Carolina Ellis

The Madness of Testing New Methods

I made my New Year's Resolutions way back in the fall of 2012.  I have made major progress in accomplishing the things on my list. The gist of my theme for the year is to try different methods of working, rather than just my own methods. The first one, that I am showing you here, today, has to do with quilting. I set one of my goals to be going back to basics. I am taking a Quilting 101 class. I drive an hour and a half for 3 lessons over a period of three months. How hard could it be?

How hard could it be???

Let me tell you, this quilting thing is about to break me.

The class uses a good book ... I am more than a little embarrassed to admit that when they sent us our class supply list, I went on Amazon to get the book and realized "Oops!" I already have that book in my stash.

The class is doing a quilt called Small Plates. Why it is called small plates - I have no idea. There is not a plate in sight! Maybe "plate" refers to temPLATES. ??? I don't know. The point is, when I finally cracked the book open, I was more than a bit miffed and unmoved by the quilt in the photo. If it wasn't on my New Year's Resolution list, and I hadn't already passed my credit card # and pressed send, I swear, I probably would have bagged the whole concept. I took one look at the photo and yawned. But it is about going back to basics and learning someone else's method, so I persevered.

I made a quick sketch with two colors of fabric from my stash, and figured the rest of the blocks would have to come from digging even deeper into my stash. Buying more fabric, at this moment was out of the question.

I gathered my fabrics. I have a lot of batiks from all the lampshade stuff I do, so that is what I am using.

I went off to my class, whipping along, headed south, my back right tire, almost free wheeling in the air as I swurved and hugged the cliff edges. I was on a mission. And then ... and then, ladies, I HIT THE WALL. What was I thinking? Quilting is for perfectionists! Quilting is for people with some semblance of math skills! Holy Toledo, Batman... I was out of my league.

They sent me home with my newly aquired ruler skills to cut and put together EIGHTY blocks. I almost choked at the number.

I, obviously, am not that skilled, so the name of the game has been "Trim, Trim, Trim".

And now my blocks are put together and square, all be it - a tad smaller than they are supposed to be. What a relief it was to get to this point.

I needed to put my blocks out and see what I had. Unfortunately my studio is EXPLODING with other projects at the moment, I have several canvases in various stages of, well, "yuck" at the moment, a few panels with charcoal drawings, a special project I don't want to tell you about yet, and Maggie is donning on more than one outfit that I am working on. The studio is a mess. I couldn't squeeze in a quilt even if I wanted to. So I have spilled out into the family room. The one bare wall has now been claimed as an official extension of my studio. (yay!)

I leaned two panels of 4'x8' insulation that I got at Home Depot against that nice, bare, clean, white wall. I covered both panels in white felt,which I pinned to the back by using my plain sewing pins. The fabric blocks stick quite nicely to the felt without pins, making it easier for me to put blocks in place and then rearrange them at will. I also like the fact that I could pin my sketch right to the board for reference.

I put them up, then, one by one ... a ridiculously long process, I stitched them all together. I had a trying time being that precise for such a long time. I am happy with the quilt top, though.

I must add, here, that picking out the colors was super fun and felt really creative. After that it was ALL WORK. You quilters out there should have warned me. The next two classes don't have me jumping for joy either - I make a "quilt sandwich" ... yoohoo! and then, AND THEN, I still have to quilt it. I don't know ladies. I don't think quilting is for me.

I did like picking out the colors, though. A part of me is thinking about playing hookie and skipping the rest of the classes... maybe I could just glue this quilt top onto a canvas and go from there.

From great madness, comes great possibilities.

Carolina

 

 

When You Are Little, You Know

I appreciate the break. Thank you to you. Thank you to the universe. I sure did need it. I am here, back on the blog, and will be doing so frequently.

The winter has been my constant companion during my break. It has been beautiful on the mountain.

 

There have been sooo many projects I have been working on, that, if I put them all in this post, it would appear that I have not slept a wink. I won't share it all today, but I will share them little by little in the days to come.

The most important thing I want to say in this post is a direct result of me, digging deep, searching for my path. This photo, of yours truly, came across my email recently. I looked at it for a long time, wondering what I was like when I was little. Every day, back then, I didn't question as much as I do now. I just was. These past few weeks, of my hiatus from blogging, I have been doing the same: just being. It has been very good for me.

 

 

In doing so, I came to the realization of something critical for my next steps:

 

Read it again. Out loud.

Just like I thrive on every flower on this earth being unique, the world needs for me to be the way that I am. I knew this when I was little. Then I grew up and got in my way. Now, I am working on making it a part of my daily awareness.

I need to add, here, that I need for you to be the way you are, we all need for you to be the way you are.

Having said that, then the only thing left to do is for us to be exactly the way we are, FEARLESSLY.

Talk to you soon,

Carolina

PS. It is good to be back.

 

The All Important Three Weeks On The Other Side of The Gate

The All Important 3 Weeks On The Other Side of The Gate -

What on earth am I talking about? 

Listen up, this is important.

I am coming out of blog hibernation to share this with you because I really think it is important ... important that is if you are a bit like me ... somewhat creative, but shy of the mark compared to what you are seeing out there in the blogosphere, or the Pinterest-sphere. This post does not apply to Melissa P., or west coast Elizabeth, but I am hoping they will read it as well.

I have been over the top, busy, busy, busy since I was last here on The Muse. I miss you guys, but I also have realized that my time away from the blogging world is critical to the creative process.

For the creative process, blogging and hitting the other blog & Pinterest sites, like a lab rat viciously hooked on a drug, is, for me, like being stuck in one season. One season only. Like being forever in "Spring", with all of it's bursting beauty, but never being privy to the other all important seasons that are vital & necessary for Spring to actually occur in all of it's awesomeness in the first place.

I have been taking care of business, my creative "business". Every day the autumn season has made changes. I can see them out my bedroom window. 

They seem quite subtle, at first. Then there are riots of color that seem to be massive events in and of themselves, that permanently alter our direction. 

The light, now at a definitively different angle than just a few weeks ago, makes me realize that everything IS different. Everything is working it's magic, full speed ahead, so that when the calendar pages get turned, and it is Spring, the hard work has been done and we are ready for it's glorious show.

Although it seems like it is a time to slow down and contemplate, the reality is actually quite different. 

It is time to shut up and walk the walk. In Spring, when it comes, there will be time to talk the talk.

I got a chance to think about all this when on one of my hikes, a few days after a recent storm, I came upon this fallen tree: 

Bizarre, isn't it? More bizarre if you were standing there, with me, looking at the gate it had naturally created by falling down in such a position. I couldn't figure out quite how the tree ended up like that. I walked up to it and still couldn't figure it out. It almost looked like the tree had been "flipped" into that location. Anyways, while my panting breath quieted down, as I took it all in, the natural "gate",  made by this "tossed" tree,  kept demanding my attention. A gate. A gate. A GATE? All of it could have been passed off as a natural event had I just kept hiking past it ... noticing it, but not much more. What I did, though, was not keep hiking past it. I stopped. Looked at it. Decidedly went off the trail I was on, and then, then I WENT THROUGH THE GATE.

On the other side of it, my life changed. This may sound like I am being a bit too dramatic. But I am sharing it with you like it happened. You see on the other side of it, I noticed how different it all looked from there. My sorroundings looked different, the gate looked different, but more importantly my hiking path, that I walk on regularly, looked totally different - as if I had never laid eyes on it before. Everything was new. Had I not taken the time to get to the other side of it, though, it would have been more of the same old, same old.

So how does this relate to my creativity? Let's see if I can explain it clearly enough for you to get something out of it. On the other side of the gate, completely unrelated to what I was looking at in front of my eyes, came a vision ... or perhaps more accurately: a visual... of a project I have been wanting to do.

In my "normal", or "usual", "Carolina-is-getting-a creative-spark" mode, I see something that floods my brain with a visual image. It can be something as simple as some fabrics that trigger the creative spark.

The impulsive side of me usually will purchase said object (sometimes it is not fabric or a yarn, but it is a unique thing I have spotted in a junky antique store). I come home, add it to my stash, and there it remains. On one side of the gate. It had an intial "Spring" burst upon purchase, but it did not rebloom. The project I had in mind was akin to an "annual", it never had the chance to fully perform.

On occasion, when Lady Luck is on my side, I work with it, pushing it to try and "bloom".

More often than not, though, I fail. I fail because I did not spend enough time with the project, giving it it's other "three seasons", if you will, before I am confronted by another Spring moment - compliments of, you guessed it, Pinterest, or some wonderful blog post by a creative "other". The addict in me, looks back at my project as if it's lack luster appearance is THE TRUTH of it ... and that is all it ever was.

How can something so creatively juicy, like Pinterest, or some of your gorgeous blogs, be so LETHAL to my own creativity?

The reason is because I don't work my way to spending the all vital and necessary three weeks on the other side of the gate.

I will spend one week, all ensconced in the newness of my project, and never get down to the knitty gritty that can only occur in the other three weeks.

It is in that knitty gritty three weeks that the gleam of magic may, M-A-Y, have a miniscule tiny prayer of shining through.

How stupid of me to let the Pinterest Giant invade the tender and fragile moments when I am on the precipice of the beginning of the three week struggle.

I need to see my projects and their status for what they are - on the week-one-side of the gate. I have five big projects, that I can quickly think of off the top of my head, that seem to have remained on this side of the gate, never making it to the other side. Shame on me. 

Shame on me for calling myself a "creative", for what is a "creative, after all? It is someone who has the nerve, the inner gumption, the stupidity, call it what you will, the PULL to go through the gate and see the project from the other side, to work through the mundane hiccups inherent to all sparks worked through to completion, to spend time on the other side, to work things out, where most would not venture. The other side of the gate has one dark pit, though. This pit is what we call FAILURE. Many times we don't want to face failure for it is way easier to bask in the deliciosness of the possibility of success rather than the reality of facing harsh failure. 

A creative is not someone who had the "spark", it is, rather, only those who continously trudge through the woods to the other side and camp out there until the work is done. Those few, and they alone, have the privilege of calling themselves creatives. Those - the creatives- I think have been keeping something from us.

They have seen failure, they have stared at it squarely. They keep good company with it, for they know without that vital courtship, no real breakthrough is possible. They don't laugh at failure. They laugh WITH it.

They never share the depth of their failures (and their doubts) with us. They never share just how much of their success depends on this most delicate of courtships.

Spending one week on an ultra creative high and three weeks avoiding doom sounds much more doable in these fast paced lives of ours, no? On the one hand, I can not blame myself for taking the easy way out. Motherhood  & "housewifehood" are more complicated and difficult than I ever thought possible. On the other hand, staying on only one side of the gate means my creative sparks fizzle, creating no joy, no Spring.

But ...

here is what the creatives are keeping from us : failure is on BOTH sides of the gate. It is both in the dark pit of finding out your project, no matter how many times you reworked it, can not come to be for real logistical reasons, and it is ALSO on the side of the gate where you have done nothing with your creative spark.

Here is a question to ask yourself: how many of your truly great ideas fizzled because you never worked them out? Did you like your answer?

Here is something that might make you feel better:

If your project, your spark, fails because of real, logistical reasons, it won't really hurt, it will just be. You can handle that.

If your project, your spark, fails, because you never actually stepped up to the plate and "played ball", well ... that kind of pain can destroy you from the inside out. I don't want to find out that not making the choice to follow through on something, was itself a choice - a bad one. Do you?

So, three weeks. Why three weeks, you ask? Is that an arbitrary amount of time? No. It is not some random time alotment. I have been studying my patterns and I realize that I have about a one week creative burst per month. All the ideas during that time, flow through my brain with heightened vibrancy. On a side note - could it be affected by a natural tide of female hormones? Who knows ... maybe. The phase of the moon? I don't know. Study your own patterns closely for a bit, see if you notice anything that has a semblance of a pattern.

More importantly, think about which side of the gate your projects are on. Are they like mine? Stuck in a revolving door like stupor. Are they being squashed and dimmed by the the brilliancy eminating from your computer screen?

I have three-week creative business to tend to for several projects. They have been being stacked, back to back, for years now. I need to set up my own camp on the other side of the gate. I need to change my habit of the same old, same old. I need to do that if I am ever going to have a sliver of hope of creating my own Spring. I have gone off trail for a bit by not blogging. It has been good and necessary. I never, before, had realized I needed to walk through the gate and work on the other side of it. I didn't know that THAT was the work that actually needed to be done. I was convinced that the key to being better was inventing a new Spring, a better Spring, like those I see on the web. Silly me. It is not a new Spring I need to invent. I just need to work on the other seasons until the work blooms forth and appears to be doing it on it's own - creating the ONLY Spring I could create, a Carolina Spring.

