Thanksgiving at Our New Table

I promised myself that when our new table arrived, I would put up a puzzle. I saved this Peace Like a River puzzle by Kim Norlien just for the occasion. He is, or was, a local artist. His studio was down the road from us in Clearwater. When we stopped in there this past summer the studio was locked, and there was a realty sign on the lawn. The last time I checked his web site it still had the Clearwater address. At any rate, the puzzle finally went up and was finished.  But just like a country music song, I have to analyze it! Notice that the sky looks like daylight. You can't see it from the picture, but there are people sitting out on the deck on the right, just above and to the left of the blue car. Yet. the fireplace is lit, and all of the lights are on in every room of the house. They are wasting electricity and firewood! I guess that means the light is merely symbolic. When I first started this puzzle I was dropping in pieces left and right. As I neared the end, when it is normally easier, it got harder and harder. It was a challenge. The hidden images were a little bonus, and the scripture quote a commentary on the artist. I am sorry that he is moving, or has moved from, the area.

I have been able to finish two mysteries, Ralph McInerny's On This Rockne, and a garage sale find, George Harmon Coxe' Top Assignment (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1955). Ralph's book was entertaining from his commentaries on academic life and on the state of affairs in the Catholic church. I got a kick out of "The Old Bastards Table" and the faculty senate. Took me back to my days at CSB/SJU. Academia! Top Assignment was interesting in that Communist infiltration in the United States was part of the plot. Today no one would think anything of it, and in fact people would probably cheer it on.  

We have had some life adventures this week. Arthur's car just came back from the garage. Mine needs to go in. On top of that our local e-mail service provider closed up out of the blue, or if it was a one man operation, he was injured in a hunting accident and is lying in a hospital bed somewhere while the company goes belly up. We had not had service for almost a week. Last night we decided to scramble and go for a new e-mail.

The St. Marcellus Mission group craft sale is over for the year. I am free to craft as I like without deadlines for another whole ten months! Glory! But not really any time to rest. I had to deliver a bunch of leftover hats and scarves to Catholic Charities, and I brought home some stained and holey vintage embroidered tablecloths that I will have to figure out how to use for next year's sale. There is no rest for the wicked. And I still have to get caught up on dishes, housecleaning and laundry. 

Homemade Apple Cider

    In spite of the drought, we had an abundance of apples this year. My husband picked them all before frost. He put four 10-gallon pails in the basement, gave some to Anne and some to a friend, and put the rest out on the end of the driveway for anyone to take. I have already put eight quarts of sliced apples in the freezer for pies or crisps. The rest are waiting to get eaten or to be made into apple sauce. 

    I have been craving apple cider but have not bought any because of the price. Yesterday I decided that I would try making my own. 

    I quartered enough apples to fill my pressure cooker two thirds full. Then I filled it with water to cover the apples and let them simmer on the stove for three hours. No work to that. It was Sunday, after all. But the labor part was yet to come. After cooking and mashing as best I could, I strained the pulp through a mest strainer. Then I restrained it through the mesh strainer and a layer of cheese cloth. It was messy because each time I emptied the strainer I had to rinse it off before reloading it. With the cheese cloth it was even tricker since I had only the one piece of cheese cloth left. I had to rinse it out as well and then try to get it stretched out again. I did save the apple sauce left after the cheese cloth strain, since by that time all of the seeds, stems and skins were removed. After all of that I was left with a gallon and a pint of cider.  

    I had not added any spices, sugar or oranges to the brew as many recipes called for, since our apples were sweet enough, and I already consume enough sugar. I used a mix of both Haral Red and Northern Spy apples. The result was sweet enough but tasted a bit watery. Still, it satisfied my desire for cider. 

    Would I make some again? Not this year for sure. Perhaps in the future. But I think I will use all Northern Spy apples next time. Now time to scrub the sticky floor.

    Otherwise, I have been trying to finish embroidered dish towels for our mission group craft sale, and reading, reading, reading. 

    I finished The Evolution Hoax Exposed. Glad to give that one away. I am too old for such small print. Then I read Seymour Reit's Guns for General Washington so that I could pass it on to my granddaughter, who is studying the Revolutionary War in social studies. Interesting that the author was also the writer behind the Caspar, the Friendly Ghost cartoons which I watched daily as a child. Also interesting because the main characters were Henry and Will Knox, and I am sure that Fort Knox must be named after one of them. Now I know who they are. I had purchased this book when Anne was homeschooling but had never read it myself. What a sacrifice they made for the cause of the Revolution.

