Spanish Details

A few shots from Spain...a pop of color, a twist of iron, the old and the new...

Viva, Espagna!

Our trip to Spain was at the very beginning of the World Cup, and people didn't seem too excited yet. Apparently Spain has a propensity for clutching at the last minute, so perhaps sports fans were trying not to get their hopes up. I'm sure by the time the last few games happened, the country was much more involved, but when we were there they lost at least one game.

So the World Cup was NOT a big part of our trip. However, eating, drinking, seeing incredible art, architecture, the Mediterranean, ancient churches built on top of mosques and synagogues, sidewalk cafes, hilltop castles, and generally enjoying ourselves were.

We spent four days in Valencia and six in Madrid, where we spent time with Luis, a scientist who collaborates with Paul and who was a perfect host. He met us with a shopping bag of maps and guidebooks and he'd carefully labeled the museums that would be open on Monday (since many of the major museums were closed that day and it was a day we spent on our own). He and his lovely wife Julia took us to dinner four nights, to Segovia and a fantastic lunch one day, encouraged us to take the train to Toledo (where we saw the 16th-century embroidery at left), and made sure we had the best, typical Spanish food and wine.  It meant that we had the opportunity to eat and drink things we wouldn't have otherwise, and to see places he recommended that we might have missed. It was a reminder to me of the importance of being a great host for out of town (and especially out-of-the-country visitors).

I loved the old part of Valencia and it was great fun to go to the ocean, but one of my favorite things was to go to the Prado and the Reina Sofia museums in Madrid. Art history was one of my favorite subjects in college and to see in person so many of the artworks I studied was very fulfilling. Seeing Picasso's Guernica was a highlight at the Reina Sofia Museum, but so were this and other costumes created by Oskar Schlemmer, for The Triadic Ballet in 1924.

I bought very little while in Spain, but what I did buy were special textiles (surprise!).  A shop very near the Reina Sofia Museum, Dimo, had row upon row of gorgeous silk scarves, all hand-painted. I asked the shop owner if knew about Etsy and left him the URL. And I left with a scarf—it was extremely tough to choose, but I picked one with a geometric pattern in greens, purple, and brown.

Rather than write a travelogue, I think the next post will be simply photos...stay tuned for some of the inspiring details.

Two Words: Quail Eggs

Last night Rebecca brought home ten quail eggs. She'd been visiting a friend with an acreage who keeps a variety of animals: pygmy goats, araucana hens (the kind Martha Stewart has that lay green and blue eggs),  and quails, among others. He had a bowl of about 40 quail eggs (he keeps 12 quail) and offered some to Rebecca and her friend.

When she first showed them to me, and once I got over my disappointment that they weren't those chocolate eggs with the thin candy coating, I marveled at the mottling on them—the way each one was so different. Some had a shiny finish, some a matte shell.

Tonight she offered to make us an additional course for dinner and perused quail egg recipes on the web. Did you know it takes 24 quail eggs to make an omelet? Or that there is a site called Quail-Egg-Recipes.com?

We decided against pickled quail eggs and deviled quail eggs and opted for an appetizer that involved toasting baguette slices and topping them with olive tapenade and a fried quail egg.

Rebecca took charge, and after a few difficulties toasting bread in the broiler, she turned out the cutest darned appetizers we'd ever seen. They were a ten on the adorableness scale.

Cracking the eggs was challenging—the membrane was tough and they were so tiny. But they fried up nicely. For the second batch she used a goat cheese and dill spread we'd gotten at Saturday's farmer's market instead of the tapenade and left the yokes a little softer. We voted these our favorites.

She reserved four quail eggs for tomorrow's breakfast—a mini-omelet, perhaps? With teeny toast? Bitty bacon?

Busy People, Busy Day

My daughter has assured me that a very few people will get the reference in this headline (except perhaps my other daughter). It's the slightly mangled title of of one of their much-loved childhood books by the author Tibor Gergeley. It's a phrase we've used for years, when we're getting, well, busy...


I'd promised to have Spain photos up, but I'll just put vacation photos off for awhile and continue chronicling the 4th of July activities. (Aren't three-day weekends just the best?) It was a busy weekend, in the best possible way.

After our fruit and veg extravaganza of Saturday, we spent Sunday a.m. at the Hansen's Grove antique show, an annual 4th of July event in Solon, Iowa. Dealers come from all around and as it's an outdoor show it's always a little dicey as to whether the weather will hold. This year, storms were predicted, but there wasn't much rain until the end of the day, so the sale went on as scheduled.

The number of vendors at Hanson's Grove was down this year, largely due to the fact that the field that previously served as an overflow sale area and parking lot was actually planted with corn. There was a shuttle bus that would take visitors to another part of town for the rest of the sale, but we opted out.

