Bauer T.V. (vidéo surveillance à Sélestat)

Peace Beets

I was looking for an opportunity to use my new birthday camera.  I found it after cutting into this beet!  Slicing it any other way than down the center, the symbol would have been missed!

Wallpaper.... Attack!

Day one of wallpaper attack.   The bedroom is now half covered after a full day of effort, a serious endeavor!  I've never put up wallpaper before and was glad to learn the art from Daniel who operated with professional exactitude (Nazism).  This is one job where perfectionism counts!   How else were those flowers going to line up?  
It's so exciting to see the room change!  We find these purple flowers dynamic and a little strange,  a little bit Grandma-ish.  We need to finish the room today to evaluate it properly.   Back to work!
Quote for the day:
"Spend five minutes at the beginning of each day remembering we all want the same things (to be happy and be loved) and we are all connected to one another." --Dalai Lama

Enchanted Gardens...

Yesterday was the big Patchwork Expo in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines.  At the top of my list: The Enchanted Gardens Quilt Collection by Kaffe Fassett.  Hear the celebrated quilter talk about his love of pattern in a video here.

Nothing dull or sober about his quilts: full on bright color that I can't resist!

By chance, last Wednesday, I found a book at Emmaüs called: 'Quilting Lessons: Notes from the Scrap Bag of a Writer and Quilter' by art historian Janet Catherine Berlo.  I couldn't leave it on the dusty shelf after reading the dust jacket description:

'In the middle of a successful academic career, art historian Janet Catherine Berlo finds herself literally at a loss for words.  A severe case of writer's block forces her to abandon a book manuscript midstream; she finds herself quilting instead.  Scorning the logic, planning, and order of scholarship and writing, she immerses herself in free-wheeling patterns and vivid colors.  For eighteen months she spends all day, every day, quilting.'

An exciting read!  My brain was all prepped to see for real all the quilting patterns described in the book: Delectable Mountain, Log Cabin and Pineapple blocks, and Fifty Four Forty or Fight.   

I'm even more motivated to hold onto my fabric scraps to make something bright and functional and get a little color therapy at the same time.   

Ikebana Arrangement II: The Purple Purchase

I purchased wallpaper yesterday.  I'm questioning the ethics of settling in, charging through samples, getting one-on-one advice on glue application and color fade from a local small business owner, and then ordering the very wallpaper that I touched in her boutique for 75% cheaper on the www!  But that's what I did.   And after seeing the prices in a boutique de chausettes in Strasbourg, I'll be doing exactly the same thing with socks. 

Thank you kind readers for your votes on the bird wallpaper, but finally,  Daniel confessed that he didn't like it's feel: too thin and glossy, as it was made of vinyl.   Much thicker and textured, my dollar voted virtual for the Ikebana wallpaper in purple, instead of it's black and bright red sister.   And I'm getting excited about playing up, echoing the purple à la Paisley Park for our hallway.   

We will be receiving our six rolls at the end of the week.  Until then, I have some small wall holes to fill, an antique chest of drawers waiting in our garage to sand, and some book shelves (to learn) to make.   Stay tuned!

Today's Harvest

Time is Short, What's to Be Done?

 Two of four items made in the Belle X 2 Workshop this week.....

↑ Tunic Top and ↓ Apron.

An Aztec inspired apron group was my goal.  But you can see the resulting tunic and apron aren't very Mesoamerican.  I settled on these bold prints after clicking through endless pages of badly rendered totem-pole (actually kind of tempting), angry Chiefs wearing American flags and dreamcatcher fabrics.   Daniel told me the tunic reminded him of Polichinelle.  huh?  I did Google image and got this ↓ red-nosed marionette:  Punch!  And hey, he is wearing my tunic!

Madame Sutter and I based the garments on view two of this↓ vintage Simplicity Pattern.

It's a nice apron pattern with waist sash and button at back of neck.   I thought one yard would be enough to make a men and women's version in each fabric, like we did here, but it wasn't even enough to make the full three compartmented pocket system for one apron, so that's why there are only two pockets. 

I went downstairs on Wednesday and our cleaning lady (between bites of cake offered by Madame Sutter) asked me frankly why I didn't make a tunic instead of an apron to wear with leggings.  She likes this look.  She's always full of good ideas, so we went for it and made a tunic based on an apron pattern.  Tunic should most definitely be worn with leggings.  I should have called it the R***, the name of our maid, but I didn't want to be uncouth.  So, I called it the Come As You Are, As You Were, As I Want You To Be Apron, but not because I'm a huge Nirvana junkie.

Men's model will pop into my shop soon!

Come Wallpaper Shopping with Us...

I don't want to give the impression that I'm one of those annoying wives who is never satisfied with what is.  I love the way things are at the present moment.  A little wall space just happened to open up to let in more beauty.   SO LET ME AT IT!