    Now I am reading The Life of Washington by Josephine Pollard (McLoughlin Brothers, 1893, reprinted by Beautiful Feet Press). George did not chop down the cherry tree, he only gouged it with his axe. And yes, his family did highly prize honesty. I just finished Chapter 3, which included the story of his trip from Williamsburg to a French outpost on Lake Erie on behalf of Virginia Governor Dinwiddie. It was no easy journey. One cannot help but admire the heroic effort that it cost.

    I have not made it to the basement to finish my card bases yet. Little by little they will get done. But I have been giving them away almost as fast as they have gotten finished. Not sure how many will be left for the sale!

DSP Scrap Busting and other Adventures

 I am on a mission to complete two different aspects of downsizing. The first is to clear some books off our shelves. The second is to clean out some of my stamping stuff. 

To accomplish the first item, my job has been to read, read and read. After The King's Thane I picked up The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone (James Cross Giblin, Harper Trophy, 1990), a book I had purchased for homeschooling. That was a quick little read over a few nights when I could not sleep. I will pass it on to the girls. It gave me some background on ancient Egypt and on Napoleon, both subjects I knew little about. The Rosetta stone is an arifact which Napoleon's army discovered in 1799 when tearing down an old fort. The stone contained a decree writtin in three languages, Greek, Egyptian and Demotic. Over the next 40 years it took several scholars to unlock the "riddle" of how to read the Egyptian and Demotic writing. The rest, as they say, is history. Opening the door to history, that is.

My next foray into the bookshelf was a book I am only half way through, The Evolution Hoax Exposed (A.N. Field, Tan, 1971, reprint of  Why Colleges Breed Communists, Christian Book Club of America, 1941). I chose this book because I had done an independent study of  Evolution in college, but I had not put much effort into the class. I had purchased this book many years ago to fill in some details that I had not studied. When I first started reading the book my impression was that the author's belittling comments on college and university students would not win anyone over to his side. As I pursue reading, however, I find the book very enlightening. Evolution in some form or another is taken for granted these days. I hear both  Fr. Richard Simon and Patrick Madrid speak of it on Relevant Radio. But Mr. Field digs into the scientific and news communities at the time of Darwin's publication of The Origin of a Species, and demonstrates that right from the beginning there were those who did not believe Darwin credible. Two big hurdle were the absence of fossils and the inability of species to breed and produce fertile offspring. Those hurdles still exist. Darwin's claims were mostly assertions, not verifiable facts. But the most important part for me has been reading about the silencing and censorship of those who did not accept Darwin. What happened from 1859 to 1941 when this book was written seems exactly like today, when people are being censored for disagreeing with climate change, COVID, and transgenderism. Scientific facts are being replaced with name calling. Those who disagree with the politically correct position (The book deals with the influcence of the theory of evolution on politics, sociology and philosophy in the section I have not yet read.) are denied grants and advancement opportunities in their fields of study. Deja vu. 

As for stamping, I have made a concerted effort to depleat my scrap box. The picture shows more than 30 of the card bases which I have put together so far. I am enjoying some of the mixtures of old and new designer series papers that I was able to combine. When my box is cleaned out I will go back to stamping for the tops. Most of the completed cards will go to Sleepy Eye for the Schoenstatt gift shop, and to our St. Marcellus Mission Group Craft Sale in November. I have dug deeply into my stamps as well, and have used some of the previously unused stamps that I had purchased from JLN Connections in Wisconsin. Good to make use of all of the supplies I have spent money on over the years. But using up the scraps has not come without a price. I have gone through several rolls of adhesive tape. I am out of Old Olive paper, one of my favorites. And I had to purchase another packet  each of Whisper White and Very Vanilla paper. But it is exciting to get things done. Wahoo!

The top two are some of my favorites.

Last, I tried a recipe for Ezekiel bread which I had clipped from Tast of Home several years ago. I looked up the quote from Ezekiel which inspired the bread makers. I have to say that I felt like the bakers used the Bible. The only ingredient they used which was mentioned in Ezediel was wheat. Further searches of recipes on the internet showed me numerous others who actually used lentils, barley and the other ingredients in scripture for a true Ezekiel bread. But sprouted grains sound like lots of work, so I  think I will just look for a loaf in the store if I ever want to try it.   