 

I will leave it at that, hoping I explained myself well enough to those of you that are like me. If it is not complete enough of a thought, then help me out and add to it in the comment section. I felt like I had had a breakthrough that has been a big help to me and I wanted to share it with you incase you, too, were spending little time on only one side of the gate or if the web was actually keeping you from doing the hard work only you can do.

 

Well, then, that is it.

Working towards a good Spring, 

Carolina

 

 

I Leave You, Then, With A Tale Of A Mushroom Blue

The girls started school, and I am NOT driving them. Like shells in a shotgun, I have set off in several different creative directions. I am loving it. Amongst the list, I have been painting, drawing, sewing, ... even writing poetry which I haven't done in a gazillion years. Thank me in advance - I won't be putting you through the poetry. There is a lot of pent up creative juice coursing thru my veins.

The air has barely a touch of fall in it. I can tell that the crisp days will be here soon. Shadows on the mountains in front of my living room and a clear view to the mountains in the far off distance, let me know that the chokehold the humidity has had on us for the past few months has been broken.

I notice the biggest difference in the mornings. The low morning clouds get caught in the valley, below, virtually swallowing everything in it's path except the tippity-tops of the peaks.

When I have my coffee with this view, I pretend I live at the edge of the ocean, and those peak tops are mere islands in an enormous sea.

I have been doing my fair share of hiking, as well. If I don't get out in the fresh, early morning coolness, I dodge the mid-morning heat by hiking in the refuge of the trails beneath the thick canopy of hickory, yellow-poplar, and elm, to name just a few that I can actually recognize.

When the canopy above my head gets especially thick, the moisture doesn't evaporate as quickly and the path has a generous coat of vibrant green moss edged in leaf litter that is damp beneath only the very top layer of dried leaf. There, in those fairytale mossy paths is where I go hunting for jewels. Mushroom jewels that is. I see all kinds, all colors. Do you see the one in the lower right of the picture below? It looks like a white mushroom. But it is not.

I have been spotting BLUE mushrooms. Magical blue mushrooms. Some on the edge of the path, some just off the path and peeking out of the leaf litter.

Some of them look deadly.

Their undersides entice my imagination with stories only a child would believe.

Some are soooo beautiful that I simply can not resist.

I gingerly sliced one off with my knife that I keep in my backpack. However retarded I looked, I ran home, panting, water bottle dangling and slapping my side, both hiking poles firmly gripped by one hand, and one hand gingerly holding my blue prize.

The milk that oozed from it's gills tainted my fingers, blue. No worries, I did my homework first, this beauty is edible.

I sliced through it with my trusty knife, it's flesh gave in easily. I inspected it with my little loupe left over from my girls' homeschooling days. I was in heaven. Amazed too ... the colors looked just like the wool I have been using.

I have my lovely (and awesome) Tía Anita Maria to thank for getting me into this next project - rug hooking. I didn't know anything about it until a few weeks ago when she sent me an email with photos of her masterpieces.

For future reference, tía, I would appreciate not getting into any new (read costly) endevours.

So, hereI am with this stunning blue mushroom (Lactarius Indigo) - stunned by it's blueness. It reminded me of the lapiz lazuli earrings my husband gave me on our honeymoon spent backpacking the length of Chile.

I just couldn't leave it at that. Out came my watercolor paints and my brushes.

I made a transfer of the little mushrooms I painted and put it onto fabric. A quick attempt at quilting it to see if it merits further exploration ...

and this is where I am at. I am not sure when I will return, here, to the blog. A part of me feels like I have just begun the journey. I know that it is not ready for "prime time". I have restled with the concept of blogging what I create vs. creating to blog. I am going to let time and creativity form and shape it's own path. So we will see someday, where, when, how ,... and I hate to say this: if, we meet again. I will leave the blog up until April. If before then I choose to either return to this blog, or appear somewhere else, I will let you know via this blog.

I leave you then, with a view of Wednesday's sunset and a tale of a mushroom blue.

Carolina

 

Memories on Monday: I Don't Know Why He Painted It Orange.

Before you begin to think that my mental state is slipping ... I am well aware that it is Tuesday and not Monday. Regardless, I am doing my Memories on Monday post today. I have tried to get to posting, but life has gotten in the way. In a good way. I just haven't been able to sit down and process the photos I have taken in the past couple of weeks. We had my inlaws visit for a few days. That was really nice. I actually love my inlaws. I lucked out. What really has been filling my days, though, is summer. Summer and all it's glory.

Early mornings have been spent watering the garden and being mesmerized by what I have found there.

 

I debate shirking all my responsibilities for the day after spending sometime with the myriad of shapes and colors and think about just drawing what I see. I realize when I look back on my photos, just how much vibrant color attracts me.

I have hiked for hours on end in the past couple of weeks. Starting off on the trail-to-the-blackberries my husband made for me.

 

The birds were kind enough to leave plenty for me.

 

The sweet juicy berries are quite the gold mine. Their dark, blackness is irresistable. Late in the evening I returned to pick some more and photograph them.

 

Just peering into the colander I notice just how much color, deep color, attracts me.

On my longer hikes I cannot help to stop and gawk at all that is around me.

 

The cool damp shade provided by this massive tree along the way makes the green seem to breath on me. My skin feels cooler, my eyes look up and wonder - how much more green could there be?

I contemplate the fact that I can only see 3 different colors, and 4 combinations of them, while the birds above my head have 4 colors and 11 combinations, plus ultra violet light, available to them. What would it be like to be bombarded by what they see?

 

It is the color everywhere, that as my eyes absorb them, they, in turn, absorb me. They absorb me to the point of no return. It is useless, in the face of all this color, to attempt the pretence of indifference and get on with my day.

When I get home from the farmer's market, it is as if my Leica is an extension of my fingers, there, at the ready, to attempt to capture what my eyes have engaged my emotions to.

 

Outside and in. It is the color. I experimented making jam this week. Peaches were first.

I used apples for pectin. The core had to go into the pot wrapped in cheesecloth so I wouldnt have to fish out the seeds, only the apples, after 20 minutes of cooking the pectin out of them.

 

After making jam, any leftover peaches were slurped up with copious amounts of thick, heavy cream.

After peach jam, came the damson plums.

 

In all their purple goodness, as if dusted with fairy dust.

What a shock it always is to me to see their interior golden color upon cutting them open.

And then ... the grand "ta-dah" magic of the damson plum ... the raspberry hue of the finished jam. It is as if the gold married the purple in a passionate, heated, eternally bonding kiss staining everything in it's touch.

So how did I grow up to be this infatuated with color?

I am blaming it all on a memory of a bench. I barely new my grandfather, tata Leland. I have no memories of him, not a one. Looking at photographs of him is almost, almost, like looking at a complete stranger - merely a historical looking photograph, were everything is an off white and black image and all the people are standing in a stiff pose. I don't remember his face, his smile, his temper, his hands .... none of it. The only connection I have to him is that I vivedly remember the bench that he painted a bright, almost garish, orange. It was placed under "la parra", the heavily weighted grapevine, that served as our dessert station after meals on his back patio at the house on Calle Carmen Silva in Santiago.

I must have stared for hours at that bench, because I can clearly see it in my minds eye. While the adults, still sitting at the dining table, continued their "sobre mesa", long after dinner conversations, my cousins and I, fidgety little children that we probably were, were released to the outdoors. Under the grapevine, as the golden late afternoon sun seemed to make newly forming memories cling to the air particles, with my fingers running along the curly cewed reliefs on the bench, the bright orange paint color so bright, you could probably lick it off the arm rest, my love affair with color was solidified. Now I live with it, inside of me, making me stop to photograph the color I come in contact with throughout the day, catching, like a poorly filed fingernail catching on the surface of a precious cloth. My day goes by in a stop and go motion. Do. Photograph. Do. Photograph again. Repeat. The only fluidity being the continuous observation, and infatuation, with color.

I don't know why he painted that bench orange.

I am just grateful that he did.

Until next time,

Carolina

 

 

Memories on Monday: My Little Suitcase

Good morning. How have you been? This post is totally inspired by Elizabeth (West Coast Elizabeth), from the blog Gossamer Wings. Elizabeth has been doing these fantastic posts every week called Retro Friday wherein she shares photographs and stories from her past. Through these posts, she lets us in to her life. Needless to say, since her first Retro Friday post, I was totally "in". I think that you get to see me, on my blog, but perhaps there are gaps in getting to actually know me. I have no idea if I can do this every week, as Elizabeth so faithfully does, but I can at least begin the sharing process. I am going to see if by sharing some of my memories, you might feel like you know me better. Let me know what you think.

Lets get on with it.

This week I flew up to Minnesota to pick up my oldest daughter from her 28 day canoeing adventure. Upon picking her up, I felt I had many things behind me - mainly my garden adventure of practically digging my way to China and fancying myself a carpenter with our pergola performance, but also my youngest daughter had been "retrieved" from her camp, writers camp at Duke University, which BTW she LOVED.

I finally could turn my attention to me. I began to do so no sooner than we had boarded the plane. I took out my sketchbook and coloring pencils once we were airborne. Being up in a plane has always fascinated me - not the actual being in a plane, as I actually have to struggle with a mental tug of war to deal with the claustrophobia I feel when I am in an airplane, but it is the part of looking out the window from way up there that I love - I consider it my reward for actually succumbing to strapping myself into what is akin, to me, of a flying sardine can.

Despite the fact that I am tall, and my body feels trapped in the window seat vs. the isle seat, I perfer to put myself in the window seat just so that I can press my face up against the window and see what is out there. Looking down at the perfectly gridded farm parcels of Minnesota and Wisconsin made me think about life. In some of those farm houses down there there was fighting going on, some of the housewives were fretting over the weight that they had failed to lose, some of the farmer's machinery and equipment was failing and needed to be repaired, and there were foreclosures at the banks I imagined at the places were all the roads seem to converge and the buildings were more closely clustered together. Life is this way. It comes with upheaval and change. Looking out the airplane window is good for me; it makes me feel like I am part of this human race and that all of my worries and problems are an earthly thing that I share in common with the rest of those walking the earth down there. Being up there, though, also makes my imagination soar. I can detach myself from my problems. Easily.

Once we got higher up, as the farm houses no longer looked like Legos and became just specks dotting the land, and the long roads mere pencil thin lines, the clouds were billowy and fluffy. I started to think about how when I traveled from Chile to the United States, at age twelve, I saw these same clouds out my airplane window, up close and personal. How I wanted to open the plane door and go sit on one of those clouds.

And so, on this trip home, as my eyes went from one cloud to the next, my mind began to wander and wonder. I thought about that trip, with me barely 12, and the little suitcase that had been handed to me by my mother to fill with all my earthly possessions.

It was tiny - more of an "overnight-sleepover" kind of suitcase, despite the fact that its' shape was like a traditional travelers' suitcase (it was the 70's and that shape was typical of suitcases of the time.) Regardless of its' size, the little handheld suitcase was the only thing I was allowed to bring when we moved to this country. I don't remember what I put in it. This was the second time I was going to the US. We had come with my father, the first time, on a scholarship, knowing it would not be permanent. Now, however, the stakes were a little higher. We had no idea what the future held. Chile was in political turmoil and my Dad had been offered, in the US, one of the most coveted of things when a home country is in upside down mode - a well paying job.

Memories are difficult - they adjust to our persona as they go through time. I don't have many pictures of the time to quantify everything that is in my head. My parents have a death grip on the few family photos our family does have. Although those photos haven't seen the light of day since I last visited my parents home a few years back, they probably will remain as I last saw them - stashed in a box on one of the upper shelves of my parents' office closet, shutting out the rest of reality. I sometimes think my parents don't want to let go of the photographs from our past, as a way of ensuring that their own past remains intact and that its' magic retains the viability of someday returning to whom they were in their younger years.

I don't know.

I wish I had those photographs to look at though.

I haven't the faintest memory of what I put in that little suitcase of mine. I know I wasn't able to put in it my favorite story book, Young Years. It was a horrible event, for me, to have to leave my beloved storybook behind. It was given to my younger cousin, Michelle, perhaps they thought that I, at twelve, was getting too old for that book and would have little use for it in my teen years. They couldn't have been more wrong. When, as an adult, I returned to Chile for a short visit and saw it in my aunt's guest bedroom shelves, the tears jumped from my face. I begged my cousin for it, she gladly returned it to me. My book is now home, always with me.

When I finally came back together with my book, on that fateful trip back to Chile, I was instantly transported to a time when all things were possible. The images, both the fully colored ones and the more simple line drawings with their two toned swaths of color washes upon them, made me  - yes they MADE ME.

They made me who I was again. It is almost like as if in my teenage years, in the US, I had been holding my breath and was just going through the motions without really knowing who I was. When this book was finally in my possession, again, was the beginning of me valuing my imagination. Since then I started creating images in my mind and seeing the world differently.

Back to the suitcase.

