As some of you may have noticed, I have a few pieces with hands on them (mine, since I’m usually the only available subject!). I seem to be developing a “thing” for hands, in addition to words, serpentine shapes and the nautilus / ammonite swirl….. (it’s a Fibonacci thing, and a how-cool-that-these-have-survived-since-the-dinosaurs thing… and ammonites are way more cool than cockroaches, and as visually appealing as the gingko…both of which also are that old…)

Anyway, I was browsing a couple books and saw someone had made a carved stamp that looked like mehndi to me. Mehndi is this cool “temporary” tattoo sort of thing done in India with henna. Here is a site about it, and another, and another. Light bulb goes ON! I’ve been wanting to make a stamp to use on labels on my quilts, so I began doodling around one night in front of the TV. Finally, weeks later, I got around to making a stamp today:

Here’s my first “print” (on paper) using Lumiere textile paint. So-so (and that’s being generous…it’s yucky).

Here’s my second attempt, using stamp pad ink on paper. Better, except for the uneven application of ink in the center.

So, I went to “pigment, acid-free” stamp pad on cloth. This is the first attempt (by the way, my scanner is usually quite good, but for some reason read the cloth as more red and less coral than it actually is):

The image is light, but the background is nearly solid, so I think this is the best of the three efforts on cloth. The second one had too much white in the portion of my hand-dyed cloth, and here’s the third….more white stamp pad ink, but more mottled background. I used this coral hand-dyed for a 2-ish inch wide strip on the back of my Viking entry, so think I’ll use one of these hands for (part of) the label (which MUST be sewn on, and the quilt sent in soon!)…..

Thanks to Discovery TV, many of us have seen some of the incredible performances of Cirque du Soleil without having been able to go to an actual performance. The artistry and combination of phenomenal physical athleticism with music, lights, and unbelievable costumes and make-up are mesmerizing. So when about a month ago I read a review of Cirque du Soleil The Spark: Igniting the Creative Fire that Lives Within Us All (note: hotlink is to the amazon.com link for the book) in USA today which compared it favorably to Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit (ditto–link is to amazon.com–it’s now out in paperback, a good sign!), I sought out the book.

The Spark itself is a short hardback (135 pages, $20); both times I saw it I wasn’t in the right frame of mind (was rushed) to decide if I really wanted to buy the book, so I ordered it up on interlibrary loan. Having read both The Spark and The Creative Habit in the past month, I would have to say: not. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy this book, just that I’m glad I bought The Creative Habit and got The Spark on inter-library loan. The book is “Created by Lyn Heward and written by John U. Bacon” according to the cover; Heward is former President and COO of Cirque’s Creative Content Division and currently an executive producer for a variety of special projects. Bacon is a veteran journalist.

The premise of the book is that a sports agent has begun to work / live in a rut, when he literally walks into the back door of a Cirque performance area in Las Vegas, accidentally meets the Creative Director of Cirque, and eventually ends up spending a month learning how Cirque works by training with the athlete-performers and support staff, and finding once again a creative spark that re-energizes his life. Sigh. It appears from the blurb on the last page that this is just what journalist John Bacon did (though whether he sought out Heward or she sought him out, more likely, is up for grabs), and the fictionalized account in this book appears to be the collaboration between Heward and Bacon.

As a fairly creative person, there wasn’t really much of anything new in here in terms of how to find creativity, how to spark it, and maintain the spark (or break through the doldrums). BUT, it was a fascinating glimpse into how Cirque puts together its shows, keeps them and the artists fresh after umpteen performances, and generally does its thing. For that reason alone, I’m glad I read the book.

I loved the descriptions of the Cirque headquarters in Montreal and wish there were pictures (of course…I’m a visual person!), as well as of the performers in training and working. My question: who is going to do the documentary, and when / where will it be aired? I know that some of these things have been covered in TV shows (on Bravo? Discover? I know I’ve seen them somewhere), but not in the same way as this book. Glad I didn’t spend my scarce $20, but also glad I read the book.

Warning! Long, and involves (gasp!) cooking!

In the beginning, there was a field with strawberries:

In the end, there was a LOT of jam. In between, there was a lot of mess and heat. Yep, once again I’ve made enough jam to (barely) keep two growing boys (aka the bottomless food pits) in peanut butter and jam sandwiches and toast with jam for a year. For those of you who haven’t made jam, here’s what you do:

1. Get the berries. Now that we live in Maine, we go to the U-pick fields, where berries are a bargain at $1.15 a pound (about US$ 2.40 a kilo if my rough arithmetic isn’t too far off). Everyone in the family was dragooned into the effort of “getting close to the land.” Let’s say the boys’ work ethic needs work LOL! My goal this year was to get 40+ pounds (nearly 20 kilos), since last year’s 38 pounds of berries and jam lasted with only two small jars to spare. Alas, we got only 38 pounds this year.

