Summer Crafting

I am spending my day today figuring out school supplies and embroidering names onto items in preparation for school. Not a very creative way to craft, but perhaps it is the ultimate summer craft -- getting my kids ready to go back to school.

Did You See Me At Westport Landing

On the wide Missouri shore?
Did you hear the west wind calling
In the spring of forty-four?

That is how the song Oregon Trail starts. It was written and sung by C.W. McCall sometime in the seventies. You may be old enough to recognize his most famous work "Convoy". My truckin' brother-in-law bought the album for that song. I was surprised by and pleased to listen to the more lyrical songs on the album. Mostly because they were songs about places I knew and loved.

Back in the day I learned as much as I could about the Oregon trail and visited as many sites as I could talk my parents into visiting. Now I find myself living not too far from Westport Landing. That gives new meaning to the song for me. But that isn't why the lyrics are rolling around in my head.

They are there because of a few lines later on in the song...

If the sun don't shine and the river don't rise
We can make South Pass by the fourth of July

It is variations on the theme 'river don't rise', that are an endless background to my daily endeavors this summer. I am trying to organize the BEST. YEAR. EVER. for an annual river race. And the Missouri River is rising and rising and rising. The reasons are plenty and there is probably a fair share of blame to go around. But that doesn't matter much to me at the moment. I am just hoping and praying that the river will not only not rise but that it will drop to levels low enough for our participants to have a safe and happy paddle.

So as I go about my day, reading reports, calling vendors, comforting racers, I keep thinking... river don't rise and I am probably grateful that Mr McCall has provided a background serenade for my angst.

If you want to read the rest of the lyrics you can find them on sites such as this. The tune is probably out there as well, but you will have to google it yourself. I have a river to monitor.

At the Parade

In keeping with the summer-time theme.... How about a parade?


Some altered photography. Pictures of the young spuds at a November parade waiting more for the tossed candy than the arrival of Santa at the end. Ok, so it is a November parade, but most places hold their parades in summertime!

Handy Pecan Pie

Re-posted here as part of my ongoing effort to wrassle my recipes into one convenient spot.

In a more compact, less messy and no crust to roll form. The recipe is from Pioneer Woman’s Tasty Kitchen. These are pretty tasty.

* 1 cup Packed Light Brown Sugar
* ½ cups All-purpose Flour
* 1 cup Chopped Pecans
* ⅔ cups Softened Butter
* 2 whole Eggs Beaten

A few changes for the next batch. Make sure to use salted butter or add a dash of salt. Add a splash of vanilla. While they were good and simple and come in under the 5 ingredient rule, they need something to brighten or intensify the flavor.

The recipe calls for mixing the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately and then gently mix them together. The tricky bit is to make sure that the butter is not too hot or to temper the eggs. If you pull the melted butter directly out of the microwave and dump in the eggs you will get scrambled eggs and not in a good way. Melt the butter first and then allow it too cool. If you are impatient you will need to temper the eggs, but mixing small amounts of hot butter into the eggs SLOWLY. It will be easier to wait.

Do NOT skimp on greasing the muffin cups. Like pecan pie, these can be sticky. The amount of butter in them helps but…

Another thing, you need to keep mixing the batter slightly as you put it into the muffin cups. Just like in a pecan pie, the pecans float to the top and if you aren’t aware of how you are distributing them you will end up with lots of nuts in the first muffins and few in the last.

I used 350 degrees for 22 minutes with normal sized muffins in silicone pans. it made 12 good sized muffins rather than the 8 described in the recipe. I will try them in the mini pans at some point in the future.

Definitely worth a second bake!

Cleaning Crew

Hats off to some fine folks who pulled about a bajillion tires and pounds of trash out of a Big muddy Slough. It takes some fantastic people to get their hands (and a whole lot more) muddy to make a difference. Thanks gang.

Summer Fair Quilt

Since I'm here at the Summer Fair, I thought I might just as well enter a quilt. This little whole cloth quilt can hide over the corner behind all the beautiful pieced quilts on display. This is one of my earliest attempts at free motion quilting. The bright colors make me happy. Besides, this is far more summery than the recipe I submitted.


