The Muse of The Day

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

In The Beginning, There Was Garlic

I can say with quite certainty that if I ever were to write a food bible, I would begin it just like any other foodie would ... with the words: "In the beginning, there was garlic". I suppose if I had to name one ingredient that I could not live without, it really would have to be salt. Salt, alone, though would not be enough to "float my boat". There would have to be garlic involved.

Whenever I am shopping in the city, the smell of garlic cooking can make me stop dead in my tracks to scan the horizon for the source of the heavenly scent. I love it when garlic heads are roasted whole and I insert one of my wooden pallet knives and the garlic is buttery soft. Roasted garlic on a good baguette equals happiness to me.

Lately, in an attempt to really get down to the nitty gritty of kitchen basics, I have been trying out a few new cookbooks.

The above book, How To Roast A Lamb, is one of seven new cookbooks I recently listed on "My Favorite Books" link. They are all fantastic resources if you are learning how to cook, or if, like me, you are starting all over even though you have been cooking for years. I cannot recommend them enough. This book, How To Roast A Lamb,  is filled with recipes that are Greek in origin. I have been trying several of the recipes in this cookbook and have had great success. As I get better at them, I will share them, here, on The Muse.

Lets get on with it. In this book, there is a recipe for garlic confit. "Confit" is a method of preparing food that preserves the food by cooking and flavoring it while it is submerged in a liquid. When most people talk about "confit", they are talking about duck confit (confit de canard). The leg meat from a duck is cooked (and also stored) in the rendered fat of a duck. I haven't tried it - yet. I do hear plenty of people rave about it, though. Those people must not be eating in my town. Lucky buggers. You can "confit" just about any meat - rabbit, chicken, veal, guinea fowl, and woodcock, but more commonly you will see confit of goose, pork, and turkey. For centuries confit specialty zones have been a part of the French landscape. Someday, when it is my time to go on a confit-mecca, I will go to France. I'll rent a tiny Renault like this one:

I can envision myself zipping along the back country roads of the Basque and Béarn regions of France, tasting a cassoulet here, and a cassoulet there, getting my confit fill. Today, I am sharing with you a simple, basic preparation of garlic confit - a must for you to have in your fridge. Cooking with garlic can be tricky. Because garlic has much less water than onions do (60% vs. 90%) and a much higher concentration of sugar (fructose), the chances of you burning it are much greater. There are two things that can make garlic taste bitter - one, the most obvious offender, is if you burn it. Once you burn garlic, you have to throw it out and start all over again. When cooking onions and garlic together, you will fair better if you hold off on the garlic until the onions have cooked long enough to become translucent. The other offender, not as obvious but consistently able to ruin garlics' flavor, is that little, bright green sprout lurking inside of each garlic clove.When the garlic is not super fresh, the little green sprout starts to grow inside and when left in your cooking can impart a bitterness that seems to linger on the toungue. Pick out the little sprout with the tip of a sharp knife. Although it is not as pretty to slice (lengthwise) a garlic clove in half when you really would like to see all perfectly plump, whole cloves in your confit, I belong to the group of people where flavor trumps beauty. So as far as my thoughts on what to do about that sprout : have no doubts, take it out.

To begin then: get yourself as many garlic heads as you think you have the stamina to peel. Peeling the garlic is the only "hard" part of this, and the difficulty lies not in the skills but rather in the fact that peeling that many garlic cloves is simply annoying. You must focus on the prize. Peel them all now, and you will reap the rewards for weeks. Trust me. 

My friend, Cathy, has one of those silicone garlic peelers to help speed up the process of peeling all that garlic. She swears by it. I must try that gadget. In the meantime, I found that cupping my hands around 5-10 cloves at a time and rubbing vigouresly back and forth for a bit rendered the skins from the bulbs (actually a leaf, but those are semantics, here.) To remove the raw garlic smell from your hands you can place them under running water and move your hands along a stainless steal knife, rubbing the surface will remove the odor. I am more than a bit of a clutz, therefore, I must take the necessary precautions in order to avoid going through an entire box of Hello Kitty bandaids too quickly, and I use this little gadget:

At eight bucks, it is a great stocking stuffer for the chef on your Christmas list, and does the trick of neutralizing the odors in an instant. Although I followed the recipe as far as amount of garlic (3 cups) and amount of oil (enough to cover the cloves), I did not add the thyme, bay leaf, or peppercorns the recipe called for. I wanted the garlic cloves to stay "neutral" enough so that I could "push" the flavor I wanted in the final dish. If I only was going to prepare Greek food with it, then by all means I would have added the other ingredients the recipe called for. I put the garlic cloves in my dutch oven. You can get a very inexpensive one that works great, I just had to buy mine because one of us, in the family, can not intake iron. They both work equally well for a variety of tasks. I make my bread in it, I cook whole stews in it, you really can't go wrong adding a dutch oven to your kitchen. Just make sure it is big enough so you aren't doing all the work for itty bitty amounts of food. If your current budget only allows for the purchase of oil and garlic, then you must put whatever oven proof pan you have into the oven and cover it with tin foil while it bakes.

