Making Stuff - A Miniature Japanese Teahouse, or two...

Every now and then I get a creative bee in my bonnet. It buzzes around in my hair telling me it's time to make something. Really, to build something. I'm always making something (knitting, cards, dinner) but this urge to build is different. It's a feeling in the solar plexis that will not relax until I see the buzzing idea through, or firmly make the decision not to do the project at all.

These Japanese Teahouses have been in my hair now for months, ever since I was given a few remnants of Japanese cotton with tiny designs.

I instantly saw teeny little curtains and a miniscule zafu pillow in a teahouse. From that moment, every time I saw the fabrics, they pulled me into their colors, bring me down into that tiny world, reminding me of Faerie Junction, that wonderful time and space my friends Lea and Jois and I spent in our collective minds while building the faerie village for Hanley Farm in April 2017.

A few days ago, those tiny fabrics practically yelled at me, like, "Dude! Let's do this!"

So I surrendered. I have assembled all the parts for several teahouses (of course - you thought I might just build ONE?). The first will actually be a lantern, with three simple sides and an opening for a tea light. Then, as I advance in my building skills, I'll attempt a  teahouse with an actual interior. If it works out, it will be an essential oil burner, with a tiny ceramic "caldron" in the middle.

Along the right side here are the various parts, in order:

-the fabric and a susi roller I thought might work as a tatami mat
-crafts sticks in the process of being trimmed with scissors
-a 1/24 scale graph
-a little store-bought platform
-skewers, tiny stones wrapped in wire and an umbrella
-the creation of the first platform
-cut craft stick tips (they curled up in the cutting -
they might make good roof shingles)
-and the laid out platform waiting to be glued.

This is all very well and good, but anyone who has followed this blog will ask, "What? I thought you put all your three dimensional projects away in honor of knitting and Studio in a Basket!" So, right. This post is to say, "I surrender."

It's danged uncomfortable to stuff one's creativity down. Don't do it. The spirit of creativity has a way of getting under the skin. In my case, it's a muse I sometimes call Patricia, who dances down the hall and drags me to see moonshine, shadows, light. She sent pictures of teahouses through Facebook, brought into my fingers old books of Japanese designs collecting dust on shelves.

Before I knew it, all this paraphernalia was assembled on my workbench (I only spent $36) and I had three sets of Japanese teahouse plans in a folder on my desktop.

Stay tuned for the next installment of "Making Stuff - A Miniature Japanese Teahouse.

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eBOOKS!!!

Thanks to the Lucky Valley Press tech department, First You Grow the Pumpkin, 100 cool things to make and preserve, my best cookbook, filled with all my favorite concoctions and kitchen creations, is available as an eBook.

First You Grow the Pumpkin was inspired by my brother Jess, who posed the question, "Why is it, when asked for a recipe, your first response is, 'Well, first you grown the______?'"

The DIY trend is nothing new for me. I have been churning butter, growing herbs, making stock and creating food from scratch since knee high to my mother on my grandfather's farm in Ohio.

On the left is an abundant harvest from Seabreeze Farm in San Diego. On the right, one of my mother's water colors from First You Grow the Pumpkin. She called it "Chicks." I call it "Run for Your Lives."

Other new eBooks from Lucky Valley Press

The Lavandula Series,

As the Wheel of Life turns at Sweet Farm, the homestead of the Wymans, a Carmel Valley, Calfornia family, we focus on three sisters: Rita, Nana and Fox, and their three daughters: Tate, Stevie and Jolene, cousins and friends.

In the Lavandula Series, life rumbles the earth at the farm, like any compound full of women, their men, children, elders and friends. They breathe the air of the Valley, filled with the scent of lavender growing abundantly on ten fertile acres. They eat of the garden harvest. The women are restless. The men are nervous.

The girls are growing up in the 60s and they and their peers will become known as Baby Boomers, Flower Children, Hippies, Yuppies, the ME generation; they will be affected by the Vietnam War, Rock & Roll, revolutions from sexual to political and other dramatic social changes.

But, mostly, they will be dealing with their loves, their children and their homes as they relate to and are touched by those concerns mentioned above.