In my memory, this suitcase, with all its' "wild" seventies shapes and colors of turqouise, acidic yellow, lime green, and blue, was not the suitcase I wanted. I wanted the other one - the one my sister got. It had the same pattern, but it was in different colors. It was red, orange, and purple.

Once I came home the other day, after picking up my daughter in Minnesota, I took out my art supplies again.

My trusty little "grocery store" tin, like a ritual, is always the first thing I open before I begin a new project. 

It holds my kneaded eraser and my favorite pencil sharpener. I like how I can see the "inside of the store" when I open up the tin.

It wasn't long before I started thinking about what it would have been like to rewrite this "little suitcase" memory of my past. What could my suitcase have looked like? What would I have liked to be wearing on that trip? Who was I at age 12?

This is what I came up with:

My fingers fumbled, mirroring my brain, as I tried to draw without something to look at and sketch from.

In a world of make believe you can have things the way you want them. I would have liked to have had a red cape of my own, made out of deep scarlet colored felted wool with pink flowers at the collar,

an orange ribbon or two, trimming a band of the same pink flowers at the hem. Oh ...

and a suitcase that was TO DIE FOR. If you saw me at the airport, deboarding that plane in Miami on that day, you would have wanted to come in for a closer look.

Maybe, after all these years, you would have forgotten me, as you did not ever get to know me. But perhaps, just perhaps, you wouldn't have been able to, in all the years, forgotten my little suitcase. I have drawn it here, again, so that you can take your time and get a good look at it again, instead of briefly, in passing, at an airport held by a girl with no name but with an imagination she wanted and wants to share.

Memories on Monday - maybe this could be a good thing.

Carolina

Tomorrow, As Promised

Here I am, as I promised in yesterday's post. As you know, for the better part of the last 3 weeks I have been outdoors working on creating a garden.

I have been very up close and personal with the flowers I have been planting.

The purple coneflower,

the little pink roses on the low bushes I planted,

and the dahlias, with their incredible burst of color,  have all affected me.

Looking back on the time I spent picking the fabrics for the third shade, well, there was no way I could of gone with anything but these juicy fabrics from my stash.

The only problem with them, as I could forsee, is that they were a bit too garish in comparison with the two shades that were already up and hanging in the dining room. What to do? What to do?

Gratefully, also in my stash of fabrics, was this antique - or rather just plane old or used, tablecloth. I knew, when I bought the tablecloth for a song, that it had these burn markings on it. The tablecloth must have belonged to a family where just about every family member smoked because there were burn marks everywhere. I had to strategically decide which part I was going to use for the lampshade and cut it out so I would dodge the burn marks.

But it did the trick. It softened the bright colors just enough so that it could hang along side the other shades.

Rather than cover the bright colored fabrics with the tablecloth, which in daylight would give the effect of an all beige lampshade,  it worked better to diffuse the light coming from behind instead.

I held it up to a bare bulbed lamp in the studio first, before cutting, to see which way I liked it more. I really like the way the pattern of the tablecloth comes through as a design element on the colored fabrics in addition to their original design. It almost gives a batik look to the non batik fabrics.

I really like the look of that effect.

No matter which direction I am walking from, I like to see the three shades, colorful as they are, in contrast to all the neutral colors in my home.

Just to have the three shades up, my three little ladies, as I am calling them, makes me happy.

During the day, as these photos were taken, it looks lovely ... and at night? Well, it is absolute magic to have the lanterns glowing from within. I feel like inviting all of you over for a party just to see it.

You could arrive in the late afternoon, check out the flowers in the garden, and then come inside. After a bit of chatter we would move on to the outdoor porch with all it's candles lit. From our position sitting in the porch, as the night darkness took over, we could watch the magic of my indoor lanterns take place. It really is such a sight that you should see it in person.

Well, that ends the posting of the the dining room lighting task. Another check mark on my list.

We still have one more thing to discuss, though, the title of yesterday's post, Instructions Needed, But Not Included.

While my husband and I were working from the little photo of the pergola on his iPhone, we thought about just how much easier the whole project would have been had we had instructions and not just a little, tiny image. We worked through all the problems and hiccups, tackling them, one at a time, as they surfaced. I had to do the same thing with my lampshades as I did not have a template, instructions, or even a beginning light fixture to start from. I had to figure out every part of it - how it would attach to the ceiling, how long the electrical cords would be, even the color of them, then the thingamajig that would be where the light bulb got screwed into also had to double as the apparatus to hold the shade. Then I had to find a factory to make the wire frame to my specifications. They could do the outside ring, but not the part that came in contact with the fixture. I had to find a metal smith, bring him the wire lamshade and the fixture and a schemtaic of what I wanted him to reconstruct on the wire shade. Just like the pergola, I was flying solo as they say, without the backup of instructions. It was a lot of head scratching, but in the end I came up with exactly what I was after, not anyone elses lampshade. While I worked in the garden doing manual labor, I thought about all the steps I had needed to learn along the way to accomplish the pergola and also the shades. The more and more I thought about it all, something began to dawn on me that I want to share with you.

My life, like yours, didn't come with any instructions. I am flying solo. It didn't come with any instructions even though there have been many, MANY, times that I wish it had. People try and give you instructions on how to live ypour life, it is called ADVICE. Advice is nice ... but if all you do is follow someone else's advice and never strike out on your own, working through the hiccups as they surface, all you will end up with is a life similar to the one of whom's advice you followed. It is good to hear advice, ponder it, and debate it in your head, but you must come out with your own solution if you are going to be an original - if that is important to you. Is it important to you to be an original? Will it be important when you are 80 to have spent your life striving for that?

It is to me. I got to thinking, while I was out there sweating my *%# off, heaving the maddock at the solid, ungiving earth, that I like to make and take care of. Let me repeat that.

I like to MAKE and TAKE CARE OF.

These are the two things that fulfill me. The only two. They are my very own set of instructions. If I manage to continue to make and take care of things for the rest of my years, I will reach 80 as a true original. And a happy one at that. Who would have "thunk" it, that the process of making, or taking care of something, fulfills me to the max, and that that would have been discovered while I was digging and digging in the yard? I dug all the way to finding my instruction manual. Money is not a driving force. Power can go to others. I need to continuosly be making things and continuosly be taking care of things. Happiness and bliss is mine to be had.

I am sure you can figure out your instruction manual. If not, go dig in the yard. It worked for me.

I love you all.

Until next time,

Carolina

 

 

Instructions Needed, But Not Included

Where were we? Ah, yes, my husband was in the midst of moving all the extra rock, with his tractor, that had been dumped on our driveway while I was slaving away at the solid earth beneath my feet. As I went along, digging and planting, my husband and I discussed building a rose arbor at one end of the garden to give it some height on that side. I said I wanted to grow wisteria ... and let me tell you, folks, that let the flood gates come loose.

Next thing you know, we are have this monster of a truck backing down our driveway ... beeeep, beeeep, beeeep. No little arbor can hold the massive trunk-like vines of wisteria, and I knew that. You need a pergola for wisteria, not a wimpy little arbor. The problem was we investigated the cost of having one made to our specifications and it was upwards of $6000 - that is A LOT of art supplies. We decided to build the pergola ourselves, from an image on my husband's iPhone. If it was to hold wisteria, it was going to need some serious posts to go in. I was afraid that if we dug the posts with a shovel they would not be cylindrical and we would have the equivalent of four solid cement ponds.

Once those 4 holes were dug, we asked our good friend Johnny for pointers. The only part we weren't too clear on was how to insure that it would be square. The railroad ties already in the ground weren't quite square, making everything look "off" that was put along side of it.

And then that was it. My husband and I just looked at each other trying to figure out how we, both without any construction skills, were going to make the image on his iPhone a reality.

We headed to the drawing board. We did a a lot of head scratching. We had a lot of discussions, sometimes over more than one glass of wine, making it so that the next morning our sketches and concepts needed some revision help. We kept at it - charged ahead. I extrapolated every last bit of math that my brain had squirreled away over the years and worked up the drawings to make cutting templates for the pergola ends.

We got down to business. Every day, by 5:30 in the morning, we were out there making our pergola dreams come true. We mixed the cement for the posts with shovels in the wheelbarrow and raced the clock to get all four post holes filled before the cement started to set. My eyes stung from all the sweat dripping down through my eyelashes, but there were was no time to even stop and wipe my brow.

Next came cutting - my job. I knew just how much we had paid for the western red cedar and held my breath on every cut - each piece was accounted for and there was no room for error. Screwing up would have meant needing to order more wood from the hardware store and that could take them a week or two to get some in.

The only break we had was when we took our youngest daughter to her writing camp at Duke University. That was two long eight hour days of driving there and back, but it was a nice break to get to eat in the restaurants at Chapel Hill (North Carolina).

When we returned, it was ladder work time - lots of it, in blistering heat, staining and polyurethane-ing. I did that part, and while I was at it, I let the world know just how good I am at cursing at those darn sweat bees that kept stinging me.

Below is a photo of some of the tools we used. Clamps, jig saw, drill, templates for cutting and a template for marking bolt positions, wrench, a very ingenious wooden contraption made by my husband, and the dreaded level. We held our breath every time we placed that level on a board to check and see if we were on the mark. Oh ... and of course ... the ultimate girl tool - the little pink plastic ruler.

We had ladders, 3 of them, and, of coarse a tape measure. My husband is brilliant, I might add. He created this little wooden contraption to fit over the existing posts and beams that we already had put up so that the next level of crossing boards would go in without any measuring. VOILA!!! I liked THAT! Or rather LOOOOVED that!!!

Now, when I walk down the driveway and see the pergola in the distance, I forget how nervous I was when he was up there on a ladder, with a chain saw, doing his best to level the top of the 8x8 posts and not end up with the ambulance coming up the mountain. I also forget just how much I have shoveled out of the garden and also just how much I have shoveled back in to it.

The wisteria I have planted will grow up those posts. Hopefully, if all goes according to my dreams, there will be plumes of purple flowers draping from all the beams up there as I walk towards the stairs that lead to the back patio.

The back patio needs fieldstones , but we are leaving that for another day when our bank account feels a little healthier. For now I am content with what we have made.

A home. Our home. There were truckloads of soil, rock, mulch, and sod ...

and definately our share of damage was done at Mary's greenhouse.

My back has survived. I won't show you all the photos around the property for I don't want to put you to sleep.

All I know is that I did 100% of the digging other than the 4 pergola posts and I am still walking fairly errect.

I lost salt, sweat, and tears on this project and I have survived more bee stings than I care to count. Below you see my "treehouse" bedroom and the new patio we have made right off my studio door. From now on all my messy projects will be done out there. Those are baby hostas in the mulch - trying their best to survive the 109° heat we had the day I took this photograph when I was out there watering them.

It took a month for this project to get wrapped up, getting out there at 5:30 every morning, dropping off the edge of Blogland, and living with dirt under my finger nails on a permanent basis. But now I can open the gift every time I look out my window, my husband and I have done a really good thing. Now I am free ... other than weeding and watering, I am free to go back to the studio.

Which brings us to the lampshade project.

Here it is, unfinished of course. All those flowers in my garden made it so that I could only think "flowers" on this last shade.

I have actually finished the lamshade since I took this photo. I hung it last night. It looks awesome. So why am I not posting it now? Well, ladies, my husband just went out the door, bathing shorts on, carrying the floats for the lake. It is hot outside, I am going to go and join him. Perhaps I will grab more than just my bathing suit and bring the picnic basket with a few goodies to enjoy. We can toast to eachother. We are feeling like we are quite the team and nothing is in our way of our dreams.

Can you blame me for wanting to join him instead of staying in front of my computer? I promise I will be back tomorrow with the shade photos ... most probably at that time I will also see just how many spelling errors there are in this post. I don't want to waste a precious minute on spellcheck. I am going swimming!

Carolina

PS. I also realize that I never got around to explaining the title on this post, Instructions Needed, But Not Included. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will get to that. The lake is beckoning.

Me, My Mulch, And My Magic

I was going to title this post "Obviously, The House Is Not Vacuumed" because it isn't. It is a filthy upside down disaster. It is the reality I have been living since I last posted. Right as you come in my door, you can't tell the difference between the wood floors and the garden dirt outside. There are trails of work boot prints wherever my husband went and garden clog sole patterns wherever I traveled. At first - the first five days - we took our muddy stuff off at the door. Then one lazy move by "one of us" (if you know what I am saying) and the whole thing went to hell-in-a-hand basket. Now, I am just waiting for the project to be done with before I give a thorough cleaning to the entire house. I haven't stopped for a moment. One of my neighbors, Kim, stopped by and took this picture of me about to take a ride down the mountain to get "another" tool. Don't mind the smirk on my face - it is probably due to the fact that I had been out there, for hours, flinging the maddock since 5:30 in the morning.

