Show and Tell

I was uploading some photos from the camera and realized that there are a few things I've done over the past few months that I haven't shared here. And since I'm a little bit proud of my efforts, you'll all just have to put up with my little show and tell exercise here.

First up is the portrait I did of my sister Julia and her dog Pirate. This was done for a Prismacolor drawing class I took last fall from Rice University's Glasscock School of Continuing Education. It's been decades literally since I drew like this. As in since I graduated from UT. So, I wasn't sure if I could draw anymore. I am extremely grateful to Kathryn Klauber, the instructor, for showing me that I could indeed still draw. And I intend to keep on drawing.

Next is the baby blanket I wove for my first grandchild, Luci. Luci arrived on April 5 and I will be talking about her a bit more in future posts (consider this your official warning that I will be gushing about her).  This blanket was my first project on my restored loom and I loved making it.

Finally, we've been working quite a bit on our yard, planting lots and lots of flowers. Among which are these lovely little geraniums which are creating a very nice ombre effect when they are in bloom.

 

Aren't they pretty?

In between these projects, I also taught my daughter-in-law to sew and helped her make items for Luci's nursery, completely redid my daughter Sara's room, which involved a lot of paint and some sewing, and did a few other things.

Currently I'm winding a warp that I hope will result in three shawls, the beginning of my inventory for an Etsy shop! I'll post photos of that project in process on the loom once I get that far.

More Pie!

I think Maria Antoinette really should have said, "Let them eat pie." I like cake, but I love pie.  This past weekend, I finally made a pie recipe I found last August in Bon Appetit. This pie spoke to me. Basically, it said, "Make me and your friends will LOVE you." It was right.

I mean, wouldn't you love me if I sat this in front of you and said, "This is dessert."? A lime blackberry Italian meringue pie?

You can find the recipe here:  Be forewarned that this is a labor of love. One doesn't make something that takes the time this takes if you don't love the people you are making it for. Or need them to do you a very, very big favor. I did, as usual for me, pushed this one to the limit. Which is why my dinner guests ate grilled eggplant and zucchini, rather than the eggplant, zucchini and tomato stacks I had originally planned. Something had to give and it wasn't going to be this pie. (For the record, I made the right choice.)

One tip: Since I was running a bit short on time, I opted to toast the meringue by using a butane torch instead of putting it under the broiler. It was an interesting choice since I don't possess a fancy butane torch of the type sold by Williams-Sonoma or Sur la Table. Nope, I just grabbed a basic long handled lighter and used that. It worked perfectly. Oh, and I didn't use the pie crust recipe given in the magazine with the pie. I opted to use my tried and true pie crust recipe that comes from the Woman's Day Desserts cookbook. (Came out several years ago and worth looking for just for that pie crust recipe.)

Miscellaneous Mischief

For my dear conservative or apolitical friends, you might want to skip this one. Yes, I'm going on a tear. A long overdue tear. So, following my tradition of giving you something to read that won't offend you, I offer up tonight Emotions with Jon Hamm. A brilliant bit of online craziness created by Tricia, who is a rising creative marvel. Loads of people love this blog (well, maybe not Jon Hamm, but hey, his loss). So enjoy and come back to me soon.

Now, on with my rants...er points of view...

Bye bye Rick: Act II.  Rick Sanctimonious – er Santorum, finally saw the writing on the wall and bowed out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Which leaves only three options: The Newt, Ron Paul, or Mitt. Given that Mitt has about ten million more delegates than The Newt or Ron Paul, it's pretty obvious that in November, republican voters are going to have a the choice of a man half of them are convinced either isn't a US citizen or a Christian (Muslim being the predominant thought if you can say these people are thinking) or both or Mitt who is a Morman. Depending on just how desperate they are, they may just go for the Morman.

Disclaimer: I personally don't care if our president is a Christian, Jew, Morman, Hindu, Muslim or atheist as long as he does have the ability to lead our country, which I really don't think any of the current crop of Republicans do, except for maybe Ron Paul. And I feel obligated to point out here for the uneducated that technically, there is absolutely NO requirement that an American president be a Christian (aka a member of a Protestant or if no attractive Protestant is a viable choice, then a Catholic). It's called freedom of religion people. We can worship as we please. And that right to worship as we please extends to the President of our country.

Speaking of Ricks, it seems that Texas Governor Rick Perry has decided that Texas legislators should be required to take an oath of loyalty to his policies. Or some such nonsense. Since I just love it when the governor of our state makes us look like a bunch of idiots for electing him over and over again, I want to thank all those who continue to make His Holy Hairness' reign possible. Do us all a favor during the next election y'all: Forget to renew your voter registration cards and stay home so we can finally vote this bozo out of office. Oh, and also any bozo in the Texas legislature who is stupid enough to vote for this stupid loyalty oath of Ricky's.

