End of another month already?

Where in the world has March gone to? Was it washed away by the rain? blown away by the wind?? I only just got accustomed to the idea that February was over, and now March is gone too?? Who authorized that?!

March was full of many distractions for me. There was travel, and dance events, and travel for dance events. There was miserable drenching rain and billowing winds, and there was alluring sunshine. The sunshine was particularly devious: it made me want to attempt a garden. Doh! As a result of the weather, I ended up with several plant starts that needed repotting, so now I have five slivers, dirt underneath my fingernails, quite a few containers of potted vegetable starts outside in the yard, and several flats of five-year-old seeds taking over my dining room table that decided to germinate much to my shock and awe. (The seeds decided to germinate, not the table. ...though a germinating table would definitely hold a higher shock and awe factor than some sprouting seeds, even five-year-old seeds.) Yay! The beginning of a vegetable garden for the first time in YEARS! woot! My mouth is already watering with the thought of fresh peas and lettuce and green beans this season! I hope that my plants grow and thrive and produce produce! .. it would probably be more likely if I quit nibbling on the poor things long enough for them to get established. Heh. For the past two weeks I've been making a morning round of my container garden, peeking in at all the little plants and encouraging them to grow (Pep-talks help, right?)
And each morning I pull off one or two leaves from any plants that look big enough to spare them. :) Yum! spinach leaves and lettuce for breakfast! ... except that the plants are so small that I only get about three to five leaves total before I decide that I'd better not take any more or risk killing the poor things before they get a start in life.
(Patience is not my best virtue.)

All of which means that I ended up doing less stitching than I had anticipated over the course of the month. The travel and the dance events were very unfriendly to stitching, so instead, I took my tatting shuttles along with me and I made some tatted trims. You'll spot a couple of them on this month's block. The others will most likely find their way onto future blocks.


(The semi-transparent gray mask is my attempt to obscure the blocks from past and future months and clarify where March begins and ends.)
The wedge shape makes photography challenging, so here are a couple of detail shots as well:




I also managed to create my BJP mandala for March! woot!

Gardening and spring flowers definitely influenced my stitching this month in all of my work. The crocuses, grape hyacinths, and daffodils have come up in my yard to greet the spring weather (all three crocuses, two daffodils, and five-hundred-thousand-ish hyacinths that survived the floody-wet winters, anyway.) It's the color combo of spring greenery, daffodil yellow, and hyacinth purple/blue that determined my color selection for this month's BJP. :)




I didn't get much done on my TAST postcards, even with this past week designated as "catch-up week"-- so little, in fact, that there's really not much to show for Whipped Wheel and Barred Chain... I'll have to chip away at them as I can, and show them when there's something to show. CQJP and BJP take priority, and I'm really quite delighted to have accomplished as much as I did on both of those!

Haha! 30 minutes to go!

Okay, so I'm cutting it really close to the wire here for February's CQJP, but I've run out of time, and I'm reasonably satisfied. Of course, if time were no boundary, I could keep working on each of these wedges indefinitely! ..but time is a boundary, so I'm calling it good:


It neighbors my January wedge:



And once I add the BJP mandalas, they will look something like this:




I am going to wait until the end of the year to add any of the bead mandalas because the weight and stiffness of the mandalas would make the remainder of the embroidery much more difficult. Once I get all 12 wedges embroidered and all 12 mandalas created, then I will decide which mandala goes on which wedge. In other words, I reserve the option to not put January's mandala on January's wedge!

Tahlia: TAST wk 8, CQJP Feb

**SO** far behind schedule! I am counting on today, tomorrow, and Tuesday to catch up a bit and make some real progress with my CQJP wedge for February.


TAST wk 8: chain stitch : twisted chain with varying angles, open chain, magic chain (with two colors threaded in one needle), chain stitch to create shapes

I think I picked an unfortunate postcard for this particular stitch, as the stitch itself is subtle enough that it was tricky to find ways to keep the stitch from just disappearing against the energetic prints! ... also, this postcard would benefit from a variety of stitches instead of just one stitch. I think I will use this realization as a guideline for my future TAST studies, and try to keep prints to a minimum when I am trying to explore the possibilities of a single stitch, and use an excess of prints only when I am giving myself full permission to embellish heavily with whatever stitch seems appropriate in the moment!



CQJP block looks completely unimpressive at the moment!! My time has been sucked up by performance rehearsals. Last night was the performance for which we were putting in extra time, and it went really well! Everyone stayed upright, and glitches were minimal! :) ... but the result is that I don't have much thread on my CQJP block yet!



What I did get finished, though, is this lovely little embroidered interpretation of the valentine bouquet that my husband got for me this year! This pic shows how I turn the embroidered patch into a free-standing applique with finished edges that is easy to slip-stitch in place on my quilt block. I am REALLY liking this technique for appliques and expect that I will use it very often in the future!