To the garlic cloves add oil, that is half olive oil, and half canola oil, to cover the cloves. Place the lid on the dutch oven. Put the whole pot in a preheated (300°F) oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Take it out of the oven and let it cool. Put the cloves and the garlic into a clean jar and place in the refrigerator until ready for use. It will keep for 3 weeks as long as the cloves remain covered with oil.

What to do with it :

• mix a few cloves and a Tblsp. or so of the garlic oil with mayo for an instant aoili.
• mix it instead with goat cheese and chopped sundried tomatoes in oil. Spread on toast (bruschetta).
• Use instead of plain olive oil in salads.
• place a few of the cloves, as is, on pizza before it goes into the oven.
• mash a few cloves and add it to a creamy soup.
• in a blender, combine 10 cloves with 3 Tblsp. canned chipotle chilis in adobo sauce, chopped cilantro (small handful), a little salt, and the zest of a lime. Put THAT on your burger or in your taco. 

The important thing, here, is that now, in your fridge, you have a jar of "help". The more you get used to grabbing for your garlic confit, the more uses for it that you will find.

Remember that this is not the same as the preserved "fresh" garlic you see in grocery stores. When you use that garlic you have to cook it after you take it out of the jar. They sell that stuff so that you can skipp the step of peeling your garlic.

A note of caution: if you were to take a bunch of raw garlic cloves, cover them with oil and forgo the process of cooking, you are dramtically increasing your chances of ingesting the deadly botulism bacteria that thrives in the absence of air. The only way around it is to do like the factories do - bathe the garlic in acid for several hours first before placing the cloves in the oil. That is why the store bought stuff tastes "off" even after you cook it. Do like I did, here, and cook it with the oil, and then store it in the fridge. You will get all the soft, comforting, nutty flavor that comes from roasting them, and by cooking it in oil you get two products that you can use, the oil, and the cloves. As I said, it will keep for three weeks. Mine has been in there for a week. I don't think I will make it to three weeks before we run out. Next time I will peel even more garlic.

I know that, at this time of year, most people are busy making cookies to give as gifts. I think a jar of garlic confit would be quite the gift to recieve. I know that I am in love with it.

I would love to see a picture of your jar of heavenly garlic confit in your fridge. Good luck with it.

Carolina

Believing In The Difference A Day Makes

Below is a photo of the Christmas ornaments that do NOT go on our family tree. Every time I see them all together, like this, I get this magical feeling of anticipation inside of me.

These ornaments go on my pink Christmas tree in the studio. In the studio I have total say so of what I want, so I have a very pink, and very different, Christmas tree for this space.

I have lots of favorite ornaments that hang along the white "feathery" rings. 

The colors are scrumptious and bright. Some of the ornaments remind me of events, like this one with the tree being transported on the top of the car like we bring our tree home:

But most of the ornaments on the studio tree are about the magic that is all around us on a regular basis.

 There is only one ornament with a word on it.

And "BELIEVE" is what I want to talk about today.

Day before yesterday, in the afternoon, we had our first "real" snowfall of the season.

It struck me just how different things appeared in the very same places I see every day. From one day to the next, a change had occurred - a real, palpable, obvious-to-everyone kind of change. It was almost as if winter just "suddenly" showed up, when actually I know that isn't so. I have been watching the light of day get shorter and shorter since the day after summer solstice, and have commented many times on daily changes, shifting position of the sun, and speed of the impending winter. Yesterday I had to go for a hike in the snow.

As I hiked I thought about how to share what is on my mind in regards to your comments a couple of posts back. To be fair to all of you, I had to get to the core of figuring out what it is that motivates me and why it seems like I am hopping from one path to another. I have come to realize that I am not motivated by money, and even less so by fame. These two things don't get me to move on anything. So what is it that actually makes me get up and take action?

In one word : Knowledge. If I could do two words, then it would be Knowledge & Curiosity. I am as curious as to why only one side of the Mekong eats with chopsticks as I am about how a sleeve goes on a dress, or how to paint a spoon or a face. Have you ever stopped to think about what really motivates you to do stuff? I'm not talking about handling your responsibilities, here, we all take care of our responsibilities because they are just that: ours. The question we need to ask ourselves, and be brutally honest about, is what motivates us? Once I figured that out, I could see why I was hopping all over the place. Had it been money, I would have stuck to one thing until the money started rolling in.

Back in June, I did a post on food & the Mekong River. I didn't get a whole lot of response to that post, but it struck a deep cord with me. I  have been wanting to delve into other people's kitchens. Not just your kitchen, but kitchens around the world. Hence why I started the  I'll Take The Scenic Route blog - to get into shape enough to be able to travel in remote locations and find out what people are eating where and how they prepare their food. My ankle misbehaved badly and put a serious dent in my progress.

