One more thing

I finished this scarf Tuesday night. The wool/soy blend was great to work with: knitted up beautifully and felt wonderful in the hands. And the soy-based dyes are so lovely. The picture doesn't do the depth of color justice.



I also had fun making a tag of my own. Seems a little boring however (and blurry. Sorry!). I think I need to come up with a more interesting name than just "Handmade by Brandi." Any suggestions?

The beady stuff so far

I've been busy, with the holidays and birthdays approaching, with the annual gift-making extravaganza. Jewelry, hair pom-poms, scarves. I always make more than I actually give away. What happens is that as the deadline for wrapping and/or sending approaches, I take inventory and pick my favorites and give those. The others are either kept (Gabi never minds this, particularly in regards to bracelets and scarves) or torn apart and their parts recycled. So, a few more things so far...

First, two bracelets. The purple/blue one is all glass beads, the copper/white one mixes metal, bone and glass.





I've been having a blast using, finally, some of the gorgeous beads that I brought back from West Africa. These trader beads were purchased in Ghana and Togo. The "serenity" bracelet was given to Jenny as a birthday present, and Gabi laid claim to the "peace" bracelet before it could be given to anyone else. (That is her prerogative!)





This necklace also uses both glass beads from the local craft store and mixed-glass beads from Togo. Check out the close-up to see the lovely colors of the African bead. There are many varieties of these mixed-glass, matte-finish beads, and they are much less well-known than the trader beads. However, I really like their subtlety.





This three-strand is made of glass and metal beads. I found the finding at one of my favorite bead stores in Duluth. The other beads are locally purchased.



Lastly, I went an uncharacteristically sparkly direction on this one (glass and metal). I was thinking of my niece when I was picking beads... that's why it's so shiny.

Hair Bobby Thingys

I've been playing with string again.

Last weekend I spent movie-watching time playing with felt, buttons and embroidery floss and made some fun hair doo-dads. I got the idea from Heartfelt: 25 projects for stitched and felted accessories by Teresa Searle. There are some great projects in this book. Searle provides detailed and simple instructions, and the book is a joy just to look at. The projects would be great for beginner/intermediate as most of the embroidery stitches are very basic (chain, blanket and straight stitches, mostly) and felt is so easy to work with.What really makes the projects pop is the color combinations and the light-hearted, joyful feel of them. It can be hard to find beginner-level crafts that really make a statement, but Searle's do.

And for those of us who are beyond beginner stages, the ideas here are a great jumping-off point for more felty-flossy entertainment. Searle's ideas got my brain buzzing so much that I bought some lovely greenish blue felt to use for a cell phone case and/or little purse.

In the meantime, here are a few of the silly, pretty hair pom-poms I came up with. They stitch up so quickly I made four or five in a single evening, and the simple stitches meant that I really could watch a movie and stitch at the same time (free tip: never try to both watch a movie and make a neat, tidy pallestrina stitch ~ you're just asking for bloody fingers).

First, how the hair-bobs look when worn.



Next, the group I made over the weekend.



And a couple of my favorites.





Of course, Rosie thinks they'd make great toys!



(I did make her a couple, and she promptly lost them.)

Happy Belated Thanksgiving

Time is flying by... and I'm exhausted just from trying to keep up.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving at our friend Jane's house. It was a small gathering: Jane, her two sons Elliot and Sam, Elliot's friend John, us, and our friend Nancy (and Nancy's daughter and two friends for dessert, later). Good friends, good food, good wine. Lovely day.

Yesterday we did our traditional day-after-Thanksgiving: we slept in and then walked downtown to take in the sales at Herbergers. We have a fairly strict rule for "Black Friday:" we don't shop anywhere we can't walk to. Traffic is just insane in this town, especially on big shopping days. It's like every family from a hundred miles around comes to town and rushes between Fleet Farm, Wal-mart and the mall. Mayhem.

After we returned home with our purchases I started soup. I had loaned Jane our turkey-sized Romertopf for cooking the bird, and I brought it home with the carcass so that I could make soup. I came up with a great recipe to share. Hope you enjoy it too.

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Day-after-feasting Soup

Face it, you’re still psychologically full from Thanksgiving, yet your stomach tells you it’s hungry. This soup is perfect. It’s very light and won’t leave you feeling overstuffed, yet the broth is so exquisitely flavorful that you feel spoiled. This is my creation, with a tip ‘o the ladle to Lynne Rosetto-Kasper.

2 Tbsp each butter and olive oil
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2-3 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
2 stalks celery, including leaves, chunked
2 carrots, chunked
2 medium tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1 cup dry sherry (Use real sherry, not the “cooking sherry” you find in the grocery store aisle next to the vinegar. It would be better to omit the sherry completely than use that stuff.)
1 turkey carcass
Filtered water

1 Tbsp butter
2 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
2 stalks celery, thinly sliced
A couple handfuls of good quality egg noodles, preferably something thin like spaghetti or vermicelli

Heat butter and oil in large soup pot. Add onions and garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add carrots and celery and cook another 5 minutes or so, until beginning to be tender. Then add tomatoes and sherry. Bring to a boil and reduce for several minutes, until liquid begins to thicken.

