A Brightly-Colored Mushroom

Last Saturday morning, I woke up early. Not on purpose. The one day I get to sleep in...but no such luck. There really is no good explanation for why I was so wide awake on a Saturday morning. I am never ever wide awake. Ever. The only reason I can conjure is that I was having a dream that would not allow me to sleep any more. In my dream I was crocheting. But I wasn't crocheting the granny square blanket I've been working on for almost 2 months now. And I wasn't crocheting the cute slippers I made for my sisters for Christmas. I was crocheting a mushroom. And in my dream, I figured out how to do it. So I think my dream woke me up so that I could use this new knowledge it had worked out for me.

I obediently got out of bed, packed up a hook and some yarn, and Jason and I headed to Panera. Because really, if I'm going to be awake in the AM hours of a Saturday, I'm getting an asiago bagel bacon egg and cheese sandwich out of it. (Seriously, if you haven't had one of these, it will change your life. Go to your nearest Panera tomorrow morning and get one. They serve them up to 10:30am Sunday-Friday and up to 11:00 on Saturdays.) There we sat in Panera, Jason working on the computer and me crocheting a mushroom.

And as it turns out, my dream was right. I do know how to crochet a mushroom although I had never done it whilst awake. Here it is:

Pretty cute, huh? I have absolutely no idea what the point is of a crocheted mushroom is, but there you have it. I can do it. My dream taught me how.

Also during that Panera trip, I read through a journal I wrote while I was on a 3 week wilderness expedition before I started my freshman year of college. I had never really been camping before, but I thought that if I could get through 3 weeks hiking through the wilderness with 8 complete strangers, freshman year of college would be a breeze.

So I set out into the woods with my new hiking boots and my new hiking backpack and absolutely no idea about what I was getting myself into. And let me tell you, it was one of the most difficult and physically taxing experiences of my life. There were times when I thought to myself, "What if I just walked into that ditch right there and twisted my ankle? They couldn't make me keep going." Don't get me wrong...it was also one of the most satisfying and beneficial things I've ever done. But there were moments and days when it was really hard.

In one of those moments, I saw a little brightly-colored mushroom growing on the forest floor. It was a little burst of orange in an otherwise brown landscape, and I thought to myself, "That is one colorful mushroom in an otherwise very drab environment. It looks so out of place, but here it is. And it's doing just fine. If that little mushroom can survive and even thrive in this environment, so can I." And from that moment on, whenever I saw a brightly-colored mushroom, I was reminded that I belonged there and that God was with me and that I could still be my colorful little self, even in the middle of the wilderness.

It was one of many lessons He taught me in those 3 weeks. But I think it's especially pertinent to my life now. So I brought that little crocheted mushroom into my office, and it's now sitting on my desk reminding me that I can be a little burst of color in a somewhat drab environment, that God is with me, and that I'm going to be just fine.

The Best Fudge Brownies Ever

When I get in a food slump, I like to read the recipes that come on the back of food packaging. I hardly ever actually try them, but they often inspire me to use that food item for something other than the specific purpose for which I bought it.

Cooking is something I want to be really good at. And to be really good at anything, first you have to learn to follow the rules, and then once you've mastered the art, you can break the rules all you want, and then it's called ingenuity. But if you never follow the rules and just do your own thing from the start, you'll never reach mastery of anything. This goes for poetry, music, painting, science, exegesis, driving, language, you name it. Every medium has its limits, and you must first learn to respect those limits before you break them.

But I get bored following all the rules. Which is probably why I'm the jill-of-all-trades type. I learn just enough about something so I can improvise because my goal is always to create something new. (Okay, maybe not with driving, but you get my point.) I run into this issue a lot with sewing. I have a really hard time completely following a pattern. I also have issues following recipes. I like to add my own ideas, change things up, bring something into existence that has never existed before!!! It's just more exciting for me that way. And maybe the end product is not always "better" than the result the recipe or the pattern or the rules stipulated. But it's an exercise in imagination, and I think that's more important.

But then I bought a bag of King Arthur Flour. And on the back was the recipe for "The Best Fudge Brownies Ever." Now I am sure that plenty of people have made that claim, but when King Arthur makes a claim about a baked good, you best listen. So I did. I made the recipe without one single alteration. And let me tell you...these are the best fudge brownies ever. So here, for your culinary pleasure--without alteration or interference from your truly (except to say that I used ghirardelli cocoa and mini chocolate chips)--is the recipe:


"There's no dessert more satisfying than a warm, fudgy brownie; and we daresay these are the best brownies you'll ever bake. Cut through the shiny, delicate top crust to reveal a deep-dark, rich, super-moist brownie underneath, perfect with a cold glass of milk (or a scoop of vanilla ice cream!)."

