Tex-Mex

Have you ever walked down a street on your way somewhere and been stopped short by the feeling that you are home? When I saw Federico Archuleta's stencilled Virgen de Guadalupe (a selection of Archuleta's graffiti art appears on his web site) on the columns of the old Tower Records building in Austin, Texas, I felt exactly that.

I love how Archuleta adds highlights and blends the spray paint so that the images aren't flat; they glow with energy and life. They evoke pure nostalgia, taking me back to my childhood in Texas in the '70s.

Archuleta's portraits are raw, iconic. They capture that unique blend of sounds that I grew up listening to on actual vinyl record albums in my grandmother's dining room, the needle lowering and making a scritchy sound (or a scary scratchy sound if you weren't careful). The songs I heard driving down endless miles of Texas highway on those fat 8-track cassette tapes in my parents' Texas-size Suburban: Johnny Cash and Janis Joplin, ZZ Top and Buddy Holly. Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton. Freddy Fender and the Rolling Stones. Eydie Gorme y El Trio Los Panchos and Merle Haggard.

This background music--a mix of country and western, rock and roll, and Tex-Mex--was playing (at least in my head) as we drove through the Texas night from Austin to South Texas, the stars spread out all around us on the wide velvet sky.

In the small South Texas town improbably called Alice (pronounced AH-lease by my kin and known as the birthplace of Tejano music), I met people related to me through my great-great grandparents at a very extended family reunion.

I talked with a man who had gone to elementary school with my grandmother. I chatted with a woman who was taking an algebra course taught by my uncle, then in his early 20s, when he died in a car accident. I learned that my grandmother and her sister had to attend a segregated school for Mexican American children in Del Rio, Texas, in the 1930s.

My mother reminisced with a cousin about the sentimentality of their great aunt, who cried "even when a stranger died." A woman who nevertheless kept a ranch and rental properties going after her husband's death and while three of her sons were away fighting in World War II. I heard the ache of loss in a cousin's voice as he remembered that as a boy he had to sell his favorite black mare, and how he now owns several descendants of his favorite horse.

Hearing these memories made me realize how vivid the past still is for all of us, how we wear it on our skin and speak it in voices accented by the small town where we were born. When we filter these memories through song or art, there's a truth and beauty that hits you solidly, like a steel hammer hitting a nail true and sure. 

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Thank you to those of you who have already purchased the 2011 zencrafting calendar. I am hearing that they will make great Christmas gifts for colleagues. For Cyber Monday, the calendars are on sale for $12, and I am offering free domestic shipping. You can purchase the calendar here.  

Have a happy week!

Weekend Field Trip: Boston

I spent the weekend in Boston (mostly in Cambridge) gobbling up architectural and art inspiration. The whimsical massing of shapes of the Stata Center (above) on the MIT campus makes me want to sit down with odd-shaped blocks and design a similar structure for myself.

Throughout Cambridge, former factories have been converted into offices for genetic engineering, pharmaceutical, and other high-tech companies. The building shown above seemed vacant and "age proof."

Just up Massachusetts Avenue, at Harvard, the classically inspired buildings are more somber but just as inspiring in their ornate details and fine stone forms.

I spent Saturday morning at Harvard's Arthur M. Sackler Museum, most of it in the Asian gallery admiring the Buddhist statues and Persian ceramics and manuscripts. Persian artisans decorated bowls for everyday use with verses of romantic poetry around the rims. I love how Persians served up their poetry every day with the soup course. And these ceramics have proven to be enduring forms for literary transmission: some Persian poetry has survived only as inscriptions on these bowls. 

The Sackler also displayed beautifully illustrated pages from the Persian epic poem, Shahnama (The Book of Kings). The level of detail in the pages is astonishing, with gold paint forming patterns on top of blocks of boldly colored opaque watercolors. The layout of the pages is complex, with some of the illustrations forming horizontal bands that break up the vertical columns of Arabic text. Other pages have a large central image surrounded by an ornately illuminated pattern, with a more subdued decoration forming the background for both. If you're at all interested in the history of the book, take a look at the Princeton Shahnama Project to see digital images from various editions of the manuscript.

Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, which I visited on Sunday, had its own Shahnama exhibit. The well-curated exhibited focused on the women in the narrative. To appreciate the level of detail in these paintings, use the zoom function to take a look at the secondary figure of a woman soaking her feet in a stream on this page (lower left). Her dress is decorated with gold, and the flowers that surround her are tiny and detailed, with varied shapes. Hers is a story I'd like to know.

I soaked up enough inspiration to last me several decades on this trip. As I was browsing the magazines at the newsstand in Harvard Square, the latest edition of American Craft caught my eye with its colors of the sea. The feature article, "Weaving the Sea," profiles revered textile artist Kay Sekimachi and her latest work. After decades of collecting seashells, coral, bones, and other items from a beach in Hawaii, she transformed these found forms into art jewelry. I'm sure her work resonates with artists and crafters who value traditional crafting methods and use natural objects as a sustainable source of materials.

I'm thankful for the time I spent in Boston immersing myself in such striking visual imagery. This coming week will be inspiring in a different way. My focus will be on the art of gratitude as I celebrate Thanksgiving with my extended family.

Have a wonderful week!

Flexibility

A rain storm woke me up in the middle of the night last night, and the winds that blew it in are expecting to gust up to 35 mph this afternoon. I only saw a few smaller limbs down, so the storm was not as bad as the one this summer that knocked out several trees, including one that blocked off the road to our neighborhood.

The swaying branches in the wind storm reminded me of a term that I just heard that perfectly sums up what I need to embrace right now (and always): cognitive flexibility.

Basically it's the idea that you don't need to throw a tantrum when things don't go exactly the way you envisioned them. You can look on the bright side, count your blessings, or whatever other optimistic trope you want to employ.

We've been practicing this idea at home with my youngest. When confronted with the fact that he wouldn't be able to ride the roller coaster at the kiddie amusement park this weekend that he had so looked forward to doing, he came up with a cognitively flexible response all on his own without any prompting: "Oh, well. There's lots of fun things to do inside!"

It's been a great lesson for my son, but I think it's a way of thinking I need to embrace as well.

I had all these visions of what I was going to create for the Thanksgiving table and all of the heartfelt goodies I would make to fill up my almost-empty Etsy shop. I even sketched out ideas and made a good start on them.

Given what I have to do from now until next Thursday, those things aren't going to happen.

I had planned to lose 20 pounds so that I could feel better about myself at a family reunion. That did not happen.

I could throw a tantrum right now or just sulk about not getting these things done.

But I could also employ some cognitive flexibility and know that the regular exercise I've been doing to reach my weight-loss goal has made me feel better physically and mentally. The table runner I made from felted sweaters can be used this year even if it's not embellished the way I wanted it to be. It was a joy to sew, and I was happy to use up my stash of sweaters for the project. I can file away the embroidered linen napkin rings for a future Thanksgiving. The Etsy shop can wait.

And instead of looking around the Thanksgiving dinner table and seeing all of the projects I couldn't complete and the skinny person I'm not, for a change I am going to just be happy to be me in that moment, surrounded by my family that I love. That's the kind of flexibility I'll be happy to pass on to my kids.

Giveaway Winner

Thank you all for leaving comments on the 2010 Zencrafting Calendar giveaway. The winner, chosen by the True Random Number Generator, is commenter #9, Sonia, of the beautiful blogs Cozy Homemaking and Naturally Dyeing. Sonia runs the sweet goodness of an Etsy shop she calls Cozy Memories, along with her card shop.

I'll put that in the mail for you soon, Sonia, along with a felted Snowflake Stone. Stitching it tonight while I watched "Vanity Fair" with my daughter sorta, kinda started to put me in the holiday mood. I may just have to stitch up some more to generate some true holiday cheer.

2010 Zencrafting Calendar Giveaway

I'll be closing the giveaway for the 2010 Zencrafting Calendar this evening, at 9:00 p.m. EST. Please leave a comment by then to have a chance to receive the ecofriendly 2010 calendar/postcard set, printed on 100 percent recyled premium matte card stock. You might receive a little extra handmade treat to get you in the holiday spirit.

The nursery just down the street has already put up its holiday decorations, and I have to admit that I am not at all in the holiday frame of mind. Still, though, it's fun to start thinking about the holiday cards we'll be sending out. I'm hoping to find an ecofriendly option to print a family photo we had taken in Hawaii this summer.