So my CQJP so far looks like this. The rose applique is just basted on for now in the space I think that it might occupy, although the embroidery on the block might change the placement of the applique, once I get that done.
There is also a little growth to my January block from the last time I posted about it. Not a whole lot of change, but a little here and there.
I do hope I can catch up again!!!
At least I can say that I am not yet getting tired of this project, and I am very glad for that! Long-term energy investment in a single project is not something that I excel at!



I would like to say that I managed to find time to create a February BJP, but I didn't. This is the BJP that I made in January that I then misplaced, so I had to make a second BJP for January! ack. ... so this is my spare BJP which will fill in for whichever month doesn't get an official one of its own. ... hopefully that won't turn out to be February, because I have some nice heart-shaped beads that I would like to use for February's mandala! .. but it's nice to have a back-up plan!
So, for now this is my progress, meager as it is, at least it's still forward momentum. . I hope to be able to put up an update in the next couple of days to show that I actually did get something accomplished in February! the month's not over yet, and I need every single minute that I can get!

Hugs all!


The picture of the bouquet from which I sketched my embroidery.

Busy couple of weeks!

It's been a busy couple of weeks! Unexpected house guests, out-of-house obligations, generalized chaos. It was difficult to find time to stitch, but somehow I managed at least a little: less than I'd hoped for, but more than I'd realized!

Week 5 TAST: Herringbone


Week 6 TAST: Chevron


Week 7 TAST: Detached Chain


I might get a little more work done on the Detached Chain before the next stitch comes out, but that seems unlikely, considering the rest of my weekend schedule!

I've decided that I'm going to make it my mission to make friends with metallic threads. :P Not my favorite yet, but I am learning how to make the relationship somewhat less than abusive. :)

There was a postcard and an ATC to create for a birthday swap:



and a re-creation vintage dress (UFO) that I finally got half-sewn together:


The front of the dress has gathered details at the shoulder, bust, and waist. I put top-stitching thread in my needle to stitch parallel lines with a long stitch length to pull the gathers, and then instead of pin-basting (which always seems to let the gathers shift and get messed up), I thread-basted with herringbone stitch. It worked like a dream and was much quicker to work than I would have expected!



Sharon Boggon's Studio Journal class started at the beginning of the month, and I've been struggling to balance my schedule to allow enough time to work on that, too! One of the first week's suggested exercises was artistic frottage (also known as "brass rubbing"), and I spent some time experimenting with textures around my house:



Then Valentine's Day came along, and my husband sent flowers!


I took a lot of pictures of it with the intention to add a floral motif to this month's CQJP block.
With all of the other demands on my schedule this past two weeks, I've hardly even begun to stitch on February's CQJP block! Ack! .. and I will need to make the BJP mandala soon too. I did get a lot done, so why am I so fixated on what I DIDN'T get accomplished?

BJP January

My BJP mandala for January!

Chatter: Stray Cat update

Stray Cat spent his first day at the vet's office getting his health assessed. He got aggressive at some of the poking and prodding, so they wanted to put him under sedation so that no one (including him) would get hurt. Sedation was also the perfect time to rid him of the horrible mats in his fur, and this is how he came back after his vet visit:

He makes it pretty obvious how he feels about the situation!

He doesn't get to roam the house for now: I have a pet rabbit whose health takes priority, so the stray cat needs to be kept in quarantine for at least a couple of weeks while we get his ear mites and etc under control. I won't be able to assess his long-term potential in my household until after I find out what his stabilized health status is and whether he causes a problem for my rabbit.
In the meantime, the stray cat happily naps away the days on the heater vent.

TAST- wk 4, CQJP-Jan, and BJP-Jan progress

Week 4 of TAST featured the Cretan stitch. I wasn't sure I'd be able to make enough variations on this stitch to make a postcard interesting, but I surprised myself!

The line at the top I started out just varying the length and compression of the stitches, and then realized that it was reminding me of an EKG or a seismograph reading, so I played around with that idea a little, trying to get it to be more accurate. (This stitch also reminds me of fish bones or snake vertebrae.) I can see that it has great potential as a filling stitch, but didn't really want to play with that idea very much this week-- other things had ahold of my time.

Which brings me to CQJP! I definitely put myself at a disadvantage by waiting until January started to start piecing together my block(s). I've only had about a week so far to stitch (instead of four weeks), and I feel like I need at least a week more. My stitching time during that single week was also impacted by the snowstorm, power outage, and stray cat, so I really should be surprised and pleased at what did get accomplished!

