Darning. Again. Bee on cosmos. Black walls

Sunday was about slow everything. Lovely sunny walk, cool morning, warming up to 70s later.  More junk tipping on the common area, and I took pictures, sent them to management requesting a cleanup, with the numbers of the two houses, so the contractors can find them. 

At home the cosmos is the last flowering plant and it's had a lot of traffic, from this fat bumble?bee I think, to brown butterflies and other stripy buzzy fellers 

 

How lovely it is with the morning sun shining through the petals, six front ones, two behind 

And I stitched a bit more on my autumn leaves, with people sending me pictures of their mothers' crewel work from long ago. It's usually English crewel, more solid and filled in than American. 

American Colonial era crewel was airy, more delicate designs, largely because crewel wool was hard to get in the colonies,  so people had to work with less material. To look at the early bed hangings you'd never know those wonderful designs arose partly from scarcity. No scarcity of great talent, though.

As I was doing dishes (says Boud virtuously, just to show I got around to it) my assistance was called on to look at Gary's sample painting of the black wall. 

He's not just doing the alcove. It's the whole fireplace side of the room. Oh. I liked the warmest sample, and turns out I agree with his daughter on that. So that convinced him! It's very rich. Also very dark.

From fancy stitching to plain, I found yet another sock needing help, so I inserted my glasses case and got to work.

with Kate of the Last Homely House knitting and chatting in the background as I darned along. If you knit socks it pays to know how to repair them,too, especially if you're a walker. Under the toes goes first.

And here's an artwork of spices, many of which blogista cooks will recognize right off.

Since I've been making my own mixes, umami mix, garam masala, baharat, berbere, curry powder, I've come to appreciate the flavors so much more than buying mixes. 

It's fun to handle and grind them, wonderful scents. Also things like mayo, red chili oil, are just better, I think because they're fresh and personal. Even grinding your own pepper as needed, has more flavor than ready ground.  I don't grind salt, but some people do. And I do buy sugar as crystals, not in a loaf!

My spice taste is more south Asian and middle eastern, and Ethiopian,  than Mexican and US Southwest. Though I do make chili sometimes. 

In fact now that I have ground turkey to hand, also various beans, I might do that today. I'll check my World Central Kitchen cookbook. 

They have recipes for feeding huge crowds which they kindly present for family size, too. Chili is a big crowd food, needing vats rather than my little pot. They're still feeding people hit by the latest hurricanes, I believe.

About which, the NJ first responders are home again after working in Florida, North Carolina and Georgia.  

Happy day everyone, eat well, rest a bit, enjoy what you can.

Which logic will work, and other passing thoughts

Yesterday I opened a canteloupe, wonderful scent, and wondered what seasoning to use. Ginger's a popular choice but though I love ginger , the combination with canteloupe tastes exactly like soap, so I looked further.

Three candidates, amchur, which is dried mango powder, citrusy but not for people allergic to mango rind, sumac, a different kind of citrusy, given to me by a terrific cook who was amazed I didn't have any, and za'atar, a freebie with my last tea order, warm mixture, cinnamon, nutmeg, other good things. Went in the end with amchur.

You will instantly note that the alphabetic organizing of my spices, I have quite a few, doesn't serve me well here. A and S and Z, three different shelves, fumbling, knocking bottles off the lazy susans.

I wondered, briefly, let's not get carried away here, if I could organize by function instead. 

Then realized that, if the permutations of the drops before and after eye surgery nearly defeated me, I'd need a spreadsheet to organize the spices in families by food affinities. Maybe I'll just take up quadratic equations as a hobby for my declining years, instead.

Which reminds me of the joke about the artist and the brain surgeon. Artists on the whole, who know what it takes to make and exhibit art, the focus, persistence, sheer energy required to create even apparently "simple" work, do get a bit tired of people saying ooh, an easy life really. I fancy taking it up in retirement.

So the brain surgeon at a party says this to the artist, could have been me, not saying, and the artist says "Funny you should mention it. I'm ready to retire to an easier life. I've been thinking of taking up brain surgery."  Bitter but accurate.

Other people's work does tend to look easy to onlookers,  such as the nice people, during my pet care business years who said, "I'd love to have your job, playing with animals all day long". 

Well, if you don't count the coping with the humans, the pets were easier, and the seven day a week out before dawn on early dog walking rounds, all weathers, at least 15 miles daily walking, three rounds, much driving, busy times ending after 10pm, and that's only the start.  I did love it, and was happy though tired, but I wouldn't confuse it with playing all day!