How does this all tie into the word "Believe?" Well, I have 4 and a half more years to go before my youngest is done with school. Most of the time I feel like the day will never come when I can get to go on those adventures. I have a hard time "believing" it is actually going to happen, but that is exactly what I must do. Believe. After uncovering what motivates me, and reviewing my ridiculously busy schedule, I have created a plan. I am going to go on an all-out-learn-everything-I-can mode so that I am ready for my adventure when the day arrives. Although you still will see me knitting & sewing, I am going to let my focus be on learning about food. Many of you, who actually have been to my home, think I already know how to cook, but I am going to dive in deeper and really learn the what & why behind the magic of cooking. I need to be able to really know my stuff, so that when I am "out there" in areas where I don't speak the specific language of the country I am in, I will at least understand the language of cooking, and understand it well. I want to also keep learning how to paint. I enjoy it immensly, but have decades to go on it. I would like to see if I can focus the painting and drawing on the food I am learning to prepare. Having two different blogs gets tricky for me. I am not sure which one I should write on so that we "keep it all together". Any input on how to do that would be helpful. My main focus then, at the moment, is to learn everything I can about the kitchen and keep working towards that change. Every single day needs to nod towards that change. My biggest hurdle to overcome is to learn to BELIEVE that little by little, one daily layer upon the next, that change will come and not only will it be obvious and palpable to everyone, but it will be also obvious to me. I will don on my backpack and set foot on my adventure one day. I want to look back on today and think "that was my solstice day", the day I started to BELIEVE in the difference a day makes.

Until next time,

Carolina

 

Do Not Reinvent The Wheel When Pressed For Time

With Thanksgiving behind me, I can breath a little easier. We had different guests stay with us for a total of 15 days. I was really happy with the way Thanksgiving turned out. My favorite moment of the meal was when I knew I had accomplished the feat:

My time for spending in the studio has been practically non-existent, as you know. With age, comes wisdom and the rule for the day is "Don't reinvent the wheel unless you absolutely have to."

Way back when I followed the Sew Serendipity Book to make this dress. Do you remember that?

As you know, recently I decided to make it longer.

Well ... all this cold weather has had me wanting a warm, long-sleeved flannel dress. In the midst of all the Thanksgiving hullabaloo, I decided to make myself that dress, but the last thing I had was time to start figuring out something new so I just used the very same pattern and made this:

Although I had to use every measuring tool I had,

I was able to cut the patterns for the skirt out flat so I could get the diagonals right. I wanted the top plaid to go straight up and down, and the bottom plaids to go on the diagonal.

I used the same sleeve pattern, just made it longer. In fact I was running a bit shy on fabric so I positioned the sleeves to end up at the selvedge - a serendipitous, pardon the pun, event that reduced the tedious time of hemming the cuffs. I also made changes to the bottom "ruffle". I made it longer in the back to give it more of an oldfashioned feel. I had to work quick as I was in no mood to reinvent the wheel because I already had my shoes picked out for the outfit.

Using the "old" pattern made the whole project fly along. The most time consuming part, the cutting out of the fabric, probably took me two hours - being that the bottom had to go on the diagonal, used up a few more brain cells than I would have liked. I am happy with the effect.

Sewing it up took less time than it takes to list all that we ate on that Thanksgiving feast thanks to the fact that I knew exactly what to do from the previous time. Pay no mind to the expression on my face. The wind is blowing something fierce outside and my husband and I had little desire to have a full on modeling shoot in the cold. If I didn't get it photographed today, I wouldn't ever get it posted and out to you. 

I really have been thinking hard on all your lovely comments from the last post, and I think I have come up with a plan. I will finalize that and share it with you next time.

Carolina

Dear Elizabeth

Dear Elizabeth,

I got your message on Facebook. You are so thoughtful. I am sure you aren't the only one who has been wondering where I have been this past month. I must say it has been a challenging month.

The colors around me have been spectacular, but it has not been the autumn I hoped for. I have had little time for anything remotely related to this blog. There have been times where I have considered dropping it all together.

I have been putting my fair share of miles on my poor old car and have more than exceeded my carbon footprint this month. My oldest daughter has been quite sick. An ultrasound revealed concerns for her kidneys. The long version: we have been driving back and forth between school & hospitals in Nashville. Several CAT scans, ultrasounds, blood tests, etc. later, we are all still here. The short version: She is going to be OK.

All this driving from place to place has, in a way, been very therapeutic for me. It has been an incubation period of sorts. I got this blog to narrow down a direction for myself. There are times I feel like I have made zero headway with the whole thing, but I can see three possible roads to take. With the little time I actually have to dedicate to my "path", I feel I need to narrow it down NOW. I can stay on the sewing & knitting route, I can paint, or I can cook. You have seen me do all three paths. All I need to do now is pick one to focus on. Got any input?

Melissa P. thinks that things will work themselves out, my husband thinks I just need to focus on getting healthy and losing the weight, my good friend Melisse, from Michigan, feels I ought to get back on the Ill Take The Scenic Route blog, I am certain that my friend, Alicia, has been swallowed up by her new employer and hasn't been able to participate in this dilemma, and to make matters really bad ... my mother just keeps telling me I am doing too much as it is. Ahhhhh. It all just drives me crazy. How can it be that at 47, I am not bright enough to figure this out? I am serious, here. How can that be?

Every day I drive by this house. We have had a few days of wind and rain since I took this picture. This morning I noticed that all the leaves were on the lawn. Nothing was left on the branches. Winter is here. Autumn, my favorite season, passed me by because I was too busy wrapped up in my life.

I obviously am not making progress, here, today on the blog with my decision. I will end it here. Frustrated.

Frustrated until next time,

Carolina

PS - the only question I have to contend with right this very moment is  -  do I just send this to you, Elizabeth? Or do I go ahead and press the "publish now" button and publish my guts out on the blog, on the internet, for everyone else to see as well?