This wedge shape is a difficult one to photograph efficiently. I have to settle for a large photo in which you can get a general idea but can't see detail and then supplemental detail photos.

Since the stray cat impacted my life and schedule so much this month, I decided to commemorate him with a decorative patch. I used a scrap of the light green silk that I had used for piecing the blocks together. I inked the design on with a rubber stamp that I found at a thrift store and a "Stazon" brand ink pad. Then I used single-strand silk floss reclaimed from an old silk sweater and hand-dyed to the color I wanted to outline his features and add some fur. His whiskers are DMC metallic gold- single strand doubled over in the needle, and the brown of his eyes is DMC floss. When I finished stitching the cat, I traced an oval around him, used a heavy-weight thread (handquilting cotton) to stitch a running stitch line over the oval tracing, and then turned the edge over and buttonholed it a stitch at a time to keep it in place. When the buttonhole stitching was complete I trimmed the excess allowances, and I ended up with an applique that was very easy to handle. I blind-stitched it to the block using the same thread I'd used for the buttonholing-- which I believe was a fine Perle cotton marketed for tatting.
Again, the stray cat takes most of my stitching time! Ack! ;)

I used several of this month's TAST stitches to further accentuate this block. I decided that I did not want to limit myself to only using the featured TAST stitches of the month, so you will also find bullion stitches, chain stitch, and other explorations with thread and needle, but I definitely did find ways to incorporate feather, buttonhole, and Cretan in the stitching I've done so far. I still want to add some fly stitch, and I have plenty of room still to do that.
I will still be adding to this block for the remaining three days of the month! (counting today).
I will be leaving the bottom patches of this wedge blank because that is where the peacock's body will overlap the tail fan, obscuring any stitching that I do there.


(You can click on the pictures to see the detail better, and use <"ctrl"> <+> to zoom in -- at least on my browser that works.)

Because of the wedge shaped blocks, I decided to stitch all of my blocks together before beginning embellishment. This makes transitions between blocks easier, but makes the thing as a whole more cumbersome. I also decided that because of the wedge-fan shape I would start from the center of the fan and work outward. This will help keep embellishments and beads from previous months from snagging threads as I continue to work each month. I hope that these decisions will make the project as a whole a little bit easier!

My BJP seems to have wandered, and apparently I didn't think to photograph it right when I finished it, so I will have to add that update in a supplemental post. :P

Chatter: Life Will Conspire to Keep You From Working

One of the things that I (and many other Artists that I know of) constantly battle is the tendency for Life, or our own habits, to get in the way of our creative productivity.

My own habits are often to blame: maybe it's that my studio isn't clean or organized, and I can't find the pair of scissors that I need, or the fabric I intended to use, or the pattern I wanted to work from; maybe I just don't feel like working, so I fritter away the day with little unproductive distractions; maybe I do feel like working, but I'm up against a creative block and I just don't know how to break through it....the list goes on.

Most of the reasons we artists don't get things accomplished is, truly, our own doing. We over-schedule ourselves, we procrastinate, we wait for inspiration, we insist on perfection, we harbor unrealistic expectations, we overestimate our skill set or underestimate a learning curve... in short, we undermine ourselves at every opportunity.
Eventually, we learn how to curb these habits and apply ourselves with regular effort to achieve brilliant results of which we never could have dreamed ourselves capable. And we get to ride on that comfortable and exhilarating little wave of "I am ON A ROLL!!" (ah, how we look forward to that feeling!)

And that is the moment when Life steps in to undermine us since we dropped the ball on undermining ourselves. Life: that chaotic process that surrounds us and confounds us and even nourishes and inspires us -- that chaotic process with which we are inevitably intertwined for better or worse, which will be our steadfast companion to the day that we die.
For the most part, Life is well-behaved- and by well-behaved, I mean predictable. Gravity works predictably with astonishing regularity, as I am always dismayed to reconfirm when carrying just one too many items on a slippery walkway. I generally reconfirm the solidity of objects in the middle of the night with my little toe.
But overall we like predictability. It gives us a sense of security and comfort. It allows us to adapt ourselves to circumstances we don't feel able to change (e.g. Stockholm Syndrome), or to adapt our environments in ways that suit us (e.g. deforestation). We do this for better (an ergonomic office chair to bring comfort to the hours we spend in front of our computers), and we do this for worse (aforementioned deforestation, possibly as a tangential result of the production of our ergonomic office chair).

But now and then Life is not so predictable.
Of course, Life is extraordinarily complex, and perhaps if we had access to all the data all at once (assuming we even recognized what "all the data" would be!), we might be able to discover that Life is, indeed, thoroughly predictable, and the butterfly in Suriname does, in fact, cause the tsunami in Anchorage.
But in the meantime, snowstorms, floods, and power outages still catch us by surprise (as does, occasionally, gravity and the density of solid objects).

