Parsnips, Pie and ISSMA Gold

This week’s vegetable is parsnip.  At least that’s the felted vegetable I’m making for my piece in progress called ‘Fall Stew’.  I grew up with parsnips as a big part of our diet.  It’s a key ingredient in svíčková omáčka.  Every family makes it a little differently.  My father always prepared it with a meat roast surrounded by carrots, onions, parsnips and celeriac.  The key spices are peppercorns, bay leaves and juniper berries.  We used to collect the juniper berries, illegally I’m sure, at the Pinery Provincial Park during summertime visits.  That kept us in dried berries through the year.  After baking, the ingredients were combined with sour cream and milk and pureed.  This was an event where he always wore an apron because he managed to splatter the omáčka everywhere.  The sauce was then poured back over the meat and big knedlicky (big dumplings).  There was lots of sour cream to make it good and a little vinegar for flavor.  The carrots and parsnips were important to add a sweetness.  Many families have different versions, but that’s the basic recipe. 

As I was making the parsnips, which I always tried to sneak into my fall stew, I realized that most people aren’t familiar with the shape.  People around me who watch as I needle felt ask if I’m making albino carrots.  They’re probably the same people who can’t tell a loon from a duck.  It doesn’t matter, though—I know what they are. Next I’ll add to the composition a little garlic as my next ‘vegetable.'  You can’t really have a stew without garlic, can you?

I have a lot of art fairs on my summer schedule that I’m excited about doing.  That means I need to hide away in my studio and weave.  I always forget how much I enjoy weaving!  My frame maker, Tom Bertolacini, has been busy as well. He is a woodworker and photographer who lives out in Greene County and makes my frames from locally sourced oak.  He has been busy making seventeen new frames for me that he delivered on Friday.  I know I’m getting off track a little, but that was an incredibly busy day.  I have been going into South to work on the costumes for Pippin on Mondays and Fridays.  This particular Friday, the 29th, is exactly one month since my birthday.  I had lost track of that, but as it turns out, my husband and the SOS director (Gwen Witten) hadn’t.  As I was coming out of the costume studio into the big choir room to measure one of the girls for a skirt waistband, the spotlight fell on me and Gwen announced that it was my birthday!  Four big boxes of cookies came into the room from Baked in Bloomington, still warm and full of wafty smells to share with the room. It’s pretty amazing to have sixty-five vocally gifted kids singing happy birthday to you in perfect tune, all staring at you and smiling.  It was a little overwhelming.  My son Tommie was among the 65, but my husband and younger son Jacob walked in to be part of the experience.  I even got a present—a Kuerig coffee machine that will stay in the costume studio.  What a perfect gift and a wonderful surprise! It’s almost as good as the Bahamas!  Almost. 

Saturday turned out to be pretty intense too.  Both boys participated in the ISSMA (Indiana State School Music Association) voice competition.  Jacob was in Division 2 and Tommie in Division 1, and both received gold medals.  Tommie will be competing in the state competition on February 20th.  I’m so incredibly proud of them!  They are both gifted in many many ways. They sang with confidence and poise and passion.  When I sat in the audience and they opened their mouths and this beautiful sound came out of their mouths I had a moment of ‘who is this kid?’  We went from there to a 60th birthday party for a friend of mine who lives on a beautiful property in Brown County.  I saw an impressive field of turnips planted for ground cover, which got me thinking about Fall Stew again.  Sunday was my actual birthday party, with conch fritters, baked salmon and boca negra, a delightful flourless cake from Julia Childs.  

 Oh, and so much happened that I almost forgot to mention that it was a pie week!  Blueberry, yum!  I still have blueberry pie and chocolate cake in the fridge.  My life is complete.  At least for the moment.  I’ll probably want another pie by Wednesday.  

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Scarf season begins…

This week I was caught in a whirlwind of ruffled scarf creation. Last week I designed and wet felted a large collection of lattice scarves created from reclaimed and recycled materials. I combined novelty yarns, ribbons, and lace from my collections with ultrasoft merino wools to make my art scarves. I then decided I needed more ruffled scarves for the Fiber Arts show so I launched into creating black and red scarves from merino wool. I developed a strategy to make the outer scarf edge undulate, where the undulation is part of the actual scarf structure. I really liked how the red and black colors worked together, so after a few of those I made some of red, purple and black. That led me to two different shades of purple and black and then two tints of indigo and black, then on to scarves with tints of turquoise and black. By the end of the week I was looking for something different to do so I incorporated some shiny red Angelina fibers to give the scarves a little bling. I made so many that I was ironing scarves right up to the start of the Fiber Arts show. The good news is that the ruffled scarves were a big hit again this year. The bad news is that I don’t have many ruffed scarves left for shows later in the year! I guess that means I’ll be laying out more ruffled scarves before the December Unitarian Universalist Holiday Art Fair & Bazaar (Fee Lane & the bypass).

The Fiber Arts show itself was a huge success and a lot of fun for me personally. This year three local guilds put on their shows the same weekend, which was dubbed by the BEAD folks as the ‘Craft Crawl’. People could easily move between the local clay, glass and fiber guild shows at three nearby churches. Plus it was the weekend of the Handmade Market downtown. I think people enjoyed visiting all the venues—it was just a local art shopping weekend. For me, it was nice to see people I don’t get to chat with often enough. The Fourth Street Festival is always jam packed so I don’t get to visit with everyone. The Fiber Arts show is a little slower paced. I ran into my friend from Argentina, and I spent Friday and Saturday hugging people, laughing and catching up. I only stopped long enough to sell scarves, both ruffled and lattice, every so often. Now I’m looking forward to the Déjà Vu show this weekend in Columbus Indiana. I won’t bring my ruffled scarves, since they don’t have any reclaimed and recycled content, but I’ll bring a selection of my lattice scarves and my new upcycled sweater scarves. Even if I don’t sell a lot of art I’ll have a lot of fun with my art friends and show-neighbors Cappi Phillips and Pat Hecker. I’m sure that we’ll laugh the whole time. I went there with Cappi and Dawn Adams on a reconnaissance mission a few weeks ago to check out the space so I have an idea how the Commons will be laid out for the show. We had a great trip then, including lunch at Bistro 304—I’m looking forward to having a box lunch from there this weekend. Thanks to Marilyn Brackney for organizing the show, and I hope to see you there to show off my Re-shirts, scarves and a few weavings.

On the home front, when I have a successful art show my family makes me a celebratory dinner. This time things were a little hectic so I pulled some peppered salmon out of the freezer for dinner. Jim baked some bread and a boca negra (black mouth) cake, both out of the ‘Baking with Julia’ cookbook. It was sooo… good—Jim just nailed it. Just what I needed after a full weekend of chitty-chattying! I guess the last bit of news is that in the background of my life I’ve been working my new poppy piece, which is very labor intensive. For two months now I’ve been creating leaflets for the plant and I wanted to lay out what I had and see how many more I needed. I think it looks really good but I still have a lot of work ahead of me. I need more leaflets, plus poppy buds and flowers to finish the piece. I’m sure it will be ready for the first spring show! Oh, and if you’re in Bloomington and want to see some Scarf Art, I have several pieces hanging at the Bloomington Bagel Co. (on Dunn St). Stop in, have a bagel and enjoy the art (and the bagel).

Until next week…

Martina Celerin