The Halloween Costumes

Yes, it's way after Halloween, but I'm just getting around to sharing these pics.  I made the Things' costumes, and was pretty darned happy with them.

Here they are.  On the left is Thing 1 in his velociraptor costume.  Center is Thing 2 as Spongebob, and on the right is Thingette as a butterfly.  Spongebob was the biggest hit, by far.  It was the best Spongebob costume I've seen anywhere, if I do say so myself.  Thingette was a bit dissolusioned with the butterfly and was wanting to be Spongebob herself by the time Halloween rolled around, and I guess I can't really blame her.

I'm most pleased with Thing 1's velociraptor costume.  I came up with this one from scratch, and it looked *really* good.  I found some fab dinosaur-skin looking fabric, and it all just kind of came together without a lot of dicking around.  The first head I made was too small and I had to redo it, but the basic design was spot on so enlarging it wasn't a big deal. 

If I were to do it again, I'd use 1" rather than 1/2" foam for the body so it would have more body.  The tail got kind of floppy.  Still, it was great, and Thing 1 loved it. 

The butterfly worked pretty darned well.  I found some good quilting fabric for the wings and covered the body with velvet, like a fuzzy caterpillar.  I wanted to find a headband with some dingleballs on it for antennae, but couldn't find anything at all.  Just a few years ago. those things were all over the place.  They're no longer popular, apparently.

Here's the head in production.  I love working with foam rubber and making soft-sculpture pieces, and this was a really fun project.  I suspect that my messing around with soft-sculpture in crochet long ago really helped with putting this together.  You have to look at things in terms of semi-flexible planes, and the increases and decreases in shaping a crochet piece give a good sense of how things are formed. 


Although this year's costumes were a hit, Things 1 and 2 have told me that next year they want store-bought, gory costumes.  I let them know that this was okay with me, and that I'd help them put together some good zombiewear. 

So next year, I'll have the time to put together something fabulous for hubby and I for Halloween.  There's always a party somewhere...

FT

The wild grapes

We made our wild grapes into jelly and booze.  We need to remake the jelly.  The booze was excellent.

I tried to make a low-sugar jelly by just cutting back on the sugar and using a pectin that didn't rely on an abundance of sugar.  I've got 21 jars of really tart wild grape jelly.  It's a little thin, too, so I'm going to re-cook it with some more sugar and pectin and re-can it. 

I found the canning process pretty easy.  I used small jars - 8 and 12 ounce - but my canner was made for pints, so that was a bit of a challenge.  The small jars kept falling over on the rack.  I cut a piece of hardware cloth with a 3/8" mesh and put a bottom on the canner rack, and the jars stood up just fine.  It took some organization and coordination to do the canning, and three great big pots.  I've only got three working burners on my stove, so my options for what should go where were rather limited.  I thought I'd be clever and boil my jars and lids in my roaster.  I think that's what destroyed the roaster. 

It was really neat listening to the tops of the jars pop as they cooled.  That was the sign that I'd done my canning properly.  The jelly is really very nice for a first effort, I think.  I'm looking forward to doing some more canning.  Actually, I'll be doing it this week when I re-batch the jelly.

I'm not going to share any recipe, because it didn't really turn out.  With all of the diddling, I don't really know what the recipe is anymore.  When I try it again next year, I'll share the recipe, if it turns out.

The booze is another story altogether.  It turned out fabulous.  It's really good mixed with lemonade or lemon sour.  It's beautiful in the bottle - a deep, rich red-purple that coats the sides of the bottle.  It tastes summery-fruity and deceptively mild. 

Here's the recipe.  The amounts will vary with the size jar you have.

