The New Piece, In Progress

The new piece wants to be made.  I keep finding myself sketching, rummaging through fabric, sitting at my worktable with my journal.  I guess I'd better get working.

I'm using a vintage textile that I think used to be a pillow.  The images are going to be framed by a thick, embroidered frame.

This scrap of vintage embroidery has been looking for a home.  I thrifted it at an estate sale last year.  The women who embroidered it had tons of linens, but her needlework skills weren't stellar.  I've often wondered if maybe her eyesight had gotten bad over the years.  

I reinterpreted the scrap here.  I used tracing paper to trace over the actual fabric.  Before transferring the design to fabric, the tracing paper assists composition.  I can move the design around and decide how I want to use it, let it speak to the other elements.

And then I can iron it onto the fabric.  I used Sulky transfer pens to trace the back side of the drawing and then set it to the fabric with a hot, dry iron.

I'm using a split stitch to embroider the design.

Waiting in the wings are embroidered and printed lines, birds and flowers, dense circles and pinwheels and bands of color.

As ever, I am thinking about composition, feeling limited by my knowledge.  I am considering perfection versus messiness, precision versus speed, planning versus spontaneity.  I am trying not to get bogged down in the details.

Halloweening Up The Place

When I was a kid, my family really only decorated for Christmas.  Sure, we'd get a pumpkin for Halloween, but that was about it.  As an adult, I love putting up the holiday decorations.

After we visited the apple orchard, Ellis and I created our Halloween display, spiders and all.

Pretty spooky, huh?

Art Content Two Days in a Row?

Here's a good reminder to myself to just voice my goals.  Yesterday I was all, I haven't done any art in forever.  And here we are.  I spent the whole day doing art.

I finished the first fingerless mitt, despite some thumb-issues (not pictured).

I have germs partially to thank for this.  Ellis landed his first full-fledged case of strep throat (my childhood favorite) and so required rest and relaxation (tv) all day.  What's a mama to do?

When you're done knitting, you should sketch, obviously.

New embroidery is coming, new glasses or not.  Some inspiration:

Our Regularly Scheduled Program

I just checked.  The last time this blog had any art or craft content for anyone over thirty was August 4th.  Unacceptable.  You'd think nobody around here does anything but can.  You'd be mostly correct.

However, it is Fall so I do have some projects on the needles:  Fingerless mitts for me and a blanket for a Christmas gift.  Frankly, I'm struggling with both.  I've redone the thumb gusset on the first mitt twice and have messed it up both times.  I have messed it up differently each time, so at least I'm learning. 

As for the blanket, well, I'm just not loving it.  I've started various versions over and over.  I need a clear vision.  I'm waiting for inspiration.

As for sewing and embroidery, I pretty much have done nothing.  Partially, I really have been busy with cooking and canning.  But I'm also in dire need of some new glasses.  I can't see well unless the light is very very good.  Alas, the light is rarely that good.  Once I can see again, things should pick up on the art front.

I did trick out some too-short pants for Ellis.

Too bad for me that he'd already grown out of the waist and hips, as well.  They are cute but don't fit anyone who lives here.

As long as I had the machine up and running, Elly decided to get in a little sewing action.

I'm proud to say that he worked the machine all by himself.

Canning Theory & Practice

In my last post, I wrote about my canning history.  I didn't grow up preserving food, but rather have learned through trial and error with Sarah over the past 5 years.  Like so many of us who were not taught these skills by our families, we've had to learn from scratch what once was common knowledge.

In general, I think most of us feel unqualified to produce our our food.  This feeling is fostered and reinforced by our food infrastructure, engineered to teach us that if it's not factory-produced, it's not safe.  If they can convince us we can't feed ourselves, that's money in the bank for them.  Year after year.  Forever.  Considering that what comes from our food infrastructure is often anything but safe, that is a dangerous set-up.

When we learn to produce food for ourselves, we take back that power we've lost in the past few generations.  Using food preservation methods such as canning, freezing, and fermenting, we can increase the volume of food we produce.  We don't have to worry about the preservatives and pesticides in our food.  We don't have to worry about the carbon footprint of our food.  We can spend less money for higher quality food.

And we can pass this knowledge on.  When Sarah and I first began this journey, we knew about two people who canned.  I was inspired by the local food movement and the internet to try my hand at it.  It took us 5 years to get here.

Each year, more of my friends have joined the food preservation revolution.  And the newbies are learning faster each year with the rest of us guiding them.  In fact, my friends Kim and Kathleen have gotten as far in one season as Sarah and I got in 4 years.  It's awesome.

Canning.  Pass it on.

The Fall Girl Waxes Poetic On Canning and Preserving Food

This was one of those weeks where you blink and it's gone.  Between work and school and a few bad headache days for me, the days flew by.  I can't believe it's Friday night.

Remember when Friday night was for going out and stuff?  These days, I relish staying home.  There's a chill in the air tonight, so I'm happy to be staying in, re-watching Alias with Sarah, and working on my new knitting project.  Well, after she goes out and covers the remaining tomatoes, that is.

As I get older and the climate here goes crazy, I'm finding I love Fall more than ever.  I've always been a Summer girl.  Times are changing.  It'll be a few years before I claim Fall as my favorite season, but I can feel it coming.  After all, if the cozy romantic nights in and wooly sweaters and the click of knitting needles aren't enough, here's one reason to love Fall: Autumn Fruit Jam.  It's a spiced apple, plum, and pear jam, full of festive Autumny goodness.

I figured I'd better process some of our U-Pick apples before Ellis and Sarah ate them all up.  This jam combines the best of the season.  I tripled recipe.

Isn't it beautiful?

At some point, I thought the name of this recipe was Autumn Harvest Jam.  I am going to call mine that, because it's sort of poetic.  Mmmm.  Autumn Harvest Jam.

And we're not done yet.  This week-end I'm hoping to get some applesauce put up and use the last 3 eggplants from the garden.  There's also those green tomatoes to address.  As it stands now, Sarah and I have put up over 250 jars of produce this season--not counting frozen or refrigerated items.  Although we're not into the ranks of our good canning friends Venessa (310) and Anika (307), I feel proud of how far we've come.  This is only our third season canning (although it's our fifth for preserving).  Each year we accomplish more.

I encourage people who haven't tried canning to just jump in.  We started small and have come a long way in a short time.  Our first year, we just made refrigerator pickles.  The second year, we added frozen tomatoes in zip-lock baggies.  Our third year, we put up whole tomatoes in jars.  Last year, we canned jams and relishes and pickles in the water bath canner.  This year, we got all crazy with it and learned to pressure can.  Now we can save pretty much anything for later.  And we did.