Book Club/Eating Club

 

I haven't written about Book (Eating) Club for awhile, so here are some pictures from last night's get together. As usual, food took precedence. Everyone brought something to share and hostess Beth outdid herself with appetizers and a main dish. There was a lot of talk about travel because three of them just got back from a long European tour.

We started with homemade pretzels by Beth, both regular and a cinnamon-sugar batch that were soooo good. They sounded like a lot of work, kneading and letting them rise, boiling them like bagels to give them their nice chew and then baking them. But boy were they good!

Beth also made a chicken gnocchi dish with spinach and a creamy sauce. Judy made a Greek pasta salad, and Kristina combined tomatoes and basil from her brother's garden with feta for a tasty hot dish.

I had planned to bring a Caprese salad with tomatoes from last weekend's farmers market, but the tomatoes went bad so I substituted slices of watermelon. It was refreshing with the mozzarella, basil, and a syrupy balsamic drizzle.

Sandy made shrimp scampi that was delicious.

And Barb brought a decadent ice cream cake!

And yes, we did talk about the book, "The Bird Hotel," which we all liked.

Here's a review that I found online, which summarizes it better than I could:

"Escaping a life riddled with tragedy, Irene finds herself alone in an intoxicatingly tropical corner of Central America. At La Llorona, a neglected lakeside hotel beside the village's storied volcano, she builds a new life for herself, one woven together with Scheherazade-like fables of Indigenous life. This heartrending, epic novel is about the histories that come back to haunt us, the indifference of fate, and the magical powers of the natural world."

Speaking of which, here are some magical flowers that bloomed overnight on a neighbor's cactus.

Have a colorful day

Another happy bowl

I made another yellow bowl because yellow is the happiest color! The rope and strips of fabric ran out at the same time, which made it easy to decide when to stop.

I added a little hot pink and orange to make it sizzle, since it's getting hot here in Tucson. We haven't hit three digits yet this year, but we're getting close. Saturday is predicted to be 97.

The yellow prickly pear flowers are also blooming.

And in three days I'll be in Spokane smothering this little girl with kisses!!! She's grown so much in four months and I miss her every day. She's getting strong and is making cute babbling sounds and is so alert. I'm thankful for FaceTime and for my daughter being able to send videos and photos at the click of a button. I probably watch her videos fifty times a day.

Have a colorful day

Spring quilt for sale

 

Here's another oldie but goodie that I'm listing for sale, for $175. It's 24 inches square.

The Kiowa saying expresses gentle reverence for the land: "Walk lightly in the spring; Mother Earth is pregnant." The Kiowa are indigenous to the Great Plains.

I stamped and outlined the letters on fabric that I painted in soft spring hues. The center panel is stamped with spirals, hands and forest animals ... 

... and unfurling ferns are beaded at the bottom. The crinkled sheer blue fabric represents rain.

This is one of my favorite quilts, but it's time for it to go to a new home and bring someone else pleasure. I just have too many quilts!

Have a colorful day

The nastiest cactus -- the cholla

There's a very common cactus here in the Southwest that I don't write about much because I don't like it, but now that it's blooming I thought I'd introduce you to what I consider the nastiest, most dangerous cactus:

The cholla

(pronounced choi-a)

The dead ones look like zombies (above) and the live ones are thick with barbed spines that are really hard to remove once lodged in the skin. 

And they jump on you! If you barely brush up against one, it will break at a joint and attach itself to you, like what happened to these unlucky guys who I found by googling "pictures of cholla cacti stuck on people."

The first one fell while ATVing in the Nevada desert. I don't know what happened to the one below, but it looks like medical help has arrived.

In my four years of hiking here, I've never been stuck by a cholla because I'm terrified of them and give them a wide berth and a lot of respect. On my first Meetup hike here, our leader advised us to carry combs in our packs to remove cholla joints that might get stuck on us. There's no way you can remove them with your hands, because they would stick you again.

They bloom April-June, and they're everywhere. I took some of these photos in Catalina State Park and others along a walk by my neighborhood. They'd make a good security fence!

There are more than 20 species of cholla with some colorful common names such as teddy bear, devil, chain-fruit, club and jumping cholla.

The flowers are pretty, but beware of the rest.

Have a colorful day

More art listed in my shop

 

"Canyon Wind"

It's getting too hot to spend a lot of time outside, so I've been inside listing more quilts and spirit dolls in my online shop. I have about a hundred more quilts in storage, more than I'll ever list in my lifetime! 

Click on Pages - My Art for Sale on the right side of my blog if you're on the web version. Otherwise: my-little-art-for-under-100.html should get you there.

Here's a sampling. 

Click on photo for larger view.

"Yellow Vase"

"Spring In the Desert"

"Sea Glass and Fog"

"Pink and Orange Hills"

(Or it could be a sunset)

"Joy"

Detail of Dream spirit doll

Detail of "Canyon Wind"

Make my day and buy something!!!

Art walk color splash!

Barb and I went on a First Thursday art walk on a balmy evening last week at Plaza Colonial, a Mediterranean-style paradise of gardens, galleries, restaurants and shops tucked away near a main intersection in Tucson's foothills but a world away from the traffic.

Musicians added to the festive ambience, and there were refreshments in the galleries.

At Jane Hamilton Fine Art we were gushing over a magnificent glass sculpture when we discovered that the woman standing nearby in an equally magnificent tunic was the artist, Mary Sherwood! I'm sure it's even more beautiful with the sun shining through the colored glass.

Here's more of her art, below. Her card says, "The interplay of transparency, color and light in glass is an ever changing process. Working with glass is a choreographed dance of art, chemistry and science to achieve a desired result." 

Tucson's art is very colorful ...

... and there's an abundance of outdoor art because we can enjoy the outdoors all year here, with much of our lives transpiring on patios and in courtyards.

 

Now that I'm putting this blog post together, I realize I didn't take nearly enough photos of the art.

But I did take a picture of "Saguaro Moon Landing" by Tom Murray for a friend who's interested in UFOs. When I stepped outside, I realized that the sky was the same color as the one in the painting, with saguaros piercing the sunset. (I didn't spot any UFOs.)

Afterward we went to Frost for a gelato dinner. 

And to show you some color at home, look at this crocheted afghan that I just got from my daughter's Etsy shop, DesertspringVintage!

Signing off from my back yard, where it's 86 in the sun but perfectly pleasant in my patio shade with a pitcher of sun tea brewing.

Have a colorful day