First Attempts at Weaving...

My dear friend Copper, gave me a lovely hand loom for Christmas. I have been enjoying my first attempts at weaving. Have just been doing rows of plain stitch so far, but I am beginning to think about how I might attempt to weave something more complex. Perhaps a scene from the farm where I grew up??  Many things to learn (like, say, improved tension!) before I tackle a bigger project, but definitely having fun!

First potholder on the loom....

Potholder #1- On the Road

Potholder #2

gardening on a sunday afternoon

 rain drops. water cascading in gentle rivulets down arms and legs. hair, now drenched, clinging to head and neck. laughter. sloshing shoes.
racing down a quickly mudding path. arms full of dripping curly kale. followed by joy.

(chased out of the garden by rain!!  It has has been such fun so far, and very enjoyable to eat my own kale anc chard and... hopefully soon potatoes. once I get batteries for my camera, then pics...)

Picture of our garden space!

Copper Penne and Polvo getting the ground cleared. Our space is 10'x20' between the 2 white strips of tape

Looking out over neighboring gardens

Seeds!

And here is a link to more talk about our garden over at a food blog I have with my siblings called TravellingSpoons:  C is for... Community Gardens and Cambodian Crab Shacks

Urban Gardner ..Writer's gone Gardening

A Not so Secret Gardner by Copper Penne

The day is bright with the sun beaming  down on the earth.  Puffy white clouds float by like ships, their destination unknown to those of us looking up into the sea of azure blue sky.  I can feel the excitement in the air, as my writing partner Vanilla Bean and I begin to plot and scheme about our shared garden.

I envision Birds flying high in the sky looking down on my garden as droppings rain down, plop, plop, plop, to fertilize my small piece of the earth.  My secret garden of sorts.

There shall grow profusely all manner of vegetable delicacies.  A myriad of fragrant delights, basil thyme. And more.

The excitement is palpable, what to grow?  I do not know!

So stay tuned my amigos for an e-ticket ride through the world of gardening!

Writers.... Gone Gardening

Inkstains is about to get active again!

My friend Copper Penne (KJWilli in the sidebar), with whom I meet up often to write, drink coffee, and talk life, is joining me in another venture-- gardening!!! We have just rented a plot as part of a local community garden and have been sitting here garden dreaming.  Look for more frequent posts and updates from both of us as we have fun putting plants in the ground, as well as sharing bits and bobs of our other daily and creative ventures.

Welcome to Inkstains and Coffee Beans, Copper!

Sketchpad Assignment: Art as Communication

I am taking a (free) class over at Coursera titled History of Art for Artists, Gamer, and Animators by CalArts. If you are at all interested in creative things, I highly recommend it.  This is my sketchpad response to the first assignment- thinking about what art is to us; what art is to the word and providing two images that reflect that for us. 

Mostly I think art is a medium for communication.

 

We want to connect; we want to share; we want to feel; we want to take emotions or difficult to understand things and make something other outside ourselves that we and others can interact with or dialogue over. It can be something created (a book, a painting) or something that simply exists (the sculptural quality of iris leaves under snow). The specifics of what that “art” looks like change based on where the viewer/receiver is in their personal journey.

For myself, as a story-teller, I am in the phase of learning to mine the art/story out of myself and to somehow figure out ways to get it out onto the page, so the art that draws me now generally focuses on either capturing something or transforming something.

The piece Transformations #4 by Karen Thiessen is an example of this kind of work.

http://karenthiessen.com/series4.htm

She started with what she had (a cultural heritage of thread/fabric/quilt; scraps of “failed” earlier attempts at art; a darker emotional thought or issue with which to wrestle). The resulting piece is something finished and beautiful. As evocative and visceral as the majesty and mystery of the night sky.

For how I think the world views art… that is too big and too varied. And fragmenting more every day as art and line and form step out of the more traditional forms of work hanging at an art gallery or a sculpture in the park to take up residence in many other places of our lives. Ads on television. Brand. The covers on our phones. A printed book of hundreds of our own personal photos.

