The Life of a House

Cute kitty? or just plain nuts....

2011-12-16T19:01:00.000-08:00

Swee'pea's newest antics...
When I put new litter in the box - scoop by scoop...
Swee'pea can't get in there fast enough to toss and turn. It makes it tough to get enough new litter in there. But he just can't get enough of that fresh clean feel.

Christmas came early...

2011-12-14T17:46:00.000-08:00

and my birthday too..
Because my Dad and Ann bought me a butcher block maple table top for them both!!!
Oh... it's so pretty!!!I also added a pull out shelf. This island was inspired by Ken, and someday it will get the full Ken-treatment: a hole cut in the top for a "garbage disposal", and maybe cabinets as well. We'll see.
At the moment I am so excited to be working with my new butcher block! Considering this:
is what I was working with before. Ugh. Not only is it not pretty but it had started to sag quite seriously in the middle. It was only matter of time before the whole thing said, "good night sister!" and crashed in half. With this new top it will be a while before that happens (I sure hope).
And how did I score such a beautiful island? Well - as mentioned before my Dad and Ann sprung for the maple top - I treated myself to an early birthday shopping spree at Home Depot for the rest and with the help of a good friend, Michael (aka The Muscle), I had me a new island! And I love it!
Jacques as usual, was on hand for inspection.
Once the table was build the major dilemma ws - what will be the first thing to cook on the new table?...
Eggs Benedict.
Yes. There were left over collard greens which replaced spinach quite beautifully, ham, eggs, and lovely hollandaise to be made in the Cuisinart - on the butcher block. Ah, yum. Eggs Benedict has to be my favorite breakfast - so yummy when you make it yourself. Especially since you won't be chintzy with the sauce.
Why the rush to get this table done? Why couldn't the table arrive on Christmas with a big red bow and be put put together after? Well - that's because I am set to be the next big TV star! Okay - not really - but I am going to be on tv (I hope) - here's the story:
My little cookbook hit it big with some articles locally, which is great. And our local PBS affiliate WHYY has a little show called Friday Arts. It will be in the Art of Food segment. The producer contacted us a few weeks ago about doing a segment on Mrs. Emlen's cookbook! Very very cool! :) So last week they spent and entire Wednesday interviewing me at work and then they came to my house today to film actual cooking segment! How exciting is that?
So we decided to do the recipes for "The Hen's Nest for a Supper Table", "Floating Island", and "Spinach". Things went fairly well.
The Hen's nest calls for blancmange. Here's your history lesson for the day:
Blancmange is a very very old recipe. It came to western Europe with returning crusaders around 1200C.E. At that time is was a savory dish which was a cream and almond soup with chicken or fish in it pepped up with expensive spices. This was an upper class dish to be sure. Around 1600 the dish changed to become a sweet desert type dish as we know it today. It is almond milk, sugar, gelatin, and whipped cream put into some sort of mold. It holds its shape very well. And Mrs. Emlen's recipe says to fill Bantam's eggs with blancmange, then make a "nest" with candied lemon peel. Once the "eggs" have jelled you put them on the nest. Sounds great right? Yeah, I had trouble. We couldn't get the eggs to chill so they didn't set right! :( They tasted amazing! but since PBS hasn't figured out how to deliver taste yet... it needed to look great. It didn't really. So I'm going to try it one more time and see if I can't get some beautiful still shots.
Since I couldn't get bantam's eggs I had to settle for Quail eggs - which present problems of their own. On the left is a regular chicken egg and on the right is the quail egg. The quail eggs don't break as easily. That is - the shell breaks differently than a chicken egg. Lots of problems. Cross your fingers for me that 3rd time is the charm.
At least the 'straw' is already finished. I made loads of candied lemon peal. It was the second thing I chopped up on my new butcher block.

The final result? I am pooped. I mean - ex - haus -ted! I've been cleaning like a mad crazy lady since the weekend. We're not talking a little dusting, we're talking full on detailing! Pulling every surface horizontal to the floor down and cleaning it, vacuuming twice, scrubbing with little scrubby sponges, and even re-painting the back splash to make it look clean. Then I also spent Sunday trying out the blancmange recipe - that was an entire adventure unto itself, and as if that all wasn't enough, I realized last night that I was making messy in the kitchen and I needed and apron. So - I woke up at 6am, showered, dressed, ran to grocery store to pick up last minute things I forgot I needed more of, and sewed an apron. Sigh. I know, I am crazy. I do know it.

And just in case you need some kitty pictures here are some gratuitous ones:
Swee'pea at the water barrel:
Handsome Jacques
Cutie-pie

a flurry of activity

2011-12-06T16:27:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving weekend was a quiet one for me. I stayed home, roasted a little chicken and made all the fixin's. It was delicious! Made fab-u-lous gravy, bean casserole, mashed potatoes, collard greens (from my garden) and I can't remember what else. Was delicious. and it was just enough to have left overs, but not enough to get sick of the left overs. Just right. The rest of the weekend I took care of business.
Friday I spent all day working on my shop at etsy.com. You check it out here. There is finally a place to purchase blank journals and notebooks. I will probably also post my artist books there at some point.
Saturday was the day to finish projects which should have been done a long time ago! sigh. I'm trying to get some of these projects off of my list. I'm happy to say that the three I wanted to finish I did. Very happy about that.
1. The doorway to my apartment:
before:after:
The doorway was a left over project from when Jeff (of the-bathroom-Jeff) was here! That's the back of the wall with the huge beam for book shelves. I just never got around to finishing it. And especially since it was outside and I never saw it except for when I was coming home, it wasn't high on the priority list. But I am thrilled that it is done now. Thank goodness the former owner left me all of his paint in the basement. I didn't even have to buy any!
2. Bedroom ceiling:
before:after:I also finally finished patching and painting the holes that Electrician Lee punched into my bedroom ceiling. There were two of them, those are also about 2 years old. Again, nothing pressing, but annoying when I did notice.
3. The kitchen shelf:
This fell down this summer while I was away. It was because I used the wrong brackets. I thought they would be fine. Nope. If you want a shelf to hang you need to use something solid. So here is my wall (again) before:
Preparation of the garlands before hanging those too:
Swee'pea is very interested in things that come from outdoors. And of course we are at the oral fixation stage of development so he had to chew on the pine needles, swallow, throw the whole lot up, repeat - until all of the pine boughs had been used up. Pea Brain. I don't know about you, but if something makes me throw up - I don't go right back to it.
But success with the shelf was a achieved!
after:
All of this was accomplished in one day (except for the pine garland) and all of it was observed by curious kitties:
In other news, the cookbook is doing very very well. There have been some newspaper articles about it. I did a blog post here about the program at work. We had 53 people attend in the rain! That rates as a success! We are down to 135 books left, so if you haven't purchased yours make sure to do it soon.

The world is standing on its head

2011-10-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

It's snowing. Seriously - in October. See the white stuff on the grass? That's snow. Crazy.My raspberries haven't even dropped all their leaves! You can see them poking through the sad looking porch, which didn't get done this year.
The threat of the weather forced me to go out early this morning and pick the remaining tomatoes, some collard greens, and herbs. It was very cold, and Jacques, who insisted on going outside, sat on the bricks by the tomatoes complaining loudly about the weather. I still had to go out later to pick up my farm share and run a few other errands. It's amazing how it takes some getting used to the cold weather. It's like we are in denial that it could really be so cold so we don't dress appropriately. I forgot some gloves or mittens. My hands were absolutely freezing! I've been trying to figure out what I'm going to knit next... and after standing at the gas station trying to deal with the debit machine while you can't feel your fingers, it was really a no-brianer...mittens. And they will be some fabulous color work things. I'm leaning towards some geometric patterns, but then I saw these. Octopus mittens! Well, since I finally think I picked the last of everything in the garden, I might as well give the summary of that. Had a dickens of a time with the tomatoes this year. I tried using the seeds I got in Germany last summer. This went really well in some respects. All the seeds sprouted and I ended up with ENORMOUS plants. But not much fruit. So I was listening to a garden show one day and someone called in with the same problem that I had. Turns out was too much nitrogen in the soil. All ya gotta do is counter act that with some bone meal. Worked like a charm. Unfortunately a bit later than I would have liked. I didn't end up with the same amount of tomatoes had I figured this out sooner. But they were still delicious. I found the same farmer again when I was there this summer. He told me the seeds were from Poland and had been in his family for over 90 years. I got a better look at some of his tomatoes, there were some really funny lookin' ones. Maybe I'll try those next time I'm there.

I did finally get Chinese Lanterns. Now that I know what they look like, maybe I won't "weed" them all out next year before they can turn into this. They are really pretty. I also finally figured out what to do with all of the Melisse. This is a plant similar to lemon verbena although it's not quite the same. It is delicious in tea - especially sun tea. I've also used it in some cooking when I needed a slight hint of lemon - it's especially yummy in quinoa.
However, My entire bowl here, turned into melisse pesto. Wow. Imagine pesto but with a very nice lemon flavor. Very very yummy. What I will NOT plant again next year is catnip. This little guy showed up on my porch about three weeks ago. He was very sweet, and had some sort of injury to one of his back legs. He was sleeping on a piece of cardboard wedged between the house and a slab of marble on my porch. It took two weeks before I had a chance to take him somewhere to see if he had a chip in him.
Turns out his name is Scott, he has a chip and had been adopted from PAWS, (which was where I took him to see if he had a chip), so they just took him back. On the other had, I'm glad I took him last weekend, he would have been so cold this weekend.
And yes, the other one is still with me. I don't know why I cannot just make the flyer to get him adopted. He's miserable, I'm miserable, Jacques and Swee'pea are ticked off... sigh, he has a very sweet side - but he is such a pain at other times.
He is a catnip fiend. When he does sneak upstairs, after checking out if there is any food in the food bowls, he heads right over to the bowl with all of the catnip toys and goes bonkers. All of those toys were in the bowl, five minutes earlier.
He's also quite agile, turns out. My Dad and Ann came to do an east coast road trip and book-ended the trip by visiting me, or keeping Lucky company, depending on how you look at it. After they left the first time, all of the sheets and things were piled high on a chair. Look you found the prime comfy spot immediately! When they came back the second time, we went out to visit Ephrata Cloister. This is an amazing little place. We've been working on a collection (at work) that has about 22 illuminated music manuscripts made a the cloister in the mid 1700's.
The manuscripts are beautiful. Each one made with special little drawings scattered throughout. We've been very curious about where they came from. So my Dad, Ann, and I went out, and then this past Friday, Leah, Mary and I went to visit.
Here's where they made those amazing manuscripts. This room has very low ceilings.
It was still great even the second time around. Much colder though! Whew! The cloister was self-sustaining. They made not only their own cloth, clothes etc. but they also made their own paper, had a tannery and a print shop.
In other updates, I'm valiantly trying to finish some long over due projects, like putting the base board on here. I've got it cut to size - but it's not attached yet. I still have to cut the hole in for the electrical socket. It seems like a very do-able winter project.
The other winter project will be my ceiling. I heard from both the insurance and a roofer person in September... then nothing. I did call my insurance adjuster and he will be out until this coming Monday. Hopefully I'll hear something then. If water is coming down this way - I'll bet warm air is getting out that way and I have no intention of heating all of West Philly this winter.

So what do you do when it snows in October? Pick up a little pumpkin at the farmers market, stuff it and bake it. Yum.
Stuffed Pumpkin
some sort of Italian sausage - I used mild 'cause that's what I had.
onion (large)
thyme
celery
bay leaf
quinoa (cooked)
a mildly sharp cheese that will melt nicely
salt
pepper
nutmeg
Saute all of the above, clean out the pumpkin and stuff with filling. It will hold more than you think it will. Bake for 1 - 1 1/2 hours. Yum.

It got me after all...

2011-08-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

Yep - Irene got me anyway. Didn't discover that until last night. Here are the pictures, I'll elaborate more this evening.

a little more life in the house

2011-08-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

I tried. I really did, I tried to get something done this weekend, but it was just too hot. But I did finally manage to change the door knob on my door. Poor Katie lost the keys to my place in December when I was in Hawaii. So that I still only have one key to my door, I decided to keep the deadbolt - and just put a knob on door. Should be fine.
I also checked out a circular saw back in July so that I could tackle this baseboard. So I managed to take the picture this weekend -but not much else.
I have had three batches of collard greens from my garden. Super yummy. Collards are so sweet and tender when they are young and fresh from the garden!
On the other hand, the tomatoes have suffered. Everytime it gets close to time - some damn little squirrel sticks it's claws into the side and chews a great big hole out of the side. I have one ripe one sitting up on the table but I've lost three others. I'm trying out my garlic theory again. Spraying garlic all over the tomatoes. We'll see.
My cousin Rosanna got married this weekend, in Hawaii! Yay! - I couldn't make it to the wedding, but I made her guestbook.
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Can't wait to see pictures of the wedding!
The second caterpillar has come to a tragic end. It attached itself to the cheesecloth, and then on a windy day the rubberband broke - the cheese cloth was on the floor and the cocoon was at the bottom of the jar. It had been looking funny for a while though.
Today I got the full story - some wasp layed an egg inside the poor caterpillar - when it went to pupate - the wasp hatched and at the caterpillar. :(. Poor little guy.

Speaking of poor little guys poor Lucky is still miserable. Here he is not knowing that Jacques is right above him. Lucky doesn't jump up on anything. So it's very easy for Jacques to assert his dominance.
Lucky is just miserable and tells me all about it all the time. I think he would be a great kitty as a one-kitty household. But he can't get used to the other kitties. And they aren't really interested in getting used to him either.

And how about our blasted government getting our credit down-graded. That's got me pretty worked up right now. Grrrr.

The first tomoto

2011-08-03T21:07:00.001-07:00

I jumped the gun. I just couldn't wait - I picked it. It wasn't quite ripe, but I just couldn't wait! It looked like it was ripe from the bottom!
And it was delicious!
Even half ripe - it had a lot of flavor. I'm sure I'm going to have to wait 'till the end of the weekend to have perfectly ripe tomatoes.

Ellen's beets

2011-07-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

I had some beets from my farm share and some were looking done in the garden... So I thought I'd try Mrs. Emlen's recipe. These are delicious. And aside from having a pot of boiling water in your kitchen for an hour it's a very easy recipe.

Reprieve

2011-07-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

Reprieve! Ugh - yess, it has been a blessed and balmy 87° today, even though the humidity didn't give us much of a reprieve - it was pretty much a 95.5% humidity situation. But it's much more bearable at 87° than at 103°. And so I opened all the windows turned and turned off the air conditioners. Aaaaahhhhh..... nothing beats fresh air.
I went for a bike ride, came back completely sweaty and thought - well, I'm already sweaty, lets tackle the garden. (which I've been ignoring in this heat)
So I did. I mowed the lawn (three weeks forgotten). Watered the weeds so that I could pull them out. I don't know if you can tell in these two images (above and below) but on the right side I yanked out a ton of weeds. They were all edible of course which caused a bit of guilt - I must confess. I had the Asian day flower, lots of grass, poke weed, and the pink flower weed that I don't know what the name is, plus a ton of lamb's quarter. Of course it's been really hard to "weed" the lambs quarter now that I know how good it is. But today - maybe I came to my senses (because of less heat?) - I decided... it's time to weed. I don't need to eat the weeds. I also had a good look at the majority of them. They seem to have been hit hard with the birdy poop. Then I looked up. Amazingly - the densest weed growth is directly beneath the telephone wires running across my garden. Which is great... except that this seems to be an annual station of "relief" because the lambs quarter in that region is very pooped-on looking. So... since I am NOT starving, I decided to sacrifice the lambs quarter for the tomatoes and collard greens. I have plenty from my farm share and I don't need to try to make use of everything edible in my "garden".
The rest of my garden is going bananas: Here is the Melisse plant. A month ago we could still see earth around it.
It turns out that the lantern plants I planted last year are doing okay as well. They don't really like it here though.
I moved two stalks I thought might be the same thing to a different location and they are much happier. Both have lantern buds and the leaves are much greener. For those of you unfamiliar with these - these will turn bright orange in the fall. They are very beautiful.
I don't know if I've mentioned my indigo plant on the blog yet....
This is a gift from Jennifer - of knitting fame Jennifer. She grew a huge bush in her yard last year and I was extremely envious. This year - I don't remember what we traded for - but it was worth it. I have a beautiful little indigo plant.
I did have to rescue it from the weeds. But apparently when the leaves die - they turn the tell-tale blue:
The tips of these little ones seem very blue to me. I did have to rescue the plant from the weeds. Hopefully this one will go crazy now. I also had to rescue my cockscomb from the weeds. It's just started to "bloom"? Is that the right word for this plant? I don't know. Jennifer also sent me the instructions on how to make indigo from the leaves... I can't wait! I wonder if it's a perennial?

And then in other news... I knew I wanted to post about this but wasn't really sure where to post.
I decided a couple of months ago that if I was trying to twist a bunch of people's arms into joining my charity project (www.pinkknit-a-thon.blogspot.com), I should probably pay it forward and do some charity work for others. So this weekend while the weather was unbearable, I decided it was time to crank up the air conditioner, watch movies and knit some swatches for Heart in Hand Project. This is a project to make blankets for those hit hardest by the tornadoes this late spring/early summer (remember them?) especially in Missouri. I found this yarn at AC Moore when I was there this weekend, and I knitted five squares from one skein.
It was fun doing a no-brainer project - just knitting. Maybe the good people at Heart in Hand will get another set, if I get my act together.

It's Hot.

2011-07-22T13:13:00.000-07:00

It is so bloody hot. I just have to post about how freekin' hot it is! I'm so blown away (almost literally) because it is so incredibly hot. The minute I walk out the door I start sweating. Thank goodness for electricity and god bless the person who invented air conditioning - although I wonder if it isn't the old vicious cycle... are we staying cool at the expense of the world climate next summer? Is all of the exhaust we are putting out now harming us in the future? Because if it is - we are in serious trouble. I will be non-functional through the summer.
When I was running errands today - my car thermometer said 117°. I've never seen that before.
I took Lucky to the vet - he was his typical self... super friendly for about 8 minutes and then really grouchy. But he has to be on the 2nd floor, it's too damn hot on the first floor. Ugh. I'd really like everyone to get along. That would make things so much easier.
It's so hot I even moved the worms upstairs. They appreciated it. When I looked yesterday to see how they were doing they were all crawling along the top of the bin - trying to get out. Now that they are in cooler "weather" they are much happier. All down in the rubbish chomping away.
Okay - cross your fingers that we don't have a black-out. Otherwise, I'll be sleeping in a very cold bathtub - with ice cubes.

the Things you learn from your friends....

2011-07-20T17:59:00.000-07:00

Its amazing what you learn from your friends ... or because of your friends.
Here's how it happened. Today - I met with a food historian at work to plan for an event featuring THE COOKBOOK. As we were browsing the book I found so many recipes I still want to try. (By the way, the menu for the event is: meatballs, sweet potato pudding, macaroons, cottage pudding, and currant shrub.) We were trying to come up with a vegetable (because I insisted) and I thought - oh, hey, there is a pickle section. So I went through it and found the recipe for "nasturians" [sic]. I asked - does she mean the flowers? Yes.
Well... actually no. I came home and started googling. It's amazing what you can find on the internet. "How to pickle nasturtiums" and all of the results included the word "buds". "How to pickle Nasturtium buds". It also included the phrase, Poor Man's Capers.
Huh. Capers... interestingly enough capers came up in a conversation this past weekend with Melanie. Where do capers come from? A bush. Well not quite. Turns out, if you google "capers" you get a very interesting story. I found this info on Wikipedia - a completely reliable source (I know Daddy.) But yeah, now I want a caper bush. It has pretty flowers. Are there Caper farms? Seriously! So what I learned from my conversation with my friends is what a caper really is. Thanks Meli! And - turns out - Pickled Nasturtiums doesn't mean the flowers - it means the buds.
In other news - I harvested my very first beet. I'm going to use Ellen Emlen's recipe for the roots. I'll cook the greens in garlic. yum.

Garden and Birkshires and kitties!