• Fill a large jar with gently crushed wild grapes.  You want the skins broken, but you don't want to crush the seeds.  You can substitute any berry for the wild grapes.  I also made booze from wild raspberries and from elderberries, and they were wonderful. 
• Add 1 Tablespoon of sugar for each pint of capacity of your jar.  For a quart jar, add 2 Tbsp; for a gallon jar 8 Tbsp, etc. 
• Fill jar with Everclear (grain alcohol - 151 proof).  You can also use vodka.
• Store in a dark, cool spot.
• Shake the jar and/or give it a stir every few days for the first two weeks.
• Shake or stir once a week for the next 8 weeks.
• Strain your booze, squishing as much juice as possible from the grapes.  I use a mesh strainer, then squeeze the grapes with my hands.  This stains my hands pretty badly, particularly my fingernails, but it washes out eventually.  You'll have a lot of grape goo left that you'll need to decide what to do with.  If you can get the seeds separate from the pulp, I think that the pulp (which will be boozy) might be nice mixed with jello for some party shooters. 
• Run the booze you've collected through a jelly bag to strain out any solids.  These can be added to the pulp for your Wild Grape Shooters. 
• Give your booze a taste.  You may want to sweeten it up some, or to add some water to thin it down a bit if your booze seems kind of "thick" (think juice concentrate) or too strong or some additional vodka if it's too weak (I don't know what your tastes are).  BE CAREFUL.  No matter what you add, it's going to taste funny if you taste it right away.  It will have to sit in order for you to know what result you've gotten.  You can always add more sugar and water and vodka later, but you can't take it out once you've put it in.  If you want to add both sugar and water, dissolve the sugar in the water before putting them into your booze. 
• Bottle up your booze.  Use glass bottles with screw on tops.  I use old booze bottles, since they're made for the purpose. 
• Store your booze in a dark, cool spot.  If you added any sugar, water or vodka at tasting time, let your booze sit for at least a month (shaking it up once or twice a week) before tasting it again so that the flavors can blend and mellow. 

It's hard to let the stuff sit for months before imbibing.  Ours is just about gone. 
 





FT

Distracted

I've been pretty distracted by the news lately.  That's why I haven't been posting.  Well, that and the fact that it's been a rather busy fall.  I only have so much online time and I've been using it to bang my head against a wall in the discussion sections of a newspaper or two. 

I don't know why I do that.  Most of the people who post to those things are cranky, ideological jackasses.  They don't want to actually talk about the issues, they want to argue about them, score points, win the fight.  Most of them don't know what the heck they're talking about.  They speak in logical fallacies and quote opinion pieces as though they were news.  They're utterly convinced that they're absolutely right about things that they know very little about. 

I'm cranky, too.  These folks are turning me into a cynic, and I don't like it at all.  I think of this quote - "A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset." - James Gould Cozzens.  That's not the person I want to be.

So I'm going to stay away from the comments sections and try to regain my faith in humanity.  If I feel strongly about an issue I'll write to my elected representatives rather than bang my head on the wall on some discussion board. 


FT

The Final Granola Recipe

I've made granola for hubby enough now that I've got the recipe down so that I can throw it together with minimum effort and get great results.  This recipe makes a lightly sweet, toasty granola. 

42 oz rolled oats (standard large, round container that oatmeal comes in at the grocery store)
1 pound of coarsely chopped nuts (we usually use walnuts, but any nut will do)
2 cups whole flax seed
1 1/4 cup water
1 1/4 cup turbinado sugar (or 1/2 cup brown sugar and 3/4 cup white sugar)
1/2 cup butter (1 stick) cut in small chunks
12-16 ounces dried fruit

Combine oatmeal, nuts and flax in large roaster pan*.  Bring sugar and water to a boil, stir until sugar is melted.  Add butter to sugar mixture.  Stir until butter is melted.  Pour sugar/butter mixture over oatmeal mixture.  Stir until well blended.  Bake at 325 degrees for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, stirring every 20 minutes, until granola reaches desired toastiness.  Let granola cool for a half hour or so, then add dried fruit.  Stir until well mixed.  Store in airtight container.

If you like a more nuggety granola, increase the sugar to 1 cup brown sugar and 1 cup white sugar, and increase the butter to 3/4 cup.

