US II

I'm calling it done, with thanks to Don for touching up the frame ...

the cloth now named US II, a tribute to our 40 years together.

It was originally imagined in a much simpler form, but after the spare outlines were stitched, it began to tell its own story of the places we have called home.

First in Virginia, where we raised our kids ... rivers running through it ...

but a faded outline compared to the lighthouse at Cape Hatteras ...

long my heart's home ... where I've walked many miles by the sea, watched storms roll in, and caught the last rays of sunlight to the west where sea oats bend in the unceasing wind ...

And "can't you just feel the moonshine?"

How perfect then, that we found kindred grasses growing a thousand feet above sea level in the Texas Hill Country ...

prairie grasses that sink deep roots into limestone bedrock formed millions of years ago at the bottom of another, more ancient sea.

We share our Edwards Plateau home with abundant wildflowers ... bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and countless little yellow ones... all interlaced with timeless rivers ...

And I dare to say the stars at night are big and bright, here inspired by Hazel and stitched on cloth from a long-worn nightshirt ...

Lastly the sun ... on a bit of Jude Hill indigo (as are the other two) ... a smoldering memory of the 2017 eclipse as seen in St Louis ...

because our hearts live there, too.

The cloth with no name

This is where I am today with the (still unnamed) cloth I began last month as a 40th anniversary commemorative ...

It's been a journey from my original plan, which was to make a new-fangled sampler ...

I even got so far as to stitch the lettering on the bottom half, seen here photographed with one of my new clip-on iPhone camera lenses ...

But even though I was happy with the clouds, created by loosely backstitching marks on the hand-dyed cloth ...

the lettering just didn't feel right, so I tore it out. 

Then, while looking for something else entirely, I came across a long-lost envelope of Jude Hill's indigo-dyed "planets," which sent me running off in an entirely new direction ...

I'm still not 100% sure about the frame, but considering how the size seems near-perfect, I'm thinking it's meant to be.

Addendum: As I waited for this post to load, it occurred to me that the cloth has become an un-sampler ... US 

Icons

Don: "What are you making?"

Me: "I'm not sure, but I'll let you know when it's done."

Homesteading

This is The Land as the Crow Flies as it stands right now (about 40" wide by 19" high) ...

Over the past few weeks it has morphed considerably from green grids of cloth weaving laid out linearly ...

to various trials at angles ...

along with a fair bit of design mending as I realized I wasn't happy with some of my fabric choices.

There was also consideration of how and where to eventually place the house ...

and how to represent the stone wall boundary lines (torn strips of linen rolled between the fingers and couched down with two strands of floss), as well as the topographic elevation contours (detached backstitch worked with two strands of variegated floss) ...

So far, so good.

Imagine ending

Three more pins are heading out to Janet in Washington, Bridget in Florida, and Louise in Canada ...

and as I stitched the last one ...

I found myself intoning, "Imagine ending."

And I do think it's time, for now, to close the Peace Pin Project. 46 pins have gone to 40 individuals (myself belatedly included) ...

from Australia and New Zealand to England and the Netherlands. As far north as Canada and as far south as Hawaii. From Washington and California on the west coast of the U.S. to New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, Georgia, and Florida on the east coast. Not to mention the Midwest states of Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, the mountain states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Montana, and the Lone Star state of Texas (although I prefer to claim the tiny island of blue that is Austin).

Take heart, as I don't see this as a permanent ending, more like a hiatus. It has been too cool getting shout outs like this one at Kaizen Journey

http://kaizenjourney.blogspot.com/2017/05/thanks-liz.html

...

not to mention all the real mail that has graced our snail mail box. But still.

There are other projects that call to be completed: the flowers for Little P's room ...

and the placket cloth bag in progress ...

Others are waiting in the wings, such as a new Land of Flood and Drought cloth for 2011 ...

and The Land as the Crow Flies ...

which I muse on as I work daily NYT crosswords ...

cloth strips already torn from thrifted linen shirts, waiting to be woven ...

And so it goes ...

- Almost a week

Retrospective (11/7)

Patch #288 Hi bird

What didn't get written into the original post was our visit to the Austin Nature and Science Center with G. In addition to trails and hands on artifacts such as fossils, the center has a small menagerie of injured and imprinted animals that can't survive in the wild.

One in particular breaks my heart ... an imprinted roadrunner that spends her life spinning in circles, then stopping while her eyes jerk back and forth. After which she begins to spin again.

Except, G and I quietly crouched down and I coached him to softly whisper "Hi bird" over and over again. It worked. She stopped her endless spinning, turned her head to the side, and listened ...

