Katherine is a pastry chef at the Firefly Bistro in South Pasadena. Her favorite jewelry is simple bead strands– a rope of pearls will suffice. Big pearls, because she’s a big girl. Her favorite recipe is for pecan cookies– she has it memorized. And she likes to turn her pecan cookies into a pie crust for pumpkin pie. Katherine has gifted me with lollipops made from fresh cherry juice, rose-flavored nougat, and ginger marshmallows. And my jewelry adores her…
I think it was given my sister and me around 1964. I was just learning to write cursive, as you can see. In my preteen years, our very battered copy became the recipent of an embroidered book cover, which I pasted onto hard board without nearly enough swing-room for the covers to open… The pages are filled with these delightful illustrations, and the familiar nursery rhymes are brilliantly reenterpeted. Anyone who reads the snippet from “The Theory That Jack Built will know where I developed my brand of scepticism!
Take pictures of, write descriptions of, and offer on Etsy, the estimated half-ton of vintage jewelry that I have accumulated over the decades. Some samples;
it’s the spice tea known as “Masala Chai.” This recipe comes from Yogi Bhajan, who introduced Kundalini Yoga to the west in the late 1960s. Yogi Bhajan is also the founder of the “Yogi Tea” brand, which is easy to find in health food stores. It’s very simple to make this tea at home and the aroma is heavenly. It only takes a few minutes to prepare, but you leave the mixture to simmer for as long as three hours. 15 whole cloves 20 black peppercorns 3 sticks of cinnamon 20 whole cardmon pods (split the pods first) 8 fresh…
For my sister-blog DragonMother Wand Works, these moon faces keep track of the moon phases, in front of the red-cram-and-blue quasi-Victorian show board.
This is Wolf, heading into the canebreak. We made this outfit for the Wasteland event… Wrap pants in a double layer of muslin to the knees, with canvas tube for the lower half. The shirt is an approximation of the same technique. Wolf hotglued and tied bundles of corn straw to make the hat. The furs are courtesy of my dear friend Walter. All the weaponry, and those amazing elkhide boots, circa 1970, courtesy of Keith Longino.
I do love to design. I love to go over the top. These are me being restrained. Really! Sort of. In a way, which I shall explain. I have always loved ephemera. I have collections– can labels, fruit labels, even– and this is hard to admit to– toilet paper roll labels. I like the stuff that is utilitarian. In France, the fruitier’s shops had small thin brown paper bags that exhort you to “Mangez Des Fruits,” with varying vintages of graphic sensibility. I have one in a little gold frame over my sink– also, the wrapper from a single “Les…
One gigantic spool of black cotton Cluny point lace. Don’t waste your time trying this with acrylic or polyester. Bleach. Patience– or impatience, which ever seems most appropriate to the dish at hand. Reel off as much lace as you feel like fiddling with. Wet the lace, if you want, scrunch it into a very random wad, and drop it into a bowl. pour some bleach into a cup, and add the same amount of water. Sprinkle it over the wadded lace, and pour more of it carefully down the edge of the bowl so that it puddles on the…
