Batik Easter Eggs. So much fun.

Tomorrow, Music Monday, but it will be a little late.....  Noonish...

Tuesday Tails, a Sort of, Maybe, Abstract Drawing, and Witchcraft with a Watermelon.

And God said, Let there be Light....

Ok, I tend to draw and then name.   What I did is started in the middle with that random little C like thing.  I find that this is very comforting, this sort of drawing, though I do like realism the best.  Abstract sketching does have aspects or perhaps, qualities, that reach a little deeper into the subconscious mind.

I drew this while avoiding interaction (viewing, While throwing verbal barbs- unlike what they were throwing at the fish) with a fishing show about Blue Fin Tuna fishermen on the East Coast.  I like the red crab guys a whole lot better.  Blue Fin Tuna is about to disappear off the radar of species.  I don't WANT to make any emotional attachments to the fishermen who are stripping them out of the oceans.

Sorry, that's just me.  My blog, my opinions. 

Tuesday Tails...well, you got all them yesterday when I went insane and post three - THREE - 3 bloody times!  I can't blame the heat anymore but I can blame Elonis!

This 15 minute segment is the first part of how to cut a watermelon into a beautiful Arty thinga that's also good to eat!  There are a ton of these on YouTube, and I am going to watch the carrot ones next.  Life has a lot to offer if you can keep your eyes peeled for it, eh?  (No pun intended) Have fun going through all of them.  These are almost better than the cat videos, just slower paced.   



It's not the heart one.  You have to figure that out yourself.  Happy Tuesday!

Visiting sister tomorrow, and getting directions for the wreath made from a book.  Stay tuned...  I'll make one with you, Paula, if you like.

Bits and pieces of my life...

I'll show you my favorite brushes first.  And no, I sure the heck am not knitting at the moment.  I'm hoping for something to light that fire, and soon!  Anyway, I introduce you to my hands down favorite brushes.

These are my go to brushes for ceramic painting and for watercolor.  I have big mops for the washes and for  clear glazing but they aren't very interesting at all.  The only other brushes that I use are Chinese Calligraphy brushes that I really love, and I use those for Sumi-E painting.  It looks spectacular on ceramics as well as on paper.

Then some favorite vegetables that no one even thinks of as vegetables.  But they taste like asparagus when properly prepared by boiling and then get even better when sautéed with green onions.

Nopalitos

Here's how to make them. 

Sorry about the white letters on black.  It's a guy, what can I say?  But he doesn't do the sissy thing about heavy gloves, etc.  If you get these young enough to eat them, they have few spines and you can see what you are up against the instant you see them.  And, he cooks and serves them the proper way, meaning the way I was taught to.  He doesn't call them Nopalitos like my Aunts, but many foods have regional names.  I think it means something like 'Little Paddles" or something.  The Opuntia cactus "leaves" are called paddles in the botanical literature. 

Anyway, boiled then fried with green onions, they are delicious!  We grew these. 

And the last thing for the day is these little darlings:

Yellow flowering mammillaria elongata

They are like the pinks, same cactus but are yellow flowering.  Make everything big when looking at these flowers so you can see how enchanting they are.

Today the big ceramic piece comes out of the kiln and home.  I am going to work on it the rest of the way, here, where I have an air brush to do some shading.

I wish you a very good week, with enough of the good things like friendship, laughter, smiles, sunrises and sunsets, and enough things to eat, and a roof over your head.  You know what I mean, all the important stuff.  Blessings!  And good night!  I have to be up early!  Well, relatively speaking.

Unicorn Poo, and it's raining..almost

I will hit you with a little hate mail to Facebook and Twitter, which have taken over almost half the content of the world, gluing things so tightly to their breasts that no one else can share them.  Watch out Facebook, your time is coming!

Ahem!

I wanted to share a beautiful sparklie cookie with you, in full and half living color.  This is a cookie named after the droppings of a fictional animal that every woman worth her princess dreams believes in. 

How to Make Your Own Unicorn Poo cookies When you get there click on the button that says, "View all steps on one page".   LINK   


Trust me, you can get lost on that page and that's probably planned that way.


