The recipe/process is pretty simple really. It is basically this: Many, many dandelion flowers. Make tea with them. Let them steep for 2-3 days. Remove the flowers, keep the tea. Add citrus, sugar, and yeast. Ferment for 2 months. Rack it, (expl. later,) 2 more months fermentation/clearing. Bottle it. Let it stay in the bottle for 6 months.

So you see, the hardest part is waiting. That is 10 months of make-time! I personally will probably cut the second 2 months down a bit this year. I need it to be ready for the winter solstice party at our friend Averil’s place. Last year I rushed that part of the process without understanding entirely that I was waiting for the dead yeast to settle. I was a little rough with the must while bottling it so the bottles have yeast on the bottom that clouds the wine if you shake it. Not really a big deal as long as it isn’t too much. The taste isn’t affected. And you can clear the wine by chilling it which is how it is best to drink it.

This year, 10 gallons! Last year’s batch disappeared quickly around the holidays. And I am really interested in wine that stays in the bottle for a whole year. (Thankfully I have 4 left.) So I wanted to make more this year, and I have the carboys to do it. This year’s recipe included 30 oranges and 20 lemons, zested and peeled. (The kitchen smelled wonderful.) Instead of juicing the fruit and putting that and the pulp in there with the zest, I just put the zest and fruit, without the pith, into the blender and made a slurry. (It was very tasty.) And I am using a different yeast this time. A nicer yeast that will ferment better alcohols. (I will probably get into what I have learned about fermentation later. Check back.)

If you know me, you won’t be surprised that I am looking forward to designing the label for this year’s wines. I really liked last year’s label. But I am happy to have the opportunity to make another. Thisis a mock-up of last year’s label.

Note: The two 1 gallon jugs to the right in the photo above are lilac wine. This batch is a special one-off for Teressa. The recipes are very similar. I learned recently that you can make marigold wine. So it seems the idea is to find a flower whose odor you enjoy and adjust the recipe to suit. (Probably should research your flower choice well though. Try to avoid poisoning yourself.)

More soon.

We had a baby! Her name is Willow Jean Barsotti Hicks. (No hyphens; four names. The world will just have to figure it out for themselves.)
She was born at our home on March 8, 2012. She is just over 2 months old now. Starting to smile more which is really rewarding. She definitely recognizes her mom and me. It’s nice to know she likes us.

We currently sleep no more than 3 hours at a time. Usually more like 2 and a half. Willow sleeps with us in our bed, between us usually, right up by our heads. So when she starts to stir and move about, we either are awakened by her noise or we get socked in the face by a wayward, not yet coordinated little uppercut. (She’s got some serious guns on her.) Anyway, this means a diaper change and some time at the boob are in order. Often I change the diaper while Teressa gets set up to nurse. After handing Willow off, I take care of any other needs like peeing, getting water for Teressa, turning the laundry over so there are clean diapers in the house. Then Teressa makes me go back to bed. I hate going back to bed without them. Yes I am lonely and I miss them. But mostly it wrenches my gut that Teressa has to stay up. We both sleep for 2.5 - 3 hours. Then I am up for 30 minutes. Teressa is up for an hour, sometimes more depending on how hungry or fussy Willow is. Our culture gives much lip service to women for their “role” in child rearing and yet never comes close to any real description. (I quotated “role” because Teressa doesn’t “have a role” in rearing this child. She IS rearing this child. I have a role. It is to support Teressa.) I can do more laundry in the middle of the night than than a laundromat does in a week. But I cannot feed this baby. And no way in Hell, even though I am willing to try, would I have been able to carry and birth that baby. You should have seen her, wait, no, I am glad you weren’t there. You should know how heroic Teressa was during labor. I love her. I do not doubt her. And yet to witness her strength and magic giving birth to our baby gave me a whole new perspective on what is possible in this life, if only in the hands of women. Mother’s day is a farce. Every day is mother’s day.

Every day is also father’s day. At least it feels like I am being rewarded every time I see Willow and Teressa. I know that Willow knows me from her mom. I am not as soft and I don’t smell as good. I know she recognizes the difference in our faces. My thick framed glasses and, shall we say, ample eyebrows giver her a nice contrasty clue. She looks mostly at our foreheads with her amazing blue eyes. The day she was born Willow had the darkest azure eyes I have ever seen. They are lightening and greying now; incorporating the colors that will likey lead to a beautiful hazel color. She does make eye contact, moreso lately in her alert periods while we are practicing our conversation skills. (The worst feeling in the world is when she is really, really upset and crying at full force, she looks me directly in the eyes while she is screaming. Just awful.) We have talked about who we saw that day, how awesome Mommy’s boobs are, the Avante Guarde, the Canterbury Tales, and why it is important to recycle. (For the record, the Avante Guarde is a really hard concept for adults, let alone newborns. So bone up on it before you start. Newborn’s have less patience for ilprepared lecturers.)

If you want to see more photos of the wedding and the party, here is the wedding website. On theCeremony page and on the Party page, there are links to photos.

Yay for us!

I built a large raised bed for us last year. Something close to 10 feet long by 7 feet wide. Twenty-one inches in height. And with a nice lip around the top to sit on. The wood was found, purchased on the cheap at the Rebuilding Center, or donated by Eric. Thanks dude.

We filled it with our first year’s compost from the bin, and some free dirt from a guy on craigslist and some more compost purchased from McFarlanes. That bed can hold some dirt, let me tell you.

Our first crop in this bed was tomatoes. Seen here at there fullest, in late August of 2010, right after the wedding. (We got married! Teaser for another post.) In the original beds we grew some artichokes, which are beautiful plants and tasty, but for the room they take up, I am not sure we will ever plant those with “production” in mind like we do tomatoes.

