Blog Vacation

  There will be no posting to this blog in February. Check back in March.

A Study In Blue

Even though we do not have snow on the ground and the sun is shining brightly, the outside thermometer reads 8 degrees and there is a brisk breeze. Not a day to take my camera and look for outdoor photos. Instead, I will share some indoor items.
The first thing you would notice as you enter my condo is that I like blue. Yes, indeed, it is my favorite color. Though I seem to be gravitating more to purples, pinks, and reds in my wardrobe, blue definitely dominates my home décor.

 I especially like looking up from reading and seeing the light shining thru this vase I bought at Alley Cat Antiques in Leesburg, Indiana.
The swirly stripes are white (not discernable from the photo) and create an interesting pattern.
                                              
I do most of my browsing in antique stores and consignment shops these days. Many Northern Indiana antique stores have very few real antiques. They tend to have collectibles and decorative items. The little square-shaped glassware was $2 and labeled “shaker”.
I wondered a shaker for what? The “holes” on the top are pretty large. I bought it thinking I might put flowers in it. Then it hit me; aha, that metal top probably was a floral frog to hold up and arrange blooms. A search on ebay confirmed that. A couple was retiring and selling off the inventory of their floral shop. There was a blue “vase” just like mine being auctioned.

This cute miniature cream and sugar set I received as a Christmas present after telling my husband about seeing it in a Dallas store.
It complements nicely this lidded jar from a consignment shop in Warsaw.

This Dick Lehman vase was more of a splurge. He has such interesting techniques. You can read more at his web page. He displays and sells at the Old Bag Factory in Goshen, Indiana. I used some of my money from working election board for this treat.

I received these Blue Danube salt and pepper shakers from my sister over 40 years ago. I just looked on replacement china websites to see availability. These were not available currently so I don’t know the value, but plenty of other pieces in this pattern are for sale.

I really liked this tissue box cover in a Berlin, Ohio store. It is a fun town in the middle of Amish country. Don’t miss Heinis Cheese Chalet where you can sample all kinds of cheese.

I’ll finish with my counted cross-stitch picture stitched by yours truly. A big time investment, but I do love it.

For so patiently looking at my blue items, I will reward you with an easy recipe from Better Homes and Gardens January issue. I had some red grapes that had been in the refrigerator a few weeks. They had mostly fallen off the stems. Fixed them this way and served with chicken sandwich, and they were tasty. The magazine suggests serving them at a party along with cheese and nuts.

Balsamic Vinegar Grapes
Place a bunch of grapes on a foil-lined baking pan. Splash with about a tablespoon of balsamic or sherry vinegar. Pop under a preheated broiler for 8 to 10 minutes.
Happy eating.

The Beauty of Wood

My post about the Moravian stool is now the 3rd most-viewed of my blogs. Woodworkers see the variety and beauty of the different species. My husband started turning mini-goblets out of different wood species to display. It is fascinating.

Though my husband enjoys using hand tools, he has done projects with his lathe and power tools. I am uninformed about woodworking techniques, but I am the happy recipient of many of the end-products.
Several years ago he and some friends harvested mesquite on a friend’s ranch in Texas. Hubby tried his hand at woodcarving on these bookends. He built himself toolboxes.

Sometimes a “junky” piece of wood hides character. With the hand of the wood turner, something beautiful emerges.

Sort of how God can take our weaknesses and flaws when we submit to Him and creates people who demonstrate His glory and power.
Many items are small, but there have been pieces of furniture, too.
      

      
The most ambitious pieces were the desk and the hutch.
  
A great advantage to custom-made furniture is that you select interesting grain to feature such as the drawer fronts of the cherry hutch.

My husband’s most recent experiment has been to take the silhouettes of pottery pieces found in archaeology throughout the Middle East and make them in wood. The shapes are beautiful no matter the medium.

 

I am lucky  to have such a talented and creative spouse.

Promised Land Book

The past few days I have been in my retirement village library adding the over-sized books to the Library Thing data base. One book that intrigued me was Promised Land with text by Abba Eban and beautiful watercolors by Gordon Wetmore. Eban comes across as an apologist for the existence of modern-day Israel, denouncing the debasement of the land by the Arabs and Turks and lauding the reclamation by the Jewish people. He defends Israel’s actions as survival basics and puts down the Palestinians. You can pretty much skip the text unless you want a lesson in one-sided public relations. The book is available for as little as 99 cents to over a hundred dollars. Corollary to the saying in real estate of “location, location, location”, bibliophiles would say “condition, condition, condition”. The library copy is the 1978 edition without book jacket, but in pretty good condition.

For me, the value is the illustrations. Having recently sorted my photos, many of the sites in the book were of places I had seen two decades ago but fresh in my memory. I had never heard of Mr. Wetmore, but apparently he was a renowned portrait artist. A Christian, he approached the land wanting to capture the “traditional” Israel. He had no political goals. The water colors were done 1976-1978 but purposely exclude items with a modern look, except for the sketches of Jewish soldiers. He truly has portrayed the golden aura of limestone buildings and the variety of people in Jerusalem.

My favorite one is the plant because it reminds me of my stay at the Institute of Holy Land Studies on Mount Zion. Though we were there to do library consultation, I was invited to go on the walking tours and fieldtrips taken by the students. I carried a canteen of water, especially on the walks, as it was still quite warm even though it was September. I rarely finished the water, however, so each time I returned to my living quarters I poured the remaining liquid on a plant near our room. This bedraggled plant sat on the top of a low brick dividing wall between the rooftop rooms and a small clothes line. After one week, it perked up; by the time we left after almost a month, the plant was thriving and its succulent type of leaves were plump and full of color. I often wondered if it made it until the rainy season.


If you have ever been in Israel, these pictures will surely evoke memories. I present them without permission of reproduction to promote the book. Please do not use them for profit without getting permission from the publisher.