Do Bee Do Bee Do: The Anti Quiltin’ Bee

Please click on the picture above

to enjoy the beautiful fantasy quilt detail.

“I love these digital quilts I’ve been making, “ I told my friend Marilyn. “No scraps, no batting and a whole lot less time.”

“Yea, but what about all the fun they used to have at quilting bees?”

She got me wondering if quilting bees were as charming and folksy as they look in the movies. Were they real pals’y kind of places, or was everybody looking to see if your stitches were small enough? Did people feel obliged to go even if they didn't want to, like Tupperware Parties, or were they heaps of fun? I 'spose it depended on where you were and who you hung with.

Trying to imagine what a fantasy quilting bee scene would be like, I wrote a little Objective-C code to enable me to travel way WAY back to the time of home made lye soap (have a good time washing that out of your eyes), barn raisings, and quilting bees.

Loading program into debugger…

Program loaded.

run

[Switching to process 14843]

Running…

Welcome aboard PORTAL PILOTS , serving the needs of the time travel community for over three centuries.

Customer LRS531957 PLANNING A TRIP FROM THE YEAR 2010 TO 1893

SO SORRY We are experiencing a slight disruption in service. You will be dropped off at the nearest portal.

PORTAL PILOTS apologizes for any inconvenience to your schedule.

While you're waiting for the next Time Portal to open up in the year ... 1977..., feel free to complete our customer satisfaction survey, and be entered to win a coupon worth five percent off, on your next PORTAL PILOTS trip!

Debugger stopped.

Program exited with status value:0.

My ipod battery is dead and I forgot my charger. (I can’t even remember if we had three pronged outlets back then anyway). What am I going to do here for a few hours?

Hey, the summer of 1977! I remember this! I had just finished up my junior year at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and was living and working with my sister in Yuma Arizona. She had gotten me a junior programmer gig for the summer.

Trisha had gotten roped into going to a Tupperware Party. Her best friend, with whom she volunteered at the “League of Women Voters”, was putting it on, so of course she was stuck with going. I was stuck too but, coming from one of the more alternative U.C.’s in California, I saw it more as a cultural experience.

The nice-lady who ran it showed us a fine new product. A hot-dog bun keeper for the freezer.

The two of us stared at each other in amazement.

“Because, girls, you know the problem you have keeping hot dog buns in the freezer. You KNOW how those darn buns stick together!”

Trisha and I were both thinking the same thing. Don't they have a big knife to whack them apart with?

We drank our carcinogenic diet sodas and after 30 minutes, figured we could slip on out while the others were playing some kind of game with clothespins and a laundry bag that we never did understand.

The nice-lady’s skinny backside was firmly anchored against the door.

“Girls! (toothy grin). Where are your order slips?”

We managed to mumble that we were not buying anything.

She gave us a look of amazement, tinged with horror. “But what about the hot-dog-bun keeper?” (I'm not making that product up.)

The nice-lady swiveled her head slowly back towards the rest of the group, who were now frantically scribbling on their forms amidst a welter of clothespins.

Trisha swung one foot around the screen door. I slithered through, and we lit out like two banditas into the badlands.

Signs of Fall:Pixel Paintin' Pumpkins

I spent much of my day working on creating and debugging self-review exercises in my quest to learn Objective-C. I really like writing and debugging code, but it's hard teaching yourself a new programming language. Over the last few weeks, I've figured out a way to make my self-imposed homework fun, by linking them to my art-journal. I've shared my experiences in this online piece, Reviewing Concepts: Time Travel for the Masses, a piece I wrote at my self-education blog.

I also took a little time to create another fantasy quilt and stencil an imaginary pumpkin just like Martha Stewart, or one of her hard-working staff, would. My pumpkin, however, is one I plucked off one of my old photos with the help of Photoshop. And of course every pumpkin needs a quilt of it's own.

As always, if you click on the picture above, you'll see a lot more beautiful detail.

Summer’s End Peach Cobbler

The weather’s been funny everywhere this summer. It poured rain several of the days I was in Madrid – a pattern the locals told me was normal ahora, pero antes, no! Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we had a cooler than usual July and August. And my facebook-friend Judy, up in Oregon was most unhappy because it either rained incessantly or was boiling hot, nothing like the quintessential blackberry-pickin’ season I always imagined in the northwest.

I wonder if the funny weather is why every peach I tried, this summer have been crummy? I look forward to fresh peaches all year, but every one I’ve tried this year has been, what my mother would call, ‘mealy’.

Last week my husband hopefully brought home one last lovely looking box of peaches. Surely this batch would be different! They were so attractive, a beautiful shade of yellow with lovely red blushes. Today they were perfectly ripe, giving just, so, when you pressed one finger against their delicate complexions.

They tasted lousy.

What does good old Ann Landers say? Or was it Ben Franklin who suggested the connection between lemons and lemonade? But in the case of peaches, it’s cobbler. Tonight we made, and ate, the best peach cobbler I’ve ever eaten. Could it be, the mealier the peach, the better the cobbler?

Pretty easy.

1) I mixed up a batch of my 1960’s Style Buttermilk Biscuits (it’s the same recipe I wrote about earlier this month, in the art-journal entry “Kidhood Memories:1960’s Style Buttermilk Biscuits”) and filled the bottom of a deep dish, square type casserole dish.

2) I set the oven to 400 degrees (instead of the 450 degrees I’d use for biscuits)

3) Cut up 3 large, delicious looking, but mealy tasting yellow free-stone peaches and covered the biscuit dough. Then I topped the peaches with some sugar (maybe ½ a cup?) and a sprinkling of cinnamon.

4) I bakes the cobbler for 20 minutes (checking after 10 and finding it still very much un done). Then I turned off the oven, leaving the pan inside the still hot oven and took my dog for a walk around the park! (Probably for about 20 more minutes). When we returned from the dog walk, I turned the oven back on, but now at 450 degrees. It was done and fork clean, 10 minutes later.

Yummm. The mealier, the better!

Kidhood Memories

With my older sister, Trisha, at Pike's Peak Colorado 1962

We thought everybody in the U.S. ate biscuits then

1960's Style Buttermilk Biscuits

We often eat these with homemade Damson Plumm Private Eye Raspberry Jam

Bake 450 degrees Bake 8 – 10 minutes till tops brown

In a bowl Mix the dry stuff: 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon baking soda,1/8 - 1/2 cup sugar, some cinnamon (½ teaspoon?)

Make a little well in the dry stuff pour in ¼ cup corn oil and 1 cup buttermilk (if using regular milk*, use 1 tablespoon bak. powder and no baking soda). Do not beat, just mix softly until combined.

Pam spray/oil muffin pan/ cookie sheet/pan

Additions: Raisins or a few blueberries (mix these w/ dry stuff) or A spot of strawberry or raspberry jam in the top of each biscuits (jammy biscuits)

*or make buttermilk substitute: A tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice plus enough milk to make a cup, let stand 5 minutes

American House Spiders Unite - No Sacrifice Required!

Please click on each picture to see the lovely details.

A female American House Spider, Parasteatoda tepidariorum. Apparently, she is still alive and kicking

Identified at Spider Identification Org, by Bug Eric,

a.k.a. Eric Eaton author of the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America.

Having read too many articles about how to be a good parent, I thought she had left her poor decayed body behind to feed her offspring, but Eric says that she looks alive. I guess she is simply hanging around waiting to see what kind of peanut butter the kids want to go with their flies.

In the photo below, she is waiting for her kids to emerge. I guess this is the equivalent of reading a magazine in the parking lot.

Any Bugs in the Bell?

Please CLICK ON THE PICTURE ABOVE to see all the great details

After 14 hours on a plane from Frankfurt, Wolfgang figures perhaps, there COULD be bugs in his horn bell. I played French Horn up through the end of middle school. Which made my position on the stage in Memorial Church, just behind the brass section from the Junge Kammerphilharmonie Freiburg even more enjoyable.

In my case, the drummers sat off to the right of us. Being the third french horn, lowest in the pecking order, I was the target of their happy-go-lucky juvenile male behavior. The only instruments with more time on their hands than horns are drums Though the french horns had a lot of rests to count, the drums had even more, and so they needed something to do to occupy their time, while waiting their time to play.

We practiced in the school cafeteria before school. These resourceful fellas would gather up old pieces of stale food and, when I leaned on my horn, counting, or was otherwise distracted by my best friend, the second french horn, they would toss old french fries and stale pieces of hamburger buns into my horn bell. Then when it was my turn to blow, out would come a fusillade of ancient bits of lunch.

At the age of twelve and thirteen, it didn't seem funny to me at all, but it sure does now.

Concert Details and

my other art-journal entries about this performance can be found at

* On Stage

* Playing Beethoven

Araneus diadematurs, At Home in a Smaller World

Please CLICK ON THIS PICTURE To see all the lovely details

What am I in a spider's world? A cloud that passes over her sky? A tremendous gust of air? Is something smaller than the bud of my ear-buds, aware of me as a threat, a presence or with any kind of interest?

I encountered this little beauty hanging out on one of her own silky threads on the bathroom wall. That's usually where I meet up with her kind, right about tooth-brushing time.

She's commonly known as a "Cross Spider". I was so pleased with myself because I recognized her. That's because one of her sisters came to visit my porch on Halloween night. My trick-or-treat Cross spider was much, much bigger than this little darling. I was able to see her markings with my own eyes, but for this babe I couldn't tell what she was until I enlarged the photo in Photoshop. A magnifying glass would have done the trick as well.

I posted pictures of both these girls to the spider identification web site, where both were identified by entomologists who frequent the site. (It's a very to join this site for free, and to post your photos there .) This tiny lady was verified by a charming man, "Bug Eric". He has a great blog (http://bugeric.blogspot.com/) that really brings out the romantic side of insects, spiders and other arthropods, and the people that work with them.

* One of the tricker-or-treaters pointed her out and after that all the kids came to see her.