Yesterday Daniel and I opened ridiculously oversized wallpaper portfolio books in a wallpaper store in Sélestat and I could barely turn the pages, because of that excited jittery feeling of anticipation that I also sometimes get when looking at exquisite clothes.  Ridiculous!  My emotions ranged from disgust, mostly from some wallpapers' plasticlike textures, to love at first sight, which translated into jumping like a baby goat.   What was the sales lady looking at?  What were we even looking for?  We had no idea:  something vegetal, something rococo, something purple or magenta, something loud, something victorian.   This something just couldn't be gray.

 So we flipped through and scooted around the huge books and finally narrowed it down to the following top two:

 

  

the above ↑ from the Rasch Grand Estates collection (the most expensive in the shop of course) and below ↓ from the Casa Déco Ikebana collection.

So, what do you think?  The goal here is beauty.  Which one is more beautiful?  (Totally subjective question, I know.) Greens are supposed to calm the pulse, aid relaxation, so it might be a better choice for a sleeping chamber, although the red and black could be dramatic!  And I love birds.  But I also love flowers.  Are we more of the Grand Estate kind of people or Ikebana arranging people? 

  Stay tuned for the result, it's a real cliff-hanger here at E + D! 

Green Tomato Chutney

Not everything goes as planned in the garden chez Sutter.  Our thyme plant still remains the size of a minuscule bonsai tree, onions or parsley just won't grow, and suddenly our tomatoes have developed a black crust on stems and leaves, giving mature tomatoes that have hard inedible circular areas on them.  Maybe we planted them too close together, maybe I tied them too tightly to their stakes?  

We decided to uproot the stands that faired the worst, plucking off the green tomatoes that still clung to their calcified mother, leaving us with a basket full. 

  

Daniel gardens for a kind lady who sends him home with little jars of her homemade conserves, green tomato chutney being one of them.  Normally eating anything unripe and green is unappetizing to me, almost counter-nature, but I wanted to adapt to the circumstances and honor our little immature tomatoes by making a green tomato chutney of our own.  I got the recipe here if you too are interested in putting some green tomatoes to good use.  It's yummy accompanying meat dishes and I imagine it would be dee-lish on hotdogs instead of a traditional relish.  Note the Ball jar from Indiana that once held homemade peanut butter made in the kitchen of my Cousin Luke!

I realized that 'chutney' doesn't translate well into French when I was trying to explain to Madame Sutter that it wasn't a confiture, but something to eat with savory dishes.  So I looked on the internet, finding 'condiments aux tomates vertes' to be the closest, but Daniel said it still wasn't exact.  
We made eight jars in all, one of which will go to the kind lady who introduced us to this preparation.   I hope she likes it!

McCall's 1968 Blouse

Here I am looking wistfully out the bedroom window at the neighbor girls playing un, deux, trois soleil.  I know, I know, 'what a cool pink blouse,' you're thinking...

Ahhh, shucks, thanks.  Pink blouse made possible by: The Amazing Aunt Sue's generous gift of: sumptuous pink silk and McCall's blouse pattern 9446 from the mod, free-lovin' year of 1968!!! 

Me and Madame Sutter decided on making model A (center image) ↑ but with slightly longer, cuff-free sleeves.

Did I know what I was getting myself into when Madame Sutter asked me if I'd like to learn bound buttonholes on this blouse?  Well, from her expression, I could tell that it wasn't going to be easy, but a skill worth learning, so I said yes.  I love a challenge.  Pictured above is the work in progress ↑.  

And here a freshly sewn one ↑.  The white thread is just a basting stitch to hold it secure.  Five hours devoted to five buttonholes.  A morning of buttonholes. Bound.  It was a bound buttonhole morning meditation.

Other features of blouse: carefully hand stitched invisible hem, and self-covered buttons I ordered off of Ebay especially for the project.   These are fun to use if you've never.  They're just a two-part metallic button system that sandwich within a fabric stretched over the button face with a snap.  

Wishing you a wonderful rose-colored day!

Paint & Paper, Paint or Paper

Now that the walls of our room are white and 'sad' as Daniel finds them to be,  we were intent on purchasing some paint from a store in Mussig, the only natural paint store open on Saturdays in the region.  And they close at noon.  So we set off in a hurried whirl of color after breakfast.

Unfortunately, their 'natural' section was just the dusty top of a filing cabinet where beige clay paint and some natural resin varnishes were stacked on top of each other.  

Daniel corrected the nice salesgirl who noted down our special order for a 'Vaseline' instead of  'Casein' base coat and we left, contenting ourselves on experimenting with color on paper. 

It's always special to use my grandfather's paintbrushes, pulling them out carefully from the notches of the canvas case that still bears his insignia.  I used a photo of a kingfisher for color inspiration, and we dabbled and blobbed and blotched and splotched all afternoon.    But at the end of it all, we found that none of our colorful compositions were really fitting for walls.  Will we continue to work at this?  As much as we'd like something perfect to just flow out of us spontaneously in a couple of hours, we see it's actually going to take precise, studied arrangements so harmoniously conceived that they appear effortlessly inspired.   Or we might just buy wallpaper...

