It’s odd timing that I should bury myself in botanical & herbal reference books and foraging & homesteading cookbooks in the dead of winter – or slightly sinister. As I cram myself full of knowledge, I’m not in a season where I can practice … and for me, that’s a risky way to invest my time. That is, I’m a kinesthetic learner who doesn’t retain much if it’s not in my muscle. On the other hand, give me something to do and I’ll nail it after one or only a few repetitions.

So I might be setting myself up for failure.

Luckily, there’s no better lesson than failure.

And I’m hoping that by taking winter to cram, I’ll be able to hit the ground running come Spring. (And with the Shamrock Run around the corner, that’s a double-win.) Since this is a self-directed endeavor, I’ll be using this space to track my lessons and progress – because even better than learning from failure is learning from someone else’s failures, right?

From Foraging to Programming to Cooking

Last October (my last public post), I stumbled on the joy of cooking quince and wanting for a better urbanedibles.org. Shortly after throwing my wish into the wild, a member of the urbanedibles group contacted me, showing interest and connecting me with the open source code. From there I spent a few weekends getting a mobile app together that let me upload pictures of my foraging finds from my phone and have them appear on a map. It was a great experience that I still hope to polish and share within the next few months, but I needed a break from the computer and found myself spending my spare time going on long walks, hikes and binge watching tv series.

Then a few things happened:

• A holiday sale at the Independent Publishing Resource Center introduced me to the Kinfolk Table cookbook, which I nabbed on sale – as a Christmas gift.
• I wandered into an art sale (after pulling over on my way home to gawk at some street art) featuring homemade elixirs. The apothocary mixed a fine cocktail, and I bought a few and began playing around with a new realm of cocktails, enjoying the seasonal comfort of medicinal and herbal hints. She mentioned a capstone at PSU and researching it led me to many other schools and programs – none of which were really suited for me. So I decided to craft my own (free) course.
• I reconnected with an old friend who invited me to a dinner party at his house. I was hooked.
• I talked my uncle into hosting a dinner party – that I’d plan the menu for & cook. We picked the weekend of the solstice. He then kept bugging me for a shopping list so I had to get going crafting a menu. I picked up Kinfolk Table and crafted a menu that came to receive rave reviews. It didn’t hurt to cook in a kitchen with 2 ovens and 6 burners.
• I also talked some friends into hosting a solstice dinner (the next night) in honor of their recent move. The hostess, renown in the art world for her sculptures that reimagine furniture, bridging fantasy with function, inspired us with a most exquisite table setting and decor made of nature: cloth, glass, wood, pines… We all contributed dishes and mine came, once again, from the Kinfolk Table. They were a hit and the book became a totem of more dinners to come. I left it with the hostess, suggesting that she bring it to the next dinner so the next host/ess could enjoy it until the next dinner and so on.
• I got sick over the Christmas holiday. The sickest I’d been in years. This immobilized me and got me reading.
• I picked a new 30 Day Challenge: keep up with my own velocity. No procrastinating what I can do in 5-15 minutes, from dishes to laundry to mail. My first weekend in, I was loving it! It was like having a free weekend since I had no chores to-do-list taunting me. Or put another way: not finishing what I can’t finish without the “out” of not being able to not start anything.
• I finally picked up the Good Life Lab, a book I’d picked up after a session at Barcamp in Portland earlier in the year. On the topic of wild harvesting and foraging, the author recommended Native American Food Plants. In the spirit of not spending money and contributing to community, I headed to the library. It was in the cookbook aisle. (They have cookbooks at the library!?! A lightbulb went on.) On my 3rd visit, I picked up DIY Delicious, with super simple, mix-and-match recipes and guidelines for preserving, fermenting, curing, cheese making, pasta making …

The new living room.

The old living room is now a large dining room.

Every dining room needs a fireplace.

