Bosch Mixer - Wow!

For the past 8 months or more I have been saving for this new mixer. It has a large capacity and has an exceptionally powerful motor. The bowl is large enough for 18 to 20 Cups of flour! Yikes! That's enough to make 6 large 1 1/2 pound loaves of bread all at one time. Finally! An easy way to whip up a batch that is big enough to eat now, freeze some and give the rest to friends and family.  Now all I have to do is double, triple or quadruple my favorite recipes and Saturday morning baking is one very productive 4 hour deal. Yum!  By the way, it is a Bosch Universal Plus. I got it on-line from Pleasant Hill Grain for
$429.99. A lifetime investment perfect for me.

Sometimes a moving picture is more fun than a pogo print!

Here's the recipe - adapted from "Bread Machine Magic" by Linda Rehberg & Lois Conway -

However, do not try to stuff these ingredients into a bread machine, this is for two large loaves. I put almost everything into a mixer, but knead the last cup or two of flour by hand. Measure out everything before you start, just so you won't miss anything -

Wholewheat - Wheatgerm- Sunflower Bread
1 C rolled oats
3 C whole wheat flour
3 to 4 C plus unbleached bread flour- there is a lot of wiggle room here. A lot depends on the brand of flour, the temperature and humidity in the room, and one's mood.... to get a dough that "feels good."
2 TBSP Gluten
3 TBSP wheatgerm
1 TBSP salt
4 TBSP brown sugar
2/3 C sunflower seeds
10 TBSP Buttermilk powder
2 1/4 C warm water
2 eggs
3 TBSP canola oil
2 TBSP active dry yeast
Mix yeast with 1C water and some of the brown sugar. Let sit 10 minutes to activate. I like to do this in a 2 C glass measuring cup because it's fun to see the yeast bubble and rise to life!
Pour into your warmed mixer bowl (I warm the bowl by rinsing it with warm water just so the yeast won't be shocked on entry into the bowl) and gradually add all the wet and then the dry ingredients, mixing slowly.
When the motor starts to growl, transfer the mass of dough onto your kneading board or counter and work in the last of the flour. Add more flour if dough is really wet, but this dough just tends to be sticky. Because it is a whole grain mixture, you really do not have to knead it for long.
Transfer it to a lightly oiled bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or a damp towel to keep the dough moist and let it rise. In my kitchen which tends to be 76 degrees or more, this dough rises within 60 to 90 minutes to more than doubled in size.
Prepare two 9 x 5 inch bread pans with crisco and flour to prevent sticking.
GENTLY deflate the dough, (remember it is a living thing) and cut into two equal parts. Flatten it somewhat into a rectangle and roll it into a loaf shape.  Place in pans to rise again, covered with that wrap or towel. This takes another hour or so.
15 minutes prior to baking, move the wire rack to the bottom third of your oven and heat to 350 degrees. Bake for about 35 minutes or until a baking thermometer registers 190 degrees at the center of the loaf.
If the crust is getting browner than you like, tent the pans with some aluminum foil. When done, remove the bread from the pans immediately and let cool on wire racks or until you absolutely cannot wait to cut a slice to try it out. mmmmmm. good.

Ft. Lauderdale

Sometimes the best thing about taking pictures is changing them.

I have a few different programs that allow this.

The hardest part is deciding which effect I like best.

Make it look a few years old.

Make it look dreamy.

Make it look like a drawing.

Every single one is pretty to me.

Bag lady

Saturday, while baking more bread, I put some gesso on a couple of used brown lunch bags and did this drawing.
It's a pretty face from a magazine done using my left hand and a # 6B graphite pencil.
I sure do like to use my finger to smudge the graphite to shade the angles of the planes of the face.

Last night, while watching a movie, I added color using pastel pencils.
What fun they are! Good control for adding color in small places. I added more pencil work and used my eraser to make the highlights whiter.


 Working from a photo really does teach me more about drawing a portrait. And, I gotta say that this left hand of mine is learning ...fast.

