- Axe-tually

Retrospective (11/7)

Patch #282 ACL live

Original Post 

- It's all a blur

Retrospective (11/7)

Patch #281 Rubber sole

Original Post

- Three-fer Thursday

Retrospective (10/14)

Patch #280 Hazel's swirled

I loved seeing what Hazel did to her hair in this post at Handstories 

http://handstories.typepad.com/blog/2016/10/continuing-my-mid-life-metamorphosis-.html

She called it metamorphosis, which fit perfectly with the bit of butterfly Shibori in this patch/homage.

Original Post 

I finally finished the September patches with this trio ...

For those of you coming over from Jude Hill's SunMoonStars, I've been making a patch for each day of 2016. Sometimes (okay, many times) I get behind. So when I do finish a patch, I insert it retrospectively into the original post. I've even got a subject heading titled Retrospective in the Index with 100+ entries.

So today I finished the patch for September 19

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/turning-redux.html

which was inspired by Jude Hill's post Turning. In the original post, I pictured a close-up shot of my antique clock reel, which coincidentally resembled a rising/setting sun ...

The original post for September 20th

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/golden.html

promised a take on yellow indiangrass. So I cut a stem to better see the colors ...

then found a variegated floss that would work ...

resulting in this ...

Last, but not least, I conjured up memories of my teenage peace activist years for the September 21 post about Vietnam

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/war-and-peace.html

My mom's family was quite conservative (as was my mom), but I took after my liberal-minded dad. Consequently, I wore black armbands and clothing embellished with peace signs quite frequently ... including at family gatherings. One uncle used to disdainfully point out that I was wearing the "sign of the American chicken," but in spite of the glowering looks and shaking heads, I persisted. I'm proud of it to this day and my only regret is that I stopped wearing peace signs after the Vietnam War ended ...

I guess I could remedy that anytime, right?

- Wrapped

Patch #279 Once upon a time

There's a song called Wrapped by Walt Wilkins that tugs on my heart with the words ...

Summer gold, Winter blue

Wherever I am, whatever I do

I'm wrapped in you

Forty-two years ago today, Don and I met on a blind date. Hours earlier, I sat for this yearbook picture ...

wearing the India cotton top that I later wore to the frat dance we went to. And while I don't have a picture of Don from that night, I know this is the shirt he wore ...

Forty-two years. You can read more about that first date in this post: 

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2009_10_05_archive.html?m=1

which was written when we were celebrating a mere thirty-five years. Oh but we were young, right?

So we're celebrating this time around with a quiet dinner at home. Steak on the grill, popovers, artichokes dipped in butter, and a good red wine are on the menu.

In the meantime, Don is working on a frame for his latest landscape in the Contours series ...

My stitching chair caught his attention somehow and he commented on the frayed state of affairs along the corded edges of the arms. "I know," was my response,"I've been thinking about how to repair them. Do you think multiple colors would be too much?"

You can figure out his answer ...

That's a Hazel Monte ship sailing along the armrest ...

Sorta like Georgia's Window  

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/07/backlit.html?m=1 ...

"What about blue?" Well, what about that ...

It ended up being a different kind of wrapping stitch in colors I've always loved. So one last look at the way we were the night before our wedding to prove the point ...

And we've lived happily ever after.

- What if ...

Retrospective (10/14)

Patch #278 Shibori butterfly wing

Original Post 

What if I tried doing shibori with Inktense pencils? Couldn't find anything when I searched Google and Pinterest.

So I tried wrapping a small bit of blue linen on a tiny Cracker Barrel maple syrup jar. Scrunched it down, spritzed it with water, then layered on some blue, green, and gray ...

Then I stitched up another bit ...

gathered it ...

spritzed it with water and hit the edges with black. Here's how it looked after being rinsed and pressed ...

I think it has potential. Now if I can just figure out how best to imitate these beauties on the mistflower ...

which Don just identified as queen butterflies by checking the Wildflower Center website ...

- On edge

Retrospective (10/13)

Patch #277 Pomegranate-dyed linen

Original Post

I realized it after stitching on the new row of black and white patches: the cloth was flaring outward ...

My "fault" for working without measuring.  There's no going back, though. The cloth is what it is.

I guess I'm moving away from perfection ...

Jude Hill's September Window on the armrest

Letting things be, not worrying so much (but still worrying some, I confess).

Lately I've taken to piecing some things from the front ...

This was destined to be a take-off on G's tic-tac-toe board from September 22 

(http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016_09_22_archive.html), 

so I kept cutting ...

and piecing ...

cutting ...

and piecing ...

until I realized that the seams made it too bulky to use as a patch ...

This became a tattered name tag for FASA meetings

So I backtracked and made a second version in woven cloth and decided to stitch an acorn freehand ...

then the resulting bit ...

got cut and stitched down to patch size ...

As for the patched piece, I suspect it will make an appearance elsewhere someday (Addendum: it did ... as a nametag for WVAL and FASA)

And I know I promised some dyeing news, but for now I'll leave it at this ...

The weather patches are once again a lighter pomegranate yellow, after the hot yellow days of summer. There's nothing like running out of cloth of a needed color to get one motivated to dye more.

- 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.