That Was Relatively Painless

Here's the latest thing I've made for my Etsy shop, and also for the Etsy NeedleArts Team July/August Challenge. I think this is the first thing I've made for a challenge or swap where I knew what I was going to do immediately and with no brain-wracking or agonizing. It even came together amazingly quickly, even the nest, which I totally made up as I went along. It was curiously refreshing!

The Very Slight Possibility That I Might Be Crazy, Plus Confirmation That I'm a Huge Dork

I totally have this! I didn't know there was actually a term for it (Ordinal-linguistic personification ), though I figured I have some slight aspects of synesthesia in other ways, since I first read about it in Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How Synesthetes Color Their Worlds .  But I've always known that 1 was the father and 2 was the mother and 3 was their daughter, who was in love with 4, who was young and handsome but poor, but 1 and 2 want 3 to marry 5, who is older and rich. 6 is male and kind of arty or bohemian,  and a little weak, while 7 is his girlfriend but more ambitious and is also interested in 8, who's very charismatic but distant, though she may eventually marry 9, again older and richer, but without such a distinct personality as 5.  I am NOT totally crazy, other people think like this too, and some even more than me.


 

Possibly the best persuasive sentence ever: "I promise I'm not some kind of modernist monster trying to make you read something with no pelisses or heaths in it. " Well, I'm sold.  


It's from this review/recommendation of Villette by Charlotte Brontë, which I've been considering reading anyway. The fact that the review is totally hilarious AND shows the same edition that I have is just pushing me closer to the edge. It's going to happen.


Also, I just found out I can get the audio version from Librivox  for free. How did I not know this existed? I vaguely feel that maybe I have heard of it, but that can't be true because if I had why would I not have checked it out? Not possible. I find that audiobooks are often very good for Victorian or other "classic" novels where sometimes you can get bogged down in all the verbiage,  but too they are immensely soothing to listen to, and good for walking or needlework, plus the libraries only have a limited number of the ones I want to read/listen to and I've heard all the Jane Austens at least twice, so this is heaven sent. Yes, inordinate glee over free public-domain audiobooks=hopeless dorkiness. I don't care.

Ooh, and more Pinterest validation! I pinned a very cool necklace by Wendy Brandes,  who is an actual legitmate jewelry designer with a very cool blog, and she's started following all of my boards. That makes me very happy.

And Another Thing

Something else to complain about - super-restrictive diets undertaken not because of specific medical issues, but because you don't appear to have anything else to do with your life. And you don't have a sense of humor, and you like to proselytize. Or so it appears to me, anyway.

Now, you can eat whatever you want, I don't care. If you want to live exclusively on Doritos, or if you want to be a floratarian (I read this in a Connie Willis story, but they may actually exist) go ahead. If you have a medical condition such as food allergies or intolerances or celiac disease, then of course you have to restrict your diet. I can't eat bivalves, because I throw up for hours if I do, but that doesn't mean I don't think you should eat them. Eat what you like, just don't tell me about and for the love of God don't try to bring me around to your way of thinking.

What got me started on this was reading a recipe on a "paleo" diet website. These are the people who believe we should go back to a "hunter-gatherer" diet, because that's how we evolved to eat. So wait, we stopped evolving before we learned to grow crops? I don't know the precise number of thousands of years (or tens of thousands, who knows), since that happened, but my understanding of evolution is that it keeps happening all the time, without our knowing it. Sort of the point, n'est-ce pas? I'm wondering when this line of thinking will "evolve", if you will, to the point of thinking that even coming down from the trees was a bad idea, and we should never have left the oceans in the first place, (thank you, Douglas Adams) so we should just eat fish and plankton.

Also, the paleo people don't eat grains, but no one could have begun to raise grains if there weren't some wild ones around in the first place, right? I suppose if you can find some wild oats or wheat, that would be OK, wouldn't it? And what about wild rice? They eat fruits and vegetables, but those have presumably been farmed. The recipes I see call for things like broccoli and onions, but not wild ones.

Oh well. Here's the non-paleo, non-vegan, totally delicious cake I made for Mom's birthday back in June. It's the Devil's Food Cake Cockaigne recipe with the Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting from the Joy of Cooking, garnished with chocolate chip-stuffed wild black raspberries (I got the idea from Pinterest). Man is it good, and I'm not even a big chocolate cake fan.

Sweet! And Get Over Yourself

So you know what's cool? Having someone whose blog you follow and admire start following all your Pinterest boards. I mean, it's cool anyway to have people you don't even know follow you, but that just makes it a little bit better, makes you think, "hey, maybe I'm not such a dork after all". Obviously, this is patently untrue, but it helps.


