Have Faith

We have a lemon tree. We bought it several years ago for about $25. It wasn't much to look at, just a few sticks in the dirt, but it was full of blooms, and it smelled wonderful. We figured we had to start somewhere, and it would soon grow into a charming little tree full of lemons like I see in magazines.

Well, not so much. It's still a pitiful looking thing, no closer to becoming a tree. It flourishes every spring when we put it outside and then barely manages to hang on through the winter while it resides in the upstairs bath. Every so often it will burst into bloom, reminding us of why we wanted a lemon tree to begin with.

It has managed to squeeze out a few lemons. There are several tiny ones on there right now, and this is the big daddy of the bunch, measuring in at about an inch. One thing about these lemons: They take their time.

So we'll hang in there with it. Hopefully it will survive another winter. Hopefully we'll see this lemon grow. We have faith.

Out in the Field

Time for another field trip! This weekend, we visited the Ephrata Fair. Unfortunately, we missed the animal exhibits, but here are some of the other homespun sights.


Honey, jam, and jelly. Look at all those ribbons!












Hopefully they slow down in school zones.













My focus for much of the day: Choosing a funnel cake stand.












A blue ribbon winner! Wouldn't that make a great quilt?












Games on the midway! Everyone wins!












Aww, the judges are suckers for kitty cats, too!













I love that some kid put so much time into making a poster of an egg.












Another fair delicacy: Fresh-cut fries!



















No visit to the fair is complete without a look at the "freak" vegetables. This oddity beat out a double zucchini and a potato that grew around a spoon to win the first place ribbon.

Another Stack Attacked

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows-- This is one of those "what more can I say" books. Everyone I know who has read it, loved it. Add me to that list.






The Wet Nurse's Tale by Erica Eisdorfer--I think I was drawn to this book because I liked The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber. Another book about the seamy side of Victorian England? Sign me up! This is nowhere near as intense as Faber's book, but it has a great main character and is a fun read.



Mariana by Monica Dickens--Another Persephone Classic. A quote: "Everything looked so right and so comfortably unexotic, like a cabbage." That's a pretty good description of how I felt about this book. I wasn't blown away, but it was enjoyable enough.

Huge by James Fuerst--I couldn't get into this one. Its setting in the Eighties didn't ring true, and I just didn't care about the characters. I found it awkward and choppy and...ugh. Wasted my time.

While I'm Falling by Laura Moriarty--Eh. It was okay. It just seemed like a book I'd read a thousand times before.


Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow--A fictional account of the Collyer brothers, the packrats who filled a Fifth Avenue brownstone with (according to Wikipedia) 130 tons of garbage. I found myself slowing down as I read this, because I didn't want it to end.



Miss Buncle, Married by D.E. Stevenson--Right afterI finished Miss Buncle's Book in August, I submitted an interlibrary loan request for this, the sequel. While I enjoyed reading more about Miss Buncle (she is such a character!), this book didn't have the zing of the first one.

Viola in Reel Life by Andriana Trigiani--I really love some of Trigiani's adult novels, especially the Big Stone Gap books, so I'm always excited to see a new book from her. This is a young adult title, but I squealed gleefully and brought it home with me just the same. Unfortunately, I didn't love it.

The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs--This is the same guy who wrote about reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z and following the literal word of the Bible for a year. Well, sorry, AJ, your schtick is getting old. Yawn.


Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore--This book is sort of like an ice cream cone. It's simple and straightforward and it just made me feel good. Of course some people aren't satisfied with that--they want hot fudge and sprinkles and whipped cream. But this just hit the spot with me.



And finally, I started a new mystery series called the Gaslight Series by Victoria Thompson. To me, these are similar to the Molly Murphy books by Rhys Bowen (which I love). I've read the first two in the series, Murder on Astor Place and Murder on St. Mark's Place. I'm happy with them so far, but I'll be looking for a little more variation in the following books.

What about you? Read anything good lately? I'm always looking for recommendations!

Everyone Needs One

I know this is a long, rambling post, but bear with me. It seems important not to leave anything out!

How many of you use rechargeable batteries? My camera takes four AA batteries, and I take a LOT of pictures, so we got ourselves a little battery recharger soon after the camera arrived. But picture this: I am in the middle of photographing Isabella doing something cute and that empty battery thing starts flashing on the screen. Annoying, but I'll just change the batteries. Uh oh. The charger is empty. But what are these batteries strewn on the counter? Are they charged? Uncharged? Commence trying different combinations of batteries, looking for four that are juiced. Now that's REALLY annoying.

I realized a while ago that we needed a system. Maybe two ramekins labeled with my P-Touch? Then I became obsessed with finding one container with two compartments. Our kitchen is small, and it would be neater. I found several dual-compartment vessels at the thrift shop, but I felt like Little Red Riding Hood: too small, too big, too shallow, too expensive, too ugly.

The other night I started flipping through Amanda Soule's new book, Handmade Home. There's a lot of emphasis on using what you have. That made up my mind. I would figure something out, using what I already had.

Probably due to the influence of the book, I was in a fabric frame of mind. Maybe I'll use a tea towel? Something from my refashioning pile? Whatever I did, I figured it would involve bias tape. I pulled out my scrap bag of trimmings to take a look. Do you have a bag like that? I have a little bag looped over my doorknob where I keep all the short pieces of leftover tapes and trims. If I need to trim the raw, inside edge of a pocket or something, I can usually find something to use in there, rather than cutting into a big piece (which, inevitably, would then be too small for whatever I needed next, right?).

Now, I knew I needed to mark the two compartments somehow. I thought about using faces or words or pictures, but that seemed to suggest embroidery, and I am not a very good or patient embroiderer. But how about a plus and minus? In red and green? And I had tape scraps in each color!
The fabric. If I'm going to go with the + and -, I should probably stick to something not-too-busy. This navy and white dotted fabric happened to be on my sewing table (after riding around in the trunk for a few months), and it seemed just the thing. The + and - really show up on there!

Yep, I use Scotch Tape to hold things in place. Zippers, usually. Things that are hard to pin. Or not. Depends on how lazy I feel. Speaking of lazy, the white thread wasn't an artistic choice. It was in the machine.

You know what it was starting to reminded me of? Those felt and burlap yardstick holders people used to make in the Seventies. With owls? Or daisies? And a little ring for hanging? Hmm. I like that.


Can you feel the love? It wasn't easy to get a picture of this in its intended habitat, but here's the best of the bunch.

The reason it's staying flat like that is because I stuffed a piece of plastic needlepoint canvas between the layers. I can't remember why I had a piece of plastic needlepoint canvas, but I did!

Happiness

Happiness is...figuring out why Blogger wasn't letting me post pictures.

Happiness is...going to the flea market with my husband for a look around...even if we didn't get much of anything.

Happiness is...washing every single kitchen towel and napkin at once!

Listen to Your Cat

I can't decide what I want to do. It's that in-between time...not really fall yet, not summer anymore...and I just can't sink my teeth into anything.

This morning, I dug out something I'd photocopied from The Total Tote Bag Book, copyright 1977. It's called the Triangular Tie Tote, and it looked quick, easy, and ingenious. You start with a rectangle of fabric, measuring 18 by 36 inches, sew it into a tube, cut it on the diagonal, and then sew the two resulting pieces together to form the bag. I was thinking this had Wardrobe Refashion possibilities--pant legs maybe?

Originally, I was going to use the fabric from a skirt I bought last summer and never wore. I chopped off the waistband and patiently unpicked the pleats around the top, but when I spread it out to measure for my rectangle, Isabella climbed on and wouldn't move. I stopped to take a picture and, looking at the screen, realized I didn't want to waste this fabric on an experiment. Whew. Thanks, Isabella!

May I take this opportunity to say this is exactly why I keep fabric around even when I don't really like it? Out came a piece of sample fabric (complete with swatches of different options) my mom picked up at a yard sale.

I drew out my rectangle, started cutting, and...

Isabella again. Do you see what's going on here? Her paw, right in the path of my scissors. Hmm. Might she have known something?

