Year's End Stuff--Crafts and Cookies

Except for raking pine needles to mulch my flower beds and to improve the paths between my herb beds, I did not do much gardening in the late fall. Tom and I harvested all the peppers we could before that early freeze in November, and we made habanero pepper jelly for the first time. Two batches included habanero peppers, apples, and rosemary; one batch included habanero peppers and green peppers. All batches turned out to be quite tasty, and we made so many pints that we could give several jars away to friends and family.

After weeding, mulching, and canning, I abandoned the gardening and spent most of my time making things--which meant that for weeks, my dining room looked like this:

The latter half of November I was busy making Christmas presents--plush, shaped pillows for my grown children and my daughter's boyfriend. The project started out simply, as projects do: I had seen a cat-shaped pillow in a catalog a couple of years ago, drew a rendition of it, and thought I would try my hand at creating a cat-shaped pillow for my daughter.

I finally set about doing so in mid-November, a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. For the past several years I have been collecting second-hand wool sweaters at Goodwill stores, washing and drying them to felt the wool, and then cutting up the wool to store for projects. In the past, I had made several folk art quilts with the felted wool--see here, here, and here--but I wanted to make some smaller items before setting off again on a quilt project.

I first drew a large pattern--and pieces of the pattern--for the cat pillow.

One of my goals for this project was to use as many recycled materials as I could, so in addition to the felted wool from second-hand sweaters, I used material cut from an old, stained linen tablecloth as backing for the wool pieces. I would be embroidering and appliquéing the wool so needed some kind of closely-woven backing to stabilize the wool.

The project took me longer than it might had I used a sewing machine for some of the simpler sewing because I did it all by hand.  I re-learned some things I had forgotten about sewing (clipping rounded corners to prevent puckering, for instance), and I made some errors that I happily did not repeat in the projects that came later.

Here is a finished version of the cat. In retrospect, I would have made the nose longer and would probably have chosen white wool for the cheeks instead of  light tan.

close-up of the mouse (stuffed separately to give it a 3-D effect--but I didn't attempt to stuff the tail)

When I make something, especially if it's something for which I have created the pattern--whether a hand-sewing project or a crochet project--I tend to make multiple versions. For instance, seven years ago when I began crocheting hats of my own design, I made a LOT of hats; when I created a pattern for crocheted Santa gnomes, I made not one but THIRTY of them. And then I usually don't repeat the project again. After creating the first cat pillow, I knew I had to make something else in a similar vein, so I made a Grumpy Cat pillow for my son and a fox pillow for my daughter's boyfriend.

Grumpy Cat pattern (minus an ear)

Grumpy Cat, front

The "Give a Damn" pennant is a pocket for the smaller flag, which can be taken out to make a different statement.

back of Grumpy Cat

The decorative sashes cover up imperfections in the assemblage of the pillow.

My daughter's boyfriend creates video games, so I wanted to make a pillow that reflected that interest. I drew a fox design that might be at home in a video game and that is also a little reminiscent of the simple and playful features of amigurumi .

pocket on the back of Mr. Fox

Finally, on the craft front, I had a wacky wreath to make for the Raucous Wreath Auction at the Holiday Party held at the Abita Mystery House in Abita Springs, Louisiana. For my wreath, I used some crochet methods I had developed in creating earrings and broaches out of bottle caps. Recycled plastic caps helped shape the wreath; recycled Abita beer bottle caps completed the decorative bit. The final result was a little cuter than wacky, but the winning bid on my wreath was $55, which I designated as a contribution to Doctors Without Borders. A couple of days after the auction, I saw John Preble while shopping at a Rouse's grocerty store, and asked John how much money was raised: "over 18," he said, and I assume that meant over "$1800," as the auction brought in about $1500 last year.

Wacky Wreath I ("Not My Grandmother's Crochet"): the crocheted wreath I donated to the Raucous Wreath Auction at the Abita Mystery House Holiday Party

back of the wreath: You can get a peek at the recycled plastic caps I used to create the wreath form.

