Blog Archives

Time to make the doughnuts....

11/27/2017

Last Wednesday evening The Main Street Hookers decided to mix it up a bit. We put down our frames and projects for a social. I invited the crew home to my house for doughnuts. Sugar highs all around and the sweet smell of cake doughnuts and deep fat clogged our pores, and probably an artery or two, but in the moment if one was unlucky enough to drop dead, what a way to go baby!

For me doughnuts are a childhood memory, to be exact one of the top rated links to my past. For me food is comfort, transporting me back to simpler times when a grandmother kept a tin of doughnuts in her panty and the smell of deep fat painted on her walls and embedded in the draperies almost drove me delirious. Like living in an old fashioned bakery, so sweet that even looking in the tin caused a toothache.

I was craving my nana’s doughnuts for months but fear kept me from hauling out my mother’s old electric fryer. I knew their power and my blood sugar couldn’t handle it. Oh the delicious cake doughnut, with a crisp outer crust and soft doughy inside and subtle nutmeg influence. The smell and taste decrees one is too many and a thousand is not enough. Hubby would have found me in the closet with crumbs on my chest babbling incoherently as the diabetic coma slowly engulfed me.

So I figured if I had the gals over for doughnuts and made them promise to fill their stomachs and a Ziploc baggie on their way out the door, I’d be safe. No leftovers, no death. I’d test a few; get them out of my system and move on to the next memory, shortbread cookies.
My house smelled of deep fat and doughnuts for three days but there wasn’t any complaining. It was sweet perfume. Why they don’t actually invent a cologne to dab behind the ears is a mystery. Men would follow you home, even better, dogs would follow you home! Hey Dragons Den what do you think?

Anyway, we had a blast. My two assistants were a great help, thanks Anne and Deana, coating them in either plain sugar or a cinnamon and sugar blend and serving them to the appreciative crowd kept me overseeing the hot fat. I managed to sample enough to fill the craving. I prefer mine plain, not letting anything get in the way of the flavour and my memory.

There were groans as we all sampled the wares. It would have been a good night to wear stretchy pants; they were headed for the hips anyway, so why fight it? Someone commented their sugar scores were up the next day, I didn’t get my meter out as I’m not sure if it registers triple digits. Anyway, it was a fun night, not one to do often but it should be a once a year tradition, maybe during warmer months so I can deep fry them outside or at least open the doors and windows.

There’s more fun on the horizon, our annual Christmas pot luck dinner is next week. Food and games and lots of laughs, that’s the way we hooker’s roll!

10 Comments

Alternate way to finish a Christmas stocking....

11/27/2017

1 Comment

By Guest Blogger Nancy Hurlburt

I thought I would share with you photos of 2 stockings I did for my family in Australia. I looked at your blog for ideas on how to finish them but I ended up trying a different approach. I followed a Pinterest post on sewing a lined stocking. I also chose to put batting in the back section to give it more body. My steps were:

1 I steamed as usual and zigzagged edges. I also made a second row of zigzag stitching around the ankle section so I could clip the edges.

2. I sewed the lining and front together at the top, right sides facing each other. I did the same for the back except that I also added the batting to one of the back pieces.

3. I spread the 2 pieces out and pinned them, right sides together. The hanger was pinned in the appropriate spot.

4. I sewed them, stitching very close to the hooking, using a regular stitching foot ( I had tried a zipper foot before but I couldn’t get close enough). I left a 4 “ opening on the sole of the foot.

5. I pulled the right sides through the opening. I hooked a few extra sections where I didn’t get close enough with the stitching. There weren’t many spaces. I couldn’t use a hoop but it wasn’t difficult.

6. I pushed the lining in, hand sewed the opening and steamed again.

I was very pleased with the finished stockings.

Thanks for the great patterns.

Nancy Hurlburt

Ho Ho Ho (I just realized this stocking pattern was never posted on the website....so that makes 60 designs in the line!)

Father Moon

1 Comment

Puzzled?

