Shoes

Last weekend, I finally had to admit it: my favorite old leather sandals are kaput. Done for. Rolled up the curtain and joined the choir invisible.

I bought these sandals when we first moved to Jay, and I wore them every summer. I wore them throughout the summer when I was pregnant with Colden. I wore them to Texas numerous times, to Bead Fest Philly when I taught there, and to California. I've worn them out in the boat and the canoe, and I've worn them for trekking around New York City, shopping for beads.

I think I only paid around twenty bucks for them, so you can say I've gotten my money's worth. Only problem is that now that I know I have to replace them, I can't find anything as well-made in a similar style. Do a search for women's sandals on Amazon or Zappos, and all I get are these sky-high platform crappy sandals that look more suited for a ten minute strut on the catwalk than a walk in the woods.

However. Last fall, I bought a pair of Merrells loafers from a store up in Malone, and I am absolutely in love with them. I did a little search on the Merrells website and found these beauties:

And while they're a little sportier than I'd like, I think they'll work just fine. Not sure if I'll be able to just slip into them the way I could slip into my old pair.

When I told Tom that I wanted to replace my old sandals with a pair of Merrells, he said, "Expensive. Those are top-of-the-line, you know." Of course, I know they're top-of-the-line. I'm sure if I spent another twenty bucks on a pair of sandals, I'm most likely not going to get the same kind of mileage out of them. So I'd rather spend a little extra money and have a pair that I can rely on, year after year.

Wonder what new adventures my new sandals will have in store for me...?

Sour Dough Starter

Because I was soooo happy with my homemade English muffins, I decided that the next thing I want to try is to make my own sourdough starter. Years ago, when I worked in non-profit environmental management, someone gave me a wonderful sourdough starter in a gallon-size plastic bag. We used it for a few years before it got trashed when we moved from Lake Placid to Jay, but sourdough bread is still some of my favorite bread.

The book that contained the recipe for the English muffins has a fabulous section on breads and bread dishes, and the directions for sourdough starter looked so easy! So, off I went, measuring the temperature of the water and measuring out the yeast and flour.

I put everything in a bowl and covered it with plastic wrap, just like the directions said. As to putting it in a mildly warm (about 74 degrees F) place, that was kinda hard, since we don't use air conditioning in this house, and the whole place is about 85 degrees right now.

I guess I should have read those directions a little more carefully, since it specified a two quart glass dish. I walked away for about forty five minutes and came back to discover THIS.

The blob! The Sourdough Starter That Ate Jay! Whatever it was, the stuff just totally took off and was pouring out the bowl, as I watched! I guess the yeast is good!

I scooped out as much as I could from off of the plastic wrap (I hate that stuff - whoever invented it should be killed) and put it in a much bigger, deeper glass bowl. I stuck it in a darker, hopefully cooler, part of the kitchen, where it still sits, bubbling and frothing its little heart out.

I can't believe I'm admitting this, but I'm getting so pumped to try my hand at baked goods, I've started scouring websites like Pampered Chef and Amazon, looking for baking stones and springform tart pans. I've read the recipes for breads in this cookbook so many times, I feel like I've got them memorized.

And just in case anyone is wondering which book I'm using, it's this one:

This was one of the first vegetarian cookbooks I bought when I decided to go totally veg. It's a wonderful book, with loads of easy (and not so easy) recipes. Diana Shaw's Essential Vegetarian Cookbook has been a fabulous friend to me these last ten years. I used many of the recipes when I was pregnant with Colden, and I think what I like best about it is that the ingredients she calls for in this book are things that I keep around the house pretty much all the time.

So, now I just need to be patient for another four or five days while the sourdough starter starts, and then this weekend, I'll be dipping into it to make a few loaves of our own crusty sourdough bread!

English Muffins

There are really three things I want to write about here, but since that would make for one long-ass blog, I'll break them up.

The first is my English muffins. Divine!

I used whole wheat pastry flour from Essex Farm mixed with a little of the unbleached all-purpose we have leftover from our last ginormous bag. Moistened with yogurt from the farm and baked on a bed of stone-ground cornmeal, also from Essex Farm.

The dough came together pretty easy. I put it in a bowl and let it rise, just like the recipe directed me.

Then I rolled it out with my beloved wooden rolling pin, and Colden had a BLAST helping me cut the muffins out with a measuring cup/muffin cutter.