The Best Fudge Brownies Ever
1 cup (8 ounces) butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups Duth-process cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt*
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour
2 cups chocolate chips

*Increase the salt to 1 teaspoon if you use unsalted butter.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch pan.

In a saucepan set over low heat, melt the butter, then add the sugar and stir to combine. Return the mixture to the heat briefly, just until it's hot, but not bubbling; it'll become shiny looking as you stir it. (Heating the butter and sugar a second time will dissolve more of the sugar, which will yield a shiny top crust on your brownies.) Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl.

Stir in the cocoa, salt, baking powder, and vanilla. Add the eggs, beating until smooth; then add the flour and chocolate chips, beating until well combined. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake the brownies for 28-30 minutes, until a cake tested inserted into the center comes out dry (though it may have a few crumbs clinging to it). The brownies should feel set both on the edges, and in the center. Remove them from the oven, and after 5 minutes loosen the edges with a table knife. (This helps prevent the brownies from sinking in the center as they cool.) Cool completely before cutting and serving. Yield: 2 dozen brownies.

(Disclaimer: I forgot to take a picture of my brownies. This is a picture from the King Arthur website from a similar recipe.)

Is your tummy growling yet? Mine sure is. I am thoroughly taken by these brownies. Those of you well versed in the art of brownie-making will know that these are just a touch on the cakey side due to the 4 eggs. So that means they're not quite as chewy as box brownies. For a long time, I thought box brownies were the pinnacle of browniedom. But there's just something about brownies made from scratch. They're just so satisfying. Jason thinks they're a little on the rich side. He's probably right. It's a good idea to make these when you have a few friends to help with the consumption. And seriously, friends and homemade brownies? It doesn't get much better than that.

edit: Blogging about these brownies today was just slightly tortuous. So I resolved to make them as soon as I got home from work. I trudged home through the rain salivating over these deliciocities. And lo and behold, I walked in the door and was greeted by the most fantastic husband ever and a pan of freshly baked "best fudge brownies ever." Yeah, I know. You are all jealous. And you should be. These brownies (and Jason too) rock my face off!

A Flower for Tea

Last year for my birthday, Jason took me out to tea. We went to a little tea shop in Salem next to Rita's Water Ice, and he diligently sat with me and ate scones and tea sandwiches because that is my ideal meal and one of my most favorite things to do. He drew the line at cucumber sandwiches, so I ate all of those. It was a lovely time. He also gave me a "coupon" to be taken out to tea sometime again within the next year.

Well, my birthday is coming up again soon, and I wanted to make sure to use my coupon before it expired. So a few weekends ago, we planned a date at The Wenham Tea House, which is the oldest continually operating tea house in the country.

I was very excited to go to afternoon tea. I wanted to get all cute and dressed up and springy because that just seems appropriate for tea. I know that people have afternoon tea all year round, but it just seems like a springish thing to do. Maybe it's the flowers on the teacups. I don't know. But regardless, I envisioned a springtime afternoon tea experience.

Unfortunately, I live in New England, and we don't really get spring here. We get endless winter followed by a few weeks of freezing rain and mud and then the trees start blooming around the end of May and two days later, it's summer. So as you can imagine, on the mid-March day Jason and I set out for afternoon tea, it was just above freezing and raining in torrents. There go my cute springtime attire plans.

But I would not be defeated. I found my warmest skirt/sweater combo and went to work on a coordinating headband that would add some flowery goodness to the ensemble. And here it is:
Unfortunately, I took these pictures on another rainy day so the color isn't fantastic. The flower is actually a bright purple, so it springed up my outfit quite nicely for a lovely pseudo-spring afternoon tea.

Diagonality

Let the catching up begin. Bring on March! Contrary to what you may think given the pleasantness of the warming up of the world, I really do not like March. I find it absurd that a 31 day month does not include a single holiday. And by the time March rolls around, I have no patience for its flip-floppy weather. Just be warm! What is so hard about that?? Okay, enough ranting. Now we can bring on March.

My first weekly make of March was quite a mystery for some time...even to me. I had been rummaging through my fabric scrap drawer and had come across some lovely strips of flannel. I decided that I would make some sort of bag using a single continuous strip of cloth. I was inspired by a bag I had seen once that was made entirely out of a continuous zipper. Here is a pretty good example. If you need a little better of an explanation, here is a scary infomercial-type video that shows how it works. Yikes.