*  You want the granola spread out, and you need to have room to stir it up, so you want a big, deep pan.  I use the inside pan from our 18 quart electric roaster.  That's about the perfect size.

FT

Bill Came Home, but Things Were Different

It's been a while since I posted.  First thing I need to share is that Bill came home.  He was gone for about 10 days, came home a little slimmer but in good condition. 

He was not happy when he came home, though.  While he was away, we got a new family member.  There's a pic of her at right.  The last thing I wanted was another cat.  Well, not the absolute last thing, obviously, but really close to the top of the list of things I did not want.  The son-in-law brought her to me because she was about to become homeless, and he knows I'm a great big sucker.  We've named her Pita.  She is named for the acronym - Pain In The Ass.  She's cute as heck, but definitely lives up to her name.  She is a curtain climber, an ankle attacker, a beverage tipper-overer.  On the plus side, when I showed her the litter box, she knew exactly what it was for, she loves to cuddle, and has pretty good bed manners.

Bill disliked her on sight.  She went bouncing up to him, thinking that he'd find her as irresistable as hubby and I had.  He did not.  He put her in her place, then searched the rest of the house to make sure that there were no others like her hiding anywhere. 

Bill and Pita have reached an understanding.  That understanding seems to be that she is irresistable and he should just stop fighting it.  He eventually gave in, but he makes sure that she knows that he is the Head Cat In Charge, and is not to be messed with, leapt upon, chewed on, hissed at, or any other unpleasant thing. 

Looks like I'm going to end up a crazy cat lady after all.  At least I have hubby to help out.


FT

Bill Is Still Missing

It has been rainy and cold, and he's still out there somewhere.  I've talked with the neighbors and have asked them to keep an eye out for him.  He's very friendly, so if they call him he'll likely go to them.  The lady down the hill said she'd be out in the woods hunting turkey soon, and will keep an eye out for him.  We've been out along the edge of the woods and fields calling for him,

I hope that he comes back soon.  He's an old guy - 17 years old - without much extra meat on him.  He's all hair.  Some friends have suggested that at his age, perhaps he just went away to die.  I don't believe that's what happened.  He's old, but he was healthy and happy, and did not appear to be close to the end of his run.  He still has his moments when he runs around the house like a kitten.

He just isn't the type to stay out.  I don't think he's ever stayed out all night.  He's out there somewhere, wet and cold and lost.  The rain has kept the farmers out of the fields.  I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  Would he get run over by a combine, would it chase him out of the field and toward home, would it get the corn out of the way so that he could find home?  They're not going to be getting the corn out any time soon.  The forecast through next week is rain, rain and more rain. 

Poor Bill.  If something got him, I hope it was something big and that it was quick.  I hate the thought of him out there cold and wet, covered with burrs and ticks, sick and miserable....  I hope he comes home soon. 

FT

Bill Has Gone Missing

I expected that he'd be hanging around the house when I got home from work, but he's nowhere to be found.  I called for him, walked around the woods, but there's no sign of him. 

I've been hoping he'd come home, but it's not looking good.  He goes out when he wants to, usually but not always sticks pretty close to the house, usually but not always is back in the house within 15 minutes.  He doesn't stay out all night, but he did last night.

I'm guessing he was out strolling around yesterday and either the lawnmower or the kids' dog scared him into the woods or into the corn and he got lost.  I hope that he makes his way home before it gets cold.

FT

Home Invasion

It's a part of living where we do that we just have to accept.  When they start harvesting soybeans, the Asian Lady Beetles will invade.  Today there are hundreds, probably a dozen per square foot of house surface. There are also dozens inside the house.  There will be thousands of them on the house when I got home from work tomorrow.  I may get lucky as it's supposed to be cloudy and cooler, then rain for days after that, possibly even snow by Friday. 

I'm hoping that bulk of the ALB will decide to lay low tomorrow, but I can't see how that will happen.  They like it when it's sunny, but the farmers are unlikely to take that into consideration.  They've got maybe 36 hours to get the beans out of the field before it starts to rain. 