Still, there was plenty to see. These shows are always a mix of vendors who know just exactly what they've got and set their prices high and other vendors who focus their collecting on one particular area, but may not know quite how to price other things they may acquire along the way.

So while at first I thought the sale would largely just be an opportunity to look, but not buy, I did make a couple of purchases along the way that made me happy.

Although it's the dealers who don't put much thought into their displays that tend to have the best prices, I love it when vendors create enticing vignettes to show off their wares.

I'm drawn to furniture (although I need nothing and don't have room for anything else, even if I did buy), quilts, pottery, things depicting animals, and (what a surprise) the handmade, quirky items that show up now and again. I was also very taken with the small sewing machines below and other toys. And I love when things are used or displayed in unexpected ways, like this "graveyard" of pieces that belong on old harvesters and other farm machinery—so much more striking than if they were piled in a basket.

In the end, we purchased an Iowa dairy milk bottle to add to our collection; eight small bread plates in the Spode Tower pattern, a blue and white china I grew up eating on at my aunt's house that will go nicely with my plain blue and white Dansk dishes; and a present for someone who occasionally reads my blog...so I can't talk about that one. But all three were decently priced and I felt very pleased at noon, when we headed home.

The rest of the weekend included some heavy-duty gardening and a couple of trips to the Iowa City Jazz Festival, the best part of which was hearing Lake Street Dive, a fabulous band from (mostly) Brooklyn. The enormously talented bass player is the daughter of a close friend and plays in several bands (including Joy Kills Sorrow). Lake Street Dive is so much fun to listen to—the lead singer has an absolutely stunning voice and the songs are mostly original (except when they take the occasional Jackson Five song and turn it on its ear). They're also fun to watch because they're obviously having so much fun together.

As much as the music, I loved sitting in camp chairs under the trees with my husband and friends, just hanging out, taking in the people and the pups who strolled by. It was a totally relaxing way to spend several hours. Like I said in my previous post, three-day weekends are the absolute best!

The sweetness of summer

[We interrupt this textile blog for some important announcements about food.]

Between the Farmer's Market and grocery store's fresh offerings, I always become a little unhinged at this time of year. I buy tons of fresh produce and then my week becomes a mad meal-planning and cooking scramble to use up everything before the next market, when the cycle repeats itself all over again. If I were really brave I'd opt for a CSA, but I'm not really brave.

This Saturday's market resulted in a fridge full of broccoli (for steaming), cauliflower (which will be the basis of a long-time favorite: Mollie Katzen's Cauliflower with Cumin and Cheese), green beans (to accompany a Sumer Barley Salad from Cooking Light ), the first-of-the-season sweet corn, and beets (roasted an hour in the oven...I used to steam them, but no more).

After the market I came home and got Paul and we drove out to pick blueberries.

I grew up picking gajillions of blueberries each summer during out vacations in northern Minnesota—the tiny kind of berry on tiny bushes. As I've gotten older I confess that these high bushes with larger blueberries appeal to me much more—and they were just loaded and will be for weeks to come.

Paul and I picked more than 8 pounds (here you see the owner weighing our two buckets).

(Blueberry pie is also on the menu this week, along with blueberries on cereal and handfuls of berries every time the fridge is open.)

Then, it was on to Wilson's orchard, where they had fresh Michigan cherries and where I saw this lovely Queen Anne's lace overlooking the apple trees.

We got two pounds of each type of cherry...does anyone see a pattern here? Like, I'm nuts? Still, there's something about getting things so close to their growing location and season that makes me a little giddy...it's an impulse I can't seem to control.

...and did I mention I've got half a watermelon in the fridge, too? It's leftover from making a salad, the recipe from an Austin Farmer's Market last summer while visiting my eldest daughter—there are a number of variations floating around—here's one. The remaining half melon is going to become watermelon sorbet...following in the footsteps of my rhubarb sorbet of earlier in the summer.

Home again, home again

I just returned from a ten-day trip to Madrid and Valencia, Spain and I'm still floating in jet-lag land. I know, no sympathy for someone who gets to take such a fun trip! But still, I'm not all here yet. I just wanted to say a couple of things about my Etsy Storque post on pearls, which went up while I was away.

I was stunned by how many people commented and how many people love pearls. I especially enjoyed the comments about thinking that pearls were stodgy. Steve (Bloom--author of Tears of Mermaids: The Secret Life of Pearls, who I interviewed for the story) made the point that while Barbara Bush wore pearls, so did Audrey Hepburn.

They're classic, but not stuffy, in other words. There is a lot of talk in his book about the way pearls represent virtue, innocence, and tradition, but also sophistication, drama, and haute couture. My favorite quote is from Manolo Blahnik, who Steve quotes as saying "Pearls give a gloss, a certain refinement, even if you're just a trashy girl."