Anyway, that was my starting point. I decided to use two different fabrics to emphasize the sweet diagonalness of the pattern. And I just started sewing the long strip to itself winding around and around as I went. (I really need to start taking in-process shots because I'm sure this makes no sense.) When the strip ran out, I stopped sewing and evaluated what I had...which was a bag with 3 corners on the bottom. I spent the next 2 hours--Yes...2 hours--trying to figure out how to tuck in the bottom single-cornered side so that I would have a nice rectangular, flat bottom with a front and back and sides that were squared off. I folded and pinned and unpinned and refolded. I cut out a cardboard bottom to see if pinning around a solid piece would be easier. It wasn't. In short, this bag--or whatever it was--totally owned me.

So I took a rotary cutter to it. (That's the sewing equivalent to a pizza wheel.) I cut off the double cornered half and sewed up the side. I now had a flat bag. Much smaller than my original intention and not nearly as cool. But it turns out that when you sew a strip of fabric diagonally and 3-dimensionally, it just doesn't come out squared. End of story. Defeat accepted.

Because of the seams from the strips, I had a large amount of flannel folding all over the place inside my bag. So I decided it needed to be lined. I pulled a random bit of fabric from my scrap drawer (now a large pile on my floor) and cut it to what I thought would be the right size. But flannel, though soft and lovely, is thick and obnoxious, so measuring the outside of the bag produced a lining that was too big. I measured again and resewed. Still too big. So then I got really angry, took the rotary cutter to my lining and whacked off about a half an inch. Maybe it was a full inch. I don't know. I was distraught.

Of course, my lining was now too small, but I was determined to make it work. I thought, "Hey! Maybe if I add straps to the sides, it will make up for the gap-osis between my lining and the outside of my bag!" Brilliant, Robin! And you already have a matching strip of fabric cut into the perfect width! I sewed it up and tried to turn it right-side out. But again, we were working with flannel. And there was no way that little strip of fabric was ever going to turn right-side out. So what to do? I didn't want to waste any more fabric on this stupid bag. But what else could close the gap between my lining and my outer shell? Why, a zipper of course! Because I'd never sewn a zipper into anything before, and what better time to try than for a project that was a complete disaster? Really, how hard could it be? I even had a zipper that was kinda sorta almost the right size! Woohoo!

Well, I'm guessing that the right time to sew in a zipper is not when the bag is otherwise fully assembled, and especially not when your liner and your outer shell don't match up. So it was a...trying experience. But I ended up with...



a zipper pouch...that is only somewhat functional...and will most certainly fall apart if you don't hold it just so when operating the zipper.

So, was my little diagonal bag project as nifty as a continuous zipper bag? Not even close. But I did try a few new things including some very poor geometry. And if you don't look at it too closely, it is kinda pretty. And the original intention of the diagonality remained intact. So there are small victories in the midst of disaster.

As a side note, in searching for bags made of zippers, I found this little number, which just might have to be an upcoming project. Maybe once March is over. I think I'll have better luck and a better state of mind come April.

Show #5

So back at the end of February, there was another Kalos coffee house. This one was to celebrate the 2nd issue of the arts journal put out by the seminary community. The theme was "Light." Here is the post about my submission to the journal. I had both of my cathedral window wall-hangings on display:
The night before the coffee house, I still didn't have any way to hang either wall-hanging, so I was working on sewing sleeves on the back to hold a dowel so they could hang. And then the power went out. So there I was, sitting on the living room floor, hand-sewing by candlelight. It felt so lovely and colonial. (But I must tell you...my candle-light stitching was far from impeccable.)

I got some really positive reactions to my cathedral windows. People seemed to like them. But it is a little difficult because I'm the only person who has submitted any sort of textile anything to the 2 editions of Kalos so far. So I don't know if people really get what I'm doing or not, if they see what I do as "art." I guess it doesn't really matter because these cathedral windows are really important to me and grew me in so many ways. Even so, I do hope that a fellow sewer or crafter of some sort steps up for the next issue. There are quite a few talented writers and photographers who contribute to the journal, but I think a little more diversity of media would make it better. Just my opinion.

This time, the coffee house was in a smaller, darker room, with strings of lights hung overhead. The feel was much cozier than the first coffee house, which was held in the great hall, which has terrible acoustics and is not really conducive to listening or focusing attention on the stage. Once again, I played in the open mic section of the evening. (I'm not sure what one has to do to be a part of the "regular program," but I'm not going to get into that right now.)