How to Get Your Man To Love You More

"Lunch Is Ready" - don't you just love the sound of that? My husband hears it every day since he works from home via the internet. He also hears the call to the table at dinner time. Lucky guy. 

It has been a L-O-N-G time since I shared a recipe with you, so I thought I would show you how to make what we had for lunch the other day.

We had an heirloom tomato and Mozzarella di Bufala torte with a watermelon, cucumber, basil, & mint salsa, a few drips of a balsamic vinegar and honey reduction was added as well. This makes enough for 4 people. Here goes:

For the salsa, place in a bowl the following:

- a chiffonade of @ 15 spearmint leaves and 10 basil leaves

- dice half of an english cucumber (don't peel the cucumber)

- dice 1 cup of watermelon. dice it small, same size as the cucumber

To the bowl above you are going to add my favorite combination for a salsa dressing that has fruit in it. In other words this works great with mango, or pineapple, etc.

Mix in a 1 cup liquid measuring cup or small bowl the ingredients for this salsa dressing:

- 1 finely chopped shallot

- 1 Tblsp. rice vinegar

- 1 Tblsp. lime juice

- 1 tsp. honey

- 1/2 tsp. finely chopped garlic

- 2 Tblsp. good quality olive oil

mix those ingredients together and let them sit for a couple of minutes before you add it to the chopped cucumber mixture.

Next:

take a small frying pan, add  8 Tblsp. balsamic vinegar and 1 Tblsp. honey ( I don't measure this, but it is roughly an 8:1 ratio of balsamic vinegar to honey) and get it nice and hot on high heat. Let it bubble and reduce to bring out the sweetness in the vinegar. It should take no more than a couple of minutes. If you go for too long, it will caramelize into a thick goo that, although yummy, will be difficult to spoon and drip over the plate.

 

OK, now you get to play chef like they do on TV.

- take slices of heirloom tomato ( you need 2 ripe tomatoes)  and slices of mozzarella di bufula and layer them in a torte-like fashion the way I did in the photo, above.

- spoon the salsa mixture over the top and on the sides.

- now drizzle the balsamic vinegar and honey reduction over the torte, the salsa, and the plate, in a few key spots, just enough to insure that every few bites you might get a burst of that flavor. The key in the whole dish is balance. Don't let the flavors, especially the mint, overwhelm the your tongue. A little bit of this and a little bit of that should be in every bite, with the vinegar reduction getting in on the action a little less often.

So there. This is my method to getting Greg to love me more. I think it works pretty well. There are a few guys (that never comment) that read my blog via Facebook. Guys: I think this can work wonders on your special girl, too.

Let me know if it works for you.

Carolina

Granny Boots & Granny Grey

FINALLY - I finished the whole outfit. You guys have been sooo patient. I appreciate your patience and also the comments on my hair from the last post. I am very proud of this outfit because for once, I thought of the WHOLE outfit, not just the skirt, which was originally what got me going on this project. I now have a version for when the days are chilly and another for when the days are still warm. Here is the skirt:

I altered a Vogue pattern ( #2958) to make it work with the jersey knit fabric. I changed the waistline by removing the zipper, that the pattern called for, and using an encased elastic. I used Maggie and pinned all the muslin pieces right on her so I new it would work. I didn't line it and I stitched the seems down by hand a-la-Alabama-Chanin.

This is the winter top I made for it. I made the pattern by using another top I already own and guesstimating the whole thing on muslin. I pinned and cut on Maggie to get it exact. I obviously recognize that I am not trained in pattern making, but I had no patience to go through that long book on draping. They didn't get to shirts until much later in the book and I am still on the first chapter. I figured ... it is only fabric and I will learn from the mistakes on the muslin instead of the expensive jersey ($18 per yard thru Alabama Chanin)

Although I used a straight stitch decoration and edge detailing on the skirt, for this top I tried my best to make little x's so it would have some stretch.

 

The little sweater top, called a shrug, is my saving grace to deal with the ugly grey color. It was made using pattern #1662,  by Plymouth Yarn Company, as a guideline. It knits up using only 4 skeins of wool and is perfect for those of us whose brains shut off immediately after dinner is done with. If you want to know how it is made let me know. I'll give a quick how to if there is interest.

As you saw on the last post, I made two tops for this skirt. Here is the one for warmer days:

It all looks like a different color, I know, but it is actually the setting sun which alters the color. I have to tell you getting my picture taken is not high on my list of fun things to do, but worse is having to plaster them all over the internet big enough for you to be able to see what is going on with the outfit. As I write this I am truly regretting scarfing down that Kit Kat bar I took from my girls (OK - I have 2 girls, to be fair and not feed into sibling issues, I had to eat a Kit Kat from each one of them. Fair is fair. No?)

We have been enjoying awesome Fall days were it oscillates from feeling like summer to needing to get the fire going in the chimneys. This top took me longer to finish. I didn't use any pattern - just Maggie and muslin. What took so long, though, was the hand stitch detailing all along the edges of the top. There is quite a bit of fabric covering my ... mmm ... bottom. I realized just how much with every little stitch. 