Look at that kid go!

We baked them according to the recipe, but discovered that our oven bakes at a hotter 400 degrees F than other ovens, so next weekend, I'll remember not to bake them for quite as long.

We could barely wait to try them as soon as they were out of the oven. I smeared mine with some of my friend Andrea's homemade, organic berry jam. It was like Heaven on a plate!

Tom and his fishing buddy enjoyed them, too, when they took a handful of them to make breakfast sandwiches before they went out on the lakes this weekend.

This weekend was insane. I kept Colden with me all day Friday, and we ran errands in town. Friday evening, Colden went fishing up at Lake Stevens with Tom and Claude and had SUCH a good time. Saturday was kind of a bummer for me, as I woke up with my first real ulcer attack in over a year and a half. I chugged down a glass or two of our pasteurized farm milk, and that cured me, so I figured it's just my ulcer acting up again. Drat.

Saturday night, I cooked a beautiful mushroom-goat cheese-Swiss chard tart and brought it over to Mona's house for a potluck and bonfire. Wow, was that fun! Hung out with some nice folks, had some amazing food, and dragged Colden and his little friends all over God's green Earth in the wagon that Mona had for the kids.

Sunday morning, Colden and I went into Lake Placid to get some more Pull-Ups. On Saturday, we had kind of a rough potty training day. We went through every single last clean pair of underwear, shorts, and pants that we own for Colden. Sunday morning, I woke up with another ulcer attack and though, you know what? I'm not doing this for the rest of the weekend. So there!

We stopped at Starbucks on Sunday morning, and the warm hot chocolate I bought instantly quelled the ulcer attack. Knock on wood, nothing today, so I'm hoping I've nipped it in the bud.

Sunday night, we went fishing again up at Lake Stevens. Sorta got skunked, since we only landed one fish. They just weren't biting. There was a supremely unpleasant family up there at the same time we were. One of the sons (about sixteen years old) yelled to his father across the (very tiny) lake (more like a pond, actually) that he needed some help with his fishing line. The father yelled back, "No way, no! I am not going to help you!" I don't know what was going on there, but we half expected to see NJ plates on their big truck. (Sorry, nothing against NJ folks. I grew up there, you know. It was folks like this that give the state a bad name amongst the locals up here!)

After fishing, we went to the Whitebrook Dairy Bar where we treated ourselves to some yummy soft serve ice cream. Colden had his cup finished before we even got home!

Monday morning, while Tom and Claude made one last trip around to go fishing before Claude went home, Colden and I headed over to the Lake Everest (dammed-up river) beach with some friends for a play date. Just goes to show how long it's been since I've been at the beach: I didn't bring a chair, or a towel, or a change of clothes for the kid. Colden and his two friends had such a BLAST in the water - they couldn't actually go in swimming, since the levels were down because of work going on at the dam further downstream -  but they did discover that they could float their toys in the fast current until they just floated out of sight!

I quelled some of the crying by promising that Tom would look for the toys during one of this future fishing trips at the dam.

So today, it is disgustingly hot - like August - and we're under a severe thunderstorm and tornado warning until 9 p.m. tonight. This should be fun.

Obstacles

Well, maybe Ganesh knows something that I don't.

This morning, I got my latest order from Sparkle Spot Bead Shop down in Florida, which included three spools of their marvelous colored Fireline (squee!) and a sheet of Lacy's self-adhesive design paper.

The self-adhesive design paper is really quite something. You can draw on it or put it in a copier or put it in a printer and print your designs directly onto it, then remove the backing and adhere it to a piece of Lacy's Stiff Stuff. (Or, in my case, a piece of Nicole's BeadBacking, which I much prefer to the Stiff Stuff any day!)

My idea for the self-adhesive design paper was to take some of the amazing and awesome artwork of my friend Susan Tompkins and turn it into bead embroidered pendants.

I printed a test page just to make sure that I knew which way my printer was oriented, and discovered that my printer was not printing any of the vibrant reds in the pictures!

So I cleaned the print heads. I replaced the magenta cartridge. I cleaned the print heads again. I contacted Brother customer service and was told that I need to take my printer to a service center. Of course, the nearest service center is Williston, Vermont.