Week One

This was the week I picked up Good Life Lab and went to the Library. A weekend adventure led me to some second hand stores with a friend where we stocked up on ‘essentials’ like a rope, ladder, oil lamp and wooden basket. Normally, these items would linger in my car or basement with dreams of getting cleaned, repurposed and used. With my recent momentum I spent the next day doing just that, including putting to use the last batch of junk I picked up while visiting some friends in Tacoma.

Inspirations, ideas and items on my radar:

• An banking ledger app that requires you to enter purchases as you make them. No integrations, no mint.

Week Two

This week I was solely focused on the next weekend’s dinner party and a plan to double the size of my dining room by swapping it out for the living room. It was a long week with work and week night commitments, so I had a strict schedule including a few hours tucked away here and there for menu planning, food procuring and the re-arranging. To my surprise it was all a wild success. And thanks to my partner, we were able to keep up with our velocity and had everything cleaned up before bed.

Hearing that Faye’s foot hurt, I reread The Good Life Lab‘s story about aiding the healing of the author’s broken foot with some herbal wraps or poultices. We made a trip to the Portland Herb Shoppe for comfrey, where I picked up some Usnea so I could practice my identification skills the next time I’m out in the forest.  The wrap of vinegar, comfrey and sage reportedly felt good while it was on (we applied it 3 times), I’m not convinced it will have any long lasting effects. In the course of internet investigation on the topic, I discovered that folks predominantly use poultices for horses & that some report treatments marketed for horse care work on humans.

Despite the perceived successes, I faced some challenges which will end up being my next few projects.

• Sauerkraut was not ready. While I started it 4 days before the dinner, I had to add some brine to keep the cabbage submerged and I think this added onto the overall fermentation clock. As of tonight, it’s looking good with no mold and an expected odor.
• In preparing to start kombucha in the hopes of making vinegar (ala The Good Life Lab), I read that one should avoid using a spiced black tea (like Chai) and sugar substitutes. I’ve added both to this next week’s shopping list, so I won’t be starting kombucha until next weekend. And I have a gallon of semi-sweetened chai tea for drinking this week.
• I picked up some brewer’s yeast in anticipation of starting on some Ginger Beer (ala DIY Delicious). I decided I needed to prioritize writing some of this down- so now need to start this before the yeast goes bad.

Inspirations, ideas and items on my radar:

• I kept my receipts from last week’s procurement runs as I don’t want dinner party food to enter into my tracking of money spent on various ingredients & food for the home. An easy way to track project expenses without the overhead?

Observations

I wonder if I can keep up with my own velocity -and- get up early. No time soon.

My addictive personality works well when it’s well directed.

Spending a little time here and there on chores makes for a dream-like weekend where I feel like I suddenly have a million hours in my day – to make stuff and learn. So much better than the weekend becoming a time to recover from the week and catch up on as many chores as possible.

My 2013 30 Day Challenges all petered out after 3 weeks. If this is anything like the last 3, then this will be my last week. I think I need to be careful to pace myself to avoid that 3 week burnout — as I’d like to make it past 30 days for this one.

Edit: This ended up being my favorite challenge all year and one that I keep coming back to.

The post From Foraging to Programming to Dinner Parties to Decorating … a DIY Retrospective appeared first on Jewels.

And so I set out to make some food for my immediate lunch and the week ahead. While I don’t have specific recipes to share, I figured I’d share the general outline and what I learned in case you’re in need of some food experiments.

Crab “cakes” over a bed of garlic heads and onions. Born out of my need to rescue the aging garlic heads, a couple half-eaten onions and a bag of mostly dead mint.