The obligatory folded binding shot.

Here you can see a bit of the pieced back and the free motion quilting. Thanks for letting me play!

Hot Cross Buns

When I was a kid, I used to enter my baked goods into the county fair. I earned my fair share of ribbons from them. I loved going to the fair but I haven't been for years. When I happened across the Summer Fair at Generation X Quilters, I wanted to play along and enter something! The following recipe is a re-post from a few years ago. (I am slowly collecting my recipe posts from hither and yon across the internet and putting them all here so I can find them.)

This recipe is slightly out of season for a summer fair, but that is sort of how I feel posting to a Gen X group. I don't technically qualify as gen x. And yet, I find myself, the youngest in my traditional quilt group, by quite a bit and the oldest in the mommies with babies quilt group by not so much. I'll do my best to blend in...

Hot cross buns. I was challenged to make hot cross buns.

Hot cross buns are bread, rolls flavored with nutmeg and cinnamon. My mother taught me how to bake bread. Following her instructions you add flour and knead the dough until it makes the perfect thwack sound when you hold the ball of dough in one hand and strike it with the open palm of your other hand. It is a tactile and audible sensation that cannot be replicated. You then put the dough into the greased bread bowl. The bread bowl is not just any bowl. It is a very old crockery bowl with a beautiful dark brown glaze that you couldn’t afford if you could find it in an antique store. You let it rise until it pushes back just the right amount when you poke it. I really can’t explain any of it any better than this. All I can say is that until I baked bread with my mother where I was able to smell and touch and poke and listen I couldn’t bake bread. I made rocks and paperweights and doorstops and poofy,floofy pasty things, but not bread. No matter how closely I measured and timed and followed each step precisely (which if you know me you understand that much as I dislike precision I can punctiliously replicate a set of instructions) I never made bread.

The problem is that yeast is a living breathing organism. Bread is a set of chemical reactions. Slight variations can alter the chemistry and the microenvironment in ways that completely change the final product. Humidity affects the amount of flour. There are slight changes in yeast. Yeast can be less effective as it ages. Subtle changes in the size of the egg, the type of salt your use, regional differences in milk…. all affect the happy world the yeast inhabit.

This is all a round about way of saying that I can tell you how to make hot cross buns. And I can provide you with pictures, but I really cannot teach you to make them unless you are in my kitchen. You need to experience dough in the real world. I suggest you find a master baker. They are every where. Go to the nearest church supper and you will find one. Spend a day. Bake some bread. Poke and smell. Touch and knead. You will see what I mean.

Now having said that, I am going to give you the road map to hot cross buns. Not a recipe, a road map. Some of the measurements are precise. I’ll try to explain what and why. Some are not. Again, I’ll try to explain what and why. Try it for yourself. And if you have the magic words to explain dough, share them in the comments.

Hot Cross Buns

Oil a medium sized crockery bowl and set aside in a warm spot.
Set out two eggs to bring to room temperature.
Melt 3 Tbsp butter and set aside.

Heat one cup of whole milk in the microwave or in a pan on the stove until it is very warm to the touch. The amount of liquid you start with really determines the size of the batch of dough. One cup of milk makes enough dough to fill my 9 x 13″ rimmed cookie sheet.

Pour the milk into the bowl of your mixer. Sprinkle one package (2 1/4 tsp) yeast over the top. Sprinkle 1/4 cup sugar over the top. (Sugar is a relative thing as long as you don’t overwhelm your dough with it. I never measure precisely but I seldom use more than 1/4 – 1/3 cup.) Slip 1 tsp salt down the side of the bowl. (Salt is important. I almost never cook with salt and I always try to skimp if I do use it, but it is a critical part of the chemistry of baking. Use what the recipe calls for. No more. No less.)