These cookies must be seen to be believed.

Uni poo c/o of the above link which cannot be shared via the vanquished Blogger Button.  Vengeance will be ours with the inexorable passage of time! 

Isn't t lovely?  The recipe is on that page, too, but copy it soon before, like the mythical animal for which it is named, it vanishes into the mists, or the bog, or wherever it is that they all went.

Today I did nothing at all.   It was Glorious!  DD called and we talked until she got to the gnarly part of her commute, then DH and I played a little Escapist Computer Game, but mostly I just sat on the bed eating pretzels, or fruit, and reading Donna Leon's next to the last book, A Question of Belief .   It did rain enough to wet the side walks but only after the garden was watered.

If you want it to rain in SoCal, do one of three things:  Water the garden, wash the car, or wash the windows.  Drat!  But this puny rain will not be enough, so in two days time the sun will have sucked the stuff back into the 20% humidity of SoCal air, and we will be dragging hoses around saving the lives of the rooted ones.  I know, 1st World problems.

Please  don't think for a minute that I've forgotten the 95% of the rest of the world who live right at the edge of disaster, and face it everyday..

Good night.  I've got more blessings than I can count but it's everyone's right to bitch about the weather, right?  Off to count my blessings and look at that cookie page again. 

UPDATED: Cookie baking day has arrived!

Today is a flurry, and tomorrow is a race to the finish.. the rest of the week is easy!

I'm finishing up gifts that it got too late to send in time, but they will get there! 

There is just no good time in the year to have major surgery. lol

Where is that tiny violin when I need to play it?

Update: With DH's help, I found the special horoscope for today:

"It's a year of "tough choices". You'll shine as a decisive, sincere and devoted individual. Community involvement help you establish a new niche. Actions that "help your work" will be quite pleasurable,and vise versa. February is lucky for finance. March will end a hot pursuit with a satisfying outcome. Aries and Gemini people adore you. Your lucky numbers...blah blah blah.

Tough choices because I want another dog and DH doesn't?  Big Vet Bills.. possible sibling rivalry for poor Wolfie..all valid reasons to not do this.

A new niche as a dog walker at the animal shelter?

Actions that help my work means we get another dog?

February so far is only going to cost us money that I know of.

March and the " hot pursuit with a satisfying outcome" sounds like we are going to get another dog!

About who adores me, we'll have to let that unfold. I'm willing to wait. I don't actually KNOW any Aries people.

Let's Dance!  Is that Mistletoe?

Farmer's Markets and Good Bye to a Palm tree.....

Cynthia Nelson- whose blog, "A Taste of Home", has sparked a book and lots of great things for this wonderful cook - has been traveling to Farmer's Markets.  HERE is a blog entry about those special  Farmer's Markets in Barbados and Guyana.

Enjoy the lovely photos and all the interesting fruits and vegetables and even some enormous fish!

My hands are tired so there won't be any knitting for a few days, but this morning the neighbor had to cut the big palm tree down because it was leaning dangerously. I am glad that I made a video of it, swaying in the wind a short time after Jazzie died. It was very comforting to watch it over the intervening years. I'll see if there is a link to it.



Another tree goes out of my life. A wall is leaning and the palm lost it's support. This is known, geologically, as soil creep on a hillside. The whole top two feet or so are slowly dragged down, and the wall holding it has to be strong enough to withstand the force of gravity. We have skin creep, we humans. heehee

My Mother's Recipe Book

Sometimes I thumb through this book to find favorites from my childhood. Mother notes that she made "See's Candy Fudge" first in 1952 at the approximate cost of $1.64, and the recipe made around 5 pounds. By 1972, when she made another note, the cost had risen to $2.78, and by December of 1980, when she made a new note, the cost was $4.58.

Mother loved to make cakes, but time and energy ran out on her. I remember that she made "box cakes" after my little sister was born, except for one Red Velvet Cake for my birthday when I was, maybe, 15.

When the DDs were here in January, we went to a neighbor's garage sale. I bought a couple of book cases so that there would be more room for cook books. My collection is so SMALL! It hardly fills two shelves of that tall bookcase. Is it time to by more books? I get them used so as to have less "marital discord" over all my books.

