You can fool the fans - but not the players.... John Cage

Pine cones and puppies

I am making an effort to be here more often. I do really like blogging; just like I like photography and journaling and making things and baking and riding my horses and how on earth does one fit it all in? To say nothing of WORK! Which I also like - alot - I love my job! But I want to do it all.

 

I feel like Feather tackling this stick. She tried and she tried to maneuver it up the stairs but it kept hanging up - like all the projects I take on during a day. Being a puppy it didn't bother her a bit to have to give up and chew the dang thing down on the grass. There might be a thing or two to learn from a puppy.

We've been dealing with animal medical problems - the cat had an abscess we had to lance (ugh), the puppy has an ear issue and one of the horses had pigeon fever (we think - the vet said no but we don't know that she really knew).... we are ready to be finished with vet bills for awhile.

Here's my latest pine cone and this one I really like - in fact I'm making more like this.

Busy week - got too many evening events I have to attend but I've made up a little craft travel kit for taking on the road. And I'm going to knit. I'll keep posting photos -our project this week is a sweet little felted gift box topper / brooch using bonded felt and fabric. Can't wait!

Gettin' in the holiday groove

Last night I sat down with some felt, glue, needle & thread and Betz White's instructions.... and made my first items out of craft felt.

 

Normally I don't do much of this type of crafting but I'm enjoying working with the washed craft felt and can't wait to do more with my pile 'o felted sweaters... and I am coming up with some ideas for these projects to create Christmas gifts. You can't just give one of these - so I'm going to have to go into production mode and make sets of three. That means that I didn't buy enough felt!

It was a pleasant evening sitting at the dining room table with Feather asleep at my feet, Grey's Anatomy on, and a pile of pleasing textures and colors at my fingertips.

 

It was cold and rainy outside, toasty warm inside and these pinecones are not quite finished... they need a few pine needles. Next I'm going to try the alternate technique using the ribbing from a felted sweater - more pics to come soon!

Holiday preparations

Even though it seems slow getting here the holiday season is really upon me and I've been feeling the need to ramp up. It is such a great season and it goes so quickly. This year I don't have the luxury of 2 weeks off so I've got to squeeze the baking and the making into evenings and weekends.

 

I pulled out all the partially felted and unfelted sweaters from my fabric stash and sorted through them, felted batches by colorways and went shopping for more wool sweaters in colors I don't have. Since this photo was taken I've been able to add some blues and more green and still to be felted are some patterned sweaters. The thrift stores in town have bumped up their prices on wool sweaters, though, and I'm going to have to start looking at yard sales and mid-summer when they aren't so desirable. Seems a shame to pay $7 or $8 for a wool sweater only to cut off the sleeves and shrink the dang thing.

 

Here's a stack of wool-blend craft felt I'm using to fill in colors I don't have and have a little more control over. I ordered most of this from felt-o-rama and April, the owner, is great to work with -she ships out immediately priority mail and her website is very user-friendly. I followed Betz White's instructions for washing the craft felt and taking some of the manufactured look out of it. The red felt is from JoAnn's and is off a bolt. Getting through that line on a Saturday in Southern California is a story of its own.

 

Here's all the fun stuff with which to embellish the felt things I hope to make.... and I'll post photos of the finished items although I can't post photos of the work in progress since I'm taking Betz's workshop and all the designs are hers. I thought it would be fun to learn to make new things while gearing up for the holidays and I've admired Betz's felted work for awhile now. She and Leigh Radford rock when it comes to wool felt.

I picked up a bag of lemons while we were down south specifically for this:

 

The making of limoncello and crema di limoncello. At the risk of losing some of my limoncello fans I'm going to post Ann Hood's recipe from an unknown magazine (Country Living?) page I tore out some time ago. It is delicious and great for gift giving.

Limoncello:

8 lemons

2 cups sugar

1 liter good vodka

Strip the zest from the lemons. Dissolve the sugar in 4 cups of water. Combine the zest and the sugar water with the vodka. Let stand for 5 days at room temp. After 5 days, strain out the zest, bottle and refrigerate.

Crema di Limoncello

5 lemons

3 cups sugar

1 liter vodka

1 Tbsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups heavy cream

Zest the lemons. Dissolve the sugar in 4 cups of water. Combine lemon zest, sugar water, vanilla and the vodka. Let steep for 5 days. Strain out the zest. Add the cream. Refrigerate.