2011-07-17T19:46:00.001-07:00

My newest kitty is still here. I'm not sure what's going on with Lucky. He can be very sweet, but today when I got home he was not a happy camper. He also hasn't pooped in several days... so now we need to go see the doctor for sure. I just hope he's not pooping somewhere else I just haven't discovered yet. I haven't smelled anything suspicious though. I've tried introducing him to Jacques and Swee'pea. It's not going well. Mostly because Lucky is so vocal about his displeasure. He sure is a character.
Had a little bbq last weekend and made some mint ice cream. Pretty yummy stuff! Fresh mint from the garden. I mixed it with the sugar for the cream. It's perfect for chocolate syrup and strawberry jam and... ???
My first zucchini also showed up. I'm a bit surprised that there aren't more. I thought I would be inundated. But I'm not. There is another one growing now. But only one.
My tomatoes are flourishing. I finally have close to ten fruits on the vines. I am really looking forward to those. The fruits are getting quite large too - they must start turning red soon?
Flowers are doing well also - I have lots of these. They are next to my firey-orange cosmos. Looks very beautiful.
Blueberries!! I've got two ripe ones. Watch out.
Basil - oodles of it. I ran out of olive oil so it's all washed and waiting for me to do something with it tomorrow after I buy more olive oil.
And look what I found when I went to cut some parsley! Another caterpillar. Remember Fred? Same little guy (I think). So now the little guy is in a jar chomping on my parsley and well see what he turns into.
And yes I was in the Berkshire's, Western Massachusetts this weekend. It was absolutely lovely. Melanie has an amazing house - now with horses, hot tub, clean air, and a sparkling pool. Very lovely. There are also two barn cats. Who are new mommies. Here is Tiger with the 8 little ones. The litters are about a week apart. They are so cute!

I'm a wild foodie!

2011-07-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally did what I threatened to do... try eating my weeds.
Here is a bunch of lamb's quarters growing in my tomatoes. I've always had to weed this stuff like crazy. I don't know how so much of it can seed itself in my yard, but it does. So after the event at the Wyck house I decided to let it grow, so I could harvest some, so I could eat it.
I pulled up bunches of it. made a nice clear space in the tomato garden came inside, cleaned it up, and cooked it in a little bit of olive oil and some garlic.
All of the websites say this stuff tastes just like spinach. Boy are they right! It's pretty delicious. I'll have to try it as a salad next time. Supposed to be just as good. And don't worry - there is plenty left in the garden.
I also have tomatoes coming!!! I'm super excited about these. Of the 12 plants in the garden only one or two have fruits. They are growing like crazy, but I hope the others get fruits soon. I also have some baby zucchini's and a few beets are starting to show up.
In the last few minutes it decided to dump on us. A massive thunderstorm has parked itself over my neighborhood. This is good - we need this! It's pouring. Unfortunately I had sheets on the laundry line. Those will have to be done again. But it is nice and cool for a change.

And then there were three...

2011-07-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

No - I didn't get another kitty. This one just showed up. This is Lucky. Lucky is a BIG kitty. He's even bigger than Jacques. He showed up in the yard and was still there the next morning. So I opened the door and in he came. I was going to place an add in Craig's List for a FOUND! kitty. For some reason I thought I'd search first to see if he'd been lost in the first place. Sure enough someone posted him with a picture. And it is him. But I've been trying to reach this person since then and have received no reply. :( Maybe the person is on vacation. Lucky is very lonely, but of course he and Jacques do not like each other. I'm not sure about Swee'pea yet. But I'm also not going pass him on until I've exhausted every possibility to get him back to his owner. He's a big love bug too. Sigh - how do I wind up in these situations?

On a different note - there is a "This American Life" episode - you must all hear. (When you get to the page - click on the red "play" button. The episode is about an hour long. Worth it.) It is a documentation of a group of prison inmates doing an act of Shakespeare's Hamlet. It will really blow you away. Talk about actors reflecting on their life for inspiration for their roles. It's the best acting you've ever experience. I've heard it twice now and I think I'll listen again. It gives you hope for people who recognize their wrongs, but aren't sure they should be forgiven. It's amazing. Check it out!

Garlic Scapes - clarification post

2011-07-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

Here we go - this is A garlic scape. If you unwind it it is about 12 inches long. They are the flower part of the garlic that farmers cut off so that the bulb will be bigger. Apparently you can only get them at farmers markets.
And for the recipe I posted in the last post you cut off the flowers, then use the stems. They are very garlicky, but not sharply garlicky - just good flavor. Plus they are just really pretty. I got another bunch of them in my share yesterday. Yay! I might try something different this time... maybe a stir fry? I have two zucchinis as well....

Oh, and do I just have the cutest kitty or what?

Happiness in the small things

2011-07-01T05:20:00.000-07:00

My garden is flourishing and I am always amazed at the rush I get when I spend time with it. Here's my bird's eye view: The herbs in a row are happy as clams. They are growing like crazy, and it is such a pleasure to be able to go out and pick exactly what you want to put into dinner. Above is my beautiful mellissa plant (the big fluffy one in the middle). If you don't know this herb it is really lovely. It has a strong lemon scent - completely different than lemon grass. I went to the herbiary yesterday and distilled drops sell for $69. per bottle. That's about $1/drop! But it is pure heaven. Probably the most expensive whiff of anything I've ever put my nose close to. What an indulgence. While I can't afford that - I can stick my nose in the bush in my yard whenever I want to - or cook with it (it adds nice flavor to rice) and I also like to put it in my apricot sauce. mmmm. On the left is thyme and to the right is parsley and then a rosemary bush.
Below is the other half of the row, from left to right: chives, basil, dill (very faint), sage, and green onions (purple poof flowers). I'm also trying my hand at collard greens - they apparently like water - go figure. I say that because they were in the ground for a week not doing anything, turning yellow and then I soaked them and they perked up. Duh.
And the onion flowers. They are so beautiful! The bees really like them too. That's going to make for some funky tasting honey, maybe. So Matt, my partner in crime from the food symposium, keeps bees. I told him in return for honey he could totally park his hives in my back yard. I hope he takes me up on the offer. I have to think about what to plant for yummy tasting honey - we'll have to consult if it works out. The bees really like my echinacea flowers (see top), and the clover that is growing all over the lawn. I have a completely new outlook on my "lawn" after the symposium. I walk around on it and see totally different things in it now. I was going to try to re-seed the lawn with some real grass this summer, but now I think I want to keep it more along the lines of a "tamed meadow". I think I might try a weed salad tonight. I haven't done it yet. But the one plant I've yanked out in hand fulls has flourished by the tomatoes. So I'll yank it out again... The advise on the wild foodies website is to go easy. Eat only a little at first to see how it agrees with you. This is probably good advice since I was going to just go through the garden and pick a whole variety. I'll try them one at a time, see what happens.

It's all about food - Part 2

2011-06-26T18:31:00.000-07:00

I had the most amazing day I've had for a long time. (Saturday) (Sunday - it was so amazing it took two days to write about it.)

I attended the Wyck House Food Symposium: Cultivating our Food Roots. My mind is so completely blown that I don't even know where to start!

I guess I'll start with the site. The Wyck House is one of the oldest houses in Germantown (a neighborhood of Philadelphia) and served as the ancestral home of the Wistar-Haines family from the 1690s until 1972. They were Quakers. Today it is preserved as a historic house and farm. They farm as 19th century farmers would have, have programs and the house and its artifacts are open for public viewing. For the Food Symposium, they hosted a food market and fair on Friday afternoon during the same hours as the weekly Farmers Market, and on Saturday hosted four amazing speakers in the gardens under a tent who spoke about food history and more.
My co-worker Matt, is really the culprit for getting us involved in this event. He is my partner-in-crime for getting THE COOKBOOK published. He is in charge of the digitization department and together with Ashley got everything ready for the book. He encouraged us to participate in the market on Friday evening. We decided we wanted to cook food from the cookbook in hopes of enticing people to purchase the book. That part of the plan didn't actually work, but people really liked the food. But it was great to be there.
There were some fantastic people there. First of all, fresh fruits and veggies right from the farm. Then there were other vendors, the first blueberries of the season, there was a historic food re-enactoress, Susan McLellan Plaisted in all her garb - she made a lemon tart - had the flip chart to prove it. And I must say - the tart was amazing. We talked about historic cooking. She was lamenting the fact that so many historic garden were closing and she couldn't get the correct foods to make some of her historic recipes. Who knew this was such a big deal? Well, I do now.
There was also the Wild Foodies. And I think that this is where the mind blowing started. I made the rounds, purchased my local-in-season-cherries and blueberries, and saw this lady with a bunch of pots on her table of... - get this - ALL THE WEEDS I HAVE IN MY GARDEN. So, ya just gotta go see what that is all about, right? And it was all about what to DO with them - how to eat them, how they are edible, how to use them for medicinal purposes. Which ones are anti-bug and post-bug-bite appropriate. I couldn't believe it. All these weeds I've been yanking out are edible! So I don't know about you people, but I have a yard full of all these things and I'll be surviving a nuclear Holocaust just fine thank you. (I hope) But I do have to pat myself on the back - I have been preserving some of them just because they are pretty. Now I know I can use them too! I've got to figure out how to learn more about this. In the meantime - here's what I did learn about the things I can eat in my garden...
We (with the cookbook) were in the back in a tent with Capogiro (the best gilato in North America), the Johnson House (who brought their own ginger beer), Le Dames d'Escoffier (who had a pork roast that melted in the mouth) and Whole Foods (who were making fresh individual pizzas on the spot). Are you hungry yet?
So to back up.... Friday morning, Matt and I cooked. We cooked like crazy!!! We made just over 100 meatballs. A stuffed eggplant recipe that went so fast we couldn't believe it - we'd doubled up on the Cherry bread because we knew that would be a hit and the night before I'd made 150 macaroons. Well, let me just tell you the hit of the day were the meatballs. Thank goodness there were (apparently) alot of vegetarians, because they were stellar and we had enough to have some left over. (page 8 by the way, if you have the cookbook). One of the first gentlemen to try them was a guide for the Wyck house and he raved! Two minutes later his phone rang, he answered it and said, "Hello? - Hi - lemmetellyou - I just had the best meatball in the world. Oh man..." I saw him today at the event and he reminded me that they were the best meatballs he had ever had. And yeeeeaaah, they are kinda good. Too bad he didn't buy a book. I hope he dreams about them and comes and gets a book after all. hee hee.We did break even at the fair. We spend about $133. for the food and such, and we sold a total of 8 books. $20 each. I'm really hoping some people bought the book online. Then we would make a profit.
And then today... - more blowing of the mind.
The symposium was four incredible speakers:
William Woys Weaver, Michael Twitty, Valeir Erwin of the Geechee Girl Rice Cafe, Rose Hayden-Smith, and Ben Watson.
William Woys Weaver started Saturday's mind blowing. I wish I would have heard him speak before publishing THE COOKBOOK. He talked about trying to figure out - in order to recreate authenticity - kitchen gardens of the 18th and 19th centuries. He showed how to read recipes and extract the subtle information from which can tell you so much. I cannot wait to get back to work to start doing some more research. He showed how images are very important to authenticating what we think are heirloom seeds. We have huge "ephemera" collections I will be pulling on Monday to look at to see what treasures are in them.
Michael Twitty - I don't even know where to start with this man. He was an incredible wealth of information about food and the history of the enslaved peoples and African Americans. How did food migrate from West Africa to the Americas - what is the origin of the word "yam" and what where enslaved people's garden's like - how did they grow them - how was it important and why? The origin of the word yam is from the word yahm a common West African word in many languages. He went on today that this is also the origin of the word yum. Here we've got these African Mamies - raising white kids and black kids, telling them to "eat up!" YAHM, YAHM. Michael then went on to say that if you look up 'yum' in the dictionary it says, "origin unknown." to which he said, "that mean us", meaning former slaves and African American people. After listening to him speak I realized - I needed to come home and rethink my entire vegetable garden. If enslaved people could feed themselves on these small 8ft.x8ft. plots - I should be able to do so as well. I can't wait... although it may have to be next year. But tomorrow will be my garden day. I plan on making some progress then.
Valerie Erwin, chef of the Geechee Girl Rice Cafe in Germantown, spoke briefly about how to prepare a meal with local, in season, fresh foods. And then she talked about the lunch menu and how she'd decided on that for our lunch. Eat your hearts out...
We had salmon broiled with a very yummy spice rub, a fresh greens salad with lovely dressing, a bean salad - to die for, black eyed peas, sugar snap peas, red peppers, red onions, all in a savory dressing - oh dear - I had heaps of seconds of that. Then there was corn bread and collard greens, and for dessert - a yellow cake with fresh fruits from the Wyck house (peaches and black raspberries) and home-made whipped cream. I think there were very few people who didn't have seconds. I had to save my dessert for later. It was delicious. Yummy Yum Yum.
After lunch, Rose Hayden-Smith spoke. Rose embodies the politics for the day. She is the Strategic Initiative Leader for Sustainable Food Systems for the University of California, Agriculture and Natural Resources. She is also a US History historian. Her specialty? Victory Gardens. How interesting - how incredibly interesting! She said that the first Federally mandated education curriculum was foods and gardens during WWI. She proceeded to show posters and imagery. She continued to argue in favor of shortening the food mile. She argued in favor of small community or civic gardens. Schools should have gardens - and on and on. She encouraged us to look at the USDA website. and many others besides. I had no idea I could!? The commentary after her speak quickly became a heated discussion of current farming politics.
The last speaker was Ben Watson. Who knew there was so much to know about apples??? Apparently we can thank the bears for them. They are accused of choosing the sweetest apples from trees, walking a way and then pooping the seeds out with a nice, "fertilizer" to get the new tree growing. Ben talked about looking for varieties that have dissappeared, how they are propagated, which are good to eat, which are good for cider, and which are good for insect repellant purposes. I'm seriously toying with the idea of getting an apple tree. Although there is a lot of research that needs to be done first!

To write the above - I sat outside in my weedy garden with Jacques who started chasing the fireflies, which made me decide it was time to go in.

Today - Sunday, I slept in. I felt I'd deserved it. Then I went for a bike ride, came back and decided it was time to tackle the garden. Lawn mowing, hedge trimming and a new examination of what it growing in my garden. Mary came over and dropped off my farm share in the afternoon, mostly the same stuff as last week. So I decided to look up a recipe for what to do with garlic scapes. Again... eat your hearts out....

Garlic Scape Pesto

Ingredients:
1 cup garlic scapes (about 8 or 9 scapes), top flowery part removed, cut into ¼-inch slices
1/3 cup walnuts
¾ cup olive oil
¼-1/2 cup grated parmigiano
½ teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste

Method:
Place scapes and walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and whiz until well combined and somewhat smooth. Slowly drizzle in oil and process until integrated. With a rubber spatula, scoop pesto out of bowl and into a mixing bowl. Add parmigiano to taste; add salt and pepper. Makes about 6 ounces of pesto. Keeps for up to one week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

For ½ pound short pasta such as penne, add about 2 tablespoons of pesto to cooked pasta and stir until pasta is well coated.

This recipe is stolen from: A Washington Post Blog, A Mighty Appetite, by Kim O'Donnel

It's all about food

2011-06-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

yeah well, it is. My first CSA, crop share association, came on Saturday! In the first haul we have small red onions, kale, lettuce, parsley, fennel, garlic scapes and cherries. Yum - can't wait to get going with those. I think I will freeze most of the parsley a la basil as in the last post. It works really well. I need to eat the kale very soon. the most interesting challenge will be what to do with the garlic scapes.
From my own garden on Friday I pulled a giant bunch of turnip greens, more raspberries and thyme. It doesn't even look like I made a dent in the turnips. which is good because they were yummy and I think I will take a few more bunches before they become actual turnips.
On Saturday night the three pit bulls next door broke out. The youngest mail who got out first did quite a bit of damage to the garden. Not on purpose, but still. I think the worst is that I lost one of my precious tomato plants. I have been worried since I planted them that something would go wrong and I'd lose them. But if this is all - okay. I really hope it's all. I put them into cages this weekend so that should help. And I really hope those darn dogs don't get out again. It was a little scary. The two boys are fine. They like me, but the little girl - oh boy. She's a piece of work. She's been severely abused - but still. She doesn't like me - fine. But that's not great either.
But at the moment she's not my biggest problem. Its these guys:
ooo how I hate them! ugh! They've invaded my house. They are everywhere - I kill them wipe up with vinegar and they come from the other direction. I think their nest is under the porch somewhere. Once I get that ripped up - I hope i find it and I can get rid of them. If they would just stay in the yard! But then they'd probably eat my tomatoes. Ya just can't win with these suckers.

Saturday Harvest

2011-06-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

What a great way to start the weekend. Two more cups of raspberries (maybe enough now to make some jam!), an echinacea, more pretty sunny flowers, and a bunch of basil. The basil in the garden in going absolutely bonkers. The bushes are just thrilled to be out there. I probably need to change the earth in the window box or something because for the last two years the basil has been unhappy in there. But maybe I'll just ignore it because I have so much of it outside!
I picked a bunch to freeze and figure every time the bush is overloaded with too many leaves I'll just have to pick some, freeze it and not worry about buying any more.
All you have to do is wash the leaves and pretend you are rolling a cigar in plastic wrap.
Leaves:
Ready to freeze:
When you need fresh basil, just take it out of the freezer, chop and voila! This technique works well with parsley and dill also, both of which I have in the garden. Hopefully I'll have oodles of herbs come winter.
Since I do have a small parsley bush, and I have ground meat stashed in the fridge, I decided to give Ellen Emlen's meat balls a go:I did: a cup of ground beef, cup of ground pork, 1/3c chopped onion, 1T. chopped parsley, 1/2t. white pepper, 1t salt, 1/2 t fresh grated nutmeg. 1 small lemon peel and juice, maybe a cup of bread in the milk, and 1 large egg. (eggs back then were smaller so you don't need as much today).
My beautiful parsley and an onion.

Dinner with some kale. Yum. Don't leave out the lemon. As weird as it sounds - it needs to be in there. Fry in butter - or whatever you want.

That time of Year

2011-06-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

Yes it's that time of year, that time of year for so many things...

Strawberries:Strawberries from the Amish Farmer. Beautiful sweet, aromatic, small, perfect strawberries.
And this year, he finally gave me a break on the price - and I mean a real break. He only charged me half the price - normally he just gives me 25¢ off a basket. This time... yippee! So I bought two flats. That's a lot of strawberries. I made three double batches of strawberry jam last night. And by the third batch I figured out my new secret. Spices. Yup. Cinnamon and Cardamom. Next year they will all be like that.
But not only are there the edible ones, there are the wild ones. Too bad they are fake ones. They taste like NOTHING. Its a real bummer because they are everywhere in the garden. They are a pretty weed. They shoot out runners like crazy and take over everywhere. I wasn't sure if I liked them at first. But now I find them quite lovely. They have taken over the three feet of barren land next to the neighbors wall.

I'm letting them do their thing. They aren't hard to weed out - unlike other nasty ugly weeds. If I ever decide to get rid of them, it won't be too difficult.

Raspberries!My first bowlful today! And it seems like I barely made a dent on the bush. I am so hoping to be able to make a more substantial cache of jam from this year. However - this first batch might end up in some homemade ice cream.

And next to the raspberries? - a mystery solved:Hollyhocks. The things that never did anything last year are blooming! I have this pale pink, a darker pink and yellow - so far. They are beautiful! They seem to me to be hibiscus for non-tropical folks. I can't wait to propagate many many more! I'm going to plant them everywhere. And especially since they are tall - they will cover some of the ugliness of my neighbors idea of landscaping. sigh.

Sunny flowers:
A few other things are blooming as well, for example, these fun sunny happy flowers. They are blooming in clumps in a few places.

Kitties:
What scary thing is making Swee'pea stalk it?
The fan.
The fan had to be set up last weekend because the summer inferno hit us full force. I was a die-hard until I couldn't sleep and there were kitties wilting all over the place. Then I put in the window air conditioners. But still, air needed to move...
The fan. Scary scary stuff to have something whirring at you. We spent a good 10-15 minutes on high alert. Then we lay down in the wind's path and looked content. However... then the InCharge Person went downstairs and left Poor Thing on his own. He disappeared into the bedroom where it was safe and apparently forgot about the fan. Because when I came back upstairs after an hour we came back out of the bedroom only to be confronted by the Scary Scary. So we stood by the kitchen counter trying to decide how we felt about it. Poor Thing turned to look at the InCharge Person and the InCharge Person made the mistake of touching the Poor Thing trying to calm him. Swee'pea lept three feet straight up, all claws extended, did major acrobatics, and one of those extended claws came down straight on the InCharge Person's leg from knee to mid calf. After lots of blood and no hydrogen peroxide, tea tree oil was applied and the Scary Scary was moved to a more descrete location. Good Grief.

The other thing my little Swee'pea is still insisting on is pulling out every single ball of yarn to play with in the middle of the night. Fun for him - not for me who has to unravel all the knots and try to wind everything the following morning. I broke down and went to Ikea and bought paper put-em-together-yourself storage boxes. I hope this will work. We'll find out tonight.
But someone else had to claim those boxes first.
Here's my Jacques-in-the-box: It seems there really isn't a preference as to which box we occupy either.
And finally, we have a new toy.
It is a laser pointer mouse.
This is causing considerable consternation. There is a red dot flitting around, that doesn't have an identifying sound, nor does it make any noise. It disappears too quickly. It needs to be moved slowly so that kitties can keep sight of it.
And when you finally do get your paw on it, you can't feel anything. What in tarnation....?