Papa / Dear Hubby:

The boys:

Sometimes you need to take a beauty break (and take photos from which to make quilts in the future) like this one:

or this one:

2. Go home and WASH the berries and hull them (remove the leafy do-bob). This is what 38 pounds of strawberries looks like–and don’t overlook the tray in the sink. Make sure you are wearing shoes that support your feet, because you’ll be on them for HOURS.

It took me over two hours to wash and hull all of them.

3. Start making the jam. I use Pomona’s Universal pectin, found in health food groceries. It seems to gel better than Ball Pectin or the brands found in regular every-day grocery stores. And it requires even less sugar than the “low-sugar” version of Ball Pectin. (Ball, by the way, has been around forever in home canning, and the Ball Blue book is the canner’s bible of how to preserve foods by canning, either hot water bath or steaming–find the book and every supply you could ever need other than the Pomona’s at HomeCanning.com).

4. The recipes always call for mashed fruit. My wrists and joints are not up to mashing 38 pounds of berries, and things like food processors pulverize. So I chopped. And chopped. And chopped.

5. Measure berries into a heavy, large pan. My bought-at-an-estate-sale-for-$25!!!!-Le Creuset Dutch oven (bought in the early 80s by the way), an enameled cast iron pan, is perfect. Add calcium water (Pomona’s gives you calcium powder to mix with water) to the berries and bring to a boil:

6. Measure sugar and pectin into a bowl and stir with whisk. Most pectins require equal amounts of berries and sugar: so 4 cups berries, 4 cups sugar. I prefer jams that taste like the berries not “sweet.” So I have used various low-sugar pectins, and like Pomona’s best. I was able to use about 2 1/2 cups sugar to 8 cups of berries, or about a one to four ratio… ta DA… jam that tastes like strawberries!

Somewhere in the middle, take more future-quilt-reference-photos like this one:

7. While bringing berries to a boil, also boil and sterilize the lids and rings and the jars. You’re supposed to keep the jars warm / hot, but I don’t ever have enough space and organization to do that, so I’m diligent on the other stuff.

Aside: by the way, for several years I volunteered at the judges’ table at the Food Preservation section of the San Juan County (Wash.) Fair, and learned a LOT about the subject. The key thing is health and safety. Don’t burn yourself. Don’t poison anyone. So observing proper headroom (the amount of airspace at the top of a jar) is critical…too much air, and the jam can spoil and make you sick. Ditto for too little. Getting a proper seal (more on that below) and a “vacuum” pack through the hot water bath (10 plus minutes) is also critical.

8. During all of this, make sure the jam doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn. I have found that my Mom’s old flat-bottomed potato masher (dates from about 1963 and still going strong) is the perfect stirring tool…stands upright in the pan! See it above, at the photo at step 4.

Once the fruit boils, you add the sugar-pectin mix and bring everything back to a boil again.

Strawberry jam is notorious for making “froth” (yuk) on the top. I swirl the potato masher to spin the froth to the edges. I’ll skim some, but if you add just a few slivers of butter, it makes the icky froth go away (if you can that up, it looks like gray scuz…not attractive).

9. Set the jars near the jam pot. Get a ladle and the wide-mouthed funnel. Here’s a bowl to contain (see… I make some effort to stay tidy… doesn’t work, but it limits the mess, sort of…) the tools: a skimmer, the green wide-mouth funnel (highly recommended), a spoon (to ladle in the last few bits to reach 1/4″ from the top of the jar), a magnetic grabber to get the lids and rings out of the scalding hot water (the blue wand things), and a jar lifter (essential! to get the jars into and then out of the boiling water bath)–it’s that wire thing on the right with green rubberized stuff on the bottom to keep from dropping the jars.

10. FILL the jars, add the lids and rings. Lower into boiling water bath in canning pot (the big tall metal one to the right of the stove in the “view” photo of the kitchen chaos). Cover, return to boil, boil for 10 minutes. Remove using essential jar lifter. I set an old towel on the counter, then a cookie rack on top of that. Place jars on cookie rack to cool. Wait for the tell-tale pop telling you that the vacuum seal has formed! Success!

11. Realize you have skipped lunch and are ravenous after hours on your feet. Eat the first slice of bread with butter and still-warm jam. Heaven!

12. Attempt to clean up. Decide some of it can wait, since you left for the berry fields 11 hours earlier. Take a well-deserved shower and collapse into a vegetative state on the sofa.

13. Next morning: Set out ALL the jars and take a picture to show your blog-friends that 38 pounds of berries and just under 10 pounds of sugar, and four boxes of pectin, makes 35 pints of jam (in 45 jars, pint and half-pint). Feel very self-satisfied (grin!).