Beowolf

 A long, long time ago, after my two older sisters' graduations from Archbishop Murry Memorial High School (AMMHS), I inherited a copy of their English textbook, England in Literature. It was a wonderful book, leading me to knowledge of Old English, Roman and medieval England, and the tale of Beowulf. I kept that book for many years, using it occasionally for reference and for pleasure. I eventually sold it when my days as a homeschooling mom came to an end. But I still regret it. 

Fast forward to the present. I have had a few sleepless nights, curtesy of MSG in my food, and thoughts of my kitchen cabinet project. (As I lay in bed I am re-arranging  the contents of cupboards to figure out what will work best where.) My usual recourse to insomnia, besides praying the rosary or Divine Mercy chaplet, is to read. I move to the little bedroom, crawl under my down comforter, and grab a book. My current read is one of my homeschool juvenile collection books, The King's Thane, by Charles A. Brady (Clarion Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY 1961). It is the tale of Beorn, a lame lad who serves under the great hunter, Bjarki, later known as Beowulf. It is a difficult read in terms of medieval linguistics. But it is also written in a rather poetic style with lots of alliteration. I would call it sing-song. I have resorted to the computer to look up words such as Geat, scop and Gautland. But it is grwoing on me. I am almost half way done. Beorn is a descendant of King Arthur, and mention is made of Augustine of Canterbury and others whom I have met in my reading. What it all boils down to is that after I finish this book, I will have to read my copy of Beowulf the Warrior (Ian Serraillier, Bethlehm Books/Ignatius Press, 1994), along with some of my other books from that time period. 

I got a new estimate and some kitchen designs with and without an island on Friday. I will stick with the original design proposed by Steve from MHI. I will have to buy a smaller dish washer than originally planned, but that will be no problem. I am sure the next people who buy our house in the future will not have ten children. If they do, they will just have to run the dishwasher three times a day instead of one. I am going to be my own contractor. I have the time to make phone calls and get estimates. It looks like I will be able to stay within our budget and still be able to purchase the dining room table that I have picked out. It is a fun project. This is the first time we have made an real changes in our house on the interior, besides flooring and paint.  

Alleluia!

 He is Risen as He said. Alleluia!

What consolations I have received this Easter season! For the first time in many years I did not suffer from scrupulosity. I am usually plagued the most around Christmas and Easter. This year, just peace. I am not sure what has made the difference besides gentle, good confessors over time. Not much else has changed. But I am very grateful.

About two weeks ago our snow finally stopped. It was then that I remembered that I still had a bag of unblessed palms out on our deck. When I opened it up they were still pliable and had no mold. Before dumping them in the compost pile I decided to give the Palmeto rose one last exasperated try. Lois Maciej taught this rose in her class, and I have spent lots of time watching Youtube videos on how to do it. Still, I had noever been able to figure it out. I watched  this video one more time, and then sat on the deck to practice. Ran back to watch the video a few more times, and then back out to practice. Finally something clicked, and I got it. I recognized that certain folds should always run paralell to other folds. That was all I needed to know. I've got both muscle memory and verbal cues locked into place. Looking forward to using it next Palm Sunday. I am so glad. So cool.

Akin to palm weaving is napin folding, and I am happy to say that I added the butterfly fold to my repertoire. 

I am re-doing my kitchen. I was unsure where to start on the project, and which way I wanted to go. Originally we thought that we would just have the lower cupboards and the counters replaced. I wanted to do it myself, but Husband was not very enthused. He wanted stain again, and that is much harder to match than paint. Then we thought that if we do cupboards, we may as well put in a space for a dishwasher to increase the market value of our house. But then I would lose all my drawer space. That limited our options. So I started making phone calls and checking on Angi. Then Steve from Minnesota Home Improvement came over last week and gave me some good suggestions. Now I wait estimates on cupboards and counters. For the sake of comparison I am getting one for custom cabinets, and one for ready-built. But my inclination is for custom built. I have my cabinet color, style and crown picked out. I know where I want drawers and where I will want cabinets. We will get rid of our railing along the steps and replace that with drywall and cabinets. When I get a cabinet timeline nailded down we can start on the drywall and electrical work in the middle room, which will become our new dining room. Very exciting. I plan on getting a dining table large enough to accommodate family and friends. 

