Apricots to cheese and onion, spiderwebs

Yesterday's reading in Apricots on the Nile led, of courses, to the kitchen. The memoir is lovely, old family photographs and anecdotes about relatives, staff, and with inserted recipes. 

This one was definitely for me. Sambusaks, pockets of pastry filled with a cheese mixture. I adapted, making a cheese and onion and garlic filling, all minced together, using the last of the feta crumbles and the parmesan, and a bit of  the cheddar, and an egg 

In the course of making the filling, a random chunk of onion ended up on the page, the first evidence that this is a cookbook.

The resulting dough is enough for twenty, but I froze half of it for a future fruit filling, probably apricot and cranberry or blueberry. Maybe even apple.

Home grown basil, fancy touch 

The pastry is lovely, light and crisp, flaky. That's because it's equal parts butter, avocado oil and hot water. The pastry with various fillings, is a keeper. Could be fruit tarts, too 

This book will be slow going, if this keeps happening. Delicious interludes expected.

And this morning's patio prowl, after a day of torrential rain, showed spider activity

And the zinnias are coming along

*Also the spider wort out front, growing where nothing else will.

*correction, thanks to Ellen's greater knowledge, it's dayflower, commelina communis. Corrected also on spoutible, to thanks from followers there, too.

I expect our local frog and toad population are happy today. Certainly the birds are, after the rain. There was a gang of house sparrows pecking busily all over the path.

Happy day everyone, I hope you get rain if needed. And relief from it if needed. Quite a bit of flooding around here. But thanks to a good power company, no loss of power.

Grandpups and Czechs rule!

 Yesterday Gary had a sudden call to help yet another relative urgently, so Billy the Pup, still needing care and attention after her spay, came chez Boud for a while. 

Officially "half an hour tops" I know how these things go, and it was nearer three hours, fine by both of us. Various other things happened, as they do around Gary.

She wambled about all over the house,  helped me with my tuna salad, tiny taste, and her first try at homemade yogurt, teaspoonful, before falling asleep in mid wamble and being guided into the bed she'd brought, where she snoozed peacefully for quite a while. I checked her chest was going up and down, as you do, because she's so small, her breathing's almost undetectable.

And here's a few pictures. 

You can guess which picture was related to her exciting introduction to yogurt. It's a wonderful food for animals, and I never had one who didn't like it. Especially important if anyone, human or animal, is on antibiotics. It keeps the gut balanced. She just liked the taste!

So we had a lovely time, she dozing, checking every now and then that I was still there, I finishing this airy fluffy work

And starting this, which arrived just as Billy did

 Yesterday saw a great women's Wimbledon win for a Czech woman, Vondrousova, unseeded, even, so I dashed off congratulations to my Czech cleaning family, who reminded me she's the third Czech woman to do it. 

They're keen sports fans, very proud of the Czech tennis tradition, daughter herself a high school champion track athlete.

So,  nice day of unscheduled events. Happy day everyone, I hope your day has puppiness of some kind.

Billy the Pup, Korean fashion history, twigs

 Yesterday I realized I'd missed a livestream of a presentation on Korean fashion history, around a new book, but I found it on YouTube and here's a few shots in case you'd like to check it out. 

Very learned presenters, and appropriation was an issue they tackled, wearing another culture's iconic dress, here the hanbok. 

They agreed that if proper credit is given to me origin, and you don't make commercial use of appropriated looks or ideas, it's more or less acceptable.

 In other questions, is this giant trying again to take over, despite repeated removals, pigweed, aka amaranth?

And yesterday was Billy the Pup's Spay Day. She came through pretty well, but it was touch and go with Gary. He came over last evening, she was shivering what to do?

I went over and sat with them, stroking Billy's ears till she fell asleep after happily  taking a few drops of water off my fingers.  She was shivering on the inhale, not the exhale, pretty sure she was doing fine. 

She was alert ish   and clearly knew me, so I stayed a while and chatted about all kinds of unrelated things, to talk Gary off the ledge. He planned to sleep downstairs with her.

This morning I called, quiet night, she's getting on okay, he sounds done for.  He loves his dogs so. I've heard him singing made up songs to Billy when he doesn't know anyone's around! Lovely guy.

