The Armadillo

My blog needs some serious updating.  But I'm too busy to do it now...  So, I post a photo of a lovely armadillo so I don't have to keep looking at garlic salt even though it's really yummy. 

Delicious home made garlic salt

I made some garlic salt a few years ago and ran out a couple of months ago. It is really easy to make and so handy. Yes, you can peel a garlic clove every time you want to use some garlic or you can buy pre-peeled garlic or you can buy garlic salt. Nothing holds a candle to home made garlic salt, ahem, in my opinion. Here are 2 different batches of garlic salt and the larger jar holds celery salt. You can see that the smaller jars are different colors. The jar on the left is air dried garlic salt. It wasn't hot enough when I made the middle batch of garlic salt so I put it in the oven on low to hurry up the process and it dried out but got a little yellow. I messed up with the celery salt as it should be made with celery seed not celery stalks. I'm going to keep adding dried celery leaves to the jar as I get them. Maybe I will make a spice mix with it. Oh, and I didn't have jar rings to put on but make sure you do especially if your going to shake the finished salt occasionally to prevent clumping.

You only need 2 ingredients to make garlic salt, fresh garlic and salt. The ratio I used was 2 full heads to one unit salt container. I used regular iodized salt. I have also used sea salt. Iodized salt contains anti-caking ingredients where kosher and sea salt don't. If you use the kosher or sea salt, try to find fine salt. As the garlic salt dries, the salt crystals grow. If the salt grains are large to start with, they get even larger. If they do, you may need to put the garlic salt into a salt grinder or back into the food processor to grind down the salt. It won't fit in a regular salt shaker. I use a pinch when cooking scrambled eggs. Somehow, the larger the salt grains, the larger the pinch, so for those on salt restricted diets, you are forewarned, use small grain salt. This is all I used. My trusty old Cuisinart. If you don't have one just put the garlic through a press or chop it up fine. You only need 2 ingredients to make garlic salt. Fresh garlic and salt. I use the ratio of 2 full heads of garlic per full container of salt. The hardest part of making the garlic salt is peeling the cloves of 2 heads of garlic.

You can see that the crystals can get quite large. If you put it back in the Cuisinart to grind down, let it sit awhile as it makes a powdery cloud of garlic dust. I love to put garlic salt on my meat and in my scrambled eggs just a dash! It's really addicting!

As is my home made granola! Made with fresh picked and air dried blueberries! I have some refinements to make to the recipe before I post it, though. I had such trouble writing this post and arranging the photos (well, I couldn't see some of the photos or get them separated to write comments). I wish Google and Apple would get along better. Anyway, enjoy!

Homemade Soap Season

I guess I could have said homemade soap season is nigh upon us but who says that anymore except those of us who watch period dramas and read old books? For me it's harder to make soap in the summer because the temperatures get too high unless you start early in the morning. It takes too long for the sodium hydroxide to cool to the proper temperature unless I use up all the ice the ice maker produces then there is none for iced tea. Fall weather is so spectacular I really just like being out and about and in the garden. Early in the spring is the traditional time to make soap, post holidays and pre-spring cleaning, before there is weeding and gardening to do. (Having just wrote that, I don't think we have winter in California anymore. I am still harvesting squash from the garden, some roses are blooming, not all the leaves are off the trees and the weeds are starting to take off!)

These soaps turned out very nice (except for the spots). I used sodium lactate (which is a sugar) to make the soap harder since my recipe is not that hard but apparently, I didn't mix it in enough or something. Still even with the spots I am very pleased. I have a couple of these types of tray molds and I never seem to get anything aesthetically pleasing from what I have tried until now. I don't want to "paint" the details in as some have done (I have seen beautiful painted soaps on the websites that are usually selling the molds). My basic recipe is not that opaque but I refuse to whiten it up with titanium dioxide which is toxic.

So here is what I did. I made a batch of soap. I kept out about an ounce of distilled water when I made the sodium hydroxide (I put red devil lye into the distilled water). Then I made a small amount of green (sage) and brown (java) coloring (making up with the 1 ounce of water I withheld from the main batch of sodium hydroxide). I use dedicated pyrex measuring cups for soap making so that I can control the pour easier. So after putting soap in the individual pyrex cups and mixing in the colors, I poured the brown colored soap into the pine cone and branch areas and green colored soap into the pine needle areas. Then I poured the uncolored soap into the tray mold. As I had more green colored soap, I finished off pouring that into the tray. I have done this technique before on other detailed tray molds but they didn't turn out to my satisfaction probably because the color combinations didn't blend together as naturally as these do.

