ERA Graphics - Winter 2005 Newsletter

Rain, rain, rain - but that is a lot better than the snow that has paralyzed much of the nation over the holiday season. Oh, yeah, Happy New Year to all, healthy and prosperous, too. All was quiet here over the holidays, just family and friends - and no snow. Just a few miles east of here in Lake Tahoe - eight feet.

kudos and brickbats

Since I have not done any shows since the last newsletter, nothing much to report. However, The Hun keeps giving you lots of kitchen tips in his section so I thought I would throw in some of my own which may have little or nothing to do with crafting.

For those of you who love to read, I highly recommend "The Book Seller of Kabul" by Asne Seierstad. This book, which is non-fiction, provides a vivid window into life in Afghanistan during and just after the Taliban. Seierstad got herself invited to live with an Afghani family and became a fly on the wall.

Since you are reading this newsletter as an email, you all have computers and have a modicum of computer facility. Most have a bunch more. We have recently switched our portal to Firefox. Firefox is not a search engine but a portal that allows you to set your home page and enter the URL to other web sites. It has a Google search request space already on it.

This system is available for free from www.mozilla.org and is more than worth the small effort to download it. As fast as a dog licking an ice cream bowl, no pop-ups and every new feature you could wish for, such as tabs. You don't have to use it all, but it sure beats Explorer and Safari. And it gives you a chance to stick your finger in Bill Gates' eye.

One of the most beautiful and inspiring books (which to me means my fingers get itchy to make something) is a new one by Jim Widness and Ginger Summit, November 2004, "The Complete Gourd Carving Book." There are over 600 color photos of carved gourds that will take your breath away and for only $15. This is the definitive book on linear and relief carving using hand and power tools. Also included are special tutorials on inlay, chip carving and gouge work.

A great place for books and tools for gourd carving is The Caning Shop, 926 Gilman St., Berkeley, California 94710. 800-544-3373 or www.caning.com. BTW Jim Widness is the owner of the Caning Shop.

Old Age
283-004I

i'm sorry

As of January 1st every last supplier has raised their prices a substantial amount. Thus I have no choice but to increase mine a tad. After February 1st, check the web site prices under the ordering section for the increases.

up coming shows and classes ta ta!

* For those of you in southern Florida I have arranged to teach two beading classes at Amore Beads in Coral Springs. On Saturday, February 12th, I will teach my, now famous and fabulous, Amulet Bag, albeit a small one (but the class will provide all the knowledge for participants to make one of any size). On Sunday the 13th, I will teach the Spiral Bracelet. Full kits are included in the class price - you only have to bring yourself and your tools. Call Linda at 954-227-1115 for prices, directions and sign-up.

* My classes at the Creative Palette are set. Cheryl and I will team teach (two for the price of one and lots of personal attention) three classes at The Creative Palette in St. Marys (for those of you who are picky, yes, they do not use an apostrophe), Georgia in February. We will be teaching three new classes and for those in the know I have beta tested each class before introducing it here.

I will introduce an evening bag made from a canteen gourd which will not look like you made it yourself. Each participant will receive a cleaned and prepped gourd. We will use wood burning techniques, paint, texture mediums, foil, beads and stamps to embellish the gourd and turn it into an incredible evening bag. The project will be completed in the class. This is one spectacular all day project.

For those less ambitious there will be a gourd shard necklace project, for a half-day, using a gourd shard (waste not want not!) to make a pendant. In the other half-day class we will introduce an ancient beading technique developed by the Huichol Indians of Mexico. This so cool - you will not have to thread a needle for this class and yet it uses seed beads. Here, we will bead a trinket box.

All the info including pictures of the projects can be found on the site, www.oldtowncrafts.com . You can also go there to make room reservations.

* For those in the southwest I will be teaching three classes at Stampers Anonymous in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on March 18, 19 and 20th. Here I will be teaching the fabric doll, the polymer clay Spirit Vessel and the small Amulet Bag. Check with Celia at 918-270-1930 for information and sign-ups.

* Lisa Ohmer has asked that I again teach the Amulet Bag project at Artiscape, (in Coshocton, Ohio, April 2005), to accommodate those who could not get into the class last year. You might remember that the class sold out very early as I can only accommodate 12 participants due to the need for much hands-on instruction.

My other class will be Face to Face, or Polymer Clay 101. This is a terrific class for those with minimal or no experience with polymer clay. Emphasis is on molding faces, making faces from scratch, surface decoration of clay and adding embellishments with wire and beads. Participants will leave this class with two or more pins.

Go to Lisa's web site www.europeanpapers.com , for more information. And I kid you not on this one, the classes get sold out very fast. This retreat was fabulous last year and I am sure will be even better this time around.

Starface II - sm
283-008I

pewter update

Expression magazine has featured my pewter faces in the New Tools section of the latest issue. Also a number of major artists, including Lisa Pavelka (a major polymer clay artist) and Kathy Riker (a major gourd artist) are using my pewter faces and charms in projects that will appear in their newest books, due out early next year. Presenting new and different project ideas is always a challenge for an author and several artists who saw the faces at various shows say they were inspired to go in new directions. Lisa is also using the faces in the next project she is taping for the Carol Duval Show.

sources

I am continually asked about the sources for the material I use in my work. Many artists carefully guard their sources as trade secrets, but I am pleased to reveal mine, for they deserve the business and this knowledge cannot harm me in any way, as no one else can duplicate my art.

Send me some of your favorite sources and I will put them in the next newsletter (with proper attribution of course).