This stitch also has give to it. The neckline and the armholes are big enough to easily slip on so I didn't have to zig-zag the stitch heavily. This meant my little "petals" could be more elongated and" viney" looking. Had the zig-zag really needed to come in to play, for stretch purposes, the ups and downs of the stitch would have had to be more pronounced and the leaves would have to have been made smaller and more rounded to not look odd. Because I hand finished the skirt seams, the edges on the long-sleeved top, AND all the edges on this summer top by hand, my glasses really came in handy.

 

Phew!

The beauty of this outfit, is that because it is made to my exact measurements and is made of easy-to-care for knit jersey, it gets thrown in the washer and dryer. When I put it on, it is really no more constricting than a T shirt and sweats. It certainly feels good to put on something that fits me to a T (especially after a life time of Kit Kat runs.)

I believe I have earned my granny grey. And the Granny boots? Well, you know me. Boots - I can't ever have enough of them.

I am glad to get this posted. I hope it gets you going to make something for yourself.

See you soon,

Carolina

Longer or Shorter? Isn't That Always The Question?

Every spare moment of time I have had has been spent on my current project with Maggie. My problem is with the "spare" part. I haven't had much spare time lately since most of it is spent driving 5 hours a day, back and forth to my girl's new school. On with the "important" things: I was able to drape, pin, and cut the muslin directly on Maggie to get the look I was after. I really am in awe of the process of having a real figure to work with. Right away you can just go directly to cutting it the way you envision it in your head. No wacky drawings, no funky patterns that don't turn out right. It is all there in front of me - kind of like sculpting an outfit.

In the midst of things, the temperatures started to drop and I realized a longer sleeved option was going to be needed if I was going to get plenty of use out of it between now and spring time. I put the fabric on Maggie without any seam lines down the center, this would mean I would have to place the muslin "pattern" on a fold so that both sides of the shirts would look symmetrical. My jersey fabric from Alabama Chanin comes in a 60 inch width, and I only had so much length of it left after making the skirt, so I had to not fold the fabric in half, but rather fold both sides towards the center in order to get two shirts out of the deal.

During my 5 hours in the car I would debate ... long or short ... long or short. By folding the fabric this way I didn't have to pick.

The knitting is coming along as well. I had to have Haus of Yarn, in Nashville, send me another skein as I had to alter the pattern a bit for it to fit me. Having them send me the extra skein was a major savings in driving time.

Speaking of long vs. short, do you remember when I made this dress? Yesterday, I made it LONGER.

Just in case you were mesmerized by what got LONGER, and didn't notice what got SHORTER, here is a hint:

Yes, Diane, I did it, just like you. It is really quite an intense feeling of freedom to get rid of one's long hair. I think I had been having that debate in the back of my mind forever. I don't think it looks better or worse, I just feel free.

Hope you all have a peaceful, relaxing weekend ( all except for Melissa who has a million projects due for the upcoming Quilt Market in Houston. My only message to her is : You go girl! I am very proud of you.)

I will be finishing up my project.

Until then,

Carolina

 

Maggie Is Sick of Waiting

Poor Maggie. She came here around Christmas time and has been patiently waiting for me to get in shape. You should see how she longingly stares out the window as if contemplating moving on to someone else's home - perhaps a place were she might feel a bit more useful. I have visions of her stealing away and hopping through the woods as if propelled on a pogo stick.

I decided to make her wait no more and bought some fabric from Natalie Chanin. Those long time readers, here, who are quite sharp, are actually snickering whilst they remember some stupid remark I made regarding NOT buying any more supplies. That was a typo, wasn't it?

Anyways, I ordered grey jersey from Alabama Chanin.

There was a problem, though. Yes it was grey, but it was ugly. It has sort of a greenish tinge to it. Perhaps my "phone photo" doesn't quite portray just how green it is, but trust me ... it is ugly. Since the above purchase I have become considerably more intelligent and am now the proud owner of all of Alabama Chanin's color cards.

Had I had those color cards from the beginning I would have realized that there are lots of greys to choose from.

The grey I ended up with is nothing like the lovely Pewter or the soft colored Dove. The green grey that I have makes me look like I am much closer to the last stage of life (in fact, I look like death is only moments away). I had to liven it up. This meant an immediate one and a half our drive to Nashville to remedy the situation through the purchase of more yarn.

Hopefully this color yarn will liven things up a bit near my face. Halloween is more than a month away, I don't want to start scaring people too early.

With Maggie's "firm" assistance I have been draping and pinning, and redrapping. I don't think I could have gotten as far as I have without her help. I will post when I am closer to "Runway Status" ... hopefully in another week.

Here is a sneak peak of Maggie's best feature sporting the beginnings of the outfit:

So far I am really pleased with the bottom half - I am feeling quite proud. Together, Maggie and are feeling like we could conquer the world. We are going to start out, though, just getting this one outfit completed.

Hopefully this outfit will help her see that she really is loved and needed here.

See you next time.

Carolina

 

I Love Her, But She Doesn't Love It

I finished the T shirt. It fits. I like it. She doesn't. Plain and simple.

I used a grey, organic cotton jersey from Natalie Chanin that has a thick, wonderful feel to it. I added little mat, grey, faceted beads on neck area. The knots for each of the beads are hidden between the layers of fabric because the bodice is lined.

I also added beads at the edge of the sleeves and on the bottom hem by using a simple chain stitch with black button thread . 