Let the whole thing stand for 5 – 10 minutes until the top is a tan-colored foamy sponge. This step proofs the yeast and lets you know that it is viable. If it doesn’t turn foamy you may have the milk too hot and killed it. It may be too cold and just take longer. It may be that your yeast is too old. Test your yeast by adding some to a bit of warm sugar water. You should see it bloom on the surface in short order. If your yeast is active, start over but don’t get the milk as hot. If it doesn’t spread out and start to open up and blossom, get new yeast. If the whole thing feels cool, try setting your mixing bowl in a bowl of very warm water or in your oven set at 130 degrees fahrenheit for a while.

Add about 1/2 tsp nutmeg. (I used freshly grated. If I was using the usual preground I would add up to a 1 tsp.)
Add about 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Use more if you want a stronger cinnamon taste. I keep the cinnamon light. The real and distinct flavor of all the hot cross buns I’ve ever had is nutmeg.

At this point you can start to mix your dough. First add your melted butter which should have cooled but not solidified by now. Crack your eggs into a small bowl and beat them with a fork or whisk until they are well blended. Add them to the bowl and mix them in.

Start adding flour. You want to have at least 3 – 4 cups of flour (as determined by the scoop and level method) handy. You may use less. You may use more. but make sure you have that much handy. You can add the first 1 – 1 1/2 cups of flour in one dump. Start mixing. you will get a very soft dough that pools in the bottom of your mixer. Your dough hook will pull through it, but it won’t form a ball. Scrape down the sides if you want. Once that first bit of flour is incorporated, you can start adding more flour. The next couple additions can be 1/2 cup at a time. Add the flour and then let the dough hook work its magic until the flour is completely incorporated. By now, the dough should start forming a ball and climbing up the dough hook. The sides of your bowl will still be covered with dough and flour and the dough will stick to the bottom of the bowl when you pull the hook up. At this point you start adding smaller and smaller amounts of flour each time. You can probably make a few quarter cup additions. The dough will start to form a slightly firmer ball. It won’t stick to the bottom of the bowl and the sides of the bowl will become clean. If you touch the dough — with the mixer off silly! — it will still feel sticky. Little bits will stick to your hand as you pull it away from the dough ball. You will probably have to scrape it off your hand and back into the bowl. You are getting close. You need to add a few tablespoons of flour at a time. Let each addition become fulling incorporated and handled the dough before you add anymore. Sometimes the flour will stay on the bottom of the bowl and the dough nearest to it will look like it is getting dry and nasty while the dough climbing the top of the hook looks like dough. Stop the mixer. Give it a few turns in the bowl to mix it all up and knead it together then restart your mixer for a few more turns. If the dough is still sticky to the touch you will need to add a bit more flour. Once the dough is smooth to the touch and all forms a nice smooth ball it is ready to rest. This is the point where you give it a thwack. You should see a nice hand print in the dough ball with nothing sticking to your hand.

Take your perfect ball of dough and roll it around in your oiled bowl until all sides are covered with oil. Note how much it fills the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap or clean dish towel and set in a warm spot. Let it sit in a warm room for an hour or two. I use my oven set on its proofing temperature which is about 130 degrees Fahrenheit for half an hour.

Yeast is like Goldilocks. It wants the temperature just right. It likes warm. The warmer it is the faster it grows. Until it is too warm and you kill it. It slows down in cold. The fridge is place to stash your dough if you suddenly remember a meeting or that you have to pick up the kids. Keep your dough Goldilocks warm.

While you are waiting, oil your baking pan. Be sure to get the oil or cooking spray into the corners! The egg wash will stick like glue if you don’t. Actually the egg wash will stick like glue even if you do if it is one of those sorts of days.

When your dough is double in bulk or when you have run out of time and you absolutely must have hot cross buns in the next hour punch it down. That’s right. Take your fist and punch it right down into the bowl so that the whole thing deflates. Now is the time to knead in 1/2 cup of raisins or dried currents if you want. I don’t.

