A Slow Sunday

 

One of my bird mugs for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday

Yesterday brought an atmospheric river to our region, and this time it rightly was called like that. The torrential downpours started Saturday night at 11:00 pm and wouldn't stop until Sunday night, except for very short breaks. But worse than the rain was the gusty wind that was near hurricane force and only started to lose strength on Sunday night. We kept inside the entire day, spending a very slow Sunday and every now and then watching the rain and wind playing wildly in the garden. Thankfully we didn't lose anything, but there were several fallen trees across the county and also some flooding that closed roads. We also didn't lose power as so many others did.

Our primary election will be on March 5th (Super Tuesday), so after breakfast I thoroughly read our Voters Information Guide and learned more about the candidates for State Assembly and the Superior Court Office. There are also propositions and measures to consider. I had already made up my mind about the presidential candidate and the candidate for the US Senate.

The evening before I had made a dough for a whole wheat bread that proved overnight and was ready to be put into the oven. This is our go-to bread when I bake because it's easy to make, and I always enjoy the warmth and the scent of freshly baked bread spreading throughout the house.

The day before I had recevied an order for baby socks in my Etsy shop, so I packed them up, ready for shipping. My goal is plastic-free packaging - used tissue paper, baker's twine, cardboard envelopes. I always include a little stamped and handwritten thank you card and a small Moo business card with my photography.

Sometime last year I took some of the taster lessons - I can't remember whether this one was for Kaleidoscope or Life Book. Anyway, this was a lesson by Melanie Rivers whose style I like very much. I never finished what I had started and completely forgot what she was doing even though I had jotted down a couple notes. So I just did my own thing which is more fun after all. I experimented with watercolor on a textured gessoed background and liked the result. The dark background color I mixed with Phthalo Blue and Burnt Umber. I need to put down a second layer because it looks a bit chaotic, but I really like this rich color.

Dorothy wrote a post on her blog The Frog & PenguInn about loneliness in which she mentioned the organisation Letters Against Isolation. Here, volunteers write letters or cards to seniors who live in Assisted Living or Nursing Homes or are served by Meals on Wheels. LAI was started by two sisters during the pandemic when seniors were very much isolated and couldn't receive any visitors. After reading Dorothy's post I went to LAI's website to learn more. Now I have signed up to participate in writing letters/cards to seniors and on this slow Sunday I prepared my first cards for this. Thank you, Dorothy, for writing about this important organisation.

Finally, after having made a cup of hot chocolate for both the Geek and myself in the afternoon, I settled on our couch and continued knitting this bird hat. Last fall I had a good number of them in different color combinations in the shop, but they completely sold out before Christmas and I didn't have the time to knit more until now. The color stranding looks challenging, but isn't that difficult at all. 

Do you sometimes have slow Sundays (or any other day of the week) and do you enjoy them? I loved our slow Sunday and felt very relaxed and happy at the end of it.

Birds on a Hat

 

The art I'm bringing you today for Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date is my knitting, in particular this birds hat. I have been knitting several of this hat for a couple years now in different color combinations. They're for purchase in my Etsy store and usually sell out pretty quickly during the months before Christmas. This year I added a new color combination - grey with red birds. I'm planning to knit more hats in grey or charcoal and contrast the neutral color with more colorful birds in the near future.

Recently we had linguine with lemon sauce for dinner. It's another NYT recipe and super easy. I've enclosed the recipe below. I find it better to start heating the butter and adding the lemon zest more toward the end of the pasta's cooking time. However, I would add a few good grinds of fresh black pepper at the end and I also tend to be quite generous with the Parmigiano-Reggiano (I prefer this aged kind of Parmesan).

Last weekend we finally got some rain! It was such a relief. While we didn't get quite the soaking that was in the forecast, we still got a decent amount and my garden is very happy. Right before the weekend I harvested everything that was ripe enough. We had some lovely tomato dishes of which I forgot to take any pictures. Pasta, garlic, cream and basil were involved. Those big dark tomatoes are Pink Berkeley Tie Dye, an organic heirloom tomato with a truly big flavor. Otherwise there is Early Girl and the cherry tomoato is Riesentraube, an old German heirloom. Its name means "giant bunch of grapes" and indeed, it has big clusters of flavorful cherry tomatoes. It works well with Rain's prompt for this week, "Harvest Dinner". Bon appétit.

 

T is for KniTTing

 

Buying yarn is like buying art supplies and paper - it's all so beautiful and you do want to have it all. If only I had more hands to work on several projects simultaneously.

Knitting has become a very important activity in my daily life. I do it every day - sometimes I start out in the morning, sometimes I only do it while watching a movie, most often I do it in the afternoon, either in my garden or in the living room. There is always a project on my needles and dozens more in my mind that I want to do.

My dominant knitting project is socks - warm, soft, cozy socks that are the bestseller in my Etsy shop. 

Every now and then I knit socks for myself (I wish I did it more often). I got this pattern book last year and the sock patterns in it are fantastic. I chose one that was quite time consuming, but it was worth every single stitch.

The leftover yarn I use to knit up baby socks and cat ornaments.

I also love to knit hats. The one with the birds is a favorite of mine. It is made with merino wool and therefore quite warm, but thin enough for an evening at the beach in the summer. The Cookie Monster and Big Bird hats I made for the two little girls of a friend. They were a fast and fun project. The girls also wear the pumpkin hat.

Of course my favorite person to knit for is Kaefer. I made a summer sweater for her birthday. I love this particular yarn because the company plants a tree for each skein that is sold. With this sweater three more trees were planted. While I was knitting this sweater I constantly worried whether it would fit. I do know my daughter's measurements, but hand knitted sweaters can be tricky.

