Souffles (now I'm just getting silly)

Here they are together. The souffles were a disaster. My husband's was the only one to set up properly. Mine and my daughter's were quite wet inside. Well, you saw my little oven...pitiful. Not good for souffles, anyway.

So, you can tell, we stuffed ourselves. Thanks, Martha!

Oh, and here's our lovely table and my lovely daughter before things got messy.

Filling In The Blanks

2008-11-25T00:39:00.001-08:00

Well, this is the solution to the problem of the gaping holes in my quilt top. I'm showing it to you step by step.

I actually took 40 photos of the process, but I wont bore you.

I'm dragging it out like this for you because this is what it was like for me. It took me all stinking day!

Ok, so I could sense your impatience.

This last corner has more filler than motifs, but I kinda like that.

Ok, ok. Here it is, unbound, unquilted.

And I am so happy with it. But I discovered I don't have a piece of batting big enough, so I have to go downtown. And tomorrow is the pre-Thanksgiving blur, so it probably wont happen until next week. Sigh.

Wheee! I am so happy with this quilt!

The Current Status

2008-11-22T20:16:00.000-08:00

If you have been following along with our home audience, then you will recognize that I have removed the center 4-block square that I had before. It wasn't working for me, altho I did reuse some of those blocks in the center. I also changed out two blocks that had grey for the background. They were just stopping my eye. So now I'm really liking this. Funny thing is, it's not exactly what I was aiming for originally. It has evolved, and I just went with it.

I really like how I can see the whole piece when I post it on the blog, or just take a picture of it, really. When I'm standing in front of it, I can't tell much about it, but when I look at a picture, I can really see the whole thing at once.

And looking at it this way, I can see two blocks I'm going to switch. Hee hee.

Now comes the scary part: fusing these parts together and filling in the open spaces. I have a great idea (I think) for the open parts, but I'll post about that later....

Layered Fusing Tutorial

2008-11-21T17:02:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, blog reader Ursula posed the following question:

Q: Do you fuse all the circles on top of each? Are there about 5-6 layers on each square?

Isn't that great? Ursula is just the one for asking pertinent questions. So, I took some step-by-step pictures yesterday and have this tutorial:

Here is the first circle in my block.

And here is the fabric I want to fuse it to.

This surprising tool is a small sliver of bar soap that is left over after the bar is almost all used up. You know the stage: you can't use it anymore because it just breaks. That piece of soap, dried out, is an excellent marking tool.

It's a little hard to take a picture of something that usually takes two hands, but I use the soap to trace under the top piece so that I know where to cut out the bottom piece. I don't trace right at the edge, tho. The soap line would show. I trace a little in from the edge.

Now I have my circle traced onto my fabric.

And I cut that part out.

Then I can fuse the two together.

But in all but the overlap, it is essentially just one layer.

Then I continue on, building up the layers, removing the backs, until I get something like this:

But the back looks like this:

The reasons for doing it this way are
1: to save fabric. Those cut out pieces are being immediately recycled into the next block or blocks in this quilt. And,
2: to reduce bulk. The fusing becomes a little less reliable when there are so many layers sandwiched together, the quilt is heavier and harder to quilt.

And here is the current status:

BTW, all of these pictures were taken with my new camera. Woohoo!

Another Trip Around the Sun

2008-11-20T19:27:00.000-08:00

November 20th is my birthday. Two years ago, I threw myself a party, which I blogged about, and I invited about 12 ladies.

You see, I wanted to have a tea party, and in Singapore, you can't go out and do that without encountering seafood in some form or another. I'm not interested in seafood in any form, so I had the party at my condo. I made finger sandwiches and pastries and a good time was had by all.

Last year, my dahlink friend Janis couldn't let the event go by unnoticed, so she hosted a party at her house (also blogged about). We had chicken kebabs and hummus and salad nicoise (I avoided the tuna) and everything was delicious and wonderful. And I wondered, "How did I trick my friends into thinking they had to celebrate my birthday every year?"

Well, it happened again. Here I was going along, minding my own business, and a call came on Tuesday saying Thursday we were going to have lunch in honor of my birthday. "It's become a tradition, " I was told. How did this happen? What did I do to deserve these repeated kindnesses? I'm not sure, especially as I have been mostly absent from our gatherings this year. But sometimes one has to just accept the kindnesses done to them, and be grateful.

Here we are, from left to right:
Mavis McAllister, Janis Douglas (the instigator, I mean our host), me, Marianne Bos (a fellow quilter, a fellow fuser), and Amy Low.
I was treated to a Mexican feast the like of which will live in my memory for at least a month, maybe two. I had a virgin lime margarita, the best mole poblano I've had in years, and a decaf cappuccino. Everything was absolutely delicious and I felt so blessed and honored.

Everything was so delicious, I forgot to photograph it until I was almost done eating!

I have such wonderful friends.

Afterward, I scrambled to meet the DH and we went downtown so we could pick out a new camera for me, as my old one occasionally thinks it's on another planet.
Here's what we got:

The Canon Powershot A1000 IS, in a lovely shade of metallic lavender. I really thought I was going to buy an IXUS, but they cost so much more, and for mostly the same options. This one is much smaller than the old camera, and only uses 2 AA batteries, so it's much lighter.

Every year, I think I don't want to make a fuss about my birthday. Just let the day slide by with maybe a nice dinner or something. But secretly, I'm afraid that if that were to actually happen, I would be very sad. Luckily, no one seems interested in letting me go there. May I be worthy of their love and generosity.

Further

2008-11-18T22:31:00.000-08:00

Here are some further pictures of the current work.
As you can see, I have rearranged the existing blocks once again. I think I'm more drawn to the Around The World layout.

When does a few green blocks become enough green blocks? I would never know if it weren't for my pin up wall.

And here you can see that I started filling in the white spaces with the grey scale fabric I have. Not sure if that will stay or not. Love the blue, don't you?

I made some great progress today, but felt compelled to stop when my mp3 player ran through my podcasts. I need to reload, but I also need to take a break and do some housework. Fah! When I feel overwhelmed, the house is clean. When I feel on a roll, I need to stop. Figures.

Progress is Slow

2008-11-15T16:55:00.000-08:00

I've been beating my head up against the wall on this latest quilt. But that's ok, it turns out. It just means that I am breaking through - or trying to break through to a different level in my art.

So, I took my sister's advice and just starting making motifs in my chosen color scheme, and building the quilt on the pin up wall. Seems like every day I make a few motifs, place them up on the wall, and then I feel overwhelmed and have to go away until the next day. So, yeah. Progress is slow, but I'm gonna keep plugging away.

Here are some photos showing my progress:

This last photo has a lot of white space, I know. I will fill it in later with different little things. That is, if I decide to leave it this way.

In order to feel some sense of accomplishment, I have also been cooking a lot. I made a caramel apple pie the other day. It was delicious!

For the first time, I made the pie crust in my Cuisinart. It was so easy that way, I can't believe I never tried that before. If you haven't done that before, go to Crisco's website; they have a short video and everything. Easy as pie. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Then I just sprinkled the apples with cinnamon sugar. I didn't want too many flavors since I was using caramel. And the apples were very tart and a little dry.

For the topping, I had about 18 caramels which I melted in a small sauce pan with a little water. Then I stirred the caramel into chopped peanuts and oatmeal. Working quickly, I spread that concoction over the top of the pie. Quickly because once it cools, it ain't going nowhere.

Then I covered the pie with foil and baked it for a half hour at some temperature. I don't remember what it was. I took the pie out and poked at the apples to see how done they were. They were quite soft, but really still dry, even though I put several dabs of butter on them before putting the caramel topping on. So, I got the caramel topping for ice cream out of my fridge and squirted a bunch of that on the pie, covered it and let it cook another 15 minutes. It smelled so good!

Afterward, when I'd had a taste, I decided I wasn't getting enough of that caramel and peanut flavor that I wanted. It tasted a lot like oatmeal. So I think I will do it differently next time. But it still got gobbled up by my family. Yum!

Over Thinking It

2008-11-11T19:57:00.000-08:00

You know how, when you look at a word too long,

for example,

the word AQUEDUCT,

it begins to look like you've misspelled it?

I had a similar experience recently.

After the last quilt, I knew I wanted to continue working in this series, but the ideas weren't quite crystallizing in my mind. So, I set down to do some sketching.

I really liked the idea of these eggs or bubbles or whatever, the motif, overlapping. But then what? I continued drawing, but it wasn't coming together. So I tried again.

Nope, that's not it, either.
Naturally, I'm skimming through all my art quilt books to try and get ideas. And I'm being bombarded with ideas for layouts and color schemes and it's kinda confusing me. So I press on.

And now making these sketches is becoming a bit tedious because of all the detail I'm tempted to include. So I leave the detail out and go for a sort of shorthand, and even that is not making me happy. I'm beginning to get a little panicky. I don't feel like making any of these sketches into quilts would be fun or would be worth the effort.

Keep trying, I tell myself.

Now the big doubts are starting to surface. Why did I think I could be an artist? And other mental junk like that. I ignore it. Mostly.

In desperation, I sent all of these sketches to my sister.

Her advice?

It's only fabric. Start playing around and see what you come up with.

Playing around.

Playing.

Around.

Why do I insist on thinking that making great art is going to mean grueling, frustrating work?

Well...I'll be in my studio. You know what I'm doing. I'm having fun.

The Last Bit

2008-11-06T21:38:00.000-08:00

Here is the quilt top finished, but not trimmed or fused to the batting yet. While I enjoyed making the medium and large sections, my favorite bit was the little "bubbles" - as I've come to think of them. I think that idea will continue to feature in the next quilt or quilts.

And here I've fused the quilt to the batting. This is the point of no return. It's not impossible to change things if you've only got fabric fused to fabric, but once it's fused to the batting, it becomes a sticky mess to try and change something and I have never tried.

I was tempted to do an old-fashioned binding on this quilt, but it's been so long that I just didn't feel up to it. So I did my favorite escape hatch finish and then quilted it up.

Fizzy Pink Lemonade

17" x 15.75"

$100

SOLD!

Here are some details. You will notice that you can't see the quilting. Isn't that so great? I'm so pleased. My new machine is the bomb.

Fame in Melbourne

2008-11-05T15:13:00.000-08:00

This morning on The Toy Society's blog, they have posted an article from The Melbourne Leader. If you look closely, you can almost see me in it:

The altruistic treasure hunt is the brainchild of Bianca Brownlow, an ex-Northcote girl now living in Sydney.

“The last one was found in a carpark at IKEA in Atlanta, and they said ‘the chicken’s been riding around with us in the car’ and they were loving it,” Brownlow said.

“That’s by far and away the most exciting part of it, hearing back from people.”

That's my chicken! Go read the entire article here.

Isn't that so fun?

The Next Bit

2008-11-03T18:55:00.001-08:00

Well, after I finished the first section, I felt that the second section needed a difference more than just scale. Too much of the same color scheme in a quilt bores me, I guess. So I decided to make it more about pink and green, with a little yellow.

I was really stymied over the weekend trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I discussed the options with my sister, and she reminded me, "it's only fabric." I'm so glad to have that reminder sometimes. So I went ahead and made this next bit, and it just came together like pie.

When Timothy Botts was here last year, I bought a print from him that says:

"The freedom to fail is the essence of creativity (just as the prevention of failure is the essence of conservatism). The creative act must be uninhibited and marked by supreme confidence. There can be no fear of failure. Nothing inhibits so fiercely, or shrinks a vision so drastically, or pulls a dream to earth so swiftly as fear of failure. Albert J Sullivan"

For me, there has to be an element of play in creativity. That means, also, no fear of failure. Just do it, maybe it wont work, but that's no reason not to try.

And so, I move onto the next part of the quilt, and I intend to have fun!

Sold!

2008-10-31T17:23:00.001-07:00

I'm so thrilled to announce that my dear friend, Carol, has purchased Release - after I made her wait months for it. She first expressed interested in buying this quilt in August, I think it was, and I made her wait because I was getting ready to travel to the states for a month. Not too smart of me, but there it is. However, I couldn't dissuade her desire to purchase this quilt, and yesterday it became hers!
The best part about this sale, other than the quilt going to a friend, is the fact that she had a good understanding of what the quilt design meant. I don't usually mean much by my designs, but this one had some significance, and she got it. That is so cool.

Enjoy your new quilt, Carol. And thanks a bunch!

