Chunky Bracelet in Americana Assorted
I’m blogging this
Today was the last day of school (finally!) and tonight we’re celebrating with a slumber party.
Just the four of us, enjoying a bowl of snacks,
re-watching the last few episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender,
and sleeping on Mommy-made quilts.
To be completely accurate, I’m not really watching Avatar. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a surprisingly good show, and I enjoyed these episodes the first time I saw them. Two days ago. But I don’t do repeat-showings very well, unless enough time has passed that the details of the plot are fuzzy in my mind.
So I’m doing like my new ThinkGeek tee says:
I’m blogging this.
Yeah, I’m a nerd. A very sleepy nerd. A very sleepy nerd who’d have conked-out already if she didn’t have to wait for the bread machine to be done baking a loaf of Irish Potato Brown Bread. Just another hour and fifteen minutes. Too bad the boys don’t know how to take the bread out of the machine when it’s done. They’re way more awake than I am right now! *yawn*
Chicken dance
Last time Eamonn and I went to Hillview Farms, we saw some chickens off in the distance who, once they noticed us, came running down the hill. The closer the chickens got, the more interested Eamonn got in watching them from the safety of the car. No, he was not adventurous where enthusiastic clucking and pecking were concerned.
Still, that meeting must have left a favorable impression on him, because yesterday while we were wandering around the New Providence Farmers’ Market buying cherries for a pie and cucumbers for our supper salad, he suggested we stop at the farm on the way home and see the chickens again.
So we did. We bought a head of lettuce there, and asked if we could walk up the hill and take a look at the chickens. The girl behind the counter enthusiastically handed us a bag of rye bread slices and said, “Sure! you can feed them, too!”
We spent the next thirty minutes joyfully tossing bread chunks to a bunch of clucking hens and a few roosters, too. I don’t know a heck of a lot about chickens, so all I can tell you is that there were big white ones, noisy black ones, ones with a pretty black & white pattern on them, a few red ones, and a small white one that Eamonn fell in love with.
There was also this. What is this? A turkey? A pheasant? [edited - it's a guinea foul. thanks, bzzzzgrrrl & kathi.]
I’m going to do a little chicken sleuthing online, and see if Eamonn would like to join me. I know he’d love to go back and see these birds again soon, so he might also enjoy knowing more about them.
See, this is the kind of thing that I think Eren is getting at with her Summer Unschool project, and I feel it’s a great idea. I don’t want to push my boys into school-type work at a time that should be all about jumping in the pool, sleeping over at Grandma’s house, and drawing chalk murals on the side of the house. But I see a lot of merit in taking advantage of little sparks of interest as they come up, and then providing the opportunities to explore these interests. Who knows? Maybe an afternoon of googling chickens will set Eamonn on the path to becoming a farmer someday! Or a vegetarian.
Either way, the point is, as long as it’s fun, a little summertime learning never hurt anyone.
Swatches
We’re getting our house painted. Yay! Poor thing really needs it. And now we have a choice to make. We conducted an informal four-person survey amongst ourselves and the results were inconclusive.
I had asked the painter to come over with five samples. He only brought four, and one of them wasn’t even on my list. So, I got three that I asked for & one that I didn’t, and we’re missing two that I wanted to see. Oops.
Thing is, when we look at these four colors, we seem to find ourselves leaning toward the one he brought accidentally. Why am I not surprised?
Truth be told, I kind of like this look. I think it says “somebody artsy lives here.” Neil thinks it says “somebody cleaned off his paint brush here.” Hmmm. Just one more decorative element I will have to save for my imaginary house, along with painted wood furniture, cheery curtains, skylights, and aqua-colored walls.
So nice to have a place to put these lovely husband-rejected things 
Getting knitty
Last week I alluded to the next knitting project I wanted to tackle. It’s a summer shawl, written for needle-knitters. I have a tendency to think that any project that involves knitting a flat panel can easily be translated from the needles to the loom. To some extent, that’s true, but perhaps using the word “easily” in this case is a tad optimistic.