Add turkey carcass and 2 to 2 ½ quarts water to soup pot, enough to fill pot but not overflow. Bring to a boil. Turn heat down slightly to keep stock at a low boil and reduce until half the liquid is gone. Add water to fill pot and reduce to half again. Add water and reduce to half again. This will take 3 to 4 hours, and by the end of that time your broth will be richly fragrant and flavorful.

Strain soup to remove all solids. Skim fat from broth. Bring liquid back to boil and add noodles (not too many as the broth is the star attraction). Melt 1 Tbsp butter in saucepan and sauté sliced carrots and celery until just tender. When noodles are cooked through, add carrots and celery. Add salt to taste and serve at once.

Better Housekeeping Through Cats

Cleo is on a diet.

She is eleven and getting stiff, arthritic shoulders. She walks like an elephant lumbers, and you can hear her on the wooden floors from across the house. Occasionally she limps on both shoulders so that she waddles like a drunken sailor, her tail doing a most inelegant jerky twist that mocks every myth of cat-like grace. She weighs 15 pounds, despite all our best intentions to get her weight down. So. It's time for a serious diet.

And, so the plundering of counters and cabinets has begun.

As soon as we leave the kitchen, she is in there sniffing, searching out bread crumbs, bits of cheese, or just the yummy leavings on a butter knife. She's not picky. She jumps up on the counters and the butcher block table, hoovering her way along.

What she's really looking for is butter. The cat loves butter. She has broken a couple of butter dishes by knocking them off the counter. We finally found a Cleo-proof dish that is plastic, unbreakable, and fully enclosed so she can't knock it open either. We keep the butter, and the bread, in the cabinet with the dishes and glasses.

So she figured out how to open the cabinet.

We've come home from work and ~ ooh look! who could have done that? ~ the butter dish is in the middle of the kitchen floor, the bag of bread is ripped open. (We're pretty sure Rosie helps with the bread but the butter is all Cleo.)

So we now make sure we push the cabinet doors all the way closed. We now make sure we remove all the prep dishes from the counters before sitting down to a meal. We wash or put away every dish every night. We are becoming neat-freaks for our cat's sake.

*** *** ***

Yeah, I'm back. Thanks to many of you for your well wishes and thoughtful hugs. The passage of Prop 8 in California sent me into quite the tail-spin of sadness and brought up a lot of stuff that I thought had been dealt with and done. Here's to lessons in humility and forgiveness. But I'm feeling more like me again, finally.

Way to Go Wanda

Finished enough

Ah, happy day. The study is finished enough for us to relax... well, no. It's finished enough for us to turn our attention instead to the yard, and the myriad chores left to do there. One of which is to find a lawn mower to borrow. Ours has decided that it has better things to do than start. You will not believe how grumpy we are about this.

However, let's talk pretty, happy things.

Our adinkra looks wonderful behind the desk. It makes me so happy to have the cloth up, even though I can't find the "cheat sheet" we brought back from Ghana to tell us the significance of the different stamps. This cloth, with its incredible detail and geometric patterns, was our first purchase together after we had decided to make a home together upon returning stateside. For fifteen years it has been in storage. Now it makes me giddy every time I look at it.

And here is one of the most colorful blankets that we brought back, looking right at home behind the sideboard that is decorated with toys made from tin cans. The motorcycle, train and vespa are all from Togo, as is the clay pot in the center. The two wooden figurines are from Benin, I believe. The wire airplane on the shelf is from Zimbabwe.

And last, but definitely not least: the craft hutch. Bracelet and necklace ideas are tacked up on the doors, and the former keyboard shelf is now home to my bead board and the felt pieces I use to lay stuff out while I'm playing with ideas. I have three fabric-collage bookmarks that I've been playing with tacked up in front. And storage beneath. There are places for most of my stuff ~ although I still need a separate rolling storage bin for ribbons, trim, purse handles and other various things.

There are still things to do in the room: re-upholster the two side-chairs (I'm thinking claret red velvet would be so cool), put up a few more things on the walls (pictures, a clock, etc.), and find some place for at least one kente strip. But it definitely feels homey and comfortable as it is.

Last night Gabi and I were both in here, she planning her week (AP Physics is as hard, if not harder, for the teacher as it is for the students. Send my sweet girl happy thoughts, please!), me playing with beads (although I was too tired to anything more than lay them out and look at them. The ideas came at 5:00 this morning). It was nice, listening to music and being in our new space, and the house still smelled like baked chicken and squash from dinner. A lovely end to what Gabi called, "the fastest weekend in history."