Marsbarn Designs...

The food recap

 

I have a few food notes about Thanksgiving before this year's autumnal feast zooms into the past.

This year I made my usual pair of pumpkin pies, a cranberry jelly mold, a chard and sweet potato gratin (to prove I can cook without sugar),  and possibly the best pecan pie I've ever made. 

The cranberry mold (see above) is from an old Gourmet recipe. In the original you boil up pounds of fresh cranberries with some sugar, add some gelatin and poof you have a lovely, trembly jelly.  But, I tell you pounds of cranberries cost bucks (especially when you double the recipe like I always do), so now I use a combination of some fresh berries, but mainly pure cranberry juice.  Much more economical, and quite a bit easier.

The gratin was from Smitten Kitchen, and my only alteration of the recipe was to make an extra cup of white sauce.  My sauce became too thick (because I didn't read the directions carefully enough, whoops), but once I added more white sauce I was living pretty.  I did the whole assemble it the night before, and bake it off in the morning.  Perfection, I tell you.  

Now, the pecan pie.  I had this package of ultra dark, but not very sweet, molasses brown sugar, and it called to me to be made into pie.  I subbed in this dark, dark sugar and a 1/4 cup of molasses for part of the sugar and corn syrup in my pie recipe (yes, I know corn syrup is the devils nectar), and I threw in an extra 1/2 cup of pecans to totally through caution to the wind.  Oh my... it was rich, and dark, and only vaguely sweet, and oh I wish some had survived the dinner.  

And then there was the next night.  
The Dinner After, the Harvest Dinner, the Dinner Part Deux.
This is our chance (those of us who dare) to try some non-traditional recipes of Autumn.  For this I made two pumpkin cheesecakes and a gingerbread pumpkin trifle.  The cheesecakes are my traditional offering for this night's feast, but the trifle was something new I wanted to dabble in.  I made it exactly as Gourmet describes, except I made less whipped cream as the garnish.  It was perfect.  The gingerbread is perfect, and the pumpkin mousse adds a lovely compliment. Plus, it's not a terribly sweet dessert.  

A whirl, a blur, and flash of tail feathers.

Oh my goodness, what a whirl.
Thanksgiving has come and gone in a blur of family, food, dirty dishes, and good times.  

 

Grandpa D, Grandma K, and Nay-nay found time to make felt ornaments with us between meals (oh, we ate a lot this weekend!).  It felt very good (oh, dear, an inadvertent craft pun.  How scary!)  to sit around the dining room table and make things together.

And now, our company has gone, the sewing table is nearly back together. I have a passel of projects to get done, and December is hiding like Big Bird behind a lamp post.  I can totally see it there, but I will still startle when it jumps out at me.

Oh, and there's only one more day for placing dice bag special orders, you know.. if you were going to.

I'll have some deep thoughts with the sequins and felt, please.

I keep thinking about this girl.

My Little e, who wiggles, and squiggles, and flits like a 
hummingbird, took to this project with a rare stillness 
and intensity.
She worked, and worked, and worked.

It makes me wonder if I do her a disservice by not doing these family projects more often.  

Lately, I have been trying to make my creativity less insular.  Our Ladies Art sessions,  the group collage parties, and now this ornament making fete, are all an attempt to make a solitary venture into a group experience.

The things I make, while the products might be for others, the process is for me.  It is how I deal with stress.  Want to see me wonky?  Take away all my creative supplies.  Plop me down in a barren environment without access to a fiber, or a pen, or paper, or a kitchen and watch my brain implode.

I have been asked on occasion, how I deal with the stress of being a police officer's wife.  My response is this, the anxiety never really goes away. It comes in waves, and peaks at odd, unpredictable times, but most of the time it just hums in the background. What I find to be the hardest part is the endlessness of it.  We've been doing this for more than a dozen years, so the days, the events, the stress, the injuries, they blend into an endless cycle.  The stress is like the laundry or the dishes; it is a constant part of the way I choose to live my life.  I don't have to enjoy it, but I do have to cope with it.

What I need in my life to keep me sane is something that marks the days.  This day was different from yesterday because I made this, or I created that, or I made this progress.  I need something I can hold in my hands that is proof of today's work. 

 

This is what I have always done.  I make things.  And most of the time, I have made things by myself. 

Now that the girls are older, I have begun to worry that I am too withdrawn into my projects. I enjoy making things as a group, it just takes a part of my brain that often lies dormant.  When I feel the need to create something, my first impulse is not to make it a family affair.  I need to change this.

Each day should be marked.

I have always loved advent calendars.

There is that dual joy of marking the days to encourage their passing, and trying to stay focused on each day so you don't (gasp) miss a day.  There is always that inevitable day that gets overlooked.  The focus vanishes, and when you next turn to mark a day, you find two or even (dread the thought) three days unmarked.  With a thrill you make up the missed time, and swear to be more attentive for the rest of the days until Christmas.

