Reedsburg Market, Fabric Eggs and Purple Cabbage Potluck

I did the Reedsburg Farmers Market today.  Come visit me on Sunday at Thunder Valley Inn from 9am-1pm where I'll be selling Wormfarm organic produce!

I have skipped the 8th page and am working on the 9th for now.  Eggs!

Last weeks Potluck was full of purple cabbage!  I brought Spring Rolls filled with tofu, cabbage, red pepper, cucumber, lettuce, basil, carrot and rice noodles with peanut sauce and I brought my fermented Sauerkraut.

Farmers Market Bounty!

Today at the Glenwood Sunday Market I went all out.  I have a lot of vegetables I plan to cook!  Half of it is my beautiful CSA share from Midnight Sun Farm.

About 3 years ago I started cooking more seriously.  Now I am starting to feel like I have got the hang of it.  It took a lot of work to get here and I definitely still make not so tasty food...but at least it is always edible.  I learn more about food with each meal I make!

Black Caps and Garlic Scapes!

Jeff and I picked a bunch of black caps yesterday.  They grow all over in random places and are actually wild blackberries.  I found those pink flowers while we were looking for the berries.  They smell so wonderful!!!

This is what they look like when we find them.  They are ripe once they are dark purple.  I put them on my oatmeal today with some brown sugar!

Garlic scapes are the swirly things growing from the middle of the garlic.  They are actually a flower but you have to cut it off so all the nutrients goes to the garlic bulb and not the flower.  Anyways, garlic scapes taste super good, like garlic but a bit more subtle.  You can chop them up and put them in a salad or saute them.  Laura said she pickled them last year.  They are only around once a year and you will only find them at your local farmers market.  We harvested a ton of them today!

A garlic scape cut from the garlic.

The black caps were all along the outside of the trees.  It is so open and beautiful out here!

Color and Shape Study of Rosa Bianca Heirloom Eggplant-Finished!

In September I posted some water color studies I did of two Rosa Bianca Heirloom Eggplants and my plans for those studies. I finished the piece today. Here is a link to the post with the studies.

I had finished all the eggplants and started sewing them onto a big navy blue fabric. I got pricked so many times that I was about to give up. It is still shocking and unsettling every time I get pricked. And even more frustrating when I get pricked three times in 30 seconds.

I laid out the eggplants on the fabric to see what larger shape they would make.

Here is the piece finished. It is 32 x 28 inches, all fabric and thread. I think the title is Color and Shape Study of Rosa Bianca Heirloom Eggplant or just Rosa Bianca Heirloom Eggplant. I like the first title because it gives a bit more of an explantation of what the viewer is seeing, but it makes the title long and calling something a study makes a piece seem like it is not a final piece. Then again, I could use a different word than study. Or maybe it is obvious enough what I am trying to do when I simply call it Rosa Bianca Heirloom Eggplant. I have two more pieces similar to this and I go back and forth with the two sorts of titles.

And a close-up of an eggplant.

I am glad to be done with this one. Always near the end of a piece I get antsy to start another with completely different materials. I don't think I could ever do just one media over and over again. I need a break from fabric and sewing machine, so I am going back to sculpture to create a piece about the disappearance of our honey bees.