- Orange again

Addendum: after writing the post below, we had dinner with my daughter's family. G has the best seat in the house, looking out the dining room window. As the meal wound down, he exclaimed, "I see the moon!"

Sure enough, a waxing crescent was sinking into the sunset west. Patch #12 has been revised accordingly, albeit one day late ...

Patch #12 redux

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I was thinking I would make an orange patch each day we watch three-year-old grandson G (yep, that's actually one of his nicknames).

We're a day earlier than usual this week since he was diagnosed with strep throat yesterday. So we got up at 5:00 and drove into Austin just as dawn was breaking on the horizon ...

Patch #12

It seemed like the light was radiating up, but this stitch didn't quite capture what I was after. No matter ... there will be other sunrises and sunsets this year, so I'll look toward to seeing how many ways I can interpret them in cloth.

Interestingly, my camera is having a hard time dealing with this intense orange, so I tried stepping away from it ...

Add caption

Okay, nuff said on that. Here's another look back at Christmas:

"What about making a gingerbread house? Do you still have the pattern?" my older daughter texted as we planned for the arrival of her younger sister and family for Christmas.

"On it!" I replied. 

No, I didn't have the old recipe and template, but I had the Internet. That and an idea to make smaller houses, one for each three-year-old grandson. I couldn't wait.

After looking at scads of designs, I picked the simplest I could find and made a mock-up scaled so the pieces would fit on my baking sheets ...

along with a frame to ensure the gingerbread could be rolled to a consistent thin-ness ...

I followed a recommendation to use the gingerbread recipe from the most recent Joy of Cooking. It worked well enough, but didn't taste great, so I think I'll use my grandmother's ginger snap recipe next year. In any case, I whipped up one batch, which was just enough to cover two cookie sheets ...

While the gingerbread baked, I made more bases so the houses would be sturdy and the boys wouldn't have to worry about being careful ...

And when the gingerbread came out of the oven, I cut it to plan ...

let it cool a bit, then stuck the pieces to the bases with royal icing (made with pasteurized egg whites) ...

There were gaps once the houses were assembled, but I figured they could be filled with icing to serve as decorating opportunities ...

Which indeed they were ...

A family tradition is (re)born!