Town of West Bend, Wi – If I listen very carefully, I can hear the rooster warming up his voice in the coop across the way, calling to the sun to begin to brighten the day. Sunday’s new snowfall and closed windows muffle his crowing, but once in a while I can faintly hear him and it’s heartening to know that the snow and cold haven’t stopped him from singing his usual song.
The first week of December flew by and for the first time in a very long time my planning list is deliberately shorter and I am not worried about getting everything done before Christmas.
Click HERE for the full story by Ann Marie Craig
Focusing on the few traditions we are celebrating this year – just enjoying this time before the holidays – is making things a lot less crazy at the Farmhouse. This past weekend I finally made the fruitcakes I had been planning all week.
The fruit was brandied the Sunday before and was sitting in the refrigerator, waiting for me to get a bag of the flour I wanted to use in the cakes. It was a good thing I had prepared more fruit than I’d need as I couldn’t help tasting a little bit of it every day last week; there was enough for the cakes and a bit left over that was scrumptious in muffins too.
My goodness, I should soak dried fruits in brandy and spices more often. The fruit was glorious in yogurt, in those muffins, and by the spoonful when no one was looking. When I said I had tasted some every day, I meant it. I may make brandied fruit a December staple from now on.
Today’s plan involves clearing out drawers of fabric pieces collected from various projects from the past 4 decades. I should be putting up the tree or cleaning a room, but I have in mind a sewn gift that requires odds and ends of fabrics and today is the day for that project.
Sunday is my usual creating day but yesterday was filled with breadstick making and window lighting, so I’m going to work on the sewing today and will get organized drawers at the same time. Besides, what’s the rush? The room cleaning and tree can wait a few more days.
If you are a sewist or a maker who loves to work with fabrics, you probably can relate to the rather magpie inclination to save even the smallest, usable scraps of cloth and pretty papers (yes, I sew paper, too!). The dresser drawers in question above are quite overflowing with fabrics – small and large – left over from dresses I made our older girls 40 years ago and some from our younger daughter too. There also are lengths of cotton and fleece left from projects they made as they learned to sew.
If you dig more deeply into the drawers you’ll find two pillow tops crocheted by my godmother (why have I not just made the pillows already??), and some 1930s flour and grain sacks printed with colorful patterns to make life during the depression more fun. My mother remembers and deplores wearing clothes made with the sacks, but I made myself a wild-orange button-down shirt in the 1970s with some of the same cloth bags and thought it was quite stylish.
The treasures will continue to pile up as I sort through the bottom drawer because it is also the present home of my first rag doll, Janey, who was brought into being on a 1910 treadle sewing machine by my grandmother for my third or fourth birthday.
During my childhood, Janey went back to Grandma once in a while for fixing and she always came back even better than new. Grandma once created a new face for her and you can still see her original features behind her newer, embroidered visage.
She often came back with better hair; the yarn having become tangled or worn, but her hair stayed nearly the same color over the years, her golden tresses morphing to a more yellow-blonde look. She still wears her original pink calico dress and bonnet, her tiny petticoat has been changed along the way, and she has a newer pink apron. I still feel the loss of her one other dress: a lovely long gown made from the fabric of the dress Grandma wore to my parents’ wedding. Janey’s dress was deep, brownish-green-turquoise in color and Grandma embellished it with tiny ribbed pleats and rhinestones around the neckline not unlike the dress we see her wearing in photos from that wedding day.
I don’t know exactly what happened to that dress. I have five sisters and when we were growing up the doll clothes were… click HERE for the rest of the story and a recipe for Brandied Fruit Muffins.