Knitting and Garden Surprise

2011-05-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

Well, our Pinkknit-a-thon 2011 is off and running. So I've been knitting like a mad-crazy woman. This is the first hat - it's super easy, and I am thrilled with the results! The yellow mannequin is a bit much - but don't worry I painted her sky blue pretty quickly after this photo shoot. I've been knitting for other people as well. My friend Babette in Australia was diagnosed with a brain tumor last fall (northern hemisphere fall) and I have been planning to make a hat for her ever since. I finally manage to pull together this little number based on a hat my great Aunt "helped" me make. Babette said - Grey and red - I said I don't have grey - I hope silver will substitute.
Here's the front:

and the backI decided she also might like some variety so I knitted her one of the simple knitting hats from the pinkknit-a-thon as well. I used the fabulous alpaca yarn my aunts brought from California last fall. Ugh - it is so luxurious to knit with! So soft... I hope Babette likes it.
The colors of this yarn are beautiful... I'll probably make myself, there is still plenty of yarn.
In the mean time - for me - I make fun funny things:
for example: a slug and a toad stool
Swee'pea is still "helping." I don't know how he finds the yarn anymore! I think I'm doing a good job hiding it - but more often than not, in the morning there is something he's found in the night. He also started bringing me the just-finished items. I wonder if there is something about the smell of my hands on it or something? He brought both of Babette's hats and the pink one too when I left it on the table. What is going on in that little noggin of his?

When I'm not knitting I'm fighting the ever present war on the garden. I don't know where these weeds come from. They show up over night! So there's a lot of that kind of maintenance. But of course I'm also trying to grow stuff. Go figure.
Last week after I was done planting some tomatoes, I thought I'd just try out throwing some turnip, beet and zucchini seeds into the rest of the prepared ground. The packages said germination 10-12 days.
Surprise! I have a magic garden. In two days this is what I had:a tiny stripe of beets at the bottom and a massive stripe of turnips!
The little beet greens are struggling to come up:
While the turnips don't seem to be having any problems
and the zucchini's are just doin' their thing. Tomorrow will be the winnowing day - and more gardening.

and a little more garden

2011-05-23T18:50:00.001-07:00

and today I have a beautiful purple iris
and several gorgeous peonies:I think I'm going to have to do some research on the peonies though, I don't think they are happy. They are much smaller than last year and wilt very easily. They probably want to be in the ground and not so much sun. Just a guess.
My allergies have abated for the time being. But I was pretty miserable at work this morning too. Somehow they've calmed down this afternoon. Is it because the humidity went up? I wonder. I'm still a little stuffy but not like last night. Gettin' me a dose of Claritin tomorrow! Maybe then my brain will return.

Befuddled and bemuddled

2011-05-22T17:46:00.000-07:00

I have allergies. I don't really - have never ever before in my life! But for the last month or so, I've been miserable. Today's been the worst so far. And I just feel like whining. So. Woe to me...I feel like I've got a head full of cotton balls.

The roses around the front door are blooming again. They were blooming when I bought my house. I can't believe its been three years.

Raspberries are on their way. I can't wait!!!
Primroses are blooming:

The blasted porch project is not moving along as fast as I'd hoped. Probably mostly because of these allergies - they just wipe you out. I need to get some drugs. Better living through chemistry.

I don't know what this plant is, but I'm pretty sure I planted it. I'm hoping it's a hollyhock? But so far it just makes leaves.

A little more garden in the garden:
More tomatoes planted, beets, turnips and zucchini's. Hopefully something will grow!

Another mystery plant but I think these are lantern plants. This is where I planted them last year and they didn't do anything. This year... explosion! Plus the package said, plant this year for blooms next year.
Baby Blueberries. I was afraid they didn't get enough sun - but maybe they do. Yum.

Yesterday was a beautiful day - sunny warm, perfect day for reading on the deck.
Jacques surveyed his domain. Watchin' out for the other black kitty he had to chase away earlier in the day.

We are very happy when there is a fresh barrel of rain water in the house.
And a very cute Swee'pea. He loves to help me make the bed. He's very good at making the sheets stay put.
And we are just cute.

And if that's not cute enough, we have taken to wanting to be under the sheet on the chair we always sleep in.
still working out the situationhappy now. Rear end sticking out and everything.

Jeff the Giant Orange Cat

2011-05-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone - I have a new blog I'm following. And yes, this blog is really only for cat lovers. Click on the link for Jeff the Giant Orange Cat. Jeff is a hoot. From being the sheet tamer to funny sleeping positions, to the laziest playing I've every seen. Check it out. Jeff has staff. 'nough said.

Garden Work

2011-05-15T18:28:00.001-07:00

Last Tuesday I decided it was time to put the screen door in. I bought it three years ago without really examining the doorway it would be going into. The door 's been sittin' in the first floor kitchen for three years because there were a few problems. For one thing, the door frame is metal, for another there was a great big pipe sticking out of the lower left corner for no apparent reason. I just couldn't face trying to saw the thing out. Turns out - there was no need to worry. I wouldn't have been able to saw it out because the saw wouldn't have fit in the skinny space between the doorframe and the pipe. Fooey. So I got the sledge hammer. Bent it right flat down flush with the door sill. Ready to go.
Now of course it still didn't go very smoothly. I didn't have the right drill bit for the metal door and it was a little precarious trying to reach the top stuff. On Friday, after going to Home Depot and getting the right drill bit. I finally gave up on trying to drill holes into the metal and used gorilla glue and clamps. Ya know what? Works just fine.
Part of the motivation for getting the screen up was so that I wouldn't always have to lock Swee'pea up on the 2nd floor. He likes to be where I am so the "open" door is a good trade off.
I spent the rest of the afternoon working on my herb garden.
The before:

Last fall I put in this tulip bed. Unfortunately the chili powder I threw all around the place didn't keep enough squirrels away and half of what I planted was not there to bloom in the spring.
The plan was always to put in a next row - but I wasn't sure what it would be planted there.

I've had a thyme bush, melisse, rosemary, and chives hanging out in pots on the porch. I thought they deserved a bit of earth for their own. I also added basil, chives and parsley. I hope everything makes it. It's supposed to rain for the next few days. This is a good thing, but I'd really like to get my tomatoes in the ground too. That's a whole 'nother weekend project.

Oh right, I have a blog!

2011-05-08T16:47:00.000-07:00

Here it is the eve of the three year anniversary of owning my home and I should really post. I've been meaning to since last time. But you know how that goes when you have too much to do - sometimes you just let it go until it really IS too much to do and well... this is one of those times.
Since the last post - I had to purchase a new computer. Yes, my poor baby kept kept suddenly falling asleep on me. Having a narcoleptic computer is not fun when you are trying to create new documents. Each time one fears that everything has crashed and all is lost. So I preemptivley bought the new one. And it is fabulous! Moves at the speed of light, everything uploads quickly, and oh there are so many wonderful bells and whistles. But I lost a few of my favorite things from my vintage computer. There used to be a button to press and all of the open windows would go away so you could see what was on your desk top. That's gone. And I don't like the screen. It is too reflective. It's beautiful in the dark - but working outside in the yard is a nightmare. My face starts to hurt from squinting too much. But let's talk about the life of the house shall we?
So after putting up the o-so-subtle-10ft-tall fence, I decided to add a "deck." I don't like having my table flying around in the middle of the grass. It makes it a pain to mow. Because of course I don't move it. So I decided it would be nice to have a deck that would be level. I've been thinking about laying bricks or flag stones down in the back to create a bit of a patio. But funds are low and that is a heck of a lot of work. I'm not sure where the brainstorm came from to get four shipping palettes from work, and lay decking wood across them. Looks good, eh?

Looks even better with the decking on it But you'll have to trust me on that because I can't find the picture. That's what happens when you wait so long to blog.

My outside garden finally came to life - six weeks later than last year. We had such a cold miserable April. Most of it was the 50s and 60s. We finally had a few scattered days of 80 and the garden took advantage of that and exploded - weeds and all.

Who knew? Violets are weeds? Well I'm okay with that. All of the violets I transplanted last year came up exactly where they were supposed to and the yard was very purple. After the initial blooming, the wild strawberries bloomed too - it was quite lovely to have the little purple and yellow flowers everywhere.

The indoor garden was also started at the beginning of April. I started all kinds of seedlings from various seeds. My most proud achievement are the tomato seedlings made from the seeds I brought back from Germany. I really hope they are as good as the ones they came from.

They were transferred outside this week and then next weekend I will put them in the ground. I need to get some more compost and decide where to put all of these plants. Flowers from last year are coming back stronger than ever. The echinacea flowers and mini sunflowers are doing very well. And something that I know I planted is back in full force. But beats me what in the heck it is! I guess we'll find out together.
And for some reason blogger has "updated" all of its fabulous features and I cannot upload vertical images!? So you will have to use your imagination.
Of course my house has not been without its charming problems. Towards the end of April, we had some really crazy rain storms. It must have been residual from the tornado madness from the south. At any rate my window-of-the-perpetual-leak on the second floor couldn't take it. It just started raining right through. It did not go to the 1st floor thank goodness. But I had to have some major buckets ready.

A roofer came on Monday and caulked everything up. It leaked a bit the the following storm but nothing like before.
And Jacques and Swee'pea? Oh they are getting along famously.

Yup, those would be my boys snuggled up together. I wouldn't go so far as to say they are best friends but I think Jacques is happy for the company. They play together a lot, but Jacques is happy when he gets to be in the garden with me - without Swee'pea. Swee'pea is happy when we are alone together in the apartment. He's my little buddy - he follows me everywhere. It's fun having him. We are still at the learning stage where Swee'pea is learning to trust me. Before when I would pick him up he would freak out and have to be up on my shoulder. As of a few days ago I can cradle him in my arms. Water is still a fascinating thing and he has finally discovered the toilet - Jacques favorite fascination as well.

Of course the month couldn't pass with all good things. My great aunt died on April 19th. She would have been 100 in August. And while I am very sad that she has passed - it is still okay. She lived a great life. She lived with no fear or worry. She enjoyed people, talking, good company, and good wine. I am so glad I got to see her in March. Despite her delirium it was a good visit with good memories. My poor uncle though... I don't think he knows what to do with himself. They were together for almost 60 years. I talked to him this morning on the phone and he said how much he misses her. I can only imagine what he's going through right now.

In other news, today was spent working on blogs - this one and the Pinkknit-a-thon. This was the knitting project we did last year, and I hope that this year goes even better than last year. Check out the new design. I even had postcards printed. I spent this morning down by the Art Museum passing them out to all the awesome people doing the Komen Race for the Cure. I had some good responses so I hope we get some people to join. Feel free to let all your friends know.

And last I will leave you with a recipe.
Sesame Beets.
a bundle beets
sesame oil
sesame seeds
salt - optional

slice beets very thin. Toss in sesame oil. Roast in the over at 350 for half an hour, tossing every 10 minutes. Sprinkle sesame seeds on the dish before serving. Enjoy!

Can I get a HALLELUJAH!

2011-04-03T18:33:00.000-07:00

Hallelujah! for two things:
1). I have my computer back! Yay! And what a riggamarolla that was! They had the part, then it didn't work, so they "ordered" the part, it didn't come, then they called, it wasn't going to come because it was a vintage computer, so they looked again and lo and behold! oh my goodness there was another part sitting there all along and they could have tried to put that in. And in all of this they managed to lose my power cord. ??? But they ended up just giving me one, because they have some that come in and don't need it, because (all together now) my computer is a vintage computer! Bottom line - I am not complaining. I'm back into functional mode. Thank goodness. Let's hope its for a while.
and 2). Fence up! Privacy Privacy! Yay!
This is what I was looking at before. And I never felt I could go to that side of my yard. Someone was always lurking there. Plus the giant creep who lives next door's girlfriend is the back door. Yesterday when I was excavating roots who popped out? The creep. I've had enough of that.
So off to Home Depot I trotted to get potting soil and seed starting mix, and in addition to that I ended up with fence materials. (And lots of nice help from two guys in the lumber dept who tied it all to the top of my car.) Putting up a fence isn't that hard when you have the right stuff. They make these really cool stake-things that you can just pound into the ground and then a 4x4 fits into the cap thing on top. Once those are in ya throw up a couppala 2x4s, then the slats and before ya know it...voila! Fence. Okay - well it's even easier when your friend Mary gets tired of doing her taxes and comes over to help.
There's my 10ft. fence. No one can see over that. Finally some privacy in that corner. Now I can start to put in some "furniture" like a table and maybe some sort of a hammock??? Oh, I'm still in the dreaming stage of that. Because I'm still in awe that the fence went up today!

So many things and then some...

2011-03-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

Okay - first of all you should all know that I don't have my computer at the moment. In the whirlwind prep to get to Germany I was vacuuming and caught the cord of my laptop and my poor baby landed right on the power supply. ugh. I was able to jerry-rig it while in Germany but two days after I got back it was done being rigged and said "good night!" So I took it to a repair place a week and a half ago and I still don't have it back. Apparently my little laptop that is ONLY seven years old is - get this - a vintage laptop. I paid extra money to get it back faster than most, nope - they can't get the part. They tell me their computers say the part has been shipped, but they don't have it. I'm going to have to go tomorrow to do an IM chat (whatever that is) with the supply company and the shop to see if we can get some answers. Why they can't do this without me there is beyond me. At anyrate... I am at school on a Sunday internetting.

So yes, after a whirl wind trip to California to visit a ton of conservation labs, (and my dad) it was off to Germany. (The issue came to a good end - just fyi).

My Aunt who is 99 and 1/2. is still hanging in there.

However, now there are no less that 5 people in the room at any given time. She, my uncle, and I are the visible ones. Then there is a little boy, a Lady, and someone sitting on the ceiling. She talks to all of us, and tell stories from any given time in her life. She was always able to talk a blue streak, now we just have a bit of a challenge understanding. It's really fun when she tries to switch to Spanish.

So I spent the time prepping for the PinkKnit-a-thon. We launch in May (all things willing). I designed three hats for the project and I think they look pretty good.

My aunt helped me with this one:

It was the most amazing experience. I was just working on the hat while she talked and decided to try it on. She stopped in the middle of her 1940's world to turn to me and said, "no - not like that." Reached up and tugged at the edge a bit, and then said, "that's better - that looks right," and without missing a beat she turned back to who ever was listening to her on the other side of the bed and kept telling them something. This happened a few times. It was amazing how she would come right back to the present instantly to comment on the hat.

While in Germany I also got to visit the conservator at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz.

She gets to work on incredible things like this while looking out the window at the cathedral. She really has a nice space and spent about an hour showing me her space. It was nice.

Back at home with a failed laptop, unable to continue PinkKnit prep - I just had to knit a pair of spring socks. These are Jennifer inspired. She said that you can make right socks and left socks. What genius. I also wanted to try knitting socks from the toe up. It was the perfect opportunity to try both.

I'm pretty happy with them. The only thing I need to know now is, Jennifer, do you block your socks?

Spring keep pretending to be in the air. We had a very wonderful warm day a few weeks ago, but since then it froze and snowed again. I am finally getting fed up with this. I have some daffodils blooming, tulips are coming up and I'm itching to be out in the yard doing things.

But since it snowed last Thursday (it didn't stick) I worked inside on a few projects that have been calling for attention for months.

Firstly, the shelf in the living room:

It started to fall down.

So before it landed on anyone, I pulled all the books off and did the best I could to get it back up where it belongs.

The next thing that needed to happen was the addition of some small shelves next to the door.

Now I have room for the miniature books and some pottery. It doesn't have to clutter up the top of the china cabinet.

And then I decided it was high time to put the shelf in the kitchen in. I've been threatening to do this for .... oh dear probably since last summer!

Tah DAH!
but that of course prompted much cleaning. Here are my copper pots getting all shined up with the ketchup.

But of course there are other projects which will need to be addressed rather sooner... for example the squirrel that got stuck up in the rafters (its right in the middle of the image), and in the process of trying to get free kicked off a 12ft piece of molding on the top of my roof. I crawled out there today to get the wood off of the roof so it doesn't fly down on someone one, and then I tried to get the corpse down. Nothin' doing. But that has to happen soon so the damn thing does fall down in to the wall and start rotting. So maybe the cold was actually a blessing!!??

And in the most amazing news of the spring - I received the first two copies of THE COOKBOOK! The rest of the shipment should come in this week. It's beautiful!

Okay - and now I need to go. I might have figured out why all of my students are sick all the time. I'm sitting in this classroomwith the "air conditioning" blasting right on me. It's cold, and we can't open windows to air the stale air out. Yuck. I'm going to go eat some veggies now.

I also have to consider getting a new laptop. This computer is working at the speed of light!

The Yarn Thief

2011-02-20T19:11:00.001-08:00

There he is - The Yarn Thief. This has been the biggest part of the adjustment of having a new kitty - that he is not like Jacques. Jacques couldn't care less about yarn. Every-once-in-a-while he would steel a ball of yarn for two seconds. But with this new little guy -balls of yarn are THE BEST. I haven woken up to this sight many times...And it doesn't matter if it's crummy yarn or very expensive cashmere - it's ALL up for grabs. So what do you do? You wind it all up and start over again. Or you go to IKEA and get new boxes with lids! That is a fantastic thing! This little guy also has fur for days. I've had to vacuum more than ever since he's been here. But he is so sweet! I can't help but love him. He's become very shy. Doesn't want to meet new people. Not interested in going outside. So when Jacques is checking on his yard, Swee'pea is following me around the apartment. Doesn't matter what I'm doing, cleaning, cooking, knitting, folding clothes, taking a shower, Swee'pea is sitting right there with the great big curious eyes that say - "What are you doing!?" What a little sweetie-pie.
In other news - spring is coming. Really. Punxsutawny Phil (The groundhog of authority on the seasonal matters) said spring was around the corner and maybe he's right. Thursday and Friday we had a heatwave. It almost made it to 70° on Friday. But then Saturday it was very very windy and today it didn't break 40°. It's supposed to rain, maybe snow, tonight and probably snow on Tuesday. sigh. I am trying to be patient - but when the little crocuses are starting to poke their little green heads up, you really want them to come out! But you have to say to them - wait wait, not yet! Don't come out yet! It's going to be freezing in a few days. The nice thing is that Amaryllis grow indoors. Mine are beautiful this year. Its so rewarding to have something grow so fast.
My orchids, back on the rain-water diet, are coming up as well. They aren't very exciting at the moment, but they'll get a post once they decide to bloom.
And my other issue is still with me. This poor little guy (okay he's not so little), just wants to be loved. He is so sweet. But he does. not. like. cats. Not at all. I decided to see if he would be able to tolerate my babies. No. way. I opened the door (he was in a harness), Swee'pea jumped down from the sofa back, he snapped at him and Swee'pea lost his mind. Swee'pea turned into a whirling vortex of fur and claws. Got a couple of good swipes at his nose - there was blood - and then came after him as I was trying to drag him out of the apartment and shut the door! It wasn't until Jacques came around the corner and shocked Swee'pea that Swee'pea's attention was diverted and I could drag him out and shut the door. We went down stairs and I wanted to wipe the blood off of his nose, but I think he was embarrassed. He hung his head facing the wall and wouldn't turn around until I made him.
Ugh - these four-legged guys just break your heart. There's no bullshit in them. There's no passive aggressive crap. They are genuine - the way we just want people to be. Unconditional love as long as you feed them and pet them. If only people were so simple.

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-13T19:56:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. I hope your day will be filled with love.
On Valentine's Eve in thelifeofahouse we had a special first - at least that I've witnessed:Two kitties shared the same chair. A little while later Swee'pea had slipped down a bit and they were right next to each other. After I took those pictures, Jacques had had enough and got up and went to his basket.
Happy Valentine's Day anyway - hope you get to share your chair or basket or whatever with someone you love.

A week in Review

2011-02-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

It's been quite a week. Monday was second class for the semester - everything was fine until we approached headbands. Then there was a lot of moaning and groaning but once we got started there was a lot of, "oh, is that all it is?" Yeah. We finish our books this Monday and then we do decorated papers. Should be a fun class.
Tuesday was not so great. We have had some pretty horrific weather this week. Really rotten. We missed the giant end-of-the-world blizzard, but we got freezing rain and ice instead. Tuesday I went out to go to work and a woman shuffled past my front door. I sort of scoffed inside - but only until I hit the sidewalk. It was slick. One giant sheet of ice. It is an experience let me tell you. So I started the icy-sidewalk-shuffle too. Got all the way down to the train platform and realized I'd forgotten a bag of very vital things I needed - like lunch. So up I went again and I thought, well, since the powers that be sent me back here I better salt the sidewalk. So I did... felt good about that and headed back to the train. I got the the next block and suddenly there was a moment of pause where I was hanging in mid-air with my feet slipped out in front of me and I had enough time to think - I'm going down. And I did. I landed on my elbow and my rear. Now there is plenty of padding on the rear - good design feature - but there is not so much padding on the elbow. It hurt like crazy. But what do I do? What I always do - go to work. I was concerned that I had cracked it or something - it was pretty painful. But when I got home I did Arnica therapy and the next day all was fine, except for the muscle I missed on the back of my arm. That stuff is amazing. So I arnica'd that up the next night and I'm fine now. Well, except that I am even more careful than usual on icy sidewalks. There are some creeps who don't clear their walks. Makes me want to knock on door and say, "What is wrong with you!!??" Problem is, they are usually just tenants and god forbid they should do anything about it - even for their own safety. Okay - rant finished.
The rest of the week went by rather quickly. At work I've been working on that cookbook. I'm SO close and yet SO far. You have most of the stuff finalized and yet there are a hundred little things to do - page numbers, degree symbols, how to make fractions appear and on and on. When I come home I knit. I might be addicted. Could be...
I finally bought a hat pattern I've been thinking of off and on for a while. Last weekend I tried to design my own hat with no luck. I thought I'd treat myself to the pattern. And then of course one must find the correct yarn in one's stash.
And I found this: This is a ball of yarn, leftover from a sweater my grandmother must have knitted at least 40 years ago. I can't remember when I inherited the yarn or the sweater. They seem to have always been there. At any rate, I decided it would be great to have a hat to match the sweater. Turns out, The sweater has faded a bit, the yarn in the bag felted itself a bit. But I kind of don't care. I really love the fact that I have something she knitted and something I knitted from the same stash. I barely made it too. The hat is supposed to sit much lower but well I squeezed it out!
Then of course, I felt the need to keep things going in the family. I knitted the same hat out of the beautifully soft alpaca Aunt Lois brought me when she visited last April. It is so soft. A dream to knit with. Sorry the picture is fuzzy - I'm too tired to go take another one.
When Aunt Lois and Aunt Alice visited last October, they brought some more beautiful alpaca so I decided to try out another interesting pattern. This will be a neck wrap. It gets an interesting button. (Don't' worry Aunt Lois, I'll model it when I'm done! :)) I'm really excited about it.
I was so excited about it, I actually went out in the really crummy weather today. It was just a misty rain- all day. I wanted to get rose water and a button. That's all. Well. There was an emergency on the train so we all had to get off, got to the other side and get on a train specially routed for us. Okay. but then there was the oncoming train and I was in the front car and so many people were freaking out about that train - even though it was going backwards that I had to get off early. Walked all over South Philly and they didn't have rose water. So I walked to get the button - thank goodness they had some beautiful ones, but by the time I was done, I was pooped. I came home, had lunch and took a nice long nap.
I'm surprised I was so tired, but maybe I made coffee too strong this morning. I tried out Hannah Penn's (as in Mrs. Penn of William Penn - founder of Pennsylvania) recipe for coffee. Turns out we have her recipes as well! Her recipe for coffee calls for boiling water, coffee grounds, 3-4 sprigs of rosemary and 20 grains of saffron. Verdict? Tastes more like dirt that usual. But after I added some sugar and cream (milk) I have to say it was very palatable. Its different alright, but it grows on you. I'm curious as to why she did it that way. Was coffee too strong? She didn't like the flavor? It wasn't possible to understand coffee as one ingredient? Interesting.
The cats? Oh they are fine. We had a lazy day after I got home and did nothing. Everyone has their favorite place and we snuggle accordingly. I'm having some trouble with my phone line, I'm getting a lot of static and my internet is being funny. So I tried to check everything out on my end first. This involved moving a bookshelf, books etc. And of course promptly Jacques needs to occupy the empty shelves. Poor Swee'pea couldn't figure out what was going on. But now they are uninterested.
I called my phone/internet provider and they weren't especially helpful. But they are supposed to come out on the 10th. What they did say was that they have been having a ton of problems "in my area". Interesting. But I need this too work. I need to call my aunt and uncle, and I need the internet! Cross your fingers for me until then.

The road to hell...

2011-01-23T18:55:00.000-08:00

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I'm beginning to think this is really true. Although I cannot for the life of me figure out why. Why is it that if you are doing something good for something - it always comes back and bites you in the butt?
I gave the puppy back this afternoon. I cannot have a puppy right now. Good Grief - I just got a new kitty! That's about all Jacques can handle right now. Not to mention me!
The owner never actually showed up. Wasn't really concerned to get his dog back??? So I gave him to his brother who was there moving something. I thought at the time this was a good thing, because I could also give him a couple of old towels and ask him to put something over the door of the dog house to that Petey (the big dog) would be warm. But then because we were worried the puppy would get out again he locked the puppy up in the house. Now I am petrified that they won't be there for another week - AGAIN. and who is going to feed that little guy!? If he was outside - at least I could feed him.

Waste not, Want not

2011-01-22T17:06:00.000-08:00

Back in October Aunt Lois remarked that I'm not really making any more improvements on my house. And she's right. But those of you who are anxiously awaiting news related to that - here's one....
I've been wanting to do this for a while, but it was pretty low on the list-o-priorities. The kitchen on the first floor is leaky leaky leaky (as in air). There is one good window, one I should have covered in plastic by now, and a door that has (and I'm not kidding) a quarter of an inch of daylight around it where air gets in. The high for today was 23F. Tonight it should be 11F. That's cold. Since the room is so far from the thermostat I've put it low on the totem pole of things to be addressed, but what I've wanted to do is take the left over door from my 2nd floor bathroom and hang it in the doorway to this kitchen. Jeff make a bigger doorway when he remodeled my beautiful bathroom, and I decided I wanted to keep the old door. For the last two years, I've been wondering if I made the right decision. And the answer is yes. I had to hang the door tonight.... And just by the way... I don't get it... Jeff was always whining about how hard it is to hang a door. Seriously - you just have to make sure you have enough stuff underneath it to prop it up to the right height - then it's a piece of cake! But I digress...
Yes I HAD to hang the door tonight because right now, my neighbor's dog is in there, and he needs to stay in there.
Yeeeaaah, I'm not sure what happened, but last night I went out, kinda late to give the dogs a treat before I went to bed. (My neighbor has two dogs, I'm a sucker for a cute face so I give them lots of treats.) The next thing I know, the puppy is running around in my yard! I didn't know what to do, so I coaxed him into my house and locked him into the kitchen. I called my neighbor today to let him know I had the puppy, and he said he'd be home sometime this afternoon. I said I'd keep an eye out for him so I could get him back. As far as I know he never showed. Soooo..... I still have him.
At first I just had the door propped in the doorway to keep him in. That only lasted last night. This morning he promptly knocked it over. So I went to Home Depot and go the replacement hinges and hung the door. Its a good thing I decided to get some latches as well, because the door will stay shut on it's own, as long as nothing bumps it. The second it's bumped it springs open. So the little one is holed up in the kitchen on my old egg crate with a fresh piece of grey buckram for a potty.
The grey buckram? Yeah, so, while I was working in my studio I let him run around on the first floor. I was a little concerned because he hadn't gone potty anywhere that I'd seen. Only one little piddle on the bathroom floor which was hardly anything. While I was hanging the door though, I had to go back to my studio for something and I caught a whiff.... a whiff that only dog poop can smell like. So, now ya gotta find it and you can only use your nose! But I was lucky, it wasn't hard to spot. I had put down some scrap cheap grey buckram around the windows I was stripping (last summer). Apparently that is the place to go potty. Maybe he mistook it for newspaper? I don't know, but there were two poops and two pees (one made very strategically on a cat toy). So, long story short - he got a fresh piece of paper in the kitchen tonight. Let's hope he knows what to do with it.
Poor little guy - he is so sweet. He just wants some love. I am a little worried about Petey - the other dog. He's still outside and I hope he doesn't freeze tonight. He's got a little doghouse but without the puppy, will he be warm enough? I hope so.
I know what you're thinking...and the cats? I don't think they know. Jacques has probably smelled the puppy so much he doesn't think much of it. He wanted to go out, so I shut the puppy up in the bathroom, and Jacques just stomped right by, didn't pay any attention. Swee'pea, on the other hand, knows some thing's amiss. He smells something he doesn't understand. And the two of them? They are getting along much, much better. Its starting to feel like it's always been this way. Animals are just amazing.

Cats and stuff

2011-01-20T19:30:00.000-08:00

Oh, it's all that seems to occupy my mind lately. Cats.
It's been really really cold lately, a bit of snow, freezing rain, ice, and just cold. So my rain barrel has run out. Oh yes. My cats are so spoiled that they will only drink water out of the rain barrel bucket - or a freshly flushed toilet. Go figure. I'm not quite sure how I spoiled the big man this much. But ... it's too late now.
So today I chipped ice from around the bucket that is frozen solid to the downspout. I was hoping with the warming trend (high 33 today) it would melt somewhat. Nothin' doin'. There is a great big chunk of ice holding the bucket and the downspout hostage. They will have to do for a while. It's supposed to snow tonight. Yay.

Last thursday I took Swee'pea to the vet. I'm telling you, I think he thought he was going back to the shelter. He was so heartbroken. His face said it all. He tried desperately to snuggle against my hand against the fence of the cage. Poor little guy. He wouldn't leave my lap at the vet. Just sat there and looked at me. I tried to tell him, I was taking him back home - he didn't need to worry, but you know how well that works.

So it turns out he is about 10 months, which makes sense because is SUCH a kitten. He is healthy, but might have a heart murmur. That would be three cats now... so I'm not sure I believe it. He weighs a grand total of 8lbs. Jacques weighs 16 - at the least. So that confirms that theory.

In the mean time the two of them have started some serious playing together. It's really very sweet. Jacques has accepted that this is part of our family now - doesn't mean he is 100% in with the deal but he is very sweet sometimes. They play a lot - chase each other a lot - and then when Jacques has had enough, he just ignores the little one. This is a huge improvement. I also have two (well three) alarm clocks in the morning now. The clock radio - and after about an hour - Jacques and Swee'pea both feel obligated to remind me that it is really time... time to feed them! What on earth am I waiting for!? I'm so glad this has worked out.

In other news, I finally finished my 2nd pair of socks.

There is really nothing like a pair of handmade socks. It always surprises me when I put them on. Maybe it's because they are wool, but not as dense as the store-bought ones? I don't know. Needless to say, they are pretty nice. If they just weren't such a pain to knit....

Still in Charge - but maybe a milestone

2011-01-10T18:30:00.000-08:00

Just before I took this picture I was sitting next to Jacques petting him and thinking, wow, Jacques has been very patient the last two days. How nice that he is coming around. He might be a good daddy yet to this little one. He's much more patient about the playing, he just watches Swee'pea in fascination for as long as Swee'pea is doing what ever he is doing. Curious George would have a run for his money. While I was petting Jacques and telling him how nice it is that he's being so patient, Swee'pea jumped on my lap and wanted to be pet to. Well that was just too much for my big kitty, and he let out a very irritate growl/yowl and Swee'pea scampered. So what I mistook for patients was really the look of disdain.

I took a bath tonight and Jacques made a big show of just sitting down on the bathmat - and not needing to be curious. Swee'pea on the other had was fascinated! Could not figure out what the heck was going on. He finally crawled under the vanity and with a very heavy sigh lay down and put his head on his paws. It must be an overwhelming world to a little guy who has basically spent his first year of life in a cage.

This is talking looks like. Check out the wrinkled up nose. He doesn't talk very much, yet. I have a feeling he will be pretty vocal.

The milestone was that we all slept in the same bed last night. Jacques of course on HIS spot with the look of irritation. Swee'pea next to me until I turned over and he thought it was time to play. Nope.

Jacques is being very possessive of me, more than usual:

Here he is not on the table.

I mean, you see that too, that his back feet are still in my lap, right? Therefore - Not on the table.

Introducing... Swee'pea!

2011-01-08T07:59:00.000-08:00

I finally landed on a name. And it fits him perfectly. He is very sweet but he's got spunk and so Popeye's little orphan is the perfect name for this little one. And I don't even mind that he stole the ball of yarn I've been working on. It's good to know what they like to play with, then you can make sure to furnish them with appropriate toys so they don't take things they shouldn't play with. Problem is, I'm not sure what to replace it with. Maybe Aunty Mellie needs to make us another large felted eyeball? (this was one of Jacques favorite toys pre-blog times).

This little one is full of the cutest antics. He will hide behind something in order to surprise Jacques. The surprise is for me because when he leaps, all four feet leave the floor and he looks more like a gazelle gliding through the air. Hopefully I can catch it on camera one day. He also doesn't quite understand toys on a stick. There is one they both love, an elephant with a pink bunch of feathers tied to it. When we first started playing, Swee'pea wasn't sure what to do. He decided this was prey and he had to walk away with it, and when we played with it the other night, he wouldn't let Jacques anywhere near it. Every time he let go of it and the toy would go flying (because of the elastic) he would chase after it, catch it and walk away with it in his mouth, growling at us. This must have gone on a good ten minutes. Jacques just looked at me with a look that said, "See, you brought this dumb little thing in here..."

And there is definitely a "cuteness" competition going on, except Jacques is the only one who knows it. Swee'pea is just cute and still kind of a kitten, so everything is fun to play with. But the other day when I left a ball of yarn on Jacques chair he hopped up and started to play with it. Now he's never really done this ever, but this time it really felt like he was trying to show me, look I can be cute too - why did you get this other thing?

And so how are we getting along? Well, it's hit and miss. Jacques' agenda is to assert his vertical dominance. Big Time.

He hops around on top of the furniture to get around whenever he can. If Swee'pea is in the room Jacques will be sitting up on something. He has begun to accept that this little pest is here to stay.

They touch noses, sniff each other can walk past each other without incidence, but then there is the "playing". Hmmmm, lets just say it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Then there is yowling and hissing and growling. Thank goodness Jacques has started to assert himself - maybe a bit too strongly sometimes. They don't really know how to read each other yet. Sometimes one or the other is just sniffing and the other will go into defensive mode with a raised paw the peace is shattered.

We always have to be on the lookout.

In both directions.
Jacques needs a lot of extra love right now. He needs reassurance every time I pet Swee'pea or show him any affection. Jacques really asserts his dominance in the bedroom (haha!). No seriously, Swee'pea gets chased out of there regularly, and is not.allowed.on.the.bed. period. When Jacques has had enough he comes and tries to get me to go to bed for the night. The little one sleeps under the basket. It's his-self designated spot. I'm so glad that is not an issue and that he does actually have a space to go to.

When I'm not worried about kitties, I started knitting a new sweater:
Except mine will be red. This is the yarn I bought with my Aunts way back in October. It's perfect for this project.

While still dreaming of Kauaii...

2011-01-03T14:03:00.000-08:00

ah.... the Napali Coast.... warm sunshine, cool ocean water, everything green and blooming...

Oh, right I'm back in Philadelphia where the snow had finally melted.

I spent the New Year's weekend organizing my yarn stash and trying to play peace maker with kitties.

I started by pulling all of my yarn out of everywhere. I have so much! Unfortunately not enough to make lots of things. This is the problem with purchasing one ball of yarn because it's beautiful. You only get one hat, one mitten or something tiny out of it. I need to not do that so much anymore. I do have enough to start another sweater which I did, and then some more.

I also discovered this snarled madness:

I was extremely tempted to chuck the whole lot. But I diligently sat there pulling strings apart and ended up with one ball of red cashmere, three balls of turquoise wool, and several more balls of different red wools. Probably about $60 worth of yarn. It was worth it. Plus I got to play with cute kitties. Although Jacques was still very. put. out. He has asserted his dominance vertically. He jumps on everything, chairs, tables, stools, me, etc. while the little one stays on the floor. This is apparently a good strategy as validated by my friend Rachael. Whew!

So after two days of organizing, winding, and so on, I was able to color organize my stash.

Isn't it beautiful? (Yes, I'm a yarn-aholic nut - I admit it). But it feels good now to know that

when I go into a basket of yarn, it won't explode out as one giant yarn monster.

The little one was very helpful. he was good at pouncing on balls of yarn, or carrying them (such as the blue one) into different locations.

But best of all he was so helpful at winding things. He would either chase the yarn being wound or watch the winder intently.

Most of the time the two stayed in their separate corners. Jacques stayed up on a stool,

the little one stayed inside the basket. He claimed this place pretty quickly after coming into the house.

As of yesterday the growling and yowling (from Jacques) had mostly subsided. There was still some hissing but they were able to eat dinner almost face to face in peace.

Unfortunately the little one discovered a new game - chase Jacques. It boggles the mind sometimes how smart all these little critters can be - but they have zero concept of their self-image. Jacques is 16 pounds. The little one is maybe 6, if we're lucky. Instead of turning around and whacking the kitten once, Jacques kept cowering and running away. The game was making Jacques really miserable so this morning I had to put a stop to it. Every time the little one stalked and chased Jacques I squirted him with a water bottle. He learns quick that little one. I came home today and both parties were calm and came to greet me, the little one only needed to be squirted one more time. They even touched noses a few times without anyone freaking out. Maybe this is a good sign. The little one sure is cute:

That's my empty knitting basket. What a comfy place to hide from Jacques. I'm leaning towards naming him Romeo. We'll see.

Two MAJOR events!

2010-12-30T13:12:00.000-08:00

Finished. Finally! finally. whew! I am so glad to have finished this sweater. And it is actually really beautiful. It is so warm and soft and I have even already sewn the ends in! This is the part I usually neglect for quite a few wearings before sewing them down. But I wanted to put this project behind me - so that I could start a new sweater, guilt free. But now, I have to assess my yarn situation because I have so much sitting around I don't know what to make of it all! Wish me luck!

And now I need some more well wishes and luck.
I have a new kitty.

I stopped at the Morris animal shelter yesterday and came home with this little guy. he doesn't have a name yet because we have to see how things go. So far, not good. Jacques. is. not. happy. He was so shocked last night that he crawled under the papazan chair in the corner and growled and hissed all night - and even went after me. He finally gave up on the living room and went into the bathroom to claim territory. Then he slept with me and the little kitty decided to claim the bottom of his standing basket.

This morning didn't go much better Jacques couldn't believe it wasn't all a bad dream and just wanted out of the apartment. So I let him out. Now I'm blogging and Jacques is trying to reclaim his territory. The little one is holding his own. But I'm worried. Jacques is still. very. unhappy. I fed them and Jacques was growling the whole time he was chewing. It sounded like he was saying, yumyumyumyum, over and over. Now he's stalking around growling at this little thing. The little one just wants to meet him. I really want them to be friends. Jacques needs one.

I got the new kitty because Jacques was SO lonely while I was gone in Hawaii. I've always known that he misses me and I've always wanted to get him a buddy. I really hope I did the right thing. This new little guy is so sweet. He just wants to be loved, is about 1 year old, and doesn't jump up on things (yet). He does, however, scratch everything. So we are going to have to nip that in the bud. He has the longest tail I've ever seen and when Jacques growls at him, it poofs out like a bottle brush. I've decided to give them until next weekend, 10 days. If things don't get better, the little one will have to go back. Too bad, he is so sweet.

Aloha, Aloha

2010-12-23T02:19:00.000-08:00

Hello and Goodbye to the beautiful Island of Kaua'i. Today was the last day. Tomorrow I fly to California to spend Christmas with my dad and Ann.

But today... I saw the moon set over Hanalei Bay:

and the sun set over Kekaha Beach.

It doesn't really matter what happened in between.

Aloha!

2010-12-21T00:25:00.000-08:00

Ah - yes, I am on the beautiful island of Kaua'i with my friend Mary - a fellow book artist. It is about 9:30 in the evening, we had Island Sangria, (Gewürztraminer, little gin, soda water, sugar, pineapple, rambutans, bananas - yum), and now I'm sitting on the balcony - it's about 80 degrees and I'm blogging. This is part one.

What is a Rambutan? - it is very similar to a lychee fruit. Except that it comes in this very funny outer covering.

Pretty yummy.

We start everyday with the alarm clock of the island:

I wish I were kidding. These birds are all over the place - there must be at least five that live in the bushes under my window. They start about 5:30 am. As of today I don't hear them so much. But it takes a night or two to get used to them. What I really want is a handful of those feathers.

Everybody seems to get along. There are a few cats and they pretty much leave the big fowl alone. I would too.