This is true of practically any work, not seeking the moral high ground here.  Except for those "artists" known to a lot of us actual artists, who do our own work stem to stern, the people who sketch out what they want done, then hire (poorly paid, and uncredited) artisans to execute the artworks.

Ellen pointed this out elsewhere, spot on. I know a few, usually male sculptors, who put their name on a piece with no acknowledgement of the actual artists who created it from, in one case I know of, stick figure drawings. 

One person I know personally actually bragged that he only spoke the concept then looked in now and then to see its progress.  

Now I understand about collaboration, I've done it, where artists work together, put their names to finished work, and that's perfectly fine. What l don't appreciate is the suppression of the credit and sale share to people who actually did the work. 

I've known of gifted local modelers at a metal foundry, a wealthy local man's property, working up the shapes for his bronze casting, at $9 , that is not a typo, per hour.  

It's where a rich man buys a reputation as an artist. Not so good.  I know a woman famous for her art quilts, where the execution was an important part of the success of the concepts.  

I was talking with her, unaware of this, admired how her execution worked flawlessly. She looked a bit flustered then said, well I have an assistant for that. 

I asked what her name was, couldn't see it anywhere, and she  got angry and pretty much flounced away. 

I'd blundered into this, never thinking that there could be any joy in pretending to make art that you just jobbed out like a contractor. The "I have people for that" approach.

So do look out to see that makers of large pieces credit the skilled team behind them. Good ones will. 

That's one of the traditions I love in old edition prints. On every one they credit the artist who drew the original work, and the engraver who transferred it to the plate, sometimes the artist was also the engraver, and the printmaker who pulled the prints. All skilled work, a team, to create great prints. Rembrandt never pretended he'd done it all. I do like artists who make like Rembrandt.  Credit to the team if there is one.

It follows in other parts of life, too. Important to credit the people who keep our personal little red wagon trundling along. The spouse, the child carer, the cleaning crew at home if you have them, and work, the lunchroom ladies, the deli worker, the chambermaid in your motel, hotel. There's an army in a lot of our lives, often invisible. Heck, do we think to care about the nurses in our doctor's office as people. Yeah, we do if we're nice. That's all the readers in here.

End of unexpected sermon, preaching to the choir,  hopping down from the Sunday soapbox now. 

Happy day everyone! Enjoy your day, play, work, breathe. That last part is good. I should remember that one when I get all hot under the collar about Wrong Things Happening.

Image AC

The Law of Concatenation has struck

 After the prepping of the Misfits produce, minus the ginger which they forgot to pack, and will credit me for, though I'd rather have the ginger,  where was I? 

Anyway, at that point I noticed the spices which take up most of the small cabinet space of this not very well designed kitchen, were in total disarray.

I use them a lot, so they get knocked down, shoved around and generally disrespected.

So today, the weather being rainy, seemed like a good idea finally to Do Something. 

Three cabinets, the only ones away from the stove and the window, better for spices, were stuffed with containers of all sorts and materials which defeated my original idea of alphabetizing them. I'm against buying containers on purpose except for the few I have for jam. 

So I sort of have them organized by function. All the baking related ones together, more or less, the others by family, all the salts, all the peppers, that sort of thing. 

But it's ages since I took everything out and cleaned the shelves, and generally Kept It Up.

Top pic is the easiest one, cleaned up, then the middle one, horrible shape, too deep to reach in, goes to a point in the corner, things fall off the lazy Susan and you have to get a stepladder to retrieve them. 

Then the smallest which ended up with the most stuff, don't ask me, I only live here. That one also yielded all the items on the tray, needing emptying, cleaning, reassigning.

As I sorted and wiped and spilled and swept, I wondered why I had so much of some items. Cardamom seeds? Masses of cinnamon? Coriander?

Then is when the concatenation struck. It's a fancy word for one damn thing after a damn nother. Because a couple of the containers were empty. No home mixed curry powder. No baharat.

Clearly the next thing, once I'd dealt with the extraneous objects such as bags of coins needing wrappers if they still exist, totally outdated spices needing to be tossed to reuse the glass jars, the next thing is to get grinding.

Needing to retrieve the recipes, baharat in Jerusalem, curry powder in Bill Veach.

And that's when I realized it's why I have all those spices. 

Here's the set-up for the curry powder.

I rest my case.

I also rest my arms. 

While these are soaking, I'm off to enjoy Bad Food.

No grinding, mixing, working. Just chomping. Happy Fourth Eve.