Was I There?

Paper Snowflakes

There is a ground-level window in the new bathroom.  And although no one (except maybe the stray neighbor of visiting mother-in-law) ventures back there, I decided it needed a privacy curtain.  Hence, how inspirational the idea from one of my favorite design blogs, Poppytalk, who gave me a link to Laura's DIY snowflake curtain at Bugs and Fishes.

 

Theo and I also watched a great tutorial on how to cut paper snowflakes by Chris.  People, it's all the fold not the cutting!

Then we went wild on the copy paper, glued our masterpieces together and viola!

Visiting inlaw diginataries even got into the spirit.  (This is my father-in-law's nightmare: tiny pieces of paper on the floor, too miniscule to be swept up easily...and yet, he couldn't help himself, and cut out mighty fine snowflakes himself.)

Later in the day, I bought origami paper which made lovely snowflakes, but they didn't iron flat.  Still, we hung them up on our ceiling, right where the Halloween bats had been, and it was sweet: our own  bright snowfall, to cheer us through the coming winter days.

a walk in the fog and the first "bon" fire of winter

I went out looking for patterns today on a walk through a thick fog.  Here are the bases madrone trees.  Madrone bark peels off in mosaic patterns in the winter and becomes so beautifully green and red.

Here is some lichen on fallen scrub oak branches.

Here is a cobweb.

And here is a robin!  He was perched in a tree filled with robins, all squawking at each other.  One of the things I enjoy about living in Southern Oregon is the migration of the birds-- like the appearance of the robins in the winter months.  I've even looked out on our land in December and have seen the robins and the variegated thrush (the "Hollywood Robins" as a park ranger once said) hopping about, looking for worms.

 Back home, we lit our first bonfire of the season.  The neighbors wandered over.  We spontaneously roasted chestnuts over the fire in an old pan that had been on its way to Goodwill.

The fog darkened around us, but there were still such lively patterns.

persimmon pudding

It's persimmon weather again.  Seven years ago, Gus and I discovered a tree full of ripe persimmons in an abandoned lot and so, on Thanksgiving night, we backed the truck up beneath the branches overhanging the road and picked a good bag full.  We then made persimmon pudding and sent a batch and the remaining persimmons to my dad in Colorado.  I even wrote out the recipe for him.  He said it was one of the best holiday gifts he had ever received and relished the pudding, complete with whiskey hard sauce.

Anyway, Josephine and I made persimmon pudding tonight from three ripe persimmons, which weren't enough for the recipe we got from my mom's 1976 Joy of Cooking, but we improvised with cream and butter and I tell you: it turned out beautifully.

Here is the recipe:

persimmon flesh, strained through a colander (usually 2 cups pulp)

Beat in: 

3 eggs

1 1/4 brown sugar

1 to 1 1/2 flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup melted butter

2 to 2 1/2 cups light cream

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1/2 grated nutmeg

Bake at 325 in a 9X9 inch pan, or use individual pans (like I did).  Bake one hour or until firm. 

You could serve persimmon pudding with cream over it, a whiskey sauce, or sprinkled powdered sugar.  What I did was break out the Puderzucker Streuer, which some friends brought us from Austria.  It's basically a sieve through which to shake powered sugar.

I then tried to go all Martha and sprinkle the puderzucker over cut out paper leaves. 

Not bad!

a terrifying near-miss

As I was lowering the kiln lid on a firing tonight, which included several "orders" for galleries along with a friend's marvelous sculptures, I noticed that the cord to my kiln had not only melted, but that black smoke has licked up the walls of my studio.

It must have happened durning the last firing and I hadn't even noticed....which is even more frightening considering that all of our worldly/sentimental possessions are still housed in the garage below the studio.  The whole structure-- and maybe our house-- could have burned down.

Once, when I was in grad school and writing a story, I used the term "near miss."  

Gus was my editor at the time and when he came to that phrase, "near miss," he cried out that it was a ridiculous term.  

"What's wrong with it?" I asked.  

"This," he said, reaching over slapping my forehead.  "Is a near miss!"

Which made me laugh-- and shudder.