Restingmotion

When I posted about the Premium Meme Award that Materfamilias so generously passed on to me, I was a bit distracted with the mental reconfiguring of my random thoughts into this blog and was somehow interrupted in process.  I meant to pass the blog on to seven other blogs but as I mentioned, I was a little unfocused at that time, so I reneged on the obligation.  

Now that I have caught up with my senses again I would like to pass the award on to seven other bloggers whose blogs I find distinctive and enjoyable (which means all of you I read, but I must limit myself to 7).

Remember, the rules are:   "list 7 of your personality traits, as evidenced on your blog, and then pass the award on to 7 other blogs with notable personality."

My choices are, in no particular order:

La Belette Rouge

The Furry Mind: Musings at Cat Fur Studio

K-Line

Hungry Zombie Couture

Diary of a Sewing Fanatic

3 Sleeves to the Wind

Bad Mom, Good Mom

Those vegetables that we think of as "summer vegetables" are finally showing up in my local farmer's markets, and to a very small extent in my garden.  I didn't really get much planted in the garden this year, so the low yield is not surprising.

Tomatillos are plentiful now, so I have made my first batch of tomatillo salsa.  I usually make two kinds when the fresh ripe tomatillos are plentiful, and either can or freeze them for future use.  Now that mexican markets are more common, I can get tomatillos all year, but the winter tomatillos are never as nice as those fresh off the vine, so I still put some away for the depths of winter. 

Sunday I made roasted tomatillo salsa.

First you pull the lovely papery wrapper off the tomatillos. Then I roast them under the broiler until they are brown in spots and soft, but have not yet burst; you don't want to loose much of the lovely juice. Remove tomatillos from heat and allow to cool.

I also roasted some peppers and garlic cloves.  This can be one on a griddle, or under a broiler; if you are using a broiler however, be careful to watch carefully so that you don't burn anything.    I used a combination of serrano chiles and jalapenos, as that is what I had available, although generally I prefer serranos in this salsa.

Jalapenos are producing now locally but the serrano season is a non-starter.  By the time the nights got warm enough to set fruit, the days were already growing too short, and unlike jalapenos, serranos are not daylight neutral. I didn't plant jalapenos, and my serranos and chiles de árbol are not likely to produce unless I dig them up, pot them, bring them indoors and hand polinate them.  I've done it before.

But back to the salsa.  We don't make a particularly hot salsa, and the number of peppers depends on the type of pepper, and the heat of the individual peppers as well.  For example usually jalapenos grown here are not as hot as those grown further south in Texas, where I grew up.   I used 2 serranos and 2 jalapenos for each pound of tomatillos along with 3 cloves of garlic.  Leave the papery peel on the garlic and leave the chiles whole.  You want to cook the chiles until they are blackened in spots, and soft, about 5 minutes on a griddle.  The garlic will take a little longer, 10 to 15 minutes.  You want the papery peel to be dry and brown and falling off the garlic with dark spots and the garlic to be soft and beginning to turn golden.

Using rubber gloves, remove the stems and seeds from the peppers and the peel from the garlic.  Throw the peppers and garlic into a blender jar or food processor along with the cooled tomatillos and any juice.  Add about a teaspoon of salt per pound of tomatillos.  Pulse or blend until everything has formed a coarse textured puree.  

Mince a small white onion (for 1 pound of tomatillos) and stir it into the puree.  Taste the salsa.  You might need to add a small amount of sugar to round out any bitter flavors.  Add sugar in small 1/2 teaspoon increments.  You don't want a sweet salsa, you just want to take the edge off the flavor if necessary. 

If you are going to use the salsa right away I would also add cilantro, about a generous quarter-cup, but since I am saving this salsa for use later in the week and freezing the rest, I left it out.  The cilantro does not freeze well and loses its fresh flavor.  Since it is always available it is better to add it just before serving or using the salsa.  This salsa is also rather thick, and it keeps better in this form.  If you want to use this right away as a dipping sauce for chips, you will probably need to add some water, probably 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup to thin 2 cups of salsa.

One pound of tomatillos will yield about 2 cups of salsa. 

I freeze this salsa as the canning process changes the flavor and raw onion is not safe for water-bath canning.  It keeps well in the freezer stored in one or two cup containers.

After a week, more than a week(?) of interruptions, chores, distractions, and other obsessions, I finally returned to Mine yesterday.  