Work In Progress

2008-10-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

Well, it makes me anxious to post pictures of works in progress. I'm worried about criticism, about someone stealing my design. Pretty silly, isn't she?

This is actually a sketch that came out of a sketch that didn't work. Often, I make a sketch and go with it without pausing to think. But this is a second attempt, which means I might still need to refine it before it gets made. But for now, I'm totally happy with it.

This design feeds out of the last series I was working on, which I finished yesterday but haven't post a pic of yet. You've seen some of it, tho. But I will get a good pic to post tomorrow.

And here is the design partially filled in. Raspberry lemonade, anyone?

Happiness in Sewing

2008-10-29T17:07:00.000-07:00

I am so thrilled with my new sewing machine, it has made all the difference in the world for me.

For those who don't know, last July or August I purchased a Janome 6500 sewing maching off Ebay and had it shipped to my sister's house until such time as I could come and collect it. Well, I had that opportunity recently, and now I have my new machine set up and am using it joyfully. It gives me such better control, handles the different threads so much better, everything about it is superior to the old machine I had. Here's an example.

Over and over again this last year or so, I would come up with a quilt design I was happy with and would execute the fusing part with no problem. The trouble would start when I would go to quilt the durn things. Pay attention to the quilting outlining the circular shapes here - just the outside quilting. The interior quilting I did on the new machine, and it made me want to rip out the exterior quilting and do it over again. So I did.

This machine has allowed me to go from sloppy to meticulous. Now you can hardly even see the outlining on these shapes. And it wasn't any harder than doing it messily. I'm so thrilled!

This has given me new confidence, which I think I needed, and I can't wait to get off the computer and into my studio! Woohoo!

Random Acts of Chicken Giving

2008-10-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

It is so thrilling to give something of yourself away, even if it's something cutesy and not life-supporting like say, a kidney. I asked and was invited to participate with the lovely people at The Toy Society. So I made a Little Orange Hen and finally got the chance to leave her for someone when I was in the states last month. I kept trying to do it here in Singapore, but it was always raining, and I was worried that L.O.H. would get moldy.

Well, you just have to go see for yourselves.

Back in The Swing of Things

2008-10-26T16:37:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been back in Singapore for over a week now. Like 10 days, actually. I had an easier time with the jet lag than I did when I got back from England. I think that is because I was determined to not sleep through my life. So I kept my naps to a minimum and just really went to bed early. It seems like I'm back on my normal sleep schedule, and for that I'm thankful.

I also spent the last week doing housework. Not just the obligatory dish washing and laundry, but changing sheets and towels, sweeping and mopping, dusting and throwing stuff away. There was something territorial about it. And it helped with the feeling of being somewhat depressed because I'm still living here. Well, if I have to live here, I'm going to make it as nice as I can!

I bought a Christmas panel by Laurel Burch at Hancock's in Paducah when I was there, and I took some time after cleaning my studio and setting up my new sewing machine to make a border for the panel. Man, it's been a long time since I made a pieced border for anything!

Pretty durn colorful, no?

So, all in all, I feel like I'm back in the swing of things and everything has settled down to a quiet roar, as usual.

In The Right Place At The Right Time

2008-09-20T04:31:00.000-07:00

So today was Carnival Day at my daughter's school. We weren't really committed to going, but then she decided she wanted to, so off we all went. On the spur of the moment, I decided to bring Release, the latest quilt, because a friend (Carol!) said she was interested in buying it, but she's never even seen it in person and I expected to see her there.

As soon as I walked onto campus, I was accosted by the woman who was organizing a quilt show for the carnival. I had no idea they were even having a quilt show. She hoped I had a quilt in that bag I was carrying, she said, and I did. But I wasn't planning on showing it, I assured her. I just brought it to show to Carol! Being taken off-guard, I argued a bit and then acquiesced and agreed to put it in the show.

I went and looked and my friend Marianne had entered two of her quilts, and that was all there was. So OK, I displayed my quilt and didn't think another thought about it.

Later, someone congratulated me on winning first place.

Isn't that a hoot?

And here's a picture I forgot I had in my camera of my daughter on her school's picture day. She's so gorgeous, if I do say so myself.

She had PE that day, or she never would have worn those shoes. And yes, my studio is a mess. That's why I cropped most of it out of the picture.

