Hot water crust pockets

On By CarynIn Recipe

We recently had a pastry pocket party, with three different fillings in hot water pastry crust. I love the hot water crust because it is easy to work and stays strong. To differentiate the fillings, each one had a different pastry shape. Rectangular for the apple pie, round for the chicken with mozzarella and roasted peppers, and half circle for the beef and peas. I ended up making three batches of hot water crust, but wrapped each kind of filling in each batch. I would do it differently next time, only doing one filling per batch to go in the oven, and putting some kind of topping on each one, to liven up the crust.

Photo description: three different shapes of pastry pockets in the first batch, sitting in a cooling rack

Grape vine ends

On By CarynIn Craft

When we cut off the ends of the grape vine for our hand railing, my eldest and I curved the ends into a circle and lashed them. It definitely took two pairs of hands, but they bent without breaking. The idea is that when they dry, I will trim them and make loops for either wreaths or other craft projects.

Photo description: two thick grapevine circles wrapped with jute twine

May the fourth be with you.

The trees have ears

On By CarynIn Fungi
Photo description: wood ear mushrooms on a log pile

Here is another potentially edible mushroom in our yard: wood ear mushrooms. I did look it up, and one enthusiastic blogger described eating one as “crisp, followed by slither and slurp”. Um. No. I’ll file these with oysters and cilantro on my “thanks, but no thanks” list.

They are quite wiggly after the rain, and I quite like the soft brown coloration, but they can happily stay and do their decomposition job without fear of me gathering them up.

Stereoscopic in the woods

On By CarynIn photography, Uncategorized

I took a walk in my woods with my phone and tried taking some more stereoscopic photos. These are all parallel view (I still can’t do cross view, and my eyes ache from trying.)

Photo description: a look into the woods between two trees, this one doesn’t have much depth, it is mostly foreground and background
Photo description: path up a hill through the woods, this one came out better, there are objects in the middle distance that help set up the depth and I feel like the framing works
Photo description: path through a thicket, this is my favorite of the three here, there is a branch in the foreground that comes forward, and all the brambles next to the path give a nice sense of depth

Here are my tricks when I’m having trouble merging the two photos to see the 3D image: take off my glasses or put them on, make sure there isn’t a glare on the screen, move the screen closer then farther away. There are some images that I simply cannot get the trick to work, sometimes it is the day or hour, and sometimes I suspect poor composition. My favorite stereoscopic (and stareograms) images are the ones so well done that it just pops together with very little effort.

Throwback Thursday: paint lines

On By CarynIn Life Hack

In September of 2013, I was repainting the rooms of our house and discovered liquid paint block. Essentially it is clear latex paint that you apply over the edge of the painter’s tape so that it sucks down into the cracks and crevices not blocked by the tape, rather than the colored paint. It makes for much crisper color changes, especially for inside corners.

Photo description: inside corner with blue paint on the left, and yellow on the right, with my hand holding a bottle of Frogtape liquid paint block

This has become a Throwback Thursday post not only to share the trick, but so that I have it documented in a different place and will perhaps remember it when it comes time to paint again.

And because it is May Day, and I can’t make it to get flowers to everyone’s porch, here is a picture of white bearded iris blooming in my current front yard.