In September I broke out my pens and brushes for the first time in years and really went to town in making a few beautiful pieces to give out as awards in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Below are some closeup shots.
Completed on the September 23, 2017, the “J” scroll was inspired a 1410 Italian manuscript, The Prayer Book of Michelino da Besozzo.
Smocked Aprons as Prizes
On Saturday the 24, my local SCA group held its annual event. The lunch is a potluck, and I had a .Brilliant.Idea. late last year to supplement the potluck by hosting a cooking competition. The cope-de-resistance to get people to enter items for other people to eat is having a kickin’ prize. November last year I started making four possible aprons for people to win. Not just any aprons, mind, but smocked apron, with drawn hemwork, all done in linen and by 100% by hand.
Out-of-my-ever-lovin’ mind, I was. I needed four aprons because the local cook’s guild has four colors of aprons for their ranking and, of course, I had to have one in each color because I didn’t know who would win.
All but one were completed in time for the event. Guess which color I needed for the winner? Bingo, the one undone. So I took the apron to DragonCon and sewed like a fiend in the backrow in panel after panel after panel – from Science to Space, Writing to the Apocalypse (maybe more literally then just the panel’s name). Then I did the last bit at home in time to deliver the prize to the woman the next time I saw her after she won. Go Me!
All the aprons were done in Honeycomb smocking and had Hound’s Tooth as the first row of drawn work. Red and Green also got lines of Interlacing.
Drawn Threadwork made my May
This month I taught a class on Drawn Threadwork. Related to the class I ended up making a couple of towels as examples, to work beside my students, and to drum up additional interest in the class.
First towel completed (May 19) – 15 hours
I love Drawn Thread embroidery because of its speed; this 17 inch by 30 inch towel took under 15 hours to complete when many of my embroidery projects can take over 100 hours. The four lines of drawn threadwork include Hound’s Tooth, Interlacing (Variation), Zig-Zag, and Interlacing (Basic).
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Second towel completed (May 26)
The lines are as follows(top to edge of fabric) – Hound’s tooth bottom; Hound’s tooth top; drawn thread 2 lines; drawn thread 4 lines; Double ladder interlace (6 gather for each ladder); drawn thread 4 lines; drawn thread 2 lines; Zig zag; Hound’s tooth top.
All white fabric untouched are 6 lines wide. All gathers are 8-thread gathers unless stated otherwise.
And enough of that for a while. Hopefully my students enjoyed the class as much as I did prepping for it.
Book Cover from Amazon
As you know, some of my arts include gardening and cooking. I really enjoyed this book.
Homegrown Herb Garden: A Guide to Growing and Culinary Uses by Lisa Morgan and Ann McCormick
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON
Take your home cooking to the next level by incorporating fresh homegrown herbs! You don’t need lots of space for a huge herb garden, and you don’t need to spend a lot of money on fresh herbs at the grocery store or farmers’ market. With Homegrown Herb Garden, you can choose the herb or herbs you will use the most and build your herb garden around them. Start with an overview of how to grow, harvest, and store herbs. Then, learn how to handle each herb and what flavors they work well with. The culinary section includes how to prepare and use your herbs, plus savory and sweet recipes to feature them in. Choose your favorite herbs, learn to grow them successfully, and never be at a loss for what to do with them!
MY REVIEW
Book comes in two parts 25% herbs and 75% recipes for those herbs. Total herbs covered 15; total recipes provided 62.
This is exactly what I’ve been looking for in an herb book! Each of the fifteen herbs are given height/width growth, water needs, and harvest instructions. The instructions for growing in containers are real instructions instead of the normal “appropriate size container and water regularly” – root depth is covered for instance. Whether the herb is a candidate for early start in house and transfer out to the garden or if it is best just to directly plant it in the garden (tranplantability). Etc.
Ms. McCormick lets the reader know when best to harvest and why (in case you ever wondered why you need to harvest early in the morning). Everything you need to set up an herb garden is here. It is amazing. Why more gardening books don’t do I don’t know. This changed how I was going to set up my garden – now I am going to split it into the “wet” and “dry” sections. Five stars all the way.
I don’t have herbs yet (still setting up the garden), so haven’t tried out the recipe section. The recipes are complicated, created by Le Cordon Bleu trained Chef Morgan – beautiful, but complicated. I may eventually attempt one or two (the rosemary chocolate chip cookie recipe is very tempting). At the beginning of each herb recipe section (at least three recipes for each of the fifteen herbs), includes best pairings with the herbs – what types of cheeses, meats, fruits & vegetables. I don’t see myself using that information very much, but new cooks working toward mastery of the kitchen may find it useful. More helpful is how to chop/use each herb in a dish – but I got most of that from the herb section. I found Chef Morgan’s sectioning herbs into woody and grassing completely unhelpful for my purposes – but I totally can see another cook getting an “a-ha” moment and running with it.
So for the recipe section, I would give two stars (Goodreads – it was okay) or three stars (Amazon – it was okay). But the herb section was so exactly what I have been looking for – and I have gone through a lot of online searches and gardening book reading, I know how rare this is and would have bought the book JUST for the herb section (in fact I did buy it just for the herb section) – I had to give this manuscript Five Stars.
Sorry, no recent art projects to post. I did not make the below embroidery, but I have loved it lots since I first saw it.
And if you have seen some of my other embroidery posts, you know I do have this level of patience.
Image acquired from the Internet Hive Mind