I could still get lucky because the fields around me are corn this year rather than beans - these ALB are coming in from at least a mile away.  I'm hoping they'll find a place to stop before they get here. 

FT

More of the Busy Week

Last Saturday some friends came for a visit.  We were walking around the backyard, and one of them saw a patch of grapes that hubby and I had missed.  We went out Sunday to pick and got another 8 1/2 pounds of grapes.  I turned some of them into booze, the rest will be more juice for jelly. 

I had actually forgotten about the rest of the grapes.  I just put them on the stove.  Eesh, that would have been bad, all that work molding in the fridge...

I went down to the ditch this week and picked some more cattail leaves.  The ones I'd picked before are all dried and ready to try out some basketweaving.  I suspect that I'm going to enjoy it, so wanted to get more supplies laid in. 

I tied the first ones in bundles and hung them to dry, and that worked pretty well except that the leaves shrunk and the bundles fell apart when I took them off the wall. This time, I took a stout needle and some 1/4" ribbon and strang them together to hang dry.  There weren't really any problems with tying them in bunches, but this will make them easier to handle when they're dry.  Once the bunches fell apart, the leaves were rather cumbersome. 

Basketry is going to have to wait, though, because Halloween is coming up before you know it, and I have to make costumes for the grandkids.  Thing 1 is going to be a velociraptor, Thing 2 wants to be Spongebob, and Thingette wants to be a butterfly.  I've started working on the patterns.  I'm knocking out the butterfly first because it will be easiest.  Spongebob won't be too bad, but the velociraptor is going to be a real challenge. 

I'm really pretty excited about putting these together.  It's going to be fun.  I've really got to get busy, though.  I'm pretty good as a crunch player with this kind of thing, and there's really plenty of time to get these done, but the kid will be driving me crazy if she doesn't see progress.  She's a worrier.

FT

Busy Week

It has been a week since I posted anything here.  A very busy week. 

It's been cold and rainy all week, and it looks like it will continue to be cold and rainy.  Both the hummingbirds and the bees are gone, at least for now.  I'll fill the feeder again this weekend and see if any of them show up.

There was a threat of frost for Tuesday morning, so we went into the garden Monday night and picked all of the tender stuff.  It didn't actually get down to freezing, and that's a danged good thing.  There are a lot of green tomatoes still out there, and a lot of itty-bitty cucumbers.  I think that the cucumber is about a goner.  That's it on the far left in the picture.  It sure has been a producer this year.  This one plant has supplied me with probably 50 good sized cucumbers - the seedless, soft-skinned English kind.  It's leaves are all turning now, but it's still putting out blossoms.  What a trooper.

One of my pepper plants had just took off about a month ago.  It sat there doing pretty much nothing with it's brothers all summer, then this one just took off.  I got 4 peppers off of it when we took all of the veggies out Monday night, and it had a lot of little ones starting.  It's got all kinds of flowers on it, too.

I don't know what kind of pepper it is.  It's not a bell - its peppers are darker green and longer.  I haven't tried them yet, but I'm going to be making goulash this weekend, and will throw them in there.  I don't even know if it's a hot pepper.  If it is, the son-in-law will be pleased.

This is how dismal the weather is now - it looks like the picture of the pepper plant was taken at night, but I took it at 8:30 in the morning.  This is apparently all the sun we're going to get today.

We got a happy surprise in the mail on Monday.  Apparently, we made a mistake on our taxes.  The IRS sent us a check.  I went a little crazy and spent about $500 of it on new clothes and a haircut.  The kid came with me, and she was all kinds of excited about seeing me buy clothes.  She's tired of seeing me in home-made pull-on pants and hubby's Hawaiian shirts.  So now I'm wearing actual girl clothes.  It's nice that this year's colors are my colors.

My favorite purchase was a pair of Sorel winter boots.  It has been decades since I had a really good pair of winter boots.  My feet will be warm and comfy all winter long. 


 


FT