Life's a Stitch

Recreating the past

Meet an ancient wall, located in Tarragona, Spain, a product of the Roman Empire during the 3rd century. 

Now mix it up with modern techniques. My specialty is watercolour painting on traditional cotton rag paper. Now it’s possible to apply watercolour to canvas, first covering it with a coat or two of “ground”, which dries to the texture and absorbency of paper. Using this  technique, here’s a piece of that Tarragona wall in progress. 

Cropped reference photo and beginning of painting:

Progress:

The best part of this technique is the ability to display watercolours without a mat, frame or glass.

My artwork has a lot in common with knitting. I seem to accumulate an uncomfortable amount of UFO’s (unfinished objects). This one, however, is close to being done. And I need to finish a few more because I’ve committed to participating in a show of ten artists in November. Yikes.

Where were you when...

That’s the question asked particularly on the anniversaries of historically significant events. The following are at least fifty years in the past!

I’m dating myself to include the day Kennedy was assassinated. I had been sent into the hall for talking in class, no surprise, when a big 5th grader told me the president was shot. I was in a quandary as to whether I should inform the teacher, but figured I was in enough trouble as it was.

I remember Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King’s funerals because on both those days I was babysitting for the same family and one of the kids asked why every time I babysat there was a funeral on TV.

The moon landing where I was in Rome while on a high school art tour, an adventure with 43 teen girls, a young woman in her 20’s, one boy and two nuns. We got up in the middle of the night to witness the moon walk with many Americans and Europeans. I remember being naively shocked when the US national anthem was sung, followed by boos from the crowd, a political commentary of the times.

And of course there was Woodstock. The day they closed the NY thruway, was the day I arrived back to NY from that school tour. One of the nuns and the boy, her nephew, were supposed to be headed upstate to their home town. I guess they made alternative plans. I clearly remember the music and events surrounding the festival.

I think if someone had told me what my life would be like 50 years hence, I might not have believed it. The loves, the losses, the fact that I would be living happily in Canada. That in my 60’s I would walk 500 miles across Spain and 250 in Portugal. Sounds far fetched. That I would geocache (something that wasn’t in existence then) on six continents. That I’d have a rewarding career in social services prior to finally becoming the artist I wanted to be on that high school art trip.

A painting in progress:

Finding comfort

I remember these feelings of the initial stages of grief from when my dad died when I was 16. It was a monumental event, but the world around us didn’t stop.  Our family was consumed in a vacuum of grief while the rest of the world continued on. Noises seemed louder, traffic quicker. Loss takes a lot of energy and moving through it can feel like wading through grey jello. 

This week we found comfort in a simple task - berry picking. It’s blackberry time in the Pacific Northwest. They’re sweet and juicy and the air is scented with fruit fermenting on the vine. I find their flavour heavenly, but the seeds annoying. Our solution is an amazingly simple seedless jam, made of three ingredients: berries, sugar and lemon juice. 

Naturally high in pectin, blackberries gel beautifully using a ratio of  under .25:1 sugar to fruit. I’ve seen pectin added recipes that require a 1:1 ratio of sugar and fruit. This recipe produces a burst of fruit flavour in a deep amethyst coloured seedless jam.

Five pounds of berry goodness:

made five cups of delicious jam:

Simple Seedless Blackberry Jam

5 lbs blackberries

3 C sugar

juice of one lemon

1. Sprinkle the sugar over the berries and let sit in the refrigerator over night.
2. Prior to cooking, sterilize five 8oz jam jars.
3. Heat berries in Dutch oven until hot and soft.
4. Remove seeds by mashing through a metal strainer or using a food mill with holes small enough to trap the seeds. We also squished the leftover pulp through a fine cotton cloth.
5. Add the lemon juice to the strained liquid, bring to a gentle boil, and cook until thickened. This can take awhile, this batch cooked for at least 40 minutes. Use the sheeting test to determine when jam is done. It will continue to thicken once it’s in the jars.
6. Ladle into sterilized jars, cover with seals and rims, and process in boiling water for ten minutes. There are lots of online instructions for hot water bath canning. Don’t be intimidated, it’s easy and so worth it. I own no special equipment, using a large stew pot and veggie steamer basket for processing.

There’s  a lot to be said for comfort food.

Today we picked another seven pounds.

 

 

Another loss

Though few of us old time bloggers are left, absences in posting leads remaining followers to imagine possibilities, tragic to amazing. In this case it is the former. 

Lightening has struck our family again, with the loss of daughter M and KC’s son, baby Everett, in July on his mother’s birthday. The circumstances were identical to those of his sister, Sage, although no genetic association was found. 

 

Initial testing, requested by M, whose scientific background encouraged her own research, points to a very rare asymptomatic neuromuscular disease, which produces antibodies that affect baby’s healthy development after routine ultrasounds have been normal. 

 

Again, come Christmas, another tiny hat will have a place of honour on our tree.