Rosegardenquilts

A Great Year for Sweet Peas

2011-07-13T09:47:00.000-07:00

On my way to the Farmers' Market today

2011-06-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

I heard this wonderful story on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday. It's vegetables. It's mediterranean. It sounded amazing and this is a picture I pinched from website.

It's Plenty, a new book by London chef Yotam Ottolenghi.

You can listen to the story or read it, too, and there are two recipes: Green Been Salad with Mustard Seeds and Tarragon; and, Burnt Eggplant with Tahini.

Julia Child

2011-05-11T17:38:00.000-07:00

New rose for my garden

Cinco de Mayo

2011-05-05T10:13:00.001-07:00

and the rose of that name

2011-04-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

Moraga, California

2011-04-25T12:29:00.001-07:00

Mazus reptans

2011-04-24T12:02:00.000-07:00

Cornus florida from Judy's garden

2011-04-22T17:30:00.001-07:00

2011-04-21T09:04:00.000-07:00

Cymbidiums in bloom on the porch

2011-04-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

2011-04-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

Wide-mouth Pint and a Half Jars for Canning

2010-08-27T17:12:00.000-07:00

Last jar of Crunchy Dilly Beans
It is almost 7 inches tall and 3-1/4 inches in diameter
Jar on left is a Classico Mason Jar for comparison

The Ball wide-mouth pint and a half jars hold 24 oz. with about a 1/4-inch of headspace. The markings on the jars are not very distinct. It looks like it shows 2 c. and 500 ml markings and a fill-to line for freezing (just below where the band rests when it is screwed in).

Last summer I put up some green beans using a recipe from Sunset Magazine
and the result was crunchy, garlicky, dilly beans.

I used some lovely Ball jars from my jar stash that are 1-1/2 pint capacity. They were perfect for green beans and would have been great for asparagus. Of course, they made wonderful spontaneous hostess gifts. Soon I had only a couple of these jars left. I went to my local Ace Hardware stores (and my True Value, OSH, etc) searching for replacements. All winter long I kept checking at likely sources -- hoping to get a jump on the first jars to hit the shelves for canning season. Guess what? These jars are no longer being made. I think I learned this first from the Garden Web Harvest Forum, a great source of information about what to do with the bounty of your garden.

I wrote several letters to people at Ball Corp. and Jarden, the current manufacturer of Ball jars, telling them what a great size this is for beans, asparagus, etc., and what a great gift home preserved food is, especially in their lovely jars. I reminded them that home preserving is experiencing a surge of interest. I told them how much I loved the cute, squat jars in the Elite Collection.

I received this note:

"We appreciate your interest in Jarden Home Brands products. The 1-1/2 pint size jar was discontinued several years ago and our inventory has been depleted. We received several inquires from consumers regarding this size jar. If enough interest is generated, our marketing team would consider bringing this jar back.

Please send them an email at

JHBFreshPreservingInfo@jardenhomebrands.com

It's too late for canning season in North America but who knows, maybe they will surprise us for next year?

June 17

2010-07-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

By now we've crossed and re-crossed many bridges, walked along La Seine, traipsed across Ile St. Louis for ice cream at Berthillon. Today the plan was to go by Le Metro to Montmarte. At Madeleine we managed to sortie when we were supposed to correspondance. But it was all good.

Sacre Coeur

We were mesmerized by this football guy doing his thing on a lamp post.

One of the remaining moulins.

Always a good idea to stop at a cafe.

Walking down from the heights along rue Lepic in search of Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent,

and Julia Child's Paris.

June 16

2010-07-23T11:32:00.001-07:00

Pont Alexandre III (maybe?)

even the backs are beautiful

Cleopatra's Needle
Place de la Concorde
part of our Tour de France pilgrimage

Well, we had to visit La Joconde

one of many artists at work Musee du Louvre

Notre Dame de Paris

back

and lovely, peaceful behind the cathedral

June 15

2010-07-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

la coupe du monde de foot

now doesn't this sound much nicer?

just another front door

perhaps my favorite of the whole trip

Arriving in Paris

2010-07-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

It all seems like a dream. We'd been planning our trip to France since the beginning of the year. Now that we are back home it's hard to believe that we were really there.

We left San Francisco early Monday afternoon and arrived in Paris on Tuesday. It was an 11 hour flight and 9 hours time difference.

