Rhinestone on Rhinestone Action

Our Nashville adventures continued on the fourth of July. It was great because all the touristy places were open and parking was easy. The downside was some of the things that we really wanted to visit, like a hotdog restaurant and Jack White’s record store, were closed. It was a good thing that there wasn’t much we planned to do because we spent 5 hours at the Country Music Hall of Fame! 

It was tremendous, starting with the genre’s folk roots and moving through history to the present state of country music. Lots of Dolly. 

Tons of rhinestones. 

Wow. The top floor was more historic and we got through nearly all of that before we had to hit the road to Studio B, a famous RCA recording studio in Nashville that is now owned by the museum. That was a great part of the adventure because there was a really cheesy bus driver who drove us from the museum to the studio that requested he be called “crash” and a real country lady/tour guide with long flowing white hair. She could not work the Ipod that was used to provide examples of the hits recorded there. At one point she said “and this was what happened…” pressed play, couldn’t work the Ipod, and had to go get someone for help. She really left us hanging.

Then we returned to the hall of fame to progress through more modern country stuff that got progressively worse and lame as we got closer to the present. Classic country = yay, contemporary country = boo. Another important tidbit is our observation throughout TN that country fans are great because they are unabashedly excited about nearly everything and their enthusiasm can be infectious and is typically entertaining (very rarely annoying).

The next morning we wanted to get in the things that we couldn’t get to on the fourth. We knew Benek was tired of hear about our adventures with fried chicken so we went to a hotdog restaurant which was fab. Then Dave went to Jack White’s record store, Third Man Records. There was a special event at the record store so there was a line stretching around the block. The wild thing about this line was that it was comprised of a bunch of kids in their 20’s and several of them had parasols to protect them from the sun. This was even more interesting when you consider that the record store is in a rather shady neighborhood with a large parole center or some other facility. 

Very strange. While Dave waited in the hot hot sun to get a glimpse of the inside of the record store Renee went to a coffee shop (fiddlecakes). She ordered an iced soy latte. It was the most expensive latte of her life (over $5). It was not iced and it was possibly the worst latte ever. If you are ever in Nashville avoid fiddlecakes! Dave finally got to shop and picked up some really neat stuff. 

At around 1:00 we left Nashville and headed to Columbus to spend the night with Molly’s sister’s family. We were very excited about this because we think Mary and Chris are awesome and have heard tons of great things about their kids Max and Lane. Also, as an added bonus their mom was there. We ran into our first bout of traffic on the way there. We got caught in a few miles of construction that put us a few hours behind schedule. Luckily we had Renee’s favorite podcast, The Hater Podcast, loaded up on the computer. Dave did a quick transfer onto the Ipod (the country lady would be AMAZED) and we were able to bask in hours of hate. The podcast has been canceled for a while so some of the hate topics were outdated, but it is hard to ever grow tired of the shock of the KFC Doubledown, rabid Lost fans, and the endless sadness of Jessica Simpson. We finally arrived and had a wonderful time with them and got to spend the night in a house! And do laundry!!!  It was so great, we can’t say enough about it. The only snafu was when Suzy went out to get some coffee and backed into our car. Don’t worry, everything is fine! There is a dent and we will get it fixed when we get settled somewhere.

Stay tuned!

Some Kinda Druid Dude

Renee learned that those are the lyrics of John Lennon's "Mind Games." Today, we said goodbye to Memphis and drove to Nashville, about 3 hours northeast. We drove first to the Ryman Auditorium to get our tour tickets for later that afternoon and then went to the Nashville Farmer's market.

It was sort of like Fanuel Hall but with lots more fresh produce. Dave got a tasty tamarind snowball for dessert, and Renee got a fresh lemonade.

Next we drove back downtown and found a great parking space. We popped into Ernest Tubb's Record Shop, where they had a great selection of country vinyl, CDs, DVDs and more.