Actually, I never remember to punch the dough down. I just reach in and pinch off a wad of dough about 1-1/2 inches in diameter and start working it into a ball. You can’t really roll it like you would playdough. You need to pull it across the top and then pinch the edges together at the bottom. My mom does this funky thing where she pushes the dough up between her finger and thumb allowing the finger and thumb to pull the sides of the dough down as the rest squeezes through the middle. Then she pulls the bottom together with her hand and pinches it tight. (I think I will have to try and link a video to show that.)

Set your perfect or not so perfect dough balls in neat or not so neat rolls on your oiled baking sheet. I usually manage to get about 6 rows of 4 buns across my sheet. Leave some space in between. Cover them with plastic or a towel and let them rise again. They should fill the pan with their sides touching. In the proofing oven this takes about 15 more minutes. Your time and temperature will vary.

While you wait. Crack another egg into a teacup. (I don’t know why it has to be a teacup but Grandma always used a teacup and I don’t have a stack of custard cups handy like Mom does so use a teacup!) Add a tablespoon of COLD water. Blend or whisk this until it is a consistant pale yellow color. You do not want to be able to distinguish bits of egg white and egg yolk. So take your time and make sure it is completely mixed.

If you are using your proofing oven, take the tray out of the oven before you preheat it. Preheat it to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Once your buns are double in size… I mean your hot cross buns. We don’t have that long. Brush the tops with the egg wash. Bake the rolls for 20 minutes in your conventional oven. I used the bake/convection setting and they were done in 8 minutes.

Set out to cool.

Glaze/frosting.

All of the recipes call for some sort of glaze to be drizzled over or frosting to be piped on top in the shape of a cross. You could use the canned stuff, but after going to all this trouble why ruin it with canned flavor. Frosting in easy but you need to know what texture you are going for. Humidity and the size of your lemon will affect how much sugar you need. So mix and stir until you get what feels right. Besides, you can always use that extra three pounds of frosting on something else. Right?

Squeeze the juice of one lemon into a small bowl. Add about 1/2 cup powdered sugar. Mix well. Add 2 Tbsp melted butter. Mix well. Add powdered sugar a little at a time until you get a runny glaze consistency that will coat the tops and run down the sides. Or you can keep adding sugar until you get a stiffer frosting that will easily squeeze out the snipped corner of a zipper lock bag. This makes a lemony sour frosting. It goes great with the nutmeg but it is not what most people expect. You can make it more traditional by using 2 – 3 Tbsp of milk instead of the lemon juice.

Once the buns have cooled to slightly warm drizzle with glaze or pipe with frosting crosses. Serve warm.

Look at that texture. See those flecks of nutmeg. Check out that lemon icing.

I’ll make these again soon and add some pictures of the intermediate steps. As I said, this was a challenge and I didn’t have much time to get them done, let alone take pictures.

Art Fare

Re-posted here as part of my effort to collect my recipes scattered hither and yon across the interwebs into one place.

A lovely friend hosted an after the Art Fair party and asked allowed us to bring dessert. What could be more fitting than a session of playing with your food?

Calder Cookies

one recipe sugar cookie dough. Use your favorite. I usually use the Betty Crocker version with vanilla instead of almond flavoring.

Divide into thirds before chilling. Color one third red, one third yellow, and one third blue. Use a professional grade color such as this kit from Ateco. The liquid stuff you buy in the store will produce pastel colors and you are going for as dark as you can get. Chill each color separately. Roll chilled dough. Cut with a sharp knife into random geometric shapes ala Alexander Calder. Use a straw to punch out a hole in each cookie. Bake as instructed.

Provide guests with a tray of cookies, string and assorted skewers and toothpicks. Have them string them together into a mobile. You can use shoestring licorice and pretzel rods but you will need bigger holes in the cookies.

Admire your creations and then eat them. You can always try to eat the hanging cookies but you probably want to put down a washable rug or go outside.

Jackson Pollock Cake

1 pound cake (purchased or your own recipe)
Assorted toppings and sauces in squeeze bottles

Slice cake and arrange on a clean new paint pallet. Have guests take a slice and put on a plain plate. Guests then squeeze ‘paint’ syrup over the cake canvas ala Jackson Pollock. admire your artistic creation then eat it.

