Washboard Musician

At the Saturday Farmer’s Market. See bigger here.

Winter Berries

At the Farmer’s Market. See it bigger here.

Typographic Inconsistency

I like movies. I like type. I like this article about typographic use and misuse in movies.

I definitely wouldn’t say that I am as knowledgable about typography as the author, Mark Simonson, but he has a BIT more experience than I. I wish I were though, so that I could pick out typographic inconsistencies in movies the way The Husband picks out aviation inconsistencies. It’s a fun game.

The article talks about movies using fonts out of place, mostly in movies set in a specific time period, using fonts that didn’t exist yet. {Note to self: start filing dates that fonts were released in the ‘ol mental file cabinet} It’s actually sort of amazing that Hollywood often doesn’t do their research when using typefaces within the film worlds they are creating, although I can’t say it is surprising.

It’s typography geekdom at its finest, and I love it. It adds more knowledge to my base, that’s for sure. And on top of that, there is also another article by Mr. Simonson, The Scourge Of Arial. Just the other day I was privvy to someone saying, “Helvetica and Arial are pretty much the same, right?” Riiiigggght.

HZ10 – Robots

It’s finally here. The long awaited, much anticipated, many times mentioned, but never fully revealed, Howiezine – Robots. My edition finally came, lovingly bound, packaged and shipped from the Howie editor, Pad Thai, and now I can finally show you. Finally. I have been waiting for AGES, I tell you.

This was my first experience participating in this project, and I hope to do it again. Not only is it so amazing to be a part of a group of talented, passionate designers, coming together to communicate their perspective on an idea, independently, but at the end each participant receives a hand crafted book containing each page, bound in a different, fun way each time. I will treasure this little book. There is some truly amazing work inside. It is like a slice of designer heaven for me. Just awesome.

Here is my 2 page spread that I did for the zine. See it bigger here.

I started with a sketch study of the robot, building on a concept of a computer monitor built into a robot taking over the world {complete with the Mac spinning rainbow of death}. Once I had him where I wanted him, I scanned him and illustrated him in photoshop, keeping the hand sketchy outlines. Then I built the image with other scanned pieces, graph paper, “project documents”, a drawing I did of rockets and clouds, and a couple of pieces of hand rendered type, adding texture elements along the way. Once the illustration was done, I brought the piece into InDesign and placed a couple of areas of text, which  mostly consists of technical jargon related to AI {Artificial Intelligence}

Amber Waves Of Grain

Potholders, and Cookies, and Minestrone Soup

Small comforts.

The WIP potholders, still sans binding. But I bought some brown binding tape yesterday that will look nice, I just need to figure out how to sew it on. I have already tried, and resorted to the stich ripper outer once. There is some fabric from Leslie in Japan, and some from Nicolette in The Netherlands. They are my worldly potholders.

The cookies I baked in a fit of cookie-craving. They are Alton Brown’s The Chewy recipe, and if you like your chocolate chip cookies chewy, like I do, this is hands down the best recipe for them. EVER. If you like your chocolate chip cookies crisp or cakey, I can’t help you, because that’s just plain wrong. But Alton has recipes for those too. I like to freeze the finished cookies, then warm a few at a time in the toaster oven for fresh baked cookie taste. They last months in the freezer like this, if you can stand to not eat the whole lot of them all at once, and I actually find that doing this helps me to not eat them all at once with the excuse that they will just get old and hard, since I know they will last.

Chewy!

2 sticks unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
Hardware:
Ice cream scooper (#20 disher, to be exact)
Parchment paper
Baking sheets
Mixer

Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom medium saucepan over low heat. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside.

Pour the melted butter in the mixer’s work bowl. Add the sugar and brown sugar. Cream the butter and sugars on medium speed. Add the egg, yolk, 2 tablespoons milk and vanilla extract and mix until well combined. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Chill the dough, then scoop onto parchment-lined baking sheets, 6 cookies per sheet. Bake for 14 minutes or until golden brown, checking the cookies after 5 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet for even browning. Cool completely and store in an airtight container.

The minestrone soup. This. This, my friends, was comfort in a bowl. This is a new comfort food in my collection of recipes, and one that I think will need to be made more often, joining the ranks of baked macaroni and cheese, tuna casserole, meatloaf, and many, many others. This fall, which isn’t really quite fall yet, was already fitting easily into Stefani’s season of soup, before she even decided to start it, so although I have other very favorite soup recipes that I have made countless times, other amazing soups that I have already made THIS MONTH, this minestrone is my most recent soup, my newest favorite soup, my soup for Stefani.

I adapted this recipe from Giada De Laurentiis, and only in that I increased each ingredient between 70 to 100%, and used a combination of vegetable and chicken broth rather than beef. I even purchased a hunk of the real thing, Parmigiano Reggiano, for the first time in my life, and my goodness, it is wonderful. Eat a couple of hunks of the cheese straight away while you cook this soup.