Fortunately, nobody much is reading this, so I won't piss anybody off, but I just have to point something out. In many of the blogs I encounter (not follow, for reasons which will soon be made clear), women go on and on about how the most important thing in their life is "being a mama", or "raising my beautiful children". Well and good, but I can't help but notice that all of these women have small children. I have yet to see the mother of, say, a 15-year-old express this sentiment. Just sayin'. (Also, I love Kate Beaton so much. She's so brilliant and hilarious.)

Today, Productivity!

I've accomplished several things today! Mainly what I've done is work on an embroidered wall hanging, but since I may enter it in the Etsy NeedleArts Team challenge next month, I can't show it yet. It's turning out well, though, even the bit that I completely winged. In fact, so far that's the best part.

I also made this colored pencil drawing of the view from my window. The cows weren't part of the original plan, but they showed up around the time I was working on the foreground, so I had to add them. You'd think a cow is more or less a stationary object most of the time, but they move around a fair bit when you'd like them to stand still and be drawn.

I also added this coffee cozy to my Etsy shop today. I found it a couple of weeks ago with just the planets finished, and I had completely forgotten about even making it. I added the stars and put the fastener and backing on it last week, then forgot about it again until today when I finally photographed and posted it. Now I'm free to forget about it again for as long as I like.

Finally, here's a chalk drawing my niece did when she was here last weekend. Her artwork always fascinates me, and I really like her color choices here, especially in the top section. I'm thinking I may borrow them for something, though I'm not sure what.

When In Doubt, Cook Some Squash

I've been feeling extremely lazy lately. I don't think I've actually been, I've read and studied a lot and last week we babysat my niece, which is a full time job, but it's mainly that I haven't made anything to speak of. If I haven't produced anything, I just don't feel, y'know, productive. 

So today I added a few photos and updated some items in my Etsy shop, since I haven't made anything new to put up in a while. Every little bit helps, I suppose.

 Also, I came up with a new recipe in my ongoing quest for Things To Do With Squash. This one turned out actually very good, though I had an inkling it might, and it's very easy, once you make the sauce. I guess you could call it Sesame Summer Squash "Noodles", though I'm always suspicious of recipes with words in quotation marks. (Plus, why are they called "sesame" noodles anyway, when they only have a small amount of sesame oil in the sauce? Presumably there was more at one time.)  So maybe Summer Squash In  Peanut Sauce is a better name. 

Whatever, I used the sauce recipe from the The 1997 Joy of Cooking, more or less. Basically it's peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar of some sort (I used red wine), hot sauce (crushed red pepper also works), and sweetening (honey in this case), and then I usually use garlic and ginger paste from the Indian grocery. Mix all these things to taste, adding a little more of this and that until you think it's balanced. The Joy calls for black tea to thin it out, so I tried it this time, and while I don't notice much of a tea flavor, it didn't hurt it either.  

Then all you do is slice your squash, yellow or zucchini or both. I did 1 small squash in longish julienne since I wanted it to have a noodlish sort of form, but you could slice it any way you like. Then I sliced about half a carrot into thin coins, and around a quarter of an onion into thin slices. Steamed all that together in the microwave for about 2 1/2 minutes, just until it was tender. Of course you could always saute' it, but I wanted to limit the fat, what with the peanut butter and all. Then I tossed it with a couple of tbsps of the peanut sauce,  and garnished it with a little chopped cucumber, and I must say, it was damned tasty. Also fairly healthy, and most importantly in the summer, it uses up some squash. It's colorful, too.

When the moon was full a couple of weeks ago I took some (I think) cool photos on my evening walk. Of course they don't quite have the glow of the real thing, but it was very lovely in the dusk with the Queen Anne's Lace blooming everywhere and the moon coming up over the hill.

Boredom as Inspiration

Just a couple of drawings I made on the drawing pad function of my phone, which isn't even a smartphone. It's extremely useful for occupying bored children (and adults), and I don't care what kind of phone I get next, as long as I can draw on it.

I made these in a parking lot in Bardstown, KY, while I was waiting for my dad. This is a view across the parking lot of some old houses. I think it's not bad considering I drew it with my fingernail. It really is true, the more limitations you place on yourself, the more you discover. I wish I could remember where I read that.

Looking in the other direction. I drew this one with an unopened ball-point pen. My favorite part is the electrical pole and the twist of cable hanging from it.

