Aubergine

One moment: Jan 25, 2012

Productivity tool: Workflowy

I found a great new tool recently called Workflowy.  It is so simple it is brilliant.  It runs in a browser, so it works the same across all of my iDevices (love that!).  And best?  it is free!

The biggest issue I struggle with when trying to get things done is that I have too many things in my brain.  My poor noggin is working so hard on remembering all of my to do items and great ideas that I have trouble concentrating on the one thing that I'm working on.  This tool lets me just clear my head so I can focus.  I also love that I can strike items out that are completed, because what's the point of a list if I can't mark DONE all over it?

I have long used an application called Things on my Mac and iPhone, and Workflowy won't replace that.  But before I can set due dates and sort things neatly into projects and prioritize my working order I have to get all that stuff out of my head.  That's where Workflowy comes in.  I can just type into it like an outline. When I have more details on a project or a task I can just tab over and drill down into it.  I can even change the view so I'm just looking at one task and its details at a time, or I can view the whole flowing mess (I admit that can be a little overwhelming).  One could easily just use Workflowy to keep track of tasks, but once I've done the brain download, I find it helpful to move tasks with deadlines over to Things, where I can set reminders on them.  

I've only been using Workflowy for a bit over a week, so there's a lot I haven't tried yet, but so far I'm super impressed. I suspect it will be really useful for working out rough outlines on writing projects.  I've been trying to shove those into Things but a formal to-do list application really is not the right place for those.  

Here are a few "Pro User" tips from the Workflowy team that I found really helpful: 

Completing items. Every item can be a task if you want it to be. Once you've completed a task, hover over the bullet point of the corresponding item and click "Complete" in the menu that pops up. This will strike out the item.  Your lists can become cluttered with completed items quickly, so we recommend you hide them by clicking on the "Completed: Visible" button in the upper right of the page. There's also nothing sweeter than completing tasks and seeing them disappear before your eyes.

Search. WorkFlowy lets you navigate through your lists by expanding them and zooming. But sometimes you forget where you put something. Or maybe you want to bring up all the items that contain a specific word. The search feature lets you filter your WorkFlowy account (or whatever list you're currently zoomed to) instantly, as you type. Try it by using the search box at the top of the page.

Sharing and collaboration. You can share or collaborate on any sublist in your WorkFlowy account. This is a powerful feature that lets you turn any portion of your notes, tasks, lists, etc., into a page that others can view or edit. They'll see your updates (and you'll see theirs) in near-realtime. Click "Share" in the menu that pops up when you hover over a bullet point. Read our blog post on this feature for more info.

Tagging. Sometimes you want to associate together items that are in different parts of your WorkFlowy tree. Say you have tasks for a trip you're planning in one area and tasks for a project you're working on in another. You want to mark tasks in both areas as being "high priority," and then you want to view only the high priority tasks.  Tags let you do this. Add the tag "#highpriority" to all your high-priority tasks. Then click the tag (once you've stopped editing the item) to filter only items with that tag. Click the tag again to turn off filtering.

If you've used this tool and have any other tips I'd love to hear them!

The best garlic soup

We've been sick around here and it has been cold and the intersection of the two is soup.  Soup made with chicken broth, preferably.  Or garlic.  Or both.  This soup is the both.

I originally found it on the tremendous 101 Cookbooks blog, a spin on a recipe from Richard Olney's The French Menu Cookbook.  Heidi Swanson's version nails down amounts, the main difference from Olney's version, but I just don't cook that way, so my version goes back to rough measurements and reflects my adjustments.  It turns out this is actually a soup that you can wing pretty well.

This soup is likely to cure what ails you, and will also keep vampires away.  I recommend feeding it to anyone you are likely to be up close and personal with in the next 24 hours so at least you all stink of garlic the same.

