Month: March 2008

short vacation

March 11, 2008

I’ve been really busy, and have Nothing to show for it.

I’ve been riding a little bit, which entails trailering to a local indoor arena because Wendy’s ring is still under a solid 12" of combined snow and ice. I’ve been looking for a horse of my own, but I don’t think that is what I really want. I’ve been looking for riding lessons, which I do want, but I’d like to strike some fine balance between so hard I cry and easy enough to be boring.

In circus I’ve been learning new tricks on fabric, and they are HARD. There may be pictures later, it depends on Al’s ability to make the camera go, or Aerin’s being done with her class before I have to flee because she can make the camera go. It’s high tech. Even with a geek for a husband, there is a generational tech gap…

In my fabric/fiber projects I just finished a lot of prep work, so I have postcards trimmed to size and ready to go, because apparently that is a huge hurdle for me. I trimmed up a bunch of backs as well,so if I promised you a postcard in the last couple months, it should be headed your way soon.

Postcards soon. TIF challenge is underway. I don’t think I can do the colors, though I’ll stick some in, but I am all over the prompt: look hard at the details. That is my specialty.

Clara’s European Tour

March 3, 2008


Week 9 pink rhino with baby
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Or How the Rhinoceros made a Triumphal Return to Europe at the Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment. After reading a book on Oudry’s nature paintings I found out that his life size (!) portrait of a rhino was a portrait of Clara who (I have been educated) was famous and toured Europe from 1741 – 1758. The Getty Museum sponsored the show that brought the Oudry rhino to the States and restored it. The pictures of all the rhino shaped tchotckes that accompanied Clara on her tour, including rhino figures, rhino pictures, and a chiming rhino clock (I liked that one) made me very happy. I can see making a Clara On Tour T-shirt…

I realized a Google search of pink rhinos got a lovely image of a statue in an Yves St. Laurent window in NYC, as well as a previous postcard of mine. I am proud to be in good company.

Week 8 lunar exclipse

March 2, 2008


Week 8 lunar exclipse
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Although I am a full week behind on this one, technically I am quite pleased with it.

There are two layers of chiffon over a satin base, all with white resisted stars in black backgrounds. The trees in the front are another layer, transfer printed and cut out, tacked down with embroidery. The moon is white silk with a bite out of it. Visible behind the bite is a red circle with a single layer of black night over it. It pleases me that it looked pretty much like that.

I owe another postcard for this week. Another rhino.

ghost of a tree

March 1, 2008


Feb TIF done
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The prompt for the February Take It Further challenge was "What are you old enough to remember?"

Growing up, my mother would point out elm trees as we were driving around, and tell us to pay attention, because they were dying. I can remember elms lining Main Street, and an elm in the backyard of one house we lived in. We watched it die. There was another in the hayfield where we held horse trials, and I watched that one die as well – it went from tree to tree with problems to a stump over about 4 years.

This is my memory of that tree, in Lockwood’s field, in front of the mixed  spruce/birch forest that edged the fields. I tried to make it insubstantial, the only thing that truly remains of it is the memories of the people who saw it and took note and the stump. I haven’t dared go back in the last 20 years to see if the field is still a field or if it has succumbed to a housing development.

So it made me gloomier than I expected, even though it looks pretty and sunny.

And after all that protesting about bon bons, I made toffee, like this:

  • line a pan with something that is easy to peel off sticky things, and spray it with non-stick spray or something like it
  • place nice crackers in the pan edge to edge as much as possible (hard if they are round, but do your best)
  • mix 1 C brown sugar and 1 C (1/2 lb, or two sticks) butter, melt and boil for 5 minutes, pour over the crackers, and bake at 350 for 10 minutes – this will flatten out the toffee and it will bubble
  • get it out of the oven before anything burns, and layer the best chocolate chips you have over the top, quite thickly. They will melt. Spread the melty bits around.
  • Now decorate it. I dropped on dried cherries reconstituted in brandy, but the original recipe calls for chopped nuts, or I’d add toasted coconut in a heartbeat, either to the chocolate or sprinked on top… whatever you decide, it should make you happy.
  • cool it in the fridge, crack it into bits when it is cool, and eat as fast as possible. Don’t worry, you slow down after a while. I still haven’t finished all mine, and I’ve had help.

The recipe came from my friend the Other Kate, but I upgraded all the materials to my taste. The crackers were originally supposed to be club crackers or saltines, but I used Carr’s whole wheat instead. You really do need the crackery crunch (having tested the end with no crackers as well) so choose something. The recipe said milk chocolate, but I prefer dark, so I used that, creating a small patch with milk chocolate at the end for the kids who prefer that. Since we can’t do nuts, I did the thing with cherries. They would have been good left chewy too. The end result is a far more dark and brooding toffee than Kate served us, but tasty all the same.

So: quilting, embroidery and bon bons – a pretty good weekend! Oh, and snow. Six inches of fluffy stuff, all pretty and white.