11/24/2017

3 Comments

Aunt Audrey, hubby and I have been burning the evening oil and sometimes the midnight as well. We’ve been working on jigsaw puzzles and so far we’ve completed two 1000 piece scenes, one of Van Gough’s Irises, and currently a Peggy’s Cove folk art piece by artist Eric Dowdle.    It’s surprisingly addictive and I’m finding it difficult to turn off the light to go to bed even when my eyes are burning out of my head. It doesn’t help with the insomnia either, when I find myself pondering a particular piece that has alluded me. It never ceases to amaze how you can look over the pieces many times and not find the one you seek. Even looking at the picture of the completed scene and knowing the shape and colour it should have and I still can’t secure it.   Then because of human arrogance, thinking I could never be so incompetent as to not find the piece, I think probably my poodle Henri must have eaten it and I ask him..."Did you eat mommy's puzzle piece?". Then I get up the next morning with a cup of coffee and a fresh pair of eyes and that elusive piece practically jumps into my fingers and I place it with smug satisfaction while Henri seems to say, "See mom, I told you I didn’t do it!"

Puzzles haven’t been a part of my life since childhood and quite frankly, I was surprised at the availability in stores considering the fast paced internet and video games have taken over the world.   Although I did notice that you can buy electronic puzzles online to play on your phones and ThinkPad’s. I assumed the younger generations are attention deficit now, lacking the patience to take on a twelve to twenty-four hour commitment so I was pleasantly surprised the puzzle has survived the modern day entertainment devices.

There were endless choices in several shops in the mall, a varied selection of sizes and prices and I noticed that Costco has a section of puzzles on my last visit and even the local Pharmasave has them on a shelf. As children we used to have a family puzzle set up on a card table as not to tie up the dining table and we would pick away at it for days. Santa brought them, a fun project for all the family to work on.   Maybe the Little’s will have to reinstate that tradition, a communal puzzle on Christmas Day, with eggnog and ribbon candy, (those of you that are my age will know what delicious treat that is)!

It’s been awhile since one lay out across our dining room table, perhaps as far back as when Aunt Audrey stayed with us during her condo renovation and quite frankly I forget the fun of piecing a puzzle together. It’s an adventure in identifying and detecting through shapes and colour to put together something beautiful.

The original jigsaw puzzles were cut out of wood, but the new paperboard versions are much cheaper to produce. I looked online for puzzles and you can still buy them on wood bases but of course the prices of those can reach a hundred dollars, or even more.   A painting or two-dimensional art work is clued to the cardboard before cutting and the choice of patterns is endless. Puzzles are like rug hooking in that you need to like the project you are working on, and like rug hooking, I make my choices by colour, that always attracts me first, and then the subject. After this folk art piece we will be working on a couple of clipper ships with a beautiful hazy sunset and sparkling ocean.   Hubby should like that!

I guess I’m not a puzzle aficionado; I never had a system on how to organize the pieces other than picking out the edges to start and then digging through the piles to find what I’m looking for. Audrey has it down to a science, separating in one of two ways, by piece shape or colour depending on the type of puzzle. I’m not sure which one works best for my brain and I think it depends on the cut of the puzzle on how it should be split into piles. The Iris’s pieces were uniformly normal, or traditional looking like the puzzles of my youth, so separating by shape worked nicely. This second puzzle, the folk art picture, the pieces were cut in all kinds of shapes and sizes, with pieces as small as a pinkie fingernail to doubles, larger, odd shapes, so this one was best categorized by colour.

Although I seek the most intriguing picture, the manufacturer is important as well and I looked for a high standard of quality.   The feel of the pieces are paramount. I like solid and firm, the picture well backed with cardboard and cut clean, so the pieces almost click together. Puzzles aren’t expensive overall but some are more cheaply made and no bargain. After a casual walk down the Bridgewater Mall to have a look at what is out there, we purchased the next project. Until this latest addiction runs its course I’ll need a subsequent project; but I do need to get back to rug hooking. Since Honey passed I haven’t felt like turning on Netflix and I hook with the TV on, so my evenings are open and I’m filling them with the quiet fun of a shared project with my aunt and hubby, and my thoughts focus on the work at hand not the sadness of loss. I can’t serve both masters simultaneously so I’ll have to take turns, force myself to leave the table to sit in my living room with frame on my lap and hook one of my new Christmas stocking designs. This puzzle thing is temporary and will peter out but for now it fills a void nicely.

