Savory Sage
All summer and fall you’ll find various herbs drying on my sunny back porch or in my oven. Right now I have an oven full of sage leaves drying for Thanksgiving and delicious winter soups.
Throughout the summer I eat the young tender leaves fried in butter. Not only do I get a delicious snack, but then I have sage brown butter to drizzle over pasta or soup.
Sage is probably one of my favorite herbs, particularly in winter. It pairs so well with winter squash, pork, and other poultry. And who can resist savory sage stuffing at Thanksgiving with lots of onions and celery?
What’s your favorite winter herb?
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Making Boiled Linen Rags
I had a deep dislike for microfiber rags, there’s just something about the way they feel on my hands. They leave a fine lint on everything and it drive me CRAZY. Somehow I ended up with a large quantity of these rags, I think Mr Chiots bought them for cleaning the car and somehow they migrated into the house. I finally got sick of them and the lint they produce and decided to make a few boiled linen rags for cleaning.
They’re really quite simple to make, I’m not sure why I haven’t made them before. This linen was purchased on sale a few months ago for only a few dollars a yard. I cut two squares, hemmed them, and boiled them for 15 minutes with a little vinegar in the water.
Then I dried them and used them on the windows – WOW – perfectly clean and not a scrap of lint to be seen. I’ll definitely be making more of these and moving all my microfibers out into the garage for Mr Chiots to use out there.
Do you have any great tips for lint free cleaning?
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The Milk Monster
The Littles is fitting right in, she’s a feisty little cat. She spends her days outside hunting moles and mice. She climbs trees and scampers about as I work. She had developed quite a love affair with raw milk. Whenever we get the milk out of the fridge she comes from anywhere and begs for a splash.
We’ve taken to call her the milk monster. She can hear a half gallon mason jar from miles away. It’s really funny and quite endearing.
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Artistic Repose
When I was a kid, coloring was one of my favorite activities. My coloring books were always done from front to back, in order, and the pictures were colored to perfection with outlines and a lot of shading. I remember once my little brother got ahold of one of my coloring books once and scribbled on a page halfway through the book. I didn’t even want to finish the book, but of course my parents weren’t about to buy me a new coloring book for that reason. If I remember correctly, I carefully cut out that page so it was no longer in the book and then I could proceed.
A few months ago I spotted Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book at a local bookstore. I was immediately taken and dreamed of coloring the beautiful pictures within. Impulse purchases are not my thing, so I didn’t buy it right then. Much time was spent mulling over whether I should buy the book. Last week I decided to go for it and got it and a set of Staedtler markers.
The markers are perfect, but the color does bleed through to the back page a little. I really like the saturated color they produce, so I’m using them on front cover and any pages that don’t have anything on the back. I have a set of Prismacolor colored pencils I will use for the other pages. Here’s the front of the book after I got finished with it (see image above before coloring).
The coloring pages in this book are highly detailed, it takes a lot of time to complete each one. It was definitely $15 well spent for the many hours of artistic repose I will get from it! You can bet I’ll be coloring through it in order, let’s hope Mr Chiots doesn’t get ahold of it and decide to color a page halfway through.
Did you enjoy coloring as a kid? Do you still color as an adult?
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Quote of the Day: Faith Popcorn
Handmade things with all their wonderful charming imperfections have a very rare value. Any craft as applicable and pragmatic as kitting has a great future.
Faith Popcorn (from The Wabi-Sabi House: The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty)
As I’ve been crocheting away I notice the mistakes I make. Of course not many people would notice, but I do. I have to keep myself from tearing everything out to fix my mistakes, making myself remember that imperfections make things unique. I’m trying to learn not to be a perfectionist, which is quite difficult for me. Sometimes good is good enough!
Do you find that you are too much of a perfectionist?