The Metamorphosis....

                                                                          I'm happy to report that all is going surprisingly well with the bedroom wallpaper removal project .  In fact, the scraping is complete.  Because the wallpaper is old, the glue has weakened and comes off easily with a damp sponge followed by a light scraping: no need to rent a steam machine!  Who knew!  With all these years of ambivalence due to me perceiving this project as something scary and hard to do alone, you can imagine my carefree joy at a dream taking shape with relative ease!  So, three important lessons learned: if I'm prompted to do something,  I need to initiate action, even if I think it's going to suck, because it might just not.  Second, (ladies take note) if hubby says he doesn't want to help with a project, he might just change his mind when he sees you attack with enthusiasm!  Lastly, don't touch wet sponges to electrical outlets, I got the shock of my life!!

Isn't it interesting that our bedroom echoes now without the thick and textured wallpaper?  Also, behind the wallpaper isn't drywall, but actual plaster, so it smells a little like mortar ....my dad.  I thought we were going to remove wallpaper in every room of our apartment followed by a all-over painting spree.  But Daniel thought it would be a good idea to paint the bedroom as a trial before we go nutso scraping everywhere.   

Whatever we decide, stay tuned as the exciting metamorphosis continues.....!

P.S.  What's your favorite bedroom color?

Advice for Yogi's Sensation-less Night Arms and More!

You're probably wondering if I finished Somatics:Reawakening the Mind's Control of Movement, Flexibility and Health by Thomas Hanna and if I found the answer to why my arms are falling asleep at night on the days I do yoga.  
I did finish the book, yes, and I also wrote to Kino about my problem, here's what she said:

'I had something similar when I started. This sensation is related to a nerve re-alignment in the shoulder-neck region. It's nothing scary and if you feel no pain associated it will eventually pass if you keep practicing. It usually happens either with deep backbending, handstanding or legs behind the head postures.

In the meanwhile to help accelerate the healing process I recommend that you get treatment by a yoga-friendly acupuncturist and (if you feel comfortable) a chiropractor.  With Love, Kino'

With Love?!  Who knew this inspiring woman was so accessibly helpful!  So, if anyone else is dealing with a similar problem, this could be a possible solution. 

 So, back to Somatics.   Where do I start?  The seemingly simple floor exercises in the back aren't to be done as a sweat-building workout but as subtle movements to be executed slowly, every gesture feeling good with calm steady breathing in order to re-educate the muscles and re-awaken them from a form of stress-induced amnesia.  I haven't tried them yet, but applied the principals to my evening yoga practice, and didn't force anything like I'm prone to do.  And it was revolutionary.  With softness and body listening, I opened up more, felt more attentive after!  Kind of like those Chinese martial artists who can calmly muster up qi energy in order to lackadaisically deliver a mindblowingly potent (sometimes lethal) strike to an opponent!
And don't even get me started on how this book changed my conception of aging.  More on that later.  Get the book if you are having physical signs of 'aging' (lower back pain, frozen shoulders, stiffness) or are having a  hard time  psychologically with the aging process!   
But did my arms fall asleep last night?  Yes, but not as bad.  I'll have to take Kino's word for it, that it's just my neck and shoulder's re-aligning. 
On another note......Look what Daniel and I got started on:

Bedroom re-do!  My really hip, former L.A. stylist friend, and overall stellar human being Andrea said she really liked the mural when she came for a visit recently.  Her comment for sure made me look at the mural in a new light, but upon consideration, I still wanted a change seeing that it has been up since 1984.  I hope you don't think I'm superficial.  I just want a nest that suits me.

Sail on little canoe-man.......

Let's Jam!

Six buckets were quickly filled by two plum-pickers (us) from two plum trees ↓

We wondered what to do with all this fruit for about two seconds.  It was pretty obvious: Let's Jam!

We wanted to jazz up an ordinary quetsche compote by adding some stalks of angelica that we have in our garden↓

It seems like a lot, but equal parts fruit to sugar go into a pan ➷  I was surprised at first that we didn't add water, 

but then I saw that the sugar liquified rather quickly↓

Daniel wanted to include the pits for their pectin content, as we wanted a nice gel.  We didn't have any muslin bags, so we used a strainer↓

Madame Sutter warned us about the foam that starts to form when the amalgamation reaches boiling and can easily get out of control if not watched ↓

After we saw foam, we put it on the back burner to simmer for twenty minutes ↓

Then carefully plopped it into sterilized jars ↓

The angelica adds a really unique flavor, an essence of something exotic.  ↑ 

We made three batches of quetsche-angelica and decided to try mint-apple-quetsche next ↑

No need to add any pits to this mixture, as apples already have enough pectin to make a good jelly ↑

The spoon test ↑  Does the jam stay on the spoon when tipped vertically?

This apple-mint-quetsche jam is sensational, the mint just a suggestion as background flavor.

All in all we made 21 jars of jam!  ↑