At the Market

15. November 2022 · Comments Off on At the Market · Categories: Book Event, Domestic

My daughter and I did a craft market last weekend – one of our regular markets of the season. This one was at the Senior Center in Bulverde, and I have lost track of how many of these that we have done, but I do remember doing the first one, where my daughter had to drive back home for our tables, which it turned out that we needed, and I only made enough to buy a set of regular china from a junk outlet on the way home. (Oh, yes – 2014, and we have only broken one of the small plates since then. Still love that china, still use it every day.)

So, my daughter is moving on from eking out a small paycheck in doing the gypsy markets, to doing real estate full time, so what with Covid and the cancellation of practically everything, we aren’t doing many of the markets that we used to do. She is selling off the last of her stock of tiny origami earrings, and the knitted beanies and stuff… but she did have a notion that we ought to try doing homemade soap and scented candles, along with all my American Girl doll clothes … and we were able to score a lot of raw materials for the soap and candle projects through my Vine participation.

I made a decent profit on the doll clothes (which are mostly made from scraps left over from other projects), although not so much that I will make any more until the inventory draws down – and our big seller was home–made, hand-made soaps. We found some basic recipes and had the required equipment on hand – digital scale, crock-pot, immersion blender – bought the olive and coconut oils from Costco, the powdered concoction to make the lye solution from Amazon and tried it out. The basic recipes worked very well; I think that the only reason that crafters shy off from making soap is that the lye solution is genuinely dangerous and a bit scary, when one reads all the warnings … but we went ahead, put on the rubber gloves and the eye protection, and followed all the measurements exactly. With the result that we had some very pleasant and usable soaps, which sold like the proverbial hotcakes, packaged in little mesh bags from the Dollar Tree (soon to be the Dollar-25-Cent Tree, I believe) and priced them to sell … which they did.

We took Wee Jamie with us, and he behaved magnificently, just as he did last year. We took along the folding wagon, padded with plenty of blankets, and all the baby stuff, of course. He simply charmed so many people at the market, including a tall skinny teenager who mimicked him making faces and blowing raspberries, offering high-fives for nearly ten minutes … it was really most endearing. He’s an outgoing and endearing small child and loves interacting with people. Not a shy or withdrawn bone in his body. Another woman, especially charmed, asked if we could stay in touch with her – she would like to be one of Wee Jamie’s honorary aunties. He took a good long nap in the wagon around midday and generally behaved so very well. He was not cross or cranky at all during the day. I have plans eventually to dress him as Little Lord Fauntleroy in black velveteen and a Battenberg lace collar, so he can help me flog books. Best to teach them the craft early, you know…

My daughter went around and talked to so many of the other vendors, gleaning some rather dispiriting intelligence regarding their sales … well, we weren’t the only ones who didn’t make much. Her conclusion is that almost everyone is holding on to their money this year. We made bank on the soaps because we priced them considerably below what we have paid for similar at other markets. We have another market this weekend, this one in Starzville, near Canyon Lake, and then on the first Saturday in December, the long haul down to Goliad for Miss Ruby’s Author Corral, and Christmas on the Square, with Santa arriving, mounted on a very, very tame (possibly heavily tranquilized) longhorn steer, to the great acclaim of the crowd. I hope to have the print version of the latest Luna City installment available for sale at that event, but everything about publishing and printing slows down at this time of year. The ebook/Kindle version should be available within days, though.

Color of the Year?

11. November 2022 · 2 comments · Categories: Domestic, Random Book and Media Musings

For some unfathomable reason, my daughter the working real estate agent scored an invite to a very posh event – the official San Antonio bash to announce the Benjamin Moore color of the year. Yes, it was a very post event, held at the very upscale and trendy Hotel Emma, which is an integral part of the Pearl Brewery development.

The honored color is something called Raspberry Blush, which to us looks more like a salmon-orange, a very bright, lively, cheerful color … er, well, the up-to-the-minute trendy and fashionable live for this kind of thing, even those of us old enough to remember the inexplicable fashion for avocado green and harvest gold, which made trendy kitchens of the 1970s so risibly ripe for redecoration as soon as those colors passed out of fashion.

I can’t help thinking that a whole room done in Raspberry Blush would be terribly overwhelming – unless it was something like a small powder room or bathroom, with white porcelain fixtures and neutral tile taking down some of the color impact. Otherwise, I can only see Raspberry Blush in a good-sized room under two circumstances:

As a pop of color contrast in a kitchen; the lower cabinets or kitchen island, with all else save the fabric potholders and kitchen towels being a cool neutral. That would be very pretty, especially if the potholders and towels were in Raspberry Blush. The other way that I could see it would be as trim – the doors, cabinetry, baseboards and cornice – to a room papered in a William Morris pattern, something with a vivid palette and an overall complicated pattern, with a color somewhere in it what would be close to Raspberry Blush – a Victorian-style library, parlor or dining room.

Your thoughts?

Yet Another Handicraft

09. November 2022 · 2 comments · Categories: Domestic

Just call us the modern pioneer women, if you want – my daughter and I are trying our hand at yet another home handicraft; making homemade soap. We have a couple of craft markets coming up, and my daughter had the notion of adding scented candles and soap to our range of offerings. Well, how hard could it be?

