project 52:14

last week project 52 was on the road with a soft winter landscape shot from the car's passenger-side window near Olympia and a sketch of the pattern from my favorite section of The Great Wall project at the south end of Tacoma as we headed home from Portland.

Hard to believe that was only a week ago. I've been sick since Christmas, and it feels like it's been soooo much longer because I hate being stuck in bed all day.

handmade holidays: architecture-print tees

Once again, this year's installment of architecture-themed printed T-shirts. This year, I settled on a Corbu (Le Corbusier) theme for my darling modernist. I took the design on the black-and-purple tee from a poster series of "minimalist architecture." It depicts the windows in Corbusier's Notre Dame de Haut, from the inside of the building. I printed out a large version of the poster, cropped the text from the bottom and cut the window forms out to make a stencil. There was some bleed-through at some places on the delicate stencil, alas. The tomato-and-orange stencil of Corbu worked a bit better, and certainly was less time-consuming to make.

I also was working on a funny non-architecture tee, but couldn't settle on a design to surprise Cass. I ran some of my ideas by him last night and he laughed heartily, so perhaps I'll do some more printing this spring, just for fun.

project 52:13

Last week I was stuck; it was already Monday evening, my postcard was overdue, I was stressed and uninspired. And then my friend Jorah shared a snippet of poetry from Hafiz and suddenly I had a plan - Hafiz to the rescue!

I put the whole poem on the back of this postcard:

Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, What every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

handmade holidays: a wreath for the door

I seem to be playing around with new kinds of wreath-making of late. Though I first learned to make small bundles of greens, and to affix them to a wreath form, hiding the bundled ends of one bunch with the free tips of another, lately I've been braiding and weaving and tucking branches. I made this wreath out of a wire hanger from a dry cleaner (that I shaped into a circle; I used the twisted hook to form a little loop to hang it on a nail on the door), and two whippy cedar boughs. I affixed the two boughs to the wire loop (and to each other, and then braided the branches on each bough around the wire and the bough itself. Then I wove sprigs of seed pod eucalyptus (from which I'd removed the leaves) into the cedar base, and tucked branches of rosehips (leftover from my Thanksgiving table flower arrangements - below) in among the eucalyptus. I'm not sure that this is as secure a way to make a wreath, but I like the slightly wilder and looser aesthetic, and it seems secure enough for something that doesn't have to travel or be handled by many people.

(for Thanksgiving I paired greenish/pinkish hued white roses with orange mums, rosehips, and some kind of greenery that I couldn't identify. It was simple, but I liked the effect with the beeswax tapers and the blue runner.)

project 52:12

Project 52 is getting into the holiday spirit this week; ink on paper. I had to photograph it on my washer just to get a little watery sun - it's definitely winter!

handmade holidays: libations

I don't think I ever posted a photo of the last round of cider! It was so good (and so affordable, and so pleasantly low in alcohol) that we already made another batch and I have six pounds of apples to grind up tomorrow and start another round of fermentation. The process comes from Yvette Van Boven's lovely little cookbook, Home Made Winter, which Cass bought for me last year and which is a really fun resource for these dark indoor months. I haven't tried making butter yet, but I want to - soon!

This process gave me the heebie-jeebies a little bit, at first, just because there is no boiling or sterilization of the food, just simple fermentation. Grated apples (cores, peels and all) are placed in a sterilized bucket with a bit of water and allowed to stand for seven days (you stir the mash daily with a clean spoon). After that, the solids are strained out and you add sugar, fresh ginger, and cinnamon sticks and let it stand another day. Then it is strained and put in a bottle. We put up four bottles in the fridge  to ferment (Yvette Van Boven says you can let it ferment for up to two months - our last bottles only made it a month before we drank them) and are drinking the leftovers tonight.

I really like this low-tech cider. It smells and tastes a bit of yeast (no yeast is actually added to the mash; the only yeasts present are the wild yeasts on the apples' skins), and over time it develops great fine bubbles (after a month, the bottles would fizz over fantastically when they were opened).

yuletide flavours: candied orange peel

 

M husband has a Satsuma addiction. Every December, I break out a tray or a bowl for our coffee table, and each week he fills it with stem-and-leaf satsumas (so pretty and cheery!) or even the piled contents of a 5-pound box. In addition to being cheery and delicious, they provide a key ingredient for my holiday baking: their peels.

 

I save the peels for a few days (I gradually fill a Ziploc bag that I keep in the crisper drawer in the fridge) then candy a big bunch of them at once. Candying orange peel isn't difficult; it's one of those tasks that takes more time and patience than skill. The first step is to simmer the peels in water (just enough that they have room to move around) for 2 hours, until the white pith becomes waterlogged. Then drain the peels and scrape away the pith using a spoon (I sometimes have a knife on hand, too, in case there are stubborn bits). Then cut the peels into strips (or tear into bits, whatever you prefer) and begin the candying process.

 

Combine equal parts water and sugar to make a simple syrup. Make sure you have enough simple syrup so that you can submerge all of your peels in it. Add the peels and simmer over medium-low heat (stirring occasionally to prevent any sticking or burning) for about 40 minutes. Strain the peels out of the syrup (you can save the orange-infused syrup for making cocktails!) and place on a rack to dry.

 

My peels normally remain a bit sticky if I don't roll them in sugar, so today I am trying a little alteration to my usual process. First, I simmered the peels for about an hour in the syrup, instead of 40 minutes - I kept an eye on the pan and waited until the syrup was starting to get really reduced before I drained the peels. I laid them out a cooling rack that I'd placed over a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, as you see below:

 

 - that's a lot of peel!

Finally, I put the whole pan in a low oven (about 200 degrees Fahrenheit) for another two hours. I've just turned the oven off and left the door open, to continue to dry them in the warmth. I'll report back if this results in a candied peel that is easier to work with for baking.

Now, I've just got to dig out all the lebkuchen and pfeffernusse recipes I've been saving. I don't think pfeffernusse needs orange peel, but lebkuchen does! I haven't had a lebkuchen in so long; it was my favorite as a child. In fact, one year, I named two stuffed bears I received for Christmas "Bel" and "Kuchen." =)