I don't think traveling to Vermont, paying $28 for a ferry ride and then shelling out x number of dollars to have a $50 printer repaired is a wise move at this time. I hate to say it, but I think this printer is bound for the thrift shop, and I'll shell out $60 for a new one at Staples next week.

I'm frustrated, to say the least, that I'll have to put off this particular project, but maybe that's a good thing. I've got three more projects sitting on my table right now: my challenge piece for the Oct/Nov issue of Beadwork magazine (which needs to find its merry way to the Loveland office before June 12); a piece I've been tossing around in my head made from Twins and two-holed freshwater pearls that I picked up in Tucson; and not least of all, my piece for the Battle of the BeadSmith!

I did a little experiment for my Battle piece, and I'm pleased to say that with a bit of tinkering, I should be able to pull this one off. My technique for this needs to be flawless, so I'm a little nervous about that. I've never been particularly good at this technique, but I'm determined. Even if it means having to wear Band-Aids on my fingers for the next few weeks because of all the cuts I'll give myself by tugging on the Fireline, I'm going to do it.

That said, I took a few minutes last night before dinner to finish assembling this piece:

There are all those Czech glass stones that I've bezeled! Connected with vintage Czech glass pearls and finished with a vintage Vermeil clasp from A Grain of Sand. I have absolutely no idea where I'm going to be able to wear this, but a friend on Facebook suggested to a potluck dinner and bonfire tomorrow night. Ha!

Tom and his friend Claude have taken Colden fishing for a little while, so I am enjoying some veg-out time on the computer and catching up with things.

Warning: Childhood Rant

A couple of days ago while I was having my lunch, I was browsing some of the stupid articles on Yahoo. One that caught my eye was, "Eight Skills Your Child Should Have Before Kindergarten".

And I thought, really? Aside from being able to go to the bathroom by themselves, what skills does a kid need for kindergarten?

Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Colden goes to preschool now. At his preschool, they have a wonderful routine: the morning starts with some outside play (unless it's bitterly cold or pouring rain), and then they have a welcome circle where they sing songs and dance and say good morning to each other. After that, it's time for a little free play where they can pull out the toys, or they have an activity. (Art, painting, bread making, pizza making, etc.) Then they have a snack and a story, and then more outdoor play. If the kids are staying a full day, then they go inside and help serve up a good lunch, and then it's time for another story and some time to rest and/or nap. After the nap, it's back outside for some more outdoor play, weather permitting, and then it's time for parents to come pick up.

Since he's begun this program, even just a few days a week, he's learned to tell his left from his right. He can use the bathroom (mostly) without help. He learns a new song practically every day, and he sings loud and proud when we're in the car or making dinner or setting the table. He's learned that trees can be turned into wood and furniture, or burned for heat. He's learned that plastics are made from oil. He's learned an awful lot by just running around outside with his friends, playing in the dirt, and singing songs.

I should mention that the food being served is REAL food. Things like eggs and potatoes, oatmeal (not instant processed from a package), fruit, pasta and veggies, veggie sticks, vegetable soup with kid-made bread. That kind of stuff. No mac and cheese from a box, no hot dogs, no french fries.

But I digress. Back to their "skills".

This article stated that before they start kindergarten, kids should know how to carry a tray loaded with lunch items like milk box and eating utensils; using glue; and being able to draw shapes. It stated that "the days of play based learning and naps are over, replaced by desk work".

For real? Are you kidding me?

When I was in kindergarten, we didn't have desks. Hell, we only had one table in the whole classroom, and it was only for art projects. We ran around. We sang songs. We played with Light Brights and read books. (Well, I read books, because I knew how to read at the tender age of four, according to my parents.) We ran around outside on the jungle gym and played kickball.

We didn't have work sheets or homework. We rarely, if ever, did anything that looked like math. We were in KINDERGARTEN, for crying out loud!

What ever happened to letting kids be kids? Are we really going to impose our crazy adult-competitive-world-insanity on our children now?!

This kind of thing makes me just chafe at the idea of sending my kid to a kindergarten where he'll be expected to sit at a desk for six hours a day. It makes me want to enroll him instead in a Waldorf-based program, where the kids don't have to sit and look at books all day - unless they want to - and instead learn and develop their intellectual capacity by DOING things and interacting with the world around them.