• Rinsed and cut the dried end of the garlic heads off. Then I cut the garlic head stems in half. I threw them into a warmed cast iron skillet with already melted butter and salt.
• Diced the remaining fresh portions of 1/2 red onion and 1/2 a white onion and added them in.
• Rescued the inner most garlic cloves of some elephant garlic that had mostly dried out on the outside. Halved some fresher garlic and added them all in.
• Added a splash of Sauvignon Blanc vinegar and removed the veggies once they started to brown. Some taste sampling revealed that the onions had sweetened and the garlic heads perfectly al dente.
• After scouring my cupboards I discovered a can of crab meat. So I cheated and looked up some crab cake recipes and manage to muck it up anyway since the base of the recipe I wanted to follow called for 2 eggs for 1 pound of meat and I used 2 eggs for 1/2 pound of meat. And I had no crackers. So began the improvisations. I added celery salt, pepper, some of the onion mixture I’d just cooked, the rest of the fresh mint I could separate from the not-so-fresh bag and a splash of lime juice from a mostly hardened lime. It was a bit runnier than I could fathom rolling into patties so I some coconut flower to the mix and poured it into the pan like I would a pancake.
• Though I wish I’d better greased the pan, the cakes cooked like potato pancakes and I only broke it into a few pieces when I did my best to flip it.
• Upon tasting, while I liked the cakes, I think the addition of the flour gave it a bit of a dry taste I wasn’t too keen on. Bummed I’d used the mint IN the cakes vs having for use in a sauce, I whipped up a dollop of mayo with mustard powder, dill, Cholula and lime juice. Put the cakes on the bed of garlic greens and voila! Fancy lunch.
• Next Time: I’d only use 1 egg and no flour in the cake mix. And I’d use about 1/2 as much mint, as I think it’d be much better in the sauce.

A non-traditional Gazpacho Chile. Neither a gaspacho nor a chile, this came about as an attempt to use some aged, dry beans.

• Rinsed and soaked a bowl of black beans and a smaller bowl of white beans.
• After about 8 hrs I rinsed them again and started a crock pot with 2 cans of tomatoes: one diced and “fire roasted” and the other whole and peeled. I added the black beans (not the white), some seasoned salt, garlic cloves, dried dill (lots of it), some dried pepper flakes & two cans of water. I put it on a high and waited for the mixture to get bubbly. My thinking is that I’d bring the beans as close to a boil as I could, then I’d add the white beans.
• When I added the white beans, I also added some Sauvignon Blanc vinegar and lime juice and brought the pot to low (not warm).
• I checked periodically and eventually added a bit more vinegar, pepper, salt, ground mustard, Cholula hot sauce and dill. I purposefully avoided any chile powder and smoked paprika, wanting to keep the flavor more on the citrus side than the traditional chile side.
• It went to warm overnight and back to low while I was out for a hike – so it cooked slash simmered for nearly 24 hours before I felt good calling the beans done.
• To serve, I added a dash of freshly opened “fire-roasted” tomatoes and a splash of vinegar and enjoyed!
• I also cooked a dying sausage, sliced it up and added it to my bowl only (as I wanted to keep the main stock vegetarian) – even better.
• Next Time: I’d use less beans and more water. The sauce of the “soup” is quite tasty and the beans are a bit much. I’d also use more vinegar and lime juice – even if it required refilling at the store as these are two ingredients I love having in the kitchen.

Extra: Today is Day 9 of my 30 day blog challenge. Click ‘Follow’ at the bottom of the page to receive weekly updates in your inbox or follow me on Tumblr if that’s your scene.

The post Food Experiments – Non Recipes for the Daring appeared first on Jewels.

Without further ado, some photos to begin your wandering and a review by someone else who sums it up much better than I could try in my post hike fatigue. (Ignore her notation on it only being 1.7 miles. That’s the baby hike to the falls viewing. Seeing as how we missed a few turns, we ended up hiking at least 7 miles with about 1500 ft elevation gain.)

Huge thanks to Rebecca for her research and planning!

Falls Creek Falls Vertorama

More on Flickr:

Extra: Today is Day 7 of my 30 day blog challenge. Click ‘Follow’ at the bottom of the page to receive weekly updates in your inbox or follow me on Tumblr if that’s your scene.