Then we headed to the Ryman. This is where the Grand Ole Opry was performed and broadcast from the '40s to 1974. We took a great backstage tour and heard all about the history of the building, got to hang out in the dressing rooms and meet some super excited older adult country music fans. After the tour, Dave recorded a song! The Ryman has a small recording booth inside the main auditorium where you can record your own song. Dave did "Traveling so Far," and it came out pretty good!

After that, we drove to the Vanderbilt University area and had tasty chicken fingers at MacDougal's Chicken Fingers and Wings. It was quite tasty!

The interior was plastered with ephemera, and at the end of your meal you get a tasty mini ice cream.

Then we drove up to Opryland where our hotel is. Tomorrow we hope to hit the Country Music Hall of Fame, Third Man Records, and explore a little. Maybe catch some live music somewhere?

Traveling...

Hi All! We're making our way cross-country, destination Rochester NY, where we'll be for the next year. We decided to take our time and stop at Memphis and Nashville, two places we've always wanted to go. Right now we're in Memphis, we arrived Friday (July 1), we'll be leaving tomorrow morning. We've had a wonderful time, Memphis is such an interesting city rich with history. Yesterday, we saw the Rock 'N Soul Museum, which is a Smithsonian museum, and it shows. Tons of great information and neat things to look at. Today we went to Sun Studios, where the first Rock 'N Roll song was recorded.

Elvis and Johnny Cash got their start there, and it was incredible being in the same room where all those legendary recording sessions took place.

We then went to Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken. It was a long wait in the hot sun, but it was worth it a hundred times over. Not only was it the best fried chicken we'd ever had, it was one of the best meals we've had, period.

 

Next was the Gibson guitar factory. They make all of Gibson's hollow body and semi-hollow body guitars there, as well as double-neck guitars. We were able to see how the guitars are made, from a few pieces of wood to beautiful hand-crafted instruments. We couldn't take any pictures inside because they have strict no-filming policies.

So tomorrow it's to Nashville. We'll make updates as we can, stay tuned!

Deer Valley

We have had this big pillow for years, since Renee first went to college. It used to be covered in a hideous red velour.  At some point the pillow shed its cover and has been encased in only its lining for years. Of course we intended to re-cover it but when it hides in the closet for 3 years it is difficult to remember it is on your to-do list.  Renee discovered Joel Dewberry’s fabric designs (http://quilthome.com/Joel_Dewberry) last year and has been smitten ever since. She bought Deer Valley with the intent of covering the sad naked pillow. Today while Dave painted Renee sewed this cover. 

It took some finagling since she didn’t measure and can never remember how to put in a zipper. The biggest set-back was that she thought she was finished and put the pillow in the case only to find out it was about 8 inches too big on the sides! It was a quick fix and the project was completed by the end of the episode of the Beatles Anthology we were watching.  

Fabrication

This is Renee here. Molly and I recently went on an adventure to Tucson AZ. There were a lot of wonderful things about this trip including (green) chili-cheeseburgers, tart frozen yogurt, and cacti but the best part by far was a trip to Santa Fe where we stumbled upon a fabric store (http://santafefabrics.com/). I will never ever ever be the same after going to this fabric store. The owner has the best eye for fabric and there were so many that I had eyed online for years but have never had the pleasure of seeing in person. It was completely and totally amazing. Imagine finding your fabric soul mate who brings everything you have ever wanted and more to your fingertips.  There is no way I will be able to communicate the exhilaration so I will move on. 

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for our bank accounts), we got there right before they closed. Another part that I loved/hated was that they had the most amazing selection of linen and it was crazy expensive. So it seems the only downsides were the reality of being around all that amazing stuff that I wanted and needing to decide what to get and how much I could spend. We had only been there about 5 minutes when the owner commented on my “expensive taste”.  I was finally able to settle on three different fabrics. I have no idea what I will use them for but I am completely in love with them. I am thinking of framing one and hanging it. Molly got fabric to make a duvet cover (shown in three pictures because it is very very wide) with so there will be a part two to this entry at some point because I will certainly be chronicling that adventure!

