Someday . . .
Monday, April 25, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
It's All in the Ground
In a moment of optimism and good weather, I enriched the soil and reseeded the kale, spinach, chard, and conventional beets last week. When the weather got even more beautiful today, I went a little crazy. I weeded the flower garden and enriched the soil in the rest of the veggie patch with Bumper Crop, a manure/compost mixture. Then I sowed two kind of pea, two kinds of carrot, chioggia beets, and chives. I got two round planters that used to hold small shrubs converted to veggie containers. I even bought a new rosemary bush that the nursery thought would be hardier than the ones I've had in the past that failed to overwinter. I'm pretty sure that my timing is off and some of my seeds will respond badly when the weather turns cold again tomorrow. But I just had to play in the garden today!
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Will the Fabulous Head-Pieces Never Stop?
My best friend finally guilted me into finishing the bonnet I promised to make her nearly two years ago. After all that procrastination, it only took me about two hours to make!
I still need to tinker with the design a bit. I don't like the way the ribbons attach, and I suspect that, on an authentic early-1800's bonnet, the ribbon would simply run through the bonnet rather than be attached at the sides. Also, this bonnet pattern reminds me more of the American colonies than 1800's Britain, so I think I need to look at other, more period-specific patterns. But it looks pretty good for a costume bonnet, and maybe I'll make a better one in another two years.
I still need to tinker with the design a bit. I don't like the way the ribbons attach, and I suspect that, on an authentic early-1800's bonnet, the ribbon would simply run through the bonnet rather than be attached at the sides. Also, this bonnet pattern reminds me more of the American colonies than 1800's Britain, so I think I need to look at other, more period-specific patterns. But it looks pretty good for a costume bonnet, and maybe I'll make a better one in another two years.
Modernist Cuisine - Check out this beautiful website
Thanks to Bookslut, which is pretty much my favorite blog ever, I learned about Modernist Cuisine - a ridiculous, beautiful behemoth of a cookbook/cooking manual. While my cooking style is distinctly un-modern and (I suspect) un-modernist, I loved browsing the book's website, looking at pictures of decadent food, and getting inspired by the audacity of over-the-top cooking. I'm also reminded that, as I perfect certain recipes and techniques, there's still so much I don't understand about the scientific underpinnings of my experiments. I would love to live in a world where I had both the money to buy this book and time to really explore it.
Canning Update!
Back in November, I whipped up a huge pot of beet chutney and sort of faked my way through canning it. At the time, I was concerned that it wouldn't last through the holidays and that I'd have to eat all twelve or thirteen jars of it in two weeks. I am happy to say that I was 100% wrong! I just opened a can last weekend and used it to make goat cheese and beet chutney finger sandwiches for the Historical Fancy Dress Party. It tastes just as good now as it did then, and no one was violently ill! Even without the pickling salt!
Royal Wedding Fascinators
Next Friday, at 4am on the East Coast, I will be dragging my tired, jet-lagged behind out of bed to share tea and crumpets with some fabulous ladies and watch Prince William and Kate Middleton get married. We're allowed to wear our jammies to the wedding, but are required to wear fancy hats - obviously. And since I don't relish carrying one of my fabulous, two foot diameter hats on the airplane with me, I decided to make myself a fascinator. Of course, being who I am, I got carried away and offered to make fascinators for everyone I know. So now I have to ship a bunch of hats anyway. The fascinators, however, were more of a success story:
This is the first one I made - for my friend Becca. I made hers first because I really like her, but it turns out she got the bad end of that deal. This one looks cute sitting on the table but wears kind of funny, with weird gaps between the flowers. I tried to make a curved band out of cardboard, but it really didn't work that well. I think that in the future I'll try using a heavy fabric held in place by strong wire. I eventually made Becca another fascinator once I got the hang of it.
I made this one for my sister. She has blond hair and beautiful bluish/greenish/grayish eyes that sort of change color depending on what she's wearing. I saw this beautiful blue-green flower at the store and just knew it was for her. This one's pretty big - it's definitely a statement fascinator - so I hope that she feels comfortable wearing it!
This was actually really easy to make. I just cut a small circle of cardboard and covered it in a scrap of blue silk I had in my fabric drawer. Then I cut a piece of tulle 100'' long by 10'' wide, folded it over, and gathered it. I sewed it onto the cardboard round, then glued and sewed the flower into place. Like most fascinators, it attaches to the hair using hair clips that I glued to the back of the cardboard round.