The post Falls Creek Falls appeared first on Jewels.

Quite possibly.

In part one of taking a first look at what I see every day, this is what I found and these are the conversations (with myself) I had.

• Champagne Corks for Door Knobs
• Champagne Corks for Wall “Hooks” (I see a trend…)
• Door Knobs for Curtain Ties
• Empty Picture Frames for Fancy Walls

(Update: I did this post from my phone, so the layout is experimental … my explanations as the maker of the way things are are alongside the photos. My observations and questions as the visitor are below.)

• Cool cabinet knobs. Do these work? Did you drink all the champagne to have the knobs or did you make knobs because you’d already drank the champagne?
• There’s no pictures in the frames, yet I like the wall. Mentally, I fill in the frames with a variety of photos starting with puffy paint sweaters and 80’s backdrops reminiscent of high school mug shots and family portraits. I wonder if you meant to leave it this way or have a hard time finishing projects?
• Did you do these before the kitchen or after? How much load can these handle? I think I’d like to try these for jewelry or curtain ties.
• Absolutely love the look of this! Where on earth did you find the old knobs?

Extra: Today is Day 5 of my 30 day blog challenge. Click ‘Follow’ at the bottom of the page to receive weekly updates in your inbox or follow me on Tumblr if that’s your scene.

The post I Spy: a fresh look around a space that i see every day appeared first on Jewels.

1. A Suede Polaroid Photo Album – After running out of a thicker leather, I decided to craft a book from the leftover back of a memo pad and some deer skin (that happened to be stashed in a closet). It was the first time I tried using stamps on leather and while this picture doesn’t do it justice, the Martha Steward stencils with brushed in fabric ink worked quite well.

I finished the gift at the wedding itself by taking 5 “rolls” of polaroids (with my fabulous Holgaroid consisting of a Holga with a Polaroid back as gifted to me by the most fabulous friends a few years back) and taping them inside with some double-sided tape.

This was a gift for my girlfriend’s cousin who was marrying the love of her life in Mendocino Ca. We decided to road trip down from Portland and spent the night in Faye’s favorite town, Eureka Ca. While I find it hard to call myself a morning person, I typically have the mornings to myself and spent this one fetching coffee and scouring Instagram. In doing so, I stumbled across a beautiful photo that roped me in to a larger feed … and before I knew it I was practicing some calligraphy to polish off an original WanderLove card.

2. A Leather Scroll – This came about by accident, as I had a piece of leather that cried out to be in this shape. After taking a steel file to it and carving the beautiful couple’s initials into the leather, I rolled it up, sewed in a regular 8.5 x 11 “booklet” and nearly called it done.

The minute I got home from the beach wedding (above), I knew exactly how I’d finish the scroll. I’d letter it!

Calligraphy Fun on Leather

This was done using a fine pointed pen on the inside of the leather, which I did my best to pencil in first. Leather certainly doesn’t erase like paper and though I was rather pleased with the outcome, my hand was surprisingly sore! The next time I hand letter such a surface, I will practice taking breaks and some alternate grips.

Extra: Today is Day 2 of my 30 day blog challenge. Click ‘Follow’ at the bottom of the page to receive weekly updates in your inbox or follow me on Tumblr if that’s your scene.

The post leather works: wedding gift fun and inspiration appeared first on Jewels.

1. While it’s about as easy as Apple Pie (as, let’s face it, Apple Pie requires a crust which can be tricky), it still takes time.
2. Product photos matter. I tried some shortcuts and ended up putting away the iPhone for the trusty DSLR. Oh, and waiting for the morning light is worth it. Artificial lighting is like a boob job. It takes a bunch of time for something that will never be as good as the real thing.
3. Communicating with customers is kind of scary the first time when you’ve never used Etsy yourself. Buy something on Etsy before you open a shop. You’ll thank me for it later. And if you’re wondering what to buy, check out my store.
4. Pin it! It really is the one social networking site that sells.