Its the rainy season at the moment, and so there are flowers everywhere. The beautiful yellow one (at the top of the blog) grows on giant trees 20 feet high and they are covered with them. They are everywhere on the island. When the yellow flowers fall off, they turn this beautiful red color.

The trees grow next to several of the rivers and so you see the flowers floating along.

We did a hike of the Na Pali Coast today. There were tiny purple orchids everywhere - guavas were ripe and falling off the trees and then there was this little passion flower.

Doesn't it look like it should come from outer space?

It has rained for two days straight. Pouring rain all day, well, it comes and goes but the sun doesn't shine and you don't get dry. So yesterday we did a tour of a chocolate farm. It was fascinating. Not only to they grow cocoa trees, but they have vanilla (which is an orchid!) they grow and harvest bamboo and several other things. It's a completely organic farm.

Here we have two cocoa pods.

and here are the vanilla pods (still green).

The tour of the farm ended with a talk about the history of chocolate, and how it is produced. Then we had a blind chocolate tasting of 10 different chocolates. It was very interesting to compare them. I now know what my favorite american made chocolate is (they didn't include any swiss or german chocolate. Hmmm - maybe because they can't compete with them?). And I can get it at Whole Foods. Speaking of whole foods:

our haul at the farmers market. We got green beans, bananas, papayas and rambutans. Plus I found a plumeria at the Kaua'i Coffee plantation. We also manage to put away two pineapples since we got here.

And believe it or not - it is even Christmas on the Island. We have seen some amazing decorations to say the least. From a tree decorated with lays, to one with soda cans, to this bougainvillea that was decked out with silver and gold balls.

Quite beautiful! And then last night we were hoping for a reprieve from the clouds and rain and such - and our wish was granted. We got to see the end of the lunar eclipse! We left the apartment and ran out to the golf course and just watched the stars and the eclipse. It was amazing! This morning we discovered we'd been eaten alive by the mosquitoes, but it was worth it.

If you double click on the image, the little white dot in the middle of this black photo will turn into the moon at the end of the eclipse.

We've spent some time at Hanalei Bay.

And the other day we ran into the man himself at Safeway.

He said he was resting up for the big night and graciously took a picture with us. That is - a friend of his (wearing a baseball hat that said, "I believe in Santa") took the picture. There is more to come, more to blog about, but we did the hike on the Na Pali Coast today to the waterfalls. I am pooped, but I will post more soon.

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-28T18:28:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you had a wonderful day, filled with cheer and warmth and good food! I spent the evening at a Friends pot luck which was lovely and cozy. I ate too much, and didn't regret that for a minute.
I did actually brave the Black Friday madness to run a few errands. Luckily some of them were in Chinatown - where apparently Black Friday doesn't exist? Because I had no problems there.
I came home and checked when the first day of advent was and it's today! Well, then I think it's appropriate to spend Thanksgiving weekend decorating. I knitted my Christmas tree. And then knitted a few more. I found this pattern online and have wanted to try it since last year. It is a lot of fun and the trees look amazing. I will probably try to sell some this coming weekend and Book Paper Scissors, we'll see.
I also FINALLY got my rear in gear and planted over 200 more tulip, daffodil, crocus and allium bulbs. I soaked them in garlic water for a week and then spread red pepper flakes all over the place where I planted them. Let's hope that keep the darn squirrels away. I've been wanting to do some planning of the back quarter. I decided to start with a daffodil trench. Here's the garden before:
Then I dug this trench:
And put the extra bricks along it. I want to have rows like this all the way back with things planted in between. Like vegetables and flowers and stuff. I have to see the the forsythias bloom this year. If they don't they will be fired. I have no use for plants that are supposed to do beautiful things but which don't.
This year I got smart and kept all of my leaves for composting. So all of the flower patches got a nice blanket of rotting leaves. They should be thrilled.
Hmmm, I'm looking forward to making more plant beds. This looks a little bit like my pet python died and I buried it, don't you think?
And the dogs next door? sigh, well at least they are getting fed a bit. Poor Petey (the black and white) doesn't like anyone near his fence. My making this bed just about made him bonkers.
The little one stays way out of his way when he's in a mood like this.
But then sometimes they come begging anyway. Doesn't that look just melt your heart?

A new baby, a Thanksgiving recipe, and Misc.

2010-11-21T18:09:00.000-08:00

My friend Rachael had a baby! A little girl, all of 6 whole lbs! I was furiously knitting before her arrival to make sure there were some home made things there for her. I knitted the yellow one first. This is a great pattern and I'd actually really like one in my size. To bad the pattern is for "new born, 6mos and 12mos". Not exactly my size. After I made the yellow one I thought, well that's pretty big. Maybe I'll make a little one that she can wear for about 5 minutes after she's born.

Rachael sent me this picture of beautiful little Isabel:

wearing the purple sweater. Oh she's so tiny! That sweater can' t be more than 6 inches across! I'm so glad there is room for her to grow. I can't wait to meet her. She's not in Philadelphia, so it will be a while.

The Thanksgiving recipe - to-die-for was made today! Oh boy - this is really good.

Pumpkin stuffed with everything good. (that's the title. really.)

1 pumpkin (3lbs)

salt and pepper

1/4 lb stale bread

1/4 lb cheese - Gruyere, Emmenthal etc.

2 - 4 garlic cloves

4 strips bacon -cooked to crisp chopped

1/4 cup snipped fresh chives or scallions

1 T minced fresh Thyme

1/3 heavy cream

pinch freshly grated nutmeg

Mix ingredients 2 - 7 together. Stuff into the opened and cleaned out pumpkin. Mix cream and nutmeg together, pour into pumpkin. Bake at 350 for about 2 hours. This is SOOOOO goood!

Yum! You can hear the original NPR clip here. Just click on "Listen to the Story" It's only about 6 minutes - so you should! I will make this on a LOT! and I'm going to experiment. The next experimentation will be to make the recipe vegan. I think the key things are the bacon, garlic and the cheese (I used Gruyere). I can get fake bacon, but the cheese flavor will be interesting to recreate. Although - maybe I'll abandon those flavors altogether and try for, something with coconut milk, pineapple, nutmeg, rice and cashews??? worth a shot right?

Roasting the pumpkin today made me nostalgic for the summer. I really miss being a farmer. Last weekend I cleaned out all of the tomato plants, dumped coffee grounds and eggshells into the soil to help boost it back up. I've been planning on planting my (200) tulip bulbs in new spots, but I realized today, I really miss the fresh harvest. Next year I want to grow all kinds of things. Tomatoes, zucchini, squash, onions, garlic, pumpkins, collard greens, as many herbs as possible... There really is a difference in the taste, a satisfaction in the food that isn't there with store bought stuff. Sigh, it's going to be a long winter.

What Happened to October?

2010-11-09T18:13:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I'm not sure. I sort of blinked and it was over!

Maybe because I had soOo much to do! Every weekend was occupied. The first weekend I spent at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I was asked to show my artist's books for family day. They thought it would be a kids event. Hmm - won't do that again. Kids don't understand how to handle special books. Not their fault - neither do their parents. However, there were so many other people who came, who'd never seen artists books. One woman was almost in tears she was so happy to see "the future of the book" And she was so excited. There were several people I had very good, long conversations with. It was a feel-good afternoon - that's for sure. Plus I got paid! How nice.

The following weekend (Wed. - Sunday) I was off to Tuscon AZ, for the Guild of Bookworkers Standards conference. But the take off of that trip just couldn't go smoothly. I finally managed to rent the 3rd floor on the Tuesday before I had to leave for the conference and they were itching to move in. So they did and promplty found that the toilet had an issue. Something was leaking and it had soaked the floor under the linoleum. It smelled so bad. So I called the plumber who came on Wednesday and did fix the issue - but the tennents had to deal with the smell until I could get back in town. Fabulous Jeff came and saved the day again. I haven't seen it finished but the tennents love it! A nice new clean floor - how can that be bad? Jeff wasn't sure about the linoleum I picked out he said it didn't really stick. So we'll see what happens with that. If it's not one thing it's another.....

The Conference though,.... It was pretty great. The first thing I did was go on a tour of the Arizona State Museum - and was confronted by a blast from the past.

In one of my past lives I used to teach high school ceramics. I always did a unit on Southwest Pottery. We were led into the showcase room, and there was a vitrine with all, and I mean ALL of the pots I used to show my students to get them an idea of what they were making! What a pleasant surprise. I can't believe I said, "I recognize that pot!" They are really beautiful.

Next we were given a tour of the conservation lab. Jealousy jealousy. What a nice lab. On the tables above is a buckskin suit with real silver thread which is waiting for a display form so that it can hang on the wall in the museum. They also have those great overhead fume vacuums and over head electric outlets! And if I'm lucky I'll get to order one of those amazing tables. It has a hydraulic lift and can change heights up to 8" difference! They are also on casters. sigh. how nice.

They also had a beautiful facsimile of one of the Maya Codices. That's something to look up on Wikipedia. Those books have interesting histories.

There were four workshops to attend, one on 18th Century French bindings, Byzantine Bindings, a Book Arts (she was really a caligrapher who talked about her working process. The books were beautiful), and then a fabulous workshop on the "forensics of the book"! That was really great. And it was in Arizona! The weather had just had a cold spell in Phila. and it was still 90 degrees when we landed in Tuscon at 10pm. I got in my bathingsuit and went into the pool! it was lovely.

I came home on Sunday night and my aunts from California came to visit on Tuesday!

They brought be some beautiful Alpaca yarn. Someone in their upholstery class raises Alpacas and these are some of the yarns which come from them. Aunt Lois had brought me some other colors in the spring. I finally had time to wind them all. They are so beautiful and soft. I've been writing up lists of things I might knit out of them. Hmmm....

It was so much fun having them here! The first thing they did was take a mural tour. Then they came to my work for a ghost tour! They were the hit of the evening that's for sure. We had to discuss them in the meeting the following day with the program committee.

Then it was off to drag them all over town! We did the marathon of Philadelphia.

We took Aunt Alice to see the Maxfield Parrish designed Tiffany mural in the Curtis Building (where the Saturday Evening Post (Norman Rockwell) was published).

We went to the first post office, Ben Franklin's printshop, and where his house would have stood had his silly children/grandchildren decided to tear it down.

We also went out to Amish country on a Saturday and it was jammed with people! I couldn't believe it! We spent money on stuff and they bought me this beautiful lamp. It's been fun having it on.

We did so much, shopping, Bartram's Gardens, and we went to the ballet. And of course we also had time to cook.

We cooked from Ellen Emlen's cookbook:

That is collard greens, cauliflour with whitesauce and broiled chops. So the background is that I found a manuscript cookbook at work. It was in pieces. I fixed it. And then the madness started. We want to publish it. But that is sort of like trying to move a mountain. I guess if you keep at it you can though because we might actually succeed. The food from the book is amazing!

The white sauce is basically cream white pepper and nutmeg - that would make anything good, even cauliflour, and the broiled chop (which should have been "the finest mutton" which ended up being a chicken breast), is marinated in lemon juice with salt and pepper. Then it's breaded in 50-50 bread crumbs and grated parmesian cheese. yum. Aunt Lois will have to let me know if Uncle Ralph was able to recreate it.

Here's the work table for cooking:

And we all had jobs: Aunt Lois working on the collard greens.
Aunt Alice crushing garlic.
It was so nice to have them here. Really fun. It was sad to see them go on Monday. But maybe there will be another visit in the future? :)

Last weekend I was sort of in lala land, realizing how much other stuff had to happen the following week. I had to finish boxes for Katie. She ordered five boxes for a "book" she made from an installation. It is really beautiful. I delivered the first three (four?) boxes on Tuesday and saw close to the final product. Wow it was amazing. And yeah, promptly this past weekend, Katie won a major award at Pyramid Atlantic. ! I'm so happy for her! She's been working so hard. Here's a picture of the project:

I'm really honored that I got to be part of the project.

I also had to deal with the end of the garden season. Lots of green tomatoes. I picked almost 5lbs. of green cherry tomatoes. Then I tried to pickle them. I might have ruined them. We'll have to wait three months to find out.

And this weekend? I cleaned. Yup - I cleaned like a mad crazy lady ALL weekend. I did everything, washed curtains, cleaned windows, vacuumed walls, pulled things down and washed them off, cleaned the fan blades, lifted rugs and mopped under there, got on my knees to mop even so that I could really scrub, scrubbed the grout in the bathroom (it's white again) and I even combed the fringes of the rugs. Poor Jacques. He was outside for the big part of cleaning. When he came back in things just weren't right.

He had to make a new nest on my shell pillow. He was not happy at all.

and lastly, I made a batch of Ellen Emlen's jumbles. At first I thought they didn't work, but they were really good in the morning. butter, flour, almonds, 1egg, sugar and rosewater. You really can't go wrong. Jumbles are the precursor to modern cookies. Nest time I think I'll add some lemon zest.

That's in for October. Maybe I can get back to working on this house! I still want to finish the windows. Things will have to be winterized and the winter project was supposed to be to parge the basement, so that it isn't damp anymore. I'll keep you posted!

Kitchen redesign, tomato sauce

2010-10-07T19:33:00.000-07:00

I've had a bench stashed in my shed since I hauled all of my stuff out of storage.

Not because I wanted it there - but because that's the only place it would fit where it was protected. It wouldn't fit in the house - darn eastern architecture that wasn't meant for wide furniture. It's been a real pain in the neck having it in there since it takes up a whole half of the shed. Getting bicycles in and out, and lawn mowers etc. was a pain in the neck. I had asked Jeff if he could take it apart and put it back together - he said no. So last weekend, in the beautiful weather, I decided to ignore all of the other things I should have been doing, and I took my cordless drill, my wood carving tools, hammer, and rubber mallet into the shed... and let's just say, where there's a will there's a way. I did get it apart. And to my amazement it was only because I am both an artist and a do-it-your-selfer. I had quite a bit of trouble getting the visible screws out because a lot of them were stripped. The worse one I had to just carve out of the wood with my wood carving tools. Worked just fine!Sadly I didn't realize there were two hidden screws under some molding and the wood split a bit underneath that part. But when I put it back together the problem is invisible. When it came apart and I was that thrilled to be able to get it upstairs into the kitchen. BUT I had to wait until Tuesday. That's when I had help getting the two parts up the stairs. And it looks great! I am surprised to find that I really missed this bench. It is incredibly comfortable. The wood feels good and it's really nice to lounge on it. I'm so glad to have it back.

Here it is from the front view - which is fine:

However, the back view will change.

The plan is to make a deal with myself to get some other very necessary things finished around the house ~ then I can make the fun kitchen island. I still need to finish the shutters on the first floor. That project is approaching some urgency now that winter is coming and the windows will need to be closed and winter-ized. The other project which is approaching urgency is the basement. I need a new de-humidifier (the other one died after one year down there) I need to parge the basement and I need to redirect the downspout gutters so that they empty away from the house. At the moment my basement is damp damp damp. yuck. Once I've finished those two vital projects, I can build another counter which will be behind the bench. I want to design it - á la Ken. Ken made the bench and the table, and he also design the most wonderful kitchen islands. He will be the inspiration for mine. More on that later, when I'm inspired.

Of course my adventure of getting the bench upstairs wasn't without it's usual brush with the Philadelphia wildlife. Oh yes, when I went to tip the bench on it's other side so that I could get to the screws on the other side, something heavy sort of rolled out and away from the bench.

This poor unfortunate little guy decided to make a nest in one of the drawers of the bench. It must have been a lovely nest. It was full of dried leaves, shredded plastic bags, and two of my gardening gloves I'd been missing for a few weeks! I did scare the heck out of him though. And he finally felt that going underneath the shed was a good idea.

Tonight I made my first batch of tomato sauce. And it was a success! Let me tell you!

I used 11 of my own home grown tomatoes, a huge onion, a bit of garlic, olive oil, my own fresh rosemary, basil and some dried bay leaves. A little salt and, on a co-workers tip, a tiny bit of sugar. Yeah, it's pretty darn good.

I have a great picture of the sauce bubbling away in my pot but for some reason it keep loading up sideways. So I cut it out.

Here is the first batch of great sauce. It will be perfect for anything. I just hope I get enough tomatoes to make more. I'd love to make another batch of my own stuff and have it all winter.

Like I said, I love being a farmer.

In the mean time.....

2010-10-06T19:01:00.000-07:00

Happy October everyone!

I've been doing a ton of things, but at the moment I've been tying up loose ends on the Pink Scarf Knit-a-thon. This is National Breast Cancer Awareness month. A friend of mine and I decided to run a blog to knit some pink scarves to donate to the Susan B. Komen Foundation chapter in Philadelphia. Check out all of the beautiful scarves at www.pinkknit-a-thon.blogspot.com

Danish Family, New windows 3rd Floor, Nightblooming Cereus

2010-09-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

And there is probably much much more to cover than just that. Lots has happened since I raved about being a farmer (which is still great, by the way).

Background: In 1994 I spent the fall semester of my junior year abroad in Denmark. I stayed with a Danish host family, Kirsten, Ebbe and 15-year-old Michael. About a month ago, Michael contacted me to say they were going to be in New York and could they come visit for a few days. Of course, YES! was the answer.

I just spent the last two days with Sina, Laurits and Michael. Laurits is the most adorable baby! He has so much energy though. It's like there is a wind-up key in him somewhere and he goes and goes full speed (for a few hours) until he crashes and sleeps for an hour. He is so curious, everything is fascinating. We went to Ben Franklin's Printshop where they give printing demonstrations. I was holding him. When the presenter smacked the ink daubers together, he froze in fascination for about three minutes. I think that was the stillest he was when I was holding him.f I also think that he realized I was speaking a funny language. The first day he was here he kept looking at me with a completely puzzled and confused look. English must sound very strange to him. But by today I was validated. Every time he looked at me there was a big smile. What a sweetie.

It was so nice to meet Sina too. She is really great and she and Michael are really great parents. We had quite the adventures getting around Philadelphia with a baby carriage. I learned where all the ramps were, elevators on the subway etc. It was a new experience for me, let me tell you. AND - it was an interesting experience having a baby in Philadelphia. People really soften when there is a little one to deal with. People helped with strollers, doors, they were much nicer to us completely.... I was amazed. I had a new adventure as well. I finally made it out to Bartram's Gardens. We took the trolley and it was packed. Brave Michael had to deal with the carriage which had to be folded up to get in and out of the doors, and then we were told that the trolley line was interrupted, and we would have to get off and get on a bus. Turned out it wasn't and the trolley just kept going. I thought I had just gotten us lost in a not-so-great part of town. But we ended up getting out at exactly the right stop. Whew! Bartram's Garden is really really cool. My intrepid intern Alina also works there. She generously spent an hour with us showing us all of her treasures. There was a Hawthorne tree fruiting so we tried some, we passed an Osage Orange tree and she found one on the ground. We talked about the tornado that hit us in the summer which knocked down a ton of trees there. Bartram's is the oldest horticultural center in north America. The grounds and buildings have never changed. Isn't that amazing? They also host several plants which are extinct in the wild. There are beautiful gardens there. They have different exhibits including bog plants, carnivorous plants, lichen, and a pond with lotus flower. I'm so glad we went there and I can't wait to take other people there as well.

We were completely pooped out by last night though. We decided to have a good old fashioned BBQ, gin and tonics, potato salad and blue berry pie. Yum. Then we dragged out the dvd projector and watched National Treasure on the back wall until it started raining on us. It was a great evening.

So it was really sad to see them all go this morning. You know it was a good visit when you think... they could have stayed a few more days and I would have been very happy. :) But we will just have to visit again, either here or in Denmark. :)

One other reason they should have stayed is that my Nightblooming Cereus bloomed tonight.

It went from this:

and this:
to this:

in about two hours. It will bloom for only one night.

The whole flower is about the size of a soccer ball. I tried to find out more about this plant online but I'm not sure I was successful. All I know is it is considered one of the most beautiful flowers in the world, and the perfume... wow. It is amazing. It is incredibly strong and I can't describe it to you, even though I think I've smelled something like it before. I'm sitting here trying to write this blog and scent is extremely distracting. It's a cactus from the Sonora Desert. And because I kept it inside for the winter and then put it out in a sunny spot this spring I got a blossom! I've been watching it all evening. I read somewhere... maybe it will bloom for two nights - so I'm hopeful. Then I have to hope for another blossom next year. It is so exciting when things like this happen. I love it.

And yes, Jeff was here again last week, finishing up the window frames on the third floor, putting the bracket back up to keep the raccoons out (finally!) and fixing a corner that leaked. Now I can spend more money to ask Wally to come and do some pointing on that part of the wall. sigh. It really never ends. The term "the money pit" comes to mind... anyway - I'll post pictures of that next because this blog is supposed to be about what I'm doing to my house not just how I'm living in it... but I keep forgetting to take pictures of that work in daylight.