More Left Handed Art

This is Suki. I'm trying to understand the shape and shadow of oriental eyes. And working left handed sure makes you slow down. But, she is pretty, I think. This is graphite pencil, oil pastels and some watercolor for her hair.

This is Portia. I used PanPastels for the face and was sorry that even after several layers of workable fixative and more pastel, I didn't get the opacity I wanted for highlights on her skin. The rest is graphite pencil and black watercolor for her hair.

And, finally, we have Rina. Another trial for oriental eyes. These look a little off, but oh I do love the green shadowed with purple.

Glad it's the weekend. I've painted some brown paper bags with white gesso and will see how loose I can get on such a humble surface. I just can't justify using really good paper ... yet.

Left Handed Art Making-

Last week Jane Davies at the Sketchbook Challenge site
interviewed Lynne Hoppe and I was immediately intrigued by her art work. She draws and paints using only her non-dominant hand. Every drawing book I've ever read has encouraged this and I've done it, but never with the idea that I should always make art that way. It just seemed like an exercise to loosen up and get the left brain activity confounded, forcing more intuitive, right brain stuff.

When I saw her work however, I knew I had to try it. It has that naive quality that I lust after. In fact, I haven't been doing much art work lately because mine seems so terribly serious. I don't want it to be serious. What I want is playful, loose, childlike and far from realism. I struggle with it and am always having conversations with my inner critic.  So far, it has been winning and I haven't been drawing.

Until Tuesday. I came home for lunch and started to draw with only my left hand. Then I added oil pastel, some watercolor and you know what? I was having fun! All left handed!
Got the whole thing done in 20 minutes and drove back to work feeling pretty happy, indeed.

Meet Gertrude - her name means "warrior maiden" - I looked it up later in the day.

Wednesday, lunch time, somewhat fearfully, I did it again!  This time I was having a war with my critic, but I stopped listening and in 15 minutes, I met Holly. It means, "Holy".  Thanks for your support, little one, you do bring blessings of hope for this struggling artist.

Thursday. A difficult day at work. And it shows here. Plus, I was getting all bent out of shape because I couldn't get my whites to be as opaque as I wanted. I gessoed this page, so the printed ink didn't smear, but the oil pastel didn't want to smear much either.
What to do? What to do? Wait a minute, we live in the age of e-mail and kind hearted artists. Maybe Lynne Hoppe would help me. So, I did it. I e-mailed Ms Hoppe and hoped for the best.

Meanwhile, I met Gretchen.  It seems those lips sure are speaking out.  Her name means, "child of light."

And here we are on Friday after help has arrived. Lynne Hoppe answered my e-mail and my pile of questions and I am so grateful!  She advised preparing the page with matt medium for a nice surface.  It worked! Those oil pastels GLIDE on right over the printed surface and that old book page held together beautifully.   Additionally, she wrote all kinds of stuff about her technique - the use of gouache right on top of oil pastel and how she gets from start to finish. Really, really helpful and generous. I feel so much better now. This little face is mostly oil pastels with white gouache in the hair, but I will be braver as time and practice go on.
This is Trixie. This name comes from the Latin, Beatrice, which means, "one who brings happiness and blessing."
Wow. Ain't that the truth.
Thank you again Lynne - from the Welsh, "waterfall or lake". Your blessings are, indeed, flowing over me.

Cats

Cats: we have cats. These are some of the feral kitties that live in my backyard. Breakfast time is a good time. During the day, they lounge around the porch, play tag, chase butterflies and display how perfectly wonderful it is to take a nap.

This is Fred. So curious, looking in the open door, right up at me, turning at the sound of each camera click. Today I found out that he is a girl! She has been caught and will be neutered and adopted out to a good home. I wish I could keep her, but it is difficult to catch these feral kitties, so when we can we are spreading the love.
I miss her already.

Watercolor Journaling

I've been trying my hand, or should I say brush, at watercolor painting and am finding it a fun media. Every time I go to the grocery store I look for something to draw and paint. For now it's flowers.