Never satisfied with making one of something, I followed up my Abita beer bottle wreath with a wacky wreath for me to keep, using materials left over from previous projects. When I was creating my art car from 2003-2008, I ordered a lot of second-hand buttons on e-bay, and I also collected beads and baubles that I thought I could use in spiffing up "The Lady." Consequently, I have a craft closet and metal files full of stuff I'll not be able to use in a lifetime of craft.

Wacky Wreath II: made of red veggie mesh bags, wooden beads, pony beads, jingle bells, glass ladybug beads, old metal buttons, Mexican milagros

Finally, as Christmas approached, the holiday members of our household, which had increased from two to five as our son, daughter, and daughter's boyfriend arrived, I began baking. For most of the year, we cook fairly simple foods, relying on our garden to supply a lot of our vegetables. And I generally don't bake desserts except for holidays. At Thanksgiving, I usually bake a sweet potato pie or two and maybe a pound cake, and for the Christmas holidays, I bake cookies, two recipes which are family traditions--old fashioned teacakes and gingerbread men. For the past few days, I have been baking a different cookie batch each day, filling the cookie jar and watching the jar empty over the course of that day and the next. Today I baked my final batch, gingerbread men. After cutting out several batches of typical gingerbread men, I turned the batter over to the younger adults and let them create their own strange gingerbread creatures, results which can be seen in the photos below. Also included at the end of this post: recipes for the four kinds of cookies I baked this year.

All in all, it's been a good year for us. There were the usual disappointments, of course, and worries, but I try not to dwell upon those, especially as the unknown quantity of the new year approaches. It's best, I think, to imagine new and happy possibilities rather than to dwell on mistakes, disappointments, and sorrows of the past. In our case, new possibilities may include moving again, as our government continues to cut services in response to Tea Party and Republican pressure. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has had several severe budget cuts, and while no one is being let go, there is the possibility that more budget cuts could eliminate many of the planner positions for wildlife refuges in the Southeast region. Just before last year's government shut-down, Tom and many of his colleagues were told that the budget cuts could affect their jobs. Rather than letting people go, the USFWS has tried to eliminate positions by attrition and by moving people to other, better-funded positions. Rather than wait for the hammer to fall, Tom decided to be pro-active and to apply for planning positions with the U.S. Forest Service, which seems still to have funding to pay people to write the Congressionally-mandated plans for national forests. But those are concerns for next year.

Meanwhile, we will enjoy friends and family here, a few kayaking paddles on nearby bayous, and holiday cookies from my year's end baking.

Gingerbread men--I used a very dark, organic molasses for this year's batch

Gingerbread aliens

Rolled Ginger Cookies
1 cup butter (or shortening, if you're into that)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 cup molasses
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
5 cups sifted, all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I always add a little more)
1 teaspoon ground cloves
2-3 teaspoons ground ginger (I add 3)

Cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg, molasses, and vinegar. Sift together the dry ingredients; blend into the butter mix. Chill for 3 hours. Roll dough 1/8 inch thick for crisp cookies, a little thicker for gingerbread men, on a lightly floured surface. Cut in shapes. Bake at 375° (on greased cookie sheet) for 5-6 minutes. Cool slightly. Remove to rack. Makes about 5 dozen cookies, according to the original recipe. Note: I use Red Hots (or cinnamon candies) for the buttons, raisins for the eyes and mouths of the gingerbread men.

Teacakes with Lemon Glaze (a family favorite for three or four generations)
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter (or oleo, if you prefer)
2 eggs
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-2 teaspoons vanilla (I add 2)--can also flavor with nutmeg or lemon
flour (4-6 cups)

Mix ingredients in order given. Mix enough flour to make dough stiff enough to roll out (4-6 cups). Roll dough on lightly floured surface. For crisp cookies, roll dough thin. We like our cookies a little thicker and cakier. Cut cookies to shapes and brush with lemon glaze. Bake at 350° for about 10 minutes.
Lemon Glaze: Mix together 1/4 cup lemon juice with 3/4 cup sugar. Brush mixture onto cookie dough before baking.