The sun is out and our weather is beautiful. Time to go pull quack grass.  

Easter

 This year we tried the Martha Stewart Bunny Napkin Fold for our Easter table. It was quite easy. Ari picked it up very quickly. The other girls did not try it. I would add two tips. The first is to use a napkin which has a thin or small hem. The second is that at the second fold uing a square napkin, the original first fold should be at the back, and the hemmed portion of the napkin should be on the top facing you. That way the fold will be on the outside of the finished napkin, not the hem. It just looks better. 

We also tried the shaving cream method for dying eggs. We wre really disappointed. The only color that seemed to adhere to the eggs was pink. I told the girls that if they ever need a science experiment for school, they could test this method using a few variations that I have seen on other blogs, such as leaving the eggs in the shaving cream overnight, or soaking the eggs in vinegar before putting them in the shaving cream. My other tip would be to use an unfragranced shaving cream. We used the last of Grandpa's can of sensetive skin Barbasol which was very perfumed. It was more than I cared to smell. (Grandpa asked if it turned me on. Certainly not in that dose!) 

We also tried making bird nests using this recipe. I had to put them in the refrigerator to get them to set. Of course our kitchen temperature was up to 77 degrees because the oven was on all afternoon. But still if I remember other recipes used a little bit of wax to set the candy, making it much easier to eat.   

Yesterday's snow covered up my blooming squills and crocus. They say one is supposed to wait for a week of temperatures before cleaning off flower beds in order to protect the bees. The leaves were still plastered to the ground in the flowers because of all of the rain, so as much as I like to get them  cleaned off, I was not even tempted to do it last week until they dried up more. 

A highlight for me this Easter was the arrival of my new, large Rubbermaid dish drainer and drain board. I guess I am a classic at heart. When Arthur dropped a dish out of the cupboard a couple of weeks ago it  broke the utensil caddy in the dish drainer. That meant a search for a new drainer and a couple of weeks of washing very small loads of dishes, then stopping to dry them before I could do more.. At first I thought of just replacing the caddy, but the dish drainer was getting a little rusty and I really did not like it because it did not keep the plates and glasses out of the drain water. Yuck. Nothing more gross than having your clean dishes hit the disgusting stuff on the drain board. I think I had gotten this last one at a garage sale. When I looked on Amazon I was shocked at the high cost of my old Rubbermaid favorite. More than double the price of yesteryear, and of course the drain board came separately, doubling the price again. But I am glad I have it. Holds so much more, keeps clean dishes out of the drain water, as I menioned, and I can use the glass holders once again. Wahoo!

Sewing Disaster and Recovery

 It has been quite the two weeks. We have been down to one car during this time. First my car was in the shop. Now Arthur's car is in having the transmission rebuilt. Meanwhile I have been stuck at home. It has been a good time to get caught up on projects. But oh, so frustrating.

First, as I wrote in my last post, I printed an embroidery transfer upside down. The embroidery is half finished. I am really pleased with how it looks. But I will need to rip the towel holder off and re-attach it to the opposite corner of the towel so that it hangs right-side up. Then I will add another small design to the bottom of the towel to balance it out. Extra work, but it will fix the problem. Transfer ink never washes out for me, so I dared not just throw it in the wash. I do not have room in my house for another goof. 

Next, I finished the top of a table runner which I have been working on for a friend. I made my sandwich and basted it all together. But it was too puckered to stitch. I took it apart and re-sewed a few seams. It worked better the second time around. I decided that the design would work best with stitch in the ditch instead of an meander or other free motion design after spending hours practicing stars. Okay. Got that together and it looked much  better. The binding is attached and ready for hand stitching. 

Finally, the last project is an apron that I started quite some time ago. I used a See & Sew pattern, but I have to say that it has been anything but. I cut two aprons out at the same time, and had planned on completing them side by side. But they were both planned as gifts, and I needed to finish one much earlier. I was so frustrated after finishing the first one that I did not want to face the second. The second has not been any better. It is done, but I had to leave the basement  because I was close to tears. I told my husband last night that this is the reason I no longer sew garments. It just is not fun. 

