My First Attempt at a Fascinator

Here is my first fascinator. It was a little bit of a cheat since I bought the black feathered hair clip for the base. Then I cut out a felt circle for the base and did some delicate stitching on the edge which, unfortunately, can't really be seen, and then added a little green twirl of felt at the bottom and made a bird which I sewed on top.

It's not very fancy and I sort of want to add something else to it (tin perhaps?) but I have to start getting ready for the event in a couple hours and I still haven't chosen what to wear! My friend Jenn who just finished beauty school is coming over to do my hair; I hope she can make the fascinator work!

I'll be sure to get a photo of it when I am all dressed up!

The Lost Art of Beautiful Fascinators

I really, really, want to make a fascinator. You know, those funky little dainties women have been perching on the tops of their heads for a day at the races?

I especially love the fabulous fascinator king, (my title, not his) Philip Treacy. He designed Camilla Parker-Bowles wedding hat (see above) and Sarah Jessica Parker's Sex in the City movie premiere hat. So lovely; I think SJP is licking her lips because she is not immune to how delectable her hat is. Philip Treacy basically makes hats for anybody who is anybody in the UK. Hats are not so popular in the U.S. OK, maybe in the south at the Kentucky Derby they are still popular, but I live in the Pacific Northwest, a place where if someone puts on socks they think they are dressed up.

This butterfly hat of Treacy's is especially out of control--I love it!

I want to take a hat making class but, again, it is slim pickings in this area. There is a class in Seattle and I found one in Portland, but they are multiple day and hundreds of dollars. So, I am going to start with embellishing some simple hair clips and ordering a book from Amazon and moving on from there. I bought some lovely green and gray felts that I want to use in a hat and I am thinking a matching purse too. But that is going to be a little more complicated. I found some hat bases on ETSY that I might just have to order too.
We are going to a dinner and auction tomorrow night for the Emergency Food Network and I want to felt something and attach it with some feathers to the little black feather clip I picked up at Joann Fabrics today. Too many ideas, so little time.

It's Becoming an Obsession

This felting, it is really starting to eat away at my time. I hunker down in front of a movie at night and barely watch the movie as I am focusing on my felting. Maybe I should just listen to music instead because I poke myself with the needle A LOT.
But seriously, what the heck am I going to do with all these little creations?
Start a bunny farm on the window sill?
Sell mushrooms to Mario Bros. fans? Or what about a cyclops in a spotted cap?
This really has to stop, although I know it won't because now I am starting to make more complicated shapes.
Next up I want to make a little wire armature to make a bird.

Fun!

37 Things I Want to do Before I Turn 38

NOTE: This year has gone by and I am working on yet another list! 

Well, another birthday has gone by and I woke up this morning and discovered I was 37 now and needed a new yearly list.

I discovered two major flaws with my last list. First, many of the items required large amounts of money--classes and trips don't come cheap! Second, I picked some things that I really didn't have much interest in doing. I thought I might have interest in doing them (build a birdhouse, take a yoga class) and it turns out, gee, I really don't have an interest in them!

My new list has a few old things still on it: A few are in progress (designing a tattoo, planning a trip overseas, finishing novel) but are not quite there yet. And throw a dinner party for 20 was so fun, I want to do it again! And running the half marathon is still there because I am still healing my injured ankle!

Remember, I got this idea from Michelle My Belle and she got the idea from Hula Seventy.
And here I go!

37 Things I Want to do Before I Turn 38

1. Get off of the continent.
2. Get another tattoo. (On hold since we are buying a new house and need to save money.)
3.Walk/Jog a half-marathon.
4. See the Picasso exhibit at SAM.
5. Bake a 3-layered cake.
6. Commission a piece of art.
7. Create/install a piece of guerilla art. (Idea in the works.)
8. Make a stop-motion animated short. (Still working on this.)
9. Etch metal.
10. Take a glass blowing class.
11. Tour a chocolate or candy factory.
12. Write a Nano novel in November OR finish my other novel OR both!
13. Make a large felted sculpture.  (I don't know why I didn't count my big felted Bonsai tree on this one; maybe I was thinking I would do something bigger?  Ha!)
14.Make a piece of wearable art that has felting on it.
15. Donate a piece of art to an auction. (I forgot I actually already did this for the Emergency Food Network Auction at the end of last year!)
16. Visit Vashon Island.
17. Dinner Party for 20.
18.Host a themed brunch (or party).
19. Redo the front yard.
20. Make crepes.
21. Read my entire NIKON manual. (Unable to as it turned out it was in Spanish!)
22. Finish quilt.
23. Cast in resin.
24. Redecorate bedroom. (Saving it for the new house!)
25. Make concrete stepping stones.
26. Road trip.
27. Find 6 new stores to sell jewelry/sculpture in.
28. Make pasta (ravioli preferred) from scratch.
29. Take ballroom dancing lessons.
30. Throw a fundraiser.
31. Plant rhubarb and kale and swiss chard.
32. Make a statement necklace for myself.
33. Donate blood.
34. Sew a skirt/dress.
35. Blog 175 times.
36. Volunteer 24 times at the Grand Cinema and see 24 movies. (I saw 23 movies and volunteered 32 times.  Posting on this soon.)
37. Make gnocchi.

I Think a Fairy is in My Backyard.

I was out in the backyard this morning, dragging some cardboard to cover weeds around my blueberry shrub when I noticed a big clump of mushrooms. I looked closer and realized I had a fairy ring on my hands. I have heard of these quite a bit, but never seen one in person.

A fairy ring is a ring of mushrooms. The largest one on record is 600 meters across and there are some that are over 700 years old.

I think ours has something to do with the eco lawn that I have growing and the fact that I rarely cut it because it doesn't go to seed or get 3 feet tall. Back to the fairy circle, ours is only about 4 feet across. It is hard to see it in these photos since the grass is so long but they are in a pretty perfect circle.

It is supposed to mean that elves or fairies are living in your backyard!

Here's a picture of someone else's fairy circle that was much larger and easier to see.
Weird, huh? I like it!

Absolute Half and Half Brownies

I am a brownie connoisseur. I probably average two to three batches per month. I am always, always looking for a new twist or a new recipe.

I have finally created my brownie perfection. And because I am so nice, I am going to share it will you because you will want to make them too! (You'll understand why I call them half and half once you read the recipe.)

Jennevieve's Absolute Half and Half Brownies

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar (half white/half brown sugar)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup cocoa (half dutch/half regular)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons instant coffee
heaping 1/3 cup chips (half semi-sweet/half peanut butter chips--You can buy them mixed!)

Preheat oven to 350.

Butter and flour an 8 inch square pan.

Melt butter in heavy pan. OR in a double boiler. If you are a careful person, you can just melt it in a pan. If you are a multi-tasker like myself, you may walk away and end up with burnt butter.

Remove from heat and stir in sugars, eggs, and vanilla.

Beat in cocoa, flour, salt, baking powder, and instant coffee.

Spread into prepared pan. Scatter chips over top of batter. Do not mix in!

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, checking after 20 minutes.


The hardest part is waiting for it to cool a little before cutting or those melted chips will make a mess. Enjoy!

Views From a Fabulous Dinner

Now that I am done with my fast and furious mosaic install, I can get back to my regular programming and I have a little bit of a blog backlog to stumble through.

Last weekend our friends Greg and Rosie came over for dinner and at first I had just planned on making something simple but something simple turned into four things from my new cookbook: Salt, Cooking with the World's Favorite Seasoning.
I first picked up this tiny (only 64 pages) cookbook as a wedding gift along with a nice salt grinder and a jar of sea salt. Well, serendipitously, my salt grinder just happened to break and then I realized I didn't know if that couple even cooked much and well, you see where I am going. I kept it all for myself and went out and bought a nice hand made butter dish for them instead.

And I couldn't be more pleased that I kept this cookbook. I like that it focuses on an ingredient rather than a region or certain type of cooking. The recipes run from seafood, to southeast Asian satays to pretzel bites to martinis. My type of book! The photos are gorgeous and numerous and there is a little salt directory at the front of the book explaining where different types of salt come from. For example, did you know that Hawaiian black sea salt has charcoal added to it to color it? Or that it is the iron content in Himalayan pink rock salt that makes it pink?