Ranger Cookies
Mix:
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups flour
2 cups oatmeal
2 cups cornflakes
1 cup coconut flakes
1/2 cup pecans (chopped)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Add:
1 cup butter (or shortening)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla (I add a little more)

Roll in balls and press out on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350° for about 9 minutes. Makes 4 dozen.

Cranberry Crisps (similar to the Ranger Cookies)
1 cup butter (or shortening)
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/3 cups dried cranberries
1 cup coarsely ground walnuts (I use pecans)

Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Combine oats, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder; gradually add to the creamed mixture. Stir in the cranberries and walnuts (or pecans). Drop by teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350° for 12-14 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield, 5 dozen

Ranger Cookies and Cranberry Crisps

What's It Worth?

A recent trip to Target with my daughter reminded me of how abysmal the retail shopping experience can be. My daughter had recently moved into another apartment and needed a toilet plunger. We quickly located the bathroom wares: there were two choices of plunger, all plastic or some kind of plastic-y material. None had the substantial wooden handles we had come to expect in a toilet plunger, and one choice of plunger, the laughingly named Evercare Toilet Plunger,  was like a cartoon idea of a plunger: the suction cup was flaccid, almost flat, with no suction strength at all. I laughed out loud when I picked it up, brandishing it like a [useless] weapon. Where was it made? In China. We chose the other one, the Clorox Bright Blue Toilet Plunger, made in Italy of Chinese components--or something like that. I'm still waiting to hear if the thing works.

More and more of the products displayed in our retail stores are crap [pardon the pun] like these plungers. Tom has frequently moaned about his inability to find a workable replacement for the blade in his bow saw. All the hardware stores now carry cheap, thin blades made in China. We have noticed over the years, also, how gardening tools have decreased in workmanship and quality.

Americans have become accustomed to cheap products made by poorly paid workers in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka who operate in appalling conditions. The availability of these products has affected our attitudes toward workmanship: we expect all products to be cheap and readily available, and we give little thought to the people slaving away in factories to provide us with those products. We have forgotten the time and effort that go into making things, especially those things that are hand made.

I have had first experience with this coarsened attitude toward hand made, crafted material. For a few years I have made things to sell at craft festivals, and I have had very different experiences. At some festivals, those attending seem to appreciate the time, effort, and creativity invested in a well-made item, and they are willing to pay appropriately. At other festivals, folks seem to think the hand-made items for sale should be as cheap as the products on the shelves in Walmart.

At one local festival, a man came by my booth to look at some scarves I had crocheted. Every scarf was different, and I had incorporated unique hand-stitched designs with buttons and felted wool in the one which interested him. He didn't purchase anything, but he returned to the booth hours later as we were packing up to leave. He picked up a scarf we had already taken down from display in order to pack it. He held up the scarf which had taken me hours (several days) to make and offered $20 for it. When I politely refused the offer, he threw the scarf down and stormed off angrily. "You could have made a sale," he sneered.

I later sold the scarf for $35-40 at another festival, in another state.

Of course, calculating the price of one's crafts by determining the hours one has spent making them is out of the question. I recently made some coasters out of beer bottle caps we had saved over a couple of years. I crocheted them together in a unique design. Perhaps someone else has come up with this same idea, but I haven't seen it. As the author of Ecclesiastes says, "There is no new thing under the sun"; crafters often come up with similar ideas independently.