My Mornings

2008-09-18T16:59:00.000-07:00

Well, after being diagnosed with kidney stones, I was further diagnosed with a staph infection in my urinary tract, so I have been mostly just convalescing for days and days now. Not much interesting to report about that, but I'm off my antibiotics and have been released to take caffeine again, so it would seem that whole episode is behind me. Funny thing about drinking so much water everyday: your body gets really used to it and you feel thirsty if you don't drink. My doctor didn't leave me with a prescription for how much water I should be drinking now, but 1 and a half to 2 liters a day feels about right, with at least 300 ml of that being tea! Woo hoo!

So, I thought I would talk about what I do every morning. I get up as soon as my husband gets in the shower, to iron his shirt. I actually lay in bed until I hear the water hitting his body before I get up - dragging it out, see? I know, I could iron his shirts the night before or during the day after he's gone to work, but I like having to get up that early because then I can see my daughter before she leaves for school, too.

After I iron the shirt, I sit down at the computer with my breakfast. Lately it's been blueberry yogurt. I have all my blogs open in tabs so I can just click one after the other, and that takes some time to load, so that's when I go to the kitchen and get breakfast. I take my yogurt to the computer, and usually all my sites are loaded. Here they are, in the order I look at them:

Fibermania: My sister's blog. We often communicate about what she or I have blogged for the day, altho I haven't left too many comments there lately.
Exuberant Color: This is a blog I just recently started visiting regularly, and I got to her from my sister's blog. They are friends, and I enjoy reading about what she's making and about the weather in northern Illinois.
Craftzine: This is one I find inspiration at regularly. Always has several posts for each day, usually something catches my interest.
Softies Central: This blog is a little less consistent since the author moved to Los Angeles and seems to hate her job there (poor thing) but when she's on, it's really good. I like soft sculpture.
The Needle: This is a site for softie makers to post their creations, and there's always something cute/interesting/disturbing to look at here.
Create!: This is the blog of a woman named Alicia Kachmar. I first found her site after a google search for amigurumi. Alicia is a crocheter, but her site is about all sorts of things.
From One Chick to Another: I came to this site after doing a search for silver seabright chickens. This is the type of chicken I want to own in some far away someday I dream about sometimes. This blog is created by a Christian woman in Canada, and she has chickens, ducks, goats, horses, pigs, and she takes great pictures. Funny how you can get hooked on reading the blog of a perfect stranger.
CraftyStylish: This is another collection of creative-types posting articles about various things, some of which I'm interested in. Jeffrey Rudell is a regular contributor that I really enjoy - he does amazing art with paper.
The Toy Society: This is a woman in Australia who started this site as a way to keep track of soft toys she's made and abandoned in various places in Australia, with a note saying Take Me Home I'm Yours and instructions for toy recipients to contact her to let her know they've found the toy. Almost as soon as she started the site, tons of people contacted her to ask if they could participate in their own towns, and she agreed. I was one of those people, and I have a toy all ready to be abandoned, but I've been sick and it's been really rainy in Singapore. Hopefully soon I will have something to post about this.
After these sites, I have two blogs done by friends, and I'm not sure they would want me to post a link here, so I wont.
Lastly, it's: Flickr SingPacer: My husband's flickr account. Since he often works on and posts his pictures while he's at work, I'm not always aware that there's something new to look at, so I just check it regularly.

Oh, I almost forgot. I also regularly visit Pixdaus, which is a site like Flickr, except it seems to be managed over on this side of the world as many of the photographs are from Asia and Eastern Europe.
And lately my obsession has been with this Free Rice site. Warning, highly addictive! It's a site created by a dad of a 15 year old boy who didn't want to study for his SATs. Apparently, the dad was a computer programmer or something like that, and he worked with charitable organizations. So he created this site to help high school students study for their SATs (I never took one, you know) and it has all these different categories. For every correct answer, they donate 20 grains of rice to someone who needs it. For every incorrect answer, they give you the correct answer and then they give you the question again, a little later, so you have the chance to learn it.
My favorite categories are English vocabulary, English grammar, Art, World Capitals (I suck at this, but I'm getting better), French, German and Spanish. I never go near the math or science stuff, but then I don't have to. Great site for those of you with high school students! Or not, like me.