So far Etsy seems to offer the most affordable choices. Of the many cards available (keywords: ecofriendly holiday cards), Foosie Design's Eco Friendly Photo Holiday Card and Envelope (joy) caught my eye as a sweet way to do a family photo holiday card. The shop also offers graphic cards, including a set depicting hanging mittens.

I'd love to hear your ideas for greening the traditional holiday card.

Wild Geese

Mary Oliver is a poet of the natural world. In her collection, Owls and Other Fantasies, she observes birds and connects them to her spiritual life. Her poem, "Wild Geese," is especially inspiring to me. "The world offers itself to your imagination," she writes. It "calls to you like the wild geese." We just have to listen, and find comfort in recognizing our "place in the family of things."

You can find the full text of the poem here.

Only more one day to enter the giveaway for the 2011 Zencrafting Calendar, a collection of my photographs that documents observed moments like these, when the wild geese waddling in the field respond to a shared silent signal. They take off as a group against the stripe of clouds, arrow up and high away from the field, only to glide down with a raucous cheer to land on a nearby pond.

Leave a comment on this post before Friday, November 12, at 9:00 p.m. EST for your chance to win a copy of the professionally printed calendar--a great idea for holiday gift-giving or to display as a desk calendar or wall calendar. It's printed on recycled card stock, and each month can be reused as a postcard.

My running clothes are fresh out of the dryer, so I think I'll skip my lunch break and see what my imagination can encounter outside on this breezy early November day.

Sheep Bell

I had a close encounter of the sheep kind this morning. This friendly fellow walked over to the fence to say hello, accompanied by the most charming clanging of his sheep bell.

The bell is a reproduction of the 1898 Saigne Legier Chiantel Fondeur bell, which was originally produced in Switzerland. I bet it would make a lively holiday decoration, sourced here.

His horns had seen better days, as had his friend's (below). I thought he was a rare three-horned sheep, but my son thinks that one of his horns got split at some point.

I thought you might enjoy seeing this very rough video of the sheep walking up to greet me. Isn't he sweet, with his thick body and skinny legs?

 

Can anyone identify the breed of sheep?

Heartfelt

Here's another Slow Felt piece that I had been stitching on in my imagination for months--I've been planning out how to approach the piece since February but hadn't done any actual stitching. Tonight I had a chance to sit on the sofa and stitch while I caught up with episodes of "In Treatment."

The piece started with white wool roving, which I wet felted into a rough rectangle. Then I added wisps of the colored roving to make the heart-shaped flowers and wet felted that. The piece didn't felt as solidly as I wanted it to, and I have to admit I didn't like it. It turns out it just wasn't done! (The finished rectangle measures about 6 1/2" x 8 1/2".)

The stitching with crewel wool brought the wool together nicely and gives it nice dimensionality. I think it may still need some background quilting stitches, but I'm much happier with it now. It feels right.

And the best part of the stitching therapy was that it got me thinking about my husband and how supportive and encouraging he has been of me. This one's for him!

Eco-printing--and A Giveaway

October was a beautiful month here in the Maryland Piedmont. The fall was slow to get started, but when it did, the colors were glorious. The week before Halloween marked the height of leaf color, and it felt like we woke up that Monday morning to see gold all around us. As I was driving my son to school, he and I were exclaiming about a new stand of golden trees around every corner of the country roads we travel on. The colors have become muted now, and there is a chill in the air that suggests the deciduous trees will soon show bare limbs silhouetted against gray skies--a more muted phase of their beauty that I appreciate as well.

I'm happy that I stopped to photograph this spectacular day, as well as others that I want to remember, so that I could capture the memory as a digital image. But I have also been wanting a more tangible way to represent them: their images and the story behind each one. Last month I created a 2011 calendar of photographs featured on this blog. I posted the pdf electronically for free upload. I also had a batch of the calendars professionally printed on 100 percent premium white recycled 100-lb. matte paper. (You can view each month of the printed calendar in the 2011 Zencrafting Calendar flickr set.)

I'm really happy with the quality of the printing, and I wanted to share a bit about what I learned about the custom printing process. 

I wanted the calendar to be high quality, affordable, and ecofriendly. I decided to go with an unbound, oversized (5 1/2" x 8 1/2") postcard format. Each month can be displayed as an individual print using a binder clip, clothespins, magnets, or on an easel or other display stand. (See decor8's "2011 Calendar Roundup" series or Etsy (keywords "2011 calendar") for some inspiring display ideas.) I found some affordable and fun vintage display stands--an old shoeshine kit, a folding ruler, and a coaster holder--at my local antiques mall. And when the month is done, the print can be repurposed: mail it as a postcard; cut and display the print or use it for a collage or other project.

My primary concern in having the calendar printed was to make it as ecofriendly as possible. I found a useful guide in Ecoprint's "Little Green Book," the "green standard" for printing projects. (The pdf is available for free download by signing up on the company's site.) Ecoprint was the first "carbon neutral" U.S. printer and is located close to me in Silver Spring, MD; unfortunately for my needs, the company primarily handles larger commercial print jobs.

With the holiday season soon upon us, many of us are thinking of holiday cards to send out to family and friends. It may take some extra research and leg work, but there are some ways to "green" a photo card, invitation, or other custom printing project with a comparatively small print run:

• Use recycled paper with a high post-consumer content (PCW); a minimum of 25 percent PCW is recommended for coated papers. The big printing venues I checked (Walmart, Snapfish, Shutterfly) don't offer recycled paper as an option. MOO does, and the print quality is excellent, but the upcharge for recycled paper was cost-prohibitive for my project. A few online printers offer recycled papers; use the keywords "eco friendly printing" to find them. You might also consider printing your own photo cards at home using photo paper, such as GreenPix Photo Matte, which uses 100 percent PCW. Or, go graphic, using recycled cards to make a collage or ecofriendly recycled handmade papers from The Paper Studio's Studio Green. (Please note that I haven't ordered papers from these companies, and they aren't paying me to plug their products.)
• Make your whole project recyclable by avoiding foil stamping, UV coatings, and any added plastic pieces. Leave off sticky mailing labels that also make recycling envelopes more difficult. 
• Avoid metal inks because they add toxins to the waste produced by the printing process.
• Reduce paper consumption by choosing a paper-conscious layout, one that doesn't require extra trimming. A postcard format instead of a folded card that requires an envelope uses the least amount of paper, and the postage may be cheaper. Choose as light a weight of paper as is suitable for your project.
• If you choose a soy- or vegetable-ink option for lithographic printing, check to make sure that the soy ink has low VOCs (volatile organic compounds). The percentage of VOCs should be below 3 percent.
• Digital printing is an ecofriendly option since it involves less startup waste and uses fewer chemicals.
• When possible, choose a recycled paper that has been processed without chlorine (PCF).

I had a lot of fun creating this calendar. In fact, my whole family got jazzed about it. Most of the prints have an associated blog post, and my tech-savvy daughter and husband helped me figure out a concise way to include a link on each calendar page. A tiny QR code links to the related post and can be read by a smartphone such as a BlackBerry, iphone, or Droid. For those of us without smartphones, there's also a printed link with the related post's URL (some typing required :)).

To celebrate my first venture into custom printing, I am offering a free copy of the printed 2011 Zencrafting Calendar. To enter the giveaway, leave a comment here by 9:00 p.m. on Friday, November 12. I'd especially love to hear about your experiences with ecofriendly photo and card printing. I'll draw a winner from the commenters and post the winner's name on Monday, November 15.

I am also offering the 2011 Zencrafting Calendar for sale; click on the "My Etsy Shop" link on the upper right to purchase. The cost is $16.25 $12.00 for the 12-month calendar; remember that each month is printed on high-quality paper that is suitable for display and sending as a postcard. **Added 11/29/10: I'm offering free domestic (U.S.) shipping for the calendars.**

Have a great week!

Pat

Sweet Empanadas

Fall is the time of year when I especially miss my family back in Texas. Just about every Thanksgiving when I was a kid, my parents would pack me and my sister and brother in the car and drive south from Houston to the Rio Grande Valley, where my parents grew up and both sets of grandparents lived. My grandmothers were wonderful cooks, though my Grandma Chenda (short for Rosenda) was the one who taught my mom (her daughter-in-law) how to cook. 