 

Caramel Corn

Typically during the holiday season we like to make rather than buy something for our friends and family. We do this for several reasons: it is riduculous to send people crappy gifts that they don't want or need, we are relatively crafty people and we have the ability to cobble something together; we don’t have a lot of money to spend on presents and making is usually cheaper than buying; and we are of the mindset that crafting something is a little more personal and perhaps thoughtful. I guess usually we do something edible because it is Renee's favorite combo of crafty AND useful. One year it was a cookie mix that recipients just needed to add wet ingredients to and then bake. In 2009 we made pickle relish and spicy pineapple salsa. This year we decided to try caramel corn, as it seemed appropriately festive and we had never tried making it before so we were interested to see how it came out. Plus we are popcorn making masters The recipe we used was from a website called smitten kitchen, and if I remember correctly we didn’t make any modifications except for half of the batch was non-spicy. It wasn’t particularly difficult to execute but was extreemly dangerous. The molten carmel could easily burn through flesh to the bone. It required a watchful eye – if the caramel mixture got too brown or not brown enough, it didn’t taste right and got too hard too fast. We made a LOT of popcorn so Renee was in charge of popping the batches of corn and I was in charge of making the caramel mixture.

 

In the original recipe, only one batch of corn and one caramel mixture gets made; we had to do I think 4 of each. This made for more experimentation to find that perfect balance but also more chances to burn the caramel and ourselves. Our first batch came out the best. We liked the results and got pretty good feedback from our gift recipients. If you like caramel corn definitely try this recipe out and see what you think, as I said it’s not difficult, the directions are pretty straightforward, but getting it just right will probably take several tries. That’s the fun of making rather than buying!

Brief Garden Update

Hello! It has been a busy busy summer. We are going to try and catch you all up on craft and music stuff in the next few days. This post is about our garden. All in all, we've had a more bountiful year than last year, with lots of tomatoes. If you will remember, we planted 4 tomato plants, 1 in the topsy turvy and 3 in the ground. All the tomato plants seem to be taking their time in the fruit ripening department, but we have lots and lots of tomatoes to look forward to. We've had one banana and jalepeno pepper each, and both of our bell pepper plants have a pepper on them, but the plants themselves are pretty runty and I don't know if we'll get any edible peppers this year. The biggest disappointment has been the cucumbers. Last year we had more cucumbers than we knew what to do with, made lots of cucumber sandwiches and a huge batch of relish. This year we have had no edible cucumbers and the plants all look really bad. One theory is that they thrive in rocky sandy soil, and since we improved the quality of the soil so much this year, they are not taking kindly to it. Who knows.

Some tasty produce (except the cucumber, which was too hard and not edible)

So Mayo!

Today I wanted a turkey sandwich on some of the lovely French bread Dave made. Then I realized we didn’t have any mayo. I complained to Dave: “boo no sandwich for me, we don’t have mayo.” He suggested I make mayo. I immediately sprung into action. The back story is that I have made mayo once before. It was scary, scarier than piecrust, but I followed Julia’s instructions exactly and it turned out perfectly. It was so easy, I used the food processor and felt very proud. The only downside was that it was a huge batch and it doesn’t keep very long and we don’t have much use for 2 cups of mayo. Also, it was kind of shocking for me to see that it is just egg yolks and oil; it is possible the whole experience of making it from scratch just made mayo (which is already kind of gross) way too real for me.


But today I had reason to make it. I had fresh eggs in the fridge and a use for the mayo - some homemade blue cheese dressing (ingredients – blue cheese and mayo) would be great in a couple days. I think I became over-confident. I couldn’t bring myself to make a whole batch. So instead of 1 egg plus 2 yolks I just used one egg, cut the dry ingreds, and figured I would only add oil until it was thick. It never got thick. I re-read the whole 3 pg essay on mayo and realized that the whole egg makes the mayo thinner. Yikes. Julia provides some trouble shooting tips about the use of mustard from the store blah blah that I didn’t follow. Instead I took a yolk, some more dry mustard, and a spoonful of my destroyed mayo, and beat them together. It was pretty thick so I slowly added it to the mayo. It got thicker and tastes fine but is still runny compared to how I want it. How it should be. How it was last time. I took a picture and discovered mayo looks yucky and can’t be made to look appetizing.