Taking a look at all of this blogs/sites can take very little time, or it can tie me up for an hour. Especially Free Rice. But now that I'm feeling better, I plan on visiting one more site on a regular basis: the blogger create page. In other words, I plan to blog more frequently.

I'm back!

Get Back to Blogging!

2008-09-08T03:39:00.000-07:00

Oh for heaven's sake. What have I been thinking? I haven't blogged for a long time.

Well, after the incident with the kidney stones, I spent several days mending. During this time, my husband had a paid week off from work, so naturally, there wasn't anything I could blog about. And at the end of his week off, my symptoms returned. So this last weekend I spent on the couch. Nothing to report.

La dee dah. Life goes on.

Getting Something Accomplished

2008-08-27T17:05:00.001-07:00

After languishing around the house for the last week, I finally felt well enough yesterday to make something. What a wonderful feeling it is to be healthy. And, it also happened to be my husband's birthday, so I had a project in mind.

I had seen a project like this online, using freezer paper as a template to paint a shirt. Basically, you trace your design on the paper side of the freezer paper, cut it out using an xacto blade or small scissors, and iron on the shirt where you want it. Then you iron on another sheet of freezer paper on the inside so the paint wont leak through. Then you paint it.

Unfortunately for me, I had to put the paint on 3 different times. Or rather, I had to try 3 different paints. The first one I tried was Setacolor Jaquard fabric paint. But this is transparent. Wont show up on a dark green shirt. Then I tried this Pentel fabric paint. It seemed to work, but when it was dry, it was barely visible. So I resorted to good old acrylic paint. Of course this worked. Duh.

'THIS SHIRT GOES OVER MY HEAD' get it? It's a double entendre. If you don't get it, then it's perfect.

Anyway, while I was waiting for the paint to dry, three different times, I decided to make a small quilt for this frame I bought 2 weeks ago at Muji.

Mini Mansions

5" x 14"

detail

This frame is plexi with stainless attachments and sits on a desk or bookshelf. I like the way it looks a lot and will probably be making more mini quilts to frame this way.

DRINK MORE WATER

2008-08-26T18:22:00.001-07:00

I once saw a girl walking around on Orchard Road here in Singapore, wearing a t-shirt with the above caption on it. The funny thing was that I saw her a few days after returning from a stay at my sister's house, where I was encouraged to drink more water nearly everyday. I wish I had listened.

If you think you drink enough water everyday, drink more. You probably don't drink enough.

Roughly 80% of all kidney stone cases here in Singapore are caused by dehydration. Or so my urologist informed me yesterday. I drink at least 2 cups of tea every morning. And I have milk or water or something with every meal. But apparently, that isn't enough.

I was told that I need to take 2.5 litres of fluid everyday. This is after I had been diagnosed as having kidney stones. It doesn't have to be all water, I was assured. It could be tea or coffee or soup or whatever. But, for now, I'm to stay away from caffeine.

Trust me when I say you do not want to develop kidney stones.

So, go and have a glass of water or two. Drink it cold or warm, like they do here in Asia. Whatever. Drink, drink, drink.

Since the UK

2008-08-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

I've been back in Singapore since July 14, over a month now since our trip to the UK. And altho I've been slow to post my blog, I haven't been just sitting around. Here's some of what I've been doing:

I don't think I posted a final picture of Release. Here it is, all ready to upload to my website. More on that later.

I've also been working on a series of smaller quilts that are fast and easy to make and very fun.

...now I can see that this picture doesn't have the quilting in it. Oh well. Look for it on the website.

Finishing Up the English Trip

2008-08-17T17:28:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the delay. School started last week and where did the time go? Busy, busy, busy. But enough about that.
So, where were we? Didn't I just astound all of you with pictures from Chatsworth House? That was truly the highlight of the whole trip for me, I'm sure you can tell.

That was Thursday. We flew out Sunday morning. So there's just a few more days to blog about.

Friday we woke up in Uttoxeter and climbed into our little car to make the trip back to London. This would be the last drive I took in England, and naturally, we had a huge traffic jam. We actually had to turn the car off for about 20 minutes. My husband snapped a photo, but who wants to look at that?!

