More Sun Painting in Winter

The sun came out again today! For those of you who aren't familiar with this thing called the sun, it is a bright light up in the sky that will one day soon make it's way through the clouds to your house. Believe me, the sun likes to play so he'll fight his way through soon!

Today's playing was on some plain white fabric I found in my stash.

Not sure if it is 100% cotton, but I think it is.

It's hard to say with some of the older pieces in my stash.

Step One: I spritzed the fabric with water to make it nice and damp.

Step Two: After mixing a couple colors together to get this beautiful turquoise color

I painted wide stripes on one piece and. . .

Flicked spots on the other. Hey, why not?!

I also sprayed a bit more water on these splashes so they would spread more.

Step Three: I added yellow to what was left of the white,

filling the stripes in completely and splashing on the other, and coloring in the edges.

I put keys, metal and plastic, onto the splattered fabric and. . .

washers onto the striped fabric. I bought these at Home Depot and

I really should have bought more because they just seem so sparse.

I tried to throw them on randomly, but ended up arranging a few.

If I had lots more I would let some of them overlap each other.

Step Four: Into the sun they went. I also bought this board at Home Depot for $3 because my art board was only big enough for one measy piece of fabric. What kind of fun is that?!

And two hours later, this is what I got!

I think I watered down the paint too much because the color just isn't as vibrant as yesterdays experiments. But I do LOVE the circles that the washers create. I will need to get more washers! Some of the key images came out more clear than others, but again I think this is because I washed out too much of the color. Oops.

However, some of the color washed off onto the board and look how pretty my board is now!

Sun Painting in Winter

The sun came out today and invited me to play. So I obliged the sun by experimenting with some sun paints I bought about a year ago.

I found a piece of fabric I had partially dyed during our Quilt guild's annual dye party and decided to paint over the white portions of the orange spotty fabric with some red and yellow. I forgot to take a picture of the fabric before I painted on the red and yellow. Oops.

After I painted on the colors, I laid some silk leaves on top

that I found in a half price bin at Target in October.

I then took the board outside, plopped it down on this broken chair and

let the sun get in on some of the fun.

It sat outside for about two hours before it was dry. Before it dried however, the wind decided it wanted to play too and blew off some of the leaves and I put them back on.

When I brought the fabric in, this is what I got. The color is fabulous!

However the leaf prints are very faint. Not as dark as I would have liked.

I outlined a couple of the leaf prints to show you that they really are there!

The leaves I used are made of thin silk and so I think they were too transparent. Next time I am going to use something a bit more opaque. I think I might try some metal washers.

I'm thinking that the circles would look awesome!

Maybe the sun will come out to play with me again tomorrow.

Bread Obsession Continues

The family was complaining that there was never enough bread when it came out of the oven and so I made two loaves this time. We demolished 1 1/4 loaves the first day and the rest on the second day. I took a few more photos of how the bread looks along the way, and I also tried a new sized corning ware pan; this one is oblong.

Here is what the dough looks like right after it is mixed together.

This is how it looks after about 12 hours of rising.

I let it raise a few more hours before I took it out.

Here is what it looked like before I put the lid on and stuck it in the oven.

And here it is fresh out of the oven. Yummy -

however, I think I should have baked it just a little longer.

And here are the two loaves cooling on the rack. Round on left and oval on right. Both were tasty, and crusty with a great crumb. They tasted just as good on the second day, AND they were fabulous toasted. I love toast!

One of the children wondered if I can make it without the flour on the crust

so I think I will try using cornmeal next time.

Also, my friend Juliette has offered to let me have some of her sour dough starter to try.

I will pick it up next week and and see if I can make it work!

Taking time to smell the snow. . .

The weather has been pretty rotten up here lately. We've had a nasty inversion where the news has told us to stay inside even if our lungs are healthy, and to limit driving as much as possible. And then finally we received a storm - it's been a small storm compared to what we need to rid ourselves of all gunk in the air (it was reported that we had the worst air quality in the nation one day last week). The storm started as rain and then yesterday turned to snow. First the snow was wet and slushy, and now it is the nice white powder we are famous for. . .