For me a great example of this kind of art, where beauty and story and brand and advertising and film and installation piece and whimsy and emotion and...basically several different individual kinds of art all come together in one to evoke something in the viewer, would be the Starbucks holiday commercial from last year with music (snow day) and snowflake kites over NYC.  It is also an interesting juxtaposition of the temporary (discardable commercial; set outside at a particular moment in time) and the permanent (film).

Sounding

An upcoming art show at church was finally the inspiration I needed to take my wall-hanging backdrop and turn it into a finished piece. I've had the background piece finished and hanging on my wall for maybe three years?, trying to decide what to put on it. This is what came.  The poem is one that I wrote specifically for the piece, as I was trying to find a way to explain what I meant by it as a whole and by all the individual different bits and pieces of stitching on it.  A couple of creating details-- 1) yes, those are used coffee filters stitched on behind the poem  and 2) I used water soluble stabilizer to stitch together the ribbons at the top  (for maybe a third of their length?) before attempting to stitch them onto the piece.

Sounding: God's Sonar

under the roar of waves
that make up
the cycle of every day

a mug of coffee
writing pages
tilting at paper dragons
rumblings of project details
last rays of sunlight over railroad tracks
late night phone conversations

nearly drowned out by the daily routines
of mundane minutiae

there is a beat, always present
like the drumbeat of the heart
in its silence and invisibility

still steady and present
reverberating down the
fault lines of self
reaching to the marrow of
bone

a reminder
a call
a hope

Christmas Wishes

Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment.  
~ Mary Oliver

This time of year, of all the holiday seasons, is probably the most special to me.

The lights sparkling on the trees and in the streets;
The extra time with family and friends from both near and far who are dear even though I may not get to see them very often;
The tantalizing scents of cookies and oranges and cinnamon in the air;
Voices raised in carols in the stillness of the evening;
The space to pause and think about "resolutions" or fun and interesting challenges you might like to tackle in the new year;
The chance, like opening up a new notebook or journal, to open up the cover on the blank pages of a new year crackling with all their possibilities and to daydream about the sparkling gems of hidden days and joyful discoveries that might lie ahead.

As we end the year, I want to wish all of you good health and happiness and a hope that in the new year you will experience the beauty and comfort of God in fresh and special ways. Blessings to you all.

Hark the glad sound! the Savior comes. the Savior promised long...

Homemade Ketchup

 Tomato time! Late summer always brings so many memories of previous harvests with all the vegetables popping with flavor and produce waiting in pecks and bushels and crates to be frozen and canned.  Mostly I remember coming home from school to tomatoes on the stove top, steaming and simmering their way into the tomato sauce we would enjoy the rest of the year, or sitting down at Grandma Weaver's dinner table to a bowl of her canned cherries or peaches.  Summer flavors stretched round to all the rest of the year.  

This year Mom was nice enough to show me the process of canning with a water bath.  We kicked off our weekend of canning by making ketchup.  When I told my Grandma that Mom and I were thinking of making ketchup and tomato sauce this weekend, she told me about the old days of simmering and canning.  When they used to make ketchup, she and her sisters would build a wood fire in the wash house and spend all day stirring the tomatoes in a big copper kettle hung over the fire as they slowly boiled down into ketchup. Her verdict on that ketchup? "Oh, that ketchup was sooo good."  After hearing about all that hard work, flipping the switch on the crock pot for my own ketchup's twelve hours of simmering felt completely decadent and lazy.

For this ketchup we looked up several different recipes online then went with a simpler combination version of those.  On the cinnamon, you may want to add a bit more than we did, depending on the type of cinnamon you are using. We ground up a few small pieces of Penzey's Cassia Chunks Cinnamon, which is quite potent, and we didn't need to use very much at all.

Homemade Ketchup

10 lb. tomatoes, quartered and trimmed
2 onions
1 head garlic, top trimmed off

Place the tomatoes and onions in (un-reactive) pans and roast at 400 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes.

Pour the tomatoes into a colander to drain off the extra liquid (we ended up with about 3 cups of liquid).  Then run the tomatoes, onions and garlic through the food processor to puree them.



