Then and now

In between when I last disappeared and now, I reached the not-exactly-young-but-not-old-either age of 35. I have a few concerns about this age, but overall I’m in good shape, and with some degree of wisdom from all the things that I’ve done and seen. When I was a teenager – and here I should note that I was not particularly good at being a teenager, and didn’t really like it – I told myself that I just had to wait. I believed that when I reached 40 I would finally have grown into myself. And I think that will be true.

For my birthday I chose to take a tour of the Real Ale Brewery in Blanco, Texas. That’s me and Jeff there after the tour. The tour was 40 minutes long and given by the head brewer – good stuff! Lots of information, lots of future plans. About halfway through when we were standing in the midst of those giant tanks you can see, I thought I might pass out from the heat and steam. But I did not, and I was rewarded later for my tenacity in the tap room.

You people might not know this, but I like beer. I don’t like cheap beer. I only like really good beer, the kind found in Belgium/the Netherlands and Bavaria and microbreweries and people’s basements.  The kind where monks are involved, or people experiment with ingredients and chemistry. The fun kind. Beer is a side effect of my interest in (a) medieval monasteries and (b) supporting local community industry (microbreweries). Besides, meeting the people who make stuff I like – a lot of fun! Whether it’s beer or earrings, , there’s something irreplaceably awesome about meeting the person whose effort went into creating something they feel passionate about.

The weekend previous I went to visit my mom, and my other birthday present was to see Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. You people might also not know that I love Agatha Christie. I started reading her mysteries around the time I was the age in the picture there (7 or 8). I’ve read everything she’s written. More than once. Including non-mysteries. My favorites were Tommy and Tuppence, but I’ll take any of ‘em. It was lovely! My mom can testify that I squeaked happily through the whole play.

While at my mom’s I took pictures of things that I remembered growing up that remind me of why I do the crafts I do. The first picture of me as a kid (with my brother) features me wearing a light blue eyelet dress my mom made me for an aunt’s wedding. I thought it was the absolute coolest thing ever to wear a dress my mom had made me (I also loved that ridiculous bow in my hair). It was like magic, that she could do something so awesome. She made me a few other things, which I thought were similarly cool. So you can see why I wanted to learn to sew – to my young mind it was one of the summits of accomplishment. There was also crochet in the house. The doily above adorned my room while growing up. I recognize that doilies are not acceptable for people to love these days, but I always did like this type of lace.

The above piece as a rather deft bit of thread crochet that my mom has framed. This piece and the one below were absolutely my favorite things besides the antique upright piano. What I can’t show you, unfortunately, are the cape my grandma crocheted for a baby me that I tried to wear much more often than my mom wanted me to, the vest she made for my brother’s beloved stuffed panda, or the elaborate crocheted dresses that adorned the small dolls in her home. I tell people I’m apathetic about knitting, and that’s true, because no matter how useful knitting is, it was not the thing that sparked my imagination as a little girl. When you’re six, you don’t know crocheting is a seventies thing that no one thinks is cool anymore. You like what you like.

This last angel piece is a rather interesting one. I always thought it was filet crochet, but now that I’ve taken a good close-up look the pattern appears to be threads woven into netting. Anybody know what kind of craft this is? I’m stumped. It looks unbelievably tedious.

Anyway. I’m 35 now, but the past sneaks up! Sometimes I’m still an energetic and mischievous seven. It was a good age, of playing cars with my brother, reading anything I could put my hands on, and summers at my grandparents’ farm running around like a mad chicken. Good times.

Summer Tastes

One day a week, usually on the weekend, I take a big chunk of time to do some project. Since it’s mid July and there was no late freeze, there was but one thing I could do last weekend. Drive to Stonewall, Texas, and get freestone peaches and fresh tomatoes. Day trip! So my project started this way:

There were 40 peaches.40 tomatoes. 8 jalapenos. 10 onions (none of which made me cry – I have epic powers of resisting onion). Some other stuff. All in all, I canned 11 quarts of peach salsa (and Jeff and I have already eaten one). I used the recipe I used last time. It was the only type of peach stuff I canned this time. I didn’t really think my tiny kitchen could handle more than one recipe – although it’s amazing what I can fit in there. Besides, the peach salsa was inarguably the best stuff I made two years ago.

I nearly ran out of jars. I think I only have three left, and they’re quart jars. I think I might make pickled okra in those, since I just got a heaping large bunch of okra from my mother-in-law’s garden. Honestly, after getting over the initial fear of OMG CANNING NO ONE DOES THAT I  discovered I really kind of like preserving food. It’s not that hard (unless you go the pressure canning route), and it’s sorta fun to make a huge batch of something. Still, though. When I tell people I actually make jam and can stuff, I often get a remarkably shocked response. Not many people do this, it seems.

Yeah. Me. In a kitchen. In my Slow Food apron my aunt Miriam gave me. With sterile equipment. And a gallon+ of hot salsa. And a hot stove. In July. In Texas. In a kitchen without air conditioning. That’s why my whole face is red. It’s not why I need a haircut, however. That’s because my hairdressers keep disappearing or quitting the profession, and I really can’t stand finding new ones.

You like how I made my sink into a counter with a baking sheet and a towel. Necessity IS the mother of invention!

Food is wonderful. And one of the best things about peach salsa – it’s really pretty when it’s done! The taste of summer.

Part 4 of 4: Weird Houses I Live In

At any given time, I have an awesome (and I mean that in the original sense of the word) list of things that I intend or would like to do. I’m not talking about the Sisyphus-like round of weekly and daily tasks that keep life running. No, I refer to the things I would do should I not have to wash dishes, make dinner, walk the dog, do laundry, clean the ______, etc.

Ssometimes I get to some extra thing. One task on the Extra Time List was to do some fabric prettifying of the bathroom. I have a shower stall (no bathtub) so my pretty shower curtain was way too wide. So I cut off the extra fabric from the curtain and made a little decorative curtain, trim for the rug, and a tissue box cover.

You may remember that the walls in my bathroom are concrete, so I couldn’t use a curtain rod. Instead I made buttonholes and used micro Command hooks. The tissue box cover I saw on Kirin Notebook and again on My Paper Crane (it would have worked better if I’d remembered to add a seam allowance). Just simple little things, but definitely a good impact.

While I’m on the subject, I’d like to make a note about this “house” I live in. I can’t remember if I told you guys, but this place was built around 1932 and was a garage that was added onto. As nearly as I can figure, whoever owned the house did all the work himself. He had pretty good intentions, but (a) no discernible sense of style or aesthetics, (b) no professional skills, just amateur ingenuity and a hardware store, (c) a whole lot of time on his hands.

You may note the “privacy glaze” on the bathroom window. That stuff is just weird and old. And you can see a bit of the tile there under the rug, but that’s the most normal tile in the house. I’m not kidding when I tell you we have a yellow brick road in the kitchen, a sun in front of the bathroom sink and a triangle in front of the toilet. It was clearly a custom tile job. It makes Jeff crazy to look at it.  And there is that spot in between the old garage and the addition that’s not quite sealed, where occasionally a vine from outdoors starts growing inside.  Not to mention the kitchen that still makes me think I’m camping half the time.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is more odd, one-off, inexplicable, uneven, painted over, hacked together, jerry-rigged, not-quite-functional crazy shit in this apartment than I can begin to tell you. I mean honestly, who else among you has a bedroom that’s like an underground bunker but with a vaulted ceiling? I have no idea what this guy was thinking while he did some of these things.

Ah well. I have a 10 minute walk to work, and I share no walls, and it’s not permanent. I keep telling myself that.