Saturday, April 02, 2005
The thing has already taken form in my mind before I start it. The first attempts are absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something worthwhile in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real direction and purpose.
-- Vincent van Gogh Holy mackeral! Thanks to the other Mary Beth for this great quote from one of my heroes.
Friday, April 01, 2005
New Blog Question, aka Meme!You heard it here first. My IRL friend Naomi suggested a question to ask in a blog, inspired by the recent "10 things I've done in my life" question. I was still thinking about it when I got home, so here it is - you can answer it here or ask it on your own blog and let your own readers answer. What do you have in your car (or what have you had recently) that you can be pretty confident that nobody else has in their car? I'll let Naomi provide her own answer because it was pretty... uh.... yeah it was .... like stunning. My answer? Your choice: Two loaves of sourdough bread -OR- an empty toner cartridge from my laser printer.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Where's Darwin when I need him?How fast does yeast adapt to its environment? Is it possible that in a few short months my sourdough starter has evolved into something that doesn't care so much for the warmer end of the temperature range? My starters are perking along happily without additional heating, great oven spring etc. At a (by most people's standard) rather cool room temperature my final build easily doubles and bubbles in under 12 hours. The two starters bubble away on their own with only a modest input of food from time to time. No complaints from me, mind you. I think they've grown into something that gives a nice tang to the bread without being overwhelming. And the notion of making two big loaves of bread from an ounce of starter (not dry yeast - but starter!) is amazing to me, even now that I am doing it often. OK - bulk fermentation is underway, the dough is coalescing and growing. In an hour or so I'll fold it which will give it a great leap in strength and then into the frig for a real cool temperature rising so it can be baked tomorrow night. Thanks yeastie boyz!
After making some red stuff tonight and starting a new bread build, I decided I really really really needed to make some progress on the latest project (the one with the looming deadline. Oh wait - one of two with a looming deadline....) so I headed up to the sewing room.There I managed to use up all my wonder under and even managed to make a few boo boos but nothing that couldn't be re-done. My current plan is to work in layers. The dominant part of the design is the top most layer, so once that's pretty much in order I'll go in and add whatever shadowy things I need below and whatever highlights I need on top. Some coloration is possible with stitching too. But right now -- choose and cut. Let's just say I have a lot more colors to choose from than I thought I did. That's a quite OK thing!
Sunday, March 27, 2005
This** is from a poster to the QuiltArt mailing list, where people are in the midst of the semi-annual - what's wrong with you people, write something that entertains, delights (me), and is on-topic - discussion. This is also known as the - use your delete key idiot if you don't like it - discussion.Kinda renews your faith in the power of the 'net, eh, to know that all lists are the same universally! Just that time of year. Nothing to see - please move along. ** This is actually really funny (requires flash and moderately fast connection) - funny enough to make sitting through the semi-annual discussion while deleting almost worthwhile.
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