Right now I am truly enamored with this one kind of flower. It's a daisy, but a special kind that has a raised center and I don't know what it is called.  I just love taking photos and then printing them out to sketch later in my new journal. I've been trying out lots of color combos and have found that yellows are my crack. I can't get enough of yellow!

My kitchen table is full of watercolor painty things and now every time I go into the kitchen, or pass the table to get to the laundry room, I can pick up a pencil, a brush, or some india ink and add a dab.

This sure beats crying so much which has been my modis lately. Every little thing makes me tear up. And, every thing is so beautiful, I feel as if my heart is just going to burst out of my chest. Why does even this make me cry?

Back for a visit.

Every time I log in to Blogger I see the last post of August 2010 and think about how not in the mood I am for writing anything down. No excuses. Just living from day to day and wondering what's the point? I started this process as a way to journal my creative endeavors, so that one day I could look back and see what I've been doing in my spare time.

I see all the many people on the net writing about keeping a journal to document their daily lives, to catch an inspiration, to doodle, to vent, to pretend to do or be someone or some thing. And, though I have a half dozen journals started, none have ever been filled front to back. I seem to live in my head a lot. Lately, it's been annoying me enough to get me to think about writing it or drawing it or painting it, just so I can clear our some of the recurring debris.

 This is one of the reasons I haven't been writing. Candy Chloe. 07/04/1993 to 03/07/2011. She was our "middle dog". She came from a friend who needed to find her a home and we took her in gladly to keep our aging and anxious doberman, Lady, company. Her joyful lust for life gave Lady many happy active years of doggie fun. She was followed by my brother's boxer, Liz and for a wonderful long while we had three large, barking, running, happy dogs in this home. Playmates for my husband and sons and constant company for me.

 Time moves relentlessly on and son's grow up and move out. But every day I had company for my morning walks and late night prowls. However, as everyone knows, time takes what you love away and in 1999, Lady died at 17 years of age. In June of 2008, Liz passed at almost 14 years  and now, this March, at 17 1/2 years, Candy moved on and joined them where I can not see or hear or touch or smell, or sense them anymore. In between all of that our three house cats crossed over too, and now for the first time in my entire life, I live in a house that has no pets at all. I grew up with dogs and cats and birds and even ducks in the yard. When I graduated from nursing school, I got my own apartment and immediately adopted two cats. Every time I moved, I took them with me. I was never without a furry, fuzzy, warm body somewhere in my living space.
  This is really, really hard. I am in a heavy hearted place of grief that has come at me unexpectedly. I never knew how deeply involved I was with each of the critters that honored me with their love.  I am not in a good way right now. Tears fall too easily when I am driving to work and happen to see doggie ears in the car in front of me. Is this heart ache that feels so very heavy going to lift soon?  I feel too sad to bring in another pet right now. I feel afraid. I don't sleep well. I am distracted at work. I tell my husband I feel sad, but some part of me is actually ashamed of the depth of this feeling of loss.
 I am holding onto my sanity by feeding the 25 feral cats we have in our yard, but that is a story for another day. Maybe.

Drawing again

After making 27 loaves of bread, I finally decided we had enough bread in the freezer and after making 6 or 8 new pot holders, some new aprons, and things material that I can't recall right now, I found my way back to my drawing box. At first, being ever the optimist, I thought I'd practice a lot and fill up a drawing journal. Fool. I did three and was soon looking for something else. The attention span of a May fly.... ( Quick! Life is short! What can I learn next?!)