They say my builder used "swamp mud" for fill. I kind of have to believe them after all the solid muck I have continued to dig out. Still no toilet seat though. There has been a lot of progress, but we have a couple of more things to finish before you see an "after" photo or two.

Here is a photo, of yours truly, in front of the pile of mulch we had delivered.

As the milk ad says, "Got Milk?", I "Got Mulch", the problem is I am beginning to have serious creeping doubts as to whether or not I "Got Brains". 57 cubic yards of mulch have now been spread. Had I known that my smart idea of redoing the landscaping was going to turn into such a massive undertaking, I probably would have chosen Option B for a plan, whatever that plan may have been. Is it any wonder the vacuum hasn't seen the light of day?

We had brown stones delivered for the driveway. Unfortunately, twice as many as was needed - a slight miscalculation by someone other than us. It felt like we were driving in quicksand until my husband skimmed half the rocks off with his tractor.

So what do you do if you have mini mountains of leftover rocks and you have left muddy work boot prints all over the house?

You build your lovely wife a trail.

A trail to the blackberries she discovered.

They are still ripening. I managed to find a few that were super sweet. Every time I hear the birds singing, which is all day long in these parts, I think they might be laughing at me as I lug the wheelbarrow to and fro and trip on the watering hose or by mistake step on the metal pick end of the maddock and get spanked by it's opposing end. All the while those birds are keeping a vigilant eye on the blackberry status.

Somehow or another I managed to squeeze in some time to teach three of my friends how to make asian dumplings. It was a sweet break that made me feel like a real girl again.

I did motherly things as well, like take my oldest daughter to camp in Minnesota. She will be spending a month canoeing the Boundry Waters, an area that encompasses over a million square acres of wilderness between Northern Minnesota and Canada without a road, telephone, or electrical line in site. All you will find there are over 1000 lakes and streams that are totally pristine and connected by over 1500 miles of canoe routes.

Before I left to take her there, I forced myself to finish the second lampshade.

It was a difficult goal to meet as I had decided, early on, to crochet all the edges of the flowers. The other side of the lampshade has 2 smaller half flowers, also with all the petals crocheted. I like the way the crocheted edges look at night with the light shining from behind.

It felt good to get the second one done.

There is one left to go for above the dining room table. Try as I might, I was hopelessly unsuccessful at removing all of the stiffener out of the "old" lampshade. I must have washed it 8 or 9 times - and that was after letting it soak for several days. It would stiffen up (in a drooping shape) as it dried. I finally washed it one last time and then proceeded to cut into it while it was still wet. This was hard for me to do; afterall, I still clearly remember the hours and hours it had taken me to put it together in the first place. I knew that after that first snip with the scissors, I had commited. Everything was set in motion, I knew at that very moment that I would not be able to rest until I found a solution to returning all those bits and pieces into lampshade form.

Because each piece, individually, was still stiff, I knew that there was no putting it all back together. I came up with the solution of putting the very same pieces on a completely different backing, one that not only would act as an anchor physically, but also visually. 

I am so happy with the result. It stood out as completely different than the ones above the dining room table and therefor could not be hung along side them. It is now hanging above the stairwell that leads to the lower floor of our home that has the family room and my studio. Now everytime I go to the studio, I envision this special shade "raining" creativity upon my head. Sounds kinda "out there", I know, but I'll take it.

The play of the lively colors with the delicate crocheted edges snipped haphazordly, here and there, against the natural fabric with it's noticable warp and weft struck the ultimate cord with me.

Especially at night.

Can you see it's reflection in the window?

When it was finally up, and lit at night, I stood there transfixed. Totally in awe. Not of my handwork, no. I was in awe of the light. It made me feel like I was in a kaleidescope.

I have decided to make more of them, with this very same neutral background fabric to hang from the rafters in my living room. Granted, it is going to take me forever,

but for this kind of magic I can put in the forever hours. I have always wanted to feel what it was like to create real magic. This is my magic.

Until next time,

Carolina

Breaking My Back And Breaking The Rules

Hi there. Did you think I have been having difficulty with the shade and that is why you haven't heard from me? Although I have encountered a few hiccups that made me do and undo parts of the shade, I finished the shade several days ago.

 

It took less time to finish the actual shade than it took to get the ladder out to put it up there. Do you ever get caught with a project whereby you have done the hardest part and yet one more little hiccup, like bringing the ladder up from the basement, stops the entire event from reaching it's culmination? You would think I would be so excited, once I finished it, to see it up and hanging, illuminated in all it's glory. Not so. It happens that way sometimes. I finish the bulk of a project and I am on to the next.

This time, the next project has been my garden ... well, "g-a-r-d-e-n" is kind of a big word for what I have so far. Two days ago I had this:

Pathetic as my planting bed may seem, this is the photo AFTER I spent several days on it.  I have been walking around like an old lady with severe hunchback because of it. The soil that is there is an amalgam of construction debris and poor quality fill. I have dug up all kinds of things that were probably tossed off the house from different vantage points, flung from scaffolding or the roof, during the construction process and now lay in this house-parts graveyard that I am calling my garden. I remember there were lots of delays around the time we installed the five toilets - most of them went in, but without seats so they would stay pristine until the build-out was complete. When, nearing the end of the project, we finally turned our attention to putting actual toilet seats on the toilets, only four of them could be located. One had gone MIA. I personally searched everywhere for the missing toilet seat. Now, as I dug up this bed with my maddock, I wondered every time I flung it into the soil and it was met by a hard surface, if I had actual finally made contact with toilet seat #5. No such luck.

One day ago, my husband and I went poking about Mary's Greenhouse. It is a very dangerous place to go when back home your planting bed is as sparse as mine. How dangerous, you may ask? Fifty greenhouses, yes 50 greenhouses dangerous. That kind of danger sparks double, and even triple, trips up and down the mountain with the back of the pick up truck totally maxed out.

Now, this garden bed has become my ball and chain. I have a long way to go to reach completion.

It exhausts me just to think about it, but I have been chipping away at it. When it is closer to looking like a real garden, I will rephotograph it and show you what madness 50 greenhouses can do to a person.

The meals around here have been ... mmm, lets say "sufficient". We had a Memorial Day weekend full of get-togethers with friends, and even had unexpected, but very welcomed, out of town guests come for dinner and stay last night. All this has made the progress on the second lampshade quite a bit less feverish than the first, but I have been working on it.

I had this beautiful blue batik in my stash that I could resist no longer.

But if I paired it with another batik, which would have looked cool, it would not have gone well next to the other lampshade in the dining room. The three shades are all in a line so they have to look good together. I have heard  a rule at the quilting store that I know makes sense - put batiks with other batiks, otherwise something about it looks "off". Granted I can see when that rule applies - and for good reason. It just wasn't enough reason for me not to do it in this next lampshade. Florals and batiks are a no-no according to some fantastic quilters I have met.

These are the fabrics in the next shade:

We are just going to have to pretend I never heard them. I can take breaking a rule once I fully understand the rule. My friend, Reed Arvin, says that "Expertise means that we know the rules of a domain so well they've become unconscious. Once we reach this point, we're free; the rules serve us." I fully agree, and I am continuously working towards this in all aspects of my life, and although I am not claiming that I have a full command of anything, especially what fabrics go with what other fabrics, I do know the MOST IMPORTANT rule. That one is simply stated like this:

 

FOLLOW YOUR GUT INSTINCT

 

That is what I am doing with this shade because when it comes to projects like this - ones loaded with twists and turns and a myriad of different options, one can get bogged down in the rules and you can end up quagmired without any F'n lampshade at all - and that is not my goal. I might fail. Sure. But that is the risk I am willing to take. The only real risk is TIME, you know, and I have coddled that long enough. I could sit here, in my studio picking this fabric and that fabric, changing my mind a million times over, believing that in just pinballing myself from one fabric to another and spending time in the studio I am actually being creative when in fact I am not actually creating anything, I could do that in hopes of ending up with the ultimate combination of fabrics for the world's most awesome shade, but I am not there yet. I am not at that point. I am at the point whereby I need to stay focused on more doing (not doing more, there is a distinct difference if you think about it). You can look at it another way: the NEXT shade, combination of fabrics, painting, etc. (insert your "next" here) is the best one because it still exists only as a possibility. In that frame of thinking, well, sweet cheeks, the world is your oyster ... obviously those things that sit in our imagination, only, are engulfed in absolute perfection. The ones that attempt an escape from imagination into our reality are the ones you really have to look up to - those are the ones you had the guts enough to bring to life. Those are the ones that are trying to out-run failure, those are the ones that are knee deep in problem solving shit (excuse my language), but those that are "THIS one" and not "the NEXT one", are the ones I am charging after. Those are the ones that are the steed, I am the knight, if you will, and the rule to follow my gut instinct is my jousting lance. Are you creating the right mental image? If I fail, my armour has to be tough enough to protect me so that I may live to try again.

For heaven's sake, you might be saying to your self, all this from a choice of fabric for a simple little lampshade? Well, it is what is in my head and this is where it chose to come out. Do with it what you will. Break the rules, follow the rules. Those are choices for all of us. The only thing I don't think we really have any choice in, if we are to have any chance of succeeding in our goals, is to follow your gut instinct. Are you with me on this?

 

Carolina

My Mistakes Are All Mine

Each of the members of our family had things to do today so I had the luxury of the house to myself for a bit. I spent it all in the studio. I can't remember the last time that happened, so I shoved my to-do list aside and made a sincere attempt at some progress on the shade I talked about yesterday.

Cutting the doily was scary ... all those loose threads... open and exposed. Yikes! Like my pouring my guts out on the blog; there is serious concern that the whole darn thing will become unraveled and one will permanently reside in the Land of No Return.

My mind was still happily full, from all the creativity that rushed in yesterday, as I tackled the knitty gritty of the project and got down to business. Getting down to business is always the difficult part. While I worked, I enjoyed hearing the "Ping!" of my computer with all of your emails coming in. I tried to answer most of them (I still owe you one Susan, a long one), it was good to have them coming in - they gave me food for thought while I worked on the project. Melissa had also posted about "process" and she and I volleyed the emails a bit this morning.

I had left her a comment regarding the process and how Charles Eames (of Ray & Charles Eames) viewed it. I am paraphrasing but essentially he said "that he spends 1% of his time coming up with a new, creative idea, and the other 99% of the time making sure the product stays true to that original idea. I think that is how it went, perhaps he said it more like he "spent the other 99% of the time chasing the idea and not letting it get away." He was talking about the non creative part of everything Ray and him made as being mostly responsible for the object coming before our eyes." Coming up with the idea is always the fun part.

I thought about this while I pinned my doily to the fabrics so I could sew it into place.

Things didn't go so well. The doily must not have been that "antique" because it had some give to it, almost like as if there was lycra in it. After a couple of hours work, I had a nice wobbly mess.

The mess was an obvious mistake. I had no intention of spending the better part of the day with my least favorite tool in my arsenal: the  bloody seam ripper.

As I worked, I remembered something I had read in the book Art & Fear. It said: "... vision is always ahead of execution, knowledge of materials is your contact with reality, and uncertainty is a virtue." I think I have got the "vision" part and the "uncertainty" part figured out (although the uncertainty part always fools me, perhaps I'll talk about this next time we meet here). What is for sure, and written in stone, is that I have a ways to go on the "knowledge of materials" part, no matter the medium. The mistakes are all mine, if I had found the answers as to what to do and what not to do in this situation, well of course I would have attempted to avoid my blunders. But where do you look for answers to solve mistakes when you haven't even an inkling that you are going to make them in the first place? Mistakes are a given when your knowledge of your materials is flimsy, at best.

I worked through the problem, trying out several options to find one that worked.

So I made mistakes. Big ones. Lots of them. But had I not made them I wouldn't have what I have today. I worked on the process and now I have progress. Or rather, Progress, with a capital "P".

I will continue on this quest for knowledge and realize that my path to succeeding in the realization of my visions is paved with mistakes. My mistakes. For that is where my growth will come from.

Carolina

From Warped To Right

Life has been so warped lately, it is time to get back to normal. School is FINALLY done with and so is my wacko driving schedule. Did you hear me hootin' & hollerin'?

Today I set about making things right again. I want to get back to being me again and doing my creative stuff. It was either that or have a total meltdown. Last night, just before falling asleep, I promised myself that today I would get back to my art. I started off, today, like the good little procrastinator that I am, and cleaned the house top to bottom. Just to vacuum and wash the floor takes me about 4 hours. Mental note to self : "next house, make it small, really small." ... "and make the studio big, REALLY BIG." By the time I was done with the cleaning, the Ellis family needed a feeding, of course. I "threw" down a meal and made a bee line to the studio. If there was even the slightest delay, something might have gotten in my way and I would never be here, in the studio. Let me show you what I have been doing:

I walked around and around the studio in circles. Not quite sure where to begin. I figure I may as well begin by fixing problems.