Each of these coasters takes me hours to make. I first crochet around each of seven bottle caps, taking 30 minutes or more for each cap; the time depends on whether I am also watching programs on Netflix, which I often do while I am crocheting. I add a crocheted edging on the top of each cap. Then I crochet the bottle caps together. Finally, I glue a cork backing to each separate piece of the coaster. I estimate that it takes five or six hours to make each of these coasters. No one is going to pay me a minimum hourly rage to create these--the price would be exorbitant. I enjoyed making them because I get a real kick out of coming up with ways to recycle material that we usually throw away. Yet if I do try to sell these coasters at a festival, I will have to come up with a price that honors my work while also recognizing what a customer might be willing to pay. It's a delicate balance.

That balance is more difficult because we've all become used to cheap products at cheap prices--cheap products on which retailers can slap a big mark-up price because those companies aren't paying American minimum wages, aren't providing workplaces that follow OSHA regulations, and aren't paying for health insurance for their workers.

American workers' wages have remained stagnant for the past two decades, but cheap products have obscured that fact for many Americans.

Absence and Presence

Three weeks have passed since my last post. No, I haven't been on vacation in some exotic location. Our daughter has been staying with us for the summer, working locally before she returns to university in another state, and we have spent some time visiting, cooking, going to the local farmers' market, driving occasionally to New Orleans to pick up (and to deliver) one or another of her friends at the airport or the Megabus drop-off. We've grilled on the patio, tried out new (to us) restaurants in towns nearby, gardened, and harvested our vegetables. Just as the tomatoes slowed down in production, the peas, okra, and bell peppers increased production--and the July rains began as well. Our days have been full of ordinary activities illumined by the presence of our daughter, who loves to cook and to experiment with ingredients, and the superabundance of the fresh herbs in my garden have turned ordinary recipes into culinary masterpieces.

So while I have been absent from my blog, I have been present elsewhere, in an ordinary life filled with simple activities transformed by an appreciation of these fleeting moments we have shared. Summer will end, but we've caught hold of its green garment and have held fast while we can.

And we have all started new projects. I am trying my hand at hand quilting, beginning with a baby quilt of my own design but inspired by a photograph taken by a friend. In this project, I will do some traditional quilting, which I haven't done since my grandmother Margaret Cole Dugat made me a log-cabin quilt in time for my wedding in 1978. My grandmother made a quilt for every grandchild, and some of us helped her hand-stitch those quilts. I put in many hours helping her stitch my quilt as well as some of the quilts she made my cousins and siblings, but I've never assembled a traditional quilt by myself though I have created folk art quilts in which I used nontraditional techniques for connecting squares of appliquéd material.

current project--small quilt top (Indigo bunting in a tree)

Even in my "traditional" quilting, however, I'm using less traditional techniques. This is not a pieced quilt; the top is one piece of cotton material on which I've appliquéd a design that I have cut, free-hand, out of felt. I've been thinking of how I will quilt this piece; I might choose a flannel back, and I'll quilt around the design first, what's called echo quilting. I plan to hand-stitch several series of echo lines around the appliquéd felt and then emphasize the background pattern in the remaining spaces with random stitches that will follow some of the lines of color in the cotton quilt top material. That's the plan, anyway. Using my friend's photograph as inspiration, I drew a pattern, but I have freely improvised as I cut out, arranged, and appliquéd the felt.

the quilt top design

Making this quilt is a learning experience for me; I hope to improve and to increase the complexity of my designs.

The other big project underway here is the building of a garden shed; my husband and daughter are hammering together the foundation now, and just minutes ago, I took this photo of their progress:

foundation for a garden shed

My job will be to paint the garden shed when it's completed. I'm leaning toward painting the shed green (a spring green) and blue (maybe turquoise), but I have some time to make up my mind.

Meanwhile, I wander the yard in search of pollinators and snap photos of those creatures that visit the mountain mint, zinnias, and other flowers in my garden. July rain has incited a frenzy of growth in my basil; I'll have to begin gathering up much larger quantities of it to dry for use during the winter.