This was my view as I walked back from taking the hoodlums to school this morning, and I just had to stop and record it. Sometimes I get just get so caught up in the wet and coldness of it all and forget to enjoy the beauty. So here's some beauty for you to enjoy as well!

A Bread Addition

The photo below is of the loaf of No Knead Bread I started last night. This photo shows it right out of the oven. Once I slice it I guarentee it won't last long!

I had planned on dumping the dough out of the pan and letting it rise at my Mother-in-Laws. Tomorrow is Chinese New Year and so we were heading to her house for dinner right after church. However my husband thought we would only be gone about two hours. I knew better, but dumped the dough anyway and left it to rise while we were gone. Four hours later we arrived home and I heated the oven. I was worried it would not work out after being left so long. I also worried about the bread turning out when I dumped the dough into the pan and it stuck to the towel and seemed to be a big mess, but nothing seems to phase this bread!

Look how pretty it came out:

And here is a photo of the Corning Ware I used to bake my bread in. My friends at church were wondering what I baked it in as I didn't do a very good job explaining. So here is the photo they requested. The bottom of the dish says it is 2.7 L, which is almost 3 quarts. The recipe suggests a much larger size pot and so I can only guess that the bread would be more squat in a large pot. And there's my poetry for the day!

I'm off to cut some bread!

No Knead Bread

A friend posted on her blog about making this bread and I have finally tried it and I must share. It is the easiest bread you will ever make and the bread and crust are divine! It does take a long time to make, but only because it needs to rise for about 12 hours. But basically you mix it with a spoon and forget it, then go back do a couple of easy things and bake it for fabulous deliciousness! The recipe is from a 2006 recipe in the NY Times.

No-Knead Bread

Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting

¼ teaspoon instant yeast

1¼ teaspoons salt Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed. (I used flour)

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic - I used my Pyrex dish that is smaller than the recommended size and did okay) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

These photos were taken with my phone as my camera battery was dead, but I think you can get the idea!

This is what my dough looked like right after stirring it all together. Takes a minute tops.

And this picture shows the beautiful results - and it tasted even better than it looks! My friend who's post I read is now making it using a starter for a yummy sour dough bread. I may have to try that next!

Bookmarks

Are you a "beautiful and proper bookmark" person, or a "grab whatever is handy when I'm done for the moment" kind of person?

Generally, as illustrated by the photo above, I am the latter. The book on the top is using the book cover as a bookmark. These are very handy as they do not get lost while I am reading, and as long as someone else doesn't carelessly pick up the book, my place is saved quite nicely.

My place in the second book down is being kept by the bookmark the library gave to me when I picked up the book. Generally it is referred to as a "reserve slip," but I like to call myself green (at least a pale green anyway), and so I recycle them as bookmarks.

In the third book we are sporting the "torn off the nearest slip of paper" bookmark. Another way to recycle paper, and if they are lost there is always another one around to replace it.

The bottom book is sporting one of my favorite kinds of bookmarks, the "I just finished a delicious piece of chocolate and now I have a bookmark" bookmark. These are very tasty in the beginning, fun to look at, and delicious to replace.

Over the years I have purchased bookmarks, the cardboard or plastic kind with tassels attached to the top and clever sayings about reading or life. I've also received the metal kind which are often laser cut into beautiful designs and may also have a clever saying on them. These usually come home and are promptly placed into a book and then they just as promptly disappear into the twilight zone (not the vampire kind, but the old 60's TV show kind). However, somehow I usually come across these lost treasures when I am no where near a book to stick them into, as well as no desire to stop what I am doing and put them in a book, and so they stay locked away in a drawer somewhere.

One year my thoughtful son brought back a gold bookmark from Stanford where he had spent a week at a debate camp. I used it in a book and then worried that I would loose it so I placed it in our cup of pens and now it is lost or missing or both. I have been very disappointed with myself for losing this particular bookmark because it represents my son's thoughtfulness, and I sometimes need to be reminded of his thoughtfulness.

So imagine my delight and dismay when I received this beauty from a wonderful friend.

It is a beautiful silver bookmark with a lovely bobble on the end.