I like a challenge but only to a degree. Audrey brought down a puzzle of Van Gogh’s Starry Night that boggled the mind. It looked pixilated as each piece of the puzzle was made up of tiny pictures. Two hours in yielded only four pieces fit together. Glasses on and glasses off as I had to examine them up close with a magnifier. My eyes were crossed with the lack of better lighting.   My brain went into overload and frustration rose until I was fidgeting in the chair. I don’t need instant gratification but this was like walking in mud up to the knees. A puzzle shouldn’t take longer than a few days and this one would have been ringing in the new year!

So while brainteasers were on my mind, the idea came to me to design a puzzle pattern. So I’ve created two 16” x 16” pillow topper or chair seat. It can be filled in beautifully with hit and miss, mixing up the directions vertically and horizontally for more interest. Or even solids or luscious plaids filling each space with their boldness, so many ways to make it impressive. The grid of the puzzle pieces would be done in black to create the shadow for piece separation and the extra piece sitting on top will have a shadow along one side to appear as if it is stacked. I’ll also be working on a larger rug sized puzzle with the pieces on top, a few pieces randomly here and there for added interest. I’m thinking I should hook the pillow for a demo in the shop. It might be just the piece to get me back into hooking. So many projects, so little time!

I mentioned Henri previously. The fun part of putting a puzzle together is my cream poodle, Henri. Always by my side, he lies under the table and when a piece gets brushed off with our sleeve, dragged to the edge and falls to the carpet below, he is waiting. He chews on it a bit. The glue might taste bad so he doesn’t totally demolish it, but there are teeth marks and saliva in the paper. Every puzzle we’ve done has at least one piece that is misshapen and rough, making it even more special.

3 Comments

From boring to beautacious!

11/8/2017

5 Comments

Please lay your eyes on the latest addition to our studio. Presenting…..The coffee table of all coffee tables.   Drum roll please!

Sue posted the unpainted coffee table on her Facebook page Perfectly Imperfect by Sue and I commented “It’s mine!” But someone else got there before me and I was pretty upset, I’m a bit of a princess and this just doesn’t happen. Sue told me I was next in line if the woman didn’t show up as promised the following day. There were some tense moments with pins and needles. I couldn’t leave it to fate so I put a call for help out to the universe and it came through per the usual. The woman couldn’t make the viewing so it was MINE!

I’ve wanted a coffee table for the shop since I created the Hook Nook at the front of the studio. We had a tall table with a very tiny base so it was tippy. I wanted a spot where the gals could kick back and relax, put their feet up if they wanted, while hooking, chatting or sipping a brew. This table is 40” in diameter, a biggin, but absolutely perfect, reaching everyone sitting around it to put their hooking gear on. I could see my new table in my mind’s eye, all painted and sporting my company’s insignia, the beautiful compass rose.

Next we had to determine the colours. I’m a primary girl all the way and my shop glows red, gold and blue. The table was going to be front and center as folks entered the shop and next to my staircase highlighting the beautiful riser rugs I’ve been working on, so it had to be spectacular. We couldn’t use yellow in the design because that was the base colour so I asked for a nautical green as an accent. Sue worked her magic by mixing a bit of this with that and the green was perfect. She finished all the painting and waxed all but the top of the table, the drawer front panels are red on the left for port and green on the right for starboard.   Clever eh? Green is by no means anywhere near the top of my favourite colours list, but for this project the nautical theme dictated I had to use green so I went with it.

After she’d done the base, she dropped the table off to the studio for me to do the compass, I have a lot of experience in measuring up the angles so I knew I could whip it off, exactly like I had in mind. She also supplied paint for me to finish it and after I completed that job, the next step would be for her to do the waxing to seal it.

The compass went quickly and the paint dried fast, especially with a fan blowing across the top so I was able to knock it off in less than a half hour. Tape kept the edges from bleeding so the points were crisp and clean. It was rather stunning if I do say so myself.

I was amazed at the quality of the paint. I had been distracted with Honey and several weeks went by before I got to it. Sue had delivered the paint in plastic containers with cellophane over the top, not exactly an airtight seal. Surprisingly, there wasn’t any skin on the top like regular paints. It was a bit firm but once I started stirring, it all blended beautifully. I only had to add a spot of water to the red to thin it out. What a great product to work with!