Despite my attention to the little details, she doesn't like it. She said she would wear it because she knows I put effort into it. I want her to wear it because she loves it, not just because her mom made it. There is not much I can do about it. There is no two ways around it - I love her, but she doesn't love IT.

Life goes on.

My Leica situation is still not fixed. I will see you on my next project.

Yes ... life goes on. Plain and simple.

Carolina

I Am Not In New Jersey

I am not in New Jersey, but my Leica is. In an attempt to do something akin to exercise with my slow healing ankle I thought getting in the kayak was worth a try. It was supposed to be a simple little jaunt out on the lake so I took my Leica with me. The kayak hadn't seen any action in years so it was more than a bit filthy from sitting outdoors on the rack. After my wonderful, relaxing spin around the lake (and copious photographs later) I came closer to shore and decided to wash the kayak. A miscalculation in the ins and outs of gracefully exiting a kayak and I flipped over. As a big fat spider came running out of the kayak, I occupied myself with sloshing water all over the kayak to reveal the kayak's beautiful orange/red color. PANIC. I realized my camera was in my life jacket, and I & my life jacket had been fully submerged. My Leica is now in the hands of the Leica wizards in New Jersey. Fingers crossed.

So here I am, working in the studio on a sewing project that I want to share with you and all I have is my phone to take pictures with. It will have to do. It doesn't help that it is pouring rain and grey as can be.

Below you see that I have copied the pattern on to that polka dotted interfacing that has no glue on it. I like to use it to copy patterns, that way the paper one gets folded and goes neatly back into the packet it came in and I can still use the other sizes on the pattern paper.

 

On Vanessa's advice, I am using the book, below, Chic & Simple Sewing. I will add it to My Favorite Books link if more than one of the patterns turns out well.

 

My girls are attending a private school that, although they don't use uniforms, requires that the students follow certain guidelines. This means that a lot of the T-shirts my girls normally wear, are out. I am attempting this little Baby Doll top.

 

The pattern comes in a size just small enough to fit their "tween" sized frames. My frame has to still shrink (quite a bit more) to use the larger size on offer in the pattern packet that comes with the book. I made a dry run with a muslin top as I had learned on the project I had done with Alicia. I must say that getting those little sleeves on felt like I was working with doll clothing. I don't know how Elizabeth does it on all those darling outfits she makes for little ones. I would kill to have finishing skills like hers.

 

Above you see the muslin. I had originally bought a Liberty of London print, but have decided against using it because I fear my girls might not think it is "cool" enough for them. Although the phone makes the final fabric look black, it is actually a grey jersey. I figure if it is T-shirt material, my kids will wear it, and if it has a more proper "cut" no one will say anything about it at school.

I will post again when I am done with it - if it feels like it is forever between my posts, forgive me. Until Nica gets her license in December I have five hours of driving back & forth to their school every day. Things are going well, though. Some days I only have enough time to drive, cook, and clean the house. Today, happily, I actually get to be in the studio ... even if it is without my Leica.

A Messenger Bag for Nica May

 

 

This is Nica May's new school bag. No time at all to write, sorry - I am literally going to press publish and run out the door.

Miss you all.

Carolina

She's ALIVE

I have been getting a few emails wondering where I am or what on earth I have been doing - I am ALIVE. I have been over-the-top busy getting my girls ready for school. I have home-schooled them F-O-R--E-V-E-R and this year they will actually be going to school. Hoot, Hoot, yahoo!!! Do you hear me hootin' and hollerin'?

Here is a picture of the "ingredients" for my latest project.

I spent the better part of the day doing this project. I am almost done with it. I will photograph it tomorrow so that you can see what I did with Daddy's jeans.

I love you all,

Carolina

The Thinking Chair House

I thought I would share with you a little painting I did of my favorite thinking chair from my vacation in Maine. 

It was really difficult to tear myself away from this green chair for the view from it of Rockport Harbor was beautiful.

I didn't want to let it slip from my memory. I just had to paint it.

We were in Maine for several weeks. each week we rented a different house in a different location along Maine's gorgeous coast. We found all three place through VRBO, Vacation Rental By Owner. We have used that sight many, many times over the years and have never been disappointed when trying to find a vacation spot. If you would like to find out more about this particular gem of a place in Rockport, click here.

This house happened to be just a few steps from Rockport Harbor and also the photo school I told you about that I had attended when I was younger. Walking on the very same surfaces I had walked on before "my life" took over, was a bizarre experience. I could not have imagined, back then, where I would be today.

It makes me think that it is pointless to fret about the future, its course will be run no matter how much I stress out about it today. This house was LOADED with thinking chairs. I have to tell you that the combination of fantastic views, both outside and inside this home, the plethora of places to perch, and the fact that because it wasn't mine and I didn't have to tend to any responsibilities, made this the ideal vacation spot. If I win the lottery, I would like to buy it.

Carolina

When Do You Know It Is Time To Jump?

It has been a long time since we got to visit together. I have been on a long thinking break. I am presenting you with an image of the postcard that is going to Eva of Eisblumen and sharing something with you that is very personal. I know that the postcard doesn't seem like much - a few simple earrings. They are representative of what I am trying to work through in my own life.

