Is it fall yet?

I think maybe that I should just go on vacation to Saskatchewan for the months of July and August.

I’m not a fan of heat. I prefer chilly and breezy. I’d rather wear a sweater than a pair of shorts. I sunburn with ridiculous, crispy ease. And when it comes to the sunny, sweltering heat of the dog days of late summer, I am not at my best. I’m not sure how many 100+ degree days we’ve had thus far, but I do know that it’s too many, and that it’s not stopping soon.  Monday is supposed to be a high of 105.

{aren’t my cupcakes pretty? I made them for a work event. They were really tasty!}

I am longing for the temperatures to slink back into the 80s, as they will in late September. I’m beginning to scour blog posts and craft forums for mentions of fall projects (pumpkins! scarecrows!). I have picked out my Halloween costume already.  Plus, I saw a notice about choosing yarn for holiday gifts yesterday and it made me deliriously happy. Soon! I thought. Soon there will be an end to summer!

{here’s Callie, practicing the ancient feline art of Being Where She’s Not Supposed to Be while Pretending She Belongs There Anyway}

Heat appears to suck my creativity and energy out through my ears, leaving scattered unfinished projects in its wake, projects I cannot imagine wanting to ever complete. I can’t say that I’ve managed to summon more than a passing interest in my crochet hooks or sewing machine for weeks now. Heat also makes me irritable. If you’ve ever wanted to start an argument with me, I’d recommend catching me outside at 3:30 pm on a 100-degree Thursday in late July.  Today, for example.

Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup

Heat is why I decided to make butternut squash soup the other day. It was a frustrated longing for fall, combined with the timely arrival of a butternut squash and some sweet potatoes in my weekly vegetable delivery. Although I realize squash is a summer vegetable, I’ve always associated it with fall, along with other items like sweet potatoes and yams. The lovely golden color makes me think of harvest, and October.

I’ve always intended to make this soup, but for some reason I never have, and wow! I have a new favorite food, I think. It was really tasty. What I eventually made was an amalgamation of several recipes - all, and yet none of them. I will tell you what sold me on making soup was the quote at the top of one recipe: “this soup is the perfect way to warm up on a cool autumn day.” Just what I needed at the end of July.

Here’s what I did - it makes enough for 2:

• 1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into small cubes
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes
• 3/4 cup diced red or yellow onion
• 3 cups vegetable broth/stock
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter
• 10 sprigs of thyme, leaves stripped from stems
• 1 hot pepper (serrano or cayenne), deseeded & deveined, diced (optional)
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• salt and ground black pepper to taste
• 1/2 c. milk

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until tender. Add the butternut squash and sweet potatoes (should make about four cups) to the pot, the thyme, the turmeric and the hot pepper (if you want a bit of spice) and pour in the vegetable stock/broth. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until the vetegables are tender, stirring occasionally.

After the vegetables are tender, cool until no longer boiling. Then puree it in a blender or food processor. If you have too much, you may have to do this step in batches. When the mixture is smooth, return it to the soup pot and stir in a half-cup of milk and heat through.

Serve warm with a sprinkling of parmesan and some crusty toasted bread on the side. Mmmm, fall!  (if only in my mind)

A bit of quiet

I took another drive into the hill country. I’m still not sure about the wine they make out there, but they certainly have empty roads.

I have lived in a city all my life. I believe most people do, really, I think the urban folks outnumber rural these days. I’m not sure if I’d like the quiet all of the time, but there are days, certainly, when I appreciate peace. Last Saturday I ventured out into the hill country in search of peaches to can - for they are currently in season - and found a lot of quiet.

The peaches were everything I’d hoped for, and more. Small, juicy, lovely peaches. The country store we were in smelled like nothing but peaches. It was sweet and delicate and overpowering all at once, with that sort of smell of the outdoors and growing things. I got a box and some tomatoes too.

I love going to fruit farms. I’m almost as much of a fan of fruit as I am of flowers, and it probably isn’t a coincidence that they are related. The smell of sweetness and sugar from fruit and flowers is incredible. You can imagine what a delight it was to sit in this fruit stand/store, smelling these peaches, eating homemade peach ice cream. Maybe it’s the experience I’m going for, that sort of sensory overload.

I headed into a town nearby afterward but … it was too crowded and I left. I was off to find quieter roads. Down a side road. Past a beer joint. Into rolling hills parched by drought and heat. But this is an area that can survive without water … the live oaks keep their green and the grasses become every lovely shade of gold.