So I had to start the evening with the black olive martinis. I used Sapphire gin but I think the Rogue Distillery's Spruce Gin might have been better with the rosemary sprigs.
They just look so lovely!

My favorites were these Hawaiian Black salted breadsticks. Simple, and a little bit time consuming, but the black salt gives fantastic flavoring. I made them again last night-- they were so good.

I also made a chilled fennel soup that did not come from the Salt cookbook but I had a big bulb of fennel from our organic delivery and this soup fit in nicely with the rest of the meal.
Greg brought a very fancy crab salad that set upon a homemade cucumber gelatin. Yum!
Finally, for the main event I had salt-encrusted prawns with a noc cham sauce and pork satay with a coconut-peanut sauce.

The prawns were completely encased in 2 pounds of salt mixed with lime juice and baked. When it comes out of the oven, you crack open the salt crust and pull out the prawns. They were tasty, but I did think it was a waste of salt. Also, you are supposed to bake them with the shells and their little heads on them but I couldn't find any prawns with heads. I think next time I will do a better job looking.

I also had roasted sweet potato wedges on the side. I love to combine different flavors and regions in my cooking! I was hoping for a lot of bread stick leftovers, but we ended up eating most of them. I think that must be why I wanted to make some more last night!

McCarver Mosaic Completed!

It's been a tough few days. I have had 55 square feet of mosaic on mesh in my studio for the last month, just waiting to install it at McCarver park here in Tacoma. And last month the weather was mostly good, but I had to wait and wait and wait and wait for the contractor to finish the concrete forms for me to install.

I do not like waiting when I have work to install. Then, nothing short of a miracle happened and they were ready for me and I had less than a week to install it because a giant storm is coming in this weekend and I needed to hurry it on up!

Can you see the octopus hiding in here?

The good news is the piece is installed and grouted. The bad news is I don't know if my knees and elbows and back will ever recover from 4 very long days of kneeling on concrete. But I'll just shut up now and show you the completed piece since I would much rather it be done than not in pain!

If you don't live in Tacoma, you probably haven't heard of this park and its giant remodel. The park is dedicated to Zina Linnik, a Hilltop resident that was abducted and murdered in 2007. She was only 12 years old.

This park was already slated to be renovated, but the neighborhood realized it would be great to memorialize the park to Zina and so more money was raised and now my mosaics are there and fabulous carved tile by Claudia Riedener as well as giant kinetic sculptures and large Urkrainian eggs. (Zina was Ukrainian.) In front of my Octopus bench is a poem dedicated to Zina that Claudia inscribed in tiles. We worked hard to make sure the pieces are colorful and playful.
Another long bench with mosaics also incorporates tiles that students and teachers decorated. This one was a challenge (30 feet long not being the least of it) because I had to figure out a way to incorporate all of those tiles and still make it look good and not mish-mash.

One of the contractors cut out this little bit on the front of the seat and I added mosaic. I like it; it was a very late addition to the party but I think it looks like a little waterfall.

Hello, October.

Many people assume October is my favorite month because my birthday is this month. But that is only part of the story.

October is fabulous, because, well, it means crisp and slightly cool, yet sunny days. These are the best day for working out in the yard. The veggie beds need to be cleared out and it is time to think about what I am going to plant next. We are also about to rip out some of our front planting strip to redo because I am unhappy with some of the invasive plants taking over.

We had a HUGE volunteer squash plant this year and I let it do its thing and ended up with this big pumpkin. All the other blossoms were eaten by unknown critters, but this one thrived. I am planning on turning it into a Jack'o'lantern much like my little felted one.
Halloween is my second favorite holiday (close behind Thanksgiving) and I am volunteering at the local arts cinema that day so I am planning on dressing up. Not sure yet what I'll be wearing, but 20 bucks says it will have something felted on it!

The kitties like October too. At least I am assuming they must since they whine and scratch to be let out so they can spend all day just lounging on the deck or half-heartedly attacking the birds at the feeder.
This is also the season when people start to do more inside activities which translates into more dinner parties and more going out to the symphony or a play or to wine tastings. And if I am not out socializing, I will be found with a kitty on my lap and a glass of wine in one hand and my Kindle in the other!

Good times ahead!