Fire Mountain Gems and Beads - A huge, 926 page, catalog with everything for beaders. Very good prices for seed beads, especially if you need small quantities. 800-355-2137 (24hrs) www.firemountaingems.com

Rings and Things - Another very large catalog with good prices, especially if you get together with several friends and order large quantities. A terrific source for charms, findings and unusual bits and pieces. 800-366-2156. www.rings-things.com

Out On A Whim - This is an amazing source for high quality, fairly priced seed beads. The store is in Cotati, a cute town in Sonoma in northern California. Their web site is extensive and easy to use - www.whimbeads.com

Greg Lesher Farms - For those of you in northern California and Oregon a really good source for gourds is direct from the farm. Greg and Mary are enthusiastic supporters of all gourd patches (that is what gourd groups are called). They are open for business once a year for a great festival (check their web site in May). They ship all over the world and are warm, friendly and fuzzy people. POB 157, Knights landing, CA 95645. www.gourdfarmer.com

bistro hun

I promised you some thoughts on vegetarian cooking and vegetable stock, but I must first confess that I am an unabashed carnivore. Therefore, my writing about vegetarianism is a little like the story of the Rabbi who converted to Catholicism - but I'll save that for another time. Over the years I have modified my craving and menu planning to accommodate ERA, who cannot stand red meat and eats very little animal protein of any kind.

While there are a bazzilion vegetarian cookbooks out there, all but a very few turn my blood cold and make me want to rush off to a steak house and order everything on the menu. I could embrace censorship if the sole objective is to publicly burn all copies of "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" and the other vegetarian cookbooks from the 1960s, written by quasi hippies yearning to live in a yurt. They are dull, irritating and thoroughly unappetizing - take your mung bean paste and...

And my disdain for the raw food trend, omophagia, in restaurants (heat nothing over 118 degrees and make pasta out of nut paste) knows no bounds - just don't call it edible food. As for the chemistry experiments going on in restaurants such as el Buli in Spain or WD40 in NYC - I eat for pleasure not a challenge. The thought of having a waiter stand over me and tell me how to consume my food is ludicrous, since I have actually been practicing my eating these many years and become quite good at it.

N.B. A special note from me, Roberta - after reading the above you can well see why I call him The Hun.

Amazingly (to me) there are a few vegetarian cookbooks out there that I find enjoyable reading and make me want to jump out of my chair and run into the kitchen:

The best by a country mile is "The Vegetarian Compass" by Karen Hupert Allison, Little Brown, 1998. Karen Allison, with her husband Ken, ran Hubert's in New York until her untimely death at a very young age. Mrs. Allison actually makes cooking without meat appealing and interesting. Every time I pick up this book I seem to find something new and intriguing. Unfortunately the book is out of print but can still be found new or good used condition on Amazon.com and Alibris.com as well as other Internet book sites.

One of the best meals I have ever had was at Greens, a thoroughly vegetarian restaurant, in San Francisco when Deborah Madison was the executive chef. Greens is still around but Deborah isn't. Fortunately she published a terrific cookbook (and several others, later on), "The Greens Cook Book," Bantam, 1987. These recipes are not for the dieter, since it is often the copious amounts of butter and cream that give these dishes their unctuous, luscious qualities. These recipes are also not for the vegans as they use animal products. For the rest of us this cookbook could serve as the vegetarian New Testament to Allison's Old Testament. Together one can think of them as the vegetarian bible.

One of the nice things about vegetable stocks is that they call for vegetable peelings and scraps, such as potato peelings, mushroom stems and egg plant skin. Economical and delicious - a quinella (a special way to win big at the race track). Deborah Madison offers up two, a summer and winter stock, and Karen Allison, four stocks; basic strong and light, dark rich meaty and rich sweet.

Rather than give you a specific recipe (cut up all these things, throw them in a pot and cover with water) I will tell you a few tricks I have found to make your vegetable stocks special.

The first is to throw in some cut up squash, seeds, web and all. Yup, the seeds and webbing give the stock a rich sweet flavor that cannot be duplicated any other way. Kay Rentschuler in the New York Times suggests separating the bulb from the stem of an acorn squash, reserve the stem for a vegetable side and cutting up the bulb, with the skin on, into 3/4 inch slices and drying them in a 150 degree oven over night to concentrate the flavor when using them in a stock. I did it and it works wonders.

Throw a piece of hard cheese rind (such as parmesan) into the stock as it cooks. I save all my rinds in a plastic bag in the fridge. Gnawing the softened cheeses from the rind is a treat for the cook.

Boiling down a stock after you remove all the flavoring ingredients, while reducing the volume of the resulting product, concentrates the flavor. Do like I do and make a very large pot of stock (quadruple the standard recipes) and freeze the stock in four to five cup packages so you only have to do this every other month or so.

Lastly, another contest. To the winner, a free subscription to the ERA Graphics Newsletter! What is a Wonder? Hint, it is what old New Englanders used to call, what is today, a very common treat. This is what you get when I read very old cookbooks.

Very lastly (I promise) two new kitchen hints:

* Ever notice when cooking with mushrooms that the resulting dish turns an unappetizing gray color? You can avoid this by removing the gills from the cap with a teaspoon before cooking.

* For years I wondered why I could not get my chocolate cakes, brownies and other goodies as lusciously dark as the commercial bakers do. Well, now I can by the addition of Black Cocoa from King Arthur Flour, www.bakerscatalogue.com. Just do not use all black cocoa in a given recipe since it is a bit harsh and gritty. Substitute it for about 1/3 of the total cocoa needed.

That's all for now!
Roberta