Today I'm wearing my Hamptons Skirt, east coast people will know the snooty reference! So named for the ocean colors and rock references. 

I finished it last night and made an interesting discovery. As  you know I use either hand for a lot of things. But I'd never tried stitching with my left hand. But, the appliques being long, reaching the end of a side meant turning the whole thing around and getting all reorganized to stitch back up the other side.

So I tried just switching hands to stitch back, not moving the work, and found it worked just fine. Another late in life discovery,  along with whistling.

And this morning on my early patio prowl, I found small dead twigs inside the Japanese maple, and wondered if I could make something with them. 

While I'm wondering, I put them with the current little flower arrangement

Happy day everyone, you never know what you're going to discover next.

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Misfits, more skirt design, and ironing boards

 Misfits box arrived 

Bringing lovely fresh lettuce and parsley, salmon for immediate dining pleasure, and a chicken for a few days' time.

Also two freezer blocks which I tossed next door, but no excitement this week, so Gary must not have mislaid anything.

And here's a step by step showing the difference between a design on the table and the same design in action. I really liked this layout, pinned in place. So I tried it on.

And you see how hopelessly unflattering it is in action. All wrong on my hips. Fortunately it was only pinned, so I repinned

And now it's a much better shape and drape. 

This is the way a dress you see in a shop and like and try on,  makes you cry in the dressing room. Online shopping, when it gets home to you, too. But when you're making it yourself, you can change it before sobbing. Just sayin'.

And I have one strip of fabric left to run a narrow decorative band across the back waist.  Literally no remnants. It's like yarn chicken, only fabric chicken. Have you noticed that weavers say cloth, dressmakers say fabric? I do both, weave cloth and sew fabric.

Today is cooler and stormy, lovely in fact, and Handsome Son, who has been on vacation this week, dashing all over, shore, concerts, is making an hour to visit me.  We had arranged that only if the weather isn't good for other activities, he'd come over! His vacation time is precious, he can see his cranky old ma anytime, is how I feel. He's more tactful.

I read a sample of Apricots on the Nile, per Liz's recommendation, couldn't get it anywhere via libraries other than clunky ILL, so I broke down and actually brought a used copy from Abebooks or Thrift books or one of those great places.

I also bust out for a tabletop ironing board, because my flat surface isn't doing it for skirts where you have to insert the ironing surface into the thing in order not to be ironing two sides at once and creating new creases.  

Surprising how many folding boards are designed by people who evidently don't know this. I ordered one, only one I could find,  where the support legs weren't at the four corners, defeating their own purpose. Why do they think ironing boards have that pointed end, I wonder.  Just a fun cute feature? Tell me you're an ironing board designer who's never ironed without telling me, etc.

Happy day, everyone, may all your equipment be designed for purpose!

Daylilies, plum jam, bad day at Black Rock

 Yesterday. as I was tackling a bit of catbriar, I knocked off a daylily head, so it's now gracing the mantelpiece

This morning, out before 7 while it was still cool, I cut back and tied up the butterfly bush, and pruned the sage. Now you can sit out without fighting foliage.

And the plum jam, more info for them as likes it. This time, instead of just assembling fruit, sugar, lemon juice and just cooking from there, I thought I'd do  version of Birnbaum macerating.

So I put the fruit,sugar, lemon zest, nutmeg, fresh ground, cinnamon, the real thing, not the relative of it sold as cinnamon in the supermarket, sprinkling of cornstarch, in a big bowl, stirred it together. 

Then I left it for about an hour before cooking. Whoa, was that good.  It's how I'm going to make jam from now on.

And here you see it with the latest batch of yogurt, which is also the best yet, used more starter, and left it warming for 24 hours, not the overnight recipes often suggest. You can see the texture, really nice. Here it was breakfast with walnuts.

So this jam was good enough to give some to Gary, and I went over and met a plumber emerging, oh-oh. Gary explained he'd had to turn off the water, because of a problem with the mixing mechanism in the shower head. 

He'd tried to remove it, couldn't, in-law, burly guy, came over, removed it, but stripped the threads in the process.. Now a new part needed, meanwhile all water off till he figures it out. 