Remember this?

As I tested different bulbs, going up in wattage, it started to warp.

At first it wasn't too bad, but when I got to 100 watts, the shape of the shade seemed to have a life of it's own. When the light was off it would harden nicely, but as soon as you turned on the heat, well sugar, it was a sad sight indeed. I thought my eyes were tricking me - I would turn around for just a minute or so and when I looked back up at it I could swear it was a different shape.

The entire history of this shade seems to mirror my own life. Well ... all of it needs attention. This amount of warpage, whether in my shade or in my life, simply won't do.

This is were we are at now:

I just gave the shade a major bath. I am cleaning up my act as well. I want to get back to my projects, and I figure that the worst lampshade I can make is the one that never gets done and sits there in a pathetic heap of fabrics. The ugliest painting I can paint is the blank canvas. The worst sketchbook I can work out my drawings on is the one that never gets cracked open. Right? I will discuss this topic, of doing vs. not doing art work, as I putter along on my projects in the upcoming weeks.

Back to fixing problems.

Enter Meliisa P., I won a giveaway on her blog. She has a new website to go with all the fame that is coming her way now that she is hanging with the big dogs of the fabric and quilting world. A note to you - she has loads of free patterns and project how-to's on her website.

This is what I won:

Crazy awesomeness or what? Thank you Melissa!!!

So what am I waiting for I thought? Lets fix that lighting problem. While the old one was drying I pulled out a few of my fabrics that always seem too precious to cut into.

I found a beautiful antique crocheted doily that I can't bare to get rid of just because it has a hole in it.

Added it to a few fabrics I thought might go with Melissa's gifted ones:

And while the old shade is drip drying in the sink, I have started to work on an all new shade.

That is as far as I got today. I figured I would spend the rest of my studio time, while I still had the energy, writing this quick post. Let me add here, that even the simplest of little posts, like this one, takes a long time to do. It is no small feat and I am high fiving myself for still HAVING a blog and still hanging in there, writing to you. I hope you liked what I shared with you today. I will be back sooner rather than later because I am going to try a new blogging tactic. I have had this feeling that I needed to show you only my finished projects. Ridiculous. I had to go back to the beginning, when I wrote my "ABOUT page" and see what my "mission statement" was. If I wait to show you only the finished products, then it is like Kindergarten "Show & Tell" time. This makes it longer between posts. Since I don't make money from my blog, I need to be clear what I use it for. I am here to share my process of how I go about progressing as a creative person and get closer to that mission statement. I need to focus on process, not the products I make, for the "product" is me, the creative me. Staying focused on showing you the process will take me "from warped to right."

I want to be a "Creative". EVERYDAY. That is all. This, this blog, is where you can see the steps I take along that never ending path.

See you soon. Real soon.

Carolina

 

PS. my husband, who can screen share our computers, just called me from the other room saying his "stomach is warping and it needs to go from "warped to right" and he is wondering if my mission statement has any mention of what is for dinner." That is my life, ladies!

Gentlemen, DON'T DO IT

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

Now a note for the guys out there:

Dear gentlemen,

Don't do it. Don't give your lovely wife a new vacuum cleaner on Mother's Day ...

 

unless you absolutely know, 100%, that your wife can see the true goodness in your heart and she adores you ...

like I adore my husband.

100%

 

Carolina

 

You Have To Go

I am grateful that you all have been so patient regarding my post of the last big trip I took. I put it on my blog, I'll Take The Scenic Route. I think the post of my epic trip really belongs on that blog, and not here on the Muse.

Sorry to make you click on the link, but I think it will be worth your while to do so.

Thanks for checking in,

Carolina

A House For My Banana Bread

Just a quick post today with a thought I had.

I made our Banana & Oatmeal loaf over the weekend because the temperature had dropped and it just felt like the thing to do. Our recipe has rolled oats in it, making it a bit more dense and a little less "banana-ee". It is a bit drier than what I normally find in bakeries, and we like that about this recipe. Everybody in our house, though, likes it a bit differently. Some like it with walnuts, some without, and I happen to like it with walnuts and a layer of cranberries on top.

Either way you like it, all the loaves disappear within a couple of days. My girls take it to school as an after school snack, my husband eats it after dinner while watching TV, and I ... well ... lets just say it is a good thing I have my own loaf.

When I take a piece to the studio, I do it up right and serve it on my favorite tray.

I really like this tray because of the image on it - totally not the way my actual house is but soooo totally easy to imagine myself living in it and eating my banana bread in it, sitting by a cozy fire while looking out at the ocean beyond my window.

The house is typical of houses on Martha's Vineyard Island, were my folks live. I know these next sentences are going to sound horrible, but I have to share it. Somewhere in my brain there is a place where "what if total doom happened, then I would..." kind of thoughts reside. Well if there was such a day, when reality as I know it ceased, then I would move myself into a place like this - cedar shingled, with a dutch door to open so that the ocean breezes could make the curtains billow, tiny, completely able to be cleaned in a morning, with overflowing flower boxes, electric blue hydrangeas at the front, rambling roses everywhere, good books stacked to the rafters, and a large table, with all my painting, sewing, and knitting supplies, abutting the windows that face the ocean. As I worked on my projects I could watch the ferry taking tourists back and forth to the mainland in summer, and us islanders to "the United States" in winter. The kitchen would be just big enough to make a few scrumptious treats including this banana bread recipe. I would eek out a living on the island with a little store called "Sweater Weather". The sign for the store wood be outlined in gold. Beneath it would be a second sign that would read "a place for wool and a cup of tea". Perhaps the store would be in town, or perhaps it would be adjacent to my little home. I don't know, for sure, but it is nice having a little place in my brain for that dream. I blame having that little space in my brain, where I squirrel away these kind of visions, squarely on my upbringing in the 70s. Back then, you see, we had the Sear's Wishbook, a catalog of Christmas gift ideas put out by Sears. We used to get everything from Sears back then - from our washing machine to my red plaid bell-bottom Toughskin jeans. Even our fake Christmas tree came from Sears. I remember how dog-eared the catalog would be by the time Christmas finally arrived. On Christmas day, we would rush to open our presents, forgetting all those things we had wished for and so very appreciative for whatever we got. Still. Dog-earing the pages with the country styled guitars and the pogo sticks created a pastime for me that I still depend on for relief. Hence the little vision of this house for the banana bread. 

Back to reality and my version of banana bread:

Can you see the recipe well enough? The collection of watercolored recipes is growing.

Hope so.

Carolina

I feel like I may as well right it out for you. I wrote the recipe out on the watercolor paper, the same way as here, with the exact order I do my steps and with the minimum amount of utensils. It erks me when recipe writers tell you you need to spray a pan almost at the end of a recipe, blend dry ingredients first in separate bowls, then get another bowl out like you have the time to wash them all. I know my girls (& myself), if we are going to cook, we are going to do it the easiest way possible and that is why I wrote the recipe in this order. 

Banana & Oatmeal Bread

• Preheat oven to 350°F  (180°C)
• Coat 4 small loaf pans (4"x8") with cooking spray
• In medium size mixing bowl, use fork to:

                -mash 4 large,old bananas

                -mix in 4 eggs

                -add 2/3 cup buttermilk

                -1/2 cup vegetable oil (canola)

                - 2 tsp. vanilla extract

• Stir well to combine with spoon or spatula then add

              - 3 cups all purpose flour

               -1 cup sugar

               -3 tsp. baking powder

               -1/2 tsp. baking soda

               - 1/2 tsp. salt

• Combine well, then add:

                -1 1/2 cup regular rolled oats

Divide into loaf pans and bake at 350° for 40 minutes

• to loaf pans getting walnuts, mix walnuts into batter before filling pans
• top with frozen cranberries, if desired, after loaf pans are filled then bake the same way :
• 350°F (180°C) for 40 minutes
• check for "doneness" with a baking straw

Good luck with it. I think you will like it.

 

 

Connecting The Dots

I finally stopped yesterday and I took a break. I know I have been gone from the blog scene for ever and a day. I appreciate seeing my inbox full with all your emails wondering if some tornado or health issue has ripped apart my life. Not so. However it did feel like all hell was breaking loose for a full, solid month.

Yesterday morning I was in Chattanooga a bit too early to get my food shopping done; I know not to show up first thing at the market before the produce folks have fully stocked their bins. So I stopped to have a cappuccino.

I had it at the Mean Mug, a coffee house in the heart of Chattanooga,close to the station with the Chattanooga choo-choo that we all have grown up hearing about in that song (for a blast from the past, click on that link). That part of town has that undercurrent type of artistic pulse that you can feel in your soul. The shops are tucked in, here and there, down streets that could use a repaving. They are a little hard to find, but once you do, you know you have found a gem. It is a little like antique store hunting. Once you find those gems, they get permanently ingrained in your memory. I seem to have an internal GPS for places like this.

The pubs and restaurants seem to have an uncanny ability to find chalkboard artists that really payed attention in penmanship class.

The decor is always a bit offbeat, not quite polished - almost as if on purpose...

just unpolished enough so that you feel like you have something in common with it. You; your body, your personality, your history - all of it, not quite perfect, not quite polished, but honest, creative and good to the core, both in principle and in action.

It was there that I decided to finally take a break. With me, I had my latest book purchase, The Forest Unseen, A Year's Watch In Nature. It is a book written by a professor of biology of his discoveries watching a very small patch of earth in the mountains, here, not far from my home in Tennessee. Look for it on the link, under "Outdoors", if you like Walden Pond by Thoreau, you will like this book. It is a modern day version that will make you look differently at your own slice of the world.

It was a good place (and time) to stop and connect the dots. I have been going ... and going... like crazy since I got back from my second trip. I know you are saying, "What trip?". I went out of the country, again, I had so much to share and so many photos to cull through that it all became overwhelming. I just couldn't get it together enough to blog. Life took over, on over drive, and things just fast forwarded until right now. When I stopped to look at the past few weeks, it was a long list that I had been swamped with.

For the most part, the long list consisted of all things motherly. A highlight was seeing my oldest, Nica, in a couple of performances.

The "low" light, and I mean to say VERY low light, had to do with all the pollen we have been cloaked in. This little bit is from a 15 square foot area in the porch.Two days after having swept it all clean, I had to do it all over again.

My youngest, Laela, is now on allergy shots.

What that means is that instead of five hours of daily driving, I am now, twice a week, doing seven so that she can get shots at an allergy specialist. I am looking at it from the perspective of seven hours of driving vs. my precious daughter breathing. It is an easy choice, though a very exhausting task. You know that I will be shouting for joy when the school year ends in May.

All this brings me to the thing I want to tell you most. Beauty is everywhere I look, even on days when I am bogged down with a heavy handed "must-do" list for the day. I can look back on my days by connecting the dots in terms of things I accomplished - like an endless checklist of dots that connect like a never ending "DNA twist", or I can can take a different tack. I want that "DNA twist" to give me life, not rob me of it. So rather than the dots being tasks that were accomplished, I want those dots to represent connections I made with other people. Privately, I will be keeping a "connect-the-dots list" of connections I have made with people. You, for example.

I want the common thread to be beauty. Beauty like these blossoms of the Mountain Laurel all over the mountain, opening now in it's own time, on the second and third weeks of May, in a cycle of it's own.

I am going to keep a log of how and when I have connected, and with whom, when the beauty factor was present and also was the overriding factor to notice. After a while, I hope I can look back and connect the dots, of beauty, if you will, and see if it is a better assessment of my life - a more true one, one with more lasting power.

So where do you come in? Ideally I would have all of you blogging, but I know that is a lot to wish for. If you have been on the fence about starting a blog, go for it, just post things to do with beauty until your own voice bubbles to the surface. Blogging is a way, though, that I can see the beauty you have to share. Some of you see my blog on Facebook, although I "get it", Facebook is hard to keep up with. I miss one day, and I may have missed your "beauty moment." If you have something beautiful to share, let me know in the "Comments" section at the end of my posts whenever you feel like it. If you want me to link it in to a post so others can see, I will do that. If you want to keep it just between us - no problem, I can see it via email. Either way, this life is a pretty difficult one, and recording the moments of beauty is well worth my time. Hope you feel like sharing with me.

Below is a quick video I shot while on my hike on Thursday. Some of you might think it is not that exciting, but I think there is beauty in it for you to see and hear.

Hoping to fill my "Beauty Book",

your friend,

Carolina

   

 

Taking A Cue From Mother Nature

I finally finished all of the stitches on the Blue Skies top. It is the rosebud stitch, but reminds me more of leaves on a vine. I am glad I have finished it.

I have been out hiking around my mountain ... "getting my feet wet" and thinking about going back to tackle what I started on the other blog. My ankle is not perfect, but with Spring here, I am chomping at the bit to get out and do some long hikes. I have been having breakfast out on my local, shorter hikes, here on the mountain.

