When Life Deals You Lemons

Well, things haven't been altogether sour this first month of 2012, but let's just say that the daily grind has been quite a grind.  Since arriving at our winter repose, we've experienced marvelous weather with very comfortable temperatures. It has been a wondeful season for lemons, as you can see.  They range from the size of ordinary oranges to these giant behemoth, almost mutant ones, which are over 5 inches in length and about 3 inches across the middle.  They are plenty juicy and  needless to say, we add the juice to nearly everything.  I am not particularly one for lemonade, but it does add a nice touch to the odd Bloody Caesar, vodka tonic, sangria, or martini. 

My favorite use for them is  salads which I have been shaking up in plastic bags.  I add the juice of a lemon, about 2 tablespoons of regular bottled dressing, a bit of balsamic vinegar, some crumbled feta or bleu cheese, along with  half a chopped avocado, and several leaves of spinach, romaine and then half a bag of 'store bought' greens mix.  That, combined perhaps with a few croutons serves four as a salad and it's much more 'goumandise' than just dumping the lettuce out of the bag and pouring dressing on top.  By shaking it in the bag, the dressing coats each of the green leaves so you don't get a glob on one piece and nothing on the others.  I guess the only determining factor would be that everyone enjoys the same type of bottled dressing.  And my rule of thumb here, is if you don't like it at first, it will grow on ya.

Polymer clay wise, I have made some freaky buttons and am working on a massive cane.  For our guild swap in February we have to come up with at least thirty six inches of 3/4 to inch wide cane to be distributed among the swappers.  With this amount of materials, I have been making small prototypes to see if I like the components, because I don't want to waste  pounds of clay on some end product that I dislike.  I find that is the main drawback to making huge canes.  Because my work is so varied, I cannot possibly use five feet of one type of cane, no matter how you slice it.  My work calls for a great deal of color variation so any canes I make are usually 6 - 8 inches or less in length unless I am making just a caned article, which is not very often.

I am also going to be making a raft of light switch covers.  I think I will go with palettes of limey to avocado greens, and another group in rusty-terracotta blends.  Hopefully I can get my Blackberry to download pictures onto this computer....one of the things that lately  has not been working to my satisfaction.  Since I got a new Blackberry desktop application, the danged thing has not been compliant with my wishes in the downloading pictures area.  I can take the pictures easily enough, it's just transferring them to the laptop has been problematic.  Maybe I will spend a night and figure out how to do it.  In the meantime, I will rely on the digital camera to take pics and even though it's a bit of a hassle, I know it works.

Still too cool in the early mornings to work in the shed, where the natural light is incredibly good, so I will continue on page 228 of Ann Patchett's  State of Wonder.  Thankfully, my years in the Science faculty make the pharmacological and botanic terms not such a mystery.  Now, if I could only read faster, lol.