The paint was creamy and thick so one coat did the job. I was a bit stressed that it came off easily after it dried and before it was sealed so we kept an eye on it until Sue was available to finish the table. It experienced a bit of scratching on the red when I put something on it and fretted that I might have to recoat it but Sue said not to worry, that she planned to rub some of the paint off so it appeared stressed and old. Huh I thought?

Well I wasn’t prepared for the razor blade that came out as she rubbed it across the compass to remove any bumps or thicker paint. I said “OMG” and ran to the kitchen to hide as the blade cut through to the yellow surface beneath. My perfect crisp points and marks were scratched! It was like watching a train wreck, I couldn’t look but I couldn’t turn my head either. She laughed and said, “Don’t worry, wait and see!” I don't have any pictures of the razor blade moment cause I was hiding in the kitchen from the trauma of it all.

I came back out in time to catch her using a wet cloth to smudge and wipe off even more colour and I screamed again, “OMG” and hustled away. My perfect compass that I stressed over was now in ruins, or so I thought. I’m pretty anal and a borderline perfectionist so it hurt, I won’t lie. That stick somewhere shifted and dug in. It was painful to watch.

She kept reassuring me that all was fine but I was skeptical. When I came out of the kitchen and saw how the points and marks were now missing areas I kind of swallowed a lump. It was done so I had to accept it, and it was time to let that stick go. I could feel it slipping away, and the next thing I was a stranger, someone I didn’t know, pointing out other areas needing a bit of rubbing to balance the wear. It was actually rather freeing. I pointed and she rubbed and we worked until we were both satisfied and then stopped.

Sue let the surface dry and then patted on the secret recipe antique finish. It not only sealed the top of the table but it aged it as well, taking the starkness out of the bright compass and yellow base, toning it down to an aged patina.   The antiquing actually made the distressing reasonable; as if the table had been painted years ago and lots of use had rubbed away some of the finish and motif. I gave Sue a thumbs up, pretty impressed at that point. What fun. How I love how my new table looks old, a perfectly imperfect fit in the Hook Nook.

The table has four large drawers that come out all around it for storage. The knobs she brought were nautical in flavour, monkey’s fists made of jute rope, how perfectly nautical for a rug shop in the beautiful harbourside town of Mahone Bay.

Well done Sue.

Drawing the lines.

Taping off to begin to paint the first point.

Red first.

Sue applying the finish, apparently a 'secret recipe' antique glaze.

All painted and the blue is still drying. Sue uses Annie Sloane Chalk Paint.

Sue rubbing her hand over the finish. Perfection!

The Hook Nook's new/old coffee table. Come on by and put your feet up and stay a spell!

To visit Perfectly Imperfect by Sue's Facebook page click this link to see other up-cycled treasures.
https://www.facebook.com/PerfectlyImperfectBySue/

5 Comments

The Good OL Hockey Game....

11/6/2017

2 Comments

This past weekend I designed a pattern with boys playing hockey on a pond. Winter’s coming, it was never more apparent than yesterday’s lower temperature after we’d been spoiled with an uncommonly mild October. Sunday was brisk, and the first time I dug out a heavier jacket. As I went outside with the pups the cooler temperatures made me clasp the collar tightly with one hand and stuff my other one into a pocket. I’ve been hearing snow has already fallen in other parts of Canada, and today it seemed possible on this coast as well. Snow is coming and snow means ice, and ice means skating and of course, hockey. Not the rink kind, that’s probably been going on with manufactured ice for a while; I mean the backyard fun, the frozen ponds and the hose filled low areas of the lawn.

I coloured in the design using PhotoShop to give it more interest than a flat black and white drawing but hooking this pattern will really bring it to life. The boys can also be made into girls with a bit of hair adjustment. Back in my day boys played hockey and the girls looked pretty doing figure eights, but I guess I'm dating myself. Maybe I was tripping down memory lane as I drew this design, not even considering that girls now play hockey. Silly me. The pattern is 26" x 39". I really like the hockey stick border, a very different way to frame a design. I hope all you hockey moms and grandmas will like it too.