When I was child, about Sweetheart G's age, I started making advent calendars.  The first year I sewed up felt calendars with wonky pockets with the days written with sharpie marker.  They were mailed out to family and friends stuffed with little parcels.  Each year after that, I would send out packages with bundles for refilling the calendar.  I did this for years.

The girls have several advent calendars.  I made them each a set of advent stockings, plus Great Auntie H made an ornament calendar for the girls to share, oh and there is a collection of paper calendars to do as well.  

And let me tell you, advent time is coming up fast.  We'll eat turkey, give our goodbye hugs to family, and turn around to find December staring us in the face.  

Unplugged, and wondering if I should do this more often.

I've done it.  I put on my Big Girl Pants and did it.

My sewing room is on hiatus.
The machine is hibernating for a week.
My table is gone, my fabric has been sorted and the drawers are shut.

And, I have that feeling of discombobulation I feel whenever I am unplugged.  I wander into the back room and gaze at the empty space where my  table should be, and think "Oh, right laundry. I should do laundry".  This pacing and general malaise does make me wonder if my sewing has become too much of a safety blankie... but I prefer to think of if this as artist driven angst, instead of thread dependancy.  

Of course, now I have time for other projects.  
It's not like the drive to create has left me, 
or that I'm without resources (or To Do lists).   
I can have a high fiber craft diet without the thrill of a pedal!  
In fact, this separation of girl and gears could be good.
I find I'm much more inclusive when doing hand work.  

 

So, on Sunday, with Bunny and Claude in tow, the girls and Big E and I had an Art Day of our very own.  The six of us sat around the dining room table and made felt ornaments.  Some of us used Alicia's patterns, but there was a lot of original art going on as well.

 

And this... This wouldn't have happened with the Machine.  Little e worked for 3 (THREE!) hours with her needle and thread making ornaments.  She was dedicated, and careful, and no, she is not about to stab herself in the leg.  I hope we do this again soon.  It was such a good day!

I follow her lead

 

At the end of Sweetheart G's Tuesday Taekwon Do class, 
she turned to me and said, 
"Mom, I'm not as tired as I normally am after class.... 
maybe I didn't work hard enough."

Oh my sweet, hard working girl, you make me work harder in my class, and keep me honest when I am slacking.

the semi-annual dissolutionment

Okay, this is it. 

It is the semi-annual dissolutionment  (it's not a word, 
really, but it suits the occasion) of my sewing hovel room.  
As usual, I am attempting to clean as I dismember and 
dissect the sewing set up.  I always manage to both 
find things I'd lost, and loose things I need, in this process.  
Oh yes, new adventures in Chaos Theory await me.  

Technically the organizing has already begun.  
Little e helped me sort my brights into color piles 
and wedge place them back into the drawers where 
they belong.  

It's a whole different meaning to Rot on the Brain

Several years ago, I received a catalogue in the mail selling fungus. For the most part, they weren't eating mushrooms, they were... working fungus.  If you owned, say, a large parcel of land and needed to inoculate 500 downed trees with spores so they would decompose quickly, this was your company. Or if you just love the look of shelf fungus, or want some bright yellow color on your forest floor, this was where you could get it.

 

I can't find the company on-line, and it wasn't this company. The catalogue disappeared ages ago, and I never got a second one.  How does one get on a mailing list for fungus anyway?  It boggles the mind a bit.

 

I don't know what it is about fungi, but I find them fascinating.  Oh, did I ever linger long over that catalogue, but really what's a girl with 50 by 100 foot city lot going to do with a case of fungal spawn?

Seeing this white, fuzzy, don't-really-know-anything-about-it stuff on my walk home yesterday made me think about Helle at Gooseflesh's art. She makes the most interesting coral and sea creature crocheted art.  So if I were to make some white fuzzy fungi what medium would I make it from? Felt? Yarn? Crochet? Needle felt?  Oh, what a lovely puzzle!

it would be Large, if it happens

I've been working my way through a list of special orders. The regular dice bags and fairy skirts are done, and now I'm making a prototype for a new style of dice bag.  This will be a mini trial version of a humongous dice bag that has been requested.   The final product (if I decide to undertake it) would be a dice bag that has 75-100 individual velcro pockets, and rolls into a very large bundle for carrying.  In other words, it's gonna be hu-uge.

The silent but deadly Tank.

We normally buy The Tank a cat food for the older, sedate feline (read: diet chow), but when he last ran out of food I bought him some regular food as a change (read: too lazy to go to the pet store).  And who knew?  Full fat food makes The Tank not only gain weight, but it makes him gassy too.  

Oh, yes a flatulent cat is a treat to all who meet him.