You can't imagine how absolutely content I am to stop for a bite of breakfast out on a hike and peel my oranges listening to and looking at this:

  

Lately, Mother Nature seems to be on a roll. It is hard to walk more than ten feet at a time without having to pull out my camera and attempt to capture the beauty she has placed before my eyes.

If you enlarge that picture you will see all the bees that were collecting nectar while I was there. It gave me immense pleasure to stick my head in amongst the blossoms to shoot this picture and have all the bees buzzing around my head but way too busy to take notice of me.

There was even a butterfly.

Looking up at the sky filled my heart with hope. How can this be sooo beautiful?

I made it back to the house, inspired, and attempted to make a collar for a jacket that reflected what I had just seen.

OK, so it needs some work. Both the embroidery of the flowers and the free-motion quilting could use more practice. The point is that I got inspired by Mother Nature, took her cue, and went home and did something about it. It felt good to not think and just do.

On one of my hikes I also saw this, future leaves I believe:

The colors inspired me to try this:

I goofed on the flower pattern - it is supposed to have a total of six petals. At the point of taking the picture, I realized I was going on my seventh petal. I wanted this project to be well on it's way for next week, but it is simply not going to happen.

Mother Nature has been making an appearance all over the state. I love it.

I haven't photographed even a tiny fraction of the trees in bloom, but seeing them has been enough to propel me to work on inventing my own flowers.

I was accused, the other day, of not living in reality - of living a fantasy existence. I didn't respond to them as they were cloaked in bitterness. I have sadness and stress in my life too - EVERY day, but I push with all my might against it and choose to focus on the beauty this life is offering me. Let me reword that - it is not so much that I focus on the beauty around me and dismiss the intensity of the stress and sadness, but rather I put myself forth as a vehicle for the beauty that mother nature provides me. I guess the best way to explain it is that I try my hardest to re-express it, all of it: the color, the peace, the awe in it all.

If you are going to take a cue from something outside yourself ... don't you think that Mother Nature is like the top-dog of all cue providers?

?

I will remain in someone else's fantasy existence because it is my reality.

I have made it so.

Carolina

 

Ultra Lazy And Ultra Local

I am lazy, I like to buy "local", and I like to eat really good bread. That is a perfect combination if you live in the city. As you know, I live in the boonies - and it really feels like the boonies if you are in my town looking for a good espresso or a good loaf of bread.

I now buy my bread in one of the two cities that I am living in between. When I drive the hour and 20 minutes to the city I make sure I have my huge cooler with me. It is a 150 quart cooler and it can hold 248 cans of coke with ice (just in case). I pack it with ice packs before I leave the house, that way anything I buy will still be cold whenever I get home, even if it is eight, or even, ten, hours since I left my house. When I am in the city, I run all my errands and then swing by the grocery stores and "fill 'er up". I can often be found swooning in their produce department. I swear I feel healthier just from standing in there next to all the bins overflowing with fresh fruits and vegetables. It is really too bad, though, that I don't come out any thinner. If that could happen, I probably would be driving down to their produce department on a daily basis.

If I have been smart and planned my errand route well, right before I get to the market, I will swing by the arts district, and make a pit stop at the museum. A few minutes in there and my brain will be filled with enough visual stimulation to get me through the long drive home. I must admit, though, part of the reason I go to the arts district is to stop by the Bluff View Bakery. This is where I get real bread:

After making sure I have an adequate amount of baguettes and ciabattas, I make sure to add to my purchase their "healthy" bread. Figuring out their recipe is next on my list to conquer.

 

When I finally get home from my shopping it is a mad dash to put the refrigerated groceries into the fridge and make a decent meal. I often feel like I have a plethora of ingredients when I have finally made it home, but just about enough energy to pour myself a glass of wine and put my feet up. It takes EVERYTHING I have got to finish up with dinner and go onto the task of slicing all the bread up and storing it in the freezer before it has had a chance to start getting stale. City girls don't have to worry about that. It is what I must do to have bread in the house. Life, though, does get in the way, sometimes making it difficult to get down to the city exactly at the time we have run out of bread in the house.

That is when I make my own bread, TBOG (The Bread Of Gods):

 

I dare say ... it is even better than the "city bread". Way better.

It is not my recipe; I use Jim Lahey's basic bread recipe from his book, My Bread. You need to get it if you want to feel like your are "chillin' with the Gods". That is how you will feel when you eat the bread you will bake from the recipes in this book.

 I have to add an extra 1/2 cup of water to my dough and give it a whole teaspoon of yeast (it may be the altitude), but either way, his recipe is as straightforward as it gets:

I use regular King Arthur bread flour because that is what my local market carries. Whatever I can get here, in my town, from flour to toilet paper, I do. Any funky, out of the ordinary flours I still have to get in the city. Here is a little tip, if you are starting to amass a variety of flours and have a hard time remembering which kind is in which bin:

I cut a piece of the bag the flour came in, obviously the part with the bag brand name and type, and leave it in the bin so that at a glance, I can see what is in which bin. I do this even with small bags of specialty flours that I keep in the storage room fridge.

On with the recipe. You don't need your brain, here, but what you do need is to begin this process the day before you want to actually eat it. That is the hardest part to remember - start it the day before. Take the ingredients listed in the photo of the recipe, above, and put it all in a container. Mix it with a spoon, I use a plastic spoon as it is easier to clean than using my hands. Note that the recipe calls for cool water, and that you don't have to proof the yeast first. Just put all the ingredients into a container that is not made of metal and stir it up.  The dough will look super wet. The whole process: measuring, stiring, & washing your spoon when you are done, shouldn't take longer than five minutes. Cover it with a tea towel and let the dough sit on the counter overnight. I let mine sit for around 18 hours, I make it in the morning and bake it the next day in the afternoon. After that long rest period you should be able to see little pockets of air like this:

Don't fret if the top looks like it is aquiring a slight crust; that will all take care of itself. When you tilt the bin, you should see long gluey strands of dough:

I use a dough scraper to get the dough out of the bin and on to my counter, you can use your hands or a spoon. Regardless of how you get the dough out of the bin, you want to see those strands:

 

These strands are the developed gluten.

Place the glob of dough on a floured surface. It should still look really wet:

Be gentle here, you don't want to undo 18 patient hours of gluten development. You don't want to kneed the dough, just scoop the undersides of the dough to the top of the dough almost folding it on itself, then flip the entire dough, gently, onto a WELL floured linen towel seam side down. Use a lint free towel, like linen, so you don't end up with bits of terry cloth attaching to the dough. If you have used enough flour on the towel, the wet dough won't stick to it when you go turning the dough out into the pot. Any extra flour that remains on the dough can be tapped off after it is done baking and cooling.

Sprinkle a bit more flour on top of the mass of dough and fold the towel over it all to cover it while it sits another couple of hours.

A half hour before this last rise ends, turn your oven on to bake at 475° F. At the same time you turn the oven on, put your dutch oven in there with the lid flipped upside down. The flipping of the lid and the placing of the pot (and lid) in the oven to come to temperature is so that the vessel will be as hot as possible when the dough goes in there. This will give it a beautiful crust.

A note about the pot: you don't have to have an expensive one, my husband has a condition whereby he cannot get rid of iron in his system and therefore we have to do our best not to use cast iron when cooking. Walmart sells a great cast iron dutch oven, at a fraction of the cost, that will give you equally fantastic results with this recipe.

Add flour (my preferance) or cornmeal to the extremely hot pot and place the dough in the pot by kind of rolling it from the towel, letting it land in the pot seam side up. Cover the pot and let it bake for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake another 15 to 30 more minutes until it looks irresistable but not burnt. I use these wooden spatulas to remove it out of the hot pot, only because I happened to have them in my kitchen. Use whatever you have other than your hands - this is REALLY HOT. Let it cool on a rack. If you quiet yourself down (this IS exciting), you will hear a crackling sound. This crackling, or singing as bakers call it, is evidence of the final phase of baking which occurs outside of the oven. The temperature of the inside of the loaf is equalizing itself with the temperature on the crust. Let it cool completely. If you don't, the interior will remain a dense, wet mass. Let the steam escape through the cracks in the crust, that is what is making the crackling sound, and be patient. You will be hanging out with the Gods soon.

My bread looks a little different each time I bake. Adding the extra water as made the biggest difference (see photo below) in how it looks. I can not emphasize, here, enough, that if you plan on having dinner at the same time this bread is just about cooled, you had better have the table set and dinner served, otherwise you will all just gather around the loaf and tear at it like vultures. That is what we do. Who wants to make dinner after you have just feasted on The Bread of Gods?

So yes, I am ultra lazy. I buy bread when I am near my favorite bakery in the city. I make bread when we have run out of it at home. I make the EASIEST bread on earth because I am super lazy. I have to say, though, making my own bread is ULTRA good, and now that I think of it, ULTRA local.

If you make it, I think you will agree that it was ULTRA good of me to post this recipe.

Good luck with it,

Carolina

A Little Black Magic And Three Wooden Spoons

Sunday, a lazy day, sometimes needs a little black magic - the kind of magic that turns average days into wonderful memories. I have been perfecting my bread making skills using the cookbook, My Bread, by Jim Lahey.

The hardest part of making his bread is remembering to start the dough a day ahead. After that, it really is like magic. Find the link to the book here and look in the "In The Kitchen" section page 3. If there is any real interest from you guys on how to make it, let me know and I will post the recipe.

I pulled out my bit of little black magic - my Emile Henry dutch oven, flipped the lid upside down and stuck it in the oven to come to temperature with the rest of the oven.

Once up to temp., I added the dough and let the magic begin. About an hour later, I pulled this out.

Good bread does not, on it's own, make lazy day Sunday memories. For that you need to add a little something more.

Perhaps some greek olives, a few cheeses, a delicious apple wood smoked salami, and a game of Canoe.

Good, but can we do better?

How about testing out three new bottles of olive oil?

That's better.

I poured a little of each bottle into three separate bowls. I had taped a bit of Scotch tape under each bowl, and labeled them #1, #2, and #3 - and poured according to which bottle the olive oil came from: the least expensive, the middle range expensive, and the OMG-can't-believe-I-am-forking-out-this-much-$$$-for-olive-oil expensive.

The wooden spoons are necessary so that all you taste is olive oil - no metal in your mouth. This was going to be a blind taste test, but to make it completely unbiased, we wanted a third opinion ... hence the third spoon.

And the third glass of wine.  We invited our good friend, Rhett, to come over to "help" us out.

After the olive oil winner was unanimously declared, we continued on by dunking the bread in the olive oil and consuming everything I had put out. Unfortunately, for my wallet, it was a hands down, across the board, no brainer win for Olio Santo - the most expensive one of the lot.

So here is the recipe for lazy Sunday memory making:

Good bread

Good olive oil

Good wine

Good outdoor fire

and a great friend.

In my mind, that is a pretty good recipe.

Until next time,

Carolina

 

Blue Skies Are A Work In Progress

Not everything in life is perfect - nothing new in that statement, you already know that ultimate truth of life. Last night we had a ridiculous amount of tornadoes in our part of Tennessee. Thank goodness for the safety of our all-cement storage room, we spent more time in it last night than ever before. While we were in there, I got to thinking that I need to stock up on important tornado stuff and keep it in there- like m&m's. Many towns this morning are waking up to the horror and destruction that mother nature created last night. Our town is one of the lucky ones. I find it odd just how beautiful things look after a  vicious storm has passed. The air is so calm and peaceful, your senses have a heightened sense of perception, and there is the morning-after blue sky that almost tricks you into believing that the storm you just went through, is a figment of your imagination.

Blue skies, like everything else in life, are a work in progress. I made it home from my family reunion, in Chile, and had to deal with a plethora of dark grey sky issues- the black sheep of the family kind of issues. Seeing my 150 closest relatives was awesome. Seeing my brother and sister whom I have a highly dysfunctional relationship with, was not. I came home and it took me about three whole days for the grey sky issues to finally break. I have, thankfully, extreme clarity now that my own viscious storm has passed. I also have a fully enveloping sense of calmness and peace. Enough said. Regardless, nothing in life is better than waking up in your own bed.

Or coming home to find out that Natalie Chanin had sent me a copy of her brand new book, Alabama Studio + Design (if you click on this link, you will also see her other books there.)

I had seen on my computer, before I left that she had sent it out, but it had not arrived before I needed to leave for the airport. I was so desperate for the book, I even looked into the UPS driver's drop off schedule - my top-of-the-mountain location was slated for the end of the day. I had to leave for Chile without it. I new that the directions and pattern for making this top was in it:

I did the next best thing right before I left; I cut the blue jersey fabric that I had tie-dyed a few months ago, and threw it into my carry on with a needle and thread.