Raspberry Sauce

1 package unsweetened frozen raspberries (While fresh raspberries would probably taste better I find they are too expensive to mash up and prefer t o eat them whole.)
Sugar to taste

Thaw berries and put in blender. Blend until smooth. Pour through a fine sieve pressing on the solids to force as much through while leaving the seeds behind. Add sugar to taste. You want it to be slightly sweet. I usually end up with around a 1/4 cup but you need to add about a tablespoon at a time. Give it whirl and taste. It will be a terrible trial to taste I am sure but taste it you must. Just be sure to leave some for the dessert.

While I will claim credit for thinking up the Calder Cookies I read about the Jackson Pollock cake in a magazine years ago. I have no idea what it was. I will keep looking for it. If you know, let me know and I will gladly attribute it properly.

* Variations with frosting seem to be all over the internet these days. This version was most likely found in an old issue of Bon Apetit.

Quilt Story: Iris Wallhanging

A very long time ago, I was into painting on fabric. I had hopes of actually being able to learn to paint my vision. I got pretty good at following the directions in the watercolor book, but I never got very far on the vision thing.

This Iris is one of my early attempts. I was basically following the instructions from a book. I wish I could find the book and cite it properly because it was very good at helping me get this far. Unfortunately, it is either at the bottom of a box in my basement or lost in a move. (If anyone recognizes the work, I'll be happy to give credit and probably try to find a copy to purchase again!)


I had grand plans for this little iris at one time. I was going going make a huge king-sized quilt in purple and green. I made a sandwich, put it in my machine and promptly stitched a lovely fold of fabric into the back. Once I ripped that little problem out, I put in in my machine and promptly broke the machine.

There is a very long saga that goes along with the repair of my machine covering more than 20 years and a stupid error made by an inexperienced repair shop that was ultimately solved by boy blacksmith. Needless to say the poor wee quilty became a victim of that saga and languished in another box (separate from the painting book) for the same 20 years.

For some reason, we got it in to our brains to go searching for a long lost project and dug up the iris panel. I tried to figure out how it might become part of a larger quilt by doing some sort of quilt as you go, but it hurt my poor head. I'll put that process on my 'bucket' list and perhaps tackle it in the future. In the meantime, I decided to just 'finish it up and move on, dearie". (Another tale for another day.)


So here in all it's tiny, scrunchy, lumpy glory is the iris wall hanging.

Re-blogged here as part of my ongoing efforts to gather the wheat and chaff of my creativity from the far reaches of the interwebs into one granary for safe keeping.

Wedding Mints

This is re-posted here as part of my on-going effort to reign in my recipes from across the intertubes and collect them in one place.

My sister had a huge wedding. Much of it was homemade and crafted. Back in the day, cream cheese mints were all the rage. Each one had to be rolled and molded by hand. Making mints for 500 guests can take a while. We spent hours making them and laying them out to dry on her future mother-in-law’s dining room table. Everything was going well until Flaps the basset hound came home. One swipe of the tongue and a large portion of our production was gone.

I was reminded of that when I came across this recipe at Bake it Pretty. It is for butter mints. A recipe very similar to the ones we made with cream cheese. But I think the butter will be a different flavor and possibly a different texture. I will have to try it.

****I was reminded of this as my son was assisting his cousin in making the original cream cheese mints for her wedding reception. No dog was involved, but I do believe boy blacksmith probably snagged at least a few.

Croquet with the Red Queen

Update: Boy blacksmith has posted a number of his wickets on Etsy. You can play croquet with the Red Queen too.

Queen's rules!

The Monkey's Uncle and the monkeys all got together to prank the wedding. Since Alice in Wonderland has been a recurring theme with the bride's family and since the theme for the wedding itself was High Tea in a Sand Castle with Beer, a rousing game of croquet seemed the thing.

Except, of course, it had to be Croquet with the Red Queen.

A quick perusal of the internet, provided a ready made source for the basics. Giant placemat sized cards, hats, flamingos and even hedgehog puppets that roll into balls. (Yes, time and materials permitting we would have made the flamingos and painted some hedgehogs but pranks are always that well thought out so Mr Amazon to the rescue!) The problem was how to make the cards into wickets.

