Winter Forecast

Morning fog

Most communities rely on the weather channel or the Farmer's Almanac for their weather forecasts.  Not us mountain folk.  We turn to Joe down at the hardware store.

Joe uses  time-honored traditions, which have been passed down by his mother, to predict the winter weather.   During the month of August he wakes up early each morning and heads to a special place to see if it is foggy or not.  If there is a dense fog, he puts a large bean in a jar.  If the fog is wispy, a small bean is put in the jar.  This year he had five large  beans, which means there will be five big snowstorms, and seven small beans, which indicates seven snow dustings.

He also looks at how the bees are building their nests.  This year he observed that they were creating large, thick nests, which suggests colder weather.  If blades of grass twist and intertwine with each other, that is a sign of a colder than usual winter as the woven locks create a natural shelter for smaller animals.

What get every ones attention is the mention of black squirrels.  Their appearance is synonymous with a cold, harsh winter.  Up until two years ago a black squirrel had not been seen in this area for over 80 years.  The winters of 2009 and 2010 were snowy, cold and harsh.  This year people have sent Joe 164 black squirrel pictures taken around the area.

For the past two years Joe predictions have been dead-on 90% of the time.  This year he predicts a very cold, icy winter with wide scale power outages.

Florida, here I come.

Ashe County Arts Council

The Ashe County Arts Council is located in a cute stone house downtown.  The front room is filled with items for sale made by local artists.  There is pottery, jewelry, books and paintings.  The next room houses changing exhibits.  This month the theme is trees to celebrate the 75th anniversary of these famous words by Joyce Kilmer : I think that I shall never see...a poem as lovely as a tree.    There are paintings, photos, sculptures, handmade books, paper and fiber crafts that depict trees, forests, leaves and all things related to trees.


What really caught my attention was this mural that is made from real tree trunks and moss.

 I asked hubby if we could make something like that and his said, rather curtly, "NO".  But that won't keep me from thinking of a way to replicate it...

Here are a few of my other favorite items:

Aren't they great???

It's a table.

  For such a small county, we have a wonderful arts council.  Every year they arrange plays, musical events, the literary festival, monthly gallery crawls, barn quilts, holiday concerts, and they beautify downtown with art work and murals.  Now, where did I put my axe?        

Ashe County Quilt Fair

I sent my application and $5.00 to the Ashe County Piecmakers Quilt Guild to enter my quilt in the Ashe County Quilt Fair.  The money was for a professional judge to look at my quilt and give feedback.  I was a little nervous over this since it is my first quilt and I  know of the many mistakes it contains.

Hubby and I went downtown to the Fair and my quilt was the first one we saw after coming in the front door.  It was hanging alongside three other quilts in its category and it had a white ribbon.  I came in third out of four quilts!

Here kitty kitty

On that note, we meandered around the large open area of hanging quilts with our clipboards.  Each person is asked to judge their favorite quilt in different categories.  Here are some of our favorites:

This one has all different sized squares

Great appliques

Best in Show  This one is all hand sewn.

A different snowman for each month

Terrific colors

After the show I picked up my quilt and the judge's assessment.  He liked the fabric choices, but thought I could should do more background quilting and cut my threads a little closer.  I was happy with my third place ribbon and can't wait for next year.  I am thinking yo-yos.

All appliqued

Quilting

Last fall I picked up a quilting magazine and fell in love with the quilt that was featured on the cover.  It didn't look too difficult, it was only a lap quilt and the cover said "Super simple beginner quilt", so how hard could it be?  After attending two quilting classes at the local community college I began to work on my first "real" quilt.  I think the hardest part was choosing the fabrics.  Never bring your hubby to the fabric store with you.  He will tell you that each and every fabric you pick out is perfect and will let out long sighs and give you puppy dog eyes.

I worked on the background blocks for weeks.  Why won't the fabric cut in perfect squares even when I use the ruler, rotary cutter and mat?  Who will notice that the corners aren't perfect?  Why, I'll just cover the mistakes with the leaves!

