Easy Orchid Centerpiece

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  • Just buy Orchids in small pots. 
  • Buy some cloth napkins that coordinate with your event theme or color scheme or make your own out of quilting cotton. You want napkins with a little body. Batiks are a nice complement to orchids.
  •  These I made with a rolled hem using bulky nylon on my serger. They are small for napkins, only 14″ square. I think I was trying to get 3 napkins across the selvedge-to-selvedge width of my fabric. For these small pots they are perfect. 
  • Use rubber bands like they use on broccoli bunches at the grocery store. Start saving now if you’re having a big event. Hope you like broccoli!
  • Place a pot on the center of a napkin, gather the fabric up and around the base of the orchid, stretch the rubber band up and over the pot until it settles around the base of the orchid.
  • Find the corners of the napkin and gently pull and shape them to your satisfaction.

So quick and easy yet festive and fun!

Artist’s Bridge DIY Hack

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You can buy a manufactured artist’s bridge from Blick, or you can stop by your nearest hardware or home improvement store and get a paint stirring stick. Attach some erasers with rubber bands. Please use new rubber bands and unused erasers. Alternately, get 2 sticks and cut one down to make 2″ long risers to glue in place on the underside of your stick. Stick felts or other surface protectors on the bottom.

Lemon Boy Cucumber

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Here is a photo essay showing the progress of my latest Botanical Illustration:



Things I learned on this drawing:

  • Polychromos pencils smear like mad, leaving a green haze over the white areas of the drawing. This necessitates new strategies to protect the paper, including wiping newly sharpened pencils with a cloth, stabbing the points in to a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser pad, using an artist bridge and blowing fine particles off the drawing with a Giotto’s Rocket Air Blaster rather than brushing with a soft brush as I have long done with Prismacolors.
  • It’s probably best to do a few small studies after a long dry spell before jumping in to a complex composition with a deadline.
  • Using Prismacolor Black Grape in shadows on botanicals is not for the faint of heart. Best to stay with the Polychromos Indigo.  Changing mid-drawing is a really bad idea.
  • Irojiten Mulberry has potential as a replacement for Black Grape, needs further investigation and sampling. Save this for a few of the deepest darks. Nasco sells Irojitens open stock.  Update, 2020:  Nasco might still sell Irojiten pencils open stock but they have closed their retail outlet in Modesto and as a result I usually order things from Dick Blick instead.
  • The adult coloring book craze has decimated the colored pencil market and replacements from open stock are going to be hard to get until the fad runs its course. Further 2020 update: now it’s elastic, fabric and sewing machines that are in short supply due to the Covid 19 pandemic and the need for facemasks.  Pencils are mostly available again but some art supplies are also hard to get as people shelter in place.  Adult coloring books are still out there, but not as popular.  What goes around comes around.

Mind games I play with myself…

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So I went shopping for fabric recently in the L.A. Garment District and bought several promising new pieces of fabric for summer sewing. But I promised myself I would sew up ALL of the fabric I had purchased last year at this time in L.A. before I embarked upon the exciting new fabric. The last 2 pieces were a swimsuit fabric I bought to make a tennis skirt (easily and quickly done) and this double sided plaid cotton stuff that looked for all the world like it would make a lovely shirt when I bought it, but I was having doubts. Then I washed the fabric and it turned into crinkle gauze. My recent default position for using up difficult fabric is to make sleep/lounge wear out of it if at all possible. Robes, nightgowns, pajamas, etc. This has worked for me several times and once again voilá, I have some VERY comfortable and versatile pajamas. I can wear the bottoms with an athletic top that I rarely wear to the gym anymore but still has plenty of life. I can wear the top with some plain shorts if I find/buy/make some one day. I can wear the set together. I’m so glad I made these happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care jammies with sort-of almost mostly matching plaids in the important places rather than sweating bullets trying to really match this impossible shifting plaid for a serious garment like a shirt! Besides which, who is wearing hot pink plaid shirts these days anyway? Here they are:

Would have matched that plaid had I known it was going to show through the reverse side of this fabric.

Would have matched that plaid had I known it was going to show through the reverse side of this fabric.

