- Rain chain (revised)

Note: This post was moved to a new URL on August 26, 2015
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I fell in love with a copper rain chain that I saw at an ceramic artist's house, but the price was too dear.  So I started looking at all the silverplate flatware we've inherited over the years and decided to repurpose it (after checking to be sure I wasn't ruining something valuable).  The end result has been more decorative than functional, but then again, it doesn't rain all that much in our neck of the Texas Hill Country.

Addendum (March 9, 2014): 
With apologies for not responding sooner, here's how the rain chain was made. After doing some Googling for ideas on how to bend silver, I used pliers while holding the silverware in chamois cloth in order to twist the fork tines into interesting shapes ... it would have been much easier with sterling silver, but there's no way I would use sterling for this project.

Then I bent the handles of the forks and spoons, once again using heavy pliers for leverage and the chamois to protect the silver (I wore gloves, too) ... this definitely took some experimenting to figure out the ideal flex points and I broke several pieces. Once I had a pile of bent forks and spoons, I played around with how best to arrange them before putting the whole thing together.

The top of the rain chain is a copper funnel I found at our local antique store (By the Bridge in Wimberley, Texas). I punched a couple of holes in the funnel with a hammer and nail, then ran a crab pick through the holes (with fond memories blue crab picking on the Eastern Seaboard). The first piece of silverware hooked over the crab pick. After that it was a simple matter of hanging one piece of silverware after the other. Gravity is the only thing holding the chain together and except for the bottom piece or two it has yet to come apart, even on the windiest days.

I'm not a metal-smith and had never done a project like this before (or since), so there may be other/better/safer ways of doing it. If you like what you see, I encourage you to experiment, carefully. Please note that the chain has since weathered to the color of dark copper pennies ... there's no practical way to keep it silvery that I can think of. However, since I'm very much into natural patinas, it suits me.

- Snapshot(s)

Retrospective (9/14)

Patch #243 Rain chain

Original post 

When I posted a picture of how much the front view of our house had changed in the past 6 years, I decided to take a new round of garden photos. The fact that we've had so much rain helped, too,

So, no patch yet (travel will cause me to go back to my retrospective strategy), but lots of pictures ...

Front porch ...

weathered flatware rain chain ...

complete with rain drops ...

my stitching window ...

and the view from there ...

the side garden ...

up close ...

the back garden ...

by the driveway ...

and the breezeway ...

Many of the plantings were here when we moved in, but they have grown and Don has added all the rock work plus many new plants. Well worth remembering and very much appreciated by our neighbors ...

- Be it resolved ...

I have an on-again off-again thing about New Year's resolutions. In the past, I made predictable resolutions to eat better, lose weight, exercise, etc. etc. which resulted in failure more often than success ... the resolutions abandoned, most forgotten mere weeks into the new year.

And once upon a time, I also made New Year's predictions ... at the annual party hosted by Barb and Ray Laroche, where we would all read our predictions from the previous New Year's Eve, then write new ones for the upcoming year. The one I  love to recall was from 1992, when we were all prompted to write down who we thought would be elected in November. My prediction that it would be Bill Clinton was met the following New Year's Eve with exclamations of "Who even knew who he was this time last year?" I was a rock star. Unfortunately, every prediction I made after that one was an absolute, totally forgettable let down.

Still, there's something about the new year that begs for my attention, a yearning to find my better self. So a couple of years ago I decided to try one-word resolutions ... clear, simple, memorable, accountable.

In 2013 I resolved to Create which resulted in ...

A return to stitching ...

A first attempt at cloth book-making

Re-imagined placemats

Plus lots ...

and lots of bibs and burp cloths ...

There were also a number of wood and metalworking collaborations with Don ...

Flying fish ...

A funky whale ...

 

Birth flags ...

A Chesapeake skipjack for a dear friend

And a reimagined construction site 2x4 honoring a new home

There was more, but much of it went undocumented, leaving a gaping hole in the 2013 blog archive.

In 2014 I resolved to Blog ... which got off to a slow start, quite honestly. After a lone post in early January, I dropped the blog-ball big time. Then it happened. On March 9, 2014 I discovered that my blog had been accruing thousands of hits on the Rain Chain post from 2012, mostly from Pinterest links. Who knew?!?!

It was just the motivation I needed to get blogging again. And blog I did, as you can see from the chronological BLOG ARCHIVE to the right. However, after the initial rush of enthusiasm and a mini-spate of posts, I once again lost heart ... most of the hits on the blog continued to be rain chain views. What was the point of blogging if no one was reading?

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending thanks to Jude Hill's Spirit Cloth. After discovering the concept of slow cloth (via Pinterest) I read Jude's entire blog from 2006 to present, then signed up for two of her online classes. Spirit Cloth 101 gave me to a new way of looking at cloth-making, but the solstice-to-equinox journey through Considering Weave gave me a new community within which to make it.

When Considering Weave ended in September, I was determined to maintain connections to my newfound cloth-mates. More and more my posts were directed to them as an audience and as I visited their blogs, I belatedly realized that some of them had links from their blogs to mine. Inspired, I created my own  KINDRED SPIRITS links, with which I now follow the latest missives from the blogosphere.

The conversations that have resulted from these interconnections are sometimes hard to follow (where did I post that comment?) and some revelations have sidetracked into private emails. But there's no question that I am now a part of a very real community. There have been shared experiences, such as the post about it's only RAIN that led Saskia to a Mystiqueros concert in the Netherlands.

And our home is now enriched with pieces of work from Jude ...

 
and Grace ...

and Mo ...

                         

More to the point, the friendships that have been forged encircle the globe, enriching our spirits ... because the truth is that Don has become a steady, if stealthy, reader.

