A Summer Ramble

A Summer Ramble

by Frank Herbert, American (b. 1920)

I was looking for paintings of wheat, when I found this beautiful piece of art. What a lovely way the figure compliments the surrounding scene. Nature is the guide for much of my choice of fabrics and sewing styles, and wheat is something that I've always wanted to "match" with fabrics. I am looking for a soft cotton printed with wheat kernels, on a cream-colored background, but so far have found nothing like it.

From my front window, this is the scene before me today:

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Though I have never thought of the wheat color as being particularly desireable as a color to wear, I've come to feel differently about it since great crops of it surrounds me. These photographs that I have taken do not show the vivid beauty of it in the sun. In the moonlight it shimmers like fine spun gold.

Here's some wheat print fabric on ebay

A wheat rubber stamp from the Kansas Heritage Center. Kansas is the "wheat state."

A Summer Evening

by  Leopold-Francois Kowalsky, 1856-1931 (Russian)

(The garments on the women appear to be peasant style

and I would love to know about the pattern or sewing technique. The 

dresses

look good with the flowers.)

From the north window is a field of blossoms from another crop, and I did have some fabric to make a dress to go with it.

The blue of that sky is amazing. Now I need to find some fabric to make a dress to go with it. 

The sleeves have a piece of white fabric in the middle because I did not have enough of the main fabric. I'll show you how to do that on a sewing tutorial on some future post.

The neckline is trimmed in white eyelet,

and there is a bias type ruffle on the hem:

Hello From Alaska

         

Day 1

One of the views from our trip near the Turnagain Arm area.

I am having a holiday visiting the homestead where I was raised, and signing a few copies of the book, "Just Breathing the Air."  I hope to post more pictures and stories later. 

Day 2

If you click for a larger view, you might be able to see this loon on the lake; the same lake that my father took us on for sailboat and row boat rides in the 1950's.  The homestead is not the same, without the people that made it into the adventure that it was, but I am going to enjoy the sweet solitude of the beautiful lake. The house is completely gone, and all the out buildings, but there are many reminders left: the well, and pieces of the little dock where we tied up the skiff.    They say you can tell the measurement of a lake by how many loons live there.  I saw only one, so far, but in the old times there could be 10. 

I took this photograph from the shore on the part of the homestead property (originally 160 acres) where Mother and Daddy first built a temporary cabin to live in, and where Mother first rowed the boat her husband built for her, to pick a bowl of water lilies, which you see in the distance there. Please click on the picture for a beautiful view!

This is the over-grown path to the lake, viewed from where the Big House once sat. Click on for a larger view.  My father discouraged complaining or any kind of negative talk, saying we should be just happy to be alive, and just glad to be breathing the air.

This is near the area where the first little, temporary cabin was built to house them through one winter and a summer while the Big House, about a quarter of a mile further up the lake, was being built. My father and mother chose a hill between two lakes to build the Big House, which was a name used to distinguish it from the temporary cabin, meaning it was a permanent residence.

Here we found hundreds of strawberries, no doubt spreading from Mother's original strawberry patch. They are pale peach in color when ripe, and the vine stands in a crook type loop up off the ground so that the berries will not get wet or lay in the ground. They smell like cotton candy.

Day 3 and 4: Visiting friends.

Day 5

One of the scenes on a trip to Seward

Fireweed in bloom.

Along certain sections of this glacier are signs with dates showing how much it has melted since the 1800's.

Day 6

Ninilchik, historic Russian fishing village at the mouth of the Ninilchik River. Originally, the residents spoke a Russian dialect called Ninilchik. This is the view to the west, from the top of the bluff.

View of Ninilchik from the river, looking east toward the bluff. I saw this town many times 40 years ago, and always thought it rather mysterious. Today it looks the same size, and very little chnge has taken place. The Russian fishing boats are still in their little harbor, bearing names like "Volga" and Russian ladies names.

Day 7:  Some photographs of  Tea Time at the lake---who could resist it in such a setting!

Click on for a better look.

This beautiful bouquet consists of various shades of yarrow, clover and other natural things from the area. I used it on one of the outdoor tea tables.

The strawberries were picked from the forest near the lake. They are a special northern berry that grows up off the ground and smells like cotton candy. Although they are pale in color and do not look ripe at all, they are very, very sweet.

If you click on for a larger view, you can see the fireweed surrounded by ferns in a bouquet in the kerr canning jar on the left, picked from the hill behind the lake.