Richard Olney's Garlic Soup

4 cups chicken stock (homemade is best for combating a cold)
2 cups water
1 bay leaf
a small handful of fresh thyme
about 2 medium cloves of garlic, smashed, peeled, and pressed (un-pressed cloves should measure about 1/3 cup)
fine grain sea salt to taste

Binding pommade:
1 whole egg
2 egg yolks
medium handful freshly grated dry cheese (Parmesan or Asiago)
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

day-old crusty bread or large croutons, shredded cheese & more olive oil to drizzle

Bring the stock and water to a boil in a medium sauce pan and add the herbs, garlic, and salt. Heat to a gentle boil, cover,  and simmer for 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and remove the bay leaf from the pan. Taste and add more salt if needed.

With a fork, whisk the egg, egg yolks, cheese, and pepper together in a bowl. Drizzle in the olive oil, beating all the time. Very slowly, while continuing to beat the pommade, add a large ladleful of the broth to heat the eggs.  If you do this or the next step too fast, the broth will break (it won't look pretty, but still tastes ok). While whisking continuously, add the contents of the bowl into the garlic broth. Keep stirring until the broth thickens slightly.  If the soup doesn't thicken within a few seconds, turn the heat back on medium and keep stirring.

Place a handful of fresh croutons (that would be in my old life) or torn bread chunks (what I do now) into the bottom of each bowl and pour the soup over the bread. Finish with a sprinkle of cheese and a drizzle of oil. Serve immediately.

Makes about 4 cups of soup.

This recipe was adapted from the 101 Cookbooks Blog where it was adapted from The French Menu Cookbook by Richard Olney. Originally published in 1970, this edition was republished by Ten Speed Press in 2002.

 

One moment: January 6, 2012

10 minutes at 4pm on a Tuesday

I have put all of the baby's toys back in her toy basket and she is busy unloading them again which should give me 5-10 minutes to write.  I am kneeling at the coffee table where I can see the whole living room, though she likes to crawl around the back of the couch where I can't see her to mail her toys into the boxes there that haven't made it all the way to the garage yet which renders this vantage somewhat wasted.  There's a cat on the couch over my right shoulder, snuggled up next to my camera, and a tea cup with the sticky remains of lemon tea that I drank a while ago by my left hand.  Strewn across the surface of the table around my laptop are the the parent end of the baby monitor, a crumpled tissue, two sippy cups, a plastic toy car, the cover for my iPad which is in the other room on the charger, a DVD from someone's stocking, a travel book for the trip we are planning, a handful of Trader Joe's Sesame Sticks, and my iPhone.  I crave tidy surfaces, full attention to words, clear sinuses.  None of which I have right now.  Instead, I snack on Sesame Sticks and kneel at the coffee table pecking out the best words I can find right now, which I know are not very good.

This is the heavy part of the afternoon when the remaining day feels like forever.  Back when I was working in an office, this was the same part of the day that my energy would flag and I would head for the vending machine.  The baby is bored.  I am bored.  When the weather was good this was when I would head out the door for a walk, but it is cold out there and frankly I don't have the energy. I have made all the silly faces that I have in me today, read all the books (twice), and retrieved her from trying to put toys in the toilet and investigating the litter box more times than I can count.  I despair of what we do between now and bedtime, now that the toy basket is empty and she's here at my side again looking for Grandpa inside my computer screen. 

Mamas, what do you do to get through the draggy part of the afternoon?

At sunset

This afternoon the wind pushed the morning's grey blanket back across half the brilliant blue winter sky until it ran from one horizon to the other in a crumpled pile. Where it met the ocean at one end, as the sun sank, it looked like this.

As one year ends and another one begins, I am choosing to turn into the wide open blue and away the muzzled, muted grey.

Handmade gifts: 5 gifts to make (in less than an hour)

Whether you are running out of gift-making time or just want to make some simple gifts, this group of crafts are quick and (mostly) don't require any special supplies.  

1. Felt rose ring

This is a great little quick project.  The tutorial is for a ring made from the little felt flower, but like the tee-shirt flower in last week's list, you could use the flower on a hair clip, a hair band, a pin, etc.

2. Baby sock coin purse 

In last week's round-up, I suggested you make an owl softie from socks that have lost their mates.  Here's a great little coin purse you can make from a baby sock that has lost its mate.  Any house with a baby has a few of those!

3. Crayon monogram

I love this.  Such a sweet, simple idea to make a monogram in a shadow box out of broken crayons. I love this for a baby shower gift, too.

4. 10 Christimas gifts in a jar

 Would it really be Christmas without a gift in a jar?  Here are recipes for several different options beyond just cookies and hot chocolate.

5. Soy candles in baby food jars or tea cups

These are *really* easy, if you use the pre-mixed soy wax and wicks from a craft store.  Scent them with essential oils to make a set in baby jars, or use one lovely tea cup and saucer for a sweet gift for someone special.

I'm totally enamored with re-using baby jars these days.  They are so small and cute!  Here are a bunch of other things you can do with them.  I love the spices with chalkboard-painted tops.

If you need some great (green!) ideas for ways to wrap up your lovely handmade items, here is a post over on Simple Mom with lots of creative options. I love the baby food jar as a container for a necklace!

 
Happy holiday crafting!

 

Handmade gifts: 6 gifts to make (in an hour or more)

This was going to be a weekly feature in November, but life happened and I got interrupted.  So where was I?  Oh, right, making gifts in every shortening periods of time.  Here is a set that I think will take a bit over an hour, but hopefully less than three.  An evening's work, after the baby is in bed - that's how I measure my time these days!

1. Folding travel tote

Can you believe I have a Martha Stewart tutorial on a list of "just about an hour" crafts?  Truly, though, this one is pretty straight forward.  Though intended as a travel tote for gadgets and cords, it could be used as a journaling kit, a wrap for jewelry or an on-board drawing kit for a child.

2. Tee-shirt flowers

That is, flowers made from tee-shirts, or any other knit fabric.  Apply them to clips or a headband, apply a pin-back to make a brooch, or group them together on the side of a cute bag or on a belt.  The possibilities are endless!

3. Sock owl softie

This is the re-use edition of this series apparently.  Make a cute softie owl from a sock!  Gotta love cleaning out the onsie socks and making gifts at the same time!

 4. Lip balm

I've made lip balm for gifts a couple of times and they have always been really well received.  This can be a time-comsuming project, so I recommend you split it in two parts.  Clean and set up your containers and prep the ingredients in the first session, then do the heating, mixing and filling in a second session.  Use essential oils for scent.  Try some fun and unusual combinations - chocolate and rose absolute, or grapefruit and mint.  Yum! 

5. Bandana cowl

You'd have to be a fast knitter to finish bandana-shaped cowl in an evening, which I am not particularly. But knit with bulky yarn, it will go pretty fast.  It is a nice unisex pattern, too.

 6. Jacket hooks from cool knobs

This last one is not a tutorial, just an idea, so I'm counting it as a bonus.  I love this jewelry-hanging rack made from knobs attached to a board.  I'm envisioning it scaled up, though - cool old door knobs for a jacket hanger.  And really, who doesn't need an excuse to take a field trip to Anthropologie or Restoration Hardware to look at cool drawer pulls?

 

November

I had such good intentions of writing every single day this month.  And I started strong.  I was enjoying it, the quest to find a topic every day, practicing the muscle of finding the words to pin down my thoughts.  It felt good.  And the exercise was helping me to shake out new ideas, more each day than I could use so that I could string them forward into other projects, next month, set aside for when I had more time to dig deeper.

But then my grandfather died and I dropped everything and flew to Canada.  And then I brought the flu home with me and the whole household has been staggering under it.  And then the rains came and I feel my energy winding down.  And here I sit in the middle of the last full week of the month and wonder what happened to November.

I love and hate you, November.  This is the month that starts out warm and cozy and ends cold and wheezing. It always goes faster than I expect and then the holidays are upon me and I'm unprepared.  My birthday is at the end but I'm always so worn out by the time it arrives that I just want it over and done with so I can sleep.  And by the time I catch my breath again it is the middle of December and Christmas is looming and I haven't planned gifts and the ones that need to be mailed are already late and I decide yet again that I won't be doing cards this year and I swear that next year I will be more organized and more prepared and more rested and it will be better.