I mean, just look at the pattern. This is lace, we’re talking about. It’s not something I’ve ever tried before. There are k2tog’s, ssk’s, and s2kp’s to deal with. I don’t even know what some of those things mean. Well, I do and I don’t. I kind of get it, but not really. Ack. I’m all about the challenge though. Trying to make sense of this kind of thing is fun for me, so don’t take any of this as a complaint!
The gauge is pretty small, so I’m going to be using my extra small gauge knitting loom for this. The last (and only) project I did on this loom took for.ev.er. I don’t have that kind of patience. See? I haven’t even started this shawl yet, and already I have visions of giving up at row 10.
I do have one idea that may help me. I’m going to do a few rows on the large gauge yellow knifty knitter first, just to make sure I have the basics of the pattern down. It’ll be easier to see any mistakes that way, and quicker to do. If I find that I’m getting the correct lace pattern in the large gauge, then I’ll have the confidence to try it with the extra small gauge loom and the lace yarn.
That’s the theory, anyway! I’ll keep you posted
Oh, before I sign off! At the risk of this becoming the “all she ever talks about lately is books” blog, I have to tell you that I spent a lot of time today finally going through my dining room book shelves and pulling out anything that no longer speaks to me. I’m offering them here for $5 each, which, in most cases, is WAY less than I paid for them. They’re mostly cookbooks, and all in excellent condition. (Don’t judge me for owning The White Trash Cookbook. It was a gift from my brother. And, frankly, hilarious. You should buy it and enjoy it yourself. Really.) Please take a look & tell a friend. If these sell well, there’s a huge pile of craft books in my basement that is going on the list next!
Nerdy, but in a crafty book-loving kind of way
Happy Friday! These are some of my most recent Flickr favorites. I just love seeing what beautiful things my contacts and fellow group members are photographing. You can click on the image for complete photo credits.
You may (or may not) have noticed a little bit of blog housekeeping this week, in the form of a new photo for the banner, and some re-working of the sidebars. Yeah, it’s those sidebars again. The changes are mostly aesthetic in nature, but there’s one nifty thing I’m kind of proud of: the book list.
I’m always admiring those lists a lot of you creative bloggers have on your sidebars – I see them mostly on Typepad blogs. You know which lists I mean? Check out places like Soulemama, Vintage Chica, and Uncommon Grace (go ahead, I’ll wait). Call me easily-influenced, but I’ve gotten some great wish-list fodder from them. The way I see it, if I am drawn to your blog as a reflection of you, then chances are I’m going to like a lot of the same books that you do, right?
That’s one reason why I’ve been trying to have something similar on this blog ever since I started it. I won’t bore you with the details of why it rarely worked-out, but I will tell you that I think I’ve gotten it licked finally, and all it took was opening my own little amazon-based bookshop. Being a small independent bookseller myself, I’ll admit I was conflicted about this. If it made sense for me to sell every book I’ve ever loved under the umbrella of Polka Dot Creations, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But realistically, it’s hard enough for me to handle a book store with only one specialty, let alone all of the other topics that interest me!
So, for now, amazon wins my support in terms of “all of those other topics.” I’ve set up the shop with categories that correspond to those on this blog, and I’ve only included books that I consider to be permanent parts of my book collection – things I’d recommend to you if you asked me in person. The first page of the shop is filled with the books that are on my current reading list, and those are also the ones that appear to the left on the sidebar. Just what I wanted!
Here’s where it gets even cooler: If you happen to be reading a post in the polymer clay category, the sidebar list will be replaced by a random selection of my favorite clay books, and will link back to Polka Dot Creations!
Not impressed? Well, trust me when I say that is way cool from a computer nerd standpoint, and reinforces my love for Wordpress and the handy things that can be done with it, if you spend a little time boning up on the available function library. I heart Wordpress.