Once the veggies have been pureed, mix them into the crock pot with

1 c white vinegar
1 c apple cider vinegar
1/2 c white sugar
1/2 c dark brown sugar
2 tsp salt
2 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp cinnamon, ground cassia chunks

Cover, and simmer on high for 1 hour. After 1 hour, remove the lid and cover with a splatter guard.  After another 1-2 hours, turn down to low and simmer for another 8-12 hours.

Using the splatter guard allows the excess water to boil off.

Once the ketchup is the desired consistency and taste, transfer the ketchup to glass jars for processing.  Here is a half pint jar of our new tasty ketchup waiting for its turn in the hot water bath.

My verdict on our ketchup? Yum.

Addendum: Having now used the ketchup for a few weeks, I am not as certain about the recipe as I was initially.  I tend to be someone who adds ketchup to many different foods, and this is not a ketchup you can use as liberally as Heinz 57. The flavor profile for the bottle I am using seems to keep changing, and not necessarily in a positive direction. The vinegar taste is becoming a little stronger, and the garlic flavor is now a bit weaker, as is the overall seasoning.   Will need to do some tweaks next time I make this.  Perhaps more garlic, a few more spices, maybe use a different type of cinnamon... Will add more notes once I work my way into a second bottle.

"Redneck Lamp" gets a face lift

Since so many of you have given me a hard time about my shade-less lamp over the (cough) years , I thought you would like to see that  thanks to the beneficence of a friend donating a lamp shade frame to the cause and some left over yarn, the redneck lamp is finally coming into his own.  Still needs a little something (maybe some wire and beads? hmmm.) but at least he is not completely bare anymore.

Alternate Uses For a Tortilla Press

A tortilla press is a very handy tool to have on hand if you happen to be someone who needs to (or wants to) make a lot of things from scratch, don't have a noodle press, and are not a big fan of rolling things out. Maybe not the prettiest or most elegant turn out, but definitely gets the job done. So far I have come up with two alternative uses.

Along with making flour or corn tortillas, it can be used for making--

gyoza or won-ton wrappers:

or noodles, such as noodles made form oat flour or buckwheat flour:

If you don't want to repeat anytime soon, make a larger batch of any of the above and freeze the leftovers for later use.  Just make sure to really flour the gyoza wrappers or to put wax paper between the units of tortillas you think you will use at a go, or you will have to thaw the whole batch to get them apart.

Pie for Pi Day

Raisin Sour Cream Pie. Except I substituted yogurt and clementine juice for the sour cream and lemon juice because, well, that was what I had in the fridge.  The spoonful of custard I snuck as I was pouring it into pie shell at 11:59 and 45 seconds tasted a-okay.  Will enjoy a nice slice with dinner tomorrow night for the official tasting..

Of Rosemary and Teabags

It's been a quiet few days spent recovering from illness, but I am finally getting a bit of my energy back.  Was able to spend a little while in quiet pursuits this morning. 

My rosemary plant got a much needed trim.  

All his height was glorious but getting a bit unwieldy for the windowsill. Hopefully,he will grow back a little thicker and a little less tall.

Over the weekend, my parents came to visit, and my mom passed on a fascinating article on mixed media collage art titled "Tea and Entymology."  (You can get the article as part of a free download of articles from Quilting Daily if you sign up to get their emails.)  In it the artist dried out used tea bags, and then drew ink line drawings on the leftover paper after emptying out the bags.  Apparently you can then apply the paper and image to your collage using acrylic matte medium.  Who knew? A really fun use for old tea bags!

Happening to have quite a collection of tea bags collecting in a dish on my counter thanks to the "recovering from illness" bit, I thought I would give it a go. 

 Several tea bags carefully emptied of their tea leaves.






I then took a pen and made an attempt at tracing/free-hand copying a few images from a better homes and garden magazine onto the tea paper.  One word of caution, the ink does leak through the paper on heavier lines, so if you are rather fond of the photo and wanting to use it for something else, you might want to copy it first.

My new collection of tea paper drawings.

A Morning Walk

Lights on a morning walk. The sun just beginning to trace its way above the treeline.

A Little Wall Art

Birds on a Wire

Name That Veggie

Living alone, working full time, and having several projects going on in my "free" time often translates into repetitive meals. Heavy on the pasta and cheese; low on the vegetables slowly decaying in my crisper. Which brings me to a genius idea proposed by Zach and Clay over at the blog Bitten Word. A Vegetable Board.