Thus it was clear, as I updated my profile yet again, that my focus has shifted over the life of the blog from cooking to crafting to stitching (a term I now prefer to "needleworking" which sounds a bit too much like ... well, work). I have come full-circle to where my creative life began.

For 2015 I hereby resolve to Stitch ... and to share the journey by creating and blogging (almost) every step of the way. I hope you'll join me.

- A closer look: Cross stitch family sampler

When I realized how many folks were coming to the blog to take a look at the rain chain, I figured I'd better spruce things up a bit.  That included putting an addendum on the original rain chain post, updating my profile, doing some editorial clean up, and making a commitment to resume posting on a more regular basis. I also changed my profile picture to a recent piece of needlework, only to find that the resolution left a lot to be desired ... then changed it again to a recent family picture (which also leaves something to be desired).

In any case, here's a better view of my newest family sampler (the top half only since the piece is too long to photograph effectively as a whole ... for more detail click this link), worked in silk on linen. Note that the second alphabet is in reverse as I'm fond of singing backward ABCs to my grandsons. The random letters at the end of the 4th line are variants on letters that I wasn't entirely happy with the first time around, since this sampler was worked without planning every stitch in advance (much as they did in the 18th century ... but more on my 18th-century needlework adventures in a future post or two).

For those who are interested, the buildings are iconic references to where each of us got married and/or honeymooned: Montauk Lighthouse, Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, and the University of Texas Tower. And no, I'm afraid the buildings aren't to scale ... sorry UT.

- Eating Texican

Wow ... I haven't posted in forever and now come to find out there have been over 5000 views of the rain chain post.  So, I've put an addendum on the post and belatedly answered those who were kind enough to leave a comment.

Now back to why we're here: a new recipe.  The back story is that we had some pork loin chops in the freezer and I wasn't quite sure what to do with them because they looked really lean (I usually get pork sirloin). After a fair bit of Googling on "green chile pork loin" (which is what I had in mind), I discovered a dichotomy of opinion on how long to braise pork loin.

So, nothing ventured, etc etc ... I cut the meat into cubes, salted and seared it in olive oil two minutes to a side and dumped it into a Pyrex dish.  Then I diced and sauteed some sweet onion, deglazed the pan with a slug of Lobo Negro beer, poured it all over the meat along with a pack of Rick Bayless' Frontera Green Chile Enchilada sauce (I don't usually go for packaged stuff, but this is pretty "clean" with tomatillos, poblano chiles, and no chemicals), a spoonful of cumin, and cup of homemade chicken stock.

After 45 minutes with the lid on at 325 (the time many recipes recommended as an end point), I opened up the door of a fragrant oven only to find very unappealing stew ... the meat was tough beyond prodding and there was a gumbo-like oil slick floating on top. Yuck.

I took off the lid and let it go for another hour ... which made for some significant improvement.  Good thing, as the only other realistic option for dinner was pancakes.  So I put the lid back on, stuck the dish back in the oven to cook some more, and started researching Mexican rice.

Rice Select Royal Blend is a standard in my pantry ... which isn't exactly what you find in most Tex-Mex joints. But I took a chance, sauteed some onion in olive oil, then added in the rice as one would for a pileau. After a couple of minutes, I stirred in some chicken stock, chopped grape tomatoes and finely diced jalapeno, slapped a lid on the pan and left it to simmer. After 15 minutes, I removed the lid and raised the heat, stirring until the excess liquid evaporated.

The stew came out of the oven after about 2.5 hours at 325.  It still wasn't pretty, but the meat fell apart at the nudge of a spoon.  I raided the fridge for some avocado, cilantro, sour cream, and lime ... then pulled a handful of good tortilla chips from the pantry.

A bed of rice, stew on top, liberally dosed with the aforementioned condiments made for a great meal. No picture ... honestly, it didn't look like much.  But with Shiner Bock to help it down, we agreed that it was worth recording ... for the next time.

- Rock On: Gardening in the Hill Country

When we first looked at our soon-to-be new home in 2010, the owners had amazing container plants on the front porch, but the ground in front was just grass. Of course, they took their plants with them, so we pondered how best to add visual interest to the front yard using what we had at hand.

What we had in abundance, especially on the floodplain at the back of the property, was rock ... lots and lots of rock. The soil profile for our land is called Rumple-Comfort, which is dominated by clay, brown cobbles of chert, and grey limestone. Don proceeded to create a ground cover of brown stone (after laying down landscaping cloth), finishing the first leg of the project late in 2011.

Realizing that we needed a way to walk from the front to the back of the yard without cutting across the porch, Don started moving around the brown stones, adding large limestone rocks for height, then creating a path with a "Texas Mix" of smaller stones from Gardenville ... one five-gallon bag at a time. Visual interest was provided by driftwood found on the nature trail that runs behind our property. A funky bench, some copper buckets, and a copper bird bath rounded out the second stage of the project in 2012.

The most recent (but certainly not the the last) phase involved putting in plants. Most are agaves and Spanish daggers grown from pups harvested from other parts of the yard, but this year's live Christmas tree also made the cut. In spite of my assurances that they looked fine, Don restained the cedar columns on the front porch ... a subtle but significant improvement.

Note the rain chain to the right ... now weathered to a brown patina.

The path has been extended around the west side of the house, winding past a small rock cairn and the HVAC system to the back of the house, where it now connects to the limestone rock garden, but that's a post for another day ... once the wildflowers are in bloom.

The reddish grass clumps are Little Blue Stem, a successful part of our effort to return much of the
property to prairie grass cover. The green clumps are sedges, which do particularly well under the live oaks.