When I was a kid there was a natural pond adjoining our property. At night it was almost deafening with thousands of peeping frogs and during the day It was a great spot for catching pollywogs where I spent many an hour in rubber boots and a pail wading in the water. It just dawned on me that my dad never warned me away from the pond’s edge or perhaps that’s one of the memories that have gone through my mental shredder. He was always beating the danger drum, everything on the other side of our front door was a means to an end, maiming and killing little children. Everything was geared to bludgeon, hang, stab, break-a-neck or drown the youth, making the world a very scary place. I’m surprised the miring mud and weeds that could entangle legs and pull one down into the black depth eluded him. Maybe no child had drowned there marking it a taboo for ever more.   Perhaps mom was a bit more relaxed while her paranoid, gate keeper of a husband was at work but I do know she kept a close eye on me from the kitchen window.

In the winter the pond would freeze solid and the bigger kids cleared the snow so they could skate. It was big enough for the boys to play hockey while the girls twirled in the corners doing figure eights. Up until the age of four, I used to watch them skate through the frosted windows of our house. I imagined them to be fairies. Oh, how I dreamed of growing up and joining them with my own pair of skates.

In the Veinotte house, birthdays were always monumental. My mom was a class ‘A’ baker and we loved her desserts, especially her delicious scratch cakes, lavishly decorated to suit various occasions. My all-time favorite was cut pieces of a white sheet cake that were assembled into the shape of a long eared bunny, coated with creamy butter frosting and sprinkled with long, desiccated coconut, a confectionery imitation rabbit’s fur. Before dressing the cake in a coat of sugary goodness, she would wrap coins in waxed paper, burying them deep below the crust’s edge. The walls echoed with squeals of delight, when my wedge of cake produced a nickel or a dime and sometimes even a quarter.

All birthdays were significant and memorable, but my fourth stands out as the pinnacle to which all others paled, for this was the year I received a pair of bob skates. They were double bladed, not the single blade of a figure skate like the older girls enjoyed, for a kid it was like training wheels on a bicycle, allowing easier balance to ensure more skating and less falling. They weren’t as pretty as regular skates with their white leather shapely boot, these had brown straps that buckled over my winter boots, but I didn’t care what they looked like, I now had the blades to glide and dance like the fairies.

Completely awe struck, I used to watch the older children skate on the pond, pretending that their rosy cheeks and happy faces belonged to fairies. I longed to join in their ice dance; the images filled my daydreams and frolicked in my head at night as I slept on my pillow. The delicate movement of the girls in their tights and twirling plaid skirts, their blades glinting in the afternoon sun was music without sound. How I longed to join them, arms stretched out as I pirouetted my way down the length of the pond. I would practice in our living room, the oilcloth flooring my ice, and I would sashay this way and that from one end of the room to the other.

Until I grew older and became proficient on real skates, I would spend a good deal of the time on my rump, my bulky snowsuit and short legs didn’t allow the freedom to fly, but I didn’t care, it was still magical. The crisp cold didn’t bother me, the nose candles and the numb, red cheeks couldn’t take away from the smile frozen on my lips. In my glory and oblivious to the cold, mom had to drag me inside before my toes and fingers froze to solid blocks.

So on my fourth birthday, when I tore at the pretty pink wrapping paper and discovered my dream had come true, I remember hugging mom, telling her over and over how much I loved her, backing up my words with little dewy kisses all over her face. Our mother always chose our gifts thoughtfully. Watching me day after day sitting with my nose pressed up against the partially frozen window glass, she knew the perfect present to make my heart sing and it did, the gift brought feelings of pure joy; a euphoria so overwhelming it almost induced a catatonic rapture.   That night I slept with my skates, hugging them tight, knowing that tomorrow I would be out on the pond dancing with all the other fairies.

When I was older the town built a proper rink with a cement footing, a fence around the parameter, pole lighting and a building to warm yourself while you put on and took off your skates. Back then I was like most teenage girls, pining for a boyfriend, fantasizing about holding hands while circling the rink as music blasted through the loud speakers. There’s a memory trying to come through, of me skating with a boy, but for the life of me I can’t give birth to it.   How wonderful it would be to revisit that time to see what a little imp I was and who I might have had a crush on. I’m not even sure it’s true, as a young girl, my imagination was so overripe perhaps dreaming about it so much forged a fake memory.