I asked Jason to play with me, which was a great call. I know that I'm capable of performing by myself, but when I do, all I can think about afterward are the many mistakes I made on the guitar which then made my voice a little shaky for a beat or two. It's fun for me to share my songs, but it's much more fun to have a little back-up. Enter Jason. Jason and I have tried to play my music together before. It's always been a little frustrating and slightly awkward because so many of my best songs were from a period when our relationship was really shaky, and the main content is about not wanting to marry Jason. I write from emotional overflow, so tumultuous times produce stellar songs out of me. But it makes it hard to include Jason in those songs.

I've never wanted to do music by myself. That has never been part of the plan. So I decided to try to incorporate Jason for this coffee house and just see how things went. He is a much better guitar player than I am, and our voices blend quite nicely, so there was no reason we couldn't make it work.

I flipped through my journals and songbooks to try to figure out what songs to play. Light is one of my go-to metaphors so I had quite a few to choose from. I stumbled upon this song I remembered starting a few months ago and was surprised to see it edited and finished. I don't remember doing that. It's called "Run that Darkness Down," and it is currently one of my favorite RGO's (Robin Giberson Originals)...right up there with "Orion" and "Bouncy Ball in a Blender." It saddens me that I can't upload sound clips on blogger. It seems wrong to have the lyrics here without the music. Don't get me wrong--I think they stand alone just fine, but the song is a much better experience when heard. Oh well. So as to try to include you in this lovely bit of songwriting, here are the lyrics:

Somewhere the sun is rising.
I don't know why it's hiding.
I wish it would ride out with banners flying high.
And with his tail between his legs
The dark would quickly run away
Cutting his losses, mumbling curses as he fled.
And I...I would run that darkness down.
Oh and I...I would run that darkness down.

Somewhere a breeze is blowing.
I don't know where it's going.
But if it's warm, I wish it'd pick me up on the way.
And without one backward glance
You know that I would take my chance
That breeze would carry me to a brighter kind of day.
Oh and I...I would ride out on the wind.
Yes and I...I would fly out on the wind.

It's hard to fight against the sleep
That's making all my darkest dreams
Seem like they're really real and coming after me.
So I will just turn on the light
And I will let that light fight
All of my battles 'til the morning rescues me.
And on that day...I will run that darkness down.
On that day...I will run that mean old darkness down.
Yes and I...I will run that darkness down.
Oh and I...I will run that darkness down.


So there you have it. A song that I have written in the recent past that isn't awful. Quite the contrary...I'm really proud of this song. It isn't too deep or profound. It's just a really fun song to sing and to play and it brings a little hope and sunshine to my cloudy days and instantly improves my mood. Songwriting success. Way to go, Robin.

So Jason and I played this song and "Oh Little Forgotten," aka "My Sparrow Song." I wrote that one back in my junior year of college. It's loosely based on the Matthew 6:25-34 and 10:29-31 passages that tell us not to worry because God cares about us more than the sparrows and they do just fine. That's not really the tone of the song, but that's the basic message. The tone is more, "Stop being so scared. Get up out of your ashes. God has not forgotten you. He is here even now." It's a message I need to hear continually, and this song has been really helpful in reminding me of the truth of God's presence and love and provision and challenging me to believe He is here.

So back to the coffee house...Jason and I played these two songs. He played guitar on both and sang harmony for "O Little Forgotten." And it was the most fun I've had playing music since CMC. It all went so smoothly, and I didn't have to worry so much about my guitar playing or my vocal tone because Jason had my back. So I could just focus on the words of the songs and the truths they communicated. I could just sing those truths to my soul and enjoy being filled up with them.

We got quite a good reaction, which is always my least favorite part. (I never get nervous or start to shake until it's over.) But I was pleasantly surprised when several different people asked us if we play out often at other places. We do church stuff together but never stuff like this. So that was encouraging that we seemed like we did it all the time. And one guy even came up to me to tell me that "Don't Mess with Me" was the highlight of the last coffee house. I was completely floored by that...mostly that he remembered "Don't Mess with Me" and that I was the person who did it. That was way back in October!

So this is a very long post to say that I really enjoyed the February Kalos coffee house. I'm excited to see what the next theme is. I've decided I'm going to submit a song in addition to whatever else I do to see if that'll get me into the non-open-mic portion of the night. And I'll definitely be doing more of my music with Jason from now on. And I'm excited about "Run that Darkness Down." I wish you could hear it!!

Hot Chocolate

February was a long and dreary month. One day, I decided that the cure would be a nice mug of hot chocolate. So I mixed up my little powder and milk and hot water...and it just did not do the trick. It was simply not chocolatey enough. So I spent my final weekly make of the month trying to figure out the ultimate recipe for hot chocolate. I determined that I could only use ingredients I already had in my kitchen, and I set out for something a little richer.