Genovese, lettuce-leaf, and purple opal basil

These are just a few simple pleasures of a summer spent making things and growing things in southeast Louisiana. By August, I'll be longing for the cooler and drier weather of October, but now I'm enjoying being present in the moment.

bee on one of my zinnia flowers

little waspy thing on our mountain mint

In the Garden of My Memory

Years ago I created an art car on which I was inspired to paint and illustrate an original phrase that came to mind when I was thinking of my grandmother Margaret Cole Dugat and all the women who have to re-create their worlds when war, natural disasters, bad relationships, stunted aspirations, or a myriad of disappointments change their lives: "Because she remembered her grandmother's garden, she planted her own. Flower by flower she remade the world." This is now a phrase I live by. Actually,  that idea directed my life--often literally--before I was aware of it, for in all the moves we've made to improve our circumstances, the one thing that has remained constant is the energy we put into creating a garden immediately when we've settled.

As I noted in this post of January 17, I set for myself several art, craft, gardening and writing goals for the year to see me through the presidential election and beyond. The stupidity of the election cycle can be so astounding that any thinking person keeping up with the news has to find a way to balance illusion and fantasy with reality, venality with generosity, amoralism with ethics. Work helps, but I am unemployed since I left my last job a year ago to move to the state where my husband had begun some months previous to my moving a more monetarily-rewarding job than I could acquire. So sustained gardening,  craft, and writing do that balancing act for me now.

One of my projects is the altered art journal that I described briefly in that January 17th post. I keep all the materials on an antique table in my study and work on the journal as I find the time from other projects and as inspiration strikes. It's the work of an amateur, but it gives me joy. The journal has become not just a record of 2012--rendered in paint, collage, poems, even sewing, embroidery, and crochet--but a memoir. The journal entry of this week focused on gardening, and I created two tiny, hand-stitched booklets to place in seed-packet pockets that I glued to the pages. In each booklet I wrote an essay about the flowers of my childhood and my gardening memories.

This is one of those essays, with minor editorial changes:

My earliest memories of gardening have almost disappeared into some inaccessible compartment of my brain, but I remember hoeing weeds in our garden in Old River, Texas. Mostly, however, I remember my father working in the garden. When I was very young, he had a couple of plow animals that he used to cultivate his garden, donkeys he called Jenny and Jack. I remember standing barefoot on our front porch, watching Daddy hitch up the plow and head the donkey on a straight run through the garden to create a row for planting. Sometimes the donkey didn't comply, and Daddy would begin to curse. This is where I first learned curse words though I didn't use them myself until I was much older.

I also remember gathering okra and eating the fresh, raw pods as I delivered a batch to the kitchen for cooking. Our household was a traditional one, and we girls did most of the housework while my brother, six years younger than I, did many of the outdoor chores when he was old enough to take them on. I would have much preferred hoeing in the garden, I think, to washing and folding clothes. One summer when I was a teen, I decided that the grass growing around the cement blocks under our house was unsightly. We didn't have a weed-eater, and there were places a lawn mower couldn't reach. I spent several days in the hot Texas sun hoeing that grass away from the house. It was work I initiated and thus work that I liked.

One of the funniest and yet not-so-funny experiences from my teenage years occurred one day when I was picking field peas with my grandmother Ruby Scott Benton. Grandma Benton was a short, fat woman; she was in her sixties at the time and suffering from ailments associated with her weight. She could not lift her feet very high off the ground, and when she tried to step over a row of peas, she fell flat on her back in the sandy soil. I was horrified, but Grandma started laughing, and then I did, too. She looked like a June bug waving its limbs around, trying to roll over to right itself. Grandma Benton was a very even-tempered woman, easily moved to laughter, and it was easy to be happy in her presence.

The first garden of my own was one my husband and I planted when we were students at Texas A&M University at College Station. We were living in married student housing, and the university owned some undeveloped land behind the apartments which the administration designated as a gardening area for married students living in university housing. In the spring, someone would disk the property and divide the land into small garden lots. Married students could choose a plot to garden. 