The greatest thing about this soup is that it calls to puree some of the beans with some of the broth, which thickens the finished soup. So, rather than the lame, runny minestrone soups that I have tried and been unimpressed with in American restaurants many times over, this soup has a silky, rustic texture. Although it is not as good as the {best soup in the whole world ever} minestrone that we had in Florence at Trattoria Mossacce, it is by far the best minestrone that I have had on American soil, and it definitely reminds me of Tuscany, especially when enjoyed with a bottle of Chianti. And that makes me happy.

Winter Minestrone

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, peeled, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
3 ounces thinly sliced pancetta, coarsely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound Swiss chard, stems trimmed, leaves coarsely chopped
1 russet potato, peeled, cubed
1 (14 1/2-ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 fresh rosemary sprig
1 (15-ounce) can cannellini beans, drained, rinsed
2 (14-ounce) cans low-sodium beef broth
1 ounce piece Parmesan cheese rind
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves
Salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a heavy large pot over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, celery, pancetta, and garlic. Saute until the onion is translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the Swiss chard and potato; saute for 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes and rosemary sprig. Simmer until the chard is wilted and the tomatoes break down, about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, blend 3/4 cup of the beans with 1/4 cup of the broth in a processor until almost smooth. Add the pureed bean mixture, remaining broth, and Parmesan cheese rind to the vegetable mixture. Simmer until the potato pieces are tender, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes. Stir in the whole beans and parsley. Simmer until the beans are heated through and the soup is thick, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Discard Parmesan rind and rosemary sprig (the leaves will have fallen off of the stem.)

Ladle the soup into bowls and serve.

All’s Quiet

Tensions are high in this household. Anxiety, stress. I had wanted to keep all of this to myself, waiting until the good news came that someone was buying our house to post all about it. I even have half an entry written, which may be jinxing the whole thing and perhaps I should delete it out of superstition.

But, people, this selling your house thing? It is so incredibly difficult. It takes all the fun and excitement out of buying a new house. It has me tied up in anxious knots, feeling nauseous half the day, keeping me up half the night, at one moment hopeful, at another, full of negativity and distress. Both The Husband and I are irritable all the time, losing our shit over the littlest things, because we are so worried about selling this house, avoiding the dire two mortgage situation that scares the living hell out of us, because even though technically, we can handle it, we don’t feel comfortable with it AT ALL. And the only thing we can do to make each other feel any better, is hold hands.

We spend each weekend thinking about, preparing for, and having open houses. Last week, we had 4 groups come. Which seemed good. Only one of them seemed interested, yet she was very interested. So the hope filled us up. I laid awake imagining what it would be like, to have her call us up, and make an offer. For us to be on the opposite side of the experience that we have been in twice in our lives. She came back the next day to see it again with her dad. That was a week ago. We haven’t heard from them since.

This weekend, noone came. We cleaned, we opened the door, we put out the signs, and we waited, and noone came.

I know what you’re going to say, that it is pointless to be so worried. That everything will work out. Everyone has said that, and I really want to believe it. It takes energy to worry, which should be put to positive use. And positivity can work wonders. And there is a little bit of me that believes that things happen for a reason. Karma and all that. But I can’t help it, I am a worrier, and I married one too, so we worry-wort together. Because right now? We don’t feel very stable, finantially, or emotionally.

And to put a cherry on top of this sundae, I discovered that one of my lovely heathen cats has been peeing in a place that should not be peed in. I have no idea which cat, or for what reason, and at the moment, it is not that big of a deal, easily dealt with. But the fact that it happened at all makes me very worried {again, there it is, the worry} that it could happen again somewhere where it would be A Much. Bigger. Deal. And I don’t know what to do about it. This is like, my biggest cat fear.

So, you know what happens to me when I get really stressed out? I get vewwy vewwy quiet. I clam up. I keep it in, until it bursts out of me in a tumultuous spew of tears and hysterics. So that is why I haven’t had a whole lot to say recently. Just pictures. I really really hope that soon I can tell you a good story, but for right now, I just have this lame horrible worry that I can’t stop, and pictures.

So, to try to make myself feel better, I made pot holders. And cookies. And minestrone soup. Only I got to the part of the potholders that require binding, and realized that either binding is much harder that I anticipated, or I am doing it completely and incalculably wrong. So. I am going to buy binding tape. Screw this making binding tape by hand crap. And maybe they’ll get done so I can use them. So more images forthcoming.

Daydreaming

Furry

Floating

On my lunch hour I wandered outside to do some homework for photography class, encountering some intense wind, and I happened upon these lovely seed pods in the field, drying, having given their breaths to summer and now waving, flying like kites tethered by stilts on the wind.

Upon reflection, I should have experimented more with the shutter speed, tried to capture the movement of the wind, but I was rather blown about myself in the blusteryness that I just didn’t think of it until I had returned inside. So that was an opportunity not used to its fullest potential. Lesson learned, hopefully. Nonetheless, these images are some of my favorites. I love the color tones, the yellows and browns, the washed out cloudy sky.

Also, Here’s a blog full of inspiration for typophiles like myself.

Have a lovely weekend!