For my first attempt, I melted a little bit of butter in a saucepan and added a quarter cup of chocolate chips. I melted those down and stirred in a half a cup of milk. I boiled some water separately and added it to my chocolatey goodness and finished it off with a little dash of cinnamon. The result was definitely richer than my package of powder variety. And the cinnamon was a nice touch on the back end of the flavor. But it tasted a good deal like liquid pudding. Which is fine if you like pudding. But it wasn't quite the flavor I had in mind.

So I sought out a little online help and found this recipe. Luckily, I had sweetened condensed milk on hand from sometime when I planned on making key lime tarts and did not follow through. At first, I was slightly grossed out by the idea of drinking condensed milk, but as it turns out, condensed milk is quite tasty.
(Disclaimer: I forgot to take a picture of my hot chocolate for you, so this is the picture taken from the recipe's website. You get the idea.)

This recipe was definitely better than my original attempt. But it still had a slightly puddingy flavor. I think it would probably be better if I used a higher quality cocoa. But my original vision was to melt actual chocolate for my hot chocolate. So I guess I am still on the quest.

If you have a stellar hot chocolate recipe, something smooth and yummy and not pudding-like, please do share! Especially if it includes melted chocolate. The weather is warming up this week, but I don't think there's ever a bad time for hot chocolate!

Secrets, secrets...

Alright, so it's been forever since I've posted anything. The reasons for this are many-fold. And although very few of them are resolved, I thought I'd do a little secret-unraveling today to get myself back in the game here.

1) My blog hates me. Literally. It was perfectly content being all conventional and dotty in its basic template. And then I got bored and spent hours and hours and hours searching through every website of blogger templates I could find. And I finally found the perfect one: FluidYellow. It was everything I wanted: colorful and happy but still mostly white, not klitchy or chaotic at all, pretty without being all "HEY!! LOOK AT ME!! I'M FLOWERY!!!," and a lovely shade of sunshine yellow. Just what I needed for the never-ending days of winter and never-spring here in New England. I figured out how to download the template and upload it and still keep my widgets in tact. And I was sooo proud of myself. And then the dates were all screwy. So I fixed those. And then I noticed my pictures were being text wrapped. Blex. So I enlisted help. But the code for this template is just not happy. So that didn't work. And then...all of the images in the template disappeared. Completely. Gone gone gone. No more sunshine yellow. No more little gray boxes around my widget headers. Nothing. Gone. So I did some research and found out that the host server of the images probably deleted them. So I found the template again and downloaded the images and uploaded them elsewhere and then went through the code and replaced all of the links to the pictures with my own new links. This took hours, folks. ow-ers. And it didn't work. So once again, I've gone back to the www to look for a blogger template that I like as much as FluidYellow, all the while holding it as my ideal that nothing can ever ever top. It's been...discouraging to say the very least. But I will not give up. I think that my blog is just rebelling against me because I went all change-crazy on it. But maybe if I start posting again, my blog will remember that we're friends and stop hating me. Please, blog darling??

2) My weekly make for the third week of February is a big secret that I can't post about yet. (NO I AM NOT PREGNANT.) I am super excited about it, and I think it turned out really well. But I just can't go all public with it for another few months. I will clue you in by the end of June at the latest. I promise. I know that's a long time to wait. Trust me. I know. So to clue you in just a little bit, I'll let you know that it was a writing project of sorts.

3) I thought I was way behind. And that made this (in addition to the rebellion and the really happy secret I can't tell you about) not a happy place at all. Since the big year mark...no, actually since Christmas, I've been a little drained of creative stamina. I've still been making things...puff oven pancakes, crochet motifs, a fort in the living room, hours upon hours of crocheting the granny square blanket. And in the midst of all that, I didn't think I had been keeping up with my "one make, start to finish, every week" structure. I was so discouraged by this that I thought about altering the structure of my blog. I would still be intentional about being creative, but I would set a time goal instead of a project goal. That way, I could make more big projects like blankets or clothes without the pressure to finish them in a week. I would do more in-progress posts. But I know myself. I know that my original design for this blog has been helpful for me. It's easy enough that I'm not overwhelmed and despairing, but hard enough that I am still challenged by it and motivated by the deadline. So I'm not changing it. And as it turns out, I wasn't even behind to begin with. Isn't that exciting? Once I reconsidered my little secret as a make, I was all caught up.

So that's it. Updates coming sometime this week from the last two weekly makes and a coffee house post, and we'll be back on track. And just so I don't have yet another post without a picture, here is an invitation for you:

When you're feeling just a little too silly to make anything else, make faces!