Tom and I worked very hard in that first garden. Tom would load up our Ford Ranger with free chicken manure from the Ag Center, and we added that manure to our garden to amend the soil. We also weeded assiduously. I remember getting down on my hands and knees to weed, trying to make that garden as weed-free as possible. We were rewarded with such beautiful plants and bountiful vegetables that our gardening neighbors began to comment on the lushness of our garden. Some of them assumed--and told us--that we had "lucked out" in getting the best gardening spot. So one year someone beat us in choosing that patch which we had amended with manure, and we got one of the least desirable plots on the edge of the disked land. I have a photo of myself in that garden that Tom took. I am standing near a row of corn as high as my head, smiling triumphantly. We had proven, if only to ourselves, that our dedication and hard work could turn a plot of land that no one else wanted into a productive garden. 

That might have been the year that someone stole all our vegetables, leaving behind the knife with which he had done the deed.

When Tom and I went to Nova Scotia last September to visit the land where my ancestor Abraham Dugas (Dugast) had lived in the 1600s, we learned how the Acadians had turned marshy land into productive farm land by building dykes to drain the land. They also farmed all up and down the Annapolis Valley and the shore along the Bay of Fundy. Google search "best farmland in Nova Scotia" today, and web pages will pop up describing Kings County, Nova Scotia, as having the best agricultural land in the province.

But perhaps the Acadians were too successful in their farming and gardening. They, too, lost their produce to a neighbor--the British government, which confiscated all their property and exported them to other British colonies. Stripped of their farmland wealth, the impoverished Acadians had to start over in foreign lands. Some made their way to Louisiana, carrying with them a love and skill of gardening. 

Perhaps my Acadian/Cajun genes explain in part my own love of gardening. And a natural disposition to be wary of those in power and those envious of the success--however slight--of others.

Coming Back

I quit blogging before spring arrived, and now we're just past the summer solstice. In the meantime, I've been thinking, writing, creating, dreaming, plotting. Life has been a little difficult these past few months and continues to be not what we had hoped and planned, and yet here we are.

A lot has happened since March 5th, when I decided to take a break from blogging, and I'm working on a long reflective piece to post maybe by the end of this week. Meantime, here are photos of the second folk art quilt I made, this one for my daughter. (first quilt here)I finished it a couple of months ago and am now working on smaller projects. I mark my return here with this evidence of my busy hands before I plunge into deeper waters.

Satisfaction in a Completed Project

I finally completed one of the folk art quilts I began last year. This one is my son's; I am now finishing my daughter's quilt.  In order to guarantee I wouldn't lose interest and thus finish only one quilt, I crafted simultaneously the blocks for two quilts before crocheting the blocks together.  Over the Christmas holiday, I sewed blanket stitches around each block of my son's quilt and then crocheted a half-double-crochet edging to each block. Then I hand-sewed the blocks together and finished the quilt with a crocheted edging.

Now I am sewing blanket stitches around the blocks for my daughter's quilt, and will then crochet an edging to each block before hand-sewing (yarning in the backs of each stitch) the blocks together. It is really satisfying to complete a project such as this, a project that evolved out of my interest in felting worn wool sweaters.  Half of the blocks on each quilt are embellished with buttons or applique from cut-outs or of my own design. The picture at top left is of the front of the quilt. 

The back of each square is made of cotton material I saved over the years. Much of the material came from clothing I purchased from Marketplace India. When the outfit became too worn, I would toss it in my rag bag. Some of the material came from items of my children's clothing; for instance, on the back of my son's quilt is one square with an embroidered dragon from a robe he had as a small child. Also, both of my children practiced embroidery stitches when they were young; I found some of these early attempts and incorporated them into the quilts, too. The photo on the right is of the back of the quilt.
 

Weirdly Wonderful

Just browsing on the Internet today, I came across some weirdly wonderful stuff. Here you can see furniture made of old automobile hoods: Joel Hester's work at The Weldhouse (in Mesquite, Texas). And here you can see hotel rooms made of wine casks: De Vrouwe van Stavoren, Hotel-Restaurant-Serre (in the Netherlands). Here is a house built with grain silos: Monte-Silo House.