Oh, and apparently the Rapture really did happen for this guy. Good for him. Unless somebody melted him with a bucket of water.

Feel Free to Hate Me

All right, it did turn out to be spring after all.  Today is sunny and hot, so I spent the morning in the little nook I've carved out under some big, twisted old honeysuckle bushes. I took my embroidery - a birthday present for my sister and a laundry bag I'm making for my Etsy shop - and sat in the shade and listened to the birds while I worked. Oh yeah.

The view from inside the nook. It really is lovely, cool and shady, and when the wind blows honeysuckle blossoms shower down on you. I'm still picking them out of my hair. Yes, you may hate me.

Some rings I just made, epoxying things onto ring forms. The bee is made from a brass stamping I've had for ages, and the heart locket was directly stolen inspired by one I saw on Pinterest. (Oh Pinterest, you are my very favorite time-suck.)

The cameo one is made from a button I didn't even know I had. Last week I spent a day rummaging around in our old barn, going through a lot of boxes I had stored for years, and it was well worth my time. I found so much stuff I'd forgotten about, like my high school class ring, which I thought I'd lost ages ago. There were two fruitcake tins full of buttons, with a twin sewing machine needle in one. Very nice, since I'd been planning to buy a new one.

I'd also been planning to buy some batiste to make summer slips with, and I found several pieces just the right length, and in peach, cream, and mint green, just the colors I'd wanted. Then a whole box of linen blends and linen weaves and 2 or 3 yards of what I believe is 100% percent linen in black. Such a score! And that's not even counting all the other things I needed/wanted and found, like pillow forms, that rubber-dotted stuff you use on the bottoms of slippers and feety pajamas, still more fabric.... And I didn't even get spider bit.

Rumors of Spring Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

It's almost 1:00PM on May 4th and it's still only 48 degrees. It's been raining since forever and there are pools of standing water in the yard. All the shrubs around are green but the trees are only grudgingly putting out leaves. Can't say I blame them. To brighten things up, here are some pictures I took last month on a rare sunny day.

Violets and lilacs, my favorite flowers.

California poppies in my grandmother's wildflower garden.

Some lovely pink tulips. Amazing how much better they do when they don't get mowed down.

Tulips at the corner of the yard. I'm very pleased at how well these have done, considering they were potted bulbs from Kroger that I saved and replanted. I'm actually going to have to divide them this fall. (Assuming that's when you divide them. I think it is.)

A closeup of the pink ones. I love the triangular shapes they make when they're opening. I did some drawings of them last night. I want to work them up into a design for embroidery or painting.

Easiest Chalkboard Tutorial Ever

I've wanted a nice big blackboard for years now, ever since I saw some forever ago in the Ballard Designs catalog. I even have a frame somewhere I was going to use for it, but it's literally just a frame, no backing or anything. Plus I'm not sure where it is .

I've been seeing tons of cool blackboards and blackboard-painted objects on Pinterest lately, so I thought I'd make a Goodwill excursion and try to find a good-sized frame for cheap. But the other night as I was drifting off to sleep, it occured to me that there's a big stack of old windows in the tobacco barn that I could use for free. Done and done!

Most of the tutorials on the web tell you to to mix something into your paint if you're going to use it for a chalkboard, but I remembered seeing a fabulous, enormous yellow chalkboard in an old issue of Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion. The article said you could use any color of regular matte or satin (I think) latex paint, just not gloss, which seemed like a wonderful idea.

To experiment, I used a small wooden box I'd been meaning to paint anyway, and some navy blue craft acrylic I'd bought on clearance for 50 cents. It worked perfectly once the paint dried and I tried writing on it with chalk. More importantly, it erased, too. OK then.

I went out to the barn, selected a window, knocked off the spiders, cleaned off the dirt, and brought it inside to paint. I just used regular black acrylic craft paint, mixed with a little brown and navy blue so the black wouldn't be so stark, and thinned it slightly with some water. The water wasn't strictly necessary, since a couple of spots needed two coats, but really the paint covered the glass very well. I didn't prime the glass in any way beforehand, so it may flake off at some point, but that's no big deal since it'll be easy enough to touch up.

I think for this the cheaper the paint the better, since you want it to be flat and chalky. The MEHC article suggested rubbing the painted surface lightly with chalk first, and mine did seem to work better after I'd drawn on it and erased it a few times. So, here are my instructions:

1. Find the space or object you want to turn into a chalkboard. (Window, wall, door, flowerpot, wooden object, piece of masonite or foamcore to fit in a frame, etc.) You could try something smooth like glass or ceramic (a jar or a mug), but I don't know how well it would hold up. You'd want to be careful washing it.