Look for Stefani's Peacock Feather!

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Windborne Farms

 I hope Windborne Farms from Yreka comes back
 to the Medford Farmers Market this season.
Best tortillas ever.

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How to be Obnoxious in 25 Easy Lessons

I laugh every time I tell someone I wrote a book when I was 9 years old entitled How to be Obnoxious in 25 Easy Lessons.

I had no writer’s aspirations at 9. Not really. I was more interested in my little shoe box full of paper dolls and the Littlest Angel Doll that came with a trunk full of tiny clothes.

On this day, in my brother Mark’s words, I was “pestering” him and my mother while they stripped paint off furniture meant for my French Provincial bedroom. I am not sure what “pestering” actually meant. I do not remember myself as the pestering type. Perhaps I asked too many questions. Or wanted to help. But, this is what I looked like. Would you trust me with paint stripper? (although I have just carved out a pumpkin here and am still holding a sharp knife.)

The one of a kind book is long gone, but my recollection goes something like this:

1. Stand close enough to your brother to breathe down his neck while he slathers paint stripper on a piece of furniture.

2. Put a frog in his bed.

3. Blame him for everything.

And so on…

But this story is not so much about being obnoxious as it is about books in general.

Luckily, my childrens’ book collection survived several moves and throwing out of things: Little Golden Books like Mary Poppins and The Poky Little Puppy and my first ever chapter book, Elmer and the Dragon, who flies Elmer everywhere and eats skunk cabbages when he can find them.

My parents read to us every night, and soon I knew The Little Red Hen by heart. When my father was in Korea, he sent home a 45 recording of himself reading The Little Red Hen, so we wouldn’t forget him or the sound of his voice. He paused after saying, “Who will help me plant the wheat?” etc., to give us time to chime in with, “Not I,” said the pig, the duck, the cow…

Our house was filled with books: art, music, novels, biographies. Our father was our Google, our Wiki, our arbiter of grammar and the Chicago Manual of Style. If he didn’t know the answer, he could usually find it in his impressive library full of now out of print reference books and encyclopedias. The big dictionary on the oak swivel stand was one of the few items we three siblings seriously discussed at the time of his death.   

“Who gets the dictionary?”

GB

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Afghan Stitch Sampler

A book called Pick Your Stitch, Build a Blanket by Doreen L.Marquart inspired me to make this lap robe above. The photo on the left is of the 36 squares stacked and ready to be sewn. The book has 80 different stitch patterns designed to make the same size squares. Very handy. Excellent instructions.

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A Simple Scarf Project

This scarf is a great project for a beginner. It is done with a garter stitch all the way (knit, knit, knit forever) except for a little bit of checkerboard (knit four, purl four) until the right length. Just add on whatever colors you like. I used Merino Extra Superfine washable wool with size 7 needles. I  cast on thirty stitches and made it just long enough to lay comfortably across the chest, by request. It’s a soft, cozy beauty.

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GB's Love Notes

Writing notes is an art lost to the generations after boomers. It's quicker to send an email, or even a text. Or, perhaps a wave and a "Thanks!" on the way out the door is enough.

My mother was a perfectly imperfect human in many ways, and I have forgiven her, in absentia of course, for all the weird things she did, like make me wear tunics to school in the 7th grade to cover up my well developed you know whats.

But she was a class act. I say it that way because it was one of her pet peeves. She thought that if you had to mention it, you weren't. But, she was.

She drilled mega doses of manners and niceties into me that I cannot ever discard or let go. I thank her for things I take for granted:

knowing how to set a table
chewing with my mouth closed
opening doors for others
honoring elders
leaving a place better than when I found it
and
the art of the thank you note.

I supppose I have to thank the Dominican Nuns

for teaching me cursive writing, even if they did try to make me right handed.

I'll thank my father, while we're at it, for teaching me the art of inquisitiveness and a love of words.

In an earlier post, I mention the Studio in a Shoe Box of my childhood, filled with paper dolls, valentines and tiny plastic scissors. The box is bigger today, but the idea is the same: be prepared.

 These envelopes were made from a 4x6 template from old books, magazine and songbooks.

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