Yoga

There’s a yoga studio in my ‘hood that I’ve known about for a long time, have wanted to go to for a long time, yet never had the money or the courage. Until recently.

I began practicing yoga in college, when I was able to take a class through school. I enjoyed it immensely, but when the class was done, I dropped the practice of it. I have a hard time motivating to practice on my own, I like the presence of a teacher, someone to provide that external eye and give adjustments and advice. I also have always liked the accompanying voice of a yogi during meditation. I know I could find that voice inside me, but I think I need alot more experience to be able to find it on my own.

When I moved back into the neighborhood, this studio was a mere two block walk from my house, and it seemed so silly not to go. So I finally mustered up the nerve to go to the first class a few weeks ago. I’m so glad I did. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy learning about the anatomy of movement, how the body interacts with itself, and the practice of moving and stretching, meditation and focus has felt so good.

I got myself a yoga mat and decided I should make a bag for it. This was out of Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing, made mainly out of Lotta heavy fabric. Instead of using the single fabric for the strap, I pieced several of my favorites, along with a scrap of denim that I cut off a skirt a month ago, and topstitched evenly spaced lines down the length to set the patchwork and give it some strength and heft. I was totally going to add a button closure to the pocket but got a little excited as I was putting it together and forgot. I could probably finagle a different way to do this, but probably won’t, now.

Indian Summer

The shop is open for business with the indian summer collection, and I do hope you’ll stop by. There’s something for everyone, I feel, from little jotter pocket notebooks, some postcard sets and polaroid prints, to little original oil paintings and mounted polaroids from a series that I’ve been working on that I am currently thinking of as “A Sense of Place.” That’s a growing thing, and hopefully I’ll have more to say about it in the coming weeks.

This is a new space for the shop, but there are a few things that I really like about bigcartel, so I wanted to try it out and see if it fits. We shall see if it does! The indian summer collection will be fleeting, as we all know indian summer tends to be, and is only available until October 26th, when it will be replaced with some new offerings. I do hope you have a look, enjoy what you see, and maybe find something you would like to come home with you!

Preparing

Things have been arriving from various places these last few days, little blocks of wood, ink, paper, labels, prints, and the to-do list that I’ve got going in my pocket is kind of epic. It’s divided into sections, it’s so large. And I carry it with me. I should put it in a locket.

It always seems that this time of year we are preparing for winter, putting up the last of summer’s freshness to try and save it for the cold days, pulling out the sweaters and socks and quilts. And I’m doing all of that. Yet at the same time, I am inspired to prepare some other things as well. Preparing to hopefully move this blog space to it’s own individual place, preparing an overhaul on my graphic design identity and portfolio website, and preparing an offering.

I’m shooting for next Monday to get the shop dusted off and opened up with a little collection of goodies to celebrate indian summer, this passage between seasons, hopefully before indian summer is gone for the year! So, let’s say noon EST on 9/28, for a grand reopening, of sorts, in this new space. I’m so excited for what I’ve prepared, for what I’m still preparing, and for ideas swimming around for some future stuff, and I hope you are too!

Quick projects

I was hard at work on Saturday morning, making Heather’s cinnamon swirl bread and finishing some napkins for a wedding gift which I totally put off until the last minute. They aren’t all that fancy, just squares with the edges turned over twice and stitched, but I love them. I wanted to keep them, that lantern bloom fabric by Laura Gunn is so good. But I didn’t, I have some Anna Maria Horner Good Folks Cathedral for myself. And goodness knows since it took so long for me to get down and dirty to make these with a deadline, I’ll probably never get around to making the set for myself, even though they are SO EASY. That is just like me. I also started some coasters. Who knows when those’ll get finished.

The bread was delicious, too. It rises huge which I totally love because my normal go-to bread recipe is kind of dense and doesn’t get very poufy. So it was exciting watching this rise and bake. And of course we couldn’t wait and cut in to a warm loaf right away. Cinnamon bread always makes me think of my dad, when I was little I remember him liking that peperidge farm (?) cinnamon swirl bread with raisins quite alot.

Socks Rock

My friends, may I present you with Sock Dreams, an online store devoted to socks. Yes. It’s the store that I never thought I needed, didn’t think existed, and when I found out that it does I ran there with my arms flailing around and eeeeekk!ed when I got there. And then I went a little nuts. Because I was just thinking about how I needed to grow my knee sock collection and behold, here is a website with so many knee socks you won’t even know what to do with yourself.

And free shipping! And I got an email with the shipment confirmation within 2 hours and 15 minutes of my order. AND! They arrived at my door SO FAST. Seriously.

Movement

I walked home from my first yoga class in 9 years last night, listening to the leaves rustling in the street, smelling the scent of a neighborhood apple tree, feeling the cool air on my skin, the energy of movement in my body and focus in my mind. It is fall.

Ideas

My neighbor asked if I would do a photo shoot of her daughter Isla to mark 3 months, as she’s not a fan of those mall photo studios but has enjoyed my work, so we spent 15 minutes on my porch, which has the best light of anywhere near
our houses.

It was fun and challenging and I told her not to expect much as I haven’t really ever photographed babies, but these turned out pretty good, I think. Mom was thrilled when she saw them and has apparently been passing my name around to all of her mommy friends. Maybe I’ll have the chance to do some more of this!

In other news, I’m putting together a few things for the shop, some postcards, maybe some polaroid prints, a couple of jotters and possibly a little painting or two! Sort of an indian summer collection, to celebrate what summer gave and what autumn has in store. I hope you’ll like it!