But as it turned out, there was indeed water along my path.  It was a little river, with a dam small enough to walk over in a minute. It’s the only, er, well really the only WET river I’ve seen around here in a while. Most of the rivers are mere shadows of themselves, and the creeks have dried up to nothing but their rocky beds with a few enterprising plants growing amidst the rubble.

Down the road a bit more I came to a sleepy town, where I found antiques and barbeque. I was quite fond of the barbecue. It was all made properly. “This place is clearly what the barbecue places in Austin are going for in terms of ambiance,” I thought to myself as I sat there perspiring in front of a barely-working window AC unit. I sipped my iced tea and ate my jalapeno sausage quite happily.

Afterward there were antiques to gaze at … lamps made of ceramic jaguars, gorgeous old secretaries with concealed drawers, hobbit-looking salt and pepper shakers, heavy marble-and-ironwork tables, colors from every decade, and oh, yes, a bit of antique crochet in a trunk, hanging out with a dog sweater made from an old shirt front.

It was a lovely day, Saturday.

6 hours of canning later

Sometimes, one cannot post because one is literally up to one’s elbows in the actual craft, and cannot come to the computer.  Such was Sunday, when I spent three hours peeling peaches and feeling the sticky juice drip down my arms. But I will leave that story for later, because I just don’t have the energy to tell it yet.

Meanwhile, let me tell you about antique crochet.  I grant you the possibility that you may not love these as much as I do, but I hope you take a look at the exquisite detail and skill, and maybe appreciate them a bit.  I love them a lot - after all, I am both historian and crocheter, so I’m pretty much guaranteed to love these kinds  of things. Truly, though, my love of antique lace crochet goes farther than that.

Three doilies. The one on the left is unusual in that it is made of undyed linen.  The pattern of the square one is very “pleasing.  The skill of the bottom one takes my breath away.

I’m not sure if my mom’s possessions guided my passions or my passions guided my love of my mom’s possessions, but my very favorite pieces of art that my mother had while I was growing up were (1) 2 pieces of framed antique filet crochet, (2) a medieval grave rubbing and (3) a picture of a German castle.  I ask you, is it coincidence that I have two degrees in medieval history?  Is it coincidence I am a crocheter?  I do not know.

Two potholders and a granny square. The square is so incredibly regular in its tension it looks like it could have been crocheted in rows except for the center. If you have ever done knitting, crochet or needlework you probably know how hard it is to make your tension so impeccably even with an unforgiving light-colored medium like thread.  The potholders are both detailed and double-layered.

I will admit that I had crocheted doilies on my furniture while growing up. And I loved them, and in fact am still a fan of doilies.  I will now be drawn and quartered by all the modernists around here, but I cannot help it.  Those doilies were probably the only “girly” thing that I liked when I was a wee lass.  I disliked pink. I was a tomboy.  I disliked barbies.  I favored toy cars and building blocks.  But I loved my doilies.  Go figure.

The two doilies above both were part of a swap. Isn’t that interesting? In fact, these short messages were why I bought the whole lot - the proprietor of the antique store said the crochet all came from one woman, which means these two pieces date them all, and that date is 1948.  It’s fascinating that these came from women in such small towns in the midwest and ended up in a tiny little town in Texas, and were saved for all these 60 years.  They are hard to read, but as far as I can tell, here’s what they say.

The first one has two notes in different handwriting which tell me that they were a swap.  The top bit says “Mrs. John Puck, Guttenberg, Iowa” while the second says “Rec’d about June 10 - 48.  Sending aprons ( -unreadable) Feb 12.”

The second says “Mrs. Andrew Gangl, Salem, No. Dak.“  (that’s North Dakota, if you didn’t recognize the abbreviation. I didn’t, my mom clued me in.).

I took a picture of the detail of this doily because I was fascinated by the array of techniques used.  The center star and the webbing is (if you look closely) needlepoint woven ribbon. Yes, someone wove ribbon with cotton thread.  Endlessly.  I cannot even imagine the time this took.  The butterflies and some of the edging are filet crochet.  Other aspects are regular crochet.

I am in awe of the skill it took to make this, and am personally offended that it only cost me $3.50 to purchase it, while there were modern paintings in the same store that cost over $1000 and took much less time and effort.  I cannot help it if people don’t recognize art and labor when they see it, but the very least I can do is bring it home and make a blog post about it.  I hope one day the needle arts get more of the recognition they deserve for creating such exquisite, delicate things.