The top, obviously is not the same, the neckline and seams are different. I did my best aboard my delta flight to attach the bottom of the top in a gathered way with the stretch rose-bud stitch that Natalie shows in all of her books. To try and sew on an airplane, without bothering the rest of the paying customers, is a trick. At first, you feel like you don't know, on your fabric pieces, just like when you are in the midst of a storm, family or weather realted, which way is up or down, right or wrong. It takes a lot longer to get the project going when you don't have the space you need.

You just have to persevere. I am not done with it. I have yet to finish the arm holes or the bottom hem. Every little handmade stitch takes a long time, but that is OK, the end is in sight, I can see clearly now what I have left to do.

Traveling, in real life or through life, is never as easy as you imagined it was going to be, but if you keep at it you will find yourself above the clouds, no storms in sight, with an absolutely glorious view stretching out before you without end.

I am really excited about what lies ahead. Hope you join me for it.

Carolina

A Very Different View

I haven't quite figured out this new Typepad App on my iPhone. Supposedly I should be able to create a post from anywhere on my phone. So far it doesn't let me post a photo, talk a bit, then post another photo. You just might be getting them all in a clump. maybe it will teach me to just get on with it an not be so verbose.

24 hours ago, I was in the US. The flight down on Delta wasn't "bad", I just kept thinking that it was the most expensive one night stay ($700 to fly down here one way) that I had had in a long time ... all night long I played Twister with this flimsy little blanket and simply could not find a comfortable place to lay my head against without causing my Bose noise canceling head phones to literally flip off my cranium. Really. There must be a better way.
I rented an apartment smack dab in the middle of the arts district in Santiago- it has an edgy vibe ... you know ... the kind of vibe that is cool to watch but you wouldn't want your kids going out for a walk to experience it without you.

After finding my way, on my swollen-from-the-all-night-flight feet, to a place where I could exchange my one colored American money for gorgeous multicolored, clear window toting, Chilean currency, I bought a prepaid phone (cheaper than $4 per minute roaming on my iPhone) and set out to find some real food. I found this great little cafe where I downed a 10" tall glass of freshly made raspberry juice. It was worth the flight.
Oooh... Just realized my one letter at a time typing, here, has made me late. One of my drop dead gorgeous cousins is picking me up for drinks in 20 minutes and I am no where near presentable. I hope wherever we go to have drinks provides a drool bucket- he is THAT gorgeous. Daniela - do you remember Rodrigo? I will make sure to give him an extra kiss from you. Aren't I considerate?

Hoping this post actually gets to you. I will see you again soon if it all works out.

All the way from Chile,

Carolina

Three Dresses To Say Hello And Goodbye With

To say that I am more than a bit embarrassed to have to do a mini "fashion shoot" for you is an understatement. I really want to share with you some of what I have been doing, but when I see the pictures of myself on the screen, "yuck!" is the only thing that comes to mind. Having said that, I have been making clothing for myself for an upcoming family reunion to celebrate my parents 50th wedding anniversary.

Here is a pic of the first dress:

I didn't have a pattern for the dress, but it is pretty straight forward. I just drew the outfit I had in mind on an index card, made the pattern pieces out on the only drawing paper I was willing to waste, cut the fabric out, and turned the sewing machine on. I was so disappointed in the blue & grey outfit from the last post, that I figured I had nothing to lose by just winging it instead of following a professional pattern.

I actually did go through the trouble of making a muslin before cutting into Anna Maria Horner's beautiful fabric. I made an adjustment in length to the distance between my underarm and the neckline, and omitted the band above the knees, otherwise it stayed pretty true to the sketch. When I have more time, I may fine tune this.

My favorite detail of the dress is the beads I put at the end of the ties that gather the neckline closed.

Since I had everything out on the ping pong table, already, I threw down this Liberty of London fabric that has been lurking in my stash for what seems like FOREVER and I made my self a shorter version of the same dress.

I think I should of kept the "cut line" several inches above the knee (as I did in the pink & yellow dress) instead of right at the knee. I have made a note on the pattern that I need to keep the cut farther up next time I use this pattern. BTW, does anyone know where, online, I can actually purchase long lengths of paper for pattern drafting that is thick and durable. Elizabeth, what do you use? Can you ask your fashion designer daughter what she uses? Or at least what she used to use here, in the U.S., before she became a big shot and moved to London?

My favorite detail of this dress is the actual back of the fabric; I made the dress with the fabric inside out as the right side, although gorgeous, seemed too sharp for what I wanted. The reverse side of it seemed a little softer, perhaps a little more time worn.

The last of the outfits I am showing you today I got off an existing outfit that I already own and have worn out. I put the outfit out on the ping pong tablle, measured the skirt part all out a million times over, and did nothing more than trace the top on the centerline fold. As it is a simply designed outfit, I could get away with doing this easily.

Although, originally the outfit is in a linen that is a dark mushroom tone, you can see part of it in this post, I made it in this acidic yellow colored fabric that I could not get enough of when I saw it at the fabric store the other day.

When measuring out the fabric for the skirt, in case you try it, you have to remember to make the front panel longer than the back panel to accomodate for the pockets (the pockets fold up at the casing for the elastic at the bottom edge of the skirt)). You can see the actual measurements on my index card, above. I really like leaving the ties dangling rather than tying them up into little bows.

Why did I make the dresses? The stores I can drive to have only just begun to have their summer clothing trickle in. I have little time to spend the day searching endlessly for the outfits that can handle the extreme hot weather I will be facing as the reunion is in Chile. I am going by myself, leaving my husband and children behind, and am more than a little bit anxious as to how it will all play out - I am the black sheep of my immediate family. I have lived a VERY independent life. The older relatives are people that I haven't seen in many years, and as they are getting much older, I realize that I will be saying hello to them and a permanent goodbye almost in the same breath. Living in different continents makes it have to be that way. I almost feel like I will be witnessing the mass end of my family. I don't want to get into the details of it all, as it depresses me greatly.

Well, I am off. I will see you on the other end of it, having had three new dresses to say hello and goodbye with.

Carolina

The Week In A Photo Blast

Most of my week was spent being a mother and a housewife. My husband was away on business, but the house still needed me. Yes, I am wife to the house, I believe I am married to the house. Early morning sunrises were seen from the window of my car.

Most of my drives were spent arguing with the newest licensed driver in our household. She has her license, and she is doing the actual driving, but I am just not ready to let her do the driving all on her own yet. I am praying and hoping the day comes soon when maturity takes a solid hold in her.

I spent my swearing quota for the year on this Butterick pattern. It says "Fast & Easy" ... they lied.

I am not to happy with the results, but I did photograph myself in it so you could see what I mean.

I was attempting to figure out how I can sew clothing for myself with all the bright colored fabrics out there and yet look ... mmm... not fruity or like I am wearing a quilt. I have a ways to go, but will continue working on the concept of wearing bright colors and having neutrals play a role in them.

I talked at length with my tree guy. His wife is dying of cancer.  Seeing him up there on one of my trees this week made me think about heaven. 

It was a very sad week overall as one of my dearest friends is also dealing with a difficult cancer.

I bought myself flowers to lift my spirits.

I must say, even though they are expensive to buy and not very "green" when you know they are being shipped from thousands of miles away, they do help.

Having the colors in the house propelled me to forget my Butterick disappointment and create my own pattern. I made a couple of dresses from it. I will try and photograph myself in them soon.

When the flowers started dying, I started thinking about just how short our lives really are and that there is beauty in all of it ... every step of the way.

I went out and did what any sane person would do. I bought more flowers.

It made cleaning the house an easier task. I must add here, cleaning my girls bathroom (below) made me question my parenting abilities. My little "ladies" are a bit more on the "piglet" side when it comes to bathrooms.

I put a few flowers in my bathroom too. We had the bamboo sinks crack and they needed to be replaced. Think internet purchases, delivery, plumbers ... "fun,fun"... NOT. When it is grey outside and there are flowers between our sinks, I don't dwell on the bamboo sink fiasco as much.

Melissa has been blogging on steroids lately, all her colorful projects made a quick side trip to Sew Be It in Georgia and the ensuing purchase inevitable.

Back and forth, back and forth to school.

Thinking, contemplating.

Realizing that with all the suffering there is in this world, it still is a beautiful place to be.

Hope you enjoyed seeing my week in photos.

See you next time,

Carolina

Lemon Dreams

 

 

 

 

 

The Last Drop of Lemon Syrup

OK, so what to do with the leftover syrup from making candied lemon peel from the last post is on the agenda for today. Below you see the jar I had leftover after making the batch the other day. I happened to have a little bit more in another jar, as well, I just didn't photograph that bit in this picture. There are many things you can use the lemon syrup for: lemon drop martinis, simple syrup for margaritas, a sweetener for your cup of tea, add water and lemon juice ice cubes to make lemonade, add it to yogurt, drizzle it over fresh fruit, etc., but I am going to show you what I did with it.

After your first time making the candied lemon peel your syrup will look like this:

A pale lemon yellow color, reminiscent (to me) of the color of Lemoncello, the spirit made from mixing vodka with lemon zest. I have yet to try making my own, and I am sure it is easy to do, I just haven't gotten around to it since I only occasionally will drink a glass of wine, I find it to be extra work to make some liquor thing - and who needs extra work? I must add here, though, if I DID make it , and it was AWESOME, perhaps I wouldn't consider it extra work at all. Will have to see what time brings to that issue. Anyways, my point is that it is a very light lemon color. If you take a batch of lemons (California Meyer being the first choice), thinly slice them and put them to boil in the lemon syrup,

leave them in the boiling syrup for 10-15 minutes until the rinds are really soft,

and then store the left over syrup from that batch of cooking. The next time you go to use it, you will see that your lemon syrup will now be a deep golden, almost honey colored hue:

I actually was able to make two batches of the lemon slices with the leftovers of the initial sryup. The slices don't have to boil as long as lemon peel because you are not looking for the "chew" consistency to be the same. You want it softer. Leave the syrupy lemon slices to dry directly on parchment paper. After just a few hours on the counter, long enough so they are nice and cooled, you can stick them in a jar to use later. I would keep that jar in the fridge, just in case. WARNING  WARNING: if you eat ONE slice now, you may not have any slices left for any further cooking adventures. This happened on my first batch of lemon slices. After just one try, the girls and I ate ALL of them. We had to wait for another day to buy more lemons and continue with the dessert plan.

The leftover syrup from the third time using it (lemon peels, then two batches of lemon slices) turned this beautiful amber color. It is hard to believe, isn't it? None of the pictures in this post have been Photoshopped so you can get an exact feeling of what things were looking like in my kitchen. Talk about mesmerising. Of course, by the third go around, my jar size had gotten considerably smaller as most of the sugar syrup stayed on the lemon slices. Also, I must add here, the third jar of syrup is not as sugary sweet as the first jar because it has been made with the pith on the lemon. I actually liked it more, it had a sweetness with bitter undertones to it. I thought about making grown up lollipops with this third jar, but the syrup didn't last that long in our house.

 

Get ready. The next photo is the stuff my lemon dreams are made of.

 

Lemon Ricotta Cake coated with lemon syrup (I skewered holes into the cake layer when it came out of the oven and drizzled, and redrizzled, lemon syrup all over it. I then, delicately placed the soft syrupy lemon slices over the cake. Being so soft, the lemon slices were not a problem to cut through with a small sharp knife. My husband, whom I do love, wasn't keen on eating whole lemon slices, he is kind of funny that way. Oh well, we have a fix for that. When trying out this ricotta cake thing I doubled the recipe so I could try it two different ways. He got his own separate little cake.

I must say that even though I still prefer the one with the lemon slices, both visually and for eating, I gave his a try and ... yes ... it too qualifies as a lemon dream.

 Hope you get to make some lemon dreams of your own.

Carolina 

Lots of Lemon Love

It is citrus season in California. That means it is time to make candied lemon peel in my house.

Even though I live in the boonies, I can hop in the car and "find me" some perfect meyer lemons this time of year. I don't buy just 2 or 3 lemons. I buy loads of them.

The first thing I do, after recuperating from my drive to get them is I admire them, smell them, pierce their golden skins with my thumb nail and find myself lost in the intoxicating aroma. It is better than a kiss.

Then I get to work.

I wash them with luke warm water, rubbing the lemons as I go, making sure each one is nice and clean. While I am at it, I wash all of the ice cube trays that I keep in the storage pantry. Since I have an automatic ice maker in my fridge, I don't use these that often. A quick rinse is called for in case a little dust has collected.

Next, I cut them in half

... again I take in their aroma. I used to have a prolific meyer lemon tree in my garden when I lived in Florida. The sweet scent it gave off was totally magical, but the flavor was simply not as pronounced as these little meyer lemons that we get from California. I am envious of all those with California residency. On occasion, in the hire end markets I travel to, I will find equally good meyer lemons from New Zealand, yum. This year I even saw a batch come from Chile. When California, though, goes into citrus mode, we have a plethora available to us and I fill the produce bags with as many as I can afford.