After re-reading this story I imagine it probably won’t make a lot of sense to someone who hasn’t made mayonnaise before. If you eat it – make it. Follow Julia’s instructions, not mine.

Spring Sewing

I did a little sewing in the spring and after I was done I was too tired to blog about it. I think I have adequately recovered and am ready to tell you about the bags that I made. I had to make a new purse/bag because the strap of my last one basically rotted away. It was an Amy Butler pattern called the birdie sling and I had used AB quilt weight fabric to construct it. I decided that I wanted the same bag design but that it would be in my best interest to use a home dec weight fabric this time. I labored over fabrics until I fell in love with this crazy beautiful fabric from the drawing room collection by Anna Maria Horner.

I was totally decided...that was until I fell in love with the designs of Joel Dewberry. His fabric is perfect and so cool and beautiful and interesting and I love it. I was very torn between my two loves so I decided to make two bags. The first fabric (the Horner) was very whimsical, as is the design of the birdie sling, so I paired those together. The Dewberry fabrics I chose where more clean and mellow so I paired them with the Amy Butler pattern “frenchy.” Here is what they look like.

Birdie Sling

Frenchy

In the end I am totally attached to the new birdie sling and use it all the time. I have some complaints about the design of the frenchy bag, I don’t like the pockets or the overall slouchiness of the bag. I plan to make another one in the future with some modifications, smaller or divided pockets and sewing the straps to the top part. Also, the frenchy bag pattern is not designed as well and you are left with some stitching showing in the end whereas the birdie sling is magically turned inside out so no stitching is present on the outside of the bag.

Dave's Summer Music Update

Summer 2010 is shaping up to be a great time to come and see me live! I’m playing lots of gigs to share songs from my new album, “Stay a While,” and become better known in the Colorado Springs area. I’ve got 4 shows scheduled for the summer and more dates will be added soon. This Saturday, June 12th, I will be at the “Ass in the Grass Concert Series” (how’s that for a name, eh?) at the Woodland Park Fine Arts and Crafts fair. It’s always great to play outside, and this looks like a great place, so if you’re up around those parts or looking for a way to spend your Saturday morning, come on out! I will be playing Shuga’s on June 14—I’ve had many requests to start playing at places that serve booze, so here’s your chance! I’m also playing Pikes Perk Downtown in June and July, and those have been fun, so please stop by if you can!

If you aren’t yet familiar with my music, check out http://www.myspace.com/daverichardson to hear a bit. I am a folk singer-songwriter performing original songs (and some covers) that touch on a wide range of subjects, including love, death, nature and politics. My latest album features songs about love lost, Narwhals, snowy beards, and more!

Interested in obtaining my music to listen to in the car, add to your Ipod or to put on whilst cleaning the house? Well, you have a few options. My latest cd of folksongs, “Stay a While,” is available at all of my shows. I'm working on making that available digitally as well, for those of you who prefer to go that route. Also, if you’d like to hear another side of Dave, you can check out the rokk album I made under the moniker “The Damp Wrags,” which was released earlier this year. This album is only available online at http://amiestreet.com/music/the-damp-wrags/ and is now going for the slim price of $1.41!

How Our Garden Grows

Summer is here and blogging is back! We have more time and more to talk about. Winter is our favorite season and we long for the days when we can fill it with making maple syrup and knitting but currently it is a very busy time for work making it hard to find time for artisan pursuits and even harder to find time to write about them.


As you may remember from last year we put a garden into our backyard and revived the garden out front. We were pleased this spring to see that the chives came back, at least tripling in size from last year and two lavender plants also came back. Earlier this summer Molly and I worked in the herb garden after visiting a horticultural society sale. I worked in the garden planting two more lavender plants as well as two chive plants while she planted pots of basil and rosemary. Everything looks wonderful!