I don't think my skidding slide to the end of the year actually has anything to do with poor organization or lack of preparedness.  My energy is low these months and it always will be.  I plan too much and my expectation are too high and I cannot keep up with it all. Perhaps I have not fully adjusted my expectations to my energy level.  Perhaps I still hold on to things I think I should be doing rather than things I want to do.  Do I really want to make and send Christmas cards?  Maybe a little.  But more I would like to make cookies with my family and have an ornament-making craft night, and have quiet evenings with a fireplace and a movie and my knitting. I want to savor this season and not fight it so much every year.

I am hosting Thanksgiving this year and it will be potluck.  I'm having to let go, over and over, of the idea of the perfect meal I *could* cook and keep myself to the two dishes I said I would make.  Others can bring the rest. I could make amazing stuffing but it would take me all day to make and make me too tired to enjoy the meal. The part I want is the community around the table, a glass of wine in my hand, laughter flowing.  Let the stuffing go.  Let go. Let go. Let go.

Rowland Skirrow, 1920-2011

My grandfather died today.  Two days before his 91st birthday.

My grandfather grew up very poor and told stories of going to collect free food and clothes from the charities in the winter of Northern England when he was a child. He quit school after the 7th grade and became a cabinet maker, apprenticed to a master craftsman.  He was proud of his trade and good at it.  My mother has a set of furniture in her bedroom that he made when she was a teenager and they look nearly as good now as when they were new.  My grandfather met my grandmother on a train during World War II when they were both coming home on leave and he took her suitcase so she would come home and meet his mother.  She was six months his senior and he told her he was going to marry her that day.  They were married for 66 years.  They immigrated from England when my mother was a year and a half old. When life on his aunt's chicken ranch didn't turn out to be quite what they had envisioned he packed up his little family and drove them across the country to San Francisco, where he swore he felt at home as soon as he arrived.

My grandfather was a hard man - proud bordering on arrogant, impatient, with deeply rooted class prejudices.  He loved his family fiercely, but held them to impossibly high standards that were sometimes inconsistent and hardly ever clearly communicated.  He was prone to jealousy and temper tantrums.  He never could truck with most authority figures.  He had worked so hard to control and manage his whole world his whole life and when his body started to break down with age he did not accept it gracefully.  He fought and complained and raged and he often turned on those closest to him - his wife, my mother.  My grandparents retired to a lovely community on Vancouver Island, a thousand miles from their children and their children's children. Then he was angry that we did not re-arrange our lives more often to come to them when they became lonely and frail. His death was swift - he was fine in the evening and felled by a particularly virulent pneumonia by the next afternoon.  My mother sat beside him and held his hand while he weakend and finally let go. 

My relationship with my grandfather has been distant and painful for many years, though I regained "good grandchild" status this year by virtue of bearing his first great-grandchild.  When I spoke to him on the phone last week he didn't remember that we had visited him in June and chided me that my daughter would be 14 before he'd get to meet her.  He also expressed concern that I wasn't working.  "You can't just have no job for too long," he said.  Both his wife and his daughter chose to stay at home with their small children, but I guess he saw me as a career woman and he never understood why I left my "good job."  I hung up the phone with such mixed feelings - annoyance, frustration, and also tenderness for his concern, misguided though it may have been.  I can't remember if I told him I loved him.  I hope he knew.  I hope he remembered the times I leaped into his arms when I saw him and held his hand when I was waist high and his memory was strong more than he remembered our turbulence more recently.

When I was 23 I was the spitting image of my grandmother at the same age, but I see more of my grandfather in myself.  My intense work ethic, my high standards for myself and for the world, my skill and desire to make things by hand. In many ways he is an inspiration and I'm proud to be his granddaughter.

Rest peacefully, Granddad.  I hope heaven is all you expected it would be.