I enjoyed looking through an old window frame from our house that once stood on a hill above the lake. Regrettably, I will not be able to take the frame home with me. It will not fit in my pink suitcase, and cannot go separately. After I watched the way baggage is treated, I would not risk taking it.  It is better off where it is.

Our view from those big picture windows in the log house was the same then as it is today.

Day 8



Many moose but no mosquitoes. I am glad I saw this one from the window of the vehicle instead of while walking on a trail.

After that, a bit of refinement to soften the edges, by a visit to a Victorian shop:

posted with permission from Donna in Soldotna

and another tea table with a framed view of the forest, using a part of the original window from the log house.



The scones on the outdoor tea table are called "Butter and Cream Scones" from the May/June issue of Victoria magazine; one of their blue issues. The recipe is on page 88 and may also be available online. Non-dairy users can substitute olive oil and flax meal for the butter and cream.  Course flour works very well with this (unrefined) and I used unbleached flour for one batch of them. The recipe is also included in one of the "Bliss" special editions (the one with the blue scene on the front--the first one that was issued last year).

My pink suitcase was the only one I could find at a discount store so late in the season, and it got quite a beating. I got to see it loaded, unloaded, tossed, slammed down, and kicked, as I watched out the window where I sat in the airplane. I have given up packing  tea cups for any of my friends.

I quit the wilderness one afternoon and went to the fabric store to buy this fabric. It is a quilter's fabric that feels like rayon and sews up so easily; a woven with a lot of "give." The buttons just matched the print. I made a skirt and blouse because I was so careful not to over-load my suitcase that I did not pack enough clothing. The limit is 50 pounds and mine was only 35. I think I can take back a lot more, but I saw how mean the airport crew treated my pink suitcase, throwing it about, so whatever I take back with me will be soft, like this fabric.  Buying fabric is so much easier than it was years ago when we ordered it from a catalog and waited 3 months! 

The skirt and blouse looks almost the color of the fireweed.

Day 8

A visit to the house we lived in a few years in the town of Homer, where we fished for crab, shrimp and halibut for a living. We also sold huge amounts of berries picked at Kasitna Bay and sold pinecones by the gunne sack. I knocked on the door and showed the current resident an old photograph of the house and she kindly let me come in and look around. It was the sweetest house, and as small as it looks, there were 5 bedrooms, plenty of room for all nine of us in the family.

Kachemak Bay

...not a very clear day for a picture of this marvellous scenery.

Day 9 

This is a paper birch bark tree on the homestead, down by the lake. I used this kind of bark for that quirky fake-cake I made a few posts ago.

Day 10

A trip to get more pictures of Kachemak Bay on a sunnier day.

Mt. Ilyamna, one of four volcanic mountains we used to be so familiar with, the others being Spurr, Redoubt and Augustine.  Redoubt blew up when we lived on the Homestead, covering it with a layer of ash, which later produced the biggest crop of vegetables we ever had.

Illyamna from the beach at Clam Gulch

The wild rose, which produces rose hips which are used for jam and syrup.

A visit to the Norman Lowell art gallery in Anchor Point. Norman and my father went on a few trips together to find wild life and art subjects, over 40 years ago, and I took art lessons from him when I was a girl.

Fabric of Nature

Resting Time

by William Adolphe Bougeureau

Wheat Harvest Time, USA (allposters.com)

Sea of Wheat

Every week it seems the colors of nature change, which always interests me. Being a fabri-holic, I enjoy matching up the cloth to the outdoor scenes. The fabric I'm wrapped in is gold metallic but the wheat outshines it. It is hard to find a fabric that is the color of this beautiful wheat.

If you are homeschooling your children and have wheat or barley in a field near you, there is a volume of information available for study on the subject. There are wheat crafts, recipes, historical facts dating back to the time of Joseph in the Old Testament and a seemingly endless variety of wheat around the world. A student could list a hundred uses of it, including building materials and fine paper products. I like the beauty of it and have seen it in fashionable flower shops in vases. Over 240,000 farms in America produce wheat. I have been on several car-trips across the country, and seen  where wheat grows in huge oceans of shimmering gold in the sunlight.

The Homemaker's Leisure Time

Tea Cup Snack Set

from Victorian Trading Company

This is one of the tea cup sets I recently acquired. When I have a tea buffet, and guests are going to refill their own tea cups and snack plates, I noticed how hard it was for them to handle the tea cup with saucer, and a plate with food besides. This little set solves the problem perfectly, for it holds both the tea cup in its own neat little place, and the snack in another place. Below is another one from Victorian Trading Company.

