Four.

The stress and urgency of a project melts away, leaving confusion.

Three.

I looked out the window in the morning, and saw the neighborhood bunny pointedly and systematically eating the strawberry plants.

The 24 Hour Quilt

Our neighbor had a baby girl last week. Isla. Isn’t that a pretty name? I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it in the 6 months before that we’ve known about it, but when we heard that she’d delivered on Wednesday, I couldn’t even procrastinate away this great urge to make something for them. I put together the top to a baby quilt in about a half an hour the next evening, basted it the following morning with some new flannel for the back, quilted it with some dense zigzaggy windy quilting in a couple of hours that afternoon, and sewed the binding on Friday evening. From start to finish it took me just over 24 hours. Mama and baby came home from the hospital on Saturday, and not wanting to ring the bell and disturb them, I handed this quilt over the backyard fence to one of their moms that evening when she let the dog out. It seemed appropriate, since much of our relationship with them is over that fence.

We heard Sunday morning that they adore it, and I’m so glad. Although it was still a few hours of work, I’m happy that I can put something like this together so quickly, but that it’s still a big enough project that it means something to them. I remember finishing my first baby quilt last spring for a friend’s daughter, how I’d never completed all of those steps before, I was nervous each step of the way, and the sense of accomplishment that I felt when I did finally finish it. I feel like I’ve come so far since then. They use that quilt so much though, it is small enough that they’ve found that it travels really well, and I’m hoping that Isla’s quilt stands up just as well and gets as much use.

Cotton

Sunday was my two year wedding anniversary, and after Nate ran a half marathon, I gave him my interpretation of the two year gift, cotton.

Cotton, you say? Hm, I’ve been doing an awful lot of sewing lately, with cotton. One thing lead to another, and bada-bing.

This 15″x16″ (I think) mini quilt is made from white and off white cotton, as well as as some linen and some little scraps from my wedding dress when it was altered. My dress was almost right on lengthwise when I got it, but they did take an inch or so off the back, so I had a little scrap of each of the layers, one satin-ish and one a sheer lacy embroidered and beaded fabric (on which I broke my first machine needle ever while sewing this!). I also had an extra button that never got used, and a little collection of beads for repairs that were never needed. These are things that I saved, but knew I would never use for anything else, and embellishing this little art quilt seemed just the right home for them.

The piecing was improvisational, and inspired by the horizon line of the beach and the sand and ocean where we got married. I hand embroidered shells and birds and used some stitch patterns that ended up appropriately resembling coral. The piecing was done by machine, but I quilted this by hand. What? Yeah, seriously. It was my first experience with hand quilting, and while I feel like I got a little better as I progressed, I certainly won’t win any awards for it, but I really love that each little stitch was done while I was thinking about Nate and our wedding. It feels so much more personal and connected that way.

I gave it to him as is, but I plan to have it framed, maybe. I’m trying to decide if I want to wash it.

This is, of course, an incredibly personal project, one that I debated sharing here. I’ve been thinking about this one for a long time. Months. But at the same time that I decided I was going to move forward with this, the idea blossomed in my head to make a series of these mini quilts, inspired by people that I know, people that are important in my life. Even though I would probably opt not to hand quilt any more of these, I have a feeling these will take awhile, since my personality tends to respond more to deadlines than non-deadlines. But I have some ideas sketched, and I’m excited to work on these in the future.

Postscript: A day before I even gave this to him, he told me that he had been thinking about trying to find a vintage quilt as his cotton gift to me, but he wanted me to help pick it out, so we went to a bunch of antique places to see what we could find. We ended up coming home with this dresden plate quilt. It’s huge, which is nice, so it fits on our bed, and it’s one of my favorite patterns. I absolutely love it, and I think it’s so funny that we gave each other different versions of quilts for this anniversary. It’s in great shape craftmanship-wise, but unfortunately has a bit of staining from storage. However, it’s hardly noticeable in our darkish bedroom, so that’s kind of a good thing, but, do any of you have any suggestions for cleaning ancient stains on a vintage quilt?

Two.

As much as I like going in to the magazine on fridays, I was elated when the art director told me to take the day off. I’m not sure I remember what a 4 day weekend is like anymore.

One.

I had a craving for malted milkshakes, so we went and got some.

Even then

When deadlines loom, I tend to think in lists:

I washed the white on white quilt for the second time this weekend and found that a hole was beginning to fray into one of the seams. Shoddy craftsmanship? I hope not. It was linen. So now I have to mend it.

The black beans germinated, so I planted them in the ground. It still seems too chilly to put the tomato seedlings in, though, so we are still babysitting them, bringing them in on cold nights, touching each gangly stem trying to coax them to stand up, for another week or two.

Went to see Star Trek for the second time, and couldn’t really stop thinking about it all weekend.

Went speed garage saleing on Saturday morning, looking for a bench for the backyard, but noone seems to be parting with their awesome benches. And I guess I can’t really blame them, I mean, benches are to be treasured. But we did come home with a chair. And it’s cute.

I also found for $5 a green hardly worn down Gap vest. I’d wanted one so badly when they started selling them who knows how many years ago, but they were so expensive, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

We took a walk to the zoo, and I decided to leave the camera at home. It was nice not having that little bit of pressure to take pictures, but to just breathe and walk and be, even when we encountered dozens of baby geese at the park afterward. Even then.

Ups and Downs

Man, has this been a week. I started strong with ice cream and sandwiches and then totally lost my will to say anything. Had an email and mental collapse, at the same time, one possibly inflamed by the other, but then talked to a relatively nice guy at my relatively annoying internet service who got me straightened out. Then my computer, my beloved precious mac, went on the fritz again, and after talking to applecare on the phone for awhile, I made an appointment to take her in to the geniuses at the apple store, and then I couldn’t sleep with worry. I was sure I would either be laying down the dough for a new battery, or have to send her away to some apple hub to have them poke around in her innards to fix something. Neither option seemed like a happy occasion. But, I walked out of the apple store yesterday with a new battery, amazingly covered under my applecare, which in the past month has totally paid for itself, and so far so good and I’m rapping on wood frantically as I write that. Keep your fingers crossed for me, would’ya please?