I can't help but wonder if all this ADHD stuff is the direct result of trying to turn our kids into little grown ups. Hell, even *I* can't stay focused some days. (Hence this second blog post in one morning, ahem.) Does that mean I need to be drugged up so that I can turn into some screen-gazing zombie all day? I think not.

Little kids are full of energy. They need to run around and play and experience things - that's how little kids learn. Little kids do not learn when you stick a book under their nose and tell them to read. Some grown ups don't even learn that way!

And you wonder why kids have behavior problems? We're trying to turn them into something that they're not. We're crushing their spirits.

And quite frankly, if my kid can't draw or carry a tray before he gets to kindergarten, well, that's just fine with me.

Battle of the Beadsmith

So, where has this week gone? I have absolutely no idea. One of Tom's college buddies is coming up for the long weekend for fishing, and Tom is in panic mode once again about the state of the house. It's not that bad, even though the bathroom is in definite need of a little cleaning, and I have to do some straightening up in the finished basement.

But before that, there are three things that I need to finish writing for work, and my brain is completely backfiring on me. Completely. I'm hoping that if I do a quick blog (or two) over here that the words will kick my brain into gear and I can finish what I need to before my "vacation" next week.

A few weeks ago, I woke up one morning to discover that I had been invited to participate in the Battle of the Beadsmith on Facebook. I had some reservations at first about joining the competition, but after a much-needed talk with a good friend (you know who you are), I realized that it was probably just my hormones and my insecurities getting the better of me, and I decided to join the fray.

The competition works by elimination. Each artist who entered has been paired up with another artist for the initial round, starting July 10th. Votes will be cast, and one artist will be eliminated from each pair. The remaining artists will be paired up, more voting, and more eliminations, etc., until someone is chosen the winner.

Truthfully, I'm not planning on making it past the first round (!), but last night, I finally had the perfect idea for my competition piece. And I need to get started on it. Now. I can't go into details, I can't show you any previews, but let's just say that this is going to be something that is a little bit new for me. It definitely pushes the envelope when it comes to my beadwork, but I'm very excited about the possibility!

The only danger in this is that if I can't make this piece work, I'm going to be stuck. So I need to get playing with the ideas and the components NOW to see what works and what doesn't. June is an awfully short month, when you're at the end of May.

Steven Weiss, the organizer of this amazing collection of talented beaders, has been playing with the photos of our beadwork that he's been sharing with the group. I was totally delighted yesterday to see what he did with my Azteca collar!

Gotta love those iPhone apps, eh?

What else is on the agenda for today? A lot. Quality time with the camera, quality time with Colden, trying to fit in a little bit of beading time, and a lot of blogging and writing for today. Next week is going to be all about the beads, for sure. I've got some tutorials I want to get finished up and into my Etsy shop, including the eBook!

Completion of the eBook was delayed yesterday, for one reason. Okay, well, twelve reasons.

I finally figured out how to create a netted beaded bezel that wasn't completely ugly. And they worked up so quick (about fifteen minutes each) and the colors were so much fun that I just couldn't help myself. The pieces have all been joined, except for the last one that is to be used as a drop, and then a quick right-angle weave strap to attach the vintage Vermeil clasp, and I've got a necklace that looks like a combination of Sabine Lippert and Mikki Ferrugiaro! No idea where I'll ever get to wear this beauty, but boy, I better find someplace. Even if it's just to the farm to pick up our food this weekend.

What's for dinner?

Our great experiment with weaning ourselves off of grocery store food continues. We've had to make a couple of trips to the store in the last couple of weeks, because really, I can't just feed my family sorrel, bread, and potatoes all week. But I am getting some great inspirations for cooking dinner using what we have on hand, and not going to the store specifically for one or two items.

Tonight's dinner was probably the best idea that I've stolen from a cookbook in a long time: a potato, red pepper, and Gruyere tart, with a side of leftover cucumber salad that has been jazzed up with a handful of fresh pea shoots.

The idea for the tart wasn't entirely my own. I'm a huge fan of author and cook Mollie Katzen, and in one of the many cookbooks by her that I own, there's a recipe for a potato, red pepper, and Gruyere tart. I changed the recipe a little bit, using the Russet potatoes that we got from the CSA instead of red new potatoes, and instead of a tart crust, I used a loaf of bread that Tom made over the weekend.