A whole lot of baking (and links)

I’ve been in kind of a baking frenzy latey, which I guess kind of comes with the season, even though it’s been hot. This weekend I made a second batch of my favorite family bread recipe and brownies (from Baked, so good). Leslie’s blondies have me wanting to make some butterscotch brownies, too, which are really pretty much the same thing, I think. And the weekend before I made a batch of these cantuccini, a few of which found their way home with Sarah when she was here. They are little almond biscotti and I was sucked in by the fact that they have an italian name other than the familiar biscotti and I am a sucker for that so I had to make them. They are delicious. Super crunchy, but so good dipped in coffee. I’m going to have to make biscotti more often. The only thing I did differently was toast my almonds briefly in the oven, since I was using raw ones.

Cantuccini
vai My Madeleine and adapted from Baking with Julia

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups whole, blanched almonds
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine all the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Stir. Add almonds and mix well.

In another bowl, whisk together the eggs and vanilla extract.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir.

Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead it for a few minutes. It’s dry, but comes together after a few minutes. Add flour if it sticks.

Divide in half and shape it into two 12-inch logs. Transfer the logs to a baking sheet lined with parchment.

Bake for 30 minutes. The logs will rise a bit, turning lightly brown on the bottom.

Transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely.

Once cool, cut the logs into quarter-inch slices. Lay the slices, cut side down, on a baking sheet lined with parchment.

Bake for an additional 10 or 15 minutes, or until the cantuccini are bronzed but not too dark. Let cool completely.

Unrelated:

Glee. Seriously. We fell in love when the aired the pilot in the spring, and have been waiting with bated breath ever since. And I now have a new appreciation for Journey.

We went to see U2 in Chicago on Sunday night. We got home at 3:40 am. No joke. But it was so worth it. I could probably blab all about it for paragraphs and paragraphs, but I’ll try not to and just say that they are the very definition of “rock spectacle.” I’ve seen them once before, a number of years ago when they blew my mind the first time and turned me into a fan before I even knew what was happening. They just go ALL OUT, this time they built this gigantic 164 foot tall spaceship apparatus around their 360 degree view stage, with MOVING bridges from the middle stage to an outer ring, and smoke and crazy lights all over the structure and a GIANT DISCO BALL on top, and I thought my mind was done being blown when the giant 360 circular video screen started to BREAK APART I am not even kidding and spreading down toward the stage and move up and down. It was seriously crazy. They put on such a great show and it was worth the drive down there and the ticket price and the horrible post show crowd management and the very lengthy journey home just to hear Where The Streets Have No Name and I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For live. I am tired today.

Summer meets autumn in a casserole dish?

We had some corn on the cob in the fridge that was getting a little old, and some leeks that needed using, and my mom had planted a seed in my head a couple of weeks ago for potato + corn gratin…

I totally pulled this out of nowhere, in kind of rushed fashion in fact, and I love when things like that work out. I sliced and sauteed 2 leeks, cut the corn off of maybe 5 cobs and scraped the cobs to get some of the extra corn starch and added that to the pan, along with a bunch of salt, some black pepper and red pepper, and a chopped sprig of rosemary. Then I cut 3 big yukon gold potatoes as thinly as I could and layered them in a pan with the corn + leek mixture and some grated gruyere cheese. I think I ended up with four layers, and I had to press it down as I added each layer of potatoes. I poured some cream over the whole thing and baked at 375 for an hour and maybe 10 minutes, covered for the last 20 of that. Let it sit for 5 minutes and then dug in.

It was delicious. Not too soupy, but I think it needed more cheese. The yukon golds stayed pretty firm, so I’d like to try this with regular Idaho bakers. The rosemary added an interesting component, and the corn was super sweet, just like summer. And it made the house smell awesome, like autumn food should. I’ll definitely be making this again.

A last minute meeting

This weekend just happened to be one of the very few in the warm season in which I really had hardly any plans. You know how life just fills up with the weather is nice, but some weeks stay slow, which is so nice. There was the first Badger football game of the season on Saturday, so we stuck close to home since the streets fill up with cars and parking is limited and we had a couple of people plan to park at our place. But other than that, we had nothing scheduled but alot of time spent on the porch with my foot elevated after another round of tattooing (almost done!), watching movies and a WHOLE lotta knitting.

It was serendipity, though, because Sarah came to town at the last minute this weekend. She totally thought I wouldn’t be around, but with all of that nothing planned, I had lots of free time to fill with a little get together! So we grabbed a beer at the Great Dane on Sunday night and chatted about all kinds of things, blogging and camping and work and family and more, and it was just so nice to meet her and see her smile and hear her laugh and talk in real life. I was so excited and a little bit nervous, and we laughed about how it’s kind of like a blind date, meeting someone you know online but have never talked to in real life, but it’s so easy because you really do already know each other. Meeting is like filling in the gaps. And she is just as charming and thoughtful as she is online. We’ve been slowly plotting via email some kind of camping endeavor together next year maybe, and now it’s even easier to envision.

I brought my camera, hoping we would be able to sit outside in the last of the evening light, but the place was busier than I expected for a Sunday (I forgot, people have Labor Day off, of course) so we cozied up at the rathskeller bar downstairs, where it was dark dark dark. But I couldn’t part without trying to get a picture or two.

Sarah, it was absolutely lovely, and I hope there are many more in the future!