And that’s about as far as I’ve gotten. I entered the world on Cyber Monday with a few pendants and somehow got a sale a short couple of days later after close to zil promotion. I wish I could tell you she LOVED her necklace … but I haven’t gotten any feedback yet. And I haven’t made all the updates I swore to myself I would. (The ones listed are using glass and I’ve moved on to resin & vintage chains.) Because, let’s face it, I’m not a shop owner. I’m a maker and a photographer and a daydreamer and I spend all of my managerial energies at work. So consider this a plea for a partner in crafting crime.

Can’t wait for this holiday season to pass so I can share more.

The post 2 cents on opening an Etsy shop appeared first on Jewels.

The Teams:

• The Fogs – On foot, this adventurous crew had us all riled up with a valiant (and on-time) start. Despite a small phone failure, they forged forward building fairy house after fairy house. Luckily, I had *just* received a solar phone charger for my birthday so they were able to recharge after the finish line & get their photos in.
• SBF – They put in a valiant effort to cross the finish line first, but forgot to go for the EXTRAs. Their commitment to the bonus mile gave them a fighting chance, however, and some sweet picts at my favorite Hydro Park.
• Team Won – Spent their time well crafting the Most Creative shots, sending them home with bragging rights. See: tire swing & scene from “Rubber” … I see a theme …
• Cross Knitters – They may have started late, but they made up for it with their fearless attitude approaching strangers and tracking down some of our favorite shots. (Hello, strangers making out!). Since they didn’t know they had already won by the time we started tallying (a little shy of 7), they racked in a few final extras just for fun … to go along w/all that beer.

The Hunt:

• The clue list for Jewel & Meliss’a Find Summer Scavenger Hunt of 2012

The post Find Summer Scavenger Hunt 2012 appeared first on Jewels.

The post bridge to brews 2011 appeared first on Jewels.

Luckily, a friend’s birthday crept up on me and I now had the perfect excuse to get out the saw and get crafty. Being that I have little patience for following instructions, I didn’t dig up the old article and instead started in on my own safari adventure.

Read on to find out how you can get

from

Tools & Materials: a saw (see #2 below), hot glue gun (plug it in before you start and it just might be ready when you need it), magnets.
Time: 30-60 minutes.

1. Go shopping. Check out your local party store and stock up on cheap, plastic animals made in China.
   
2. Find a saw. Any will do. I’d wanted to try the Jig Saw but couldn’t find it and decided I probably shouldn’t play with power tools anyway, so grabbed a hand saw that could double as a cleaver. Saw your beloved toy in half.
   
3. Play Taxidermist. Chances are your toy will be hollow. Stuff it with something, preferably with fabric or paper. Definitely not something that will rot. Carefully place some hot-glue over the stuffing to seal the front/back half of your animal.
   
4. Insert Magnets. While the glue is still warm, place a magnet in each end, being careful so as to place them so that they will attract each other when you want to re-assemble your dear pet. I tried 2 different methods: (1) place magnet in so that the edge is flush with the glue or (2) submerge magnet in the glue and apply another clear layer of glue over the magnet. I tried the latter method as a reinforcement. Either appears to work fine.
   
5. Put a Photo in It. I created a little card for the special occasion, though I imagine you could print a photo with a cleverly placed face or body such that the animal adds to the scene. In my case, I started with a cougar joke until I realized I had a cheetah on my hands. (Thank goodness for Google Images.)
   
6. Give it Away. The end.

The post How To Make Your Own Animal Picture Holder appeared first on Jewels.

I found this sticker, conveniently placed next to a pen on a string, on a street sign pole outside the Red Flag in Portland OR.

Yes, I took advantage of this social art experiment. If you can track down the sticker, can you guess which answer is mine?

Any idea who’s collating these? Have you seen any others?

Why are you awesome?

The post i’m awesome because. a social art experiment? appeared first on Jewels.