Heal My Life

The Butterfly and the Cupcake

A marriage made in heaven.  Well in a Connecticut kitchen anyway.  My daughter Chandra's kitchen to be exact, for my granddaughter Charlotte's 7th Birthday.  How adorable are they?

My Tag Cloud

So I went over to Amazon to put a couple of new books on my wishlist.  When I signed in, Amazon greeted me with a lovey selection of recommendations.  Underneath, I notices a tag cloud of what I'd been looking at recently.  Facinating. 

Here's mine - what's yours?

 Agricultural Sciences   Animal Husbandry   Contemporary   Decorating   Design & Decorative Arts   Desserts   Digital Photography   Essays   Fashion   Fashion Design   Graphic Design   Graphics & Visualization   History   Knitting   Metal Work   Mixed Media   Needlework   Organic   Photography   Pottery & Ceramics   Professional Science   Textile & Costume   United States   Visual Arts   Web Graphics

Object of Desire

I want this.  Really.  Thanks a lot Annie, for hanging yet another carrot in front of me.

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

So we were at a Thanksgiving dinner at our neighbor's house on New Years eve.  Yes, I know, this in itself could be considered odd, particularly since she stopped by to invite us just that morning.  The poor thing was involved in a gall bladder purge during the Thanksgiving holiday and was not able to prepare nor partake in, the traditional feast.  She had been feeling very sorry for herself and decided, on the spur of the moment, to replicate the event for New Years eve.  We never pass up an invitation to a feast, so off we went, across the street and up the hill, sort of like over the river and through the woods, except without the river and the woods.

Mikhala had cooked up a storm and we joined a neighbor from down the hill at her groaning table.  It was all absolutely delicious and I ate entirely too much turkey and stuffing and gravy and homemade cranberry compote and would have eaten more if I wasn't too embarrassed to pass my plate for 4ths. It was lovely.

After dinner, we ate chocolate tofu mousse, chatted about sporting accidents we had endured, the neighbors who weren't in attendance, and our New Years Resolutions.  The revelations started to my left and proceeded around the table until it was my turn.  I hesitated, debating whether to reveal my resolution to this table of not family nor psychiatric professionals.  I could lie, and fit myself in with either the "no resolutions" or the "practical resolutions" camps, but I didn't have the nerve or the imagination.  So finally, after hemming and hawing, I told them.

I resolve, in 2009, to learn the lyrics to Istanbul (Not Constantinople), and to learn how to sing it on key, note for note.

Everyone was silent for a moment, then Mikhala gave me a long look, and finally managed to say "Wow, Claudia, that's deep."  I know she was teasing, but it stung nonetheless.  I felt I had to justify myself, which led to an explanation for my peculiar choice.  I started by telling everyone that I had had that song in my head as an earworm for the last month, and that I had never learned all the words, and that I would alternately sing it and hum the parts I didn't know, which if possible, could be even more irritiating to my companions that to have to hear me sing it all the way through. I had decided to put an end to this ridiculousness and just learn the damn song.   

This didn't evoke a single sympathetic look.  They all just stared at me, finally nodding in seriously fake sympathy.  Mikhala surreptitiously removed all the knives from the table.  And I just sat there.  Humming Istanbul (Not Constantinople), quietly, to myself.

In case you are wondering, the cover is by They Might Be Giants, and if you wish to have this song for your very own earworm, click here.

And if you want to learn it with me and sing along:

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night

Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks

Istanbul (Istanbul)
Istanbul (Istanbul)

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks

Istanbul

 
      

A Bit of Pit?

Our little Suleiman the Magnificent? Pit Bull? Well perhaps just a bit... 

James Thurber, in his youth, had a dog named Rex, an America (pit) Bull Terrier, who could drag an old dresser home and carry two by fours.  Thurber said Rex never picked a fight, but if challenged would join the fray happily.  Rex usually won by locking onto the other dog's ear, closing his eyes with a beatific grin, and hanging on.  One memorable fight ended when someone called the fire department.  The firemen hit the two dogs with a stream of water that pushed them two blocks before Rex let go.  Clearly, he won.

From The Thurber Carnival

The Omnivore's 100

Who doesn't like a good list?  Well perhaps you shouldn't answer that.  But I do, and since this is my blog, I get to put it up.

Andrew at Very Good Taste kicked off a meme, listing 100 things every omnivore should try in their life.  I added a couple of my own at the bottom, feel free to do the same.