I painted these earrings because one of these three pairs of earrings is what I wear almost every day of the year despite having another ten or so to choose from. If you haven't met me in person and you see some woman wearing one of these earrings feel free to go up to her and introduce yourself. Chances are it is me. I do the same with my clothing, rotating through a handful of outfits over and over again. In our new home, I gave the bigger half of the closet to my husband. Over the years I have found that I will instinctively grab the same pair of jeans, or the same skirt over and over again. I know what shoes go with them, I know what jewelry to pair it with. It's not like I have been wearing the same set of clothes for the past twenty years, but rather I get hooked on a certain few, wear them for a few years, and then replace some part of my wardrobe with something new. I find myself having 5 outfits or so at a time. If I go somewhere on vacation I pack those very same clothes in my bag. On occasion, I have been successful at kidding myself and I have packed an "extra" outfit, one of the ones that rarely sees the light of day. It never fails though, I come home and stick that one right back into the closet. Other than a few wrinkles that outfit didn't see any action. It never does, and it never will. I know myself. Does this ever happen to you?

As I was making the painting of the earrings it occurred to me that we are all creatures of habit, some good habits, some bad. As I worked at trying to get the shadows right, I had thoughts regarding this topic swirling about my head. My thoughts jumped back and forth between the task at hand and the voice of that "other Carolina" - the "Miss-Know-It-All", the one I can't hide from - the one who stares back at me in the mirror with a pensive gaze making time hang until I succumb to admitting that she is right- the one who takes no excuses ... ever.

The question that the "other Carolina" wouldn't let go of is how do my daily habits affect my life, or rather : are something as minuscule as my daily habits responsible for my life, for the actual outcome of my life and how happy I feel?

Most days I find myself oscillating between exhilaration and depression. I don't know if the "D" word, depression, is the right word for it, but it is definitely a funk - a funk that has been lurking about for a good twenty years or so. The exhilaration part comes from all the creative pursuits I have been doing and you have been privy to, here, on this blog. The funk part comes from the fact that there is a part of me that is being pushed aside, and has been pushed aside for what seems like forever. I don't know if having this blog has peeled back a layer or two exposing what I needed to see, but I have come to see it plain as day.

I want more.

There. I said it. I want more. Yes, I want more from life, plain and simple. I don't want "more" as in more jewelry, more clothes, more stuff - that is all so 1990's and the Lord knows I don't need more stuff to take care of. I want more from life. It seems that my days automatically flip over, from one to the next, as if they are on a rolodex. Before I know it my week is up. When it is time to tally-up my week I am left with a slight "I-don't-know" - my answer to what I would say if you asked me what is wrong. Could my daily habits be responsible?

I want more adventure. Could my daily habits be keeping me from living a more adventurous life? Can I swap out my daily habits for adventure? Can adventure become a habit?

So when do you know it is time to jump, time to change what you have been doing? I believe that the signs to jump and go for the change are there for everyone to see, but we remain unable to see them ourselves until much later. It is like having your glasses fog up on you, you can wipe all you want, but the real way to get to the point where you can see clearly is to just let time do it's thing. In time, everything becomes clear. When I started this blog I wasn't sure if I was ready. Now that a year or so has gone by and I can look at it with an accurate perspective, I realize it was absolutely the right time to start the blog - I can see all the signs clearly now, but at the beginning I was mired in self doubt. I have taken a month off to really find out if now is the time to jump.

I have been doing an awful lot of thinking. I think that at the root of my funk are, indeed, my habits. If I try, real hard, and look at my life objectively, I can clearly see that my life, or the way it has been playing itself out lately, is an expression of my daily habits. My habits produce my life. In order to change my life I am going to run a two year experiment.

I have gone back and forth on wether or not to do this for quite some time now. And I have definitely debated back and forth a million PLUS times wether or not I should actually do all this on the internet. My experiment, although not strange, is not common. My experiment for changing my life is risky, tremendously risky because it is putting everything, life as I know it, on the line. It involves you, too, that is if you are game and have found the same "I-don't-know-what-is-wrong" type of thoughts squirming about your brain . You don't have to be game; you can watch from the sidelines and cheer me on or watch me go "Poof!" up in flames, failing miserably. If I do fail with my two year experiment ... well ... I'll just walk back here with my tail between my legs and hang around until it feels like wagging again.

I have come to realize that some of my habits are actually keeping me from the life I want to have. I ask you, though, if we are creatures of habit, then what? What do we do with that bit of knowledge? Do we not do anything about it? Do we just flip through another day on the rolodex week and watch life go by while somewhere inside we know there must be more?  I ask you, then, what is risk? Really, what is risk? Not stupidity ... risk?

What is risk other than a path to great reward without knowing the details of the path?

My wanting more is directly related to the fact that I have taken the same road over and over again and it is getting me to none other than the same place I have seen before. My experiment will attempt to answer the fundamental questions - Can I change my life by changing my habits? Can a woman reinvent herself, really reinvent herself, without swapping out her family, home, or responsibilities? And even more importantly - Is there more to life that something as simple and mundane as daily habits can keep me from? Can a woman exchange her habits for a more adventurous life? - and more over - Can a woman do it on her own?

In other words - I AM JUMPING. In order for me to share with you my experiment you must click on the words below:

 

                                     TO GET MORE ADVENTURE ...

