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.

Christmas Lights

 

Both the Geek and I are not big into Christmas. Of course, as long as Kaefer was with us, we celebrated it and I also used to decorate the house. We had a Christmas tree that Kaefer and I decorated, a Christmas village (that Kaefer later sold for more funds during college) and the traditional wooden figurines from the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains in East Germany) that I unfortunately cannot find anymore. I suspect it's in a box up in the attic and I certainly won't go there anytime soon. We had an entire angel orchestra - it looks like this:

. 

Thankfully I still have the Kurrendesänger (carolers) because they are in our grab-and-go box. These are the ones that we had when I was a child. They were sent to us by a family in East Germany whom we always sent packets during the years when Germany was divided into two countries. This is my favorite Christmas decoration.

I was glad that I found the Schwippbogen, also handcrafted in the Erzgebirge. The candles are made of beeswax and almost doll sized, thus very hard to find around here. One of my students gives me a package of them every year, so that I don't run out.

The only "big" thing in terms of Christmas decorations are the lights on our home. The Geek and Kaefer used to put them up together, but now the Geek has to do it alone. And he does a great job.

We don't call them Christmas lights but winter lights since they stay up at least until Valentine's Day. They make our rather dark corner cheerful and people who walk along here really like that it is not that dark in those early winter evenings. At 10 o'clock at night the lights are switched off and turned on again in the morning at six for 90 minutes.

The Geek really goes to town with these lights - they are all around the fence as well and even grow into the lower parts of some trees. The best part? These are all LED lights and consume about 100 watt of energy (as much as just one of those old 100 watt lightbulbs) and they're all connected to only one outlet.

This is for Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date with this week's prompt "Christmas lights". Foodwise I don't have much to show today. Our wonderful bread baker has been sick for several weeks and we're running out of bread (we always buy several loaves from them at the farmers market and freeze them), so I decided to bake our own bread again. I didn't take a photo of the first one, but remembered to take one of the second, a whole wheat bread with sunflower and pumpkin seeds.

I didn't cook any elaborate meals for dinner, just linguine with fresh spinach, cream and cheese. It's quick and delicious.

My last photo today is my morning view from the window at the top of the stairs. I love when the fog still hangs around and is slow to lift. It has such a lovely, dreamy atmosphere - my favorite morning mood.

An Image and Its Story - February 2018

To my surprise I hadn't taken almost any photos with my dSLR during the month of February. I wasn't aware that I used my phone that often. It seems that I wasn't in the mood to schlepp my big camera around, but I also used the phone a lot at home. I guess I was simply lazy.

February whizzed by in the blink of an eye it seems. Where has that month gone? What happened during that month? Lots of work, Kaefer was here for a very short weekend, I enjoyed two long weekends, and I baked some bread again.

It's been a long time since I had baked bread. I used to do it so often, not only for me but also for friends who would buy it from me. This was before I started working at the high school. It seems with work lots of things have come to a standstill.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy baking bread. This whole wheat bread is super simple to make, so it was good to start with this one. Seeing the flour, water, yeast and salt coming together to a rough dough that would proof overnight was delightful, forming the dough the next day and cutting the star pattern into it was a pleasure, but the real bliss was the delicious smell that waved through the house while the bread was baking in the oven. How was I able to live without that for such a long time? The bread turned out perfectly, and we could hardly wait for it to cool down a bit so that we could devour a couple slices with butter. I'm glad that I took a few pictures before that, and I finally played with textures again to give it a more rustic look. Since I process my photos mainly in Lightroom I have come to play more with presets, but this time I decided to try a texture again. I'm glad I did.