I am so delighted that my wonderful friend thought of me at the holidays, and that she remembers how much I like to read, and so therefore I would love a beautiful bookmark like this. And the fact that she made it with her very own hands makes it all the more special. And now the dilemma! Knowing my past history with beautiful bookmarks, I'm afraid to take it out of the package! I suppose I could loose it just as easily in the package as out of the package, but. . . now what???

1 19 09

I'm not a mathmatician, but I have a certain obsession with numbers. I think it's cool when numbers line up and do things. An email I passed around recently had one of those math equations where no matter what number you chose, when you followed the directions your answer was always 9. I don't understand why it works but it does and it's cool in my book.

I also love when numbers line up in dates, and so after having my first child by emergency c-section - dooming the rest of my child birth experiences to c-sections as well - I decided that I would do what I could to plan out cool birthdates for the rest of my kids. For example my twins were born on July 8, 1997 - which is 7-8-97. It makes it easy for me to remember that way, and then my oldest daughter's birth was also planned, but this one was to coinside with a my grandfathers birthday of January 19th - however what made it even more special was that she was born in 1990, and my grandfather (step grandfather actually, but we were very close) was born in 1909 and I always thought it was cool that the numbers were just moved around a bit for their birthdays - 1-19-09 and 1-19-90, but little did I realize at the time that my daughter would have her "golden" birthday (the birthday where your age equals the day you were born on) on my grandfather's one hundreth birthday! (If he were still alive)

This evening I went and pick up my daughter and the two of us went to Hires as a last celebration of a great weekend for her, and we shared a hot fudge brownie and talked, and had a great visit together. Then as I drove home I saw the date on a sign 1-19-09, and it hit me what a special day this really was and so I had to run home and write about it before the date changed. So Happy 19th Barbra and Happy 100th Grandpa Lou! I love you both!

Messing with your mind

I did something I always tell my children not to do.

I bought a new toy for myself right before Christmas. I am so naughty, it's amazing Santa didn't leave a pile of coal in my stocking! But I had to buy it, I had the money and the toy was so cool and I didn't put it on my "this is what I want for Christmas list" so I knew no one would buy it for me, so I HAD to buy it, and I was right, I didn't get a second one for Christmas, so it was good I bought it for myself! *sucks in deeply because of saying all that in one breath*

So what was the cool toy? A cut-a-round ruler and the cool book "Drunkards Path: Stepping Beyond." See - she continues in whiny voice - I bet none of my family and friends would have even thought of getting that for me for Christmas, so it really was a good thing I bought it for myself!

And look how cool it is! It makes circles - EASILY - and really cool patterns with those circles. I decided to use it to make a cuddle quilt for my oldest daughter because I told her the Eclipse quilt wasn't large enough to cuddle up in, it was a wall hanging, and she was disappointed. So I had in mind to make something like the cover of the book, but I didn't share that plan with my daughter. I just started putting up pieces on the design wall (aka a flannel sheet tacked to the wall) and started with complete circles that I had plans of making funky like the book. However it didn't work out that way. I told her that the quilt was for her and had her start helping me put the colors together on the design wall and when I started messing with the circles it messed with her mind, so everything went back to circles. The last thing a college student needs is a quilt that messes with their mind! Classes and professors mess with your mind enough, and so "simplicity" is better. I'll just have to use my cool toy again and make another quilt!

This is very close to what we have ended up with. I think we messed with the colors of the inner circles in the middle a bit more and I am now in the process of sewing it all together. The next step will be to pick a border fabric and then figure out how I want to quilt it! Do I go the easy route or think of something more complex?

Added Note: It's a good thing I took this picture! I went downstairs this morning to find that a cute little cat used the design wall as a place to stretch - AGAIN - she did this many times while I was making my Eclipse quilt, and the result is that blocks fall off the design wall and end up decorating the carpet! But with a photo I can easily figure out where the blocks should be. I hope.

What day is this?

Can anyone tell me what day it is? I know it's 2009, but I don't remember what day it is. Every morning I try to figure it out so that I don't miss something important. The holidays just seem to mess me up that way. Fortunately I'm not the only one as my oldest daughter just told me that she forgot today was Saturday. At least it's not an old age thing. :)

Happy New Year!