Boy Blacksmith to the rescue. He built himself a 3D printer. (Do not adjust your screen, this is a blurry picture

He used the CAD program on his computer to design hands, feet and faces for the cards. They have slots for the card and holes for a nail to poke into the ground.

This is the prototype set printed in the regular plastic.

Here you can see one of the hands up close. It has a nice notch for fitting the card.

Again the prototype pieces. You can see the club face on this one. You can't really tell from this picture, but he has the cutest smile!


Here is the diamond card wicket. It is printed in red. Unfortunately, the face for this one was printed in black. (Pranking without enough time to execute fully is problematic.)

The flower girl (after her mom had her change into play clothes) is having fun moving the hedgehogs around the field.

Proving there is more than one way to get out of a sticky wicket.

City Boys

A city boy looking at some sheep on the farm.

A couple of very curious city boys exploring the barn.

These are some images I altered. They were taken years ago after a day at the farm. This is just some more of my work I am collecting from various posting places across the intertubes. It is actually quite fun re-discovering older work.

Shrimp in Spicy Garlic Sauce

This recipe is re-posted here in an attempt to collect my recipes posted hither and yon across the intertubes into one place. Sorry I don't have a picture of this one.

Mince at least 3 cloves of garlic and 1 inch of peeled fresh ginger.

Stir together 3 Tbsp low sodium soy sauce, 1 tsp honey, chili garlic paste to taste (about 3 tsp), 3 tsp toasted sesame oil and a dash rice vinegar or mirin. stir and set aside.

Mix about 1 Tbsp corn starch with 3 Tbsp cold water. Set aside.

Heat oil in hot pan. Add 1 can sliced water chestnuts. Stir until oil becomes hot again. Add garlic and ginger. Stir just until it becomes fragrant. Add 2 lbs, peeled, deveined, tail off shrimp. (If using pre-cooked, then just heat through.) Stir fry about 2 minutes until the shrimp is opaque and just cooked through. Add sauce. Bring to a boil. Stir up cornstarch mixture. Add to pan. Stir and cook until slightly thickened. Serve over rice with vegetables. like broccoli and red peppers.

Speaking of Liberating...

Crop. (You can see his ear there on the left, right?) Label. Journal.
Oh no! Wrong kid.

I have boxes and now files and disks full of lousy pictures of my family and events that need some rigorous editing and organizational help. I've taken a couple scrapbooking classes. I've got a few books. But I can never see past the magnitude of the job. It always seems so overwhelming that I have never managed to make a single page or sort a single picture. Until now.

I met a scrapper who does random pages and puts them into books in completely random order. No familial or chronological organization. She just works on what appeals to her at the moment, finishes it (big bonus) and moves on.

Seeing her disregard for what I always thought was a key element of scrapping was incredibly liberating.

I am thinking that I might be able to actually do some scrapbooking if I wasn't facing a big empty book for each kid and a monumental task. I think I might actually be able to get some pictures sorted and documented. And then I could worry about dividing them and ordering them later.

Hand Sewing

I took a wee quilt to club yesterday to do my usual show and ask. It is supposed to be show and tell but I always have questions. My little piece is a tiny hand quilted project I took to work on during my travels. The group leader said something to the effect of 'you like hand quilting'. I was shocked. I have never considered myself a hand quilter. I can't imagine attempting hand quilting a large or even baby-sized quilt. And yet, four of my last projects have involved a significant amount of hand quilting and even some embroidery.

Thinking about it, I realized that I enjoy the artistic elements I've been using. I love the more immediate gratification of working on a small project. I am finding an almost zen-like appeal to seed stitching and I love watching the quilt sandwich take form as I quilt. I think that by doing the hand work on 'art quilts' I've given myself permission to be imperfect and in doing so have been able to improve my stitching. How liberating. Maybe I'll try real hand quilting one of these days. What about you? Do you hand quilt?