Other things are going splendidly. Last weekend I prepped for a studio visit with a curator from the DCCA (Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts.) She chose a piece to put into a show which opens in December. I'm very excited about it because she chose the newest piece - a video piece where the book performs itself. Maybe I'll upload it at some point. So that was great! It also made me get my rear in gear and do some cleanup in my studio. The shutters have been on hold for a while now. But I need to get to them before it's too cold to have windows open again. Maybe this weekend. Maybe.

I love being a farmer

2010-09-12T07:40:00.000-07:00

My harvest from last night. An enormous bowl of cherry tomatoes, a small bowl of the second raspberry crop, thyme, my first green onion which was ready to pull - and after two months of anticipation, the first cantaloupe.

I was just beginning to wonder how I would tell when the cantaloupes were ripe when I was looking at them yesterday evening. One of them still has dark green stripes, but this one is completely covered with the "net". So I lifted it to smell it (that's how I always check them out in the grocery stores, and the perfume that come off of it - wow! Perfect cantaloupe scent. When I went to put it back because I though, oh, maybe one more day - I realized, the thing had picked it self. It was not longer connected to the vine. I guess that answers that question.

But I probably should have let it sit on the counter a bit longer. The flavor isn't quite there yet. There were little hints of it - but not quite right. It's still incredibly satisfying to pick and eat something you've grown yourself.

Laboring on Labor Day

2010-09-10T19:28:00.000-07:00

Sounds appropriate don't you think? Laboring on Labor Day? Okay, well, to be honest, I didn't labor too much on Labor Day. We had a BBQ which was fun. But the day before - I spent the entire day painting the kitchen on the third floor. I'm really pleased with it and as I expected pictures just can't do it justice. There is something about the sun shining in in the afternoon which just can't be captured on camera. I finished painting on Tuesday evening and ever since then I've been doing the last little bits. The insides of the closets, the door with ultra high gloss etc. Now I'm cleaning. I wanted to clean all of today and get it finished, but I got a bit side tracked. I also think I overdid things a bit. I'm exhausted. Around noon I took an hour and a half nap. It was really great.

Yesterday I found this beautiful spider web on my front porch.

Little by Little

2010-09-03T16:28:00.000-07:00

Remember this? The tree that took over most of the back yard? It got trimmed:
Now I just need to get grass to grow underneath it. (for now). This has been a long time coming! In the snow storms last winder the tree really spread out and cast too much shade in the yard. I actually wanted to have the whole thing taken down. But Hal (the arborist) convinced me to just cut the bottom branches out and thin out the top. What a smart man!Now I've got the most ideal situation possible. My bedroom is still looking into only greenery, but the yard will have so much more sun. The only unfortunate thing is that I have a lovely view of my neighbors yard - ahem - dump. He claims he's going to build a garage there - that was supposed to happen three weeks ago. I'm going to have to grow some quick growing vines there to hide that mess.

Worked on my windows last night too. I washed them.
They are not quite clear because I also need to wash the inside. But all of the filth and dirt that was making it very foggy when the light was coming through is gone. And it looks great.
Here's a good shot of the wood as well. It was too hot last week to work on them. So I took a hiatus. I'm getting my school stuff started, people visiting, cleaning, getting the apartment rented. Its all a ton of work.

Maybe the coolest website ever!

2010-09-01T02:28:00.000-07:00

At 4am this morning, it was too hot to sleep. So I got up to write email and stuff. My friend Mary just bought a house and she wants to paint blue/purple pinstripes in her bedroom. To me, this sounds like a nightmare project. At 4am you get some pretty hair-brained ideas though, and I thought, well, hey - why not print out wall paper instead? We're artists, we can do that. Mary is the professional paste maker anyway (one of her many talents). But THEN the thought followed, What if we don't need to make our own? Maybe some genius has already designed what she wants. And the web gave me one step better. There is a site that let's YOU design your own. Pick your pattern, pick your colors - oh this site could be very dangerous in a time-consuming way.

www.alluminare.com Enjoy.

Eew.

2010-08-31T19:41:00.000-07:00

The worms are gross.

I thought this was going to be so easy. Badabing, badaboom and presto: compost. Yeah, no.

I should have known I was in trouble when the guy giving the workshop said, "now, your worms are like a 2-year-old. They each batch is different. Some like somethings and other don't. You've got to watch them and take care of them and figure out what your group likes." I was working in my studio tonight (where the worms are at present because it's coolest) and suddenly realized there were an awful lot of little flies. I had checked on my worms yesterday to find several crawling up the sides of the bin. This, I was told, is a bad sign. They want to get away from something. As I looked closer, there they were, little tiny maggots. Eew. I found myself sorting worms and newsprint. Those worms can really scamper when they don't want to be caught. But as I continued I found that the majority of the worms are indeed at the bottom enjoying my coffee grounds and eggshells. It's only a few that are unhappy. So I'm not going to change the whole thing out. I did try to wipe out as many maggots as possible and pulled out things they were clearly not interested in. Beets, some lettuce ends (that's a surprise) and something moldy I couldn't identify. I will check them again this weekend. Let's hope they regulate themselves and stay put. I really don't to have to sort a pound of worms from newsprint. Blech.

The Worms

2010-08-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

The worms. Yes, I'll get to that.

But here is my finger. Can you believe it? That's all it is. That little cut. But it's deep enough to be a big pain in the neck. It does really hurt - still - three days later. The entire knuckle was green for most of today. I'm doing fine without bandages (even typing!) but every once in a while I bend it to much or expect it to do too much for what it can do. The cure? Three cheers for arnica!
But yes, the worms. I finally was able to make them a home this evening. It's a good thing I'm an artist. We were told to drill very small holes into the lid and base of the bin. Well! yours truly has all of the tiniest drill bits you can imagine. Probably more than the guy at Green's Grow could imagine. This is also good because I can't find my drill bits! Grr. They must be around here somewhere!

Anyway - here I am drilling holes (that the worms can't escape through) in the lid.
My worms are spoiled. They don't just get newspaper, they actually get newsprint without any printing on it. It's shredded and moistened and supposedly they will eat this too. Hmm, talk about a high fiber diet.
Added my composting:
It was about time. Some interesting things happening in there. I just think I'll have more than just worms in there by the time I'm done.

Below is their little home now.
So - at some point I should be getting amazing fertilizer out of them, if they make it through this week. It's supposed to be hot hot hot again. Yay.

Unbelievable

2010-08-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

Third time in the emergency room this summer. This is getting ridiculous, and expensive. What did I do now? I was trying to fix things! I went into the basement to find that my de-humidifier was, well, not de-humidifying. There was a huge puddle on the floor underneath it because the thing was leaking somehow. In trying to get it off it's prop, and to pull off the hose which was stuck on with silicon (barely), it came off harder than I thought, and my hand flew back and the middle knuckle of my left ring finger whacked against the edge of the metal type cabinet which was behind me. I looked at it - it looked like a paper cut. And then.... I bent my finger - and I'll spare you the gory details. At any rate, I knew, I couldn't help myself. Talk about being really irritated with myself. I had to walk over to the hospital again. Three hours later, I didn't even get stitches, just tape. I'm all taped up, my finger really hurts, and I'm ticked because I wasted another 3 hours sitting in the emergency room. I read a lot of the Secret Garden though.

This is not what I wanted to blog about either! Here's what I really wanted to post:

Last night I bought $20 worth of worms.

Yup, red wigglers. This is so that I can start my wormacompost (I don't think that's actually how it's spelled). Apparently this stuff makes the best fertilizer ever and they eat a lot of your table scraps so that's good. I took a little workshop at Green's Grow, a local nursery that has a lot of great stuff. Too bad I cut my finger today because I wasn't able to get the bin going today the way I wanted to. Tomorrow. I'll let you know how they do for my garden.

We've had two beautiful days in a row. The class last night was held outside in the evening sunlight. The butterflies were all over the "butterfly" bush, a little black kitty kept trying to steal the show from the instructor, who was very cute. Half way through the class a flock of bright yellow orioles flew over the garden. I also wanted to buy some plant-able garlic, but apparently it hadn't come in yet. I'd love to have my own garlic growing. You have to plant it now, harvest next June!

In other news, I changed the buttons on my white sweater. These are some I bought with Dietlind in Germany. I really like them.
Here's the sweater I knitted from last week while I was recovering from my pulled muscle. I really like it, but while trying to take the photos tonight, I realized I sewed it together inside out. Now I get to take that apart again and sew it together properly.

And I have a new neighbor. I don't even know his name yet. But he sure is cute. He and Jacques encountered each other today though. It was loathing at first sight.

I hope this little guy doesn't get too neglected. He's got fleas and I think something in his ears and a huge lump on the top of his head. I don't know if he's been fed in the last few days either. Ugh. There should be some sort of competency test for keeping pets.

A real Vacation

2010-08-21T14:52:00.000-07:00

Ah Yes, I did. I took a real vacation. This past week. I didn't really do it on purpose, but I'm sort of glad that it happened.

This vacation was sort of imposed on me by mother nature? Or the fates? Whoever's in charge of pulled muscles made me do it. As I was getting on the plane to come home, I stepped into my narrow row of seats, and facing the back of the plane, tried to lean forward to get my backpack off my back. There wasn't enough room for me to bend my knees, so I just leaned, straight-legged, forward and felt it. It was a snap in my lower left leg, and then something like a bungee chord rippling up my leg. No pain.... but the thought, this can't be good. So I unpacked things I needed for the flight, and sure enough when I stepped back out in the aisle to put my back pack up in the compartment, wow. I decided to get some ice. Thank goodness I was almost to the back of the plane anyway or it would have been a very painful walk. The flight attendants were very nice and gave me a pack of ice. But when I got back to my seat all of the worst thoughts started coming into my head; emergency surgery, crutches for the next six months, permanent injury for the rest of my life.... But there wasn't much to do about it for the next 8 hours. The ice helped a bit, but then later I had to get up again and when I got the back of the plane I new something else - there was no way I was going to make it from the plane to any baggage claim. So the nice flight attendants gave me a hot pack this time, and said they would order me a wheel chair.

Long Story Short: this is the fastest way to get through customs ever. There was an enormous line - and I got wheeled right past all of them and was through security in a blink. My luggage was there already and the nice lady who had to push me all over the place got me into a cab. I got home, the nice cab driver helped get my stuff into my house and took me straight to an emergency room. And to still keep it short - after a two hour wait in the emergency room, all I have is a pulled muscle. But I got ace bandages and crutches and instructions to take 600mg of Ibuprofen. (Which I thought was the same stuff I was supposed to take for my eye - where they gave me another drug to keep me from having stomach bleeding. Can that be true? I'll have to go back and check.) I ignored the Ibuprofen, and just used up a whole tube of arnica. The pain was only there where I tried to walk on it anyway. So, for injuries this summer that makes 3, emergency room visits, 2. I'm done for a while I think.

Thus the imposed vacation. I decided to just go with it. I had movies and knitting and I think I really did need the break. I also looked in my own library and decided I needed to re-read The Secret Garden. I remembered that I had loved that book for a few years and then got over it. Re-reading it now reminds me why I loved it. By Tuesday I was walking without any crutches, but carefully. Stairs and moving fast are still a problem. Not too bad, but I still have to be careful. Not so much standing for me at work this week either.

While I did check out for quite a bit this week I managed to get my syllabus done! Shocking! A whole week and a half early. I just need to fine tune the course book, make some corrections, add some new things and all will be good.

Friday I spent the day with my friend Mary, who just bought a house and quite her job to start her own business. Go Mary! So what do you need to do in that case? Spend money! We went to IKEA to get chairs and supplies for her, and a new set of kitchen knives for me.

It turns out I have been cutting with .... I can't even come up with a good word for it - My old knives, while pretty colors (on the right) are just dull, dull, dull. I've always tried to do the fancy chef cutting of veggies, where they leave the knife tip on the cutting board and I was never able to do it. That's because I always had to saw through everything. With these new knives, holy cow, they just glide through things like butter. I feel like a grown up now.

And then the garden.

Yes, after three weeks of neglect it had pretty much turned into a jungle. Ugh. So I tackled that yesterday But the garden is doing beautifully. I have tons of tomatoes, flowers and... cantaloupes!

Okay, I only have three so far, but I've got high hopes. This vine went crazy and is about 5ftx5ft. It was attacking everything in sight, tomato plant, forsythia, pine tree. I think if I would have let it, it would just have taken over everywhere.

And my celosias are just gorgeous. I will have these all the time in my garden. They are funny lookin' flowers aren't they?

Pictures really don't do them justice. I know I can dry them and if I remember correctly they seed really well. Maybe then I can save some money on the seeds. There was also this funny bug on the stalk. I tried to identify it on whatsthatbug.com but I couldn't find it. Maybe I'll send them the picture and ask.

And Jacques? He's fine. He's happy I'm back. He was fine spending every morning in his basket next to me. But in the afternoons he wanted out. There are always things to guard, cats to chase, and sounds to try to figure out.

And wheel goes round and round

2010-08-11T13:18:00.000-07:00

Here I am at the end of my visit with my aunt and uncle. They've really pulled at my heartstrings this time.

Sitting in her room for a week for hours at a time gave me time to make a sweater: It's short-sleeved, and while I love the buttons I'm not entirely convinced. There's a button store in Mainz I might take a look at. It's got to be something really special.

But back to my aunt and uncle. Things were pretty peaceful most of the time. Between all of us. My uncle and I usually butt heads, and they usually fight like cats and dogs. But that just didn't happen this time. My aunt comes and goes. I got some stuff that's similar to Ensure - and she drank it over the weekend, and on Monday was pretty with it. But then on Tuesday and Wednesday slowed down a lot. I wish I could be here to help manage what's going on. They really need a baby sitter. It took me a few days to figure out that if you offer my aunt three things to eat, she'll choose one. If you just ask her what she wants, she'll say she doesn't want anything. And then, my uncle has been feeding her and if you do that she'll eat three bites and say she's done. But it turns out if you put a few things on a plate and let her eat it (with her fingers!) she will finish everything. She'll clean the plate. Tonight at the end of it all I realized now I should have bought some baby wipes to help her clean her hands. I just can't think of everything in such a short amount of time. My uncle has also been really sweet the last few days. He has been very glad that I'm cooking, although I don't think he could admit it. The complaining stopped, and we came to a truce about washing the dishes. I do the dishes in the middle of the day, he does the dishes for coffee. We each do our own dishes for supper. Today really clinched it for me - that despite everything, I wish I were closer: he came in while I was getting "dinner" (eaten in the middle of the day here) ready, and I tried to kick him out of the kitchen because he's always in the way and then if anything drips he freaks out a bit - as if a drip is a permanent blemish on the counter. But today he stood there picking his fingernails and said in a very small voice, like a little boy, "Would you also peel the sausage for me?" (sausage is made the old fashioned way here - and yeah, you always take the 'peal' off). It really broke my heart, because it showed me that he was allowing me to take care of him, and that more than that - he really needs someone to take care of him! For the first time ever - I really do wish I were closer.... I said, yes of course I would peel it for him - no problem!

For her birthday, I bought my aunt a prism. It's about two inches across, huge, and it throws rainbows all over the room. Now if only I had time to clean the window....

Spending Time with my Aunt

2010-08-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

My Tante Ursula turned 99 today.

99.

So far it's actually been an okay visit. She's not doing well, as far as her physical health is concerned - and some could argue her mental health - except that she is still in good spirits. She still laughs, she jokes and teases, and I've only heard her complain once about pain. I actually don't think she's in any which is really good. She's tired of lying in bed all the time and today I did some physical stuff with her. She was pretty happy about it.

My uncle on the other hand is a mess. He worries and worries, and he cannot give up on the German rules of living. Everything on the plate must be eaten. One must not get oneself dirty. Cake must be eaten with a fork, not with the fingers! We go round and round (all three of us sometimes) and I'm trying to convince him - that if she can and wants to eat her cake with her fingers - who cares if she gets a few crumbs on her self!? Good Grief! you can clean those up and she still has a little dignity in that she can eat by herself. And the poor guy, we had to argue about how a straw with the flexible end works. He was convinced it was a one-way straw. He tried to explain to me how the folds would only let the liquid go one way. I tried very hard to keep a straight face as I explained that that was only to let the top part of the straw bend, nothing more. I wanted him to turn it around because it would make it easier for my aunt to drink out of a glass. And then with food. Oh brother - he complains that I bring too much, cook too much but then, everything I put on a plate for him - he eats. And yesterday was really sweet. I'd asked on Friday if he would eat Weisse Wurst (this is really really yummy stuff - but if you are in Bavaria you must eat this before noon - and you must eat it with sweet mustard! There. Now you know.) Ya - sure he would eat that. And what should we eat with it? Oh - I don't need any more - I said, Bratkartoffle? (fried potatoes) - oh child, you make too much, it's all too much, I can't eat that much! Well, Sunday I asked again if I should pick up fresh Weisse Wurst on Monday. Yes. And what should we eat with that? Without missing a beat he says, "well, if you make Bratkartoffle, I can eat some too" in a way that made me think - he's been thinking about this a bit. I made Bratkartoffle (fried potatoes) but he had a conniption fit about how many onions were in it. He said, I've never eaten Bratkartoffle with onions. There's always a first time and he ate two plates full. I think he's pretty hungry - he doesn't want to admit it. And I think he's thrilled to get food that's different than what he's been eating day-in-day-out. This makes me so sad - I wish I could convince him to get meals on wheels he would love it. But when you are old and set in your ways.... So I will cook up a storm in the next few days and hopefully that will keep them going a bit longer. If I lived here - I could at least bring them some of what I cooked everyday. But Philadelphia's a helluva commute to Frankfurt.

Time is going by very slowly here. I brought yarn from home to knit a sweater and I'm almost done. I just have to knit one more sleeve and the collar tomorrow. Then I'm allowed to go purchase buttons here. We mostly sit in silence. My aunt talks in her sleep and when she's awake she talks in any language she feels like - German, Spanish or English. My uncle probably also needs a hearing aide now, as he has a hard time understanding her - or deciphering which language we're in at the moment. But things have been mostly peaceful.

The last few days it didn't rain in the morning, so I walked down to the edge of the Saale, the "river" (to me it's more like a creek than a river) that runs through the town, and did some yoga. It's beautiful in the morning (see above). The light here is pretty fantastic. There are a pair of swans with two young ones, and a lot of mallards with all of their little ones too - it seems a bit late for that doesn't it? They are super cute. Doing yoga on the edge of the river in the early morning light is wonderful. It's still a bit cool, there is still dew on the grass, and it's very quiet. All you hear is a bit of the river and the little fish jumping to catch the bugs. Maybe that is helping with a peaceful visit as well? Who knows. But I am noticing - for whatever reason - I'm enjoying this time with them. I'm usually counting the hours. But this time - I found my self not thinking about the time at all, just enjoying the moments. I am glad for this.

Berlin - expanded

2010-08-06T00:53:00.000-07:00

Berlin is just the coolest city in the world. Really. I think so. New York is too big and dirty. Philadelphia is too small. Berlin is both old and new, it's a Pheonix at the moment. Maybe that is why it is so exciting.

I was lucky enough to be able to meet with a friend. We met several years ago at UArts while I was in grad school. He's involved with the book arts world through a periodical he publishes for experimental text and images. He's originally from East Germany and so having his perspective on things and the development of Berlin was extremely interesting. He's also a bit of an architecture buff. The best tour guide I ever had. We walked all over the place the first evening, back and forth between east and west Berlin. The new Hauptbahnhof is incredible. It's beautiful structurally, and HUGE. It's the large station in Europe now. Uwe told me about the plans that made it all possible which were first proposed in 1904 - but because of one thing and another - weren't possible until just now. They built a tunnel under the city and apparently it's been very sucessful.

One of my favorite things he showed me, just because of the sheer brilliance of it was the Memorial to all of the Jews who died in WWII. Conceptually it ranks right up there with the Vietnam memorial. It's incredibly moving and brilliantly designed.

When one first approaches it, it looks like it is a flat surface which different heights of these blocks which represent sort of tombs or crypts one would find in cemetaries. They are these grey cement blocks at different heights. But as you start walking among them, you realize that the ground slopes down. Quite deep.

Here's Uwe standing deep in the middle of it. You get a good idea of the height of the things around you. And it's amazing. if a person turns the corner - they dissapear. You absolutely cannot see them. It's extremely impressive - in the sense that it leaves its mark - makes an impression upon you.

On a lighter note, there were other things we stumbled on which were pretty fun. After dinner the first night we walked back to my hotel and ran across Senefelder Platz. Senefelder is the guy who invented lithography. Imagine a country that names a whole little corner of their city for an artist! What a concept, eh?

