Kinkeeping

~ Liz A ~ 10 Comments

Kinkeeping is a relatively-new-to-me term, encountered sometime in the past year. It’s about the things we do … sending cards and gifts on birthdays, attending weddings, graduations and funerals, making note of the myriad details that are meaningful to our loved ones, following social media, texting and emailing … the list is endless, but in essence it’s all about staying in touch.

And just now it occurred to me that Kindred-Spirit-keeping might also be thing … which is to say, the connections we form in the course of blogging … the give and take of comments and replies … the circle of community created over years of faithful writing and reading.

In this particular community, much of which formed around Jude Hill and her original Spirit Cloth blog, it’s about cloth and stitch interwoven with the stories of our lives and loves. So now, with Feel Free, there is the invitation to come play … to begin again with the letter A.

I’m all in, with Paul Klee’s letters in mind …

Don’t you love how the colors shift? And of course none of them are truly representative of the actual bit of cloth. No matter … this is destined to end up on the table cloth where the colors will be many and varied.

Who knew?

~ Liz A ~ 24 Comments

You’re supposed to update phone apps? Or they don’t work correctly? I didn’t know that, but now I do and the long-running “Why won’t the WordPress images enlarge?” saga has finally come to a positive conclusion.

So now when you see a bunch of pictures, like this work in progress by Don …

Photo
Sketch
Acrylic painting in progress (12” x 12” on wood panel)

you can click on any one of the images to bring up an enlarged view in what the WordPress Happiness Engineers call a carousel. Wheeeee 😉

Now I’m in the process of going back to past posts to update the galleries so they too will once again enlarge properly. So far I’ve made it back to July 2021. Onward … or is that backward?

Whatever.

Lest I forget

~ Liz A ~ 23 Comments

I’ve been stitching napkins. Mostly because the linen/cotton napkins that I bought ten years ago have gotten unpleasantly stiff and non-absorbent. So I bought some linen thread and two yards of checked linen from Burnley and Trowbridge …

in order to have enough to make 8 napkins (with thanks to Mo for the idea to to use red thread, and to Hazel for the cross stitches and to Dana, whose table settings are aspirational) …

They washed up and air-dried beautifully. Which is important as I’m not a fan of dryers and definitely not one for taking the time to iron napkins since we use them at every meal.

And speaking of meals, here are two that I wanted to document for future reference.

Pork Meatballs (4 servings)

  • 1 lb ground pork
  • Hoisin sauce
  • Minced ginger (bottled)
  • Garlic (just a touch)
  • Wasabi (buy at sushi counter)
  • Sesame oil
  • Panko
  • 1 egg

Combine all ingredients. Form into 24 small meatballs and place on parchment paper. Brush with a mixture of hoisin and peanut oil. Bake in an air fryer or hot convection oven for 10 minutes or so.

Serve on stir fried vegetables (mushrooms, cabbage, snow peas, carrots, celery, and scallions sauced with ginger, hoisin, sesame oil, garlic, and mirin) or Asian-style slaw (shredded cabbage, carrots and scallions dressed with peanut oil, rice wine vinegar, ginger, sesame oil, and agave).

Pork meatballs on stir fried veggies with peanuts

Bahn Mi

  • Leftover pork meatballs
  • Bolillo rolls
  • Mayo
  • Chili sauce
  • Shredded carrots
  • Mini-cucumbers cut into matchsticks
  • Lots of cilantro leaves
  • Finely sliced poblano

Heat leftover meatballs just enough to warm them. Split rolls, remove some of the bread in the middle to form a hollow, spread lightly with mayo and toast on griddle until edges are light brown (putting a plate on top to weigh them down works well). Combine chili sauce and mayo to spread on toasted rolls. Top with meatballs, carrots, cukes, poblano and cilantro. Delicious with Heineken 0.0 non-alcoholic beer (a recent and much appreciated find).

Sorry, no picture … we dug in too quickly to get a good shot. Maybe next time 😉