 

The Muse of The Day will remain, as is, a place to share my path to a creativity filled life.

I hope you clicked.

Carolina

 

 

Sharpshooter

 

If you had peeked into my living room last week you would have thought a bomb had gone off. I have spent the better part of the last few days getting my kids to camp. Last week we laid out all their gear and made copious lists which we checked and rechecked to make sure that they wouldn't be missing anything. There were sleeping bags, bowls & sporks (fork & spoon in one utensil), dental floss and travel toothbrushes, riding helmets, boots, Teva's, PBA-free water bottles, sun hats & woolen caps, pocket knives, head lamps, stuff sacks, wet gear bags, flashlights, environment friendly shampoo, bath soap, and laundry soap, polar-fleece tops, hiking boots, ground covers, sun block, journals, cameras, waterproof this and waterproof that. The list goes on and on. You name it they had it.

This is the first time either of my girls is going to camp. I feel a bit like a fish out of water with the whole topic. Although I have known for years that many, many parents in the United States send their kids to camp during the summer, I feel like I am letting go of my babies. It seems like only yesterday they were just as little as Alex, the little boy I have painted. I titled it "Sharpshooter" because when he was barely 24 inches tall or so, I remember him looking at me with a sheepish little grin as I said my goodbyes to his mom. He stood there with his hands in his pockets with the same posture of a grown man waiting around at a church for a wedding to begin. He was barely older than a baby and yet, at the same time, also a little man. Just as I was getting ready to leave he drew his hand out of one of his pockets as if he were about to enter a duel with a pistol. I stood there in a trance as barely a second past by and he brought his little hand, formed like a pistol, to his lips, kissed the "barrel" end of his finger,  pointed it at me, and blew a forceful blow of air in my direction. That was it - I had been shot through the heart and I was now his forever. Just like that, in a matter of seconds, he had won me over for life. Funny how guys can do that to us, no matter what their age. From that point on I have always referred to Alex as the Sharpshooter.

This is my first attempt at painting a face, it is a postcard going to Danielle, or Daniela as I have called her for the past fifteen years. I tried my best, Daniela, to capture your littlest one. I found it nearly impossible to convey the softness of his skin. Alex is much too beautiful a child to suffer from the inadequacies of my brush skills, but it will have to do for today. People aren't going to believe that Alex could have such huge, beautiful brown eyes, but I painted them adding no more and attempting to not take anything away. There will be many, many women in the future who will succumb to those eyes and Lord help them if he is still using his sharpshooter tactics.

I could have eaten him alive when he did that. Enjoy him to the max, because as I am discovering this week, before you know it, it is time to let them go.

Carolina

 

Alicia Needs New Scissors

As most of you know, I am more than a bit envious of Alicia's newest addition. I have thought about it often enough, in the past few days, for my envy to be turning to borderline jealousy. I understand, though, that I already run around crazy, like a chicken with her head cut off, and that I don't "need" more chickens to add to the already "nutso" state of affairs up here. It just kills me to know that Rosie is providing an egg a day - that is one beautiful, exquisitely fresh egg every single day! I wondered if Alicia might be getting to the point where eggs, and more specifically the way they have always eaten them, are getting boring.

My favorite way to eat eggs is "Huevos-a-la-Copa". Doesn't that sound so much more flavorful and emotionally charged than "a 3 minute egg"? Three minutes in boiling water and you are done. How simple is that? Of course then you have to remove the top part of the eggshell- when we were little we just used to tap around the top of the egg with a spoon. Our teaspoons were somewhat large, inevitably I would end up with a few egg shell "chips" in my egg. I remember getting scolded a time or two whenever my spitting eggshell chips got a little out of hand. These special little egg topper scissors eliminate any chance of that happening. A little salt & pepper and you are in heaven. Three minutes? That is the fastest meal I know, and that is why I love it so much.

I am hoping Alicia will like getting a bit of lavender color in her mail, as this is her postcard. I should have put a limit on that post. I have made it through the first round (remember the shout out?) and since then others have asked for a postcard. Who am I to deny them a little happier looking mail? I have actually finished Eva's postcard, but it is coming with a VERY BIG post, maybe not so long, but really important. At the moment I simply don't have enough skin to write it all, but it is coming.

In an effort to send out a bit of nice mail to those of you who have been so ridiculously patient, here is the first "family portrait" of the ones I will be mailing tomorrow.

I will be taking a bit of a break. I need one. I finished homeschooling my kids (HOORAY!!!!) and feel like I haven't had a chance to catch my breath as the summer activities have begun before the ink was even dry on the final exams. Daniela, Eva, Amy, Grace, and Brenda, please forgive me. I finished my 5 week sketchbook class on day three and have been painting ever since. I will continue to work on your cards but I am going to take a few days off and get reacquainted with that guy people refer to as my "husband". I also will be taking some time to work out my thoughts (as well as I am capable of doing) so that my thoughts are clear on the post that is going along with Eva's postcard. I have been thinking of that post for a long time now, and it came to me, again, as I painted Eva's postcard. Daniela - I know you are in line before Eva, I am not bumping you in line (yet).

So there. I will be off for a bit. Maybe I will have a chance to eat many three minute eggs. Better yet, I think I will eat many Huevos a la Copa.

Carolina