A Couple of Creative Days

First I'll start with Adam, who's been working on English muffins and a Kitchenaid mixer. Do you have a Kitchenaid Mixer? Aren't they wonderful? Yes! Well ... until they start to rattle and shake and ominously drip black grease into your cake batter. We got rid of a Kitchenaid mixer many years ago for these reasons and bought another one for $250. Now they're $350, I think.

Adam made a repair video for Kitchenaid mixers, to replace the grease and the gasket, so you can spend $12 on a DIY repair, instead of buying a new mixer. Here's the video, if you ever need it! Kitchenaid recommends you replace the grease every ... five years!

He also attempted English muffins from the recipe in the "Baking Bible" cookbook, but they turned out like lovely biscuits.

 Quite yummy for breakfast.

He will try again for the nooks and crannies of an English muffin.

I've been painting (again). I saw the sweetest watercolor on facebook of a dog. It was painted by Colleen Reynolds from Nevada.

Oh my goodness ... she is GOOD. She painted this wet-on-wet, which means the paper is very wet with water, and the paint is watery too. That means the paint is quite unpredictable, but look at her results!! She made a youtube video of this painting, so I watched it too, and I felt challenged and inspired.

If you enjoy watercolor, do watch it. She is amazing.

Anyway, I had a photo of Beau, and I decided, "Why not try? What's the worst that could happen? I waste a morning and a bit of paper and paint?" Well, my results are not glorious as hers, but it was good practice. Here's a few photos:

the original:

somewhere along the line 

when the paper was quite wet:

I can't tell you how hard it is to get anything useful from a painting when the paint is running everywhere! Here's the end result:

I think he looks more like a ferret than a dog. But then maybe Beau does look more like a ferret? Haha. We joke that he's more cat than dog. 

Learning how to paint is a long process (like many things), and one goes through lots of paper and paint and produces many worthless things before it's much good. But it's fulfilling even when it's mediocre. I'd like to paint a corgi like Colleen did, and give it to my mother, who loves corgis. 

I also spent about an hour today chatting with Anna on facetime and grinning at Isaac. I love facetime video - how could I survive being a Nana without it? We do that about once a week at least. It makes me so happy.

I hope your week is beginning fine. It's hard to survive the cabin fever of January and THEN February too. We all want spring, both in the garden and in our hearts, don't we? May you all feel springy today!

Keeping Busy

I say that a bit tongue-in-cheek. I'm struggling to keep busy these days. January has been hard, for some reason. I think I slipped into a bit of depression and found it difficult to motivate myself to do much except what was necessary. I also find myself unusually disinterested in my usual creative pursuits, which is worrying. But I hope as the outside world warms and brightens, so will my inner world.

My handspun yarn from all those many months/years ago has been sitting in a bag.

I stopped spinning alpaca fleece partly because I didn't know what I wanted to make with it, and I couldn't sell it. At last, I saw this cool sweater on a friend's facebook page and asked her if she'd send me a photo. She did.

I love the shape, the collar, the bulkiness, and I could see a sweater like this, made from my handspun yarn. The body of her sweater is purl stitch, while the placket is knit, and the bottom edge is ribbing. 
My yarn is not as bulky as that -- some spots are quite thin -- so I need to augment it with another complementary yarn. My yarn is rather pale pastels, so I chose a white. I was quite limited by what's in my yarn stash; what yarn do I have enough of, to make a sweater? I have 6 skeins of this:

It has a little sparkle to it, which I'm not wild for, but when I combined it with the handspun yarn, I think it looks okay.

I'll probably have to spin more yarn, which will be a good motivation to haul the spinning wheel out of the corner and learn how to spin again, haha. A sweater takes a lot of yarn. I was tired of scarves ... So Many Scarves.

In addition to daffodils, now our Japanese magnolia is blooming also!

 Monster Egg update: This morning I found an itty-bitty egg, the first egg laid by one of my new pullets. So sweet! Look at this baby, next to the Monster!

 When you have hens, you get such a delightful assortment!

 I was busy filling a good-sized watercolor card order, but I did paint this one too:

 Are you wondering what Adam's whipping up in the kitchen? This was lunch today:

All I can say is WOW. It was delicious. And if you want to learn more about baking a perfect loaf of bread, just view this:

Happy Valentine's Week to you all! Thank you for stopping by! Your visits and comments cheer a girl up :)

Daffodils!

 Daffodils are blooming all over the county. It feels as if winter is "gone chicken," as they say, and spring is arriving.

 A large clump of daffodils bloom under our fig tree, the tree Adam has pruned way back over the years. This year, we hope, it will bear lots of figs ... and low enough that we can reach them all.

 The photo above shows my creeping fig plant that I put into the ground (nervously) a couple of years ago. It is spreading along the foundation just as I wanted it to. I think its so pretty.
And yes, I still have a pumpkin sitting on the porch from last autumn.