Life throws us curve balls to see whether we can retain our composure. Last week it was snow and a power outage. Last night it was this fellow:

He's a scraggly, undernourished, bone-thin, matted, beleaguered stray cat.
He walked right into my house yesterday.
When I picked him up to put him back outside, I felt how thin he was.
It's still cold outside.
I'm not sure how he would stay warm.
And he hasn't had enough to eat for a while.
But he's very pleasant and well-mannered (or maybe he's just too exhausted to be opinionated).
He's also intelligent.
He purrs a lot.
A LOT.
I mean constantly.
I couldn't put him back outside in the cold.


I opened up a can of chicken and fed him about half of it. I even squished it all up so that if he had problems chewing or swallowing, he wouldn't choke.
Then I gave him space in our bathroom for the night. It's warm and it's dry- perfect for a good night's sleep.

Today I took him in to the vet for a diagnostic.

Apparently he is not so well-mannered when he disagrees with what's happening to him.

The price for the diagnostic doubled.
(They need to administer a sedative for everyone's safety, and want to do all the tests while he is safely sedated instead of spread out a test at a time over several visits).

What we did figure out before he got too rough to handle: he is a geriatric, neutered male with ear mites and a slight heart murmur, and no microchip to track down a previous family of origin.
Oh great.
What am I doing?
This is NOT in the plan!
sheesh.

Week 3 progress: TAST and CQJP

Well, the snow and power outage put a bit of a crimp in my progress, but before it did so I got a lot done this week!
I spent most of the week putting together my "naked blocks" for the CQJP (Crazy Quilt Journal Project). Originally I had thought that I would make each block (wedge) in the month that I needed it, but for a variety of reasons I changed my mind and decided that I wanted all of the wedges completed so that I could see how they would work together. It took most of my work hours this week, but I got it done:

and I started my stitchwork on one of the wedges:



Of course, it was also week 3 of TAST (Take A Stitch Tuesday): Featherstitch.
TAST (Take A Stitch Tuesday)

In keeping with past weeks, I made another postcard (4 x 6 inches) featuring experimentations with featherstitch:


I experimented with changing the angles of the lines, with overlapping, with using the stitch on curves, with closed varieties and open, and with knotted varieties.

I also found a moment to add a moment to add a buttonhole ring and a string of buttonhole loops to my week 2 postcard:


So all-in-all it was a productive week, even with the snowstorm. :) I'm a little worried, though- next week I have to finish up this first CQJP wedge, a new TAST postcard, and my BJP mandala!

Urban Skiers, or Why I Don't Drive in Snow.

Well, the snow started falling a week ago Sunday. It let up a bit on Monday, and Tuesday wasn't bad--the streets were even clear by evening, but the forecast called for another snowstorm Tuesday night, and sure enough, by Wednesday we had more snow. On Wednesday I was working in my studio and took this picture out the window:

Yep, skiers. Right down the middle of the road. Because, let's face it, NObody in the Seattle region drives when it snows. Okay, that's not entirely true, but pretty close. People who live in regions that get a lot of snow like to snicker behind our backs, or point and laugh to our faces about that little quirk of ours which they see as unreasonable timidity. But that's not the full story. Here's the heart of the matter:
We get snow maybe once a year, usually in February or March.
It is usually followed very soon by rain that melts the snow and washes it away.
So we don't have a whole fleet of snowplows on hand for those few times that the snow sticks around for several days.
Because it only rains once or twice in a year and generally melts pretty quickly, we don't get a lot of practice with the whole driving-on-snow skill. Some of us go up into the mountains and keep our skills honed on the snowy passes, but most Seattlites stay in the lowlands throughout winter.
We don't tend to put snow tires on our vehicles, because--hey, we just don't get snow that often.
Our streets have a lot of curves and a lot of hills.
Our streets, especially in the hilly downtown Seattle area, have heated pipes running underneath the streets.
The heat underneath the streets melts lingering snow from underneath, and when nighttime temperatures plummet below freezing, that melted layer turns into ice.
Ice hidden beneath snow.
The rain that sometimes sprinkles across the top of the snow does the same thing-- turns to ice.
We don't have SNOW to drive on! we have ice. It's a little different.
Okay.
Then we have a bunch of people, either transplants who think they know how to drive in the snow because they drove in the snow back in their hometowns-- they're usually pretty smart about it: they figure out quickly what type of not-really-snow conditions they're driving in and they draw upon their years worth of blizzard-braving, ice-storm-enduring finely-honed survival skills -- or locals and non-snow transplants who believe they can drive in the snow because "how hard can it be?" -- they're the dangerous ones.
The how-hard-can-it-be crowd often base their idea that they can drive in the snow on the basis that they own a four-wheel drive vehicle. There seems to be a blind spot to the realization that snow and ice can make all four wheels spin just as easily as it can make two wheels spin. Four-wheel drive means that if any one of the four tires is on a nice surface with traction, you can probably get the vehicle to move, but if all four tires are on ice, well... Heh.
Long story short ("Too late!")...
By the third day of lingering snow, all of the bravado-puffed how-hard-can-it-be types have put their cars into ditches (or streetlamps, or parked cars, or moving cars, or heaven forbid what else), and the streets are relatively safe to drive again.
And by then the snow has generally melted anyway.
So there are a bunch of us Seattlite types who honor the snow in our own very particular "quirky" way: we stay inside, try to keep warm, and shake our heads slowly at the skidding vehicles:
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/seattle-drivers-snow-seattle-weather/60361