2. Clean and/or sand as necessary, making sure surface is grease- or residue-free.


3. Paint with acrylic craft paint, any color you like. Let dry. Add another coat if needed.

That's it!

The weather is finally pretending to be springlike, complete with thunderstorms and tornado watches, and the flowers seem to agree. The trees, however, are having no part of it. None of them have any leaves yet except the willow, and they don't look in any hurry to produce any. Oh well, at least there's daffodils. I bought these bulbs a few years ago, and the package claimed they had pink centers. The first year or two they were a little peach-tinted, if you used your imagination, but now, obviously, they're just yellow. Still pretty though, and they bloom late, so they make the daffodil season last longer.

And the peach trees are blooming now!

Postcards Are Mailed!

I actually finished my postcards for iHannah's postcard swap a couple of days ago (when it was still March, amazingly), but didn't get them sent out until this morning. Still, I'm nearly a week early for the deadline, and they're off into the world, 2 to the Netherlands, 1 to Sweden, 1 to Norway, 1 to Canada, and the rest to various places in the US. I've posted pictures of the individual cards at the DIY Postcard Swap Pool on Flickr.

I hope the recipients like them, because I'm actually pretty pleased with the way they turned out. It was an unusually painless process for me, since I usually stress and obsess way more than necessary over anything I do that people are going to see.

Plus, I finally got to experiment with the rub-on film I bought lord knows how long ago. It can be run through a printer or stamped or drawn on, then used as a regular rub-on. The little flourish above was drawn with a metallic gold colored pencil, which didn't turn out as metallic once it was applied, but otherwise came out well.

The eggs on the card above were done with a stamp I carved, then stamped onto the film and applied. I carved the wren stamp, too, but just stamped it directly on the card. You can see how the film changed the color of the ink slightly, which is fine.

I could have stamped or drawn the eggs and the flourish directly on the cards, but it's good to see how the rub-on film worked, which was really very well. I think it would be better to use for computer images, or on non-flat surfaces where you couldn't conveniently draw or stamp. I don't know how well it would hold up on hard surfaces like glass or ceramics. Maybe if it were sealed with some sort of topcoat.... Fun stuff to play with, though.

Postcard Progress

I've actually been making progress on my postcards for iHanna's Postcard Swap. I've done a little every day, not rushing things or waiting till the last minute, which is completely unlike me. If I'm not careful I may have these sent out this week, barring disaster. Above are some of my early sketches. Here are the final drawings I decided on. I wanted to do them in different styles, so some are pen and ink, some water-soluble graphite pencil (love that!), some very minimalist line drawings, and of course the colorful birds are in watercolor. Oh, there's also a wren card made with some hand-carved stamps, but I didn't take a picture of that one yet. My creative process in action, i.e. spread everything out and see what ends up next to each other.

Cutting out crows.

Starting to put things together. I know most people begin by painting backgrounds, and sometimes I do that too, but but for these I wasn't sure what the birds would end up looking like, so I wanted to do them first and then see what sorts of backgrounds would suit them. Some are simple watercolor washes, stamped or not, some have little paintings or drawings, and a couple will have decorative papers for backings. Then I'll add previously-painted watercolor scraps or stickers or rub-ons, whatever seems appropriate. I would have finished some of them today, but discovered that there was only about two inches left in my glue runner, and some of the thinner papers really need a dry adhesive. At least I'm still ahead of the game so far.

Postcards and Pink Embroidery

I've signed up for the DIY Postcard Swap over at iHanna's blog, which should be interesting. I'm feeling very behind because apparently some people already have their postcards finished, while I'm still working through what mine are going to look like. "Something to do with birds" is about as far as I've gotten. Well, maybe slightly farther than that, since I've cut out the supports for the cards, and painted a couple of them, and drawn some birds, and I already have some previously-painted little scraps of watercolor paper to use, but how they'll end up is anyone's guess. But I'm still mainly at the pile of stuff above. See, there's not even any adhesive-type stuff in the picture yet. I'm very excited to see the postcards I'll be getting in return. I'm sure I'll be thinking, "Damn, why didn't I think of that?" Judging by what I've seen on other people's blogs so far, I'm sure they'll be fabulous and shame me. I finished my pink embroidered scarf last week. I'm pretty pleased with it, though that linen-blend wrinkles if you look at it funny. I had to iron it about 5 times before I finally got around to taking the pictures, because it got obvious and prominent wrinkles every time I touched it. I'd thought about adding some ribbon above and/or below the embroidery, but decided against it. I didn't have the right shade(s) of pink, and it really didn't add anything. Less is, in fact more, most of the time. Since it's supposed to SNOW! tonight, here's some pictures of the apricot tree when it was blooming last week. It was very lovely, but it always blooms too early and then it gets frostbitten. It's never actually had any apricots on it that I can recall. It was actually swarming with bees when I took the picture, but apparently the bees declined to be photographed.