Making Progress

Several months ago, I began a project in tandem with my best friend: creating things out of discarded wool sweaters. We had learned that one could "felt" wool sweaters purposely--as opposed to doing so inadvertently by tossing one's best wool sweater in the wash!--and then cut the sweaters up for craft material. I purchased many wool sweaters at a local Goodwill store, washed them in my washing machine (placing each sweater separately in a pillowcase), and then dried the sweaters on a low setting. Then I cut up each sweater and stored the material in copy paper boxes I bring home from work. Then I began my work.

I first made a jacket, a vest and a cell phone holder. The jacket and vest were each made from a single wool pullover, cut open up the front, hemmed, and embellished with crochet, embroidery, and appliqué. The smaller jacket fits my daughter but not her style; I made the red vest for my mother. The small jacket I made rather quickly, the very first thing I made using sweater-felting, as one can see in the hastily stitched hem. But after these small projects, I decided to tackle something much larger, a quilt for each of my two children.

Here's the idea I came up with to make the felted quilt project more portable. I cut felted sweaters into 7-inch squares. Then I cut squares out of cotton material a little larger than seven inches. The cotton material is from handmade clothes and scraps I have collected and saved over the years. If I liked a piece of material, I kept it, storing it in a large plastic zipper bag with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the front and back. I hem each wool square, embellish it with embroidery, buttons, appliqué, or designs cut from other material. Then I handsew a square of cotton backing to the completed wool square. When I finish making 160 such squares--80 squares for each quilt--I will use yarn to sew a blanket stitch around each square and then crochet the squares together. I am a little over one-fourth the way through with this project. I decided to make the quilts at the same time rather than trying to complete one quilt before starting on another.

Here is a picture of the squares I have completed. Though the picture indicates almost enough squares for one quilt, these squares are for two quilts. I have a lot more squares to make. Although I embellish most of the squares, I am also making squares with no embellishments because I think the quilt might be a little too overpowering if every square had buttons and bows. The striped squares in this photo are unembellished. All of this is hand-sewn. And while the work may look tedious, it does not seem to be so to me. I find the work engaging yet relaxing. Engaging because I create a design for each type of sweater-square. I look at the square and decide what I am going to create on that square. Can I draw a design that will look good appliquéd? Will I appliqué a flower, a whale? Will I sew interesting buttons on the square? What color of embroidery thread will I use? Although some of the squares have turned out less successful than others, I will include them all--they tell the story of my creation, of my increasing confidence with the work and of my developing expertise with the material. And of my love for hand-crafted items and for my children. Every stitch is a conscious, deliberate stitch, in the moment--and for that reason, the work is relaxing.

The American Craft Council Show

Yesterday a friend and I drove to Cobb County, just north of Atlanta, to check out The American Craft Council Show. I love to view art and craft creations, and I like to buy handmade items, too, when I have the money. I especially enjoy seeing contemporary work, while the artist is still working, trying to get the attention of the world while expressing some inner vision. Museums are fine, but they represent a small portion of the history of artistic creation, venerating the artists who--by luck, by reputation, by personal connections, and/or by talent--have been selected by some authority to communicate "true" art and craft to the rest of us.