The memory patch came about as I looked at a printed fabric and saw a stylized roadrunner, so I stitched it with images of Mesoamerican gods gliding behind my eyes.

Original Post

Yesterday was a productive day ...

with retrospective patches completed for October 2

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016_10_02_archive.html

featuring an overlay of Texas ...

on Europe ...

October 3

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/10/on-edge.html

showing two rounds of pomegranate dyeing ...

using liquid concentrate ...

and aluminum acetate mordant purchased from Dharma Trading ...

October 4

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/10/comment-alert.html

featuring my first attempts at Inktense Shibori, the first of which reminded me of the queen butterflies in our garden ...

And October 6

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016_10_06_archive.html

featuring the second bit of Shibori, a tribute to Hazel's wonderfully wild hair ...

Today we're headed to Austin, where we plan to have some more fun with G while his mom and dad celebrate their 8th wedding anniversary (a little early).

- How I cook

Retrospective (10/14)

Patch #276 Where in the world

Unmentioned in my original post was the behind-the-scenes reality of rebuilding the Kindred Spirits list that disappeared at the end of September. In so doing, I realized how far-flung my blog contacts were/are. At the same time, I read this article, 

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/insider/the-texas-shaped-world.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&referer=

which explained how large Texas is compared to entire countries in Europe. So I made my own map with A=Amsterdam, B=Berlin, V=Vienna, R=Rome, and P=Paris based on this ...

Original Post 

First off, I never follow recipes exactly. So after G helped me cut up strawberries last night (a fork was added to the task right after this picture was taken) ...

I put them in a pan, threw some sugar at them, cooked them awhile, mashed them a bit, then cooked them a little longer. Consequently, we had some wonderfully fresh strawberry jam to put on our French toast this morning.

Late this afternoon, I realized I hadn't defrosted anything for dinner. I did have some leftover grilled veggies (onion, poblano pepper and potato), perfect for an omelet. But there was no bread left in the house for toast, said bread having given its all for breakfast.

So. English muffins? I love English muffins. But I didn't want to drive to the store. How hard could they be to make?

I trolled the Internet for recipes and came up with this one by Alton Brown (interesting side note: did you know you can't copyright recipes?) ...

found in its entirety here:

https://www.google.com/amp/www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/english-muffins-recipe.amp.html?

Except I didn't exactly follow it. Because I didn't want ten muffins and I didn't have non-fat powdered milk and there was at least one other recipe that called for bread flour, which made more sense to me.

Instead, I nuked half a cup of milk, stirred in a shy tablespoon of butter, eyeballed a half teaspoon of salt and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. Then I put a half tablespoon of yeast in some warm water with a sprinkling of sugar and let it work for ten minutes. By then, the milk mixture was cooled down enough to stir it, the yeast, and one cup of bread flour together. 

I did follow Alton's instructions to leave the dough alone for thirty minutes. After which I fired up a griddle pan with some butter, put an assortment of biscuit cutters in the middle, sprayed them with Baker's Joy, plopped in the dough, and covered the whole thing with a cookie sheet. Here's what they looked like after five minutes ...

I sprinkled a little semolina on top, flipped them, and cooked them another five minutes, resulting in this ...

Split in half with a fork and toasted it wasn't bad. Although next time (oh yes, there will be a next time) I'll probably add a bit more flour and cook the muffins six minutes to a side to make them a bit less doughy.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, if you're still with me at this point, it's mostly so I don't forget what I learned by doing. Which is pretty much my MO. Tomorrow I'll show you the linen dye I cooked up this weekend. I didn't follow that recipe either.

- Rain again

Retrospective (9/30)

Patch #270 Best of friends 

Belated birthday wishes to my sister-by-choice, who happily celebrated with her grandkids ...

and a birthday donut!

Original Post

It's been raining quite a bit over the past two days ...

giving me an opportunity to use my new Pitt pens. Although I have to edit the second patch, which should read a mere 5.3" rather than 5.7".

Fortunately, we got FEMA flood insurance last week, which was relatively reasonable seeing as our property is in the flood zone, but not our house ...

Still, the insurance doesn't take effect for 30 days, so we were a bit edgy as the water level rose a bit more than we would have liked. 

It's gone back down, but the steady rain gave me an opportunity to do some catch-up patches.

September 15 http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/thanks-to-dana.html ...

September 16 http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/playin-around.html ...

and September 17 http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/strolling-down-memory-lane.html ...

I also sent an order for some Spirit Cloth planet patches. Can't wait to add one of them here!