Other than technical difficulties, I’ve been plodding along this week. It’s been weird. Busy, and yet with moments of serenity, and then it feels as though the world is crashing around me. Been kind of in love with the new Star Trek movie, in that weird drooly teenage girl kind of way, which hasn’t hit me like this in quite awhile. Probably since I was a teenage girl, I’d venture a guess. I can’t wait to see it again this weekend. I took Tuesday off, indulgent, but it felt pristine. Stitched and sketched and jogged and worked billable design hours. And now I can hardly tell what day it is. But I made some logos. That I can’t show you yet. Sorry about that.

So it’s been kind of hellish, this week, but also kind of great.

Sandwich Revolution

Go to this website. And then tell me you don’t want a sandwich. I’ve been backed into a drab gray corner of sandwichland for a long time, and as I scrolled through the scanwiches on that website, all I wanted was a fun sandwich, stat! So now we’ve got a few better deli meats, fun bread, avocadoes, good cheese, apples, chicken oriental salad, and lots of mustard on hand, although I need more yellow. Mustard pretty much makes a sandwich for me. There’s also a hard boiled egg in the fridge which I’m thinking would be yummy with pastrami, as well as some sauce gribiche which might add nicely to a sandwich, and plans for making sorrell pesto. Need tomatoes and brie. I am on a sandwich tirade.

I scream, you scream

I’ve been reading David Lebovitz’s blog for some time now, totally smitten with its I Live In Parisness and bits of French vocab and charming talk of chocolate and bread. And cheese. Shortly after I started reading, though, I found myself having this uncontrollable urge to make ice cream. He has this book that pretty much looks like it has the most interesting ice cream recipes inside, and since he, you know, wrote it, he is quite often dropping ice cream vernacular around on his blog and really, just try to resist that. Seriously. Just try. I’m quite sure it was the thought of Lemon Verbena Ice Cream that got me started on this obsession, and that was almost a year ago. Lemon verbena is one of my favorite herbs of all time, I grow it every year if I can find it and I’ve been adding it to macerated strawberries for what seems like forever, and it sounds so strange and yet SO RIGHT to put it in ice cream.

But we don’t own an ice cream machine.

Yeah, yeah, I know that you can make ice cream without a machine, but really, I’m going to go out on a limb and bet that it isn’t quite the same. I may be wrong, but on top of that prediction I just don’t much want to deal with babysitting it during the freezing process, either.

So I’ve been dreaming of ice cream making for muh-honths. Dreaming that someday we’ll get that ice cream maker, even though that would likely be the last word uttered in the curse to make ice cream once and then forever store that machine in the cupboard. Thinking about asking for it for next Christmas, but knowing that we didn’t really want to ask for something quite so lavish and potentially doomed to non-use. Dreaming of ice cream made with crazy stuff like lemon verbena, or salted caramel, or saffron, or black pepper. Dreaming and drooling.

I have this friend. This really really good friend. And she has an ice cream machine that doesn’t get much use these days. I don’t know how all of the above came up in conversation with her, but it must have, and I asked if maybe I could borrow her machine to scratch this crazy itch of mine, a sort of joint custody situation for awhile, and SHE TOTALLY SAID YES! I know, I couldn’t believe it either. She is so very generous and accomodating of my crazy. I love her.

So for awhile, I have in my custody one ice cream machine. I immediately used up all of the sugar in our pantry and most of the eggs in the fridge making my first custard for coffee ice cream. It was a little complicated, seeing as I’ve observed the process of custard making many times but have never actually attempted it myself, so I did not take any pictures of this event. I felt like I should totally know what I was doing, in that way that if you watch someone put together an engine you feel like you know how to do it too, but really you don’t until you do it with your own hands. It was also a lengthy process, involving an hour’s worth of steeping coffee beans in warmed cream, so the churning was postponed for the next day.

It turned out magnificent. I split it into two containers, one unadorned, just the flavor of espresso permeating the cream, and the other with broken Heath bars mixed in. (Coffee heath bar crunch is one of my all time favorite Ben & Jerry’s flavors). They were both delicious, the coffee flavor was prounounced, dark brown flecks throughout, and I think next time I will add more ground espresso to the custard for an even stronger coffee flavor.

And wouldn’t you know, I have this other friend, a very very dear friend indeed, and even though she is super busy packing and moving from Japan to Canada, she still didn’t hesitate to pick up a couple of Japanese things at the grocery store and send them to me. I got a package with matcha, or green tea powder, kinako – roasted soybean powder, and black sesame paste, all of which had initial destinations of ice cream.

The green tea ice cream got the first round, and a few sideways glances from Nate. And what I learned with this batch is that skipping the step of completely chilling the custard before churning is not a good idea. Even though it may seem like cooling it extra long in the ice bath will be fine, it just isn’t. Also, the ice cream maker should be frozen for 24 hours. Maybe not 12. Although those two things combined could have compounded each other. The ice cream didn’t freeze. But no big deal, after a few moments of indecision (just freeze and see what happens or start over?) I just refroze the machine and tried again the next day. Nate learned that green tea ice cream is indeed tasty. And I’m wondering how I’m going to do this when it gets hot. Churn in the basement?

I’m feeling awfully lucky to have such good friends. And all of this ice cream. Next up: parsley ice cream. Or maybe salted caramel. The lemon verbena plant I bought at the farmer’s market this weekend needs to grow a bit more.