Ummmmm.... so good.

Kinda late for a Wednesday nite

But I have to keep posting! The race is on to the end of school and as much as I am eager to begin my new job full time I know I will feel like the end of teaching came too quickly. I'm leaving on a high note, though, and feel like I accomplished some good things at Big Pine High School. And I'm leaving with a good graduating class - the same class I started with four years ago.

We've had more flowers bloom and fade; and more are on their way. We had a brief fling with irises - so brief that I think some thinning might be in order in the fall. I'll separate and spread them out around the yard.

It is nice to see what is here and what is needed and what has to be done. We had tiny bulbs around the bases of the trees, and little grape hyacinth in the garden beds... of course they are all gone now.

And did I post about the wisteria already?

Well, there are hollyhocks just starting to bloom, and daylilies... and the roses are going nuts. More photos to come.

Chance keeps digging up the plants I put in the shade beds in the back yard... he's about to drive me crazy. I spent good money buying hosta, bleeding hearts and coral bells from the local nursery and he's dug them all up at least once. I carefully replant them and now every bed is barricaded with some concoction of old bed frames or milk crates or some such thing. Not exactly the look I was going for.

Travel is in my future - Reno next weekend, Lone Pine the following, and then Truckee... this is to be my new job. I'll have a camera and a computer and I'll post from the road. Last weekend was company and Mule Days - very much fun and I have more photos to download soon.

So warm

Came home to study and had to get some early spring sun.

Water Feature

A water feature came with our house but since we moved in last fall there has been no opportunity to check it out until now... and today being a beautiful, warm day (and the first day of March) I decided to clean it out and get it going so I could evaluate it.

It has a pretty sound as the two pumps send the water up into both the upper pool and then a cascade over the rocks into the lower pool but it also has some issues. First of all, it isn't all that beautiful. The whole thing is painted sort of a tufa reddish-brown, but I think the pools should be painted blue - or tiled or something. It's just too blah right now. Red-brown paint doesn't give the water the color it could have.

I put some rocks and bones around and I'll have to think about what else to do. I have a lot of glass I found out in the desert a year or more ago with S and C - but I'm not sure there is enough to do a mosaic or cover the bottom with glass, which was one of the things that came to mind. Another idea is to get river stones and cover the bottom of the pools with round stones. Plants will definitely help and I drove to KMart hoping there would be some pansies or something else hardy but it is too early. No flowers.

Another problem is that it leaks. I have to find the source of the leakage or I can't in good conscience run the thing... water is too scarce. The birds loved it today, though, as did Mel and Chance. I can see it attracting frogs and birds all spring and giving us a sort of country serenade all spring. We can hear the frogs from the pond across the road when we sit out in the hot tub at night and I find it soothing.

A great addition to our back yard, but some work to be done on it. I had a marvelous day around here puttering in the yard, checking out all the swelling buds and plants popping up, sweeping up the winter debris, and thinking about spring. It isn't here yet but it is on its way.

The birds are mobbing the bird feeders - especially these red-wing blackbirds. They are noisy little suckers, too. Sound like a superbowl party in the back yard. Mel likes to watch them from inside the house - he crouches down at the office door like he's about to pounce!

Actually these photos don't even do the birds justice - there were three times as many in this tree, easily, but when I went to get my camera they started to fly off. I wanted to try this overlay - it gives sort of a Holga effect- so I took the pictures anyway. Please don't judge me by these photos.

winter is back bake-o-rama

I love winter and so I love that winter has returned to the eastern Sierra after a brief fling with spring (too early). We are now in what the weather folk love to refer to as a 'more active pattern'.

I woke up to this the other morning - just a dusting here on the ground but nice and white on the mountains. The fog was hanging over the valley and the sun was coming up.

I love how it creeps up the canyons and rolls along the edges of the mountains.

Lovely power lines and towers, aren't they? I need to photoshop those out of these pictures.

If I spent a little more time with these i could probably turn them into decent photos - but I always seem to be in a rush to post them.

All this cold weather got me in the baking mood. Today I cooked pinto beans with bacon all day, then whipped up the Pioneer Woman's cornbread.

YUM! And for dessert - the farm chicks chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting.

She bakes again!