The Stitch Up

Hangin' in There

 

The real DC summer weather has finally hit and the hot, humid days have left me a little lazy. In addition to limiting my crafting drive, it has also meant that instead of walking to my metro stop, I've been taking the bus. And I made a discovery last week about my bus stop - it was once the location of a "hanging tree". According to the commemorative rock, the confederate general Mosby used it during the Civil War to hang Union spies.

This seems like an unfortunate spot for a bus stop. I mean - how much bad karma am I soaking up each day that I stand on top of Union soldier graves waiting for the bus? Should I be concerned? Or is the heat getting to me? I'll try to post something a bit cheerier next time . Until then I'll just be - you know - hanging out!

(This is the first post I've done from my Iphone - there is a Typepad application.  It's not as pretty as my other posts - I'll have to figure out how you clean it up!)

Birthday Excitement

Now that most of the projects I'm working on are for Christmas I don't have a lot to share.  Luckily I did have a little excitement surrounding my birthday!

First, a concert I've been wanting to see for about 20 years.  I love, love, love Van Morrison and yet every time he's been in concert near me something has happened to prevent me from going.  Years ago when I was in law school he played in San Francisco which was not too far from Sacramento where I was studying.  However, the concert was at the same time as finals and I just couldn't't bring myself to throw caution to the wind and party all night at a concert and hope that I'd still do well on my tests.  So I missed him.  Then again in Madrid, he was playing at a venue just around the corner from our apartment, but we had already planned to be out of town that weekend and it was too late to change plans - so once again I missed him!  But now finally, 20 years in the making, Van and I finally had an evening together!

And it was awesome!  The concert was great and well worth the 20 year wait. 

The same week I also had another outing.  I went to see Real Madrid play DC United with my friend Piedad.  We were in the DC United section but we secretly routed for Real Madrid.  I can't pretend I'm particularly interested in soccer - but I do think Cristian Rinaldo is pretty cute so he got my support.

 

 

Unfortunately I did not get any close ups of Cristian Rinaldo - but Real Madrid did win the game 3 to 0 and it was a fun outing!

I also threw in a massage and a fun night out for fancy cocktails at Le Bar in DC to round out my birthday week.  It was a great way to celebrate!

Hmm, I need to come up with one or two projects that won't spoil Christmas surprises.  I'll see what I can scrounge up and post them here soon!

Herbology

After my fairly successful pesto experiment I realized that 1) I should do more with the herbs I've grown and 2) the basil and oregano in the backyard are out of control. 

I was looking for recipes that would use fresh herbs and came across Kalyns Kitchen.  This blogger gives instructions on how to freeze fresh herbs.  Perfect!  I would love to be able to use my own fresh herbs in the winter rather than buying it in the grocery store, shipped from goodness knows where, so I decided to do a little freezing experiment.

To freeze basil you apparently proceed almost like pesto - you clean and dry some fresh basil, pop it into the blender, cover it with olive oil and blend like crazy.

 

After that you can either put it into a container or freeze it in an ice cube tray so you have a tablespoon sized portion of fresh basil (with a little olive oil) whenever you need it.  Perfect!

 It actually looks a little gross in liquid form but it's going to taste delicious! 

Freezing Oregano is a little more straight forward.  You wash and dry fresh oregano, lay it on a cookie sheet and freeze it whole.  Then you break off the individual leaves and store them in a container in the freezer for later use.  Easy peasy!

 

Since I was on a roll I decided to roast a little garlic using a method my friend Eva recommended.  You cut the top off the garlic head, pour a little oil over it and then bake it in the oven for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

 

The garlic then pops out of the head all warm and delicious!  I had intended to pop most of this into bags for freezing and using it in soups in the fall, but it was so good I ate a bunch of it, warm out of the oven spread on bread instead.  So yummy!

 

Despite my little foray into herb freezing I did have time to finish up the potholder that has been half done for years and years:

 

Doesn't look too bad and I needed some additional hot pads.  But while looking through my scrap fabric - I found this:

 

ANOTHER half done potholder??  I spoke to Lianne last night and asked her if we really took two potholder classes when we were starting our quilting.  It seems a little sad that we actually needed to take two potholder classes and that we didn't finish either one in the class - but I think that's the case.  So, one more potholder to finish and then on to some other crafting!  I've started to plan out some Christmas gifts.  I realized that I'm actually behind if I want to get things done by December.  How crazy is that?  I'll update with my non-Christmas gift crafts (can't spoil Christmas!) as I finish stuff.  Meanwhile - have a great weekend everyone!