Thursday, October 08, 2009

Thanks for all your amusing comments on my cleaning frenzy yesterday. My housekeeper is coming tomorrow and will faint with astonishment because I don't normally let her in here. It is so neat and peaceful in here that all I want to do is sit and stare into space. This is hard if you are hand-sewing and need to look down, but I am managing. This room is now suitable for meditation. Spurred on by all of this neatness, I spent a few hours in the studio today filling trash bags and neatening up the place. I also took a long piece of silk broadcloth that I had waxed, dyed, discharged, and was now a hideous, blotchy mess of green and yellow and some unidentifiable dark color. Realizing that I have no art cloth to take to the Art Cloth Network meeting in Houston, I decided this was a candidate for something. Out came the wax pot and some red dye and I went to work. Here is what it looked like when I ironed out the wax at home tonight. You can see the green and yellow underneath the waxed part. Quite a bit of the scarlet came out of the silk in the wash, so here is what I have now. That blotchy green simply won't go away (a turq. that wouldn't discharge) so I will either take this as a WIP or will have to put another couple of layers on it. Don't know if I'll have time, though. H.S. reunion this weekend. It started tonight,actually - but I didn't go to the "meet and greet." There will be endless ops to do that, starting tomorrow. Two of my lifelong friends (one since 7th grade, the other since high school) will be staying here. I'm picking Bob up at the airport tomorrow afternoon and he will stay in the house. Bill will arrive and sleep in his camper in the little parking area across the street from my house. Tomorrow night, the jeans and bar scene - probably the best part of the weekend. Marty may go for a drink but he'll take his own car because I am not leaving early and he will want to. Sat night the dinner dance. I don't love to dance - but I might be persuaded if they play some romantic '50's music and the right person asks me...although the person I would most like to dance with will not be there. Marty has opted out, although he attended all the other reunions with me and had a good time. In anticipation of the festivities and the guests, I baked cookies tonight. Tried a new recipe from Maida Heatter's cookie book (the one I own - she wrote so many). I stowed half of them in the freezer or they'll all be gone by tomorrow. They look like oatmeal cookies, but that's because they are. 2 sticks of butter (ouch! - I almost didn't make them), flour, brown sugar, walnuts, raisins, dried cranberries, and a secret ingredient: potato chips!-- well, not so secret now. I forced myself to have two of them with a cup of tea a little while ago and I have to admit they are delicious. I halved the sugar - every cookie recipe on earth is too sweet for me. I will see if Marty can figure out the potato chips. I have gotten less than one side of the facing on one quilt sewn down: I guess I will do some tomorrow morning and then it's good to do while I am sitting up late with the "boys" and catching up. Sweet dreams,

10 comments:

Kevin Key said...

Best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had also included potato chips in the recipe.

Diane Wright said...

I love the art cloth that you created! And I don't think it's just because red is one of my very favorite colors. I'd love to see it in real life.

Cate Rose said...

I love that art cloth, too, Rayna. Bet it looks better in person than in the photo.

Have a terrific time at your reunion!

XO

Diana Parkes said...

Nice cloth!

Sherryl said...

Love the cloth... also love Maida Heatter's cookbooks... so rich!

Gerrie said...

It is a cool piece of fabric and not just because I love red, too, Diane. have a great week-end reuning!!

Eva said...

Oh, I love this cloth! And the greens are the pinch of salt -- the potato chips in it, so to say.

Halving the sugar is a very good idea. W from Vienna told me that in old recipes he found only half the amount of sugar recommended, compared with today's recipes. He said, in Germany, this was a commercial campaign. -- I definitely feel better since I reduced sugar to almost none.

Unknown said...

well, if it's any help, I like the fabric after you puttered with it than before... ;) Hope to meet you in Houston!

Frannie said...

The cookies sound very tasty! I wonder if the potato chips fulfill the need for salt (or perhaps the crunch factor)? Every time I eat something sweet I end up wanting something salty (and vice versa). Also, I know one of the old fixes for when you add to much salt to a recipe is to add sugar (maybe it works in reverse). Either way, with that much butter how could they be anything other than tasty.

stitching and opinions said...

I have some dyed disasters sitting here, looking at me balefully, muttering well what now? So after your successful persistence I shall get out some printing blocks and see what I can obliterate.

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