So, I found, at the bottom of my watercolor box, (I have boxes for everything) some 8 inch by 8 inch splattered paper made months ago for an on-line "Make a Journal" class with Dina Wakeley. Nice paper. Never quite made it to the journal stage. Well, the papers were just too pretty for my petty ramblings. It's craving Iambic Pentameter about the beauty and color of a life well lived... Instead, I picked up a few and saw a face in this one. It was barely a glimmer, but I saw a nice profile. This is the result of my classes with Mystele, who teaches "gut art". A fun, fun, fun way to create. Make a background, look for a story. Draw or paint it out as you see and feel it. Since I see faces in every car grill, tree shadow, pebble walk and popcorn ceiling pattern, this is a natural way to start. I was happy with my number 9 pencil. So much fun to smear! I love to use my fingers to smear. It feels like I am molding the face and not just drawing it.

See, I told you these papers are pretty.

 I also "saw" this face in the pattern of the colors. This time I used a fat graphite #9 pencil, but I really was looking for something darker. Since I am working on 140 lb. watercolor paper, it's difficult to lay in a really solid black line. But, it smudges nicely.

So, at the end of the day today, I did something new. I took out a stick of charcoal and quickly drew this face.
Now, this looks like Iambic Pentameter to me.

Bread, bread, bread

Creating a lower fat diet took me back to my bread making days. I used to make bread for our family and truly enjoyed the whole process.
Bread flour is a soft, soft white and has a wonderful scent.
 My bread cookbooks all have a thin layer of flour even now, these fifteen years later.

Part of the fun of getting back to my favorite recipes is gathering all the supplies.  Shopping for yeast and honey, wheat germ and soy flour. Oh, the absolute fun of the chase. A big bowl is all you need to knead a two loaf recipe. Here it is outside in 90 degrees of humid South Florida weather, doing its lovely risin' thing.

Pans greased and flour dusted waiting to be filled with that living, rising, yeasty loaf. I can hardly wait to see the rise above the top of the pan.

And here is one of many being given its' own time in the oven to rise and bake and fill the house with the aroma of life giving goodness.

It's hard to describe what this smells like if you've never baked bread of your own.  You've  just got to try it.  It's amazing!



                                                                            


And the final product cooling on the counter. A Cornell Wheat Germ loaf that is so nutritionally balanced, it is said to sustain life if paired with a little butter, and maybe some jam and tea.       

Blessings and bumps in the road...

Finally! We get to meet our new granddaughter, Blanche! A family gathering in Boston for a Bat Mitzvah brings all from near and far.

 My son Aaron and his beautiful, wonderful, wife Alana and their four children under the age of 5 years take the trip from across the US to be there and we finally, finally, meet their newest family member, baby girl Blanche.  Isn't she just beautiful?

 This is us together at the night time party to celebrate the happy event of a Bat Mitzvah for Abigail, my husband's niece's daughter.

 Two hours later I was in an ambulance going to Beth Israel hospital with severe pain.  Thought is was a third heart attack. Not. Perhaps a kidney stone? Not. Maybe the gall bladder... most likely.
Sigh. The fun just doesn't end.

A Lawn Skirt...

A few weeks ago I got some lawn fabric on sale. I've not played with this fabric type very much because it is so thin and needs some kind of lining. This week, however, I just kept seeing this skirt in my head. Multi-tiers of soft, gauzy, un-hemmed layers. Something my home ec teacher would be scandalized about. No hems?! It's going to ravel and fall apart! Well, maybe. I'm not exactly going to play football in it. Tree climbing isn't a current occupation and I have a washing machine that has a "handwash" cycle.

 I made this frothy beauty on Mother's day starting at 9 AM from the first cut of the bias, bleached muslin, A line skirt and lots of 6 inch strips of the lawn, sewing, gathering, and sewing until 12 Noon. A 90 minute break for a shower and lunch and I finished this skirt at 3:30 PM.

 Wore it out to dinner with the family at 5:30 and got raves.

What a perfect day.

Rose Painted Circles skirt -

Yeah! This skirt turned out just as I wished.  It is full, long and perfectly gathered. 

It sways when I walk. It swirls when the wind blows. It is graceful. It is Spring!

The top is my favorite knit pattern. A boat neck knit with 3/4 sleeves, I can cut it out and sew it together in l hour tops!