She sent me a photo that put an end to my worries.

While I knit I always have something to drink by my side - and this is my ticket to join the T gang, so kindly hosted by Elizabeth. Most often my drink is either water or a refreshing juice like this pineapple-hibiscus cooler.

But sometimes it is a glass of cool and dry rosé.

Cheers!

Book Page Tags

 

At Tag Tuesday, Sandie is hosting the current challenge and she wants us to create tags by using book pages or sections of them.

What a fun challenge! For my first tag (above) I took a page with a picture from a travel guide about Egypt and attached it to a tag cut from cardstock. I stencilled with gold acrylic on top of it and added a scripted tape vertically on the left side. The woman's head was cut from another book page, covered with oil pastels and attached to the tags. I stamped the three words and edged them with oil pastels (as well as the edge of the tag). They are glued to the tag with pop dots. (stencil by Stencil Girl, stamps by Technique Tuesday).

My second tag - which was actually made first - is this one:

The background comes from the German book on which I took the photo of the tag (above). I gave it an aged look with "vintage photo" distress ink (Ranger), then stamped the tree over it several times with two different colors. The lady and the branch are cut from an old Grimm's Fairy Tales book and colored with color pencils. I found the word "enchanted" in the same book. The tree (Hampton Art) was stamped and adhered with pop dots (I'm really trying to get rid of my old stuff).

On a side note, I have started to use handmade tags for my short personal notes that I include with every purchase from my Etsy shop. Since everything in my shop is handmade, it's only fitting that I include a handwritten note on something that has been handmade by me. Here are the first few tags I made:

I quickly ran out of eight tags. What was I thinking? So I got to work, creating several sets of tags. I spread out several of them next to each other on a big sheet of paper and sprayed them, always in groups of eight. After they were dry, I stamped and stencilled them. I have enough ribbon and leftover yarn to give them the final touch.

Yesterday I finished a set of 12 since I'm almost run out of tags. This time I skipped the stencilling and only stamped while the tags were still spread out next to each other. It was a lot of fun. When we get closer to Christmas shopping, I will enclose Christmas tags I already made.

Looking Back

 

Only a few more hours and 2020 will be history. What a weird and strange year it has been. While this was not the worst year in my life - there were years far worse than this - it certainly was the most unique.

Much has been said about 2020 and I don't want to waste your time with repeating the same old sentiments about the virus and its consequences. The circus about the election still hasn't stopped. The life of too many people has been disrupted in a terrible way.

When I look back at the year I am surprised how quickly it passed, even though there were times when we thought nothing was moving. Despite stay-at-home orders and lockdowns I had more work than before. The new situation of teaching online had its fair share of challenges, but also many opportunities. While preparing classes was taking a lot longer, teaching was still a positive experience. It forced me to keep an open mind, to learn from my mistakes, to see what worked and what didn't and make amendments. It was interesting and exhausting at the same time. I was able to offer new classes which added to my work load, but boy! did I like it!

My Esty store also took off this year in a way I hadn't experienced before. While at the beginning of the year it was mainly Valentine's cards that I sold, customers were asking for hand knitted socks once the pandemic was under way. I knitted 68 pairs of socks for the store alone, plus some more for friends, famiy and myself. Add to this some hats, scarves, mittens and photo cards you can see that I was busy.

Since there was no way we could go anywhere I spent a lot of time in the garden whenever I could. I was digging and planting, changing the layout of the garden and enjoying the beauty surrounding me. That certainly kept me sane! Due to the unhealthy air for several weeks due to the multiple wildfires in our state and beyond, this time was cut short in the second half of summer, but by then the new school year had already started and I didn't have that much time for this kind of leisure anyway.

When I went to see Kaefer in Davis on Valentine's Day and we had a nice lunch on the patio of a restaurant, I had no idea that this was the last time I ate at a restaurant this year. After that it was me preparing meals every single day (sometimes, though, it was just a frozen pizza from Trader Joe's). I think we only picked up food from a restaurant two or three times. Since I had subscribed to the Morning Briefing of the New York Times which includes one recipe each day, I didn't run out of new and inspiring ideas. I tried many new dishes and some of them quickly became favorites.

Good thing that Kaefer had given me a fun apron! I wore it almost every day.

The big event in our family, of course, was Kaefer's graduation from the University of California, Davis. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Global Disease Biology which is a good foundation for her new undertaking, studying for her Masters in Epidemiology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. She left right after Labor Day - bittersweet for us and I sure miss her a lot.

When I look back at the time since the beginning of the pandemic, I am amazed at the creativity that I saw during those months. First it was just the "communal howling" in our neighborhood every evening at 8:00. Then the virtual wildlife turned up, including the tiger in our backyard. Everywhere something was turning up - sidewalk art, people playing music from their balconies (Italy), others reading to kids via Zoom etc. The creative solutions we found at work and new ways to exercise. We started a Happy Hour in the street with our neighbors that we only stopped a few weeks ago with our holiday lockdown that didn't permit gatherings of any size, even outside.

What did I miss most? Certainly being together with our friends - that was worse than the cancelled trip to Australia. We had a few social distanced get togethers, but this simply wasn't the same. I miss the spontaneity of "normal" times and I wonder when or even if we will ever experience that again. I miss not being able to hug my friends. 

I sure hope that 2021 will bring vaccines to all of us and we will be able to hug each other again, to be together without being afraid to spread a virus that we still don't understand. 

To all of you I wish a happy, peaceful and healthy 2021.