Crackpot Quilters’ Blog

The past few weekends I worked on a crackpot project that has been long in coming – painting my bedroom. I bought my condo 5 years ago, and all the painted surfaces (walls and ceilings) have been a color I refer to as Contractor Beige the entire time. I’d been planning on painting my bedroom blue for most of those 5 years. The beautiful blue skies and buildings we saw in Morocco finally pushed me over the edge.

Here’s the result:

Some thoughts on painting…

1. People who say painting is cheap must already own their painting supplies. And buy cheap paint. I didn’t have any paint supplies, and a trip to the local home store with a long list of everything but the paint set me back about $200. Add in high-quality paint, and the price keeps going up.
2. Painting the ceiling is no fun at all. When using white paint on white primer, it’s really hard to figure out which areas have been painted and which haven’t.
3. When the guy at the paint store recommends a product, believe him. The edger is great.
4. No-VOC paint is great for people (like me!) sensitive to paint fumes. I used Benjamin Moore Natura and I didn’t notice any aroma until I was nearly done with the room – and even then, it was vastly less smelly than normal paint. I ended up having to do two coats on the walls, but according to the woman I talked to at the paint store when I picked up the second gallon, that’s fairly common for this paint. I’d much rather do two non-smelly coats than one smelly coat.
5. Taking a ceiling fan/light down requires two people, but it is possible for one person to put it back up.
6. When the fan manual doesn’t know what color the wires coming out of the ceiling are, consult the internet – there is a standard configuration.
7. I hadn’t expected painting to be quite so much work, or give me as much of a sense of accomplishment. I had some help for moving things out of the room, but did all the prep and painting and moving things back into the room all by myself.

I still need to do some touch-up work (blue spots on the ceiling – whoops!). But that can wait.

Still Life With Pickles

OK, so this is not a quilting project; it has nothing to do with fabric, wool, or thread; and it is not the least bit decorative. But it is a significant personal achievement, so it goes on the blog.

I have been making pickles for probably 30 years. And they have never been able to hold a candle to what I can get with my bagel at Einsteins. I have always considered this to be a personal failing. My earliest pickles, made with a recipe from the Vermont Extension Service (this will date my efforts for most Crackpots) had great flavor but were limp and mooshy. Later efforts, using more up-to-date recipes, produced crisp pickles that were so acid as to make one’s throat constrict. I even tried old-fashioned brined, fermented pickles. Not surprisingly, they turned out to be salty. Last year I tried a recipe from “Too Many Tomatoes….. a Cookbook for When Your Garden Explodes,” called icicle pickles. They were nice and crisp but too acid and flavored with celery seed, which I didn’t like. Finally, last month, in desperation, I decided to try using the method for the icicle pickles and the pickling solution from the Vermont Extension Service. The key elements in the combined recipe are: 1) dilute the vinegar in the pickling solution and 2) do not process for more than 5 min. Today, after allowing the pickles to pickle for about 6 weeks, we tried them with lunch. Eureka!!!! They crunched!!! They tasted like dill!!! They did not make our throats close up!!!! THEY ARE WORTH EATING!! Now we can say, “Gee, a nice pickle would taste good with this,” instead of “Hmmm, we should probably try to eat a pickle with this because we have to eat up these pickles some day.” In fact, the old pickles will be tossed on the land fill where they will turn into compost and free up lots of canning jars for other canning efforts. (Notice how adroitly I can rationalize throwing away food in this case.) You can expect pickles for lunch, Crackpots, but not for Christmas presents. We only had enough cucumbers for one batch. Maybe next year…

On the topic of eating locally: it’s now strawberry season in my yard, and my mostly-organic technique of “plant and ignore” is working well. This is one of my first pickings of the year, from last weekend. Now I’m getting more berries at a time – plenty to keep one berry-lover satisfied on a daily basis. The strawberries are not super sweet – I haven’t yet tried adding sugar yet since adding milk or yogurt provides some sweetness, enough for eating them with cereal.