n o d d y b o o m

happy * halloween

kids art

I tend to over-think things, but they don't and I love that about them. 

I would never have thought to make a ghost out of a paper towel.  For me, it would have had to be white silk, hand sewn and hung from the rafters or wire mesh bent into a ghost-like shape and then paper-machéd.  I would have geared myself up to make something that was complex and "perfect" and I never would have gotten around to it because I would have procrastinated over the time I would have thought it would take me to complete it or the materials I may or may not have or need and the whole thing would have overwhelmed me.

Paper towel, marker and string.  Done.  Brilliant.  You could even do this at a restaurant.

Slowly, I am learning.

Thank you for all your kind words about the poncho.  I feel much better today about the whole thing,  and Marley's doll is one layer warmer, which is nice. 

Karan, that buttermilk ice cream is actually quite lovely.  You must try it.  It's sort of tangy, like frozen yogurt.  It would be wonderful with a baked apple.

Be well.

letting go

There are Tibetan Monks who make beautifully intricate works of art out of colored sand.  The images take a very long time to complete, and when they are done, the monks blow the sand into the sky and give it back to the universe.  The image is destroyed.  The energy that was put into the art is transformed and released.

That the monks do this, is like a prayer for me today. 

My housekeeper threw a wool poncho that I spent months hand-knitting for miss Marley into the washing machine and shrank it to the size of a doll costume. 

I am heartbroken. 

I knitted that thing with room to grow, thinking it would take her all the way through school and imagining that she would carry it with her to college or wherever she happens to go on the next leg of her journey.  In any case, I had imagined a long life for that poncho that didn't involve being reduced to the size of a small dog. 

I am distraught.  I am emotional.  I realize it is a relatively tiny thing, this.  There are many people who have lost houses, lately (among other things).  There are people struggling to find clean water, people without food,  people who are very ill.  Those who have lost loved ones. 

I am lucky.  I only lost a poncho.  And it is not completely lost.  It fits one of Marley's dolls and will live there for a while until I can bear to pass it on to someone small enough to fit into it.

But I hurt.  I am sad about this.  I need to find a way to be like those monks and toss every stitch of that poncho to the wind knowing that the time and the energy and the love I put into it is not lost, it is merely transformed.  I must detach myself from the end product, for it is not the end-product that is important, after all, it is the work itself.  It is the process.  The journey.  And that can never be lost.  Marley can still carry that with her through all her life.  And so can I. 

Thank you Tibetan Monks.

So I am processing this.  Modeling with beeswax is very comforting to me, when I am feeling a bit out of sorts for one reason or another.  It helps me to sort out my emotions and reshape them.  It is soothing.  And when you are done working with it, you can put it in a glass jar and store it away until it is ready to be remodeled into something else. What a lovely thing.

We made pumpkins and witch hats and blobs that were relatively indecipherable (those were my favorite) and had rather a nice time.  And then we made chocolate chip cookies and buttermilk ice cream, which was quite yummy. 

Buttermilk Ice Cream:

1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sugar or honey or maple syrup

All organic, of course.

Blend ingredients and then mix in an ice cream maker.  Yummy.

I think I am beginning to feel much better.

Have a lovely evening, everyone.

Artist Deduction Bill

Vintage red mug from Three Potato Four and a thrifted teapot.

Just a quickie.  Here is a link to a bill that encourages congress to support the Artist Deduction Bill.  Currently, artists who donate their work to a charity may only deduct for the materials they used to create the work, not for the value of the work itself.  This bill, if passed, would allow artists to deduct for the fair-market value of the work itself.  Please support this bill!

banana bread and pie crust

Banana bread.  Some for us, some for the school fair.  Hands down the best recipe I've found so far, outside of the one I remember my grandma making in coffee cans, though I suppose you could make this one in a coffee can as well.  I might have to try that sometime, if only for sentimental reasons. 

This recipe is on page 349 of my new favorite cookbook, "Apples For Jam".

Banana Bread

1/4 pound plus one tablespoon butter
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 or 4 medium ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons warm milk

Preheat the oven to 350ºF and butter a 12 x 4-inch loaf pan. 

Cream the butter and sugar until smooth and then whisk in the mashed bananas.  Add the eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, and a pinch of salt and whisk in well.  Sieve in the flour and baking powder and beat until smooth.  Mix the baking soda into the milk and stir into the batter.

