Flea market treasures

Here are my little treasures from our trip to the Montsweag Flea Market two weeks ago.

Two tea towels: The Christmas-themed one is no doubt from China, but it'll come in handy when the holidays arrive.

The ecru linen one with tan open-work embroidery is a beauty, I think.

The two doilies are lovely examples of crochet, and to think I paid 50 cents each for hours of work!

The doll on the right is my latest handmade doll with a dress made from a handkerchief.

She wasn't made by the same doll maker, I'm quite sure, because too many details of the body are different, but clearly it must have been popular at some time in the past to make small cloth dolls with handkerchief dresses.

She now sits beside the handkerchief doll I found at Montsweag in May. $1 for the one on the left, $5 for the one on the right. Again, unreasonably low prices for someone's handiwork.

I tried googling "handkerchief dolls," hoping to learn something about their history, but the dolls I located on the web are made much differently from these two. These have very delicate arms and legs; the others are more simply constructed.

Montsweag closes Columbus Day Weekend. I'm hoping to resist the urge to go back just one more time.

Montsweag again

Sunday was a picture-perfect late-summer day, so Ken suggested we go to the Montsweag Flea Market, just north of Bath and Woolwich, one final time for the year.

I was so glad we did just that. There were more vendors at the flea market than we'd been seeing on our three or four previous visits this summer.

I told Ken I suspected the vendors were making a final, last-ditch effort to sell their items to out-of-staters before everyone heads home to their respective states on Labor Day Weekend.

I always enjoy looking through boxes of linens. I've found some great, exquisite needlework  bargains. I guess I feel my mission in life now is to rescue fine needlework that no one else treasures. Some people rescue kittens; I rescue fine needlework.

This box at the left, for instance, was full of lovely handiwork, with each items selling for 50 cents!

I chose some dish towels and a crocheted doily. I already have tons of dish towels and doilies, of course, but for 50 cents....

I'll share my treasures in my next post.

 
In the meantime, feast your eyes on this lobster roll. We drove up to Wiscasset for lunch at Sarah's after leaving the flea market. A bowl of fresh haddock chowder and a lobster roll with cole slaw for $19.95. We couldn't resist.

Ever made a vegetable oven pancake?

Yesterday morning, right smack in the middle of exercise class, as I wondered when the torture would end, I happened to think of a Vegetable Oven Pancake.

I have no idea why the oven pancake popped into my head. Maybe I was just desperate to escape to something more pleasurable than jumping and bending and lifting weights.

Anyway, a Vegetable Oven Pancake it was, and what a pleasant memory, indeed.

I hadn't made one for a few years, and I don't know why, because both of us love it.

If there's a right time of year, or best time of year, to serve this delightful dish, it's now. Fresh broccoli, fresh green peppers, fresh onions, fresh tomatoes...need I say more?

The recipe I use comes from the Food Network, but there are other variations of it on the web.

For the first time I used my cast iron skillet for baking it. I was rather sorry I did, because it made the beautiful pancake crust a little too dark for my liking. I'll go back to using a pie plate next time.

The final result was still delicious, though. Both Ken and I had seconds.

I think I'll make another one next week. My garden is producing green peppers and tomatoes like crazy.

More knitting

I've been working on some quick little projects lately.

At left is the Puerperium Cardigan. I had to look up the definition of "puerperium," although I knew it must have something to do with newborns because the sweater is so tiny. According to the dictionary, the puerperium period is the four-weeks-following-birth period.

The cardigan is quick and easy. What a great pattern, free on Ravelry.

I'm pretty much convinced our young friends Erik and Janessa are having a boy in November, so if I'm correct, the Puerperium will be for their little guy.

If I'm wrong, the little Entrechat shrug in deep aqua will be for their little girl.

The Puerperium is knit with Dream Baby DK, a soft, machine-washable acrylic/nylon yarn.

I used some leftover Lion Brand Cotton-ease for the aqua shrug. Since it was only a partial skein, I held my breath as I neared the end of the pattern and the end of the skein. The pattern won out; I had about 3 yards of yarn left over. Phew. Close call.

I found some cute buttons for the shrugs at Mother of Pearl yarn shop in Freeport. I love that yarn shop; it's one of Maine's very best. I dashed in and out on this trip, though, because Ken was waiting for me in the car. He always tells me to take my time, but there's something about having a husband waiting in the car that makes a wife hurry.

What I loved about this single card of buttons is that they went so well with both shrugs. Two birds with one card of buttons, in other words.

Now I'm knitting a teeny pullover sweater from the leftover blue Dream Baby DK. It'll go onto one of my knitted baby rabbits and will be tucked into the gift box with the Puerperium cardigan. Or maybe it'll be wearing an aqua sweater and be tucked into the gift box with the aqua shrug.

Time will tell.

Gardening and knitting

 I love it when my garden begins to show signs of being ready for harvesting. I've picked several tomatoes already, which is about two weeks ahead of schedule. I've canned a few pints and will can more in the next few weeks.