Sometimes even the simplest sewing project can get de-railed. Not long ago I had to sew rick-rack on a towel. It should have been a five minute project, but the turned over edge of the rick-rack and the hem on the towel were too thick for my machine. It jammed a few times. Ended up not so perfect, but I had to leave it. Not such a great thing for a perfectionist. 

These are the things that make for humility. 

And I can say on a few things, "Done is better than perfect."

But once again I am bemoaning all of the projects sitting in my basement. Hope I don't die before I make a bigger dent in them. What a mess for my poor husband to have to clean up.  

More Books

 My latest children's read was Astrid Lindgren's The Children of Noisy Village. I found a copy at Saver's about three weeks ago. I have found almost every children's book that I have wanted at Saver's sooner or later. At any rate, it was such a fun read. I got a kick out of the blunt telling of the lives of the neighborhood children through the eyes of nine year old Lisa. It left me feeling happy and refreshed. 

After that I discovered Ralph McInerny's autobiography,  I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You on the shelf. I wondered how it had gotten there. I did not remember buying it, although it would have been something I may have purchased somewhere. Turns out my husband was the culprit. He had read a review of the book somewhere, ordered it and read it, all without my knowing, or remembering. Stinkerpants! At any rate, I picked it up for a read. It appealed to me on a few different fronts than perhaps it did for Arthur. First, because I was a philosophy major, and I remember McInerny from my time in college. Second, because I have read Fr. Dowling and a few more of his mystery stories and other fictional works. Third, because we have his book, A First Glance at St. Thomas Aquinas: A Handbook for Peeping Thomists. I had no idea that Ralph was a Minnesota native, so it was interesting to read about his childhood in Minneapolis and his time at Nazareth Hall. I was quite young when my brother Gerard was at Nazareth Hall, and I remember only negative comments that my mom made of it. Ralph painted a different picture of a place with a very classical curriculum where it was expected that not all who attended would continue on to the priesthood. Of course, my brother was there after Vatican II, so it may have been quite different by that time. I only recognized the names of two of the priests who were there when Ralph was there. I was unaware that Ralph had written under several pseudonyms, and I did not know he had a series of mysteries based on Notre Dame University. They are now on my Saver's/used book store list! A quick search on Amazon shows that most are out of print and not available. When I was in college we used texts from Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson, both mentioned in Ralph's book. I did not know of the Maritain Center which Ralph headed at Notre Dame. The book gave me insight on the solidity of Thomistic philosophy compared to other modern philosophies. I wish that I had had that insight while I was in college. It might have saved me some confusion. For that reason alone the book was profitable for me. He gave a  negative assessment of symbolic logic. I had symbolic logic at CSB/SJU, and my feeling at the time was that it was like learning chemical formulas. High school chemistry boggled my mind, so it is not surprising that symbolic logic did the same. Nice to know he did not think symbolic logic is what it is cracked up to be. His writing on what it means to be a Catholic university or college as opposed to "Meatball Tech" was helpful since my time in college was fraught with professors who dissented on church teaching. I am afraid my alma mater has continued down that path to absurdity. Just this past year they were unable to condemn an alleged sex competition in any other way than to cry rape, because the only sex they claim to be immoral these days is non-consensual sex. His writing on Vatican II was also helpful. He pointed out the expectation that Pope Paul's commission on birth control would overturn the ban on the Pill. When this did not happen, there was open dissent. (I knew that Bishop Shannon of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis had left the priesthood to get married, but I did not know that it was because he objected to Humanae Vitae.) We are still dealing with that dissent today. Some would perhaps say that Ralph was naïve in not noting the deliberate masterminds behind liturgical changes, he did rightly point out that the "spirit" of Vatican II is very different than the letter of Vatican II, and that most Catholics have not the slightest knowledge of what the documents actually say.  I experienced that myself at CSB/SJU. I believe that it is also fair to say that those who dissent from moral law have also not cared if they dissented from liturgical law. The two seem to go hand in hand. I do not think this book will go into the give-away pile. I may have to re-read parts of it from time to time. 

On the craft side, I have been doing loads of embroidery. I am also trying to redeem a table runner that I put together for a gift for someone. Better had I trimmed each unit before sewing together. It is waiting for quilting. The first time I basted my sandwich I had lots of puckers. I had to take it apart and re-sew a few seams. It seems to have helped a bit. This time around I put in loads more pins. I am also hand-basting to ease in what is left of the fulness.