While I was in Spain I was especially attuned to looking at art with pearls in mind. Steve told me that pearl obsession was part of what drove Queen Isabella of Spain to push Columbus to explore the New World, and that areas of the Caribbean were essentially stripped of their pearls by early explorers who could take them back to Europe and make a pile 'o dough selling them. Indeed, when I looked at paintings in the Prado, I noted pearls woven in women's hair and stitched to their gowns.

(These photos are courtesy of Steve Bloom and top-to-bottom depict: a rare Australian pearl plucked from its shell; Chinese freshwater pearl technicians insertinginto mussels a bead around which a pearl will form. The painting is Circle of Sofonisba Anguissola (Cremona 1527-1626 Palermo), and is not actually in the Prado, but does show her wearing a number of pearls.)

More on Spain next...soon...really, I mean it!

Playing catch up

Playing, because when I finally sat down to sew again after along hiatus, I was reminded how much fun it is. Catch up, because I finally caught up on a quilt that I started more than a year ago.

I did the quilting over Memorial Day weekend. I agonized over adding something more elaborate, perhaps some free motion flowers where the lines of quilting intersect, but then opted to call it a day at the large diagonal squares—it had taken so long to get this close to finishing that I didn't want to push my luck. I do like the look of quilting that's a bit denser than this, however.

I did choose to put some time into sewing strips together to make the variegated binding, which I'm quite happy with. Sewing on binding is such a pleasant task in winter, with the warm quilt covering your lap and the not much to do outside so that watching TV while you sew seems appropriate. I find sitting and watching television this time of year difficult, because I'd always prefer to be in the garden when the weather's nice. And it's been anything but cool, of late, so that I've been sewing on binding with the ceiling fan going full steam.

The quilt back leans toward Modern Quilting, perhaps, but was actually done out of necessity—I didn't have enough of any one fabric to make a complete back.

I'll be away from my computer for about ten days, so Pearl the Squirrel won't be updated for awhile. There may be an Etsy post while I'm away...keep your eyes peeled!

Button up

For about a month now I've been working on a post for Etsy about the Pearl Button Museum in Muscatine, Iowa. The post finally went up today, and I am amazed (and thrilled) at all the comments...guess I didn't realize that lots of folks had a mother-of-pearl button obsession, just like I do! (Check out the Etsy post here.)

I've always loved pearl buttons, but was amazed to learn that so many of them came from the small town just 40 miles from my home. I keep spouting this statistic to everyone, (whether they're interested or not): in 1905, 37 percent of the world's buttons (and that'd be 1.5 billion) came from Muscatine.

The museum is small, but the exhibits are nicely done and I learned a tremendous amount from them. Plus, they have some nice interactive displays: you can plunge your hands in buckets of side-by-side pearl and plastic buttons to feel and hear the difference; you can read memories of people whose relatives worked in button factories, you can try your hand at sorting a gross of buttons with a specially made paddle.

There's also a wonderful collection of buttons and mother-of-pearl artifacts and an entire display case of buttons sewn on those wonderful vintage cards. I'm sure anyone who knows me is tired of hearing about it, but I love learning about things like this and thinking about an unusual industry that supported an entire community. Today there are still three button factories in Muscatine, but the buttons they make are plastic.

While the story is wonderful and quirky, there is definitely a dark side: children worked in many button factories, the working conditions were unpleasant at best and often downright dangerous, and dust from shells created breathing problems for many workers. A strike by button workers turned violent and one man was killed. But despite this grim side, the city of Muscatine is proud of its heritage and enjoys its moniker "Pearl City." If you're button-obsessed (or just interested in history) it's definitely worth a visit if you're in the neighborhood...and even worth a detour if you're not.

Putzing about

Not a lot of piecing has gone on this past week, but on Memorial Day I did have a chance to sit at my machine and quilt a top I made long ago. I'm having a little fight with myself over whether to stick with the simple outline quilting I've already done or to add some free motion quilting. I'll share it when I've got it completed.

This weekend is Arts Fest in Iowa City. Sadly, we're in for rain today, but last night the weather held and we were treated to a concert featuring Sarah Jarosz and Darrell Scott. Sarah's a mere 19, but a terrific musician, singer, and songwriter—Darrell's guitar playing made people shake their heads in awe. He's also a powerful lyricist with a fabulous voice. The highlight was when they played together at the end of each of their sets.

Finally, I had to share a few photos of my garden. Yes, I really do live in a house with a picket fence (it's a bit of a fake, however...it just runs along the front, but then peters out on the sides and doesn't really enclose anything completely). My William Baffin rose and our peonies often bloom on Memorial Day weekend and it always makes me feel as though I live in some kind of fantasyland...the rose (depending on your definition) is totally out of control, or creates a charming bower that people walking by have the pleasure of passing beneath.