We’ve already done cheese-making, home-brewing and wine-making, we’ve messed about with bread-making, I’m a pretty accomplished seamstress and the Daughter Unit has fiddled around with origami and mechanical knitting. We had the basic tools recommended by a couple of soap-making enthusiast websites – a digital scale, a crock-pot, and an immersion blender, the last two of which we can dedicate entirely to soap-making, because the thought of using them to prepare food after doing soap is just … ugh. Various oils and a lye solution, simmered to perfection in the crock – what could be more difficult?

As it turns out, not much, although I did feel a bit like a chemical engineer, in apron, rubber gloves and eye-protection, measuring out in grams the various ingredients – most of them bought at Costco last weekend. Not much like Ma, in the Little House books, brewing together a concoction of rendered animal fat, and a lye solution made from wood-ash in a big pot over an open fire. Which concoction produced something called ‘soft soap’ – which likely did the job of cleaning, but wasn’t a patch on store-bought hard soap, or which came from our attempts today – a series of rather nice, fairly firm soaps, made from a combination of olive oil and coconut oil, and the Dreaded Lye Solution, with certain essential oil and dried lavender additions.

We did hot-process soaps, a basic recipe, which yields usable results in a day or so. I’m going to venture a classic cold-process Castile soap, make with the last of a jug of pure olive oil – which needs months to cure, before it works up a good lather. But honestly, I’ve been very pleased with the local hobbyist home-made soaps that we bought for sale at various markets and fairs, and if it gains a good product for us, with a minimum of harsh chemical ingredients, so much the better.

Cats, Luna City 11, and Things

08. November 2022 · Comments Off on Cats, Luna City 11, and Things · Categories: Domestic, Luna City

Now that I am done with the extended job for hire, I can turn my attention and energy back to the usual routine – like my own books, ‘n stuff, which projects have been in abeyance for months. On the good side, I polished off the last of Luna City #11 – which will rejoice in the title of “Luna City 11th Inning Stretch’ – the ebook version will be available for pre-order later this month, the print version shortly afterward. There will be a Luna City #12, which eventually will be collected into a single compendium volume with books 10 and eleven. I’ll probably pull the plug on the individual print books in a year or so, and just have them in print as part of the compendiums.

It feels good to have the extended job for hire done – it paid some substantial bills and allowed me to look at the close of this year and the starting off the next with a clean slate. In the meantime and if my daughter has real estate business to attend to, I walk the dogs in the early morning, and then walk with Wee Jamie the Wonder Grandson in his stroller. Up to the top of the neighborhood, across to the other side, saying good morning to the other regular walkers, joggers, dog-walkers, dogs and cats as we meet them. Most of the neighbors know us, and we know them; practically everyone who came to Wee Jamie’s baby shower was a neighbor, and all unite in admiring his charm, his happy and outgoing nature, and his rate of growth.

There are several cats of particular note in the neighborhood; there is a lovely and friendly Siamese about a block up from our house, whom we do not see very often, but she is more approachable than the usual run of Siamese. On one of the major cross streets lives a brindle cat with a white nose and white feet, whom we nicknamed “Socksie” as it looked as if he had ankle socks on his front feet and knee-socks on his hinder legs. Socksie is the king of his block, and always comes running to meet us, if he wasn’t off doing cat-things. His family recently adopted a bitty buddy for him – another brindle kitten with white feet – and we promptly named Socksie’s little brother “Underpantsie”. They are both very happy to see us, in any event. Then there is a black and white cat who hangs out in front of his people’s house on another street, but Chopper is only occasionally friendly, depending on his mood of the moment. Chopper lives down the street from where Tommy, the big orange and white cat used to live. Tommy was king of that particular block, and lived to the very great age of 22; outstanding for an indoor-outdoor cat. When he passed on to the Great Litterbox In the Sky, all the neighbors posted pictures of and elegies to him on Nextdoor – Tommy was that famous.

The last cats on our walking route are actually a mob of pets and semi-ferals, who live around a cluster of houses on the far side of the neighborhood. They really aren’t too popular with the near neighbors, because many are outdoors cats and don’t seem to have serious owners. We got Miso from that mob, and her sister, Snowy for another neighbor – two white kittens who likely wouldn’t have lasted very long as outdoors cats, what with owls, hawks, coyotes, stray dogs and speeding cars. But we stop and dribble out a little kibble for them – all the ones who come running when they see Wee Jamie’s stroller, some of whom will ask for a friendly skritch, as well.

Another Texas Road Trip

07. September 2022 · 3 comments · Categories: Domestic

We took Wee Jamie on another road trip, this last weekend. My daughter and I have decided that we should dedicate one day a week to “Not Doing Work Stuff” – and have an outing of at least half a day, doing something … something diverting. This long weekend demanded a whole day of ‘Not Doing Work Stuff.’ My daughter suggested a road trip to Fredericksburg, and I thought that we should check out the Museum of the Pacific War, as it has been at least five years since I visited it. It was indisputably the last war which we won, after all. The first time I went to the War Museum was maybe in 1995 – when it was all still contained in the old Nimitz Hotel on Main Street, and an annex down the road – IIRC, a side-less pole barn. (And Fredericksburg was still a sleepy little town with an attractive Main Street, with local-oriented business situated in profitable commercial real estate, where they tended to close shop and roll up the sidewalks at about 5 PM. Well, that has come to a screeching halt, I assure you.)