By the time I was ready to work on the leaves and border strips, I hated the fabrics that I had chosen.  They just didn't work anymore.  After several trips back to the fabric stores, one in Florida and one in Hickory, I came away with these:

Fabric for the leaves

Border fabrics

Backing fabric

The leaves took forever to make.  First I had to trace the leaf design on Heatbond paper and iron the paper to the back of the fabric.  The leaves had to be cut out and then ironed onto the background blocks one at a time.  It took a good week to decide the location of all of the leaves.  And don't forget each leaf had a small brown stem that had to be appliqued first.  I chose the blanket stitch to applique the leaves with.  After much You-tube searching. (you can find You-tube videos showing how to do quilts from start to finish) practicing and several e-mails to the help desk at Janome, I was ready to begin my first applique.  I could not figure out how to applique around a 90 degree angle, so I had to sew up to the point, stop the machine, and begin at the other side of the point.  Each leaf took 30 to 45 minutes to applique.  Many weeks later the leaves were complete.

Now for the real quilting part.  I chose the cowards way out-stitch in the ditch-which is sewing along the seams.  But first, all of the leaves needed brown veins.  A few weeks later, they were complete.  The ditch stitching was pretty easy, just don't look too close.

After more You-tube studying, I was ready for the binding.  I enjoyed hand-stitching the binding to the back of the quilt as it put me in a zen-like state.  Then ta-da, it was done!  Now to get it entered into the Ashe County Quilt show.

On the Same Plate

The culmination of Ashe County's Literary Festival is the On the same Plate luncheon.  Each guest was served a tasty lunch of quiche, salad, fruit and a wonderful piece of apple cake.  Four of the festival's authors, and one moderator, held a discussion regarding the role of family in their writing.

Georgann Eubanks spoke about the stories her 90 year old mother tells her.  Her recollection usually doesn't match with her mom's recollection of events, but that doesn't make the story any less true.

Wayne Caldwell wrote Cataloochee,  which takes place in the mountains of North Carolina following the Civil War.  It wasn't until he was older that he found out his roots were in Cataloochee .  He has gotten to know his ancestors through his research and fictional writings.


Darnell Arnoult grew up in a family of women, her grandmother, great-aunt, her mom and herself.  Her mom had some mental health issues that clouded her childhood.  Although she writes fiction, many of her stories deal with mental health problems and writing has helped her to understand and accept her mother's illness.


Mark DeCastrique is a mystery writer and he explained how important "voice" is to writing, especially mystery books.  Writing from the first person lets the reader learn clues and details along with the main character.  Third person writing is great for thrillers as the reader knows who the protagonist is, while the characters in the book do not.

Mark DeCastrique, Wayne Caldwell, Ken Burrows, Darnell Arnoult, Georgann Eubanks

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with these five wonderful authors.  They were insightful, witty and a lot of fun.  They talked about some personal issues using humor and candor.  I won a door prize of a yellow mum plant that is sitting proudly in my living room.  I can not wait for next year's On The Same Plate Luncheon.

NC's Literary Lineage Lunch

Part of this year's Ashe County's Literary Festival was a lunch and presentation with Georgann Eubanks.  She has written three books that are guide books to different areas of NC and historic sites where authors have lived and worked.  There are more than 170 writers featured in Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains.

"Every book is a journey, carrying us into worlds unknown and familiar. Through them we learn about ourselves and others--the culture of whole communities, the poetry of place, and the daily chores, observances, and surprises of life among characters imagined and real.

Now suppose you combined the journey of a book--many books even--with an actual trip, say, a statewide tour of the places, people, and events described by those curious creators of books: in this case North Carolina's poets, playwrights, novelists, biographers, and essayists. Throughout history, our state's native and visiting writers have been a talented lot. Connecting their work and lives to actual places in North Carolina worth visiting is the idea behind this series...." Georgann Eubanks

After a delightful lunch that consisted of green and pasta salads, ham and cheese sandwiches, veggie wraps and chips, we were treated to a slide show of many of the authors that have lived, or stayed briefly, in North Carolina from the 1700's onward.  The list is long and includes F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Margaret Mitchell, Thomas Wolfe and O. Henry.  Along with the slides, we were treated with stories of the authors exploits and readings from some of their works.

Everyone had a fun time and I am looking forward to reading her books and talking hubby into taking some of those day trips.

Community Read 2011

This is the fourth year of the Ashe County's Literary Festival, On the Same Page.  The theme this year is Family Matters.  The kick-off was the month-long community read Night by Elie Wiesel.  Night is the story of the author's year long internment in a Nazi concentration camp during the last year of World War II.  After being freed, Wiesel struggles with his guilt of letting his father die alone and with his loss of faith.

