Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Conversation and Kale Salad
Last night’s union talk and dinner at our home was crazy-successful….. an event that started out early and went late, ending with some hot-tubbing and cherry pie at midnight. About twenty people crammed into our small living room, and it was apparent to me that disenchanted as some of our activists may be, there is still a deep desire to explore the possibilities a new union and/or union movement…We already have agreement from someone to come and talk in September, so we will be working out the details of that shortly and going ahead with a little intimate series of discussions (and dinners) in our home.
Dinner last night was burgers (beef, lamb and veggie) with all the fixings, potato salad and pickles… plus a new kale recipe that I whipped up in an effort to use up the snow peas from the garden that were about to get too big for their own good. This turned out to be a definite keeper:
Conversation and Kale Salad
2 cups of shitaake mushrooms
5 garlic scapes
5 mid-sized curly Kale leaves
1 pound of snow peas
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
black sesame seeds
Dressing: rice vinegar, sunflower oil, sesame oil, juice of one orange
In advance, cut into pieces and cook the shitaake mushrooms and garlic scapes in sesame oil and a touch of soy sauce. Let cool.
Kale leaves should be cut very thin, with the ribs taken out. Snow peas may be cut into two or three sections.
Mix cooled mushrooms and scapes, shredded kale leaves, snow peas and sunflower seeds in a big salad bowl.
Mix dressing to your taste – the base is rice vinegar and sunflower oil with sesame oil being added in very small quantity for flavoring.
Toss the salad in the dressing, sprinkle black sesame seeds and a little salt on top – and you will have a pretty amazing salad to go with your summer grilling!
Making hope possible (a salon series?)
To be totally honest, I’m not particularly keen at being back in the office today. After a week of holidays and three days of training (in conflict management), my inbox is piled high and my motivation to tackle it is low. But still, I am brought back to the computer and to this blog after it all – and I rather miss posting here.
I’ve got friends in town for a week, and because one of them has some particular insight into the new union being formed by the CEP and CAW, we are having a small private salon (and dinner) at our home this evening. The talk is titled “A New Union?” and we will be exploring what this new organization might look like and what opportunities a new direction could raise for Canadian labour. Being a bit of a political geek, I’m looking forward to welcoming others of my ilk into my home for discussion. Even more than that, Brian and I are thinking of hosting a regular salon series out of our home starting with this event and carrying on into the fall. Perhaps a bi-monthly affair with a donation for dinner – we’re hoping the next one will involve a new book that’s just come out on reslience and localizing our economy (more info once the author responds on that).
Going back to school has reminded me just how much I enjoy the whole dinner and intellectual conversation equation – and although I will have more of that in my grad program this fall – I really don’t think there is such thing as too much engagement with others!
I’m thinking too, that such a series could put into practice something I think the labour and progressive movements fall far short on: rather than making hope possible, we too often focus on convincing the world of despair*. With that in mind, a salon series focussing on possibilities and visions could draw out some potentials for direction that we don’t see otherwise.
We’ll see how it goes tonight of course – a dinner of burgers and salads, and some insight into Canada’s new industrial union – not your normal party fare, but perhaps a new project for our home in 2012/13?
* A paraphrase of Raymond Williams “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing”.
Island pizza party
Last night was pizza and live music just around the corner from where we are staying. By the time we got our pizzas all of us were famished as evidenced by this photo of the girls wolfing down a pizza between them. Incidentally, I had no idea that traveling with two fourteen-year-olds could be so much fun.
Big Trib.
First sunny day on the BC coast and we are lucky enough to meet it here in Big Tribune Bay on Hornby Island.
Sewing Notebook: The (Un)Wedding Quilt!
Finally! I have been itching to show off this quilt for the last week and a half since I finished it, but because it was an un-wedding present for two of our closest friends I was worried that to parade it online would spoil the surprise. In any case, here it is – and almost queen-sized quilt made from two layer cakes (pre-cut fabric squares of 10-inches apiece) reconstituted into triangles and then sewn into a diamond pattern. Fabric is Curio by Basic Grey for Moda with Bella Solids “Natural” shade.
I feel like I really turned a corner on quilting with this project. While my actual quilting technique still lacks, I am pleased with the overall tidiness of this quilt, the precision of the piecing, and the strength of the binding. Because it was intended as a gift (which I decided to do at the last minute with only three weeks to spare) I took a lot of care with the small details – something I admit I am bad about when I do work for myself. Of course it takes almost no time to put the extra attention in as you work, and does it ever make a difference to the finished project!
Some of the things I think helped with my success on this piece include:
- Deadline – working with a deadline meant I didn’t wander away mid-quilting and forget my stitch settings or pacing. I also didn’t return to it after months only to rush through the end to “get it done.”
- Pinning – I was taught that quilters never pin, but because I wanted to ensure my corners met to make perfect diamonds, I decided to pin at the crucial junctions as I went. It worked. For the first time ever I have a piece that meets up close-to perfectly.
- Keeping it tidy – I read a tip about snipping threads as I went, and so tried it on this project. Definitely a practice to keep as I didn’t end up with errant threads quilted into the body or poking up through the top. This gave the finished project a much more professional look.
- Binding the quilt backwards – binding is one of my least favourite things, particularly the hand stitching at the end. Fortunately I found this instructable for backwards binding which allows for machine finishing – and I am hooked on this method forever!
- Getting help – quilting is a physical task, particularly in the design and layout stages when you are moving around blocks of fabric and then creating the quilt “sandwich”. For once I asked B. to help me, give me his opinion on block placement, and lay fabric out. It made my task so much easier, and I had someone to talk my choices over with too!
This quilt fits the top of a queen-sized bed but actually would tuck into the sides on a double – it’s about 80 x 80 inches. I think this is a good size for a gift as a full queen-sized quilt is really too large to use for anything other than a bed, while something of these dimensions is still usable on a couch or a guest bed.
I still have about 20 squares from this collection left over that I plan to turn into a lap quilt this summer as well. Very pleased with how this one turned out!
Red Cedar 