We took the back way, to Fredericksburg, after stopping at a local restaurant for a breakfast which turned out to be more substantial than expected – a local outlet for the Maple Biscuit Company. The fresh-squeeze orange juice was fantastic, and yes, I would know about all that, having grown up with orange trees in the back yard. The biscuits and sausage gravy were so generous and so good that we were resolved to split an order next time. (This was the last place I saw anyone wearing a mask, BTW. The staff were all masked-up.) The back way to Fredericksburg meant driving up 281 to Johnson City, passing memories all the way; Blanco, where we had done market events at the Old Courthouse, and where once we scored some amazing deals at an estate sale at an old house just off the highway. Johnson City, where we had a wonderfully fun three-day long market one year, for the lighting of the Courthouse, the weekend after Thanksgiving. (We had to stay two nights for that in a cabin at the Miller Creek RV resort, which meant that we barely broke even.)

Johnson City, when I first went through in the late 1990s, was sad and depressing in comparison to Fredericksburg. It seemed to be hanging on based on the relation to LBJ, the Johnson ranch and various residences where LBJ’s family had lived. Now it is the beginning of the Texas Wine Road and has a new lease on tourist life. Some years ago, I had suggested that the Hill Country had all the components save castles, villas, and quaint hilltop towns to become the New Provence, since they produce such Frenchified specialty items as lavender, wine, olive oil, goat milk cheeses … and wine. Oh my gosh, have they gone into producing wine. Someone has even built a castle! The usual maps of the Texas Wine Road usually include only the top twelve or fifteen of the biggest and most well-established of the wineries along 290 – or at least, those with the flashiest central building. As we discovered, just about every commercial or retail business along that road was posted as a winery, and even a couple of places, like Wildseed Farms, which initially specialized in some other commodity – like peaches or wildflower seeds – had added on a wine tasting room. If you started at the two wineries just outside Johnson City to the south and stopped at every single winery or tasting room and had a single glass … your liver would be screaming for mercy when you got to Stonewall, and you’d be on the list for a liver transplant once you got beyond Fredericksburg itself.

Yes, it looks as if every ambitious vintner wants a piece of the Hill country – and it appeared they were all doing a land office business, judging by the number of cars in the parking lots, even on a Sunday. As for the wineries and tasting rooms in Fredericksburg itself – the sidewalks and businesses were jammed; families, with children and dogs. If there is a recession in our future, it certainly wasn’t in sight in Fredericksburg; shoppers were out in force, and it looked as if all the restaurants and specialty shops were crowded with shoppers, whole families with small children, babies in strollers and dogs on a leash. However, I must regretfully admit that inflation is clearly out in force. My very favorite vintage from the Fredericksburg Winery – the Fredericksburg & Northern Red, is about ten dollars more a bottle then it was, when I first started buying it. A couple of years ago, someone who studies this kind of thing noted that the Hill Country was where Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino were thirty and forty years ago, as far as wine production went.

I wanted to see if the War Museum had ever managed to put all the relics of that war which they had in the archives on display. One of my favorite displays in the ‘liberated POW division’ was a pair of panties and a bra crocheted out of cotton string, made by one of the military nurses during her time of incarceration at the Santo Tomas internment camp. Alas, that still wasn’t an item on display, among several other clothing relics of civilian internment. When they first put up the main building for the museum, it was essentially a bare warehouse with some vehicles and aircraft parked in it, then a series of full-size dioramas, and then … well, more and more and more. It is now a tightly organized maze of displays, with arrows on the floors, and all kinds of interactive displays and videos. They have a whole B-24 on display to memorialize the Dolittle Raid, and an entire Japanese mini-sub (found adrift shortly after the raid) for the Pearl Harbor section. Models of ships, galore – I was interested to see one of the Lanakai, which had an amazing escape from the Philippines early in 1942. The Lanakai was an old sailing yacht with a diesel engine, which bounced around among various missions, owners, and nations, including being a movie prop ship, converted to military purposes as circumstances dictated. The escape of the ship and crew from the Philippines would make an amazing adventure movie – but never mind. I was glad to see that note was made of the fall of Singapore, since that features so heavily in my own last historical novel. There was not much mention made of campaigns in New Guinea and Malaya; of intense interest to Australians and Brits … but I guess there is only so much room in a museum like this, where the initial focus was on Admiral Chester Nimitz and the American campaigns.

It was so refreshing, all this crowded, happy normality – people having fun, crowding the shops and restaurants, spending money, enjoying themselves. Wee Jamie charmed everyone, and was incredibly well-behaved through the whole day, even if it was a considerable break from his routine. A woman standing next to me in the Fischer & Wieser outlet commented to her friend that she had never seen so many so many cute children and darling, friendly dogs in one single day. And I said, “Well, of course – we breed both in Texas!”

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