Also in these pics you can see some new planting boxes and barrels, and another smaller planting box that we placed across the driveway to create a sitting area. In that box we had some calendula and some beans. (Bambo structure for running the bean strings. Bamboo courtesy of Matt Stember, a brilliant Earth pal with a heart that is worth more than its weight in gold.)

Along the side of the house we had a little forest of herbs and smaller plants. Mint grows naturally there too.

Last year’s season was a weird one. Ask anyone in Portland. But we got a good haul. And had some little creatures make homes in our garden.

They are all from reclaimed, recycled materials and found objects. The first few didn’t open for cleaning… but after getting that question enough, I have started making them accessible. It adds a bit of time to the process as each solution is different and I don’t want to go and buy a bunch of hinges and clasps. I am trying to keep the materials costs as close to zero as possible.

They are all designed for either sparrows or finches, small birds that like small holes.

In the photos you can see the 9 plants, (there are 3 more in the front of the house) when they were young. They are now taller than me, but laying over and venturing out into the rest of the neighborhood. Even with tomato cages in place, I have had to put in tall spikes for them to be tied to. And the resulting web of twine is its own matrix. A tomato matrix. A tomatrix. (That one goes out to Teressa.)

I made the fencing on the beds from wood we found buried under a big pile of lawn debris left by previous tenants. The point was to keep our dog, Guido, from getting all mixed up in there. But we also needed to get in there ourselves to weed etc. so I made cross bars removable.

Also from the found wood, I made this compost bin. We are pretty excited about that. It is nice and big and composting is very satisfying. We generate alot of food waste when we process veggies for chutnies and soups and potato gratins and whatnot. And instead of pitching it into the garbage and getting an awful smell, we dump it in the compost bin and throw a shovel full of dirt on it and return all the nutrients we didn’t eat to the soil for next year and the year after that and so on.

In the photo of the side of the house you can see the spirea, (I love that plant.) and the mint and where we put up a simple fence around the wild flower seed beds. And the others are of the front yard. There was quite a bit of lavender and rosemary and some sage, oregeno and thyme existing when we moved in. I love that stuff. Lots of yellowjackets buzzing about. They love it too. The roses over against the fence struggled earlier this summer with some spots but Teressa has taken good  care of them and helped them out alot. She also planted some calendula seeds in the front too, near the tomatoes. Perhaps the most dynamic growers are the squash plants. These photos are from before the planting of the beans. They are just now starting to mature.

Click the smaller image for a larger view. Grin.

The weather was incredible this weekend so I propped the shop doors open and spent some hours on a Classical Cigar Box Guitar. As usual, I am not finished with this project but am too excited to wait to post it.

Of note, the scale length dictated the placement of the bridge just at the back edge of the box. I originally used a hinge for several reasons; 1. I didn’t want to drill through the top of the box and, 2. it gold color doesn’t hurt the design. The saddle would have floated in the dado-cut channel. This will ensure that it will not slip forward or back, but will let the tension of the srtings center itself/themselves over the neck, in case it is a bit crooked. (After stringing the instrument I found that I mis-measured the action and the strings sailed like telephone cables over the neck! So I have installed a different bridge, but have no pics of it yet.)

Then there is a 3-holed hinge coming from the back of the box which will serve as the tailpiece, 2 strings through each hole.

I cut a peice of wood to attach to the bottom, shaped like the bottom half of a classical guitar. Funny design nod, and functional in that it will provide a place to nestle on one’s knee. (I got this idea from seeing a Johnny Lowebow piece at the Deep Blues Festival this summer. His stuff is amazing.)

Hey there!
Yesterday I etched the control plate for the Suitcase Bass.

All traditional intaglio process, 1. Cleaned and prepped the brass plate. 2. Put a soft ground on it. (Some kid of tar, brushed on, then cooked.) 3. Hours of carving the ground off. 4. Then 1 hour and 24 minutes in ferric nitrate. 5. Rinsed, cleaned with a solvent and a toothbrush. 6. Viola! (Or rather, Bass!)

I am going to carve the ground of the neck plate this weekend and etch that plate on Monday. I decided not to etch the plate that is on the bottom of the bass where the jack and the foot collar are. The bottom of the bass sees the most abuse, and is rarely seen anyway.

I chose to completely open up the brass on the neck plate, allowing a field of etch to occur, hoping for a more “yes/no” effect, and not so many little lines. I am not worried about the 2 plates being different. The whole bass is an ongoing education, so it seems appropriate that it evolve. For some reason the brass did not etch evenly, and it turns out that I prefer the other method of mark making… I am really enthused about this process though, so I will continue to experiment with future projects and maybe revisit the bass brass. This scanned image does not do the plate justice. Over all a thumbs-up!

Other on-going bass related things; I am still planning to expand the micing options by installing a condenser mic, and maybe some K&K transducers.

Where this one gets really wierd is that I am trying to set this one up like a mandolin in that the strings are doubled up. But, where a mandolin has 4 sets of two strings, this instrument will have only 3 sets of two strings. (The number three we have seen on my other instruments has several origins. 1. Lately it has been hardware-driven. I am deliberately using found and recycled objects, and hinges, which very often have 2 holes on one plate and 3 on the other, make great tail-pieces - strong and flexible, decorative or funky. And 2. Three is a magic number. It is just enough to offer variety in tunings. And composing with “3″ makes for nice triangles. A bit esoteric maybe. Ask me about it over a drink sometime…) ANYWAY, this makes for a challenge in that the nutt and the bridge will have to be very finely and patiently crafted.

The sound, as you might guess?, is tinny. And I may have to make the leap into fretted fingerboards to get this one to play well enough.