There was a book discussion at the library led by Rosemary Horowitz, a Judaic scholar at ASU.  After the war, Wiesel wrote a book about his time in captivity.  It was 800 pages long and written in Yiddish.  He later translated the book into French and then English, and it became only 120 pages long.  There has been much controversy about what was left out of the translations, and why.

What I can't figure out is why they chose this particular book as the Community Read.  It was not written by a North Carolina author and it has nothing to do with North Carolina at all.  As for family, Wiesel did stay with his father while he was held by the Nazi's, but abandoned him at the end for fear of being beaten for helping him.  His mother and younger sister never got out alive, but his two older sisters did.  They are briefly mentioned in the book.  Before the war, his father spent little time with his family as he was a Biblical scholar and his life revolved around his studies.

I hope next year they chose something a little more uplifting and easy to read.  Concentration camp memories do not lead fun conversation or lively discussions.

Hidden talent (very hidden)

When I saw there was going to be an art class at the club house taught by Arlene Florence,  I decided to give it a whirl.  Arlene had her own art school and has exhibited paintings in museums and galleries.   I got the list of supplies, ran to Michaels in Boone and spent $62.00 on paints, brushes and canvas.

There were 10 of us for the class.  To start we placed 10 dots on our canvas, then connected the dots with straight or curved lines.

Now comes the fun part, painting between the lines.  After using the red, yellow and blue paints, we had to create out own colors.

Each painting is completely different from each other.

  

"Each person is unique, just as in handwriting.  I want to bring this out in the art." - Arlene Florence

My finished project:

All of our masterpieces are hanging on a wall at the club house.  I think I need to take a few more lessons.  We had a lot of fun.  Come to find out, if you bought the supplies from Arlene it was only $4.00.  (don't tell hubby)

Cake Contest

It is Labor Day Weekend and that means it's time for the cake contest at the Ashe County Farmer's Market.  Last year I lost out to the Kentucky Bourbon Poundcake, so I knew I had to do something special this year.   I dug out my Betty Crocker cook book and found an Italian Cream Cake recipe that I had made once before.

After a fast trip to the grocery store, I was ready to start creating.  The recipe is not an easy one, there are 5 eggs to separate and buttermilk to churn.  Of course,  no cake is complete until there is flour on every service of the kitchen.  This a three layer cake, so that meant moving pans around in the oven so they would cook evenly. After the layers cooled, I frosted them with cream cheese frosting and chopped pecans.  When I couldn't figure out how to put the nuts on the sides of the cake I just threw small handfuls and they stuck wherever they landed.

Saturday morning I delivered my cake to the farmer's market and I was the first to enter.  I left it with three teenagers and did some shopping.  45 minutes later there were two more entries.  One of the teenagers said they were made by the same person, her mom.  I threw my hands up in the air and thought  my chances were over and I hightailed it home.

Much to my surprise, I got a call a few hours later telling me I was the winner.  Out of five entries, everyone liked mine the best!  I am going to get my name in the paper and bragging rights for the rest of the year.

Italian Cream Cake

1 cup butter                                                          1 cup buttermilk
2 cups sugar                                                         1 t. vanilla
5 lg eggs, separated, room temp                           1 cup coconut
2 cups all purpose flour                                        1/2 cup pecans
1 t. baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour three 8 or 9 inch pans.  In medium bowl combine flour and baking soda; set aside.

Cream butter and sugar.  Add egg yolks and vanilla, mixing well.  Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk.  Fold in coconut and pecans.

Thoroughly wash beaters.  In medium bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.  Fold in 1/3 of the eggs whites into cake batter to lighten.  Fold in remaining whites.  Spread evenly in pans.

Bake the three 9 inch pans 25 minutes and a the 8 inch pans 35 minutes.  Cool in pans 10 minutes, remove cake layers and cool thoroughly on wire racks.

Frost and eat your cake knowing that you have made a winner.

Ital

Farmer's Market

You never know what you'll find at our farmer's market.  All goods need to be locally made or grown.  Last week there was a sheep shearing demonstration.

  

It was amazing to see the sheep just lay there as it was sheared.  Its' wool must have been 4 or 5 inches thick.

There was someone making yarn with a spinning wheel.

And chickens and fresh eggs.