Simplicity 3696 pants

Jalie 2787

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Here we are stash-busting with fabric AND pattern today. I’ve had this fabric and pattern in their respective stashes for a long time. The fabric is a tissue thin knit but surprisingly firm given how sheer it is. The only thing preventing this from being a see-through shirt is the ink of the print and the overlay design on the front. Definitely a cami is in order when wearing this top since there are no overlays on the back. I made my usual size T in Jalie knit tops and it is snug, but not unwearable. If I made it again I would size up if the knit was similar. For a stretchier knit, I would sew the size T again.

One comment on the design: the layer under the crossover portion is not stitched to anything at the top, this makes the design suitable for nursing, but I felt that the elastic that is stretched across the top of the piece before stitching it to the side seams could be a bit shorter to prevent possible sagging. I’m not convinced it’s going to hold up, but don’t want to risk tacking it to the under layer because I fear that would be unsightly.

Another comment on the instructions: they are not clear on step 6, figure 8, pre-sewing the partial side seams. Here is where you create the over/underlap and they make no mention of how it’s accomplished. It’s not hard, but neither is it obvious until you think about it. I had to pick out my first side seam attempt because I left a layer out. There are 3 layers going in to this partial side seam, the back, the underarm portion of one top front and the side (lower) portion of the OTHER top front. It’s not until the next step you finally add the bottom front, which is attached only at the side seams and then you can serge everything for a clean finish. They don’t say it, but you are basically basting the upper tops and then the front to the back with zig-zag stitching before making a final (optional, really) pass with the serger to clean finish everything. Here’s a picture of the front from the inside prior to the final pass with the serger, note that you can see more layers on the right side:

Jalie2787-1b

This is a first for me: I am going to leave this top un-hemmed. I can see why RTW is doing this more these days with the very lightweight knits. The fabric resists hemming, wanting to curl and puckering when stitched. I could fuss with the settings on my coverstitch machine in the hope of getting a more successful hem, but I really want to move on and am not sure how much I’m really going to wear this top, so I think I’ll just roll with it. Literally.

Gone fishing 

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On a recent Monday, Logan and I strolled down to the water hazard on the golf course to catch fish. Reputedly, there are trophy size bass to be had but all we possessed for catching fish was a repurposed butterfly net. Happily, it was more than adequate for scooping up the teeming gambusia affinis which inhabit the shallows.

Incidentally, we also encountered a Great Blue Heron. 

So on any given Monday, if you can’t reach us, we may just be gone fishing!

Bocce beautification project

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This is the view from my kitchen window. It’s a lot of unrelieved green and gravel and the roots of the shrubbery are so thick there is no planting anything under it, so I decided to add a little interest with pots. This project started last spring with bulbs. Ranunculus foliage is irresistible to whatever pests are lurking in those Cherry Laurels and the bulbs were mowed down as soon as they popped up. Next up: bacopa plants. They were not eaten alive, but neither did they thrive. Round 3: our one remaining helpful local nursery man says “I know just what you need.” And he may be right! Poppies, violas and Carex grass. That sparkle of white is just what I wanted. It makes me happy to look out and see this view.

Shirt tales

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Butterick 6026
This shirt pattern by Katherine Tilton is my new favorite pattern. I made this version first, earlier this summer. Loved it, wore it once, washed it with a new dress that bled dye in the wash and only this and another linen top picked up the red dye. I have since used Synthopol to get most of the offending dye out but it will never be the same crisp white and green that it was the day I finished it. Sigh. It’s been a long time since something bled out in the wash and colored everything pink. I’d forgotten that could happen.

B6026-2b

Here’s the next version of this pattern. Ms. Tilton very kindly drafted a second front and back to use with the sleeves. This is a drafting detail most patterns skip and it makes all the difference. The sleeveless version has a lovely design line over the shoulder that is not too revealing, but neither is it too wide. It looks like a sleeveless top that was meant to be sleeveless, not a shirt without it’s sleeves.

Butterick 6026. Fits like a dream, goes together easily, a winner in every category if you love a nice shirt with some feminine detailing.

Where’s the Honey?