OK, so now I have 3 black, a purple, royal blue, rose, turquoise, yellow in addition to the new white one. Yes, this is a series....

When first beginning any project, I am tentative. How much water should I mix with the paint? Should the fabric be damp or dry? What kind of brush or foam tool will make the marks I want?

It all is a mystery until I get going and just relax into it.

And this is how it becomes what I am looking for. The paint, Pebeo transparent fabric paint, is mixed half paint and half distilled water.  The brush is a size 10 beautiful watercolor brush. The fabric is dry with a slight misting of water over it. And the best part is the drip, drip fling! of paint all over that pristine whiteness.

And here are seven panels of painted, heat set and cured pieces just waiting for me. I love this so much, I let it sit on my kitchen table for a whole week for my frequent admiring glance. I think every artist experiences this at times. The work, the worry, the play, the constant striving to understand tools and the whole process of making something work. There are times when the work needs to be put aside, forgotten, dismissed, let go for some inner work to be done. And then, on impulse one goes back to the tools, the ideas, the hopes and dreams and tries again to find that this time it works. It's like seeing an old friend after a time of separation. At first we are shy, but soon the love resurfaces and the interaction flows smoothly again.

Here is the gathering foot in action. I've been aggressive in my stitch length settings and the tension is tight! The fabric is gathering up so close together, each strip is making the most perfect layer. I'm loving every minute at my machine. This skirt took about 7 hours to put together, but boy, it was worth it.

The muslin I used for this project was only 36 inches wide and each strip was cut to 6 inches in width. I had to sew a lot of strips together for each tier of the skirt.

I like to count the number of strips needed for each tier as I go along and this skirt just mushroomed!

The bottom tier, number 7, used 11 panels of 6 inch wide fabric. At 36 inches in width that makes the final hem a whopping 396 inches!

Now that is truly a skirt to twirl around and around in on a sunny, Spring south Florida day!

And, wearing a skirt like this makes doing all the insurance claims work, referrals and check writing go just a little bit easier. Happy clothes make happy people.

Note to self: find out why what I see in my post as a draft has very little to do with the final post I see on my blog. I line comments up with my photos, but it sure doesn't  post out in the nice logical order I've created.   grrrr.

Handpainted, multi-tiered skirt: ta-dah!

Skirt front or back depending on what color top I wear.

This little skirt took about three weeks of little bits of time to put together.
The fabric painting was spread out over my lunch times at home. I could easily spread out a damp piece of fabric, open the slightly watered down paints and paint lines before having tea and a grilled cheese sandwich.

Or, if I was in the mood, I'd iron a panel or two to set the paint.

I made several panels and suddenly found myself impatient to begin putting the skirt together.

Skirt back? It's nice to have options...

First, a bias cut yoke for the top tier makes the skirt very comfortable to wear and it drapes nicely over round hips.

Next. Cut lots of six inch strips. I'm never sure how many I will use, so I cut at least 24. These were all 36 inches across.

Sew a few strips together and then begin the gathering. I have a gathering foot for my Janome machine and have learned that though it is the absolute easiest way to gather fabric, it is somewhat of a guessing game.

It works according to the stitch length and stitch tension settings. Big stitches and tight tension equals lots of gathers. However, the weight of the fabric is the one factor
that is the mysterious variable. You'd think that the heavier the fabric the more difficult it would be to gather under the foot.
Yes and no. I've made a few skirts of batik cotton and with each one, the machine settings were different for the amount of gathering that would be created.

Since this hand painted fabric was a very light muslin, I figured I'd have to go with less tension.
Not sew!

This fabric just didn't want to gather easily!!!
And it wasn't that the paint was in the way. This fabric paint is virtually unnoticeable on the fabric. I just does not change the "hand" of it at all. I'm sorry now that I was too tentative with my settings. I was afraid I would run out of fabric before getting to the last tier and so I ended up with a skirt that is not as "swingy" as I'd like.
My impatient self was very glad to finish with the elastic waist.
My perfectionistic self was unhappy with the final product.
Next: Fuchsia circles.