I also like this sculpture because of the small details. If you look closely - the angle on the left is writing Senefelder's name backwards. It has to be backwards on the stone in order to print correctly on paper. The other little angle holds a mirror up to it so that he can read it correctly. how sweet is that?

But probably my favorite thing we just happened to see was the Ritter Sport store. Now, if you don't know Ritter Sport, you need to find out about it. You can actually get it in the states.

In Philadelphia you can get it in the little fake Wawa's and such and in California I've seen it at Cost Plus - or World Market- or whatever it's called now. It's a square bar of amazing chocolate. Anyway - we stumbled on a whole store. A whole store! Just with this chocolate!

So many amazing flavors. I did break down and buy my favorite, Dark Chocolate with Marzipan. Hmmmm. Yup - it always tastes better here - wonder why? We wandered around there and were amazed at all the different sorts we could buy - bigger tablets than we've ever seen, little tiny ones, single squares, yogurt tablets, you name it - they had it. The front of the store was some kind of (what looked like to me) frozen yogurt bar of sorts. However - when I went back before I left Berlin to pick up a few things I discovered that that "bar" is a create-your-own-chocolate-bar bar!!! OMG! How cool is that!? You can mix and match your own flavors (up to four) into a bar of half-bitter chocolate. It's melted and then they pour it into a form. It's ready in about 1/2 and hour. If only there would have been more time. sigh. What a fabulous idea! I'm going to have to go back just for this.

Uwe also mentioned that Olafur Eliasson was having a big show at the Gropius Bau - which is a big art museum. And I love his work. He is a contemporary artist born in Denmark, grew up in Iceland and his work has a lot to do with light and playing with the properties of light. This show was incredible. I don't know how it will travel though, unfortunatly I don't think it will. Eliasson lives in Berlin and the show is very much about that. The title of the show is a play on words. The title is Innen Stadt Aussen. Innen Stadt means inner city - or city center. Aussen mean outside. However, the word Stadt written with a capital S means "city." But written with a small s the word mean "instead of". So the title can be read both ways and it just doesn't translate to English. But it's brilliant.

He set up so many things for people to interact with. A lot of mirrors, lights, shadows, playing with light and color light. Different colors of light which cancel each other out. In one room there is a circular prism hanging from the ceiling, turning slowly. A bright light shines through it and so you get the shadow of the ring on the wall where it should be, a huge circular rainbow which moves around the room, and then a white circle of light which somehow moves and twists down to the infinity sign. This light slips through the shadow of the ring on the wall and opens back up again to the circle of light. In another room he has set up so many mirrors and strange angles that it would be easy if you were along to lose your balance. I liked this peace because of what else it gave us. At the same time this show was up there was a Frida Kahlo exhibit. People were waiting in line for five hours to see that show. But if you looked at the outside of the mirror room, you could see the reflection of some of the Kahlo paintings. Most visible was the one of Frida with the two monkeys. I wonder how many people caught that.

Finally that last mind blowing part of the show was the fog room. It was actually three rooms with "fog" probably dry ice I imagine. The fog was so dense you couldn't see more than a foot in front of you. But you had to move forward to see the change in the light. The whole thing was lit with different colored lights - and of course the light was all around you - you were completely consumed by a particular color. At one point as you walk through a color of red/orange that is so bright and hot that it invades your head. I had to close my eyes. I turned around and walked back into a blue light and felt my eyes relax, the heat went away and I could look around me again. It was also amazing to just stand still and watch people moving around. They would appear out of nowhere and then dissappear.

If you double click on the image above you can probably get a better idea of what I saw. That is a guard I accidently photographed - and then he walked over to me just as I was putting my camera away. Of course I got totally sucked into this room and lost complete track of time. So I was late meeting up with Uwe. But he still took me out to Potsdam to see the Einstein Turm. This is the observatory build by Mendelsson so that Einstein could prove his theory of relativity. It's really a cool little building. Still in use. And when you walk around it - it really looks like a space ship.

We walked around Potsdam a bit to get an idea of the city as well. It's so different from Berlin - which you can walk to from there. It's like West Philly and Center City - but drastically different. Different Architecture - different feeling. The difference is more like the difference between Center City and, oh I don't know maybe Bryn Mawr. It's like the country and the city, but right next to each other.

That evening I got to see another friend of mine I haven't seen in years and years. It was great to see him too, and then.....

To see my great aunt. She is not doing well at all. Last night she pulled herself together a bit for me, but today I saw what was really going on. She's on an air mattress - doesn't leave the bed at all. I found that her thought processes were still pretty clear - but Erich doesn't understand her - and doesn't try to either - so he keeps saying she is talking nonsense. Well, she's not if you pay attention. And wether they like it or not, things go better when she wears the hearing aides. She also still has her sense of humor. Thank god. Even in her much slowed down state of mind, she can tease and make little jokes. So I'll hang onto those things.

And finally - say a little prayer for my Jacques.

Poor Christie (my intrepid intern who is staying in the house - despite the fact that it turns out she's allergic to cats) had to take him to the vet on the train because he had a little bladder infection. Now she has to pill him. So, well, maybe you should say a little prayer for Christie instead. Christie - Ritter Sport is definelty coming your way! :)

Berlin is Awsome!

2010-08-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

Wow.
That's about all I can say right now. The last time I was here was in 1994 with my friend Darcy when we were studying in Denmark. Things have really changed. Highlights were the Memorial for all the Jews who died in Europe during the Holocost (it ranks up there with the Vietnam Memorial. Conceptually brilliant, very moving) and the other thing I got to see was an Olafur Eliasson exhibit. I can't wait to tell you more about it.
However. I'm typing on a German keyboard right now and it's driving me nuts. The y and z are switch so when zou go to tzpe with the y zou get zzzzzz. grrrr. Then there are funny letters like ö and ä where my apostrophy is supposed to be, and the shift key on the left is only half the size of the english key board and instead I keep typing<<<<<< and the one of the right keeps freezing on caps lock. Okay, different country different language, makes sense that the keyboard needs to be different. But this isn't much fun. Hopefully tomorrow. I'll be with my great aunt tomorrow for a week. More then. :)

The big re-cap

2010-07-21T17:38:00.000-07:00

Well. Here we go. There hasn't been any real excuse for not blogging except that life sort of got in the way. And I should know better. When one waits until the last minute - it usually takes hours. There is so much I've been meaning to write about, but alas, I just haven't gotten to it. Luckily I've been taking a million pictures so that helps jog the memory. Also, I watched Julie & Julia last night - and I don't know if I have readers - but - I'm writing a blog darnit all. Okay, so I'm not writing in relation to the greatest woman-home-construction-role-model ever (who would she be anyway?)- I'm just writing about me. Maybe that's a little vain? Well, thanks for reading. Some of you I know and some of you I don't - thanks all the same. By the way, I disabled the comments because I was getting an incredible amount of spam. But I wonder if I can just turn moderating on .... will let you know.

For this episode of Tara's life, for those interested, we (Jacques and I) offer:
Chapter 1: The window stripping project
Chapter 2: HOT
Chapter 3: Sewing stuff
Chapter 4: Package from Babette
Chapter 5: W0rkshop
Chapter 6: Garden
Chapter 7: neighborhood changing
Chapter 8:?? all the rest I forgot to mention

Chapter 1: The window stripping project.We are moving long. Not as quickly as I'd hoped, but probably more realistically. I called it my summer project. It probably will not be finished by the end of the summer. I am, however, getting the hang of things. I'm keeping the CitruStrip company in the black - that's for sure, and the steel wool manufacturers have nothing to worry about either. The thing about stripping paint is that it is immensely satisfying for the first few layers. But the little cracks and crevasses which don't want to relinquish the paint - no matter how often you smother them with stripper - those are frustrating. I even have a sharp little awl I'm trying to do some careful scrapping. It's hit or miss I tell ya. What is great though, is applying the stripper to mostly clean wood, using the steel wool to wipe it off, and then cleaning the rest off with mineral spirits. What a fabulous result. It gives me confidence that it will be gorgeous when it's finished! Stay tuned.

Chapter 2: HOT
Yeah, well, I know I posted about this before - but truth be told, things haven't really changed. We got a few days of reprieve and then wham-oh! - the furnaces of hell were lit again. Seriously - I can't believe how hot it's been. I've kept my air on for about a week and a half. It simply was not bearable. I had a BBQ on Saturday - which had to be absolutely the WORST day so far. It was 100°F, and probably 90% humidity (well I have no idea actually, but might as well have been), and we just never stopped sweating. Just sitting there trying to have dinner - everything was dripping. My hair never really dried, I decided to wear a black dress which was good because you couldn't' tell it was soaked, and the other good thing was - we were all in the same boat - just big dripping water fountains of sweat. Unbelievable. The menu for the BBQ? mmmmm:

Melanie's marinade for the chicken:
Cornell Chicken
chicken legs and thighs (I used a dozen of each)
¼ cup salt
1 cup oil
2 cups cider vinegar
1 T. Poultry seasoning
1 t. pepper
1 Egg
Mix together, marinate? - 24 hours is best. When cooking: turn every 15 minutes for about 45 minutes depending on how hot the grill is. Before turning - re-dip chicken in the marinade.
Lick your fingers when finished eating.

My favorite potato salad from Bon Appetit: Potato Salad with Toasted Cumin Vinaigrette
If the link doesn't work - you can find it on epicurious.com OMG - the best potato salad ever! There is never any left over for me.

Jessica made a really amazing salad:
diced watermelon (small)
diced jicama
diced Asian cucumbers
Thai basil
mint
lime
yum

Desert? Blueberry pie- with fresh picked blueberries (from the Joy of Cooking - the recipe not the blueberries - those were from Massachusetts), and chocolate ice cream. How did I manage to bake a pie in this heat? I have two kitchens. :) One on the first floor in the studio - one on the second were I live with air conditioning.

Chapter 3: Sewing stuff
A big part of the reason I haven't blogged is because I've be re-hooked on sewing. Ugh. It's terrible!! I've forgotten how easy it is to get sucked into that, and how much time it will just suck away from your life. My first endeavor was to recreate a skort I'd had back in my 20's. I'm sure I thrift-stored it - sadly. So I've tried again, and now I have two semi-successful projects. This one:
And the other one with some very goofy pink/orange/yellow battiqued fabric. Both projects are semi successful. The pink one is too long, and this blue linen one just doesn't sit right, no matter how hard I try, but it's getting better. I'll probably try to make it one more time, maybe three is the charm.
One of the other projects I sewed was this red dress which is a Vogue pattern. I love it. It was very easy and it is very comfortable.
Sorry about the picture quality - I'm just too tired to try to take more pictures or do a better job fixing things. I made a few other things as well, but again - you'll have to use your imagination. One of the things which just has changed my life though, ... I bought a serger. It's just cooler than cool. But it didn't solve all the problems I thought it would. I still couldn't hem properly on stretchy fabric. So I went to my little local fabric store and the owner gave me the best lesson in sewing machine needles. I'm all set now. It turns out that when you are sewing stretchy fabric you need a double needle, and two spools of thread - still one bobbin. Who knew? Now you can sew a double row of stitches at exactly the same place. It also turns out you can adjust the pressure of your presser foot. You want a lighter pressure for stretchy fabrics. It feels so good to conquer these problems which have plagued me since I was 16.

Chapter 4: Package from Babette
Towards the beginning of June a packaged arrived from Babette. It was full of fun goodies:
CD's of her son's band, The Genes (who are great - check out their website), a canvas bag, greyhound footprints, and best of all - two artists books! One from Babette, and one from Heather Matthew.
Heather is working on a fantastic collage project, one per day for one year. You can check her work out here:
She's been using stamps a lot in her work and I got this wonderful little book of stamps of the queen. I just love it - and I got a little collage of my own which is a lovely faux envelope with my address on it.
There was also a fun one-page book from Babette, a commemoration of her visit with me. She did some need things with accordions, and put lots of fun memorabilia in the book.

I haven't not abandoned books entirely this summer: I did this little mockup after Don Rash came to give us a leather restoration workshop at work. He mentioned this little structure, raised cords with leather covering and a paper case. I think it's really great and fun (and ALOT less leather paring)
And this segues in nicely to the next chapter:

Chapter 5: W0rkshop
I took a workshop in Western Massachusetts. Leather inlay and onlay. (sorry again about the bad picture). We made these five little cards with five different ways of working with leather and color. As usual it was a great class and I learned loads. I'm excited to start adding it to my work.
I stayed with my friend Melanie, who is doing a million amazing things, including a talk about her residency on top of Mount Greylock. She made some incredible work. Fabulous. Her talk was last night - (how'd it go?)
We also had the chance to pick 16lbs of blue berries. Probably more since every other handful went into the mouth. We had a dog with us, who kept freaking out about something. We both figured it was a bear and didn't worry too much about it. Turned out we were right, but should have been a bit worried. The blueberry patch owner said that a mother bear and her two cubs have been down in the patch at lot lately. Then Melanie spotted them in her lower paddock a few days later. I'm glad we had the dog with us. He kept barking and the bear was not seen. Good thing we didn't stumble upon her!
This is the flat I brought home. I baked a pie, froze enough for two more pies, and made a double batch of jam. If I could go back up there tomorrow for more, I would.

Chapter 6: Garden
And my garden? Was neglected for a while. Somehow I managed to throw my back out. Wow - I've never been in so much pain! If you move in the wrong direction even slightly you can feel the pain start. Then it grows and blooms all over your back, around your sides, you clench your stomach and hope you stay upright, and then you remember to breath. Oh brother. I was pretty miserable. But I was very generously given an acupuncture treatment by a friend and, yeah, well, I'm now a convert. It knocked the pain in half! I could move again, and I didn't have any more flare-ups. It was amazing! I started doing some very slow, easy yoga stretches and now a little more than a week later I feel pretty good. I'm still taking it easy, and trying to sit more, not lift anything heavy etc. But the pain is gone.
I was able to do a little bit in the yard, not as much as I wanted to but... you know one has to accept one's limitations.
Things are growing and blooming and are very exciting.
Teddy bear Sunflowers. These are absolutely my favorites. They are so beautiful and fuzzy. I've got quite a few of these.

Orange Cosmos. The purple one's are fine - but they are not these. These are so great. They've got these red streaks on the edges and they are so brilliant orange. I really love them.

The mystery plant. I can't remember what this thing is. I know that I propagated it, but can't remember what it is for the life of me. I'm waiting for blooms of some kind. But so far, nothin' doin'. I had another pot of mystery plants I grew in the apartment. But when I went to transfer them to the ground I found the little tag that said, Chinese lanterns. I hope that's what they are and that they bloom like crazy.

I also tried my hand at some cockscomb, and they've just started "blooming." This flower is a weird one. It looks more like coral than a flower. I'm pretty excited to see what it does.

In the edibles department we have interesting things happening too:
My cherry tomatoes are ripening. I got my first substancial harvest last weekend. A beautiful little dozen, don't you think?
I promptly went inside and made an omlet with tomatoes, baby portabellas, green onions, and feta cheese. Yum.
My green onions are moving along nicely along with my gigantic bush of thyme. I should take some to work today. The best summer recipe which must have thyme follows below:
Cook pasta of your choice. In the mean time, brown an onion in olive oil, a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, add diced zuccini and yellow squash - as much as you want (or need to use up), add the leaves of a couple of fresh thyme sprigs, and a bit of salt. Sautee the squashes about five minutes, add about 2 tablespoons of water, cover and allow to steam for about 5 minutes. Add the cooked pasta and maybe a bit more olive oil, and mix all together. Serve with a little cheese.
If you forget the thyme - it doesn't work. Bon Appetit!

I'm also trying to grow cantelopes. But it occured to me that this might be a plant where you have to have more than one for pollination to work? Anybody know?
My plant is pretty happy where it is, growing like crazy, lots of flowers, but that's all it's been doing for about a month. This weekend, it attacked on of my cherry tomatoe plants. Gotta keep an eye on this one.
And my new crop.... dandadadah! Two new blueberry bushes! When I was at Home Depot last time they had blueberry bushes for something rediculous like $2.67. Usually they are about $20 each. So I got two. I'd like to get them in the ground soon - but I'm not sure about my back yet. We'll play it by ear.
And Jacques is stil keeping watch in the garden. Remember this table which had a foot and a half of snow on it back in February? Well, it has survived another season of the elements (so far) and now it is Jacques throne. Chapter 7: neighborhood changing
And sadly my neighbor hood is changing. And not in a way I'd like it to. My wonderful neighbors decided to buy a house in Western Pennsylvania. They still own their house next door, and will probably be back and forth some, but it won't be the same. Their son will be living upstairs and while we get along, he's not like Mr. El. They also took their dogs with them. There is a big silent hole next door. I miss them. It was comforting to know they were there. I guess their son will be getting a dog too. A pitbul. hmm. We'll see how that goes. What I'm most worried about is how Jacques and the dog will respond. That chain link fence isn't the strongest. We'll have to see what I'm going to do about that. I am really going to miss them.

Chapter 8:?? all the rest I forgot to mention
Right now I don't think there is anything else I wanted to mention. I think I got it all. The heat finally broke on Sunday with a big thunderstorm. I opened all the doors and windows and let the cool air flood through the house. I was finally able to shut off the airconditioners. I just have a fan on and it's pretty bearable. So that's nice.

Hope all is well with all of you. I think I'll put the comments onto moderation. We'll see how it goes.

Catch up post to come soon

2010-07-20T03:50:00.001-07:00

Greetings all,
Sorry for not posting for a while. The next one will be a novel as long a Moby Dick - hopefully an easier read though - so get ready. There will be lots to recap workshops, the window stripping job, sewing stuff, moving stuff, cleaning stuff, cooking stuff, and of course how I threw my back out and learned the meaning of the phrase "blinding pain."
So, for the next post, make yourself a cup of tea, coffee, cocoa - whatever suits your fancy and curl up on the couch or in bed with a nice.....er,..... laptop.
:)
Tara

2nd post for Sunday: HOT, herbs, fruit, recipes, squash, sewing, yard, hearingaids, you name it....

2010-06-27T16:41:00.000-07:00

It's hot. Very hot. Unbelievably hot. Jacques is just about wilting every time I make him stay inside - the favorite place is on a chair in the kitchen under the ceiling fan. And I just found him locked in the shed. Apparently after I was finished doing the yard around noon he snuck in there and I locked him in. How dreadful! Poor guy. I heard him meowing pitifully, barely, and decided to check the shed. Silly kitty. It must have been so hot in there today. Poor baby.
I had a kind of crazy weekend. Shorter than usual. Don Rash is coming on Monday and Tuesday to give a leather restoration workshop at work. I'm pretty excited about that. But I had to go in on Friday and get a bit of a head's up on next week. I've got too much to do, not enough time ... same ol' song and dance....
But yesterday and today were great. I didn't/don't really have any obligations at the moment. I probably should be working on my lesson plans for September, but it's still June for cryin' out loud! Last Wednesday we had a book fair for the Rare Book and Manuscript Librarians conference which was held in Philadelphia this year. It was pretty good, I say that because I sold two books. :) And for now the pressure is off at the moment in that arena.
So with no pressing obligations I dove into the search for my patterns. I knew I had packed some of my favorite patterns when I moved out of my house. I realize now that I didn't keep all of them. Silly me. But I did finally find the good ones, and then I went through fabric like a mad-crazy person trying to match up what should go with what. It brought back tons of memories of all of the things I've sewn before. Dresses I used to have, fabrics, patterns, etc. I know I dumped a bunch of things at the thrift store. Too bad. But I had no one else to give them too, and I wouldn't fit into them now, that's for sure. Oh well.
In my quest for new patterns I went to Chestnut Hill yesterday because it's the closest shop that has patterns in stock. But they only had one brand. And it's terrible when you can see on the models that the pattern just isn't all that. So I decided I would go to Jo Ann's Fabrics on Sunday.
But as fate would have it, I parked outside of an antique shop in Chestnut Hill. Look what I found:
Six champagne, um, schalen, what the heck are they called in English? Well, they are perfect for that, or a desert cup, or my new favorite summer cocktail:
Barefoot Zinfandel
a handful of fresh raspberries (from one's own vines)
a dousing of the lime flavored soda water from Trader Joe's

I really didn't need to buy them, but they were so beautiful and then because we talked she said, 10% off and I said, OK. I love them.
On my way home from Chestnut Hill I stopped by my Amish Farmer. he had some squash that was quite something: they were supposed to be picked quite a while ago, but ahem, "the wife and daughter let them go too long." So it was one dollar and I thought, well, I can experiment. Maybe I'll grill it or something.
My raspberries are still going strong, if you can believe it!
I'm still getting about a cup per week. Today when I was working outside, I pulled them all up and moved some and gave some to a friend - shoots that is. The rest of these will go into Zinfandel cocktails - or ice cream - haven't decided yet. Speaking of raspberries I called my great aunt this morning to see how things were going. Apparently Germany had just beaten England(?) in the World Cup so we're fine with that. However - I had to listen to an earful about the bloody hearing aide. Ugh. And she still couldn't hear me on the phone. I tried to tell her about my raspberries, Himbeeren, and she understood bears, Bären. The funny thing is you all can understand this because it's a cognate in English. Berrys, - you know, and it does sound a lot like Bears (the animal). Same in German. So she thought I had a bear in my yard. And I couldn't understand why she was so worried about what Jacques thought about that. Finally after the third time I shouted into the phone she figured it out. Who's fault? Mine - because I didn't pronounce things correctly. And somehow those two have gotten it into their heads that my aunt needed the hearing aide because I couldn't understand her. !!! I could not convince them that I had no problem understanding her, she couldn't understand me. HA! what a cruel irony.
I also made Apricot Sauce this week. Yum. Recipe:
very ripe apricots
a little bit of water to get them boiling
cinnamon stick
cardamom pods
light brown sugar
Melissa leaves
And of course I fooled around with this recipe the first night and got it perfect. Didn't get it right the second night when I had more apricots. The problem with seasonal fruit is that you'll just have to wait for a more accurate recipe until next year. But if you're brave you can try this one, just taste as you go along. It's really really good. But seriously, do not use dark brown sugar. It's the wrong flavor.
What are Melissa leaves? They are my new favorite herb.
My grandmother always used to use a Melissa oil for her bath and it smelled divine. Then one of my former students emailed to say she had made tea with fresh leaves. They are lemony but not sour. Perfect in all kinds of things. In addition to the apricot sauce, I put them into my rice tonight:
Rice:
sesame oil
5 green onions chopped
3 slices fresh ginger
1 cup rice
1 ripe tomato
1/2 t. cumin
1 t. coriander
one sprig Melissa leaves
a bit of salt.
2 cups of water.
saute the first 3 ingredients. Add the water and everything else. Bring to a boil. Cook as normal for rice. Enjoy.

Seriously?

2010-06-27T05:15:00.000-07:00

This is the news story I woke up to this morning on NPR.
Background: It is not possible to purchase any alcohol in grocery stores in Pennsylvania. Two Buck Chuck? ... is a myth at Trader Joe's in Philadelphia. This is a pain when you have to got to two different places to get all of the things you need because the Wine and Spirit stores are conveniently located nowhere near any other stores you want to shop at.
Here's the story:
The state liquor board would like to try a pilot program of selling wine in grocery stores. The program involves a kiosk where patron will have to insert their driver's licence, then stand in front of a camera for verification. A state liquor board employee will monitor the kiosk from a remote location to verify that the driver's licence is really you. The kiosk is also equipped with a breathalyzer to be sure no one is drunk.
Said a spokes person for the state: "We feel that jumping through a few hoops for the convenience of being able to purchase wine easily located next to the cheese shop or butcher, is a small price to pay for being able to match your wines with nice foods." (I'm paraphrasing - a bit - but not much.)
A couple of things spring to mind here:
1. 1984?
2. I'm not convinced that people who are going to the grocery store to match their fine foods with wines are the ones we really need to worry about, and anyone will to jump through those hoops is really not someone to worry about.
3. Actually, the liquor store is the closest thing to my neighborhood - the grocery store is three blocks further. (but let's not get into that issue in this post.)
4. Why can't I buy cooking sherry, or vermouth in the grocery store!? If I'm going to be matching nice wines to what I'm cooking, how about making it a bit easier access to some of that stuff.

The things you notice - because of your Dad...

2010-06-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

New Pennies are being minted! For reals! This would have just been some mundane fact had it not been for my dad. My dad collects coins. Pennies too. He gave me one of those penny collecting books when I was about 9. We had lots of conversations about pennies, which years were hard to come by because of the war, shortages of copper, and the change in the design. I remember asking him if it was hard getting used to switching from the wheat stalks penny to the Lincoln Memorial penny. Thinking at the time that I would never EVER experience such madness as redesigning money. I mailed one of the new ones to my dad for fathers day - he seemed excited about it.
Thank you Daddy for teaching me to pay attention to the details of life. Happy Father's Day!

Catch up

2010-06-19T19:53:00.000-07:00

It has been a crazy week.
Monday started me off in the emergency room of Wills Eye Emergency Room in Center City Philadelphia. Believe me this is not where I wanted to end up. Last Thursday I developed something in my eye. It was red and then on Friday it really started to hurt when I blinked. When I looked at it it seemed to have some sort of infected blister on the white of my eye. My theories were 1. some more sumac attacked me (because I seem to have a plantation in the back yard), or 2. when I was stripping the window, I had a reaction to something.
I had an appointment to see my doctor Monday night. My eye was completely bloodshot, painful, and looked teary. People couldn't talk to me without saying, "what's with your eye?" . The doctor in family medicine took one look at me and sent me over to the eye emergency room saying she couldn't do anything for me. "Don't worry," she said, "it's not like a regular emergency room, you'll see someone right away."
Pshaw!
I walked in and there were at least a dozen people in the waiting room. I registered and it took an hour and a half to see a doctor. I finally got in the door and a nurse took my vitals, etc. and then sent me back out to the waiting room with a fancy bracelet with all of my specifics. An hour after that the other registrar took all of my insurance info. I asked her what the timeline was like and she told me it was hard to say. There was a teenager who wouldn't let anyone touch him (I'd already seen him come out into the waiting area cussing a blue streak about people not touching his f***ing eye!) and then a little boy had been admitted who needed emergency surgery.
Finally, four hours later, I saw a doctor (who I have to say was very good - completely stressed out it was obvious - but she was good because she was still very personable.) She didn't know what was going on, looked at my eyes, told me I had a freckle on the back of my eye ("did you know that?") then decided to dilate them. Oh yeah. And then she started poking my eye with a Q-tip. "Does that hurt?" Yes! dammit!
After that - she decided she didn't know what the problem was. She thinks I have "scleritis" - an inflammation of the sclera (doesn't that clear things up?). She said they didn't know what causes it. The treatment is an enormous does of ibuprofen and then because the dose is so enormous, (which might cause stomach bleeding), another dose of something else to deter the stomach bleeding. This is modern medicine? I didn't take the prescription.
At about midnight on Monday, in center city Philadelphia, I was released from the emergency room with my eyes completely dilated. Yay. I caught a cab home, thought it was safest. And it was. Except that I couldn't see the credit card machine to swipe my credit card. I gave the guy a big tip, told him what was up and asked him to watch me get into my house. He did.
And then, there is always icing on the cake....
I had let Jacques out before I went to the doctor and didn't put him back thinking I wouldn't be gone so long. Watsuki must have let him in at some point in the evening which was great. However, she didn't' have the key to apartment so Jacques was stuck in the stairwell. Poor guy. I was so relieved to be home, even though I could barely see and I made it almost to the top of the stairs... when I stepped right into the poop Jacques had made 2nd stair from the top. sigh. One can only laugh at this point. I didn't even see it. I let him in - fed him and then went back out trying to see out of the corners of my eyes to clean everything up. I did the best I could.
I've been trying to recover since Monday night. The junk the doctor put in my eye seems to have helped. The infection started going down by the next day. The redness was quite reduced, and today it's very minimal. I was supposed to go to the doctor on Friday, but then they said I had to have a referral from my regular doctor. (?) Which I tried to take care of but you all know how bureaucracy works. So I postponed the appointment until next Friday. Hopefully I can get the referral - I just really want then to check on things and make sure everything is as good as it can be.
Needless to say, I've been recovering from that evening ever since.
I'm still working on my window sills. I tried using my heat gun but after I burned the wood I decided to stick with the liquid paint stripper. I did try to use the super fast stuff - and promptly burned my arm with that crap. From now on- the Orange Stripper is the only stuff for me. It might be a bit slower and smell funny, but it does the job, it doesn't burn my skin if some accidentally gets on, and yeah, well, that's enough.
This could possibly be the summer project. It will be worth it once it's done. I'm sure it will be beautiful! Plus I'll be able to close shutters. I'm pretty excited about that.
And lastly, while I should have been making a graduation gift for a friend of mine's daughter, I worked on a dress. I feel a bit guilty about it - but I think I really needed a break from my "to do" list.
The dress sewing was prompted by a co-worker, who has been trying to sew an apron dress for a while. I found the pattern she was looking for in my stash-o-patterns when I was cleaning my studio. Ever since then I've been craving the chance to sew my own. I know it has been at least two years because the last time I sewed was in my apartment. And if I'm right - the last time I sewed any clothes was even on South Street which was back in 2003. Oh, no, I did sew some blouses for myself on Spring Garden St. But that was back in 2005-6. So at least four years since I've sewed something for myself. And with this co-worker talking about it quite often - I was feeling the itch to cut some fabric.

This is what I made.
It's a dress I've made once before, with ultramarine raw silk. Backless. But I was 22 at the time. When I tried this on without the yellow addition, I realized, that I can't go backless anymore. For one thing - I still have the tan-line from two years ago when I was wearing a tank top in the garden and got a sun burn. This doesn't look too good backless. So I added the golden piece which covers the rotten tan line, and that part, I think, looks okay. But I did also do some "inventing" on my own and made the skirt a bit wider than the pattern calls for. I'm not sure it looks great. Hmm, We'll have to see. I'll have to try it on for someone I trust to give me an honest opinion.
This week is the Rare Book and Manuscripts Librarians Conference in Philadelphia. There is a big book fair on Wednesday. I should be working on things for that. Instead I'm sitting in front of the fan trying not to sweat too much. There is only so much a person can do in one day.

Jeff's back! Fixing the dormers on the 3rd floor

2010-06-09T04:29:00.000-07:00

Well wouldja lookit that! (Compare the left one with the right one). The left one has brand new aluminum capping on it, the right one is still the rotten wood. I've got to see if Jeff will paint the blue stripes back on there - of if he'll let me do that on Friday while the scaffolding is still up. I'm pretty sure I still have some of the paint in the basement.
Jeff talked me into the aluminum siding. He said it would be less expensive than wood and the wood just won't last as long anyway. He said I'd have to replace the wood in 10 - 20 years anyway. He's seen that happen on some of the work he did on houses 10 years ago. The wood just doesn't last long enough. "Wood just isn't made the way it used to be" (huh?) Well, lets hope he's right.
Short post because I have to go to work and still put out the spray foam which I forgot to get for him yesterday.

Back to workin' on the house

2010-06-08T03:39:00.000-07:00

Ever since my fabulous real estate agent said, oh look you might have shutters painted shut here on the first floor in the bay window, I've been dying to strip the "molding" around the first floor windows and find out. I decided my summer project would be to strip the paint around the bay window. Even if I don't have shutters back there, having the real wood show through would be more beautiful anyway. What a mess. I don't understand why anyone would paint 15 layers of paint over such beautiful wood. This house must have been amazing back in the day. Everywhere where I find the original stuff, it's gorgeous. Remember the banister? Beautiful Mahogany.
After two evenings of lots of orange stripper stuff, lots of scraping, then sawing, because the shutters were actually nailed opened at one point, my hard work paid off:
I do indeed have beautiful shutters stuck in the walls there. How could anyone ever! paint these open!? The insides haven't been touched - there are cobwebs and a little dust, but I think if I just wipe them down they will be as beautiful as they were to begin with. I also found a lottery ticket from 1983. Wonder if it's still good - or even worth something. Would that be terrific!? And another cool thing is that the shutters are in two halves. Top half and bottom half. So the top half could be open for light, the bottom half closed for privacy. I can't tell you how excited I am about these.
But before I can really enjoy them, I have to finish stripping them. That's going to be a lot of work. At lease now I know there will be a big reward when I'm finished. Yay!
In other news, I finished my other sock. Yep, on Sunday in 90 degree sweltering humidity I sat here knitting. But now, I am all set for November. Problem is, I don't know what to knit now.
Oh, and by the way, I did buy the gold shoes.
What do you think... are they me?

Oh and PS: Jeff's back. (of the fabulous bathroom). He's going to fix the leak on the third floor and pull rotten wood off everywhere and make things look good and be airtight again. Sigh, I don't have enough to pay him for everything that needs to be done, but at least its a start. I've got to look into that lottery ticket.
And then next week that lucky duck is going backpacking through Yosemite. I haven't been to Mammoth for too long. (that's the back side of Yosemite - our summer family vacation place) I should go back.

Home again

2010-06-05T06:04:00.000-07:00

Oh boy, home again. Glad to see the cat - he's clearly glad to see me. Had to wake me up every two hours to be sure I was still there. Now he's lying in his basket, snoozing. Poor guy - I have to give him flee stuff today. He's not going to be thrilled.
To sum up the last of Germany, I guess some good things happened. The hearing aides are happening, and my aunt should have them sometime next week. She seems to be excited about them. She keeps turning to my uncle, pointing her finger at him and saying, "you just wait until I can hear again!" I also managed to have a good talk about meals on wheels with both of them. So I hope that happens as well. It would be good for them. It was clear to me by the end of the week that my uncle is not eating enough. When I first got there, he had no energy. Everything was extremely difficult, he really didn't want to do anything and there was no fight in him, like there usually is. I cooked all week, he ate everything I put in front of him, big plate of food, cake, torte, strawberries with cream (he's not supposed to have cream according to my aunt - well, what she doesn't know....) So by Thursday he was happily explaining everything my aunt was telling me as usual, even though I understood everything in the first place. I really hope they get that meals on wheels, they need it.
In the meantime, I'm home, it's really hot and humid in Philadelphia, and my garden needs some serious reigning in. The grass went wild, weeds too, but the tomatoes grew a bit and my raspberries:
Here's my first serious crop of raspberries and there are still more. They are so sweet! I have no idea what to do with them, pancakes? ice cream? preserves? muffins? Or maybe I'll just keep eating a few every time I pass the bowl. I also have a billion potatoes still, I think I'll make potato salad today. That will keep for a while, and will be super yummy.
And since I have to go to market anyway..... maybe raspberry ice cream? Hmmmm :)

The roller coaster ride from hell

2010-06-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

Well, lets start with something positive, shall we?
I may actually like knitting socks.
I forbade myself from purchasing too much yarn this time around. However, I did buy this stuff - and knitted these. I'm finished with one now I have to start the other. But these are FUN! They twist! and then when you use the recommended yarn (Regia - designed by Kaffe Fasette) The twists turn the pattern into diamond boxes. I can't wait to finish the other one... which shouldn't take to long....

So the roller coaster started last Thursday evening, when I got to see a friend of mine whom I haven't seen in almost 10 years. So we sat on the patio, it was cold, we talked until 1 in the morning, and I caught a cold. Yup. I was miserable on Friday. All my fault.
Friday. I try to get ahold of the hotel I'm supposed to stay at in Kissingen. (where my aunt lives). We finally get through to a very strange lady, who, when I asked for directions say, well you come to Kissingen and before you come to the bridge you turn right, right before the bridge!! I asked if there was a sign - yeah yeah! call me when you get there, I don't stay there, but I live very close. Me: I don't have a phone - I'll call you this afternoon when I know when I'll be there. Okay Okay - I'll be waiting for you then.
No. First of all, it was left, and second no where near the bridge and third I would only have seen the sign if I were coming from the other direction. It's nine when I get there - and 10 when I finally get out of the car, and ask another hotel where this place is and find it. Oh, says the waitress, it's hidden, and she gives me directions. Hidden is not the word, and it was completely dark. No one anywhere. I find a pay phone - the phone number she gave me answers with something to the effect of, "this phone number doesn't function" Now what. I have no money because I didn't think I needed any - I try call the booking agency with my last three euros, no help. Finally out of money, and completely frustrated, I walk across the street to where there is a beer sign hanging on the door and there is a sign that says, rooms available. I know it's 10:30 at night. I ring the bell. The nicest people I've ever met great me - take care of everything I zonk out.
Saturday - I wake up and I'm feeling much better from my cold and I get myself to my aunt and uncle. All I have to say is that old people should not take care of other old people. Just imagine the smell. It was overwhelming. I ran around opening windows, tried not to freak them out by being upset, but of course by the afternoon I lost it and fell apart in tears. I tried to talk to them about people who could help, nurses who could help. Nope - they don't need that - every thing's been going fine, and it will still be fine. It was horrible.
Sunday - same thing but worse. I fell apart again because I found out some more horrible things about about the way they were functioning that made me so upset. My uncle and I argued, I couldn't hold it together and said I would leave. Then I was forbidden to leave - I finally manage to get out... and it may not have been such a bad thing.
Monday - I run errands. 1. Reading glasses for my Aunt. 2. new house shoes for my uncle (his toes are peeping through the others. 3. other unmentionables 4. talk to someone about a hearing aide. 5. Introduce myself to my uncles nephew whom I've never met - find out he is a great guy, and he's been having the same conversation with them for years. We are all just banging our heads against the wall. Make my peace with the fact that I can't do as much for them as I wanted. Go back to them, they are happy to see me,I find out my aunt almost fell this morning and it scared the crap out of everybody. Their ears are a bit more open now.
Today - the hearing aide guy is supposed to come. Talk about an exciting day. Good lord. What will my aunt wear? This is a two hour conversation. Trying to convince her to get in the wheel chair to move her to the kitchen - forget it. The guy comes - she has 20% hearing in one ear at 105 decible. (that's practically nothing) and 60% in the other ear. The one ear is pretty much blocked, the other is okay. She likes Mr. Müller because he speaks properly, the rest of the people can't speak properly anymore, they all just mumble. Mr. Müller tries to explain that everyone speeks just fine, she just can't hear, she doesn't seem convinced. After an hour of checking things out, my Uncle is exhausted - he can't handle all of this, the hearing aids are going to cost 900 and something Euros each. The best part of all of this is? Mr. Müller recommended some which are self adjusting. She just has to put them on. My uncle the "optimist" says this will never, never work - we can't do this... blah blah blah. My aunt says, "When do I get them?" Now I've got to work this out with the nephew and hopefully my uncle won't manage to sabotage this. It would be so good not to have to scream at her everytime we need to talk. Even though its pretty comical.
"Where is he?" in "Porto"
"Wolfsberg?"
"PORTO"
"ah".
sigh.
I'm trying to get them to have some meals on wheals - I'm trying to think of the best place on the wall so that I can start slamming my head against it.
Oh, and I also had the nerve to bring flowers - my aunt loves them, my uncle ... well - it might have been better if I'd have brought cow pattys. He walked around all afternoon muttering and I finally heard him say, "scheiss Blumen" - (basically f*** flowers) Poor guy.
Alright - bedtime, one more day.

Grüße aus Deutschland!

2010-05-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm in Germany. I'm visiting friends and relatives for a couple of days. And so far it's been great. Even though it rained all day today. that's not fun. But I do need to back up a bit and catch people up.
So last week Watsuki moved into the third floor! I have a tennant! Yay!
And then last weekend my cousin from Germany, who was working in Lancaster for a few weeks came to visit on Friday and Saturday. We haven't seen each other in something like 15 - 20 so it was interesting to see him, catch up, hear about the family - and we "skiped" with his mother and father (my mother's cousin). Okay - that is way coool. Now I've got to figure out how to get into that. Watch out Daddy - you will probably be the first one who will get roped into this.... :)
Anyway - I took Marc-Michael on a Mural tour of West Philly. Saw neighbor hoods I'd never seen before - saw Murals I'd never seen before which were amazing. So that was awsome.
And then it turned out that it was strawberry time at my Amish Farmer. Of course I had to buy a flat before I went to Germany to be sure I had a chance to make strawberry jam. I put Marc-Michael to work. - he was very good at quartering the fruit. We got some very nice jam out of all of the work - and he took two jars home.
Now I'm here in Mainz which family friends which is great. Dietlind and I ran around in the city today and this time instead of buy heaps of wool, I'm going to buy some shoes:
Dietlind is desperately trying to convince me to buy a golden pair. (I can't steel the image so click here to link to the website - okay just tried to put a link in and it won't give me a link to the shoe I want to show you, just to the home page! Grr) They are super comfy but they are gold... yeah, enough said. And then.... they are really really cool, and they looked so good with what I was wearing. I could have worn them. Ugh - decisions.
In the meantime - my book arts friends: How do you like this? Hans (Dietlind's husband) must have the worlds smallest board shear:
I'm so jealous.

Ps: for this post - the spell check insists on being in German (because I'm on German internet service???) - so of course everything is highlighted. I'll fix it when I get home, if I remember.