I dumped the poor kitty off the fabric and forged ahead. Sewed the tube, cut it apart, blah blah blah. I got to the part where you put the two halves together and...

...this thing is ugly. I hate that it's not lined. I hate where the seam falls. I hate how angular it is. I just hate it.

Was Isabella trying to warn me?

A Very Nice Post

Not too far from here, there's a driveway that leads back into the woods. You would almost think it's just a path, except there's a mailbox out by the road. A few months ago, I noticed they had a new mailbox post, and I would remark on it every time we drove by, because I liked it so much. It's this very rustic, branch-y looking thing, and I kept telling Gerry, "I'm going to blog about that mailbox post someday, because I think it's so neat."

Well, wouldn't you know it, Gerry paid a visit to that house to find out where they'd gotten that post. Turns out the guy made it, and he agreed to make one for me!

I have my very own branch-y post now, and Gerry "planted" it for me over the weekend! --squeals of delight--

Gerry had the honor of getting the first mail delivery from the new box.

Okay, you're thinking, "She's showing us her mail? What a weirdo. This is a new low in blogging." But wait! There's a reason!

The mail carrier left us a note! How funny is that?

Back to School

This is me on my first day, back in 1972. If you weren't born yet in 1972, just hush up, because I don't want to hear about it.

Like my school bag? I wish I still had it. It was RED and PLAID and I loved it. I'm sure it was dead empty, but I insisted on taking it.

My Grams bought me that dress, and it was a Great Big Deal because not only did we go to Hess's Department Store (which was pretty swanky), but it was also the first time I'd been in a dressing room. Mom made all my clothes, so it was a great novelty! You can't see it in the picture, but the top was striped, and it had two shiny brass buttons at the waist.

It's Official...

...I have a saltine cracker fetish. Some people go to Italy and bring back shoes. I go to Italy and bring back crackers. That's a lot of luggage space to devote to crackers.

Mmm, individual packets for freshness. I am amazed by how well these survived the trip. I can't even get a box of Zestas home from the market without winding up with crumbs.

Peachy Keen

I'm not a big dessert person, but there was something I couldn't ignore about this post at Angry Chicken. Maybe because she said it wasn't too sweet? In any event, I clicked on over to my library's website, found we had the book on order, and placed a reserve on it.

The book is Rustic Fruit Desserts by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson and the recipe is called Stone Fruit Tea Cake. (It's on page 52.)

The little blurb at the beginning of the recipe stresses how easy and flexible this recipe is. You can freeze the dough and use almost any fruit, fresh or frozen, in it.

Gerry said it went together very easily and wasn't a fussy kind of recipe at all. Oh, you didn't think I made it, did you? The only change he made to the recipe was using raw sugar instead of granulated in the dough. 'Cause that's what we had, ya know?

We've both had a piece and pronounced it delicious. The recipe called it a shortbread-style dough, but it's lighter than that. Very nice. We're already dreaming up different combinations of fruit fillings to use. And maybe, on a very special occasion, we'll serve it up with a scoop of ice cream. We don't usually have ice cream in the house, but it isn't every day your cat turns ten!

Slow and Steady

What a disgrace. When my husband inherited my old camera, he also inherited this ratty case. It's been disintegrating like that for a few months now, but I couldn't get motivated to stitch up a new one. This morning, I was looking for a quick, small project and decided to cross this off my list.

The easiest thing in the world was just to cut the old case open, lay it out flat, and trace around it, leaving an allowance for seams. A friend at work had given me this quilted denim, which worked perfectly.

The one feature Gerry requested was a loop holding the case onto the camera strap. The old loop had a snap, which would have been too much fiddling around, so I just sewed a loop right around the camera strap.

I then remembered these little turtle appliques my mom gave me. Ever since he rescued a turtle from the middle of the road, my mom has been teasing Gerry about turtles. I wasn't sure how to apply the applique, so I thought, "Let me check the package." Yeah, that was really helpful! (I did it by hand, needle and thread, which wasn't as difficult as I imagined it might be.)


And that's it! If I'd known it was going to be THIS easy.... Yeah, we've all said that before! Oh well, at least I'm back on the horse and sewing again! Hope he likes it!