E- Eggs for Ostara

I colored eggs with lots of different natural dyes last year, some worked well, some did not.

This year I gave up on spinach, carrot and turmeric and made eggs colored with the things that worked best last year.

Black tea.

Black walnut hulls.

Onion Skins.

And my favorite:

Red cabbage!

This makes a beautiful dark purple blue that becomes bluer as it sits overnight. The high ph of the eggshell turns it a gorgeous shade of blue. Here is how I did it:

Chop up half a red cabbage from the grocery. put it in enough water to cover. boil one hour, adding water to keep it covered. 

Magic floating egg cartons!

Strain the pale purple chopped cabbage from the dark water. I served my cooked cabbage for dinner with vinegar and sugar and black pepper. 

The water looks really dark but it takes a long time to color the eggs.

Cool the liquid and add raw white eggs and 1/2 tsp salt. Boil the eggs the same way you make hard boiled eggs. remove the pot from the heat, add 1 tbsp vinegar and leave in the water overnight. If you plan to eat the eggs, do this overnight int he fridge.

When you remove the eggs from the vinegar water they will be purplish but  in the air they will become bluer.

Eggs in cabbage vinegar water.
I love the reflection .

Voila! Gorgeous eggs.  The lighter blue ones were cooked in the same water the next day. I bet I could have made another batch in that water, but I needed the pot.

Really big beets. No dice.

Beets were disappointing. They stained me, the counter, spoon and cutting board red but the eggs came out beige! I tried twice, because I am stubborn. I recolored those eggs with more onion skins.

Dilute onion skin water- maybe yellow?

The four red and gold ones at the top of the egg box and all of the ones in the box to the right were colored with the skins from one bag of yellow onions. Boiled in the colored water and then soaked overnight, they are almost red, especially if you begin with brown eggs!

The pale greenish ones are calendula flower petals- unimpresive to me. I overdyed two of those in cabbage water- they are army green.

Another way to decorate eggs is the PA Deutsche traditional scratched design. It is an art that began in Europe and came here in the 18th Century, but has nearly died out now.

You can see one I began working on in the bowl of really dark colored eggs I made just for scratching. Black tea or walnut hulls for browns, cabbage for the navy blue-black ones, the red are onion skin.

Scratched eggs will be for another post, but that is why I made the very dark colored eggs.

It's snowing right now, but I am going camping tomorrow and bringing these to the 18th C farm we are staying on. I will scratch them with traditional 18th C patterns representing power and blessings of the returning Spring. There are a few extant examples and a few reports of the work, but several  19th C newspaper photographs and reports of family eggs handed down 3 generations. The ones thought to bestow power or blessings were traditionally not kept but broken and buried when the work was done. 

Art & Love part 2

Watercolor study of reds.  I wrote "I love you" all around in the shape of a heart.

When last you saw the parts for the woven valentine I made this year there were cut strips of papers I have inked and painted, a love letter, some "I love you" messages and a big pastel heart.

The background is mainly light and the foreground mainly dark.  

The heart of "I love you" on the dark red paper overlaps with the red pastel heart on the long background strips, but after weaving a few inches I can see that it doesn't read as a heart.  The contrast of the light and dark highlights the weaving but the heart is too delicate.  It needs repetition, something to show the eye where to look for the angles of the heart design.

There are plenty of touches of orange in the paper, so I chose to paste a yellow watercolor heart cut from my paper stash onto the background.  I then repeated the pastel drawing of a heart on that.  That should do it.

The weaving pattern is called a 2/2 twill.

Strip by strip I cut and then wove my messages and images and colors together.  

I like the way the yellow heart is not traditional, but makes the whole thing bright and cheery.  Like a little sun.

I considered writing on the heart too, but I decided against it because this is busy enough.  

There has to be a few places where your eye can rest, not just work, work, work to read and understand.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Not just to my loves but to my readers and Valentine's Blog Party friends too!

Butter Girl gives Thanks

Over at Modern Alternative Mama I read this post about Prayers for Praising not Pleas.  I spend a lot of time thanking the Goddess for what I have and what I have been through, both good and bad.

I don't like the pressure on either of us to give a fancy "just right" valentine so each year I try to make one.
This is a ransom note I made for Bearded Bob a few years ago from a wood cutout, magazine cutouts
 and a beautiful folded paper lobster. It is hard to read, but it is signed: Butter Girl.

I managed to stumble my way onto the idea that focusing on the HAVE and not the NEED TO HAVE would make me happier (with the help of a wonderful spouse, marriage therapy and some really bad examples of marriages around me).  Then, it was just a matter of spending most of 20 years figuring out how to make my head stop collecting mistakes and start collecting triumph.

Oh how I wish I had seen that post about list making when I was a newlywed!   It is the formula for a really sincere Valentine, so I have shared it over at The Valentine's Blog Party.

Imbolc Par-tay follow-up

Gorgeous creativity poem to Brigid for over my loom from Kestril.

Beautiful yellow English primrose from Cat for the altar.

The ice bowl filled with holly twigs and leaves came out fantastic!  I have these little vintage silver stars originally intended for holding candles on Christmas trees.  I put one in the bottom of the ice bowl and placed the lovely green 8 hour candle on top of it. I love those darn emergency candles!

The reason I needed the star is because when I un molded the bowl/candle holder in the morning after it was outside all night to freeze it wasn't COMPLETELY frozen... It must have been just 32 for only part of the night.  The top 3 inches or so are frozen clear as glass- the inside and outside layers of the bowl are frozen in big crystals.  That indicates really slow freezing.  The water that remained in between the two shell bowl bottoms splooshed out into the sink.  Yay for me for unmolding this in the sink and not on the table!!