This time around, we had two snowstorms in a row and then an icestorm before the snow had melted away. We almost never get that combination of weather patterns, and what it meant was that a lot of the snow-and-ice laden tree branches couldn't carry the weight and splintered, taking out powerlines.

Okay, so the picture's not of a tree, it's an azalea bush, and it isn't exactly menacing any powerlines. Think of it as a scale model that I found not too far outside my own front door.
Or I could show you this one:

See the tree branches of the evergreen in the background? Those are head-height branches weighed down by the snow and ice until they drag on the ground.

We lost our power on Thursday morning, and didn't get it back until Friday night. We consider ourselves lucky that it was restored so quickly. :) It sure is nice to be warm again! and to have access to my internet, and lights to sew and read by!

On the plus side, I had a fireplace to cuddle up near on Thursday, so I didn't turn into an ice cube. :)

TAST wk 2: Buttonhole/Blanket stitch

This week's TAST progress so far! Nothing but buttonhole stitch. Even the crosses are buttonhole stitch-- spokes radiating out from a tiny little hub. The little flower is cut from a lace trim and attached with buttonhole stitch. The little jewel is held in place by a buttonhole cup. I'll have to try to get a better detail picture of it somehow.

I've been spending most of my time stitching up my CQ blocks for the CQJP. In retrospect, I should have finished putting my blocks together in December so that I could be focusing on embroidery and embellishment these past couple of weeks instead. Ah well- live and learn.

TAST wk 1: Fly stitch continued

I found my postcard! It was hiding beneath my embroidery stitch reference book, of all things. Doh!
I did a little more work on it to finish it up:

I still need to bind the edges before I can truly call it finished, but all the embellishing is done, I think.
Can you believe I used only fly stitch for this one? I'm always amazed at the possibilities for variation just one stitch can hold!

TAST wk 1: Fly Stitch

For my Fly Stitch exploration, I worked on a crazy quilt fabric postcard. I played around with varying the length of each of the three legs, and with the angles of the legs. I played a little with spacing and overlapping... and then after snapping this photo, I put it down somewhere and forgot where I put it. Argh!! I'd like to do more work on it, but I may just have to wait until it resurfaces again. I'm sure it's somewhere reasonable. I probably set it down when I went to change my laundry over and now it's buried under the socks. Or maybe I had it in my hand when the phone rang and now it's hiding behind the notepad. It'll show up when it shows up. .. or maybe the house gremlins hid it from me. That happens too, you know.