Last weekend we worked in our veggie garden out back. Last year our garden was practically a disaster. We planted tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. The cukes were all that survived the whole season and gave us veggies. This year we decided to rent a tiller from Home Depot to get the soil really nice and fluffy, incorporating some more fertilizer.

We got the same variety of cucumbers and planted 4 plants instead of three. We cheated and bought 3 big healthy tomatoes plants that already have baby tomatoes on them. Hopefully it will increase our success.

We also planted 4 varieties of peppers. In addition to those veggies we added one zucchini and one yellow squash plant. We still had room so Dave got adventurous and turned one corner of the garden into a teeny strawberry patch! It is so cute.

We also planted a watermelon plant where our horseradish failed last year.

Perhaps the watermelon will have more success but our hopes aren’t very high for the strawberries or watermelon – that is more of an experiment. Everything looks great and we can’t wait to see how the herbs, veggies, berries, and melon turn out!

UPDATE: Since this post was written last week, the strawberry plants had an untimely demise: big fat squirrels dug up all the plants and ate every single leaf. RIP strawberry patch. Everything else is looking healthy though!

Sometimes things just work out...

This morning I went to the store and beautiful organic strawberries were on sale. I couldn’t resist. Then this afternoon I went to the spice ship downtown – Savory. I had to buy peppercorns and fancy salt. I went with the organic tellicherry black peppercorns because they are organic and got Himalayan pink sea salt because it is pink and tastes lovely. I bragged to Dave because I only purchased two things that were not on my list. The first was nutmeg, which I had to have. This is our first time buying whole nutmeg if you can believe it. The other thing was lavender vanilla bean sugar. It is so delicious!!! I bought it to put on buttered tortillas but on my way home I remembered the strawberries. I tried one and it tasted better than I could have imagined. I feel like the stars aligned!
-Renee

Rug is done.

I am not sure if I have mentioned this before and I don’t feel like scrolling through to check but I have been working on a rug for a few months. My friend Lin is an incredible weaver with an amazing studio that is also known as the sweatshop.

She cranks out project after project and encourages Molly and I to do the same. She has taught both of us to weave and supervised me on easier projects such as a scarf.

Because I am so messy and reckless I had a number of sweaters that had been ruined. Beautiful, soft, mostly pink, mostly cashmere sweaters. Mostly they met their end through stains or being carelessly thrown into the dryer. I wasn’t ready to part with them. I tried to felt them into immortality so I washed them all in hot water at least once. For some it worked and for others not so much. Then (or maybe before) I decided that I could use them to make a rug. It was not my idea; I read about it here http://www.re-nest.com/re-nest/rugs-carpets/recycled-sweater-rugs-035279. Would I spend $125 for a rug made out of someone else’s old sweaters? Maybe, but not when I had several of my own laying around and access to a loom. It was going to work perfectly because all of my sweaters were in a coordinating color family because that is how it works. You like a certain group of colors and you go with that. I had a few pinks, one green, and one dark blue/green color.

We then cut the sweaters into strips. Molly cut them into really really really long strips. Yards and yards and yards long. I suppose by starting at the bottom of the sweater and cutting in a spiral until there is nothing left. While we were cutting strips we got the warp ready – light and dark green stripes. We got it all on the loom, blah blah blah. That part took months because it was tedious and the loom was at Lin’s and there were the holidays… you know how it is. 

Now it is done! I am so happy. It came out so much better than I could have dreamed. I wish you could feel how crazy soft it is because it is unbelievable! Also, there are sweater bits throughout the rug like tags and a button.

I love every weird element and I am so happy that my old sweaters are a new rug that will last a lifetime, maybe more! It is 3.5X5 ft so bigger that the rug at the link above and free!

Julie's Scarf Problem

This is a blog post in response to my friend Julie’s blog post about knitting projects that curl. Lets get right to it. Here are the pictures; do you see what is happening here friends?

Here is the thing, and I don’t like telling you this Julie: stockinette stitch curls, it does not lay flat. By the way, stockinette stitch is knit a row, purl a row.

