Pick a Color, Any Color

my post on Luminous Traces Collective this week…

studiobird

I had something completely different in mind…a hue lively and bright, to help me pretend summer has not yet begun its exit while my tomatoes are still young and green (hint, hint)…but then, this guy paid a visit to my workplace and changed everything.

I spend so many of my waking hours adding color to whiteness, that it only seemed fitting and, perhaps, necessary, to celebrate a blank canvas.

And then we dyed him teal. KIDDING.

Anyway, full set of images here.

Advertisement

One Shot :: 19 and This Week in My Kitchen :: Blog Hop

honey

This shot of pure, liquid gold in the afternoon light required no editing. We lost our bees, but what a precious gift they left behind. It took months, but we finally borrowed an extractor and liberated sweetness from the hive frame graveyard.

daylily saute

Today, I’m joining Heather for This Week in My Kitchen.

This week contained many a garden meal. I realize a garden post is well past due, but it’s not quite peak and there is so much that has such a very long way to go yet, that I’m not sure it would be interesting. Peas are happening, though, and I’m pretty sure I’ve harvested the last garlic scape. Our first round of greens have all bolted, so when I learned that daylilies could beef up my scape/pea saute instead of the bok choi I’d set out to harvest, I had to give it a try.

It’s so simple I can’t even pretend to give you a recipe. Snow peas and garlic scapes sauteed in butter, with daylily buds added in the last two minutes, whole flowers in the last thirty seconds. Salt and pepper, and you’re there. So good.

scapebutter

Speaking of butter, I am still in the midst of preserving oodles and oodles of scapes, and while most of them will go into the pesto recipe I’ll share tomorrow, and mixed vegetable ferments, I used them the other day for this compound butter. I didn’t bother with mincing or sauteing, but just threw 12 raw scapes into the food processor, whizzed ’em around a bit, and then added a 1/2 pound of softened butter. And yes, I’ll be holding back at least another 12 from tomorrow’s pestofest so I can make another batch of this stuff. We’ve been using it every morning to cook our eggs in, and tonight I’ll use it to baste chicken on the grill.

scapebutter2

scapetoast

Oh, and it tastes delicious on heart-shaped bread, too.

What’s going on in your kitchen?

Luminous Traces is back!

…and is now the Luminous Traces Collective!

 

mineral

 

Summer is a most glorious time of year to re-start this collective project. We have a full roster of contributors and near-daily posts! This week’s theme is Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. If you enjoy creative prompts, please do consider becoming a guest contributor. Follow LTC, as I’ll be posting a call for guests later this week, with a preview of the upcoming weekly themes for the season.

If you are a friend of LTC on Facebook, you may have noticed that the “Collective” part of the name is a new addition. Luminous Traces is becoming the name for my own personal photography work and shop (coming soon!), and the Collective is the group project for challenging, creative fun.

So, I’ve been busy resuscitating that, and also making plans for the next Rest of My LIfe. I left one hint already…perhaps some of the rest can be inferred, but I promise to expound on that very soon.

Remember when this blog used to be about yarn? I’m thinking about spinning some this week…
I’m already out of the Tour de Fleece before I even started. Oh, well.

One Shot :: 1

A new series, dedicated to a faulty lens.

I recently acquired a 50mm 1.8 lens. It wasn’t brand new, and it seems to work fine, but only for one shot at a time. Beyond that, it throws a tantrum. Going with the flow, I get:

One shot. Every day. No editing.

1.

lilyforblog

Faulty lens, or no…care to play along? One shot. Every day. No editing.

Five (or Six) Senses Friday

FSF is a weekly ritual of sensual reflection. Play along if you wish, in the comments or link to your own blog. What is striking your senses this week?

 

greengarlicsmall

Tasting:  Fresh green garlic. I thinned a few plants out of the garlic bed and chopped them up, greens and all and added them to cubed sweet potatoes for roasting. Perfect.

Touching: Roots and thorns and tender leaves. Transplanting is the word of the day week month.

lilacs

Smelling: Lilacs, lilacs everywhere. Dizzying, really.

Hearing: Night creatures. The sounds that disappear from November through May have returned to lull me to sleep.

Seeing: The miracle of wood bending and not breaking. So much wind this week.

Feeling: Frustrated. Disappointed with the results of my job search, so far. I know it takes time and perseverance, so yeah…carrying on and all that. Hot cocoa cure tonight.

 

Oh, and I’ve also been here this week.

And here.

Growing, growing is the topic on Luminous and Literary Traces this week. Enjoy.

growing2a

In which I also play with fiber…

In the sunshine, even!

solardye

 

It may be a little while before this happens again, as we’re headed into a cooler, wetter spell of weather, but I was pretty darn pleased with the Spring-sweet colors that resulted. In fact, I probably won’t turn on a dye pan again until Fall…why bother when I can have rainbows under glass on the deck railing?

I promised some updates, and they’re coming, throughout the weekend. Here’s one for tonight:

patina0002

Click on the pic for a link to the listing.

Back to FSF (Five Senses Friday) next week!

Oh, and I am also here today.

elements4

Enjoy, and happy Friday!

 

 

Sixteen: 52

52candosmall

 the 52 project.
Portraits of my main squeezes, every week.

O, this week you…

…waited patiently, and not so patiently, for me to get better.

…did not come down with it. This is a beautiful thing.

C, this week you…

…took such good care of me, even though you had only just recovered. You drank the fire tonic that my stomach couldn’t handle and I watched you get better while I drifted further into fever-land.

We’re all better now, today I really feel it. So, running clothes on, I’m going out to bathe in the healing light of Spring sunshine. I may not actually run this morning, but I could surprise myself. The human body loves to make a good comeback.

So, in the spirit of easing gently back into the pace of things, here are my loves together. Nonna and Nonno were here all that week before our collapse into the clutches of Strep A, and we took a most delightful trip to The Book Mill. We had a pretty hilarious lunch and enjoyed an afternoon playing around in western MA. I have more to share about that, but in a near-future post.

I have two days left to prepare for the Wild and Woolly Weekend in Proctorsville, VT and then the following day I’ll be shipping my remaining inventory to Clover Hill Yarn Shop, where the lovely Jolene will be taking my wares for consignment at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. A few new things I have had up my sleeve will have to wait, as I lost five important days of production time to bacteria. Oh, well. Spilled milk. Moving on.

Oh, and I managed a Literary Traces post yesterday…a little thing about coming through the funk and breathing in a new day.

Enjoy!