Art Journaling

 

I adore art journals. I have many blank books just waiting for me to fill up the pages only to remain empty. I finally decided to devote some time to it. I chose a regular spiral bound artist’s sketchbook for my first one (so I don’t “ruin” it). I am trying to overcome my resistance to creating the “perfect” page and started in the middle of the book, took a Sharpie and just started drawing (after consulting with myself as to what I might want to draw). I love flowers, so I decided to draw some fantasy flowers. I would draw a couple and then go do something else. And come back later and add more.

For this project it was important for me to focus on the process, not worry about the finished product. As a matter of fact, my goal was to “draw one shitty page.” I’m trying to practice baby steps and lowering my expectations (to overcome my blocks).

Overall, it was fun and I want to explore flowers more but I think my next page is going to be about animals. I’m checking out my National Geographics as I write this and for this page my goal will be to draw a bad interpretation of my inspiration.

It’s better to set the bar low so that I will at least do something rather than do nothing at all. My only expectation is forward movement.

Knitted Cowl

I made this cowl out of some cotton yarn I found at the thrift store. It is the perfect complement for a denim jackt. I did a lace bobble edging and then knit the body up in a seed stitch so that it was reversible.

To get the second edging right, I had to knit it separately and then kitchener stitch it on. Now, I’m not a big fan of the kitchener stitch, I would much rather do a three needle bind off. But once I got into the grove of it, it wasn’t so bad.

 

Sweet Potato Ravioli and stocking up

Today I spent my Labor Day laboring away in my kitchen. I didn’t really mind. I like good, homemade food and I like cooking so I decided to stock up my freezer.

First off, I decided to make sweet potato ravioli. I had cooked up two sweet potatoes (just stuck them in the crock pot) for sweet potato enchiladas (yum) and only used one so I decided to use the second one for ravioli filling. I mashed up the sweet potatoes (I probably had about a cup and a half ), added about 2/3 cup ricotta, a 1/2 cup parmesan cheese and about 1/3 cup chopped walnuts.

I used the pasta recipe that came with my ravioli mold (well worth the $15 I spent on it) and made 48 ravioli which are now sitting in my freezer.

Couple of hints for on making ravioli – first off, get the mold if you intend to make it more than once. I mean, look how pretty those little puffs of pasta are. Plus, you don’t waste so much dough. My first try at ravioli was hilarious – they were all wonky and the dough to filling ratio was way off.

 Second, make sure that you use water or egg to seal your edges. I’ve had ravioli filling spill out when cooking and water downed ravioli is not the best.

Inevitably I have pasta dough left over. I hate waste so I roll it out and take my pizza cutter and slice it up into misshapen noodles. Then I set them out on a baking rack and let them dry overnight. Homemade pasta is always good.

I actually enjoy these days when I stock up my pantry/freezer. I rarely buy prepared foods. I usually cook from scratch breakfast, lunch (mostly leftovers) and dinner. It’s taken me about a year to really get into my cooking grove, but it has paid off tremendously. And except for labor intensive stuff like ravioli, most of my meals do not take a lot of time. I’m a working mom and with a little thought, some handy made-ahead meals and a selection of well-loved recipes, it takes me just as much time to make dinner as it would to run to the fast food joint and buy it. While I have spent a lot of money on groceries, careful planning and cooking from ingredients I have on hand has kept my food bill down.

After I made ravioli, I went outside and got some basil from my basil bush and made a batch of pesto. One of the secrets to good pesto is to toast your pine nuts. Then I used my small ice cream scoop (it’s about an inch wide – it works great for filling the ravioli also) and scooped the pesto onto a baking sheet lined with freezer paper and popped it into the freezer also. Once my little pesto balls were frozen, I put them into a plastic freezer zip lock bag.  The trick to getting all the air out is to put a straw into the bag and close it up to the straw then suck as much air out as you can. Quickly pull out the straw and finish closing the bag.

My final project was to make some peach muffins for my son’s breakfast.

All together a pretty productive day!

Crafty Guys

Crafting is not a female only sport. There are many guys out there who are creative and crafty – whether it’s rebuilding an old mustang or making sculpture from junk. Ben Venom happens to be a quilter who uses rock t-shirts as his medium and incorporates lyrics from his favorite and obscure rock and punk rock songs.

His stuff is incredible – check it out.

 

Books – Two DIY Gems

I found two great DIY books – the first is Handmade Rugs from Practically Anything by Jean Ray Laury and Joyce Aiken.