The crafts on display at the Cobb Galleria on Saturday were really fine, in execution as well as in price. Of course, Cobb County is one of the top 100 richest counties in the United States, so the audience for the merchandise were those who could afford a $500 jacket or a $3,575 handcrafted, wooden bed. Not that I abhor spending that kind of money for a well-crafted item; I would just have to save for the rare purchase! Really, the stuff was gorgeous. In the end, I purchased a handmade, leather back-pack purse for my daughter--too expensive for someone like me who now works part-time in education--and a pair of handmade wooden tongs for my husband, who likes well-made kitchen items. Here are the websites of some of the crafters whose business cards I took home:

• Spoonwood, Inc., Jonathan's Wild Cherry Spoons: This booth was crowded with shoppers. The merchandise was plentiful, practical, and reasonably priced. You weren't getting "one of kind" if you purchased an item (for the crafter made several copies of each piece), but you had the satisfaction of getting something handmade and useful, something that would make spending time in the kitchen just a little more fun.
• GreatBags, Maple Leather Company: The source of my daughter's nice, new, leather backpack purse (very soft and supple)
• James R. Wilbat Glass: Cool glass-blown art--the booth at Cobb Galleria mainly contained examples of the artist's sculptures.
• Tiffany Ownbey, Papier Mache Sculpture: funky papier mache sculpture--I have to admit, while I loved the fiber wear and furniture, priced for the person who can indulge more regularly than I in extravagances, my eyes were drawn to the less functional and more funky artwork.
• The Metal Quilt: Metal collage by Kim Eubank and Will Armstrong, in Richmond,Virginia. Hey, I just love collage art, all media, all forms! And I wondered if Will Armstrong could be a distance relative of Tom's; Tom's great-grandfather Baker White Armstrong was from Richmond, and William is a common name in the family.
• Suwanee Clayworks Studio: This studio is located in Suwanee, Georgia, so I think I may visit the gallery sometime. The artists have scheduled a gallery sale in December. I have taken several pottery classes, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I love handmade ceramics. I especially liked the "watering cans" on display in Mark Knott's booth at Cobb Galleria.
• Suzanne and Matthew Crane, Fine Furniture and Stoneware: Look at the installations on this website. Yeah, I want a work like that in my bathroom, too!
• G. Kenner & Co., Fine Furniture: And I want to sleep on one of these beds!
• Ira and Sue Lances, Handmade Chenille: I wanted to purchase one of Sue Lance's handsewn scarfs ($100), and might have, had I returned to the booth before leaving the Galleria. I had a chance to talk with Sue, who explained some of her process in creating the chenille jackets and in creating the scarves. What really impressed me was that she uses the scraps left over from the jackets to create these lovely open-network scarves.
• Mary Darwall, Mais Oui Designs: The intricacy of these beaded jewelry pieces was incredible.

After perusing every booth at the exhibit, we headed back to Decatur and lunch at Carpe Diem. Spending an afternoon with someone besides family and old friends reminded me of how much time I've spent alone these past few years since I left full-time work. My socializing tends to be planned weeks in advance: the occasional dinner party or meeting with new friends for events in downtown Decatur or the long-distance trips to visit old and valued friends in other states. Rarely do I do anything with someone on the spur of the moment. It's really interesting how much socializing is connected with one's work.

Time to Go Shopping. . . at Thrift Stores

Over the past year, my family and I have enjoyed shopping at thrift stores. We bought lamps and kitchen supplies for our son's apartment in Austin, Texas, and our daughter likes to browse the rows of jeans and cargo pants. My husband looks for kitchen item replacements (an iron skillet, a spatula), and he recently found a very nice casual jacket from Orvis that only needed a tear repaired in the lining. Having grown up in a family in which hand-me-downs were the norm, I prefer brand-new clothes; I don't find much to interest me in adult women clothing at thrift stores (but recently, a yellow silk sari caught my eye--I resisted, though). However, looking through other people's junk can be entertaining, and I often find something useful or just weirdly interesting. A month ago, I replaced our well-used coasters with a nice set I found at Goodwill, and I purchased about nine wool sweaters that I will felt for crafts.

It pays to be thrifty in today's tough economic times, so check out the thrift stores as folks are cleaning out their closets to make room for those new Christmas items. Or clear out your own closets. Someone can use what you no longer want. Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an article on year-end donations: "Year-End Charitable Giving Empties Closets, Fills Stores," Bo Emerson, AJC, December 30, 2008.