We took the train into Paris and then got onto the Metro. There was a wonderful story on NPR last weekend about Le Metro.

Of course I'm besotted by all things French.

On the street where we live

2010-06-24T07:54:00.000-07:00

Hotel de la Tour Eiffel, near the rue Cler, closer to rue Dominique and the Seine

We chose this Rick Steve's recommendation in the 7th because it is in the neighborhood where Alice stayed when she was last in Paris.

We couldn't believe that this is what we saw when we looked out the window.

A most charming member invited us into their space. The association has 15,000 members from across France. On the day we visited a small group was working on the Dear Jane blocks.

Paris!

2010-06-23T14:03:00.000-07:00

Linda, Alice and I flew from San Francisco to Paris on June 13.

More silk dyeing

2010-06-08T00:29:00.000-07:00

One more from the weekend

2010-06-02T09:54:00.001-07:00

Silk habotai 10 mm: dyed, discharged with thiox, dye painted and screen printed.

Three Days in the Dye Pots

2010-06-01T10:05:00.001-07:00

There aren't enough adjectives to exclaim about the amazing 3-day silk-dyeing workshop we had with Bonnie Wells at Walnut Creek Civic Arts. And now I need to get ready for my next adventure.

What I've been up to

2010-05-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

"First, you have to try to figure out which species of block is getting to you. As well as many subspecies, the main ones are fear of failure after previous success, fear of success due to a sense of unworthiness, lack of potential venue, jaded attitude, crisis of confidence, evidence of persistent poor quality, lackadaisical motivation and common everyday shortage of ideas." -- Robert Genn

I'm in the garden

2010-05-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

Love Apple Farm
Ben Lomond, California

Last weekend, Rick rode is his bike down to Santa Cruz and I was the designated picker-upper. Actually, we met at our favorite beach on the San Mateo coast. On my way down to Santa Cruz/the beach, I stopped in at Love Apple Farm to buy some tomato starts.

Usually I just bust open a couple of sacks of Bumper Crop and spread it around. I have some old but still-standing raised beds that we put in when we bought the house. Our native soil is heavy clay. I didn't know what I was doing then and I don't know much more now but hope springs eternal. The soil in the raised beds has a lovely texture but I suspect that it is quite infertile.

Linda told me about Cynthia Sandberg, an amazing grower in Ben Lomond, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Her Love Apple Farm is the kitchen garden for Manresa, the Michelin-starred creation of chef David Kinch. This year she grew over 150 varieties of tomatoes, mostly heirlooms. She offers them for sale through the end of the month.

After strolling around the farm, checking out her pig and her chickens, I made the pilgrimage to Mountain Feed and Farm in downtown Ben Lomond. I have been fascinated with Cynthia's ideas for bed preparation and tomato planting. Mountain Feed usually has most of the ingredients necessary for the Love Apple protocols. Alas, I was too late get everything I needed. Next time I will call before making the trek. I did get some of the things on my list and resolved to try to secure the most daunting item for the almighty tomato hole: fish heads.

My test run was yesterday. Cynthia's method requires a deep hole. This is not because of the size of the tomato start, but because of the fish head. I was able to find salmon heads. Four of those babies weighed 10 lbs. I dug an 18" hole and threw in 1/2 a fish head per hole. Don't ask. Actually, that was the worst part. Next, she recommends bone meal, two aspirins, 2-4 eggshells, humic acid, earthworm castings, and an organic fertilizer. Am I the last person on earth to know about earthworm castings? That was the best part. This morning I couldn't wait to get up to see if the two tomato plants had been ravaged by marauding raccoons. So far, they don't know about the fish heads. I planted 6 more tomatoes and now I will take a nap. Je suis fatigue...

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2010-04-11T21:58:00.001-07:00

Voices in Cloth: Final Day

2010-04-11T21:36:00.001-07:00

This is the show floor as we walked in this afternoon. I was concerned that with the torrential rains we experienced while driving in to Oakland, that attendance would be down.

The vendors were along the perimeter and there were some exceptional offerings.

I took some pictures of the quilts of some of my friends.

This is Bev Glick's wonderful New York Beauty.

Chris Smith at Reap As You Sew showed two quilts. This is Bring on the Endorphins. She wrote about here it on her blog.