irrelevant chatter: I know it's borscht because it tastes better with sour cream

The thing I hate about cooking for myself (which is what happens any time I knowingly or inadvertently cook something my husband won't eat. My husband won't eat soup. I don't understand it, but aside from those times where the quickest way to heat up a decent dinner is to drop it all into the same pot together, I don't mind. We all have quirks, and being a choosy eater is a quirk I can live with.)... oops, that was a long interjection! .. okay, the thing I hate about cooking for myself is that when I cook up a decent sized pot of something (which happens anytime you've got more than three vegetables in the ingredient list) I end up eating it over and over and over again for a week or more.
So today I'm eating Excessively Orange Borscht. It was Flaming Fuschia Chicken Soup a couple of days ago, but that was before I'd given up on my denial about the power of beets. Now that the denial has given way to resignation, I'm calling it Borscht because of the beets. That's all it takes to make borscht, right? A couple of beets in the soup pot? and any time you put beets in the soup pot that makes it borscht, right? Now I don't speak much Russian, but I'm pretty sure that if you take the word "borscht" to its etymological roots, it must translate as "Oh great, it's pink. Now what do I do?"
And I wasn't in the mood for Flaming Fuschia Borscht two days ago, and I decided to play around with the color a bit. Silly me, I thought somehow that I'd be able to conquer the Flaming Fuschia. I added cumin and a little bit of yellow food coloring, and tipped the balance into the orange zone. Frankly, it looks like I started applying photo manipulation filters and forgot when to stop. Now orange is a nice enough color, but cumin is a very bright, intense yellow in its own right, and when paired up with the beet juice, I'm pretty sure this resulting orange could be worn as a safety vest. (Which I just might do if I accidentally tip the bowl into my lap while eating and typing at the same time. Still, better my lap than the almost-white carpet at my feet. Better yet, it should stay in the bowl.) Now "Safety Vest Orange Chicken Soup" didn't quite roll off the the tongue, but "Excessively Orange Borscht" is a name I can live with. It's a name that almost makes the bowl's contents endearing even on this third day after creation (with half the pot left for the next three days).
As you might have guessed by now, I am not much of a recipe person. I *can* follow a recipe, and in fact I have a small handful of sacred recipes that I don't mess with: lemon meringue pie, butterscotch-chip cookies, peanut-chicken soup, pancakes from scratch. Those select few recipes are the ones for which I go back to my recipe card every single time and follow it faithfully. Pretty much everything else is subject to whim and experimentation. I have about a 98 percent success rate with my experimentations and whims, which means that only about 2 dishes out of 100 are so unredeemable that I won't eat them (and while I'm not exactly as choosy as my husband, there is definitely a well-defined zone of "edible"). The other 98 run the spectrum from "it'll do, but I hope the leftovers don't last too long" all the way up to "OMG! I *HAVE* to have that recipe!" (which is a real "Doh!" moment because I don't keep notes as I cook, and back-engineering the recipe is never quite as successful as I'd hoped.) I have learned to treat every meal that comes out of my kitchen as a one-off, a fluke event, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enjoy this specific dish because it will never again be seen nor tasted on this Earth (excepting the 7 days of leftovers, of course).
Excessively Orange Borscht is one of those rare dishes, like a good curry, that seems to get better the second or third day out. Maybe it's because the flavors are blending, or maybe it's because the initial shock and distrust are wearing off, but EOB is inching its way up the scale into "Hmm... I might make this again if I'd kept notes... except I might leave the beet juice out next time."
Some of my most brilliant experiments come from desperation, one of those "Oh no, I need to eat again and I haven't gone to the store in the past few days" occasions. EOB was one of those. I was feeling a little sick and lethargic, and what I wanted was a good, honest, therapeutic chicken soup. I was off to a great start: I had a refrigerator full of leftovers I didn't want to eat, and I figured that the worst thing that could happen if they all ended up in a pot together is that I still wouldn't want to eat them, and if my experiment turned out to be one of those 2-%ers, I'd have a good excuse not to. :)

So into the crockpot went:
+ the bones of a rotisserie chicken (from Safeway, I think), with the remaining meat pulled off and set aside for last-minute addition into the soup.
+ a couple of leaves of kale. I like to think that it makes the soup healthier.

After an overnight slow-cook, I pulled out the solids and strained the broth. Then I started adding the stuff that would stay in as part of the soup:
+ chopped carrots
+ chopped celery
+ diced potatoes
+ diced onion (sauteed first)
+ diced bell pepper -- green and orange for festive color
+ a handful of raisins
+ the leftover chicken meat, finely diced
+ salt

The handful of raisins was supposed to have been my exciting "take a chance and see what happens" ingredient. I know that I like raisins in my rice pilaf, so it wasn't even that much of a stretch.