Surprised Kitty video, and New Year's Day Cookies

This has been around the web for a long long time, but it's so cute that no one should wonder why cats/kittens are a woman's best friend.  This can make me happy for days and days.  I might not stop watching it for that long either!  Lovely way to start the new year.

Wolfie's tricks are pretty good, too.  He is a short dog, like any Shih Tzu, and he can be sitting on the floor next to my computer chair and the next second (literally) he's up in my lap, and that's 14 pounds of dog.  His back legs are like a bull dog's!  

Two days ago we went to see our friends who own a female purebred Shih Tzu from a shelter.  With the DNA record for the Wolf including so much Shih Tzu, all the humans sat around and compared notes and characteristics.   We took note of the way  both dogs lay flat out on the floor, go under the bed standing up, and try to lick lips if a person gets anywhere near their heads.  We are sure all this marks Wolfie as at least 30% Shih Tzu, as the DNA test says.  Wolfie's face isn't flat, but the base of his mouth is really wide, like our friends' little female.    And, the spectacular jumping can come from poodles but it's definitely Shih Tzu, too.

So, yesterday, as DH was digging in the garden, Wolfie was exercising his Siberian Husky and Saluki ancestry by digging a big, BIG hole under a Lime tree.  This must be how this little dog survived down in the "wilds" of the San Diego River.  He dug a den.  His paws are huge for his stature.  Wolfie certainly wants to dig a den in the bank in the back yard!  I love this little dog.   It's not the same intensity as my love for Jazzie, from whom I couldn't stand to be parted, but Wolfie is such a good and loving little guy, and is completely deserving of love, AND, he will get loads of love. 

I've knit almost up to the easiest part in the pattern again on Manly/Beastly, but am saving that part for when I can whip through it without thinking too much.  Or drinking too much.  lol  Drunken Cables!

UPDATED bit.......

Somehow I managed to lock myself out of the house this morning and spent a few hours in the rocking chair in the shade patio, communing with nature.   We knew we had a resident lizard on the wall but what we didn't know is that there's another one on the other side, and that the two of them meet at the top of the wall and scuffle!  I guess it's a tiny border war.  hehe.  The birds were all very active in the bushes again today, after DH pruned back the roses yesterday.  One of the hummingbirds came over to investigate me as I sat quietly musing about "Harmony" as the Navajo teach.   I felt very much in harmony out there amongst the reptilians and avian hordes. 

New Year's Day I baked some Dried Orange flavored Cranberry and Pecan cookies, using this RECIPE for a base and substituting Pecans for the unavailable Pistachios.   Since my experience taught me that slicing ice box cookies without chopping up the nuts and dried fruit was going to be a nightmare, I chopped them up.  Also made THESE for Christmas... and THESE for New Years Day.

The way I handled the dough for the cranberry orange cookies was slightly different, too.  I just rolled them without squaring them off, and chilled the rolls overnight.  Then I cut them in half - across the roll,  and rolled each halved portion through a pie dish with well beaten egg in it, and then some course sugar - cheap old Turbinado sugar, then cut the slices on the waxed paper that was used to chill the roll in.

The sugar and egg helps the sliced cookies hold together when they are baked, and parchment paper really helps in the clean up because egg and sugar can stick like super glue to a cookie sheet.

Oh are they ever good, and pretty easy, too. 

Happy Christmas Eve.

It's very simple to make peanut butter balls, so I thought I'd show you the only slightly hard part, and that is dipping them.

The cool down in the fridge for a few minutes gives you a very nice finish on the chocolate - you add a little shortening.  Then, next morning you can eat the mutants, and trim the bottoms of the rest a little bit, and put  them in the little cups. There are some Orange Cardamom cookies in the back that got decorated with left over melted chocolate.   At first I felt funny about putting less than perfect candies here for you to see, but did want to show that it's easy to do, and nothing to be afraid of.  And you still get to eat those Mutant ones!  Winwin, eh?

I hope you all have a good time making good things to give away and to eat.

Merry Christmas!