Next up, I juice them.

I pour all the juice into the ice cube trays and put them in the freezer. When they are all frozen I pop out the cubes into a bag that I keep in the freezer. When I am cooking or need lemon juice for lemonade, I just grab from that bag. When we lived on the boat, I had to prepare lemons like this because there were areas that didn't have good lemons, or any lemons at all for that matter. We used to have a locker type freezer under the bunk in the pilot house. Whenever the weather was bad, and we both had to be on watch, one of us would catnap on that bunk. Every time I lay on that bunk, I used to think of the treasure trove of goodies that were in the freezer beneath me. Let's get on with it.

When you juice the lemons, juice them "hard", meaning go as far as you can towards the peel. The less of the white stuff, the sweeter your candied lemon peel will turn out.

Next. Put the peels in a big pot of cold water and bring the whole thing to a boil. Once it is boiling, turn your heat source down to a simmer, you want to simmer the lemon peel (or any other citrus peel) until it is nice and tender ... gushy almost ... to were you can easily pierce the peel with the tip of a sharp knife.

Once your lemon peels have reached that stage, drain them in a colander and run them under cool water. Once they are cool enough to handle take a spoon and scrape out any of the white pith that remains and has come loose from the peel.

You will have a lot of pith scooped out by the time you are done with all the lemon peels. I am always surprised by how much comes out. Don't worry if your lemon peel begins to tear, or even if it tears completely. It will all be good in the end.

Once you have scooped them all, cut the lemon peels into strips. How long, and how wide, is irrelevant. Put them in a pot with a two to one ratio of sugar to water. For all these lemons I used 4 cups of sugar, to 2 cups of water. Bring it all to a boil on medium heat.

Once the peel starts to look see-through, raise the heat to high, making the sugar syrup reach 230°, also called thread stage (when you pull the spoon from the pot, it creates a thread that doesn't fall off the spoon.) I don't get too hung up on the actual temperature, but I put this photo in for those of you who HAVE to be precise. Basically, what you want to see is a whole lot of bubbling going on.

Once you get the sugar to that stage, it means the sugar will adhere to the little pieces of lemon peel and give it a nice "chew". Use a slotted spoon to remove them from the hot sugar and place them on a cooling rack that is placed over a piece of parchment paper. The paper will catch the drips so it doesn't make a huge mess on your counter. When I do a huge batch, I place the parchment (and rack) on a cookie sheet (tray), that way I can move all the trays around my kitchen, making room for more trays, or making room to make the next meal that my family needs.

They might stick together as they cool. Don't fret. Mine always do. I just pick them apart once they have cooled down.

Once they cool you have a decision to make.

Gently toss them in a bowl of sugar or not. Supposedly this helps keep the little pieces from sticking to each other. I think the extra sugar is over-kill.

 

Place the sugar syrup you have left into a mason jar. Keep it in the fridge. This post is getting a little photo heavy, but on my next post I will show you what to do with that syrup. Stay tuned.

Ok - I gotta go get the girls from school. One last photo before I go.

Trust me, these are well worth the effort.

Carolina

 

Three Paintings From The Past

We have had a patch of rough weather - tornadoes, driving rain, and the unit that heats my studio and the rest of the bottom floor has gone on the blink. I had done everything in my power to insure that Sunday would be a sewing day. I had cleaned the house, top to bottom, on Thursday, I had gotten all the food shopping and errands done on Friday, I had a cooking marathon all day Saturday so that there would be plenty of leftovers, and all in all I was ready for my sewing jaunt on Sunday. Now I am sitting in my studio writing this, I am dressed like I belong inside Dr. Zhivago's house. I am waiting for the little portable heater to heat up the room, every possible light bulb is on, and we have put in a call to the heating people. I thought I would share some color with you today since I so enjoyed my Sunday morning spent perusing your blogs. Below you see three paintings I have in my "stash". 

This is one of my daughter, Nica May, the egg shaped rock above her head was a recurrent them in a series I once did. The theme was based on issues of being born, or rather reborn, into who you will become. The painting (30" by 40") sits on one of the shelves now of my studio. I like to see it every time I leave the studio.

 

 

Next up is a three piece painting ( it is about 8 feet tall) on motherhood. I often feel that as a mother and artist, if I may be so bold to call myself that, you are split, physically, mentally, and emotionally, but you must still walk forward towards the light. You feel like your creative self (represented by the bowl) never gets filled and is in a permanent state of being empty. 

 

FInally I am showing you a painting of the tea accoutrement and my pencil box that I used to keep in my studio when my studio was not located in my home. I loved this little painting (24" by 20" if I remember right.) Somebody bought it and gave it as a gift to a friend who was dying of cancer. The friend died a month later and I wondered if the painting ended up in a garage sale some where. I take solace in the fact the painting was most probably one of the last gifts they got to open in their lives, hopefully it brought a little smile to them.

 

All this cooking and driving I have been doing makes me miss painting. Of course, I can't just blame it on the cooking and driving. Maybe one of these days I will burst and go back to painting. For now there is a sewing project waiting to be tackled. I am going to go sew.

Have a good Sunday.

Carolina

Learning To Eat, Starting With Breakfast

Late last night I started reading a new book called Women, Food, and God. I also finished it. 

I found out about it during my recent bout with the-cold-from-hell and was forced to never ending days of bed rest and internet hopping via my iPad. Last night, while I was reading the book, I kept underlining sentences that jumped out at me, when it got to the point that I had more than 5 sentences underlined, I started listing the pages that I need to go back to and reread.

Things were getting out of hand. I put my pen down and devoured the rest of the book. Now I am here telling you about it. In a nutshell it is a book for all people who struggle with eating issues. Some suffer with bulimia, others with anorexia. I suffer from neither. Some folks diet hop from one ridiculous encarcerating diet to another making bird food look like a gourmet feast. That is not me either - too much suffering going on there. Some eat without stopping, completely out of control. Not me. So why was this book so awesome for me if I have none of those food issues? I fall into the "and-then-some" category, if there is such a category. I eat, out of pleasure and nutrition, fantastic, healthy food ... and then some. The "and-then-some" has gotten me into trouble so much so that I see that there needs to be a change because it is taking a toll on more than just my continuosly upclimbing size in Levi's. Who am I kidding. I don't even wear Levi's anymore, thank the Lord for Chicos. My problem is that I eat even when I am not hungry. I eat out of boredom (my days aren't my own anymore as I have become a human taxi), frustration (remember I am the parent of two teenage girls), desperation (the economy did a number on us that we are still trying to recover from), lack of a consistent schedule (like most parents driving their children from here to kingdom come with their varied activities), desperation (I feel woefully underutilized in my current mind-numbing role), and I also eat because I have a serious case of "I-just-spent-two-hours-cooking-a-massive-healthy-meal-for-my-entire-family-and-it-is-dinner-time-and-that-is-what-you-are-supposed-to-do: eat-it, plus my blog is about food. Wow. Craziness. It is obvious that all the food that goes in and can be listed on the "and-then-some" side has zero to do with hunger, or rather with hunger for food.

Deep breath. Having begun my other blog, getting an injury and not following through, has me feeling like a loser. You can not imagine how much I have been beating myself up over this. The extra ten lbs. I have gained since my last post there, is solid (my fat is solid at room temperature) proof that I turn to food to sooth whatever ails me ... and I must say my lack of coming through on that blog is definetly ailing me. How to juggle writing about food here, on The Muse of The Day, dealing with not hitting the mark in other areas of my life, and in general the nearing onslaught of menopause and what that means to my weight, has kept me from writing anything near resembling your standard New Year's blog post. Don't feel sorry for me. I don't need sympathy. I need to figure my way out of this damn hole. And so in comes this book, Women, Food, and God. I feel a great sense of relief, now that I can see the path.

Deep breath number two. And so I begin, again, with the brain fog beginning to clear. I know now what I have to do and how to go about it. I won't go into the details of the how-to that are in the book. Suffice it to say, if you need it, the path, buy the book. Read it. Those of you who don't need the help can focus on the second part of this post: a recipe for breakfast granola.

My original post was going to be about Heidi Swanson, of the blog 101 Cookbooks. It wasn't until I started tackling her second book, Super Natural Everyday, that it dawned on me that her cooking is vegetarian. I don't know why it never occured to me. I guess I just didn't miss it, the meat stuff I mean. Her food is good. Really good. Basic and simple. 

I recently made her granola. Like all her recipes, it turned out just the way she said it would.

I tweaked the ingredients a bit by using a variety of dried fruits and I skipped the salt. Not a big enough difference to say I reinvented the recipe, and besides - it's granola. Granola has been around for a long time, there are plenty of recipes out there that are nothing more than variations on the theme.

What I like about Heidi's recipe is that it is not too sweet. Although I have a healthy sweet tooth, I don't want all that sugar in my breakfast. Yuck. Not first thing in the morning.

The recipe makes enough for me to have 2 weeks of breakfast and share a bit too with the rest of the family, although the girls prefer something else.

The thing I like about granola, is actually the fresh fruit I put on top. Try as I may to "go local" I can't resist the blueberries coming from Chile this time of year, or the strawberries that Florida is sending our way.

Granola is not the only thing I like for breakfast, but I liked it enough to paint a recipe card out of it. I tried to make it visually easy to "see" the recipe, so I wouldn't have to "read" the recipe, but rather, at a glance could see what I needed to do with the ingredients. I actually prefer having my recipes on these cards instead of being written out to then n'th degree of precision.

So, I will be here, trucking along, thanking the heavens for aligning the stars for me so that can I relearn how to eat.

Loving all of you,

Carolina

Did She Really Say "Let Them Eat Cake"?

If you read my last post about the special drink, I urge you to try it. It really does taste refreshing and nothing like what you would imagine those ingredients to taste like. Yesterday, somehow or another, for 45 minutes I actually managed to feel a bit better. I mustered up the stamina to make my girls an after school snack - a cream cake in my new Bundt cake pan I received from my mother for Christmas (thanks Mami). As head chef in this household, I must try everything first. When it was out of the oven and "somewhat" cooled, I sat down with a slice of it and a cup of tea.

 

It amazes me how something so simple can taste so satisfying. Being that it used the special Nordic Ware Bundt cake pan , and everything went in all at once and came out looking ready to be eaten, no frosting involved, the whole thing was a snap to make - good thing because I didn't have much energy to begin with.

 

Although I am sharing with you my "cake making event", what I really want you to know about involves the link below. I have never (OK maybe not "never", but at least in the last ten years) have been sick for this long. Frankly, it is really boring being sick. I am used to doing so much in a day that to just sit there and do nothing was driving me crazy. Regular TV seemed pointless and annoying. I somehow, in my ipad hopping found out about this british food show that, in a very funny way, combines food and history. This show,The Supersizers, goes through, and the hosts eat their way through, different periods of history with the main emphasis being on the unique foods, mannerisms, and traditions related to food, that the people of the era ate. I started with the Shakespearean (Elizabethan) era and have been working my way to more current times. I must tell you that I am fascinated by this program series. If you are sick, in bed, with the flu, it is a must see if you are in a foodie mood. Below is the link for the one about Maria Antoinette.

 

After being home-schooled for most of their lives, my girls finally experienced the sensation of having to go back to school after Christmas break. Neither one of them was that thrilled to go back, even though they love their school. Their vacation simply wasn't long enough. I remember that feeling. I hated going back too. I tried to make it better for them by having this cake ready to great them when they came through the door. It felt good to just do a "Mommy" kind of thing.

Here is the recipe for the cream cake. I hope you can click on it and see it big enough on your screen if you are going to try and make the cake. If you have difficulty seeing it well enough, let me know.

In the midst of writing this post I felt a rush to "paint" the recipe and add it to my watercolor recipe box.

Ok. Now I am exhausted and I am going back to bed.

Carolina

 

Mama Needs A Drink

Although 2011 was a good year, I have to say I am glad it is over. This post will be super brief as I am dealing with the worst case of the flu I have ever had. I have been dragging around now for 4 days, with a box of tissues under my arm. I feel lousy. I had hoped to start the year off with a big post on New Year's resolutions and all ... but it just ain't gonna happen. I am sick as a dog.

I made myself this drink in hopes of feeling better. The ingredients go in the blender in the following order:

grapes, 1/2 banana, 1/2 green apple, handful of kale, handful of wheat grass, small handful of watercress, 2 teaspoons Agave, large handful of Spinach, slice of lime (peel & all), a cup of frozen pineapple, a cup of ice.

I am not sure why, but it tastes really good.

I should have this regularly.

I hope none of you get this flu.

Happy New Year.

I miss you.

Carolina