My afternoon walk never fails to offer its own particular beauty--doesn't matter what kind of day it is, there is always something fresh and good to see.
The stretch of dirt road:
After this morning's rain:
A small pond frequented by great blue herons:
The last few weeks of the winter's golden grass:
Giles with a camera:
"Entertaining at tea is a pleasant custom widely followed in many parts of this country. Some women make a habit of inviting a few friends in for tea in the afternoon.
The small tea is served in the living room. There should be a table low enough for convenient pouring and covered with a dainty cloth.
The tea service, silver, if you have it, or china, is on a tray of tole, silver or wood or Mexican tin. The tray, which has no cloth, will also hold a hot water jug, sugar bowl and cream pitcher, strainer, and a place of lemon slices, and, if it is large enough, tea plates, teacups, saucers and spoon. If not, these may be put on the tea table. The tea may be made in the kitchen and brought to the table in the teapot."
Tired of kicking aside the small pile of dirty clothes too delicate to be run in a regular load of laundry, I stitched together this bag to keep them out of sight but within reach in the laundry room. It's made just like a clothespin bag--I traced the angle of the plastic hanger I was going to use, stitched together the front and back, cut an opening across the front and finished it with bias tape, and left a little gap in the seam allowance at the top for the hanger to poke out (I machine-finished the raw edges there).
I love this fabric--it was a garage sale find ten years ago, a giant curtain and a matching long pillow which I use on the laundry room couch.
I fell madly in love with this pattern the first time I saw it, but it took months to find an affordable copy. Isn't it charming? The sweetheart neckline, the back buttoning through to the front, the way the back and front pieces are cut out in one?
The illustration shows the coverall being worn as a dress, but I find that the sides gap far too much to allow this, and I wear mine over my clothes for serious kitchen and cleaning work.
I found a fun reproduction print fabric in pink, with lots of orange (recognize it from Daisy's smock?). And used delicious but hard-to-find and hard-to-match orange binding.
I have been all about coffee cake for breakfast the last couple of weeks. Yes, it has to bake for forty minutes, but once I put it in the oven I am free to shower, dress, etc., with no worries. It takes less than five minutes to put together, and is delicious, dairy-free, and so easy. This is a damp, crumbly cake that is sweet and comforting.
*Schoolhouse Coffee Cake*
Heat oven to 350.
In large bowl (I use my Kitchenaid mixer) mix:
2 c. whole wheat flour
3/4 c. sugar
1 T. baking powder
1 t. salt
1/3 c. oil
1 c. rice milk (or soy or regular, of course)
1 egg
until blended, then beat for 2 minutes. Spread in greased 13x9 pan.
Spread evenly over top:
1 can well-drained sour cherries (not pie filling!!
or
1 c. frozen blueberries
or
1 c. cranberries
Sprinkle evenly with this streusel:
1/3 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. flour
1 t. cinnamon
3 T. oil
lightly tossed together with fork.
Bake until set and edges are lightly browned, about 40 minutes.
Feel free to substitute white for whole wheat flour--I grind my whole wheat flour fresh and keep it in the freezer so I am able to use it in quick breads without them turning out like bricks, but I don't know about whole wheat flour off the store shelf.
• A windy, windy walk under a blue sky this morning.
• A tidy dry woodpile in the mudroom.
• The "Adagio" from Haydn's Cello Concerto in C.
• English breakfast tea in the middle of the afternoon.
• A big pan of homemade macaroni and cheese (Giles was out, so we did dairy).
• Rearranging my freshly-painted white kitchen shelves.
• Putting baby lotion on Daisy at bedtime, beside the fire.
Don't ask me how I missed out on the fact that there is an enormous, abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium an hour from my house. Sitting on a ridge in the middle of piney woods, looking down on a little backwater town.
The Composer had to go there today on business and I could not pass up the opportunity to poke around in this evocative ruin.
The grounds were completely self-contained, because no one in town wanted to go up there with the sick people. It had its own water supply, fire station, chapel (burying grounds? I don't know), and below the hospital, rows and rows of tiny white cottages with screened porches among the pines. The fragrance of pines was thought to combat the disease.
The last patient left in 1973, but there are still paper towels on the side of the sink.
Every floor had special rooms for doctors and nurses.
Felix and I in the third floor foyer. The main hospital is Arts and Crafts style. Look at all that geometry: beauty for sick people.
But of course with no power we took the stairs.
Endless rows of doors. Every room held a human being: so many stories.
The x-ray light boxes were the most poignant things I saw.
A patient's tiny room:
A bathroom:
A glimpse of beauty:
Yesterday I had court in Tiny Town, which is always a treat-- a beautiful drive with the children along, barbecue for lunch if we have time, and most importantly, the Tiny Town Antique Mall.
Yesterday I had fifteen minutes and one twenty dollar bill. I did good.
The world's best vintage tablecloth. Generously sized, pristine condition, delicate Christmas motifs, and it cost seven dollars:
My other find was the pink Pyrex bowl. Here it sits beside a green bowl I already own for comparison purposes, so I can enjoy seeing how it's just the same, only pink! I have a whole shelf full of these green bowls, and am delighted with new one. I use them *all* the time--for mixing, serving, melting butter, everything. I run them through the dishwasher and let the kids sling them around, so I'm always on the lookout for backups. Practical and beautiful.
This is such a simple sweater design--nothing so far but stockinette stitch and increases. So why am I on my *third time* of knitting this section? I cast on the wrong number of stitches, then increased the wrong number. Ripped it all out. Cast on again correctly. Increased the Same Number of Wrong Stitches Again! Ack! Ripped it all out. Cast on again, so far, so good. It's going to be a little bolero jacket for Bella.