Here are some other things we saw on our drive back:

We had seen this field of mustard (correction: probably not mustard. Probably rape - for making rapeseed oil.)on the drive out and wanted to make sure we stopped to take a picture of it on the way back. It was just yellow for as far as the eye could see.

The English countryside, so different from Singapore. Just breathtaking, really.

So, we finally arrived back at our host's home in London on Friday evening. We had to return the rental car, unfortunately. Saturday we headed back into downtown to do some final sightseeing. First on the list: The Tate Modern Museum. No pictures, naturally. I only recall seeing a Matisse that gave me some pleasure. I'm not a huge fan of modern art. Here's some other noteworthy things we saw:

This is The Globe Theatre.

This is a replica of the boat Sir Francis Drake sailed to the new world in.

This is just a funny picture.

Next we found our way to St. Paul's Cathedral. And the weather cleared up.

It's hard to get the scope of this building in a teeny picture on a blog. It's really startling to stand next to it.

Ah, the glorious sunshine. I hadn't really missed it that much during the trip, but this day really felt like July should feel.

And of course, no trip to London would be complete without a visit to

Buckingham Palace.

Bit of a let down after Chatsworth. And they weren't allowing the public in when we were there. Oh well. How much of that stuff can you look at?

My husband is so creative with his pictures.

I know you were wondering when you might see these guys. I felt so sorry for them, constantly bothered by the tourists. Poor guys. Funny hats, too.

Next we walked down to the Gardens attached to the Palace. There were so many interesting and beautiful things to look at and enjoy, but I only had eyes for the birds.

Look at those feet! And since they are so used to people, we could get quite close.

This Canada goose wanted his picture taken just like the coot in the former shot.

Just like shooting ducks in a barrel, or something along those lines.

Well, that's the end of the interesting pictures. We ate dinner in a pub that night. Terry's meal was most memorable: pumpkin and spinach lasagna with goat's cheese. We left the next morning and arrived in Singapore a long, long time later.

And now back to your regularly scheduled blog.

The Last of Chatsworth, Maybe

2008-08-07T19:51:00.000-07:00

I went through my pictures for the last part of our day at Chatsworth, and found over 20 that I want to share!
But then I should be done with my favorite day and I can move on to other things.

These are actually three different baby robins that we saw after leaving the house. The first two were momentarily captured by myself and my daughter, respectively. No baby birdies were injured, and they were immediately released after a short cuddle.

After a few more steps, we found ourselves near the Vine House. Oh my. Another wonderful place to spend the rest of my life. Don't these look delicious?

Just a few of the magnificent blooms we encountered.

And here we are, blooming ourselves. Idiots, that is.

The top of the Cascade.

Someone really happy at the top of the Cascade.

Breathtaking.

We caught this pheasant helping himself to some chicken feed. We happened upon more pheasants in the woods a few minutes after this shot. Just wandering around, eating whatever.

Did I mention I love chickens? Aint he a beaut?

Not the maze, but it reminded us that we hadn't conquered the maze earlier. My daughter really wanted to conquer the maze. So, we decided to give it one last try.

We were heading down some stone stairs towards the maze when I noticed little bugs jumping out of our way. Little bugs that weren't bugs at all. As soon as they warmed up in our hands, they stopped trying to get away.

I told you this was a magical place!

Here is a view of the maze from those stone stairs. Taunting us.

And they have wonderful gardens planted around the maze to tempt unsuspecting tourists. I think these are called lupins.

And here is proof that we conquered the maze! The olive tree is at the center. We just missed a hidden entry in one of the corners. This attempt took us little time at all. Almost anti-climactic, after all we'd seen and done.

But it was getting on past 5:30 when we came out of the maze. We were one of the last to leave Chatsworth, and it was with a full heart that I climbed behind the wheel and drove us back to Uttoxeter.

Goodbye, sheep of Chatsworth.

Chatsworth, Part Three: The House

2008-08-05T19:03:00.000-07:00

With the rain falling out of doors, we retreated to the interior of the house. Of course it is jam-packed with art of every conceivable form (except quilts - not one!). Every room is a knock-out.

Here is the entry hall. Even blurry it's stunning.

Look up.

Doesn't it seem like the royal treatment?

The view from the top of the stairs.

Doncha love the detail? And who dusts this stuff?

Here are some of my favorite rooms:

Doesn't this room seem so bright and cheerful? Actually, it is lit up by the flash on my husband's camera. It was very dark and dreary with the naked eye. Of course, there's no windows.

The pink dining room. This one got me. I actually had my jaw drop, and my mouth hung open. I'm sure I looked quite the idiot.

But how could I not be in awe? A PINK dining room!

And don't overlook all the gold, too. It was just beautiful.

Here's some of the stuff in the various rooms:

Just a little flower arrangement.

More stuff to dust.

This tureen was in the pink dining room. I could just live in that room alone.

They did have the huge sculpture room with all those sculptures you can see in the movie (Pride and Prejudice), and here is the one that was commissioned for the movie, of Matthew MacFayden, who plays Mr. Darcy.

And this is the Duchess of Devonshire, whose life features in the new movie coming out, The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley. How 'bout that hair, huh?

I guess we all know who that is, riding on His red thingy with all His friends. Look up at the ceiling, Adam. There's some wonderful paintings up there, too!

Which leads us to the chapel.

Which leads me to a funny story.

We had been making a tour of the house, self-guided, when we came across a tour guide and his group. We couldn't pass them easily, so we stayed and listened a little to his spiel. It was interesting, but my daughter and I finally slipped past the group just as they were entering the chapel.

There's a smallish library and some rooms with contemporary art beyond the chapel, and then one is back in the entry hall again, ready to start on the second part of the house.

My husband, meanwhile, was still stuck with the tour group, which kept getting in his photos. My daughter and I spied some out-of-the-way chairs in a hallway off the entry hall, and since we'd been on our feet for nearly 6 hours, we decided to sit and wait for the DH to show up.

We were right next to a door with an alarm on it, probably leading to the private apartments, and people were to-ing and fro-ing through this door repeated. One of the people to pass by us was an elderly chap who decided to stop and chat us up a bit. I was tired and found myself in the embarrassing situation of hearing an English accent spoken to me and trying not to respond with the same inflection. But we had a nice chat, and he turned to go.

At that moment a thought occurred to me: that nice man isn't dressed like the rest of the house docents. They're wearing navy blazers, his was tweed. I was just beginning to think, "Oh no..." when one of the docents came up to us and asked, "Do you know who that was?"

Now my stomach flipped over, but I said, "No."

"That was the Duke."

Peregrine Cavendish, the twelfth Duke of Devonshire.

Duh.

It's a good thing we didn't know who he was, or I would've been really tongue tied and stupid.

Eventually my husband caught up with us and complained about all the tourists getting into his pictures. My daughter and I just sat there and nodded until he finished, and we could say, "Guess what we did."

We finished the house tour and the rain had stopped, so we went back outside!

Chatsworth, Part Two

2008-08-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

After we gave up on the maze, we headed over to the rose garden.

We passed the Cascade. There are signs on the sides advising caution if you enter the water, as if people do it all the time!

"Welcome to my humble abode."

The roses smelled so strong and sweet! And there were tiny strawberries planted in all the beds. This put me and my daughter in mind of it being lunch time, so we headed towards the nearest snack bar. We sampled Britain's famous "pasties" - she had ricotta and spinach, I had bacon and egg. They were delicious and also very attractive.

Duck attractive, that is.

I got my fingers bit more than once, but I couldn't resist giving her more. She jumped like a puppy, as soon as she saw I had food in my fingers. Too funny.

Fully bolstered from our delicious meal, and since the weather was still holding out, we decided to go and check out the Farmyard and Adventure Playground!

...where we saw:

Guinea pigs!

And a very nice mare who asked me to scratch her face for her. I complied.

And sheep that we could pet!

And look at that face!

Here's a face only a mother could love.

There were several goats.

And chickens! I love chickens!

This one has a funny head.

Squeal with me.

They had a time for interacting with some of the animals, namely the guinea pigs and the goats. We had to wait almost an hour for this to happen, and my husband had to get out due to his asthma, but my daughter and I waited so she could handle a guinea pig. They are such docile creatures. This one just nearly fell asleep.
And the little goats just wanted to climb anything and everything. This poor guy was just crouching to take a picture of his daughter playing with one of the goats when the other one got on his back.
It was after this that it finally decided to rain. So we made our way indoors for more thrills of a different kind.