RULES!
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

1. New York pizza
2. Hoppin' John
3. New Mexico green chile
4. Homemade buttermilk biscuits
5. Tasso
6. Whole Maine lobster
7. Calabash-style shrimp and hushpuppies
8. Kansas City barbecue ribs
9. Hot glazed Krispy Kreme
10. San Diego fish tacos
11. Cheese curds
12. Key lime pie
13. Philly cheese steak
14. Memphis pork barbecue sandwich
15. Lowcountry boil
16. Huckleberry pie
17. New England clam chowder
18. Boiled peanuts
19. Buffalo burger
20. Eggs Benedict
21. Pastrami on rye
22. Corned beef and cabbage
23. Pancakes with maple syrup
24. Everything bagel with cream cheese and tomato
25. Thin Mints - preferably frozen
26. Frito pie
27. Potato knish with mustard
28. Silver Queen corn on the cob
29. Soft pretzel from a street cart
30. Fresh-picked blueberries
31. Sourwood honey
32. State fair funnel cake
33. Chesapeake crab cakes
34. Candied yams
35. Oyster dressing
36. Snow cone or snowball
37. Wild Alaskan salmon
38. Sautéed morels
39. *Butterscotch Pudding (was persimmon)
40. General Tso's Chicken
41. Frozen custard
42. Italian sausage with peppers and onions on a hoagie bun
43. Chili Dog
44. Buffalo wings with blue cheese
45. Spam musubi (don't do spam)
46. Saltwater taffy
47. Fluffernutter sandwich on Wonder Bread
48. Black and white cookie
49. Frybread
50. BLT with thick-cut applewood bacon
51. Baked Beans (Boston of course)
52. Pumpkin pie
53. Collards with vinegar and Tabasco
54. Tex-Mex fajitas with skirt steak and sautéed peppers
55. Fried green tomatoes (and BOY, am I allergic)
56. Succotash
57. Shrimp and grits
58. Hot water cornbread
59. Barbecue chicken pizza with red onions
60. Chicken fried steak
61. Carnitas burrito
62. Apple butter
63. Geoduck
64. Soft-serve ice cream cone dipped in chocolate shell (especially Dairy Queen)
65. Pecan pie
66. Catfish supper at a church or fire station
67. Oysters Rockefeller
68. Homemade cranberry sauce
69. Pimiento cheese
70. MoonPie washed down with root beer - summers at the Jersey Shore
71. Pickled watermelon rind
72. Cracker Jacks at the ball game
73. Smithfield ham
74. Meatloaf and mashed potato blue plate special at diner
75. Chicken and waffles
76. Po'Boy
77. Green bean casserole with French's fried onions
78. Stuffed sopaipillas
79. *Roast Wild Boar (was Turducken, which I have not had)
80. Shad roe on toast (my ex ate the roe)
81. Sweet potato casserole with or without marshmallows
82. Cioppino
83. New York cheesecake
84. Pan-fried river trout
85. Jambalaya
86. North Carolina pig pickin' (pulled pork, one of my favorites, is it the same?)
87. California Rolls
88. Burgoo
89. Penuche fudge
90. Fried peanut butter and banana sandwich (the Elvis)
91. Scrapple or livermush
92. Elk medallions in red wine reduction Elk Jerkey - does that count?
93. Muscadine grapes
94. Cheeseburger at backyard barbecue
95. Open-face turkey sandwich
96. Chicago Deep Dish Pizza (In Chicago, on the sidewalk - YUM)
97. Cobb salad
98. Peach pie a la mode
99. Macaroni and cheese with Tillamook sharp cheddar
100. Root beer float

and a couple I think are missing from the list:

101. Kedergee
102. A soda fountain egg cream
103. a good, cold saki
104. Thai sticky rice
105. A decent caviar

Wow, I eat a LOT!  And I'll pretty much try anything once.  Well, except for the veal.  Just can't do it.

Crafting, seriously.

Today, I put my crafting skills to use for 8 Arms Creative.  8 Arms, for those of you who've never head of it, is our creative consulting group.  We help small business, start-ups and folks who have a product they want to take to market, to get going.  We do print, package design, manufacturing assistance, sourcing, well, pretty much everything someone just getting started needs. We've been doing this for years, but never put a name to it or created an identity for it.  Santa Fe felt like the place to do this.

So we decided on a name and printed a business card.  The website isn't even finished yet, but we've already gotten several clients.  This morning, A and I were talking about perhaps putting some cards up in our frequented shopping locations, and I didn't want to do that tear-off-a-strip thing, so... CRAFTY TO THE RESCUE!  Out came the Lutradur and the Steam-A-Seam, and the fabric paint and the sewing machine and an hour later...

VOILA:

Looks like suede doesn't it?  Want to know how I did it?