Scrape the mixture into the pan and bake for about 50 minutes, until the bread is crusty on the top and a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean.  Turn out onto a rack to cool. 

And for all you Pie Crust lovers out there,  I typically fall back on an old standby from "Martha Stewart's Quick Cook".  It's very flakey and nearly impossible to make into a perfectly unblemished top (unless perhaps you weave it in strips), but it comes out delicious and you can throw it together in the Quisinart (as long as you don't add too much water which makes it mushy and then you have to add more flour which makes it dense).

Quick Pie Crust Pastry (Makes four 12-inch circles)

1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter (I always use salted even though it says not to)
4 cups flour
1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup iced water

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the butter and dry ingredients.  Process just until the mixture resembles coarse meal. 

Add iced water bit by bit just until the dough pulls away from the bowl and forms a solid mass.

Remove dough from bowl and knead once or twice on a floured surface.  Divide dough into fourths.

Now at this point, you can form each piece of dough into a ball, cover it with cellophane, flatten it into a disc (easy to do once it's in the cellophane) and toss it in the freezer if you aren't using it right away.  The recipe makes four discs (two double crusted pies or four bottom crust-only pies), so two of them can be chilled for 20 minutes until you need them and the other two can go in the freezer for another time.  Or you can make two (double crust) pies all at once, keep one for yourself, and give one to a friend or neighbor or your child's teacher at school. 

fire in the sky

The air is the worst I have ever seen in all my life.  The fires are still burning.  The sky is brown.  Everyone is suffering.  My nose is dry and my eyes are burning.  It is hot.  There are mosquitoes, suddenly, quite out of season.  The air is thick and brown and gray just hangs there, unmoving.  It is frightening to look at.  It is unbelievable.  I stand there, looking at the sky, my mouth agape.  I should probably be inside.  My children should most probably be inside.  My lungs hurt.  But we are outside, staring in disbelief.  There are parents at the school who have been evacuated from their homes.  They are staying with friends and in hotels, yet they are continuing to help prepare the school for its fall festival this weekend, all the while wondering if their houses will be safe or not.  They are incredible.  I am in awe of their efforts.  I am in awe of the firefighters who are working around the clock to clean up this mess.  They are heroes.  They are super-heroes.  I have so much more respect and appreciation for them than I ever did before.  I can't believe what they do for a living.  The kids can't stop asking questions.  We are quite ready for the fires to be over.  I am sending prayers to everyone.

persimmon tea cake

Thank you Mama for my beautiful fall apron...

...and holiday potholder!  I was touched to tears that you found time in your incredibly busy schedule to make these for me. 
And it's not even anywhere near my birthday!!! 
What a lucky girl I am. 
You are a gem of a mother and I love you to bits.

Dinner tonight consisted of homemade chicken soup with carrots, celery and teeny tiny egg pasta, a stunning cannellini bean, grilled radicchio, olive, parsley, red onion and avocado salad (sadly, I don't have a photo, but it was as beautiful as it was divine) cooked up by Marie, Persimmon Tea Cake and peach pie.  The pie was too hot for the kids to eat, poor dears, but Chris and I gobbled it up later, when they were in bed and it had cooled down enough to be sliced without oozing all over the place too much.  I love peach pie.  The peaches are from grandpa's garden.  They've been sitting in my freezer, waiting to be put in a pie since he gave them to me in the summer and tonight I finally had the itch. 

But the Persimmon Tea Cake was my favorite of the two desserts, actually.  And the kids loved it, which is surprising, because Marley usually won't eat anything with nuts in it (though you could always omit them, I suppose). 

Here's the recipe:

My Version of the Persimmon Tea Cake in Deborah Madison's "Local Flavors"

1 large ripe Hachiya persimmon (enough for 1/2 cup puree)
1/2 cup homemade applesauce (made from the apples we picked last weekend)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sucanat or light brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup walnuts
grated zest of 1 lemon
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup chopped dates

Preheat oven to 350ºF.  Butter and flour an 8-inch springform pan.
Open the persimmon lengthwise, pick out any seeds, then scrape the pulp into a measuring cup.  Puree, measure out 1/2 cup and stir in the baking soda.  Combine the flour, salt and spices into a bowl.
Cream the butter and sugar until smooth, then beat i the egg, followed by the vanilla, applesauce and the persimmon puree.  Add the flour mixture, then fold in the walnuts, lemon zest, cranberries and dates.
Scrape the batter into the pan and put it in the middle of the oven.  Reduce the heat to 325ºF, and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes (longer if you're using my darn oven).  Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing the rim. 