I hope.
If you had questions about what constitutes a housecoat, take a look at this pattern. The long-sleeved version is a trim, closely-fitting housecoat--not a loose bathrobe to put on when you're fresh out of the tub. Don't tell me you couldn't answer the door in this number!
But let's move on to some bright green rayon, because this pattern also makes up into a dress, and what says spring any louder than grass green with polka dots?
This pattern had a couple of twists new to me. Most significant was the technique of facing the back of a dart, then cutting it open and gathering the lower "leg" before joining it to the upper leg of the dart--resulting in the so-forties fullness gathered at the shoulder both front . . .
and back . . .
Fun!
"The "house coat" or "breakfast coat" is an outgrowth of the hostess gown. Women enjoyed the hostess gown because it enveloped them completely. When women started to wear cotton slacks for the busy hours of the morning, a designer started producing the cotton house coats which proved to be far more attractive and they soon rose in favor. The modern housecoat is usually made of gingham, cotton pique or calico and it should be crisp, fresh and becoming. The same pattern which might be used for a velvet hostess gown might be used to make a cotton house coat.
Women of moderate means can now enjoy the luxury of extra garments of this type. Modern business girls find that it gives them a definite mental lift to shed their business clothing and slip into an inexpensive garment of this type after a difficult day at the office. It is quite correct to wear when receiving casual drop-in visitors and, due to its simple cut, it may either be laundered or dry-cleaned inexpensively. Every woman and girl should try to manage to possess at least one such garment in the wardrobe. There is nothing quite so depressing as to see one trailing around in a flannel bathrobe or a jaded negligee. A few yards of twenty-five cent cotton percale can produce a most attractive garment which will endure for months and be a constant joy to the wearer."
Part of the kitchen was usable this morning while the Composer sanded cupboard doors outside, so Clara and Daisy busied themselves with Valentine's cupcakes.
Pink sprinkles:
Serendipitous pink tee shirts:
This bit of beauty was very welcome today as we are in the middle of finishing the gigantic Cabinet Painting Project in the kitchen. Back in September we did the bottom cabinets; now we're in the middle of the upper cabinets. Bless the Composer for doing most of the hard work himself--all I do is scrub and tape off glass.
A note on the roses--the grocery store floral department was selling these as "spray roses" because they come on shorter stems, with several flowers to the stem. They cost only half of what a dozen long-stemmed roses would, and I always cut my stems fairly short anyway, so they were a great buy!
I did Felix's room in blue and white, with furniture painted white or left in shades of pale blue or green. But Felix did his room in birds.
The top of his bookcase:
The shelves:
On his bed, a guinea feather (love the polka dots!):
Above his bed, a watercolor painting of his favorite stuffed toy, Little Ducky:
And Little Ducky himself, in battered glory:
I guess it's the perfect nest for Felix!
Yesterday we had a beautiful unseasonably warm day. We had obsessively watched it coming on the weather forecast for several days and laid our plans--school done early, and an outing to somewhere new. We decided to follow the advice on the sign in the middle of the tiny neighboring town:
How many years have we driven by this sign without turning off the road? I have never heard this lake mentioned once in conversation, in all the years I have lived here. So we set off without any preconceptions about our destination, except for my hope that we would find one of those evocative, run-down, forgotten has-been attractions that the Composer humors me by pulling over for.
We found a tiny lake full of dark blue whitecaps blowing in from the south. Cypress knees around the edges, tipsy little docks ricketing out into the water. A flock of ducks, a red-tailed hawk sitting low in a tree. It goes without saying that Felix brought his binoculars.
Special weeds, sunshine, a beautiful baby in a handmade sweater.
Oh, those backroads!
How do you know you're a good photographer? When you can make Hobbes look like he has some sort of meaning.
For any new readers, my son Giles is the photographer here.
Several readers have already stumbled across my second blog, Neat and Dainty as a Flower, devoted to all things Grace Livingston Hill. I thought I would make a general announcement here that it is open for business, though still fairly small. Enjoy!
" . . . as for me, I like to do as mother always did. I always have the cake-box and bread-box full of nice fresh things, and make a pie, perhaps, and cook a piece of meat, or have some salad in the ice-box; and then it is the work of but a few minutes to get the nicest kind of meal on Sunday. It is easy to have a beefsteak to broil, or cold meat, or something to warm up in a minute if one cares enough to get it ready; and it really makes a lovely, restful time on Sunday to know all that work is done."
I'm so fortunate in my neighbor Phyllis. A multi-talented powerhouse, she has taught classical ballet, yoga, and aerobics for years, and now she welcomes me over a couple of times a week for exercise sessions at her house. It's like having a personal trainer conveniently just across the road, only she swears it's good for her too!
And on top of that, she keeps a rowdy flock of Araucana hens who have begun laying again for spring in spite of the bitter weather. Last night I got to bring a dozen beautiful eggs home.
Mad bird activity all day at the feeder--fat red cardinals, bossy bluejays, and an entire flock of red-winged blackbirds ascending into the maple tree then down on to the feeder for more . . .
Busy girls inside--Clara and a friend drawing, Daisy with a tiny tea set, and me, forced out of the sewing room by the icy weather . . .
I just couldn't help myself, and I had the skirt of a sundress the big girls had outgrown. The fabric looks just like a 30's feedsack reprint, but it came from Wal-Mart a few years ago.