A couple of hours later I got a bit hungry, but the vegetables weren't tender yet, so I made myself an auxiliary snack of potatoes, beets, and kale. Flora, this is where you get to point and laugh, because when I'd been looking through my refrigerator, deciding what to add to the soup, I'd taken one look at those beets and very distinctly thought, "nope. Beets will turn the whole thing pink, and I'm not in the mood for borscht. I'll cook them up on their own in the next couple of days." So naturally when I went looking for an auxiliary lunch, I remembered that I had to cook up the beets anyway, so into the steamer they went along with some potatoes. (The kale I stir-fried)
The beets were delicious. When I tidied up dishes after lunch, I noticed that the beets had sweated a little of their juicy goodness into the steamer's drip tray. I seem to recall a snippet of the train of thought that turned my chicken soup pink, and it went something like this: "Hmm! The drip collector in the steamer has water that's loaded with vitamins from cooking the beets and potatoes. And it's bright pink. I'd better not leave it in the steamer for long or it will turn the white plastic bright pink and I'll have a terrible time getting the stain back out again. Well, I guess I could add it to the soup pot-- it's only a couple of tablespoons: hardly enough to even influence the flavor" and in it went.
+ 2 tablespoons dilute beet juice
It might not have been enough to change the flavor, but it just about instantly dyed every single ingredient in the pot a bright pink (except for the raisins which were dark enough not to show any significant change alongside the fuschia potatoes).
By this time the vegetables were just about tender, so I dished myself up a small bowl to see how the flavoring. It wasn't bad! ...but I just couldn't come to grips with bright pink chicken pieces. Beef is just fine in a borscht. Beef is a rich enough brown on its own that it doesn't suffer from exposure to pink broth. I can't say the same for the chicken.
I felt compelled to change the color somehow.
It occurred to me that cumin has a nice earthy color that might help mute the soup's visual intensity. Cumin is frequently used in chili and has a fairly strong flavor. Since I didn't want to use too much cumin, I supplemented my color adjustment with a couple of drops of yellow food coloring. I also thought the cumin on its own might be an odd flavor to add to the soup, so I balanced it with a dash of cinnamon.
+ cumin
+ cinnamon
The raisins were losing their claim to the title of my "throw caution to the winds" ingredient.
The cumin and cinnamon added an interesting flavor component, but even with the aid of yellow food coloring they couldn't offset the pink.
So I added a dash of turmeric.
+ turmeric
I might have added a bit too much turmeric, because my soup turned bright orange: Neon-, flourescent-, safety-cone orange.
It dawned on me that despite my attempts to adjust the color, what I had in my soup-pot was borscht: almost-entirely-beet-free borscht, but borscht nonetheless.
Now, whenever I make borscht (on purpose, at least), I add some beef stew cubes to the pot. My refrigerator, however, illustrating the lack of foresight that my culinary whims had embodied, was distinctly void of beef stew cubes.
It held no leftover pot roast, no fajita steak brought home from a Mexican restaurant, not even a hint of ground beef.
My refrigerator held exactly one beef-containing product: half a package of Ball Park beef hot dogs.
So I added them.
+ Ball Park beef hot dogs
I started to wonder whether the raisins might not have been the tamest decision I'd made.
And then it occurred to me that perhaps the raisins were the tipping point: perhaps the raisins were the culprit that brought the entire string of questionable choices descending down into my soup pot. If I hadn't tossed in the raisins on a whim of curiosity, maybe I wouldn't have tossed in the steamer's beet juice in a moment's indiscretion. If I hadn't added the beet juice, I would have had no reason to add the cumin, the cinnamon, or the turmeric. And beet-juice or no, the cinnamon would never have gone in the pot if the raisins hadn't already been in there.
It just goes to show how one whimsical, off-handed, ill-considered choice can influence an entire string of choices to follow.
Fortunately, it's not bad. It's odd, to be sure, but it's not bad. It's actually kinda yummy. I just had to give up the idea that it was ever "chicken soup" and just accept it on its own merits as one of those kitchen experiments gone awry.
In the words of John Krakauer (author of Into The Wild), "a challenge in which a successful outcome is assured isn't a challenge at all." Or put another way: It wouldn't be called triumph if you knew you could bank on a successful outcome.

CQJP color palette

Originally I thought that I would make my CQJP out of quilting cottons. I have plenty to choose from! And I love making crazy quilts from printed fabrics. ... but in the end I decided that I wanted fabrics that have a more sumptuous shine and feel, so I dug out my fancy fabrics and came up with this colorway:


I guess I have plenty of purples! On the left hand side are my "greens" which are more like teal than green. Ideally I would have a lot more of them,but since I don't, I've come up with a tentative plan that should work... I just hope it's "crazy" enough.

irrelevant chatter: soup

Note to self: when going to the trouble of buying lots of different colored ingredients for a festive soup (green and orange bell peppers, yellow corn, orange carrots, green celery and beans, etc) don't put beets into the pot! argh. I ended up with a bright fuschia soup. When I added the beets, I'd thought I would get a lovely bright fuschia broth with all sorts of festive vegetables floating around in it, but no! of course not. Beet juice stains everything. All the vegetables ended up some variation of fuschia. I'd have known that if I'd have stopped to think about it. Doh!

For the past couple of weeks I have been focusing my time and energy on getting my sewing space cleaned up and organized. This week I get to focus on putting together my first CQJP "block" (wedge shaped). Yay!

CQJP planning progress

Well, for the past several weeks I have been focusing my creative energy on getting my sewing space all cleaned up and organized for the New Year so that once I get started stitching, it will be in an orderly, productive, enjoyable atmosphere. Trust me, this has taken a whole *LOT* of energy and creativity!! In the process of all this moving things around and rearranging things, I seem to have misplaced my favorite little digital camera. ARGH!!!! I had it on December 8, and now I don't have a clue where it is!