Yummy!

the truth about my purse

I've just found out that my beloved rubber chicken purse is not a rubber chicken at all.

It's a rubber cock.

This was pointed out to me by a friend this weekend.  And it's true.  It's a boy.  I don't know why I didn't see it before.

Can you imagine?  I walk around all day with a rubber cock in my hand.

How long do you think I can get away with this before it starts to become inappropriate?

witch hat

Griffin decided to be a witch for Halloween.   

I finished the hat part of his costume today.  I still need to carve out some time to work on his cape.

Griff was very excited about the hat.  He immediately put it on and started drawing a witch.

I love his witch drawing.  I truly, truly wish I could get my witch drawings to look like that.

life is busy

These are some of the silks I've been working on.  They're hand dyed using powdered cochineal, a bug that produces dye that can range from scarlet to violet to light pink to plum and even orange.  I was able to generate a few different shades of plum and purple and a little pink.  I had very little success achieving a true red on the silks, but then, this is my first time working with this stuff.  It's amazing how the color changes when you post-mordant the fabric in iron and other things.  It's chemistry.  Brilliant, really.  And fun.  Time consuming, but fun.  And I love the colors. There's something about them that makes me feel good.  I love that all these colors come from one little bug.

Life is quite busy at the moment.  I think it's like this until after Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas/Hanukkah, from what I can recall from years prior.  I think life just rushes forward nonstop from September until January and then finally I can relax a bit.  But for now it's just rush, rush, rush and very little sleep.

This one came home very emotional today, sweet thing.  Someone had thrown a ball hard during games and it slammed into her.  It was an accident, the fact that the ball crashed into her, but still that someone who threw it didn't apologize, apparently, and feelings were hurt.  What do you say to your child when she tells you this? 

Who the hell did it?  I'm going to strangle him! 

Oof.  I'm terrible at this stuff.  It breaks my heart to see my daughter in pain and it brings back all of my own worst memories of childhood conflicts. 

"I'm so sorry honey," I say.  "That wasn't very kind of him not to apologize.  I'm sure he didn't mean to hurt you.  What did you say to him?"   

She told him she didn't like that he did that and he told her she shouldn't have ducked.  So she went and sat on the bench and doesn't want to be friends with him anymore. 

Remember this stuff?  Yuk.

I told her boys can be stinkers sometimes, which made her smile (nothing like the word "stinker" to make someone smile).

We went home and had tea and brie with crackers and cookies and kombucha and read a few books and that seemed to make things better. 

Griffin's "treasures".  The fairies have been visiting the sandbox at school, apparently.  Those fairies.

This one was a bit off today, like his sister.  I had to change him when I picked him up at school (he was soaking wet) and this was the only outfit I had available. 

It clearly wasn't the outfit he wanted. 

He stood in the bathroom screaming at me and refusing to change and screeching, "no, Mommy, NO!" because he "hates this outfit", etc.  My oh my.  I can't imagine what the moms standing outside the bathroom thought I was doing to him (I only used the Tazer once, I swear!). 

Anyway, he was fine by the time we got in the car and didn't even bother changing into something else when we got home, so who knows what that was all about.  Lately, it seems Griffin can't stand pants with "strings" dangling in the front.  I can't imagine why, but he hates them.  Hates.  And nearly all his pants have strings!  What do I do?  I guess I'm going to have to cut them all off, those strings, because it's getting to the point where he only wants to wear this one pair of shorts that Addie gave us (kind of saving the day with those shorts there, Addie, thank you!) and one particular pair of sweatpants that doesn't have strings on it and that's it.  And they're getting rather worn in looking, those two string-less bottom garments. 

Now, the rest of his pants are perfectly good pants!  But Griffin refuses to see that.  He can only see that they all have strings and he won't have strings at the moment.  They must be gone!  So, I'm going to have to break out the scissors.  But watch, the second I cut off those strings, Griff will want nothing but pants with strings.  Ah, well.  I don't think we're supposed to win these battles in life.  This is just another part of the journey.  There's no avoiding it.  We have to experience these things.  So be it.

Anyway, everyone's happy now.  For the moment, at least.  There's nothing like yummy snacks and a few good books and a couple of hugs and a game of castle blocks and a long walk around the block to look at everyone's creepy, over the top Halloween decorations to cool everyone's jets.   Phew.

Have a good night, everyone.