Sewing Basket Nostalgia

Does anyone mend anymore?  I mean take needle and thread and sew up a hole?  Just curious.

My sewing basket.  (I'm particularly fond of the old-fashioned scissors case, made and embroidered by some forebear.)

How well I remember when my grandmother would come over to our house and ask what she could do to help, and my mother would haul out The Mending.  Holes in socks, frayed table cloths and linen napkins, pants with scraped knees.  I loved seeing her get out the sewing basket and start to work.  Often, she'd hold up a needle and ask me to use my Good Eyes (as she liked to phrase it) to thread it for her.

I've had this 50 years ... a very useful gift someone made for me.

So, my question again is, do people still mend?  Or do we 1) wear clothes with holes in them, 2) throw them out, or 3) take them to our local version of Experienced Goods and let someone else deal with the torn and tatty places?

And then do people these days even know how to darn?  You know:  setting down rows of stitches, then interweaving the thread across them. (Particularly good for holes in the elbows of sweaters.)

These days, I find I mostly sew on buttons or mend holes in socks.

This is my darning egg which is really handy for mending socks.

Whether a lost art or not, mending seems a satisfactory task.  Meditative, too.

Decorated Eggs

These amazing eggs were decorated by an artist friend of mine.

Here are cockatiel eggs and a goose egg (with a chicken egg for comparison)

... and goose eggs from geese she raised.

And these beautiful eggs (below) were done by a family member who used a wax-resist (batik) technique called pysanka.

Spring, here, is finally getting started.  There are even a few daffodils up ... in sunny places.

Watercolors on Copy Paper

Maybe because art was her passion, my mother very consciously gave my brother and me quality art supplies to work with, even when we were quite young children.  She gave us each our own red sable brush.  Winsor Newton watercolors to share.  And good paper, not kid stuff.  The good paper was important, she said, because if we produced something that we wanted to keep, the paper would be worthy of the painting.  But, as well, using quality goods was also important for helping to promote our self-esteem.  So, both my brother and I turned to painting early on, even, as I remember, when we were somewhere around four and five years old.  (My mother also bought me a set of oil paints when I was six and showed me very carefully how to wash out the brushes afterwards and clean off the palette.)

Okay, what I'm getting around to is that after I took up painting again when my adult years took a turn, I got out some good brushes, paints, paper, and set to work.  (I'm talking about watercolors here; I also did oils, but that's a different story.)  But though I turned out some satisfactory pieces, there was something about the paper I didn't like.  The picture lacked the brilliance I wanted ... and the paint just seemed to sink into the paper.  Until one day I decided to use what I would call crummy paper--in fact, copy paper which we used to call typing paper.  You know, just regular 20-pound 8½" x 11" paper. 

Using this freed me up.  Since it wasn't "good" paper and I could simply toss it afterwards with no remorse, I could crazily slop around to my heart's content, not worrying so much what the outcome would be.  I didn't even mind that the paper puckered when it got wet; I liked those places where the paint then pooled.  I even found that the paper was "acid-free for archival quality."

For want of a subject, I did a series of flowers from my garden.  

Here are some.

Pansy

Balloon Flower

Another Pansy

Day Lily and friends

Sweet William

Yet another pansy

Don't switch to copy paper exclusively, but try it for a change and see if it isn't liberating.

Santa Fe Eats

On my recent trip to Santa Fe, I tried out some new eating spots--both new to the town and new to me--and also returned to some old favorites.  I consider the diversity and quality of restaurant fare there to be top notch.

New spots:

1.  Izanami features "Japanese-inspired seasonal small plates."  Newly constructed at the 10,000 Waves Japanese Spa a few miles out of town.  Very airy, high ceiling, Japanese lanterns, comfy booths, tasteful decor, classy food.

After miso soup, my entree here was sushi rice, 2 pieces of chicken, a topping of slivered veggies, and a ginger dipping sauce.

Dessert was panko encrusted banana with a caramel sauce

2.  Midtown Bistro.  Highly popular. As soon as the lunch hour arrived, it filled with reservation holders.  A bit noisy but a pleasant atmosphere.

I got the half-sandwich/cup-of-soup special with a small mixed green salad.  The sandwich was roasted pork loin with caramelized onions, fontina cheese, and honey-mustard aioli.  Key lime pie for dessert.

3.  Sweetwater Harvest Kitchen which features organic, gluten-free, and sustainably farmed items.  Another very pleasant atmosphere.

I joined two friends here for supper.  I got the duck breast with roasted veggies in a sauce of figs and cherry mead.

New spots for me but not new to the town:

4.  La Choza.  Where the locals go for quality New Mexican food.  Tons of cheese, chiles, beans, and fried rice.  It fills up early on with families.

Posole, beans, and a blue-corn tortilla enchilada

5.  Burro Alley Cafe.  Right in the heart of town, easy access, bright and airy, good menu.

I got a chicken crepe for lunch.  Check out that BLUE sky!!

Old favorite spots:

6. Zia Diner.  Always dependable for breakfast, lunch, or supper.  In the Guadalupe Street area.

7.  Steaksmith's on the road out of town.  My friend and I happened to be there on a Thursday evening which turned out to be mariachi night.  4 guitarists, 2 violinists, and someone on the trumpet, all sharing the solo singing spots.  The steaks, of course, are fabulous and the mariachis great fun.

Mariachi Sonidos del Monte

8.  Harry's Roadhouse.  A long-time favorite very near Steaksmith.

My friend and I stopped here for take-out dessert. 

A Santa Fe Medley

No, it's not paper.

I did get to Santa Fe this time--two weeks there plus a few days en route taking the train.  No weather problems or cancellations this time as occurred with my proposed trip in January.  Actually, except for running smack into juniper pollen allergy season, it was better to wait.  For one thing, the temperatures were more amenable despite the fact that those high desert days were still brisk enough to require a coat. And then what with all the winter storms that hit my part of the country, some more than once a week, I was glad to be home and able to look after my house.  Power, furnace, roof gutters (which, incidentally, all came off one particularly icy day).

So I did my usual Santa Fe thing of wandering around town looking in art galleries, trying out some old and new restaurants (which I'll talk about next time), and thoroughly enjoying that high, dry, sunny climate.  Here is a medley of photos illustrating this appealingly photogenic part of the country.

Next week:  Food!

The House That Rudyard Built

(Note:   Hoping for the cooperation of the weather this time, I'm making another attempt at getting away for three weeks and may or may not post during that time.  At least I'll be here for the March 29th posting.)


Yes, Rudyard Kipling built the house and he built right here in town, living in it with his family for four years at the tail end of the 19th century, afterwards packing up and returning to England.  After that it was mostly closed up until the UK's Landmark Trust bought and restored it as one of their few U.S. properties, all in Vermont.

Kipling and his wife had stopped off here on their honeymoon to visit her family.  Enamored with the area, he bought twelve acres from her brother who lived across the road and situated the house on top of a hill that sloped down toward the Connecticut River.  Imagining the rolling, hilly pasture land to be waves, he designed the house to resemble a ship, making it long and narrow--some ninety feet long by a mere twenty feet wide.

Kipling's study with his desk and chair to the left.

An inscription just under the mantel reads, "The night cometh when no man can work."  It is thought that Kipling's father, who did plaster work, put it there. 

Kipling named the house Naulakha, meaning "jewel beyond price."  Among his visitors was Arthur Conan Doyle who came one Thanksgiving bearing a gift of skis--said to be Vermont's first pair and something Doyle had picked up in Switzerland where he'd taken his wife to convalesce.  Another first for Vermont was the tennis court that Kipling built on the property.

Though an interior room, this "Loggia" was made to look like a sun porch. 

It was here that Kipling wrote The Jungle Book and Captains Courageous and began Kim and Just So Stories.

Though the house is rarely open to the public for viewing, it is available for vacation rentals and can sleep eight.  The piece over the fireplace may have also been done by his father.

At one point, Kipling's wife (who managed his affairs so that he could spend his time writing) found that people were not cashing his checks, preferring to keep his signature as a memento.  So she instituted the practice of selling his autograph for $3 each.  Finding him thoroughly fascinating, the locals would try to peek through the windows to get a glimpse of the great man at work.  To quote one source, "Neighbours say he is strange; never carries money; wears shabby clothes and often says Begad; drives shaggy horses and plays with the baby." 

The entrance is here at the back of the house so that the view and front meadow are not disturbed.

Our Very Own Domino Toppling

Our local art museum just held its Seventh Annual Domino Toppling Extravaganza (to offer up its official name) with (mostly) children and parents crowding in to witness 29,440 dominoes going kerplunk.  Not counting the time to design the whole thing, it took something like four "domino whiz kid" teens forty hours to set everything up.  And I'd say maybe five minutes for it to collapse after a ball was dropped down a mini-tower setting off the chain reaction.

To insure against the disaster of a premature topple, several dominoes throughout the entire set up were put aside until just before the signal was given for the toppling to begin.  As you view these pictures, then, you'll notice that some of the lines are broken.  But, be assured, at Topple Time, everything was back in place.

Looking from one end...

... and then the other

Some of the many "insurance points" where the dominoes were then set back in place just before the toppling.

The mini-tower where the ball was dropped is seen in part in the upper left corner.

Our good local videographer

What had been a spiral is in the process of collapsing

A few seconds later ... still toppling at the slightly out-of-focus point.

Everything is going fast.

We were told that this may have been a record number of dominoes toppled in the U.S. though some countries, especially the Netherlands, go in for ten times that number.