She also showed It's Easy Being Green. You can read that interesting story here.

I took another picture of my friend Candice Abraham's stunning quilt, Lotsa Squares but it turned out all wonky. Her quilt is anything but wonky. Here is someone else admiring her work.

Somehow I again forgot to take a picture of my quilt. I guess I was too excited. Terry Grant was right: people were interested in it. I received so much encouragement.

The last picture I will post is a picture of Linda Weinstein's powerful quilt.

The small town next to ours has a hillside full of crosses commemorating military losses from the war in Iraq. Read more about the Memorial here.

The show closed at 4 PM and by 5:30 nearly all of the vendors were packed up and the quilters were lining up to retrieve their work.

Faces Quilt

2010-04-10T20:52:00.001-07:00

This is the quilt that I made for Voices in Cloth 2010. When I began my Faces project on 1/1/2010 I considered it a daily practice project. I tried not to think about what I was going to do with the work. I had another idea for a quilt for the show but somehow, I couldn't get motivated to make the other quilt. As the deadline for submissions neared, I received encouragement to experiment with pieces I had been "sketching." I took the first 49 faces and thought of them as an "album" and stitched them together with bits of hand-dyed cotton. I'll try to remember to take a picture of it as it is hanging at the show. Each of the faces measures about 4-1/2" square. The quilt is about 31" square.

The other "issue" is that the fabric for the squares has changed over the course of the project. Initially, I started with something that I had for another project, already sandwiched. It was a pale batik, cotton batting, and fusible interfacing for the back. It was 4 inches wide. It required no planning or thinking. I used it for Nos. 1-3. I was unable to find any more of that so I bought something else. I ran out of the second fabric at No. 69. Of course, I could find no more of that either but I did find something close to the first fabric. I am thinking about changing to print cloth when I run out of the third fabric.

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2010-04-10T20:51:00.001-07:00

VIC Set-up: Lunch

2010-04-09T20:04:00.000-07:00

Chilaquiles en Salsa Chipotle: Chips tossed with a chipotle purée, garnished with cotija & crema

We had to take a break for lunch so we strolled from the Convention Center down Washington Street, through the Farmers' Market over to 8th Street and Tamarindo.

We also had Tacos del Campo (three tacos made with hand-made tortillas topped with fresh salsa: 1 each, Asada, Carnitas and Pollo Asado ( I forgot to take a picture of this one).

And something like "huaraches" that I didn't write down. They were corn patties with two different toppings: chorizo and potato; and rajas (poblanos) with black beans and cotija and other yummmy stuff.

This was a delicious strawberry agua fresca.
Highly recommended!

Voices in Cloth: The show goes up

2010-04-09T17:23:00.001-07:00

Linda, Dana, and I arrived at the Oakland Convention Center this morning at 8:30 AM and this is what the room looked like.

Our biennial guild show is a "pipe and drape" show that begins with ironing muslins that hang behind the quilts.

Meanwhile, the forest of pipes are assembled into rows. We were in charge of row E. I forgot to take a picture at 3:30 when we finished hanging the last quilts. I'll try to remember to take some when I return to see the show this weekend.

The ladders stand ready for hanging the quilts.

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2010-04-08T21:36:00.001-07:00

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2010-04-05T20:47:00.000-07:00

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2010-04-04T22:05:00.001-07:00

Voices in Cloth

2010-04-04T14:24:00.001-07:00

Bee Happy
Raffle Quilt by Jean Smith

My guild, the East Bay Heritage Quilters, an organization of over 500 quilters, is centered in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. We have monthly meetings in Kensington and every two years we present an Extraordinary Quilt Show, Voices in Cloth. This year the show will be April 10 & 11 at the Oakland Convention Center.

These are the two opportunity quilts made by members of our guild. Two lucky raffle ticket holders will win these quilts next Sunday.

L'Attitude Bleu

Raffle Quilt by Karin Lusnak

VIC is a non-juried show. There will be over 200 quilts made by EBHQ members. There will also be wearable art, quilting demonstrations, and great vendors. This will also be a fantastic opportunity to acquire fiber art from our silent auction of quilts and garments.

April 10-11, 2010
Oakland Convention Center
Saturday:10-5
Sunday:10-4

At the last possible minute, I decided to sew together the first 49 faces from my project as my entry to the show.