Jimmy Choo By a Nose

Now that the basketball games are over tonight, there's an Australian horse race on Sirius/XM. I can't understand a damn thing the announcer is saying except that a horse named "Jimmy Choo" is winning. I would totally have bet on him. Though I have to ask, who listens to horse races on the radio, except for the Derby if you're not near a tv? And who for the love of heaven listens to Australian horse races unless they're in Australia?

St. Patrick's Day, etc.

Irish soda bread, natch, because you have to make something Irish on St. Patrick's Day and I don't like corned beef. I think it's a law or something. At least I remembered the soda this time. Once I didn't and the result was very...dense. It was a lot like Terry Pratchett's dwarf bread, though it wasn't too bad if you toasted it.

This batch turned out pretty well, I think. It doesn't look like much, but it's one of those things that's impossible to photograph well. I take comfort in the fact that I've never seen a picture of soda bread that looked much better.

Today's thing I've made, my upcycled suede skirt turned purse. 3 of your earth dollars for a brand-new, tags-still-on skirt in the softest chocolate-brown suede from Goodwill, plus another $3 for a pack of leather needles. Cut off the bottom, sew it up, sew up the lining (which was already there), make straps from the cut-off, and sew some pockets to the lining. It took maybe an hour, and that was mainly because there were a lot of layers to sew through when I attached the straps. I think I got the idea from ReadyMade , but I can't seem to find it on there now.

The inside, with the pockets I made from leftovers from my first quilt. I think I should have made them deeper, or something, because they have a tendency to come open and dump everything into the bottom of the purse. It could just be that it's a big ol' squashy bag without much shaping and it kind of collapses onto itself when I set it down. Anyway, it's about time to retire it and bring out or make something a little springier. I'm thinking linen, but then I usually am. It's occurred to me that a child's skirt would also make a good and less enormous bag. I need to get back to Goodwill and see what I can find there.

I realize none of those other photos are actually very photogenic, if you will, so here's something pretty. An empty glass bulb from the Bath & Bodyworks Wallflowers thingy I got for Christmas, washed out and with a ribbon tied around the neck, plus snowdrops from the yard.

Oh, why not?

Right, going to try to start this thing up again. It's just about what I'm capable of after this bout of the Amazonian Death Flu, which seems to have decided to linger on forever. Plus I have a lot of pictures of crap I've made for myself or others & wanted to post somewhere besides Etsy. And then there's always things to complain about.

• Like bloggers in California bemoaning their bumper crops of Meyer lemons. Oh really? What a pity, because to my knowledge I've never even been in the same building with a Meyer lemon. Make some damn marmalade or preserved lemons already. Or send a big box to lemon-starved little children in Kentucky, i.e. me. I'll send you a bushel of mint or some zucchini in a few months.
  

• 
  And there's this, which is useful, because I can never remember which of these symbols is bleach and which is dry clean. But I just noticed the next-to-last symbol in the "dry" column. "Do not dry"? What? Do I have to keep whatever it is wet at all times? I don't think any of my garments say "Store under water". I'm very confused.
  
  

• The latest thing I've been working on. Inspired by this post at ihanna's blog, I decided to do the embroidered squares as a border on a white linen-blend scarf. I've been feeling the pink lately, as you can see from the new background, since it's been so chilly and dreary and grey. Now I just have to get up the gumption to actually finish the scarf, which should really only take about 15 minutes.

I actually like Hanna's better, her colors seem warmer somehow, though maybe it's the pale pink linen she used for her background. It might also be that most of her squares are done in similar stitching. Doing a lot of different stitches seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm a little lukewarm about the finished product. Still, it'll probably look different once I have the whole thing assembled.

I do like a couple of the squares, though. These were just supposed to be sort of spirals, but they ended up looking like little abstract roses.

This one makes me think of a chrysanthemum or zinnia. Little zinnias in bright pinks and oranges would be very cute on something or other.