Tom has been experimenting with the many flours and grains that we have available to us through the CSA, and this one came out a bit...flat. Literally. Instead of poufing up into a nice, fluffy loaf, it came out flat and cracked. But no worries! I sliced off the top bit, hollowing it out a bit. I put the potato slices and red pepper slices in a deep skillet and boiled them for about twenty minutes in vegetable broth. Then I removed them with a slotted spoon, piled them on top of the bread, covered it with waaaaaay too much Gruyere, and baked it for ten minutes until that cheese got so gooey and melty, I thought I was going to swoon. Delicious!

I stretched out the leftover cucumber salad from last night with a big handful of the fresh pea shoots, also from the CSA. Cucumbers, tomatoes, yellow peppers, and just a tiny hint of oil and vinegar made this absolutely the most refreshing part of last night's dinner.

And of course, when I told Colden and Tom that dinner was ready, I was told by my four year old, "No, that's okay, Mommy, you go ahead - me and Daddy are too busy, gardenin'!" So, once again, I am eating dinner alone while the boys run around outside.

To be fair, it was an exceedingly beautiful day today. Here is Moose, our very own canine solar collector:

Had a wonderful chat with a good friend tonight who I miss very, very much, and had an extremely productive day at "work". If you can call it that. It was a good day.

How to Bezel Practically Anything

That's the name of an eBook I'm finishing up this weekend, getting ready to double check my instructions and put it in PDF format for downloading in my Etsy shop. And even though I covered making beaded bezels in peyote stitch, brick stitch, herringbone stitch, right-angle weave, and bead embroidery, I could NOT for the life of me figure out how to make a beaded bezel using netting stitch that wasn't completely fugly.

Thankfully, I figured it out, just in time to get up and make dinner. (It figures, right?) But I did it, and I can't show you a picture just yet, but no worries, it should be up and ready before next week!

Lots of blogging to do this week, and newsletter-making, and Hootsuiteing, in preparation for my vacation next week. Going to take a week off, focus on my beadwork, write up some new tutorials, get ready for my farmer's market season, and prepare for my upcoming trip to NYC to see the fab duo of Betcey Ventrella and Nikia Angel! I got to meet up with both of these amazingly talented ladies in Tucson back in February, and I can't wait to spend a weekend beading with them in NYC in June!

Lots more to write about, but it'll have to wait for later...so, until then, bead happy, friends! It's a beautiful day!

Summer Porch

Since we're pretty much past the nights of freezing temperatures (except for the odd frost warning here and there), Tom decided that today was the day to put all the plants back on the porch for the summer.

You can see why we love it out here. This is where we eat most of our meals and do our socializing in the warmer months. It's like a little mini jungle with all the lush greenery, and the furniture is actually quite comfortable. The wrought iron bench and table is where I like to set up shop on a warm summer day, with the ceiling fan spinning in lazy circles above my head to keep the air moving.

The view of the Jay Range from the big window to the south is almost distracting some days. All you can see is big, green mountains and blue sky!

Some friends gave us this big, antique-looking cabinet where we keep our collection of natural artifacts (sticks, rocks, an old paper wasp nest) and the egg collecting baskets. We also keep the bird seed in a big tin bucket on the bottom shelf.

Late at night during the summer, if Tom and I can stay awake, we move this candle holder to the metal table and light a candle while we listen to the sounds of a summer night. This is, I think, the third one of these that we've purchased since we moved to the Adirondacks back in 1999. The first two fell victim to unabashed doggy joy, first with Rosie, then with Moose. By the time the second one broke, the Mexican store in Saranac Lake where tom bought it had closed, and I don't remember where he found the replacement.

We've watched some crazy storms from that back porch in the last few years. When Colden was just six or seven months old, we watched a storm blow through that got so bad, we decided to take refuge in the basement until it was over. I remember when we came back upstairs, we discovered that the wind had been so strong that it knocked over the wood pile under the pole barn, and the metal pole of our clothes hanger was bent in half.

So, if you're looking for me this summer, chances are you'll find me out here on my back porch, most likely with my beads, my computer, and a big, cold drink.

After talking to a couple of folks this week, we seem to have come to a solution for the raw dairy problem. Tom got a gallon of raw milk from the CSA yesterday, and tonight or tomorrow, we're going to pasteurize it ourselves before we give it to Colden. I know the chances that we might actually get sick from the raw dairy are very slim, but still, it's a risk that I just can't justify.