I can feel your eyes glazing over by now, so let me just leave you with this: Thank you. Thank you for your past and future patronage of Polka Dot Creations, thank you for shopping in my new little bookshop and allowing me to have a tiny slice of amazon’s enormous pie, and thank you for visiting here! I’m inspired to write, and make, and photograph knowing that there is a friendly audience around to receive it.
Have a great weekend!
Stalemate
My creative space and I are at an impasse. I would like it to be clutter-free and ready to work in. It would prefer to stay messy and completely useless.
I have a special button order to complete, but the canes I need are buried in a tub,which is under two other tubs, an ironing board and a sewing machine. Ugh.
I have visions of a new pair of pajama bottoms, and maybe even a new quilt for my bedroom, dancing in my head. But all I can do is gaze over the top of my clay-covered work table at my sewing machine, far, far away.
Ok, I suppose it is inaccurate to say “all I can do is…” when in reality there is another choice. There is the “move everything to get the canes I need, make the buttons, put away all of the clay and supplies, then set up the sewing machine and supplies” option, but that really just sounds too much like actual work.
Does this make me lazy?
Don’t answer that.
Warm weather knitting
Eamonn and I were baking bread last week when he said, out of the blue, “how come you don’t knit anymore?”
The honest answer? I was in the middle of a Spring scarf sometime in April, when I got to the end of the skein, and I was too lazy to go upstairs for the second one. And then I just completely forgot I was even in the middle of a project.
It might have sounded better just to say “I don’t like to knit in hot weather” 
At any rate, his question reminded me about the scarf, and I finished it up a few days ago.
I used 12 pegs of the little blue knifty knitter, and just garter-stitched until I had a piece long enough to reach my hips after being wrapped once around my neck.
I still have to weave in the ends – that alone is enough to make me want to stick to one-skein projects. I don’t enjoy that part of the process, and frankly I’m kind of bad at it. Aside from that, though, I’m pretty happy with it. It’s a cotton/viscose blend, so it’s not out of the question to wear it on a cool Summer morning.
More details on Ravelry.
Next on my knitting list? I really want to try Cold Mountain. I may be crazy, though
In a jam
I had my first experience with canning today. I’ve made small batches of jam before in my bread machine, but they needed to remain refrigerated and only had a 2-month shelf-life. I don’t know about you, but I don’t go through jam very fast, and would much prefer to have a supply that I could stretch out into next winter.
So I got my feet wet with an inter-library loan of the Ball Blue Book of Canning (thank you, KarenLR for the recommendation), two quarts of farmers’ market strawberries, and rhubarb from a local farm. It was an all-afternoon affair, during which I learned a few things:
- You can’t get by with just one spaghetti pot – you need a pot for the jars and a pot for the jam, and a smaller saucepan for the lids and such.
- It’s good to have neighbors with spare pots who can rescue you mid-recipe. (Thanks, Heather!)
- If you’ve had an everything bagel for lunch, brush your teeth before you taste the jam, or you’re likely to think your strawberries have developed an onion aftertaste. (I spent a few panicky minutes thinking I’d wasted all afternoon making 4 pints of strawberry rhubarb onion jam, before I realized!)
- If you don’t have a funnel, there will be a mess. A deliciously sticky mess, but a mess nonetheless.
Challenges aside, I managed to fill up the seven half-pint jars I’d sterilized, and still have enough jam left for two small refrigerator containers that could be eaten right away.
It occurred to me that these might make nice teacher gifts, so I prettied them up, and will send them in to school with the boys next week.
I plan to do more of this canning thing, but first I need to buy another pot, preferably bigger than anything I currently have, a funnel, and a pair of tongs better suited to lifting the jars out of the boiling bath than the metal ones I have.
Now I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I did everything right, and my vacuum seals hold!
This is their lumber store
This morning I got my first taste of Farmers’ Market Season. My regular markets haven’t opened yet, so I went to one that was new to me.
This is the third summer that I’ve frequented the local markets, and I remember that first season, when the boys liked to tag along. Eamonn, in particular, liked to keep an eye out for the cheese guy and the pickle guy. Aidan was generally happy if the kettle corn people were there.