It is probably hiding behind the scissors. <-- longstanding household jibe: I have several pair of scissors. One friend once asked me whether I buy a pair of scissors per project. ...of course, she only has ONE pair of scissors, and they're not even very good for cutting paper. :P ...so, since then, whenever I misplace something, my DH suggests, "Maybe they're behind the scissors" and I'd have to reply, "Yes, but which pair?"
... hmm... I wonder whether that joke was worth explaining.

So what that means is that I got distracted from my organization-of-sewing-room task long enough to locate my old (now back-up) camera (that I carry with me on things like camping trips in case it gets dropped or lost), the camera's battery, charger, cable to talk to the computer, etc, etc, etc.

Now at least I can take pictures again! yay!

But that also means that my sewing room isn't quite clean yet. Here's what the room looks like today:




See all the clutter on the floor? All that clutter needs to be sorted, boxed, and put up onto shelves. I'm not even going to show you what the room looked like BEFORE I started this cleaning spree! ..I didn't think to take a picture. But when the sorting is finished and the floor is clear, it will be a nice little space to work in! Yay!!

Nonetheless, I did not let the cleaning spree completely derail me from the project preparation! I found time (and access to my sewing tools) to run a test to find out how much extra length I would need to add to my tail wedges to get them to qualify for the CQJP (which needs to be 36 sq inches per month)



I cut each wedge out of a different piece of fabric to represent the CQ wedges, and then cut a body wedge template out of sketch paper and overlaid the body onto the tail fan. See how much of the centermost wedge the body covers? Yep, that's my problem. If each wedge were unobstructed, my wedge size would already be perfect, but because of the overlap of body on tail, part of each wedge gets blocked, and the centermost wedge gets blocked the most.

Fortunately, there is a fairly simple way (that doesn't involve a whole lot of complex geometry!) to figure out how much extra space I need to add to each tail wedge:



I placed my clear acrylic grid ruler onto my tail wedge, with one edge of the ruler at the center-line of the wedge, and counted each full inch that showed through the ruler, plus partial inches paired-up to create full inches. This picture shows that there are 11 full inches, plus enough partial inches to add up to another 4 full inches in half of the tail wedge for a total of ((11+4)*2) 30 full inches. I need 36 full inches, so I need to add another 2 inches of diameter to my tail wedges 10 or so full inches of CQ space! ha! I do not suck at this math/geometry thing after all! ;)

I am still super excited about this project and am eagerly anticipating the arrival of the New Year!

Eye Candy: Rain on Cabbage Leaf

Eric's Fan Quilt

Well, instead of sewing, I've been spending all my free time the past couple of weeks cleaning and rearranging my workspace. It's a worthy endeavor, and I am confident that the investment of time and energy in cleaning now will let my creative energy truly blossom in the new year. :)
Unfortunately, somewhere in the rearrangement of piles and boxes and the sorting of fabrics and buttons and threads, I have misplaced my favorite little digital camera! ARGH!! ...so the picture for today will come from archives that I didn't get around to posting when I should have! ;)

My brother came over for Thanksgiving dinner this year, and we got to talking about quilting (he's started doing applique recently, incidentally), and reminiscing in general, and I mentioned that I'd been doing some cleaning and re-organizing, and had happened across a couple of boxes with his name on them. Well, we dug them all out and sorted through them, and among them was this:


It is a queen-sized fan-quilt that I started for my brother in December 1994. If I get it finished by 2014 it will have been 20 years aborning. My brother decided to give me until 2019 to get it finished, just in case. I wonder if I still have all the pattern templates? I wonder if I have enough cloth in the right colors, or if I need to buy more to coordinate? I wonder if I can remember what the plan, exactly, was! I do know it needs a little freshening up (tricky when it's in pieces) and ironing and piecing and more piecing. I will be chipping away at this project throughout 2012 alongside CQJP/BJP/TAST and assorted other obligations.

CQJP planning progress

Well, I've spent a little time fleshing out my ideas for my CQJP challenge. I really like the idea of creating a CQ peacock, and I've been using my colored pencils to see what kinds of color patterns I might want to use. Here's one that I particularly like so far:

It will be different, of course, when interpreted in cloth, but it gives me an idea of where I might start.

There are giant white circles in each fan wedge for a reason: I am thinking of creating circular beaded motifs to applique on. I made up one sample motif to see how long it might take me (on average) so that I could decide whether or not to also sign up (officially) for the BJP this year. ... but my conscience is warning me that it might be too much of a commitment to tackle BJP as well as CQJP and TAST and SharonB's journal class and everything else that I need to do throughout the year, so if I can keep my impulse under control, then I will just be an UNofficial BJP participant so that I have one element that I can drop without guilt if my schedule gets too crazy.

Today's challenge: tidy my sewing room enough to enjoy working in it and be able to find all the fabrics and components that I might need/want to use!