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HoneycakeSo we have this recipe we now call Honeycake but it hasn’t a drop of honey in it and it’s not really even a cake anymore.  Funny you should ask.  Skip down to the recipe if you don’t care a fig for provenance and just want to bake a tasty treat, read on if you have nothing better to do.

In 1979, the year I was married, I cut this recipe for Applesauce Spice Cake from the Modesto Bee and for a few years I made it often in my tube pan.  As time went by, I found other recipes, started making them more and forgot about this one that got shifted to the back of the cake section in my recipe box.

Speed forward about 20 years and a lot of cakes later and trans fats are getting a really bad rap and they are everywhere in baked goods so I’m looking for a recipe for a cake that doesn’t have butter (which hasn’t been rehabilitated yet) or shortening (none available yet without trans fats) and I come across this recipe that uses oil rather than butter or shortening.  I bake it up and offer it.  DH refuses it, saying he doesn’t like that cake.  Huh? I distinctly remember him appreciating this cake enthusiastically every time I baked it…in 1979.  I’m confused.  He just smiles.  Oh, okay.  So now I call it Honeymoon Cake and make it in 3 little loaf pans rather than the teflon-coated tube pan so it will make convenient slices and take I it to a tennis match to see what the tennis ladies think of it.  It’s love-love.  And the story makes it even better.  Sweet story, sweet cake.  Along comes DGS and he loves this cake, but what does a 2-year-old know from honeymoon, although he knows all about how yummy HUNNY is from Winnie-the-Pooh, and he knows what cake is and that it is also yummy.  So he shortens the name of this snack to Honeycake and some days he just can’t live without it.  Which is why I baked it today.  And FINALLY, here is the recipe:

Honeycake

  • 2 cups (9 0z.) All-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger

 

  • 1/2 cup (3.5 oz) oil
  • 1/2 cup (3.5 oz) granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup (3.75 oz) packed brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/2 cups (12 oz) applesauce
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

 

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease 3 small 3×5 loaf pans or one bundt or tube pan. Sift together dry ingredients.  Combine wet ingredients in mixer bowl and beat until combined.  Add dry ingredients.  Mix on low until well incorporated and then beat on medium until smooth.  Bake in 3 loaf pans for 40 minutes.  If in tube or Bundt pan, 50 minutes.

If you’ve made this as a cake, the original recipe had a glaze:

  • 1 cup (4 oz) sifted powdered sugar
  • 1 tablespoon soft butter
  • 2 tablespoons milk
  • 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Combine and drizzle over cake.  To avoid that metallic taste you can get in frostings and glazes, heat the milk before adding it.  I really think the glaze is overkill on the sweetness front and prefer this served plain as a quick bread rather than a cake.  It’s really good served with a nice very lightly sweetened whipped cream cheese spread.

 

 

Waxing Elegant

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Hardy, har, har.  I’m currently reading a book, a PUBLISHED book, wherein the author has used the phrase “hardy laugh” twice and the title phrase of this post once…so far.  I’m waxing eloquent and enjoying a hearty laugh at his expense.  Actually, I think I’m going to give him a pass on the use of waxing elegant instead of eloquent because it would be in character for the narrator/main character of the book to make that kind of gaffe, but the the continual enjoyment of hardy laughter by the characters is a brig to fare.  Spell check is obviously to blame, yet again, for not being able to catch typos that accidentally form other legitimate words, or the misuse of words that sound similar but have completely different spellings and/or meanings.  When are they going to come up with Phrase check?  Or Homonym check?  Or Does this writing make any sense at all check?

Where have all the editors gone, long time passing…

I’m about to jump off that bridge too far, but before I do, may I recommend The Elements of Style by E. B. White? I recommend it to all, not just to the aspiring writers among us, because it’s some of the best writing around about how to write and at the same time some of the best writing around, period.  That’s no easy feat.  E.B. White.  Ahhh.  Some writer.

Read any good books lately?

Postscript: that’s twice for “waxing elegant.”  Maybe it’s a Southern expression?  Could be one of those idioms that pinpoint the geographic region where you learned to talk?  That they might one day use to create a quiz like this.