I came upon a recipe online for oven-roasted tomato sauce. It sounds so delicious, and I love the way roasting vegetables brings out their sweetness (Have you ever tried roasting together potato chunks and butternut squash chunks, with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper sprinkled on them before popping them into the oven? Really, really tasty), so I'm eager to try roasting some of my own.

The tomatoes that aren't fully ripe when I pick them I put into a brown paper bag with a banana or two. The bananas will hasten the ripening of the tomatoes.

Green peppers? Love 'em. I chop them up, place on a single layer on a baking sheet, freeze them for an hour or so, then dump them into freezer bags and put them back into the freezer. This gives me chopped green peppers to use in chili, dynamites, rice pilaf, etc., all winter long.

Last fall for the first time I planted some garlic. I wasn't sure what soil conditions would work best, so I planted the cloves of one bulb in my vegetable garden and the cloves of the other bulb in my flower garden. The vegetable garden tends to be must wetter than the flower garden.

I harvested the garlic two weeks ago and can see that the vegetable garden was the preferred spot for growing garlic. The bulbs now hanging in the basement to dry before cutting off the stocks and roots. I'm a little disappointed in the size of the bulbs, but maybe I'll get a better crop next year. I love garlic. If a recipe calls for two garlic cloves, I add four. That sort of thing.

And knitting. Yes, I've been knitting, of course. This little girl's shrug is called "Entrechat." I found the pattern on Ravelry and immediately bought and downloaded it.

It was a quick, easy knit, an all-in-one, top-down design, so there were no seams to sew up once it was finished. I haven't chosen just the right button for it yet. I'm thinking something with a little bling will be just the ticket.

This is a size 3-4, but the pattern ranges from 0-3 months to 5-6 years, so I should be able to make a lot of these very feminine shrugs for various little girls, current and future!

So that's what I'm up to currently.

Two weddings

It's a drizzly, rather depressing day here in Maine, so I thought I'd brighten things up a bit by talking about weddings.

Two weddings: one on August 2, the other on August 9.

But here's the kicker: The mother of the bride on August 2, and the mother of the groom on August 9, was one person: my niece Cheryl.

I'm pleased to say she survived this intensely emotional time in fine style, and she's now breathing normally again.

The first wedding, the August 2 one, with Ashton and Eric as bride and groom, was held in a church in Boothbay Harbor. Very pretty wedding, very pretty bride, glowing groom.

The second wedding, the August 9 one, with Benjamin and Allison as groom and bride, was held at the bride's parents' home, on Southport Island, near Boothbay Harbor. There's nothing like having the Atlantic Ocean as a backdrop.

The weather was perfect for both weddings. As we sat in our chairs waiting for the second ceremony to begin, a gentle ocean breeze caressed us and hummingbirds worked at the flowers along the shoreline.

Ben and Allison's golden doodle, Bode, attended his parents' ceremony. Can you see him intently listening to the words they're speaking? He's at the far right.

I loved the way Allison's veil drifted in the ocean breeze. As you can see, this wedding also featured a very pretty bride. She and Ben radiated happiness.

Here's Bode leaving the ceremony. I found it touching that Ben and Allison's beloved dog got to witness the wedding.

We have no more weddings on the horizon, as far as we know.

These two were a lovely addition to our summer, though. We enjoyed being a part of the celebration, and we know we have two wonderful new family members.

50th

I graduated from high school in 1964. That was 50 years ago.

I know! I know! It seems more like twenty years, tops, but it was, indeed, fifty years ago.

We've had two reunions since 1964: a 25th, which I attended, and a 40th, which I did not attend.

In April of this year, I said I would attend the 50th.

Then I began to get cold feet. My cold feet were due, mainly, to vanity: I figured I was the only one in my class who had aged and looked to be nearing 70.

Early in the week of the reunion, I told Ken I definitely did NOT want to attend. He tried to urge me to go; I said no, I was fine with not going.

By Friday I was having second thoughts and told Ken I would like to go after all.

The first photo shows all of us who attended. Before you express shock at the low turn-out, you should know there were ten (yes, 10) in my graduating class. One was killed in a car accident four years after graduation. Two or three of the graduates didn't attend the reunion. Three who didn't actually graduate but who attended most years of high school did attend.

So there were ten of us at the reunion, and our spouses.

The top photo is of all of us in attendance; the second is a photo of me with my good friend, John. I hadn't seen John since the 25th reunion.

The black and white photo shows us as kindergartners, I think, or maybe first-graders. Six of the ten who attended the reunion are in this photo; I can't identify everyone, so maybe there are more than six of us shown here.

My best friend Elaine. in the middle of this photo above, was my dearest friend from kindergarten to senior year. We phoned each other each night during elementary school to choose our outfits for the next day. We phoned each other every night during high school to try to solve overwhelming algebra, geometry, and calculus problems.We've kept in touch all these years, and Elaine still phones me when she comes to Maine.

I left our little reunion feeling really glad that I had attended after all. For one thing, it was great seeing everyone and catching up on their lives. Fifty years melted away just like that as we reminisced about our school years and our teachers. (For another, joy filled my heart when I noticed they have aged, too!)