Adam has a new fun video -- a quick lunch option!  Only 15 minutes, beginning to end. Go look!

All Charged Up

I accidentally left my laptop power cord in West Virginia, so I've been off-line (mostly) for a few days. I don't like doing much internet business on my phone ... squinting at the tiny screen ... typing with one finger. My thoughtful, techy son sent me a new cord!

On the drive home I remembered to photograph this unusual home on hwy. 60. It's shaped like a tea pot! (I love driving the back roads instead of interstates.)

Bo Beau missed me.

Adam taste-tested (with the dogs) lots of diet frozen meals while I was gone. (I know ... ugh!) If you want to know what the dogs thought of them, here's the video:

He made me yummy dinners when I returned home.

Anna gave me a good idea yesterday. She mentioned that she makes "no-bake fudgies" as a single serving, in a cup. She does it in the microwave, but we don't have a microwave, so I made mine in a little saucepan. It was wonderful!

Here's how:
Heat 1/4 cup milk. Add 2 tsp. sugar and 1 tsp. cocoa powder until well mixed and warm. Add about 2 Tbsp of peanut butter and a little butter, and stir until melted in. Then add old-fashioned oats. (Oh goodness, I don't know how much. Until it looks like a lot, but you want the oats to cook and soften a bit in the milk mixture over low heat, so don't add too much). Allow to rest on low heat until oats are softened, put in a cup and eat with a spoon. It's not like you can mess this one up :)

My mother received the most amazing Christmas card. I was so enamored with it that she allowed me to bring it home. Here's a short video I made showing how it looks:

I hope it works for you. If not, here are some still shots:

 It's a tri-fold card.

 I wanted to paint a card like that. It's a silliness. It will take me hours to finish it, and it's just one card, and there's no good way to print/copy it. But it's such a cool idea! I couldn't resist. I'm not quite done selecting all the book titles I want on mine.

The original card is made by Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University in the UK.

That's the latest from me. It's good to be home.

Dogs, Diets, and Recipes

Adam's got a Youtube channel! He gave me permission to share the links for you to go check them out so far.

If you click over and watch, please click the "thumbs up" button under the video; it helps his ratings with Youtube. And if you're interested at all, please click the box that says "subscribe." 

Here's his introductory video (11 minutes):

Adam introduces you to Bo Beau and tells why he's starting the channel in the first place: to lose weight (again) this year.

The next video shows Adam making his Honey Wheat Bread recipe (14 minutes):

This is a fabulous wheat loaf - soft, sliceable, delicious, and twice your daily iron requirements in one slice. Plus lots of great technique tips.

Adam's "true confession" video is the third one.

He wants to be brutally honest about how he's gotten as overweight as he is (7 minutes).

If you struggle with a food addiction or being overweight, perhaps Adam's honesty will help you not feel alone.

He has many more recipes to share, dog stories to tell, and confessions to make. He'll assess various diets that are fads right now. He'll taste-test (with the doggies) some diet dinners from the grocery. And there's a website (called Dogs, Diets, and Recipes) that will give the recipes and their nutritional stats. Click on over for that Honey Wheat Bread recipe.

If you want email notifications of future videos, click on the "bell" near the subscribe button. All of these things help Youtube channel folks like Adam. Thank you! I hope you enjoy it -- he's still working on his studio space, his editing, and his content. Any feedback is appreciated -- please leave a comment under the videos. Thanks!

The Quiet Week

 The beginning of the year everyone is recovering from December, and nobody wants to do anything, thankfully. We've stayed home all week with zero extra responsibilities. It was heavenly. Adam worked hard on getting his new Youtube channel going: "Dogs, Diets, and Recipes." He baked some wheat bread for one episode, introduced Beau, and did a "true confessions" episode too. There'll be an accompanying website with all the recipes. I'll put it all up here when he's ready with enough episodes uploaded for folks to binge on. He's not quite there yet.

I've been drinking hot tea, painting, and editing my latest children's chapter book, Ten Days at Federal Hill. Five chapters down, about 25+ to go! The editing stage is not nearly as fun as the writing stage.

 Painting -- I'm using the tube paints Adam gave me. Here is a first attempt. I used another painting online as a resource.

 It was okay, but I wanted to try again. Here's the 2nd one, after the initial sketching, background, and a some of the fruit were started:

 I spent quite a bit of time getting this one just right, so I didn't want to sell if for $5 as a card. I bought a $1 frame/mat/glass at the thrift store and put it on my bedroom wall.

 Here are some others with the new paints. It takes time to get used to how tube paints behave.

I'm heading to West Virginia again next weekend, and after that trip my weekly schedule will return to its usual racing-around self. The week coming up is my last slow week, and I'm gonna make the most of it! Have you enjoyed these slow days in early January? It helps that we've had bizarrely warm weather. It feels like April out there. Happy January!!!