Over the years, though, they have gotten less and less enthusiastic about wandering around a bunch of stalls looking at vegetables. These days, the suggestion that they might need to accompany me to the farmers’ market elicits a groan, more often than not.
It’s starting to remind me of my own childhood. I suspect most people can remember being repeatedly dragged to a parent’s favorite shopping destination. My mother’s promised land was the lumber store, where she found the wood that she would skillfully transform into a loft, a new closet, or a family growth chart. There was no destination I disliked more as a kid than the lumber store.
So it occurred to me, as I was driving to Summit this morning, blissfully alone, enjoying the breeze through the van window, that maybe the farmers’ market will be to my kids what the lumber store was to me. Even today, the smell of sawdust transports me back to the aisles of Channel and Pergament. Perhaps my own children will have a similar experience as adults, when they catch a whiff of garlic pickles or fresh baked artisan breads. “Remember when Mom used to drag us to the farmers’ markets?” they’ll say.
Still, there’s hope. Hope that my boys will appreciate the work of my hands from the raw materials the farmers’ market provides, much as I appreciated the many amazing things my mother could do with a hammer and a piece of plywood. A child need not enjoy the process of buying a strawberry in order to fall in love with homemade strawberry jam. It’s not where you drag your kids when they’re little – it’s what you do with the spoils of the trip that counts, don’t you think?
Buttermilk Wheat Pancakes
I rarely have my act together enough in the morning to do anything more than hand out toaster pastries, let alone make pancakes. But suppertime? Sure, I can handle making pancakes at suppertime. Especially pancakes from a mix. Easy peasy.
However, there was a disagreement last night surrounding the mix I had in the cupboard, and rather than cause family discord with controversial pancakes, I decided to try a recipe from scratch. I used to have a cookbook that was nothing but pancake recipes, but it must not have survived the last Great Cookbook Purge, because I couldn’t find it.
I did find a whole pile of cool pancake recipes in Ken Haedrich’s Country Breakfast Cookbook, but I lacked one important ingredient or another for anything I wanted to try. (Note to self: buy sour cream and a lemon.) Still, I sat there for some time, reading tips for making perfect pancakes, and remembering why I used to like Haedrich’s cookbooks so much.
I eventually found a simple whole wheat pancake recipe in another book, and decided that would do. It called for buttermilk, which I didn’t have exactly, but I did have buttermilk powder. It was while I was reading the substitution instructions on the can that I happened to notice there was a pancake recipe there, too.
I was feeling adventurous, so I put away the cookbook, and instead took the recipe on the can and modified it to be healthier, and to use ingredients I had on-hand. The result was probably one of the best pancakes I’ve ever made. And I’ve never really had a lot of luck with pancakes. I mean, they’re usually edible, but nothing to write home about. These, though? I’d pick up pen and paper for these babies.
All this to say, “I made pancakes last night. They were good. Want the recipe?”
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons Buttermilk Powder
- 1/2 cup Bread Flour
- 1/2 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
- 1 tablespoon Organic Blue Agave Sweetener
- 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
- 1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1/4 teaspoon Salt
- 1 Egg
- 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon Water
- 2 tablespoons Vegetable Oil
Directions
- Preheat an electric griddle to 375.
- Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl, and the wet ingredients in a separate bowl.
- Whisk slowly to combine. Don’t over-do it. The fluffiest pancakes come from batter that’s not excessively beaten.
- Let the batter rest for five minutes or so.
- Ladle by 1/4-cupfuls onto the griddle, turning after about a minute and a half. Cook for an additional minute and transfer to a warm plate until ready to eat.
Recipe by: Lisa Clarke, based on Buttermilk Pancakes by SACO
Makes 10 4-inch pancakes. (I doubled the recipe and had a few leftover to freeze for an easy breakfast some morning.)
P.S. I just love that these pancakes are half wheat flour, and it’s completely impossible to tell. They’re are not at all “wheaty.”
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