Don’t believe the hype about blocking. I love blocking to get my projects looking even and professional looking, but not to combat major curling – which is what you are faced with. So you totes should block but not to uncurl, just to make all your stitches look perfect. How you block depends on what your yarn is made of. 

You haven’t gone too far. I suggest if you can’t live with the curling (which will be much worse when you take the needle out. The needle is trying to keep the whole thing straight, when it is gone you will have a tube, which could be cute) you take it out and start over.  Curling can be curbed with a boarder. Lets say your project is 20 stitches wide, here is what you do:

Um… I don’t usually fix knitting projects over the internets and I am realizing that I rely heavily on sketching. Ok, lets say that the X’s are knits and the O’s are purls.

Right now you are doing this

Row 1: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Row 2: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Row 3: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Row 4: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

And so on….

I suggest a scarf of stockinette with a garter (all knit) border so the first few rows and the last few rows are all knit. Then, for the main part of the scarf you can do garter stitch on the edges.

So do 6 or 8 rows all knit (k a row, k a row, k a row….)

Then switch to this pattern

R 9 :XXXXXOOOOOOOOOOXXXXX

R10:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

R11:XXXXXOOOOOOOOOOXXXXX

R12:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

R13:XXXXXOOOOOOOOOOXXXXX

R14:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

R15:XXXXXOOOOOOOOOOXXXXX

R16:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Or, leave it as is and love it!

What do you think? Other suggestions from my knitty friends?

Lemon Ginger Tea

About 3 inches of ginger, grated

A small saucepan of water – 5 or 6 cups

3 lemons, juiced

¼ cup honey

Grate the ginger into the water; bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer for about 30 mins. Strain into a teapot. Add lemon and honey.

After tasting a lemon ginger tea at a restaurant, I searched and experimented for the perfect recipe. This is my version.

This makes a very zippy brew. Adjust to make it more mellow by reducing ginger and/or lemon if you please. It is also great iced. 

Waffling

We like waffles. We do not, however, own a waffle iron. Luckily, our friend Molly is out of town this week and allowed us to use hers! Not luckily out of town but luckily let us borrow. Dave, in his usual half-assed way, decided to simply use the recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook while Renee wasn’t looking. Several months prior, we watched an episode of Good Eats devoted to waffle making, and Renee wanted to try Alton Brown’s recipe. But it was too late, Dave had already begun. He was persuaded to sub some of the while flour for whole wheat. We started cooking and sampled the first one that came out. It was, in a word, horrible. Renee said she thought it tasted like ice cream cone, while Dave likened them to plain dry toast. They were way too crispy and flavorless. We continued cooking until we ran out of batter, but as we went on, the idea of eating these flavorless discs of death became less and less appetizing.

So the decision was made to start over using Alton’s recipe. This was a pretty major undertaking: facing the prospect of another batch was daunting when already faced a pile of “waffles” that were already finished and a messy kitchen. Not to mention the waste. But one taste of those communion wafer flavored  (and textured) waffles would have convinced anyone to do the same. We pressed on and made the new recipe. There were some pretty big differences – 3 times as much sugar and butter – destined to be better, right? -  an additional egg, 3 times less baking powder and some baking soda and whole wheat flour! These waffles were fluffy, sweet and all around delicious. Two hours after we started the waffle debacle we settled into eat our breakfast and watch Roseanne. It took forever but was well worth it for our exquisite brunch. Don’t worry, we fed some of the yucky waffles to the birds and put the rest in the compost.

Waffle Fail.

Waffle Win!

Mitten Cookies

It's December 24th and quite chilly in Colorado Springs. We decided to celebrate the holiday season by making some wintery cookies. We made sugar cookies from the Betty Crocker cookbook, cut them into mitten shapes 

and sprinkled them with granulated sugar. They turned out poofier and softer than we initially expected, but hit the spot regardless. 

We had a little extra dough and made a few special cookies. Renee made some thumbprint style cookies with raspberry jam. Dave made a snowflake - but of course you knew that from the picture! 

Tomorrow we are making chili and hope to blog about that as well.