Except that he found a way to cut off water just to the shower head via the opening already there. The plumber had left, so I was conscripted as assistant plumber to watch the space while he ran downstairs and turned on the water again, to make sure he'd succeeded in shutting off the right supply. He had. 

Meanwhile he has water available everywhere except in his one shower, so I suggested he use my guest shower until his is fixed. He did this once before when the water heater failed.

And, yesterday being a bad day for him, he was just leaving his parking spot in his lovely new Beemer convertible when a new 17 year old driver in a new car, came shrieking down the street, hit Gary and totalled his own driver side door. 

The law faults the person leaving the parking place over the driver on the street, sadly, so no joy at all for Gary.  No way to prove the kid was over the speed limit, and even the limit of 25 is high for a street full of kids, head-in parking both sides, not much room.

So all in all, the jam was a good idea. He definitely needed a bit of jam today!

And see how the snake plant is finally under way. 

No holding her now -- see the three new babies.

And instead of a puzzle can you add any words to this list?

Go for it!  Happy day everyone, just remember if you struggle, you didn't set fire to Notre Dame, so there's that.

Triangles, couples and jam

 This morning's patio prowl before it gets too hot shows new buds happy with the heat and intermittent downpours

The Thai basil is flowering happily and new seedlings are coming in

No buds on the morning glory but it's swamped the shepherd's crook

tiny buds starting on the alyssum

And the first zinnia flower wheeee! These seed packets are more than paying their rent

 And yesterday I got a bag of prepped, pitted plums from the freezer to make an exclusive batch of jam

Which came out a lot better than the accidental apricot crumble stuff, so evidently I can still make jam

About the current skirt. Here's the inside showing the rectangle of fabric pinned in place

Then I laid dowels along the stitching line to show how I'm getting triangles off the pieces of batik

And here are the triangles ready to applique. I may take a strip off the biggest, for a bit of trim for the pocket edge. Today's about direct applique.

You'll notice I did this the easy way. A stitcher who's part engineer or who works for a dress pattern company would probably have painstakingly measured two triangles to fit the spaces, using protractors, slide rules and a piece of string tied to a pencil to determine the exact angles and slopes. So much easier to do it  this way, 

The inside finishing involves turning under and stitching the raw edges of the triangles. 

A couple of bloggers have posted early stories of their relationships very engrossing reading, and I have one, not so old, that became a family joke.

For many years  Handsome Partner and I were a married couple who couldn't in the end continue, divorced fairly amicably, continued as friends, more years, gradually realizing we were bonded for life but couldn't live together. 

Then came 9.11 and we realized it was ridiculous to be apart, who knew what could happen, so we coupled up again, with the proviso that we keep our own homes, share both.

We both owned the townhouse, bought together earlier, and I'd bought the condo personally.

Then his health deteriorated dramatically and we were forced into my moving into the townhouse where he had lived throughout the separation. Neither of us wanted this  but he simply couldn't manage alone with just shopping help from loyal and tactful handsome son.  He navigated his parents' unconventional relationship heroically, not taking sides, just being the grownup, and deserves tons of credit.

Anyway, neighbors noticed I seem to have moved in, and one, clearly out of the loop, fell in with me one day while I was walking KC the Dalmatian. How nice of you to take on the dog as well as the other tasks, she said. A was so smart to get this arrangement. I wish I could persuade my dad to do it, too.

I was sort of listening and wondering what we were talking about. Set up a relationship for her elderly frail father, what? Then she went on, would you mind telling me what agency sent you? I'd refer dad, too. Live-in is so good.

I explained that we were a couple, had been for many years, Handsome Son, whom she knew, was our son.  Her face was a picture. She recovered and we've had a lot of nice chats in the years since.  To be fair, she'd seized the wrong end of the stick because she was wanting to set up something for her dad, can't fault that. She'd assumed I was a live in paid  companion.

Evidently It had not crossed her ageist little mind that old frail men can have a relationship. Nor that older women can, too. Without consulting the neighbors! 

Hp was creased laughing when I told him and if we argued I'd threaten to get a new assignment from my agency if he didn't shape up. And he'd better upgrade my pay too, while we were at it!

Happy day, everyone, no need to get the neighbors to consent to your life! That's not what consensual means, hehehe.