Painting yardage for skirts

Lately I've been using up my really old bottles of Pebeo Setacolor transparent fabric paints. This stuff is at least 8 years old. They've been in a box in my garage/studio waiting patiently, as all my art supplies do, for me to get back to using them.
I have a love/hate relationship with them.
I started out coloring fabric using Dupont Silk dyes when I had my prayer shawl business back in the 90's. That meant I had to stretch silk on big home made wood frames, paint the silk, steam it, rinse it out hoping there would be no back staining, and go from there.
The results of dye on silk were always, always beautiful, but I found, after hanging up some marriage canopies on my wall, the colors began to fade all too quickly.
Annoying after all the work done. And stretching silk by putting pins into the wood frame really, really hurt my fingers. I grew to hate it.
I was tempted by silk paint (paint not dye) because all one had to do to set the color was iron your fabric. However, there was always the matter of "hand". The "hand" of the fabric changed and became a little stiff. I didn't like it. At all.

I put all of those things away when I went to work as the office manager for my husband.
And, now I am back.
This time I am using bleached muslin on a plastic bag surface and am letting the paint, which had to be mixed with a lot of water because it had thickened out so much, just do its' thing. This is a lot of fun! I am using slightly damp fabric, a foam brush and five colors. I like fabric with a lot of white in the background. Being summer 10 months of the year here makes wearing all kinds of white things OK everyday.
Fixing the color is just a matter of 20 minutes in a hot dryer and my iron. One thing I've noticed though. The fumes from the heated paint make me a little nauseous. I moved a big fan to the left of my ironing board, so now that isn't such a problem.
This stack of fabrics with lines, flowers, stripes, drips, splotches and journaling with a black fabric marker, will make a wonderful multi-tiered skirt.
So now I love the paint and don't hate the "hand". This stuff just doesn't make any difference at all on how the muslin feels.
Hey, does anybody know where I can find out how to post using more photos? Maybe it's this version of Blogger, but it won't let me put in more than five photos per post. Time to learn more. Time for an upgrade.

Pentel Dye Sticks

This morning I got an e-mail from Dharmatrading.com with the usual funny note about all the amazing stuff they have to color fabric. They sell everything you could possibly need to change plain fabric or clothing into something amazing.
One of the links led me to a video previously shown on You Tube about using Pentel dye sticks.
I was inspired!
I've had the dye sticks in my box of fabric paints, but have not done much with them.

I'm one of those people who order stuff on the net because I'm excited to try something and by the time it gets delivered, I've already moved onto something else.

Not a good trait.

However, it is so nice to have supplies right there when the urge to play comes back!

Today I took a pillow case right out of the linen closet and set to work.

Yeah, yeah, I know the fabric is supposed to be "scoured" and not a bit of fabric softener or other fragrant things are "allowed".

All the books say any softening agent will prevent color from sticking. But have you noticed how when you are painting and get some on your clothes, NONE of it comes OFF.

sigh.

So, back from my morning walk, still seeing that little three minute video in front of my frontal cortex eyes, I find a small padded quilting thingy and stretch the pillow case over it so the fabric will stay in place as I work.

I must say I had a fine 30 minutes making these flowers. The dye sticks are so creamy! The red, pink, yellow and orange for the flower just glided onto the cotton. Two greens made a nice stem and leaf and I was ready to repeat.

The only problem I had was that since I work in my garage/studio, it tends to be the same temperature as outside. This morning it is about 76 degrees and the dye sticks are very soft. They got on my fingers and I had to be careful about leaving smudges.

However, smudges and imperfections are part of the beauty of anything that is handmade, so I didn't stress about it.

And, seeing a small crumb loose on the pillow case just lead to another flower near the top.

I'm going to let this this sit for a day and then heat set it.

This is going to look very pretty on our bed.

More! More! I HAVE to make more! This is really fun. Thanks Dharmatrading, for setting my soul alight.