For some reason I have been thinking about rugs. I don’t know why. This book has all sorts techniques but is light on instruction, which is OK, because there is nothing in here that if you have dabbled in the needlearts, you couldn’t figure out for yourself.

One of the rugs was a hoop rug, which is reminiscent of the hula hoop rugs you may have seen on Pinterest. Actually this might be the orgin of that rug because this book was written way back when – in the 70′s.

The second books is The Yestermorrow Clothes Book (again another 70′s classic), that goes over ways to refashion/update secondhand clothing.

Funny because now the 70′s is considered vintage.

Now I’ve got some t-shirts and jeans to cut up to make some rugs.

 

 

Redefining our Homes

Saturday I took a trip down to Huntsville, Texas, to visit Pheonix Commotion, Dan Phillips construction company that specializes in building small homes from reclaimed and leftover building materials (which I mentioned in a previous post). Basically stuff that was either headed for the dumpster because of  botched orders (“Oh, you wanted 10 ft boards, not 8 ft boards), leftover inventory or just general waste (bottle caps, wine corks, bone).

I like Dan’s philosophy in making use of these materials to build housing for artists and single moms. The construction industry has tons of waste and using it keeps it out of the landfill and costs down. Not to mention that many new building materials are treated with chemicals that out gas and cause health issues for many people. Reclaimed or recycled materials (like using old barn wood or salvaging stuff from buildings that will be torn down) don’t have that problem because they are old enough that the chemicals have already leached out.

On the tour ($10 per person – very reasonable) we got to see the inside of only 3 of the houses (as the other’s are private residences) – the Bone House, the Tree House and I don’t know if the third house had a name but the front fencing had wine bottles as part of the fence, so I’ll call it the Wine House.

Some of these homes had artist’s studios with them as separate buildings. Personally, I could never live in any of the houses. I found them too confining and with the multitude of patterns on practically every surface, too busy. I like a cleaner aesthetic. Also, I want a flat counter top surface (the counters in the bone house where done in a bone mosaic – as in actual bone). I can’t imagine trying to cut something and having my cutting board bouncing all over the place. Plus keeping it clean would not be fun. The floor in that kitchen was absolutely beautiful but impractical, from a cleaning standpoint, in my opinion. 

I found the artist’s studios much more to my liking, which were mostly one big rectangle with a bathroom. I’m thinking I need about 800 square feet and properly planned will seem spacious and be very comfortable. And most important – paid for. I don’t plan on using bottle caps for flooring (I’m going to go with a stained cement – way cheaper and less time-consuming) but I will be looking in unusual places for my materials rather than hitting up the big box stores.  

It’ll be at least a year before I can even move and probably longer than that before I get another house as I decide on where I eventually want to settle down. Being an empty-nester will free me to go anywhere I want so I am going to explore my options. But Dan’s opened my eyes to lots of options so that when I am ready to build or remodel, I can do it without taking on a mortgage and customized just for me as long as I am willing to put in some time sourcing cheap/free materials and doing some of the jobs.

Today in Health and Fashion

Came across two very interesting articles today.  This one is about fashion and recycling clothes. Apparently a machine/sorter is in the works that would be able to take those discarded clothes you either throw away or give to charity and sort them by fiber so that they can be shredded and rewoven into new fabric. The article also gives some very good statistics about the inherent waste in the fashion industry.

Here’s my question – why aren’t more people trying to embrace sustainability? From where I am sitting, this is a problem that is just waiting for some creativity and innovation. New jobs, cleaner communities, healthier workers, I mean why are people fighting this? It is so ripe with opportunity. We have the technology to put men (and women) in space, why can’t we figure out a viable economic solution to the problems that are rampant in the fashion industry? Or in any unsustainable industry. for that matter.

Thanks to facebook, I saw another article today about the link between heart disease and our current diet. Read it here. I’ve overhauled my diet a lot over the past year. I rarely eat processed food. Most of my food is fresh and homemade (the closest I come to process food is my yogurt – although I must confess to a rather long stretch of eating Amy’s Broccoli and Cheese pot pies – YUM). I’m enjoying my food, I’m enjoying cooking my food and I don’t crave sweets and I even use less salt (I was a saltaholic). For me a treat is fresh, seasonal fruit or adding dates to my morning oatmeal. Anyway, it will be interesting to see in the coming years how this all plays out with big agribusiness.