Myths about homemaking have always abounded, and one of them is that they do not need any rest or leisure time. Sometimes even religious people are guilty of oppressing the homemaker by suggesting that she keep busy every moment doing something productive.  However, it is important and necessary to have re-creation time, to avoid being overwhelmed.

Since preferences differ from woman to woman, not everyone will have the same interests, but everyone should have something they love to do when they are not washing dishes, preparing food, or cleaning house.  In years past, our mothers would get their work done as efficiently as possible so that they could work on their quilts or pamper their flower beds; personal interests that gave them pleasure and relaxation.

Art work of various types is an option for some, as well as crafts and needlework. Others might enjoy working with paper, and still others will have a passion for sewing or knitting.  Whatever the leisure time activity is, it should always be something that renews the spirit and the body, and not taxing or stressful. It should be something  the homemaker looks forward to and enjoys.

For those who like paper crafts, I have made a new envelope template and a sample of what you could do with it. You will notice that the flaps are not typical. It is designed so that it can be used two ways: vertical or horizontal.

First, select some paper (not cardstock and not heavy paper) from your paper collection, old calendar pages, magazine pictures, or whatever you have on hand. Your printer paper or children's construction paper works well for this envelope and letter paper project. This is thin scrapbook paper which is white on the other side, from K & C Company, an English scrapbook paper company which is available in various stores here.

Cut a template of cardstock or cardboard from the pattern I'm giving you, and trace around it with pencil. If you use quilters plastic template material, you can see through it and be able to see the design of the paper and center it wherever you wish.

On another area of the paper, trace your writing paper from the template and cut it out.

This is what it will look like after you cut it out, before you fold the flaps down.

 Crease the fold lines over the edge of a ruler or straight cardboard.

 

Put a strip of glue on each side of one of the flaps and press up.

The letter paper and envelope above is made from brown paper, rubber stamped and colored with crayon.

Here are the  yellow envelopes folded both vertically (left) and horizontally, and here are the templates:

To print, click on for larger view and then click "print." If you are unable to print things, take apart an envelope that you already have and paste it to a piece of cardboard. Cut it out and trace around it on various colors of paper and you'll never lack for envelopes.

If you have 8 and a half by 11 inch printer paper, you do not really need to print out this template. Just cut a piece of paper in half the long way and you'll get the right size for this envelope. Make a little stack of these for a hostess gift or a party favor, a birthday gift, or any other occasion. People sometimes find it hard to find really pretty stationery at an affordable price, and a gift like this would be appreciated. 

I have been enjoying some evening leisure time in fair weather in my clothes-pinned sheet tent, similar to the one I made last year. In it is a fold-away cot made into a couch by covering it with an old quilt and adding cushions.

You can easily make tents like this for children, by pinning a fitted sheet onto tree branches to make the ceiling, and putting the flat sheets on the sides for walls. I used an old rug for the floor. It takes about 24 clothespins to pin the sheets to the branches and to fasten the sides. Pinch in the ceiling sheet from the top, with more clothespins, connecting it to branches. The fitted sheets create a more billowing, canopy effect which is very pretty from the inside.

 Use bricks or large rocks to anchor the hem of the sheets to the carpet. If you use a cot, you can tuck the lower part of the sheet beneath the stands on both ends.

 Children love these hideaways and it is something anyone can do. If you do not have trees, you can use clotheslines to make something similar. They are great for making a shady place  to read, write or rest. Reading has been a favorite past time of homemakers, and a stack of books would be quite appealing in this setting.

Creative activities or leisure should be a regular part of a homemaker's day. I like to sit out here and listen to the distant train whistle in the late summer evening, and all the sounds that come with the end of the day.

(This one is similar to last year's effort.)

Clothespins, sheets or fabric, and an old rug is all you need. These are easily cleaned up and stored away, and you can add old quilts and cushions during the day. Remove blankets or cushions at night if your climate tends to be damp. That white iron gate is an old child's bed spring used as a morning glory climbing fence.

I cannot forget to show a pink one, made with clothespins, tablecloths, sheets and quilts:

 Here is a distant photo of the tent village. I'm going to make a dining room tomorrow if it does not rain.

Now for the "dining room":

The fitted sheet is used as a ceiling because it fits around tree branches and prevents the leaves from dropping all over the table or couch. The flat sheets or table cloths are hung as walls, with clothespins. I still have to add the side "walls" to this little scene.

If you really want to seem some great outdoor enclosures, watch the updates at Aiken House and Gardens,  (see my blog roll) on Prince Edward Island. It is a wonder that Victoria Magazine does not do a story on this pretty home and gardens!

Go here for more Sheet Tent ideas!