Big slow-formed crystals of water with gaps holding the star and candle.  So shiny.

The day began with good smells and presents!   We set ourselves up with Mimosas made with OJ and Prosecco and admired the altar and the day.  We spent plenty of the day catching up with family news and love life news too.  Kestril brought a wonderful mix-CD of songs about milk, creativity, growth... it was just great and everyone got one!

Our meal was a yummy 3 cheese quiche and these beautiful chicken pot pie muffins.  I made a bowl of sweet and sour cucumbers with dill and lavender using goldenrod vinegar I made in the summer.  I certainly need to get the recipe for those pot pie muffins!

Then we got raffia all over the place.

Traditional wheat crosses

 With instructions we shared a good time trying to weave wheat crosses for everyone.  The raffia went everywhere, but it cut easily with scissors so I was glad that was our choice.


Combinations of weaving, braiding and tying resulted in a bunch of awesome icons to hang over our doors at home.

 


No one was in any hurry to leave, and before we knew it the time was late.  What a good day!















The candle kept burning until I blew it out before dinner.

End of the Garden Pickles

It's the time of year when we appreciate the bounty we have had and begin to glean the half grown squash and tomatoes and things. These wont get any bigger since the evenings are growing so cool, and that means pickles!
I usually make lots of dilly beans in the heat of summer but I have never tried fermented vegetables before. It turns out that the same bacteria that give us yogurty goodness also give us pickley goodness. I had no idea it was so easy:
1. 2 gallon glass crock (under 10 bucks from Walmart)
2. About 4lbs of small garden vegetables, washed and blossom ends removed.
3. 1 onion, sliced, 1 head of garlic, peeled, 2 seed heads of dill, intact.
4. 1 gallon of boiled water with 3/4c off kosher or pickling salt dissolved in it.
5. Grape leaves. Mine are wild in the backyard. 10 is plenty. These add crispness from tannic acid. You could use 1 tsp black tea if you have no grape leaves, but the pickles may be tea stained by that.
6. Big jar full of water. Small plate or plastic lid.

This is by far the prettiest thing I've made lately.

Wash crock and big jar and plate with hot soapy water and sanitize by pouring a kettle of boiling water over it. Place cover on crock and let steam 5 minutes.
Pack layer of grape leaf, onion rings, garlic chunks and vegetables, until jar is full 1 inch from top. End with grape leaf layer.
Place plate or plastic lid into the mouth of the crock, as big as will fit. This is called the follower and it keeps everything below the brine. Vegetables are whole. I used peppers, green zebra tomatoes, zucchini and pattypan squashes. Cukes, radishes and garlic scapes would all work great.
Put the crock into the sink.
Put the big jar on top of the follower, fill it with water so it will hold down your pickles.
Pour the still warm gallon of brine over everything until the crock is full to the top edge. It will overflow into the sink.
Now carefully put the crock on the counter at room temperature. In 2 days you will see bubbles. You may want to put it in a pan because it may overflow a little bit as the pickles age. Taste daily day 3-7. When you like the taste, remove the big jar and place the crock with its lid into the fridge!
You made pickles!
The fermenting stops in the cold fridge, you have a month or so to enjoy your pickles.
These should be ready on the Equinox for our meal. Next I want to try making sauerkraut.

The December Dilemma

For us, the winter holidays are about all of the celebrations, not just ours.

Dear New Mamma,  I too live in an interfaith home, and I joined with my husband when my children were 2 and 4 years old. I am invited to speak every year on an interfaith panel in our area called "the December Dilemma".

In short, my choice was to build our spirituality all year, and our holiday family traditions around interior decorating choices that my husband and I discussed, but since I was doing the "work", I asked him to hold his comments until later in January when I would sit down with him and say: "so, how was that wreath for you? Did you miss anything from your childhood that we could add for our children?"

That way, he felt honored and respected and our holiday traditions could evolve. No on the spot conflict if I hung icicles and 5 pointed stars all over the dining room ceiling.

I would like to go outside and see this on my birthday!

When it came to other families- relatives or not- I fielded a lot of questions. My answer was always the same: No, my kids know what our beliefs are, seeing your practices (house, tree, egg nog, menorah) will not confuse them.

 This is no different than my birthday, which is December 23. I open presents whether they have no paper or Christmas paper or birthday paper. It doesn't change the giving. We graciously show interest and participate in anything anyone wants to invite us to or wants to share with us, we offer to share with others- the color of the paper does not measure your spirituality. In my opinion, spirituality has to do with your family's habits most of the year, little to do with the holidays.

I should note that the families I meet at the December Dilemma talk who have the worst trouble are controlling people themselves or have controlling visitors and families. the Jewish child who's Christian grandmother gives her a gold crucifix, the critical mother who gives ornaments to her non-tree raising daughter. I advise a response which is gracious, but not compromising one's beliefs as far as having a child wear jewelry not appropriate for them. I wouldn't let my daughter wear lacy lingerie as a princess dress if she were 5, no matter how pretty she though it was, but I wouldn't make a fuss at the family dinner. I would just say "How thoughtful" and put it in the car. Donate the jewelry to a convent and change your plans next year.

Hope your new family grows crookedly but happy. Be willing to do it wrong sometimes and you will have fun. the 4 year old is now 24 and she is lovely.

regards, Hawk