14. Get the empty jar boxes and re-fill them with this year’s bounty, and haul them down to the basement, where they will be emptied a few jars at a time. Be REALLY glad it’s another year ’til we have to do this again, but be really glad my boys like my jam better because it’s not too sweet and “tastes like strawberries.” Yum!

And if you’ve read all this way, THANKS! Have a piece of bread with fresh jam for me! Next: find out who sells raspberries in Maine for….drum roll…. more jam (but not nearly as much!).

OK…. the Dreammakers that work at Quilts, Inc., in Houston, have been at it again, doing what they do best: making dreams come true.

Even before I went to Houston I had heard of the Viking Exhibit there (the link is to info on the Viking website). When I first attended Houston in 2004, the Viking exhibit was my favorite part of the whole nine-football -fields of juried show, exhibits, vendors. It is set up like a Gallery, with walls (instead of pipe-and-drape like most quilt shows, including Houston) that resemble grey cubicle walls, but taller, and excellent lighting and display. There is a book for each exhibit, with a full-page (which are about 8×8 inches) photo of each quilt. Some of my quilt idols had pieces hanging in that exhibit.

I decided I’d try to make a quilt to enter the next year. Didn’t get in. Decided to try again the following year. Didn’t get in. Decided to try again this year. Only had one entry. The theme this year is, as usual, suitably broad (aka vague so that many interpretations can be made): “Imagine That.”

I GOT IN!!!!!!! Me!!!!?????!!!!!!!! I’m going to be in the Viking show with real quilt artists! People whose names many avid quilters will recognize, who are recognized professionals in the field. Me! ??? !!!!!! On Monday, the e-mail arrived saying I was in… once again, the hard-working folks at Houston who help administer this show, helped make one of my dreams come true. (and I keep going back, and the e-mail is still there!!!!)

Alas, I can’t share a picture! You’ll have to wait until Quilt Festival opens in late October, at which point I can share here (or better yet, come see it in Houston… I’ll be grinning like an idiot standing next to it LOL!). In the meantime, I’m gonna keep tap dancing on the rings of Saturn, it’s too early to come down to Earth!

PS… here’s a link to the quilts from last year’s show… amazing: LINK.

PPS…I’ll do the strawberry blog tomorrow!

Happy 4th of July everyone! For those outside the US, today is our National Day, on which we celebrate the day the folks who Declared Independence from England on this date, and along with Thanksgiving (a traditional US holiday celebrating the first settlers making through their first year) and Christmas, on of the “big three” of national holidays.

Last night, I wrote this post, but was too tired to finish it! If you’re a regular, you’ll know that Kathy Daniels and I have a show on this month at the bank in the center of Camden which we titled Two Friends :: Textile Art. Kathy’s blog is a Studio in the Woods, so her work and style may look familiar…and wonderful and FUN! (oh…and in case someone is wondering… yes, two colons, no, no particular reason except I like the way they look LOL!)

On Monday, July 3, I was able to hang our pieces at Camden Bank! Here are some pictures of the inside of the bank. Over the next week or two I’ll be uploading a new piece every day or two to the blog with details about the piece. I’m also hoping to get all of the new pieces added to my website in the next couple of days…I’ll let you know!

The Christmas Tableau quilt is on the only wall large enough to hold it, but still in the public area so people can get close enough to see the detail– right by the doors on Chestnut Street (next to the post office and across from the Village Green):

Speaking of the Village Green, Kathy’s Homarus Americanus and Autumn on the Village Green are on the stairs leading down from the Chestnut Street entrance to the main banking / teller area. There is a sign that advertises the show on that wall, too:

The ivory billed woodpecker quilt, What Secrets Does Forest Hold? is on the wall near the elevator (which I’ve never seen anyone use, but lots of folks go to the desk next to it):

The Garuda Dances Under the Ocean Moon was large enough to fill the large wall in the teller’s area:

On the mezzanine to the right of the Chestnut Street entrance, just by the stairs, is Kathy’s wonderful tribute to Aldemere Farms and the belted Galloway cows, in next-door Rockport.

The small quilts fit best on the oddly shaped pillar in the center of the lower space:

Kathy’s Rooster quilt is at the end of the teller line and next to the doors that open onto where Elm Street becomes Main Street (aka the busiest intersection in town, and these days pretty close to gridlock with the perpetual roadwork on Route 1 a couple miles north…):

Have a wonderful 4th of July!

And today, we left the house before 9 to pick strawberries (things ripen late up here in the north!). We picked and canned 38 pounds last year, and again this year, and it was barely enough for a year’s worth of PB&J’s and toast for two rapidly growing boys (aka the eating machines). So this year…. I’ll be sure to take pictures of the kitchen chaos! It is now 8 pm, and the jam is almost made, and I promise to share every last detail with you soon–but after I get off my feet and get lots of sleep!