1. First I cut the rectangle size I wanted out of paper.

2. I traced it onto lutradur and steam-a-seam.

3. I fused the two pieces of lutradur together.

4. I painted both sides with Jaquard textile paint in brown, thinned, but not completely blended with  a little water.  This way, there are some darker and lighter areas (hard to see in the photo)

5. I put the wet sheets out into the sun to dry, flipping them a couple of times (with the bright sun and dry air, they were dry in no time)

6. I took a Caran D'ache water color pastel crayon in dark gold and added a couple of veins.  I scrubbed at them a bit with a little stiff, wet brush.  Back in the sun to dry.

7. When they were dry (a matter of minutes) I carefully made a fold to show the whole company name and stitched the edges.

8. And that's it!  I could have coated them with Golden Medium gloss if I wanted a shiny leather look, but A liked the suede look, so we're done! 

So... need any creative?  We need business!

100 Books to Read in a Lifetime

Another list of 100 (this time books to read in a lifetime) from Ashley at The HamiHarri Update:

1) Bold those you have read.
2) Put an asterisk next to those you started but didn't finish.
3) Italicize those you intend to read (or have started and intend to finish).
4) Red the books you LOVE
5) Reprint this list in your own blog.

Note: I read a lot.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible*
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams*
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Davinci Code
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabrial Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (part of the complete works?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

It Was a Good & Busy Weekend

Sort of sounds like it was a dark and stormy night.  Only without the dark and stormy.  And the night. Right. We had a good weekend.  We drifted in the boat on the pond, saw two of the new fish, but no turtles, it seems like they've gone to the mud.  We baked, made cheese, went to a poetry reading, I worked on my Go Figure quilt and a bit on the shard pins, which I'll show you when I have them finished.  So photos, yes?

First, the printed and tea bag collaged quilt sections. I only have photos of two of the sections, the other two were too dark to post and I didn't feel like taking more, but I think you get the idea.

 

Now, the St. Lucia Buns.  Anthony made these absolutely delicious soft rolls and they were gone practically before they were cool.  We didn't eat them ALL, mind you, we did give two away.  There are recipes for these all over the Internet, if you want this one, email me.  I'm too lazy to type it right this minute for the post.

And finally, the cheese.  We swapped eggs for goats milk with a neighbor up the street from us.  I don't know what they made with our eggs, but we made two types of cheese with their fresh goats milk!  First, a simple Lebanese Chevron, a hand molded cheese made with vegetable rennet. After draining it and molding it, we cut it into cubes, rubbed it with salt and Zaatar (a spice Lebanese mixture) piled them in a little jar and covered them with olive oil. YUM!  *Note: we heated the curds and why further, after they had formed, to encourage a firmer textured cheese we could cut). 

Then, after allowing the remaining whey to sit at room temp overnight, this morning we made ricotta  (means re-cooked in Italian and no photos of this, it looks pretty boring).  How cool is THAT.  Two cheeses out of one milking.  Granted, there wasn't much cheese since we only started with a gallon of goats milk, but it's still always incredible to me that while we waste continually, our ancestors wasted nothing.  Oh, and I fed the whey leftover from the ricotta to the chickens.  In this case - nothing wasted at all!

   

So back to work today.  Catch you later!

Fabric Collage Redux

So I've been busy with several things, some quilted pot shard pins for my quilt guild's Quilt Show coming up in October.  They're collecting things for the gift shop and our sig (special interest group), The Art Quilters have done several things in addition to the pot shards to donate for the shop.  The Go Figure project, and some random knitting, though I have just realized thatI need to knit Suleiman a coat for the cold weather.

If anyone has suggestions for a nice synthetic blend, I'm all ears.  I'm SO done knitting dog coats out of wool for various reasons.  I really want to knit him the Stegasaurus Coat that I did for Toby a couple of years ago, but I seriously don't think I'll get Anthony to go for it.

Here at Heal My Hands, we've also launched a new line of products that we created for Natural Soda.  They are truly amazing, with delicious fragrances I created from essential oils and absolutes.  I particularly love the Moisturizing Body Polish which fizzes as you rub it on.  Incredible if I do say so myself.  I'm pretty darn proud of us! 

We've also launched a client website (albuqcookie) and have two new clients.  Needless to say, I've been a bit wrapped up lately.   

And now that I've typed redux, I can't actually remember if I posted my first fabric collage.  Well, if it turns out I've only posted it to Flickr, I'll post if here tomorrow.  I've finished another fabric collage and truthfully, I'm lovin' this.  I think maybe I didn't get enough glue time as a kid or something, because cutting and pasting these bits of fabric and getting something to hang on the wall without picking up a single spool of thread just thrills me.

Though on this one, I did burn the poppies to get the fabric to curl, and I did use sand... but still, it was mostly glue. Cool, huh?