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2010-04-02T17:53:00.001-07:00

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2010-03-17T21:51:00.001-07:00

Multi-grain Bread v. 4.4

2010-03-17T11:43:00.000-07:00

I have been fooling around with a new recipe for a multi-grain loaf. I am using ideas from Nancy Silverton's multi-grain recipe but primarily from Peter Reinhart's new book, Artisan Breads Every Day. (And I was so lucky to attend a baking class with him last week!)

What makes ABED different from Peter's other books is similar to the ideas in Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day ( Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg): Make up a batch of dough and bake it off over the next 4 days. That gives me fresh baked daily bread. Peter believes that after 4 days, the dough is over-fermented.

ABED also describes the stretch and fold method that artisan bakers have been using. There is a cool video on Amazon's page that shows Peter demo'ing the stretch and fold method. He also has a video of how to prepare your oven for hearth baking.

I have been using my starter and bread flour, whole wheat flour, rye chops, Bob's Red Mill 10 grain cereal (which includes cornmeal, oats, barley, triticale, brown rice, soy) and millet and flax seeds. I'm pretty excited about my results.

This is a two-step dough but once it is made, I put it in the refrig for a cold, slow ferment. Then I take out about 1/4 of the dough, shape it, and bake it. These are small-ish loaves (about 300 g) but perfect for two of us.

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2010-03-16T22:27:00.001-07:00

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2010-03-11T17:20:00.001-08:00

Bread and Roses

2010-03-10T21:18:00.002-08:00

I'm pretty excited about my latest baking efforts. I've been using a combination of recipes and refining my techniques. This is the latest sourdough loaf using a wild starter that Linda grew last autumn. I've noticed that it has continued to change (less sticky) and get stronger. Lately it has been doubling in about 2-1/2 hours. I still haven't tried baking a "pure" wild yeast loaf but I will one of these days.

Oh, and if you don't prune your roses in January like you should, you could have roses in March. Amazing! This is a lovely, fragrant old garden rose, 'Barbara Worl.'

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2010-03-10T21:18:00.001-08:00

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2010-02-05T18:13:00.001-08:00

Process not product

2010-02-04T09:17:00.000-08:00

Today I really had to remind myself that this project is about process: the practice of art. I have too much on my plate right now and I've become more analytical about this project.

I am fascinated by how little says so much with line. The eyes bring the stitching to life. If I tell myself that the mouth is an issue, then the mouth becomes an issue.

Dolores asked if I intended to only draw females. It is true that they seem endlessly interesting to me. With women, there are lots of ways to think about hair. And I'm not much interested in facial hair. I continue to do a pencil thumbnail sketch before stitching and I've sketched some interesting males. The pencil seems so much more dynamic: there are variations of thick and thin with so little effort.

I've been looking at photographs in the news and in ads so some of the faces are attached to names but that gives me a headache!

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2010-02-04T09:16:00.001-08:00

Like stitches

2010-02-03T08:59:00.000-08:00

powerlinerflyers from wes johnson on Vimeo.

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2010-01-29T09:01:00.001-08:00

My Daily Art Performance Practice

2010-01-28T10:28:00.000-08:00

Christine asked me how I make my faces, whether I just let thread and images flow out of my needle. I just loved that image! I begin by making thumbnail sketches in my sketchbook. I have been looking at books, magazines, paintings, sculpture, and pottery for inspiration. When I see a face that appeals to me, I make a line drawing of the essentials.

On most days, I begin my day with my daily art practice, first choosing a thumbnail sketch or an inspiration piece, then sketching or re-sketching the face of the day in pencil. I then stitch it. Occasionally, I have repeated a face but I find that to be more difficult. The less I think about it, the better. When I've dated the piece, I put it aside and upload an earlier stitching. I do this because I find that my inner critic isn't in full form at this point.

I had been very attracted to strategies such as the morning pages described in the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron but it seemed counter-productive to spend time writing each morning when my creative interests were visual. Several times I tried using her guidelines but the process just didn't fit. In fact, I'm thrilled to see a stack of 4-1/2 inch squares and not a stack of paper or another half-filled journal. I love the idea of the artist date and I really need to make time to just look around and record what I see. That was something I had hoped to do more of.

I really hope that this might be a practice for life but I am pleased and amazed that I have stuck to it for 28 days. There are only 337 days left in the year 2010!