Next up, our intrepid secret service agents, who seem to have forgotten that scouting out the local prostitution options in preparation for a presidential visit to a foreign country stopped being necessary after Clinton left the White House. What truly amazes me is how these guys got caught: by being so cheap that they 'shared' a prostitute thinking that they were going to get the two for one deal. So, the prostitute called the police, who then called the US embassy on these bozos. So, not only were these guys stupid enough to actually hire prostitutes and take them back to their hotel rooms where they had classified info laying around, but they were cheap stupid bozos.

Finally, no rant on the idiocies of the week would be complete without the ultimate idiot of the week: Ted Nugent. I just don't know what to say here. The mind boggles at how Nugent's mind works, or rather, doesn't work. I'd advise Mr. Nugent to stick to music, but based on what I know about his musical skills, I'm not sure that's a viable option. I certainly don't have any of his music (if you can call it that) on my iPod. So, maybe the best advice I can give him is to crawl under a rock and hope that his most recent outburst will be taken for the random ravings of a lunatic. Because I'm betting that the secret service would love to have a reason to take Ted into custody and look like the good guys bringing a gun-toting, serious threat-making lunatic to justice right now in order to detract people's attention from that little problem in Columbia.

A Bedtime Story or Why You Should Dream Big

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, a young girl wrote a letter to Santa. In addition to asking for a doll and the usual toys girls of her age in the mid 1960s asked for, she also asked for something different. In the Sears Roebuck Catalog, she had seen a small weaving loom, made of wood and, according to the copy, capable of producing real cloth. Being an rather unusual, artistic sort of child, the idea of being able to weave cloth appealed to her.

But that Christmas morning, though the little girl did receive some lovely things for which she was very grateful, the little girl also had cause to be annoyed. Because evidently a major mix-up had occurred at the North Pole. Instead of a small wooden weaving loom that looked and worked just like real weaving looms, there was this little metal square thing and a bunch of knitted loops with which to make potholders. It was a real bummer. The little girl was sure Santa meant well, but she didn't want to weave potholders. She wanted to weave a scarf. That she could wear. And while she made several potholders, it just wasn't the same.

The little girl eventually ditched the potholder maker and went back to drawing and painting with watercolors for her artistic outlet as she grew. During high school, she renewed her interest in cloth by teaching herself how to sew. But always in the back of her mind was a fascination with the way cloth was made. While attending art classes at the University of Texas, the girl would sometimes linger near the huge room-sized floor loom stationed out in the hallway on the second floor of the building hoping to see it in action. But there was no time to actually learn to weave as she was already planning to work in graphic design some day.

The girl graduated from college, married and moved to a big city in Texas. She started working as an art director in ad agencies, had three children, for whom she sewed baby quilts, Halloween costumes, Christmas dresses, and graduation dresses. She forgot about wanting to weave cloth. Then one day, after she had started working for a school designing their print materials, she went to a big second hand sale. At at this sale was a small 4-harness table loom in need of a little loving care, for $50 dollars. Since it was near her birthday, the woman bought the loom as a present for herself. When her co-workers asked her why she would buy such a thing, she replied, "Because I have always wanted to weave cloth and now I finally can." She brought the loom home, fixed the few small things that needed fixing and bought a book on how to weave. Her first project was pretty awful, but she eventually got better and made some nice scarves and a few shawls with her loom. But it wasn't enough. The little loom could only weave fabric that was 18 inches wide and the woman wanted to do bigger projects. She wanted her shawls to be bigger. She wanted more.

Unfortunately, looms as big as the woman dreamed about are very, very expensive and the woman did have three children in private school and college. She was also fairly certain that it would do no good to write Santa about a bigger loom as previous experience had taught her that Santa really didn't understand the first thing about weaving equipment. So she dreamed of bigger looms. She also got on the internet and started looking for a second hand floor loom she might be able to afford. Once or twice she even saw where someone was giving a floor loom away, but whenever that happened, she was always too late when she called. Until one morning when she went online to find a brand new ad from someone who needed to find a good home for their floor loom and was giving it away for free. Kind of like a kitten from a litter of ten.

The woman immediately called and emailed asking if the loom was still available. Much to her delight, it was. But the loom needed some repair in order to work. Sure she could handle it, the woman committed to taking the loom.

Once home, it took a long time and a lot of work to make the loom functional again. At times, the woman didn't think it would ever happen. But finally, all the work was done and the loom was put back together. The woman immediately went to work putting a warp on the loom. Ever the over ambitious one, she decided that she would immediately start on weaving a blanket for the expected any day first grandchild rather than the practice project she had thought about doing first. After much hard work, winding the warp, placing it on the loom and threading it through the harnesses and the reed, she was finally able to weave. And it was just as wonderful as she had hoped it would be, watching the cloth take shape under her hands.

Now the woman just has one thing left to do. Write a thank you letter to Santa for not bringing her that little loom she thought she wanted so long ago. Because if he had, the little girl that she was would probably have gotten frustrated and lost interest in weaving instead of discovering the joy of it as an adult.

Dreams really do come true.