After letting the mold sit and unmolding  (plus 4 weeks curing time for the lye and fats/oils to completely saponify) and voilá! I have always thought of these soaps as very Christmasy but I guess they could also be considered rustic or woodsy and be used year round especially at a cabin. It's so nice I don't want to use it just yet.

Works in Progress

I've been attempting to get back into the swing of normal life…  I thought I would try part 2 of a small project I've been wanting to do since last Christmas. Some small Christmas tree skirts for 2 barbed wire Christmas trees that I have had for a couple of years and just adore. Here is one in a Dresden plate still unfinished. I have been trying it out with different backgrounds to see how I will back it. The plan now is to sew 2 circles together, slightly larger than the Dresden plate, turn it inside out, press it and sew the Dresden plate onto it. When I laid it out on one of my quilts, I thought, I am going to have to make another quilt like this with random Dresden plates on it. I'll add it to my list of quilt projects...

I cut out 20 blades for the Dresden plate but it became obvious that I was going to have to stop at 17. Thus, my pattern is not symmetrical. It was a trial run made from scraps but I love it anyway regardless of its imperfection.

Here it is ready for assembly with the first tree skirt I made out of felted wool in a rustic penny rug style I started earlier this year. (Yes, my creative output has been very minimal this year.)

I still have to stitch a piece of wool felt to the bottom of it with a blanket stitch. Here is a shot of the wool pieces I made my selection from. I hope to get them finished in time to decorate for Christmas.

Home

Gosh. I am home. Not from a trip or a journey. Just home. What makes a place home? It can be a person, no doubt. It can be a place. It can be a collection or association of objects. Not just any old objects. Objects collected from vacations or journeys. Even journeys to thrift stores or yard sales. Those objects say something about you. This is what interests me or what I find interesting or comforting or comfortable. It can be an object that has a story. It can be a very personal story or a story about your family. Or, it can be something that makes you smile when you look at it.

I recently bought a print at the thrift store. It was not signed or numbered and had a plastic cover so I knew it wasn't valuable. I sort of agonized about buying it. Not because it cost a whopping $5 but was it "me"?  I awkwardly carried it around the store for awhile (too large for the shopping cart) as I was browsing for other stuff. I really did like it and it was in a nice custom frame and garden themed, my favorite stuff, so it came home. It is titled, Still Life on the Veranda by John Powell.

A couple of caveats. It can be easy to get carried away buying stuff at a thrift store. Even there, don't just buy stuff because it is cheap or a bargain. I have re-donated stuff to the very thrift store where I bought it after I looked at the stuff at home. In fact, I bought a table and chairs and the guy loading it cautioned me he didn't want to see it back for at least 6 months. And, don't end up a hoarder with your house bursting at the seams with stuff that was too good to pass up. Sometimes when I see stuff and I know it is nice and a bargain but it is not something that is me, I just say, I'll let if be someone else's treasure. And, lastly, if you do love it, buy it because you may not find it when you return. Now, I just have to decide where to hang it.

Zentangling Away

 This is my third zentangle doodle. I was looking at the prow of a ship from a Viking ship if you can't guess. Still working on my medieval Norway quilt...

The doodle just progressed and grew until it became the whole ship. The perspective is off and it isn't historically correct and would probably fall over if it was built but it isn't a drawing just a doodle! And, did I say it's a lot of fun!

This is the first zentangle I tried. I am hoping to make some zentangle inspired embroidered hearts before Christmas.

Zinnias!

I couldn't go a summer without posting a photo of my favorite flowers, zinnias. I confess, I usually cut them when they are smaller and have them finish opening up in the vase to beautiful shades and variations. I procrastinated... No further sighting of the praying mantis. He/she must be down in the stems eating bugs (surely there is a good supply of aphids down there). Last summer I saw a praying mantis rip the head off a honeybee and proceed to eat it...They are effective predators but indiscriminate. I have had fewer bug problems this year with earwigs who were plentiful earlier in the year. Last year, they were pretty bad in the pluot trees. All of the leaves were moth eaten from them. I couldn't work on the trees without getting showered with earwigs. I think the heat might of done them in which was a good thing. I ended up with 62 pounds of plots halves frozen. I think the tree must have produced at least 100 pounds of fruit!