Grey

Yet another Monday, friends! This evening it's 56*, foggy, with a 30 mph north wind blowing. The sky is dark, looks like it may pour at any moment, though experience insists that there is never heavy rain on dense fog days. Mo and I are cringing at even the thought of an evening walk.

June [and May] are perhaps the most unappealing months here at the beach, cold, grey and dismal. Excuse me for a minute while I put on warm windpants and dig out my parka again.
Okay, I'm back! Brrr. I've been busy in my sewing room but not working on quilts. Here's a pile of etsy things in work. "Summer Blues" and "Seaglass Hearts" collections, in lemon verbena and/ or lavender.

Mostly I've been working on a home decor project for good friends. I finished the bedroom pillow cases and duvet cover this weekend. Finally! The duvet cover was hard---king sized, 12 yards of fabric to wrestle through the machine, and partly because I ordered a very long zipper---72" ---and while I set it perfectly the first time there were a couple spots I had not caught the fold-back. Stupidly instead of just fixing  two 6" areas, I decided to redo the entire zipper. Downhill from there.

My friends' home is decorated entirely in shades of grey with white trim and a few accents of seaglass aqua. Anything I make for them has to be GREY. We looked for a good grey batik for months, then waited for a sale for a better price.

It's interesting to work in a different color palette, not my usual white  with accents/ blue. The light in my home is too harsh for grey but I love it in their home, so cool, clean, and serene.

Next I am doing sofa pillows, again batik from Hancock's, and a table runner in ikat from eQuilter.com. And perhaps linen napkins?  I found my little hemmer the other day.

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This weekend my kids  hiked out to their favorite seaglass beach, a small secret beach that is only accessible for persons using the golf course. My son discovered it years ago when his ball flew off the green, over the seawall, and he decided to climb down to get it. The beach is only visible at very low tide, so  beachcombers have to time their visits just right. You can actually see the glass shards in the random photo, if you look closely.

The beach glass is amazing. The kids said all this was found in only 5 minutes.

And here is such a sweet little family, also loving the tiny secret beach. Swans!

I don't think I've ever seen a standing swan, always see them swimming only

They let the kids get fairly close to take pictures. Aren't the babies precious! Grey puffballs.

But then the parents hustled the babies off into the water for safety.

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Speaking of precious [heheheh], here is Mo enjoying his daily brushing. He loves being brushed, especially likes his belly rubbed or brushed gently with the boar bristle brush. If he could purr he would.

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Tonight's dinner is Thai peanut sauce buckwheat noodles with red sweet peppers, scallions, and tofu. I love tofu, it's hard to now think it is not good for you, sigh. I still use it now and then for meatless Mondays.

edit: here is a fairly balanced article on the pros and cons of eating soy/ tofu: HERE

have a great week.

love

lizzy

gone o the beach......

June Roses and a Winner

June!
Hello, hello, let's welcome June.
Today was a glorious day, everything a June day is supposed to be. My friend and I went shoe shopping, always lots of fun, then linen pants shopping---yawn. Afterward we stopped off at Trader Joe's to pick up a few groceries, somehow my cupboard was very bare.

This TJs had lovely flowers. Peonies or roses? Oh it's June, must have roses. These were 4.99 for nine stems.

 

They are ''white'' roses but as you can see they are like seashells, hints and tints of palest ivory, pink, peach, lemon yellow. [no, Mel, they have no scent.]

Even my neighborhood has roses. This is an especially pretty small pink rose. I like the almost-black leaves it has.

Mo is enjoying spring, lots to see and sniff and pee upon. The long light evenings are a delight.

Winner of the doll quilt giveaway is Cathy Lynch. Cathy, I don't have an email for you, pls get in touch so I can mail you your little Flying Geese doll quilt. email me at lizzzz.d@gmail.com. Thanks.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach...

PS the beach roses have also burst suddenly into bloom. Oh that scent, salt air, roses, and honeysuckle.

The Good, the Bad, and the Pretty?

Driftwood Statue of Liberty on cover of local guide.
I love it!

Hi!  I didn't do a Memorial Day post. I was feeling sad that I couldn't leave a little flag on my dad's grave. My parents' ashes were buried, unmarked, on a windswept promontory overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, in the  garden of a  Cape Cod church we called the Moby Dick/ whaling church because it dates from that era.[1845?]. It's the perfect spot but somehow putting his flag out on my deck isn't the same as being there. I don't  know why.  So along with truly frigid temps it was a somewhat sad weekend here.

I kept busy with projects: I made the Shower Melts, recipe:   HERE   You can also browse through my Bath- Little Luxuries file on Pinterest, though the general gist is always the same.

Cornstarch, water, essential oils. 

The result is like very hard to handle drywall spackle. And it gives that creepy chalk on the blackboard feeling as you mix it, eew.

I doubled the recipe, 2 Cups of cornstarch.

Drops of essential oils: bergamot, lemon, lemon verbena, eucalyptus. I subbed the eucalyptus for peppermint oil from the recipe because peppermint gives me migraines.

You don't have to pack the spackle into the ice cube trays. It sort of settles in a minute or so. The water on top can be wicked off by laying a paper towel on top.

I had the red heart molds on hand, a gift from a young man who was a house guest one summer. He'd make pink lemonade hearts in them for our drinks.

The trays go in the freezer. No clue why this works, but it seems to do the trick. Bring the trays out and let them warm up for only about 90 seconds. Pop out and let the cubes dry, then pack into jars.

Pretty!

BUT they have no scent whatsoever. I used way more scented oil than the recipe called for, but nada. Maybe my oils lacked scent because they are all natural and organic? We're used to bright artificial scents instead? But really. Nothing. Too bad because I wanted to make them for little gifts for friends.

And then there is the drywall spackle issue. I kept imagining this stuff clogging my drains. Permanently.

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Since it was so cold I went ahead and made Kelley's Roasted Veggies Pasta. I did cherry tomatoes for about 4 hours at 200*. They came out nice but cooked away to nothing much. I think big beefsteak slices or Italian plum tomatoes would work better. 

Then I roasted 1/2 a bunch of asparagus cut in 2" sticks, 1 summer squash  cut into half moons, a sweet onion cut into moons, garlic, and [just because] pine nuts. Single layer, bit of olive oil and lemon pepper [I use one of those grinder mixes.] They should roast 35 minutes at 400*. I overcooked them due to some little quotidian distraction/ crisis . But they were salvageable. 

Toss with rigatoni and a little butter or olive oil, cubed Brie. Parm on top.

The look is not foodie mag perfect but the taste was delicious on a a drizzly cold night. Easy to do too, except the watch-your-timing issue.

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And the pretty: This quilt is back from the quilter! 

My quilter did a gorgeous job. There's a lot more work to be done now, first bind, then wash and dry. Then  eyes for birdies, 60 + rosettes to sew, beads for stamens. This is a huge, king sized quilt, for no obvious reason. 

I used flannel instead of batting to make the post-quilting handwork easier, maybe. An experiment. The quilter used the flannel with no comment. We'll see how it all washes.

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Mo is always a happy little guy! He loves the cool grass.

Have a great week.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach...