Grandma Nan

Maybe I should also do a little post about my first summer vacation before I get into my second. Tristan, Dylan, Neil and I went to Grand Manan for a few days this summer. Its a tiny fishing island off the coast of New Brunswick. Summer time its full of whale watching tourists and fog and in the winter time is full of fish and meth.

We camped at a little spot on the northern end of the island called "Hole in the wall Campground." Dylan happens to have a connection to the couple that runs it and we nearly always get a sweet cliff side camping site. We all kept imagining how easy it would be for us to roll off the edge.



We went hiking a bit and cooked some excellent food. My favorite tea house was closed, but that didn't stop us from making our own excellent tea. We also brought along our friend Pablo Poutine the tequila filled water melon. He went through many transformations over the weekend, but was forever useful.



We went on a hike down a hundred meter Bay of Fundy cliff and wandered around the beaches; finding beach glass garbage and buoys. Tristan and I also woke up to one of the most intense sunrises I've ever witnessed.... even in Thailand I never experienced a sunrise like this:



In any case, Grand Manan is so beautiful. Full of fish and vinegar, camping and relaxing. It was a wonderful vacation.

Okay Mom

Its pretty bad when your own mother lets you know that you are behind on your blog. I've been busy mom! But she is right - I have neglected it.


I still don't have pictures of my headdress on me - I have pictures of it complete though....




Basically I added those nice sequin medallions on the side, on top of a tiny tea stained doily. I also added a bunch of dangly side bits. Most of the bits are collected from family and friends. A lady that visits the coffee shop a lot gave me some eagle feathers she has been collecting from the base of a tree with an eagle nest at the top.

I had some left over feathers so I sewed them to some strips of fabric, added some trim and finished it up with some ribbon ties. Now I have two shin-lets and either a really revealing feather skirt or a huge feather belt.




I am off to the Eclipse Music Festival this weekend - so hopefully there will be lots of pictures surfacing with me all done up. Other wise no one will ever see me as I'm afraid most of the feathers will not survive me raving for 4 days straight.

Speaking of which here are some really really awesome videos from last year....
Eclipse during the day
Eclipse during the night (I can already tell me and the cat lady will get along)

Project War Bonnet - (nearly) done.

Its Done! It's Done! It's Nearly Done!

I can't even believe it - how long did I bead that god forsaken headband? At least 8 or probably 16. I did it at work though (sneaky!) so technically I did get paid to do it :) I didn't even think I could bead like this - and I'll be the first to admit I impressed myself with my beading skill. Check out this sucker:



I used a ragged old piece of leather for the headband base (thanks Nan!), and also a piece of upholstery sample for the bead work because I quickly realized there was no way in hell I was going to try and bead on leather. I used some old quilting fabric for the ties too (Thanks Aunt Debbie!). Most of the materials were scavenged or given too me, even the center piece of the beadwork was an old/broken broach I got from a relative. I'm even going to use some pottery beads I scavenged from my other grandmothers house (she said she had made them a very long time ago) for the dangly bits I plan to staple to the side of my head.
I didn't think I would be so attached to it, but now that I see how proud I am of it and how much of my family went into it.... I might hold on to this more dearly then I thought.

(love)



So I will post a picture of me wearing the finished product soon.... Also.... does anyone think its a good idea to post this as a kind of available custom piece on Etsy? It would more then likely be about 120$ if I did.. maybe more.

Lemon Spagetti!

This is the pasta dish i have been waiting for, thanks goes out to the Cooking Photographer for putting this into my stomach.

I did have a lot of asparagus on hand (Partially because I know it is healthy for your heart, helps treat depression, has a shit ton of folate, Vitamin K [this vitamin still remains a mystery - what do you do?] and its really good for me because it has a lot of things things like iron and magnesium which this [bad] vegetarian is missing). I also was kind of upset because I tried to made balsamic browned butter for asparagus earlier this week and did something horribly wrong so I had sad greens covered in brown melted butter - instead of something good. I wanted to make it up to both myself and the asparagus.

Here is the recipe in case you are wondering:

Ingredients
1 bunch asparagus
½ cup olive oil, plus more for grilling
½ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ cup freshly shredded asiago cheese
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/3 cup chopped fresh basil
1 Tablespoon dried parsley
3 to 4 Roma tomatoes, cut in half then cut into half moon shaped slices
Garlic powder
Salt & lots of freshly cracked pepper to taste
About 1 cup reserved pasta water

Instructions
1. Turn the grill to medium high. Break the rough ends off the asparagus. Rub the asparagus in olive oil, and a sprinkle of salt, pepper & garlic powder. Grill the asparagus until grill marks for or until tender. Remove from the grill and cut into 1 inch pieces.

2. Cook the spaghetti according to the package directions in salted water. Set aside 1 cup of the pasta water near the end of cooking time.

3. Meanwhile place ½ cup olive oil, the lemon juice, asiago cheese, salt, fresh basil, parsley, tomato slices, chopped asparagus, and lots of fresh pepper to taste into a large bowl and stir together.

4. Drain the pasta after setting aside the pasta water. Toss the hot spaghetti into the bowl to coat. Add additional pasta water if needed. Serve immediately.

I did do a few things differently, considering the local sobeys doesn't understand the meaning of variety. I had to use Parmesan cheese instead of asiago, and I forgot about the extra pasta water completely until it was too late. In any case even with my (ahem) creative differences it was still delicious.... so I can only imagine what it would taste like properly made.

War Bonnet of love

Well my war bonnet is coming along very very nicely. I've just figured out how to attach my feather trim and my 14 inch pheasant feathers. I still have some tweaking but it should be almost done soon.

Bad news is that I lost my camera so I can't document it very well. WHERE DID THAT THING GO?!

Here is what I did manage to take a picture of though, its the beginning of the bead work I did on the headband: