last stand

i have company coming for lunch today. it's a casual affair; just sandwiches but last week when i was feeling pretty out of sorts the one thing that i thought would make me feel better was one really fine and ripe tomato on a sandwich, and maybe a friend to share it with.

when your fantasy life is tame like that, you get to live all your wildest dreams.

but anyway, since i was in the mood for it, yesterday i baked custard. you can't do it on a whim 'coz it has to set up, but it's easy to do.

this one's a little caramel number, which in this case means a plain honey-sweetened custard with caramelized sugar in the bottom of the dish. once the custard sets in, the caramel turns to sauce and you can either eat it out of the cup or you can plate it and let the sauce run down. either way it's lovely.

the custard mix can be beaten by hand, or you can just toss it into the blender.

be sure to put the cups in a water bath before you put them in the oven to bake.

and when it comes out, let it set to cool. you can do it a day or two in advance and it will be perfect.

mmmmm, custard.

imelda who?

so for no particular reason i decided to inventory and photograph my shoes. i like shoes. yes, i know it's a very typically girly thing to say, and if you know me you know i'm not exactly the fairy princess type, but it's there all the same.

so i made a little slideshow of them, which you can find here, and while i was at it, i dredged up an old song of mine called, appropriately, shoes.

it occurs to me while i'm writing this that i have one more pair of shoes out in the garage, with my drysuit: a fetching little blue neoprene cold water bootie, but i am not going out there to get them.

maybe some things should be left to the imagination.

cut and fill

my lenten project is to make some nice candles for people to take home from church at easter.

it's  a meditation, to sit and carve the designs into the candles and to patiently fill the holes with colored wax, and it's also an act of faith: you never know what the design is really going to look like until you scrape off the extra wax when you're done.

every year i have to learn the medium; what you can do with the wax is largely dependent on how crumbly the candle is, or how sticky it is, and what kind of coating is on it. places where two colors touch are tricky because you have to be very precise with the cutting.

the good news is that because you're going to scrape off the top layer anyway, you can go crazy with the sharpie making your reference marks and the general sketch. the sharpie is also handy for marking out any area you're going to want to be white later. to me it's easier to see that solid black area and carve around it than it is to carve around an outline. it also shows up better when you start to lay in wax around it.

so. loosely sketch the design. carefully, carefully cut out a section or a few sections that will have the same color. welt the wax just enough to fill the holes, and then run over it with a hot knife to set the wax in.

scrape away enough of the excess wax so that you can see where to make the new cuts for the new color and repeat this cutting, filling, sealing, and scraping until the whole thing is filled in.

now comes the nervous part.

carefully, gently, patiently scrape away the extra surface wax until the design is revealed.


that's where faith comes in.

out to play

well, the skiing is very nice, so i'm spending less time here at my desk than i otherwise might.

i have half of the month of february photographed (but not yet clocked) for the "13" project, but i'm not showing it here.

yet.

yesterday at bolton they had the #1 chair running, which is my favorite chair and it's not running all that often. i still take a picture up on the elbow of peggy dow's, even though i'm not going back to re-do the video.

speaking of which, why don't i just post it again here, so you can see it? it's my love song to a ski trail.

thirteen- january

so the first month is over.

every thirteen hours, wherever i am, i take a picture. even if the rules allowed me to go do something more interesting or more flattering for the picture, it'd get pretty tired in just a few days.

and around the clock i go. this is what my life looks like in thrirteen hour snapshots.