When I'd burst through my Grandma Chenda's screen door to greet her, she would usually be standing in front of the white cast-iron stove in her kitchen cooking tortillas for everyone. She would make stacks and stacks of them, all lined up in rows on aluminum foil, ready to be wrapped up and handed out to her children and grandchildren. Of course I had to sneak one warm from the stack as soon as I got there.

Another one of my grandmother's specialties was sweet empanadas, pastries that she filled with pumpkin, sweet potato, or sweetened refried beans. I liked to sit at the kitchen table and watch her roll out the dough and then carefully crimp the edges with a fork after she had spooned in a bit of filling. I don't think I can describe how wonderful they were. The dough was lightly sweet and so soft, and the filling, hot from the oven, was almost caramelized and steamed so that I had to blow out a cooling stream of air around the bite. But of course I couldn't wait for them to cool down. For me, the aroma of pumpkin and cinnamon and allspice from the filling is the essence of fall--and my grandmother's love.

A few years ago I asked my Tia [Aunt] Minnie for grandma's recipe, and she sent me the following recipes. I'm happy to share them with you.

Empanadas Dough

[My aunt writes: "The recipe was used by Mother."]

Dough:

1 teaspoon dry yeast

1/2 cup lukewarm water (105 to 115 degrees) [I ended up adding about 1 cup of water]

1/4 cup shortening [My grandmother used lard or Crisco. I use canola oil.]

4 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1. Dissolve yeast in water; set aside. [I added a little bit of sugar to feed the yeast beasts.]

2. Cut shortening into all dry ingredients.

3. Mix the dissolved yeast and water with the dry ingredients until you have a stiff dough. More water may be needed.

4. Do not let the dough rise. Roll it out thinly. Cut with round cutter, depending upon the size of empanadas preferred.

5. Place a small mound of filling in the center of the circle. Moisten half of the edge of the dough and fold over to make a half-moon shape. Tightly seal the pastry with a fork dipped in flour. [The recipe didn't mention baking temperature or time. I baked the empanadas for 20-22 minutes at 400 degrees on an ungreased baking sheet until outside was browned and filling bubbled.]

For the filling, I boiled about six small sweet potatoes and two apples from our CSA share with a cinnamon stick until soft. I removed the cinnamon stick and mashed the drained mixture with a hand mixer and added about 2 tablespoons Earth Balance natural buttery spread (you can use butter instead), about 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, and a dash of salt. It was just lightly sweet.

Here's the filling recipe my aunt gave me, along with her dough recipe, which I haven't tried yet.

Empanadas de Calabaza (Pumpkin Empanadas)

[My aunt writes: "I use beer instead of yeast. I like it. Aunt Minnie." My aunt's hand-written notes are the best part of the recipes for me!]

2 (16 oz) cans pumpkin

2 cups sugar

1 (2 inch) stick cinnamon

2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

3 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup shortening

3/4 cup beer

Combine: first six ingredients in a large, heavy saucepan; bring to boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat. Simmer one hour or until thickened, stirring often. Remove and discard cinnamon stick. Let pumpkin mixture cool.

Combine: flour and salt. Cut in shortening with a pastry blender until mixture is crumbly. Make a well in the center of mixture.

Add: beer, stirring with a fork until dry ingredients are moistened. Shape into a ball. Flour hands and shape into 1/2 inch balls; roll or flatten to 1/2 inch thickness on a lightly floured surface. Let stand 30 minutes. Roll each dough round into a 4 inch circle. Place about 3 tablespoons pumpkin mixture in center of each circle and fold pastry in half. Moisten edge with water and press with fork to seal. Place on ungreased baking sheets.

Bake at 400 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.

Yield: 1 1/2 dozen

Let me know if you try out the recipes. I'll be heading to Texas for Thanksgiving, and I'm hoping to have some "real" empanadas baked by the pros. Both of my grandmothers have passed away, but my mother and aunts have thankfully preserved their recipes and kept these traditions alive.

*Added later: Don't want the hassle or calories of making edible empanadas? CraftyChica posted an easy-to-folow tutorial for a felt empanada pincushion here.

The Calendars Have Arrived!

I'm so excited, I had to show you the 2011 zencrafting calendar I had professionally printed. I'll have a full post on Monday with more details.

Have a happy weekend!