This is the fascinator I made for my mom. I used some alarming purple poppies I found at the craft store, on a bed of blue-purple iridescent silk that I had in my fabric drawer. I started by cutting out a cardboard round and covering it in the same cloth. Then I cut a 50'' long by 6'' wide piece of silk, gathered it, and sewed it onto the round close to the center. I then tucked the outer edges of the fabric under and glued them in place along the edge of the round, creating a lovely poof. I glued the flowers in a bunch, so that they were facing out toward the viewer from every side. When I was finished, the fascinator was big and purple and fabulous, but I felt that it was too solid, so I added a little train hanging down the back.
Here I am modeling this over-the-top fascinator with its silly train. I love it!
This is the second fascinator I made for Becca. By this time I had learned my lesson about the placement of flowers, so I laid these on their sides on a small triangle of cardboard. Once I had glued the flowers in place, I wrapped the triangle of cardboard and stems in cream-colored satin ribbon. Because this is a smaller fascinator, it couldn't support a veil, but I did want something fluffy on it. I decided to add another train, and topped it with a big satin bow.
My goal was for all the fascinators to look equally good from the front and the back, so I ended up spending a lot of time standing in front of the mirror shifting the bow by an eighth of an inch in one direction or another until I got it just right.
Last but not least, I made a fascinator for myself. I love the headband style, and I think it looks better on my short hair. I made this one out of a spray of fake flowers that I can't even identify. I bundled stems of flowers together, then laid them in a long, narrow spray and bound their ends together. Next I had to glue down the very tips of the stems so that they wouldn't flop around. After that, I made a sort of headband by gluing the leaves from the spray to one another end on end. I glued the spray of flowers to the headband of leaves, then glued a strip of thin, black elastic to the backs of the leaves. Finally, I cut a small square of tulle and used it to make a totally frivolous veil. When I tried it on, I felt like I was the one getting married!
This is the first one I made - for my friend Becca. I made hers first because I really like her, but it turns out she got the bad end of that deal. This one looks cute sitting on the table but wears kind of funny, with weird gaps between the flowers. I tried to make a curved band out of cardboard, but it really didn't work that well. I think that in the future I'll try using a heavy fabric held in place by strong wire. I eventually made Becca another fascinator once I got the hang of it.
I made this one for my sister. She has blond hair and beautiful bluish/greenish/grayish eyes that sort of change color depending on what she's wearing. I saw this beautiful blue-green flower at the store and just knew it was for her. This one's pretty big - it's definitely a statement fascinator - so I hope that she feels comfortable wearing it!
This was actually really easy to make. I just cut a small circle of cardboard and covered it in a scrap of blue silk I had in my fabric drawer. Then I cut a piece of tulle 100'' long by 10'' wide, folded it over, and gathered it. I sewed it onto the cardboard round, then glued and sewed the flower into place. Like most fascinators, it attaches to the hair using hair clips that I glued to the back of the cardboard round.
This is the fascinator I made for my mom. I used some alarming purple poppies I found at the craft store, on a bed of blue-purple iridescent silk that I had in my fabric drawer. I started by cutting out a cardboard round and covering it in the same cloth. Then I cut a 50'' long by 6'' wide piece of silk, gathered it, and sewed it onto the round close to the center. I then tucked the outer edges of the fabric under and glued them in place along the edge of the round, creating a lovely poof. I glued the flowers in a bunch, so that they were facing out toward the viewer from every side. When I was finished, the fascinator was big and purple and fabulous, but I felt that it was too solid, so I added a little train hanging down the back.
Here I am modeling this over-the-top fascinator with its silly train. I love it!
This is the second fascinator I made for Becca. By this time I had learned my lesson about the placement of flowers, so I laid these on their sides on a small triangle of cardboard. Once I had glued the flowers in place, I wrapped the triangle of cardboard and stems in cream-colored satin ribbon. Because this is a smaller fascinator, it couldn't support a veil, but I did want something fluffy on it. I decided to add another train, and topped it with a big satin bow.
My goal was for all the fascinators to look equally good from the front and the back, so I ended up spending a lot of time standing in front of the mirror shifting the bow by an eighth of an inch in one direction or another until I got it just right.
Last but not least, I made a fascinator for myself. I love the headband style, and I think it looks better on my short hair. I made this one out of a spray of fake flowers that I can't even identify. I bundled stems of flowers together, then laid them in a long, narrow spray and bound their ends together. Next I had to glue down the very tips of the stems so that they wouldn't flop around. After that, I made a sort of headband by gluing the leaves from the spray to one another end on end. I glued the spray of flowers to the headband of leaves, then glued a strip of thin, black elastic to the backs of the leaves. Finally, I cut a small square of tulle and used it to make a totally frivolous veil. When I tried it on, I felt like I was the one getting married!
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