I would like to try skating again, although now it would be more awkward than fluid, with the accompanying worry of a fall and hip replacement. It would be so much fun to glide down the ice holding hands with my fella, the frosty air stealing my breath, a pleated skirt for twirling, attempting a circle, well, these days perhaps something more akin to a vacillating oval, but oh what joy it would be.

I don’t own a pair of skates anymore; the last pair turned mouldy from being forgotten in the basement, the age cracked leather boot turned an ugly grey, the blades brown with rust. I don’t recall ever having a new pair of skates of my very own, although a lot of my memories have been eaten like moths in a trunk ful of wool, so Santa could have brought a pair at some point. Usually my skates were hand-me-downs; the last pair came from my mother who also loved to be out on the ice. Dad always filed off her toe picks; apparently they made her stumble and fall as they caught in the ice. He called them killers anyway; they tripped a person up, causing spills where the blades could slice a throat. Not sure what field that one came out of, but someone must have had a nasty mishap because our worrywart dad had it in his memory file of fun spoilers and childhood dream crushers.

I’m no longer willing to invest money for a new pair of skates for the few times I might get out on the ice and it wouldn’t be pretty because I’d need extra padding to prevent all the bruising. I’m not as flexible as I used to be and the fear of falling would stiffen my frame even more. Why couldn’t skating be like the bowling alleys, where I could rent the appropriate footwear, do it and get it out of my system without the bite of the cost buying new, on top of the cold. Ah well.....maybe I’ll have to pencil it in on my bucket list....

I used to be a hockey mom. From awkward beginnings as Shane struggled to stay up on his feet, to watching him proficiently cover one end of the rink to the other with the speed of skilled confidence, I was there. It was a thrill to watch my beautiful boy out there on the ice. Professional hockey has never interested me but watching my son playing offence while we froze in the bleachers sipping hot chocolate and screaming encouragement with all the other parents, well, it was as exciting as it gets.

My boy turned 38 last week. I can hardly believe time has slipped by so quickly.   Shane is now a man and a very fine one, but as a mom I still see the little boy, maybe I always will.

2 Comments

A very sincere thank-you......

11/2/2017

15 Comments

I didn’t cry today. It’s the first day since Honey died that I haven’t. Life is moving on faster than I care to experience and I can’t fight the flow.

I was deeply, deeply touched by all the comments and heartfelt response to my blogs about my dear little girl. Being alone at the time, I wrote because I felt I might burst if I didn’t let my feelings out, working through the pain with words was the only thing I could do.

I actually cried over each and every one of your responses, I could barely read them through the flood of tears. Some of you took the time to send emails and private messages and there were so many heartfelt comments on Facebook that when I tried to “Like” them all days later, a big Error message flashed on the screen and Facebook BLOCKED me out thinking it was some sort of hacking. I explained that the hundreds of comments were an outpouring of support for the loss of my beloved pet and they lifted the block so I could continue. My sweet Honey almost crashed my FB page, how cool is that!

A special thank-you for the beautiful fern Anne, and Lorraine, I will plant your gift of bulbs on Honey’s grave so every spring I’ll have a special reminder of my girl. Thank-you for all the hugs at the shop everyone; I accepted your embraces shyly, but needed, loved and appreciated every squeeze.

The outpouring saddened me and lifted me up at the same time. I know a lot of very wonderful people, mostly met through rug hooking. What a wonderful community we are. I thank everyone from the very bottom of my heart, and Honey would have been over the moon to know how much everyone loved her. She was a very special little girl.

Once again thank-you all; your support has helped more than you know. I have so much to be grateful for. I feel as if I am in a very exclusive club; people who love and have lost animals understand the sadness, loss and grief of membership.

I never realized how depressed I was over the past year. I was mourning her loss long before it became a reality but I wouldn’t change a thing. I loved her enough to dedicate these past 12 months to her needs, no regrets at all. I am a better person for loving her.

So I am back at the helm and going a mile a minute. A switch has been turned back on and the light is growing brighter every day. Through the pain I’m finding my smile and it feels good.....