What is a vegetable board? A paper or board posted somewhere in your kitchen to track all the fresh vegetables currently residing in your refrigerator. A simple idea that has a real possibility of killing two birds with one stone- inspiring better eating and saving a few more perfectly good veggies from the trash bin. Especially useful for an easily side-tracked gal like me who is attempting to balance frugality with healthy eating. They actually proposed it back in July of 2010, but somehow I forgot about it and let it slip down to the bottom of my someday list. Until today.

I have already appropriated a small white board to the cause. Here's to a week of better eating!

Spaces

I have moved to a lovely apartment with high ceilings and lots of blank white walls. Given my tight budget and the fact that my furnishings tend to include more books and bookcases than anything else, I have had a bit of fun improvising solutions to these blank spaces. Hodge podge "art" from random things I found in my boxes as I was unpacking. Little combinations of things that make me happy, and hopefully, make my guests feel welcomed and comfortable and as though they really do want to come again. Even if their choice of seating in my living room is wood chair, storage bin, or camp chair!

a strand of Christmas lights and silver ornaments adds a cozy feel (and a bit of needed light) to my living room

an airy fabric (intended for a skirt once upon a time) lends a bit of sophistication to my card table

assorted bottles collected over the years gives a touch of interest to my kitchen cabinets

a piece of framed fabric adds a bit of graphic art to my long buffet table

and my favorite,

a collection of paper lanterns -picked up from the dollar store and languishing in a box for years...., combined with some bright yarn and a re-purposed fork, fill a corner of my study with a cheery mobile ( The re-purposed fork was a gift- a leftover from a project of making a wind chime/mobile from flattened silverware for a camp fundraiser.) To give a concept of the scale of the mobile, the diameter of the smaller lanterns is 6" and the diameter of the larger lanterns is closer to 10". 

Behold-Soy Free Tuna

And not just one kind--TWO!!!!

After more than five years (and maybe even seven or eight years) of stalking this rare beast down the aisles of nearly every grocery store I enter-- at last, SUCCESS! A canned tuna that does not contain soy. I had heard it existed but had begun to give up hope of ever seeing it for myself.

Meijer's of Forest Park, you are my new friend.

Starkist and Bumblee? you are officially off my blacklist.

For those of you who are also stalking this rare almost mythical item, here are the details (FYI as I had read somewhere else in my search (but don't remember where)-- note the gold wraper)

* BumbleBee Very Low Sodium Solid White Albacore in Water

ingredients- white tuna;demineralized water

*Starkist Gourmet Choice Solid Light Tuna Fillet in Water

ingredients- light tuna; water; salt

Now to find out if I still like tuna...

1-1-11

Happy New Year and best wishes for a peaceful and joyful 2011 for all of you!

Look for more Cincinnati related photos in the coming month or two. I want to get to know some of the corners and quirks of this city a little better, and a few walks with my camera seem in order.

Bits and Bobs

Mixed with a few hours alone with flickering candles and some Christmas music, and what do you get? Apparently, a folksy Christmas tree.

This December (for me anyway) is starting off to be one of those "merry messy Christmas" years when all the seasonal reminders of hope and joy and peace don't hide the fact that the daylight hours are getting shorter and there are some pretty dark clouds hovering on the horizon. It seemed a good night to hit pause and let my mind do some creating while my heart did some reflecting.

I'm keeping the decorating to a minimum this year, but somehow with the carols ringing out and this beautiful light ball (a wonderful gift from my mom) shining on my desk,

it just seemed like a little something else was needed. Specifically, a tree! With some inspiration from the odds and ends of things in my craft drawer (from ribbons to pieces of other abandoned projects) , I attached a few things to a piece of fabric with embroidery thread and pinned it onto a picture frame already hanging on my wall. Makeshift and festive! Despite my need to make it "now, now, now" without measuring or thinking too much, it turned out rather better than it might have done, if I do say so myself.

Sending up a prayer that your Decembers are filled with joy and peace and that your hearts are overflowing with hope as you face your own "Happy Messy Christmases."