In the end, sewing on the beads was the least of it.  I spent far more time coming to terms with the actual sweater and my own feelings about it.  

It is not that I don't love the sweater, I do, in some abstract sense.  I love the sweater when it is lying flat on the table (shown here immediately after sewing and unblocked).  I love the drape and the texture and the pretty beads.  It was only when I started to try to wear the sweater that my dreams ran smack dab into a wall of reality and the results were not exactly pretty.  

First of all, I realize now that some of my dreams of Mine were purely in my imagination.  I envisioned something, but I was ignoring certain clues.  I wanted to wear the sweater in a certain way.  I pictured it with a certain type of top, over a certain pair of pants I own,  I probably also imagined said sweater being worn by a certain idealized version of myself which is not particularly compatible with the person who looks back from my mirror.  

I  wanted to wear this top layered with a longer tee underneath.  When I tried it on, before sewing on the beads, this was possible, and not at all surprising as I had read the schematics in the pattern book and had a good idea where the sweater length would hit on me.  But I was not thinking about the visual evidence from the pattern photo. 

Notice how long the openings are at the neckline and the arm.  Notice the length of the sweater on the model.  There is a good bit of length and drape on that sweater.  And the weight of the beads definitely  add to this length.  The body of the sweater itself is unchanged, but the beads do cause the neckline and armholes to hang down from the weight.

I am not really complaining about that, I like the look.  But the added length changes the entire length of the sweater, and I did not fully take that into consideration.  At first I considered shortening it, but as I tried on outfit after outfit yesterday afternoon I realized, slowly, that the problem was more with my "idea" of the sweater than with the sweater itself.  The solution is obviously to find a way to wear the actual sweater, not the virtual sweater that lived in my head.

My original plans for Mine were a dismal failure.  Then began the long process of finding something that did work.  Many outfits, and hundreds of photos later, this is what I came up with.

I'll just start out by saying that the intended pants-to-wear-with-Mine, were a failure, so then my next project was to see what might work.  I was still running the idea of a tee as an under-layer through my brain.   That proved problematic as well.

First of all, most of my knit tops have the wrong neckline to wear with this sweater, as you can see in the photos on the lower left and upper right.  I need a deeper scoop on the neckline, and a longer tee.  To be long enough to peek below Mine, a tee would have to be 30 inches (long torso) which means I would have to make it, not in and of itself a problem, but I am still cautious about whether I would actually like the finished result.  Of course I could make a long tee, and if I didn't like it just cut it shorter.

Of the tee-based looks.  I think the black outfit is best.  Although you can't see it well here, I still think a little touch of the under-layer peeking beneath the sweater would be better.  The jeans look is questionable, and I doubt even a long tee would help, although it might if it were a loose, soft tee with drape. 

The jeans are also new, you can see the label peeking out in the bottom photo, and I was trying to figure out if this is a look that works for me, or if they are getting shipped back to the store on Monday.  The fit is good, which surprised me, and G loves them.  I am inclined to think that my rear-end is still a bit too ample for these jeans, although the top look, with the crisp shirt is much better.

I think the two looks with the shirt look much better with Mine.  I took my inspiration from the pattern photo, which is shown with a cotton blouse or shirt.  I didn't have anything appropriate in my closet so I borrowed one of G's shirts for this shoot.  It is a bit big through the shoulders and long in the sleeves,  but I think it worked well here.

I like the picture with the shirt and the flare leg jeans best.  The wider pants and heels make my legs look longer, and I am perhaps more comfortable with the more covered, less fitted look.  But I wonder if perhaps it is just a bit too baggy and my preference for this look speaks more to my own body-image issues than to how it actually looks.  The look with the jeans definitely gives more of a sense that there is a person under all that fabric. Of course the rolled up jeans and the long shirt do nothing to lengthen my legs, but I do like the jeans better with the longer top, and I like the spirit of this look even if I am undecided as to whether I can pull it off.  I am wondering if showing some shape is better than shapeless with long legs.  I need to think about this a little more.

In the end it is too hot to wear Mine now that summer has finally arrived.  I think the best solution is to let it sit in my closet until fall comes around and then decide what works best.  Maybe by then my efforts at exercise will have gotten beyond just trying to build up stamina and have yielded some body-image enhancing results.