Junie Moon: learning

Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Rolling Along Julia Child’s Way

Three years ago, I read about Julia Child and her rolling pins. She favored a no-handled pin made of hard wood such as maple about 18-inches in length and a diameter of about 1 3/4 inches. Around the same time, my friends and I were taking a series of classes where we learned special cooking or baking skills from each other. One of those classes was for making donuts and other assorted goodies. On the supply list was bringing a rolling pin.

Source: Unknown

Remembering Julia and her rolling pin, I set about finding one and then decided I’d simply make a pin using Julia's specifications. That thought led to the idea of making a pin to gift each of my friends attending the baking class. Not having any previous wood workshop experiences other than some minor efforts with my dad, I ordered lengths of unfinished solid maple from a wood company and asked my friend Paula’s husband Sam to help me as he has every tool known to man. The following pictures show my progress.

To add a small note of grace, I personalized the pins by stamping each attendee’s initials into one end of the pin with a metal alphabet stamp set attached to a wood-burning tool to finish it off.

Sam was such a sweetheart to help me with this effort. I learned so very much from him and am grateful for his willingness to do this and his patience.

The final step involved using a special sealant made for wood items that come in contact with food.

Since a dish towel was also on the supply list, I tied a new dish towel around each pin.

Here are my friendship gifts—I loved this project and think Julia Child would have approved.

The class itself was so much fun and we made all sorts of yummy treats: maple bars, donuts, and so on. The series of classes/workshops helped us learn more about each other and the amazing skills each woman has to offer.

I miss my friends back in Tucson—they are such awesome people! Maybe I ought to start a similar sort of group effort here with my new friends as they all have skills in a variety of ways, too.

And these are the homemade cinnamon rolls I recently made using my own special rolling pin.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

The Rose Fern Scarf

For the last three Saturdays, I’ve been learning about fine lace knitting in a class hosted at Unwind the Yarn Shop. We learned to knit The Rose Fern Scarf, a design created by Cynthia Carter of Whistling Beagle Knits. Cynthia, herself, was our instructor.

This was the most carefully planned and executed class I have ever taken. Cynthia thought of everything and organized her instructional material in such a way that we learned, applied our new knowledge, and actually managed to execute the exquisite lace design.

Instead of written pattern instructions, we used Cynthia’s charted pattern—something I had not worked with previously. However, Cynthia included chart reading as part of her class plan.

Along with learning various lace techniques, Cynthia shared the history of lace knitting with the class. I love knowing such details as it makes what we do so much richer and honors the artists.

My sister students and I learned about gauge, choosing yarn for lace, as well as what knitting tools will serve us best.

We also learned how to avoid mistakes and, if we do make one, how to apply simple fixes to rectify the situation. Our final lesson was blocking.

My completed Rose Fern Scarf will be a Christmas gift for one of my sisters. My yarn was madelinetosh's Tosh Sock superwash merino wool fingering weight in a rich berry color.

If you ever have the opportunity to take a class taught by Cynthia, jump on the opportunity.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Playing with Knives

As my interest and experimental experiences with cooking and baking grow, I find there are gaps in my skills requiring attention. The use of knives is one of those areas in which I am not proficient.

Source: Kitchenique

Interested in improving my technique using very sharp and pointed objects, I signed up for a class in basic knife skills at Kitchenique http://www.kitchenique.com/, a gourmet kitchen store and cooking school in Destin.

The chef and owner, Vicki, made my experience so much fun as did all her staff. We were instructed in the importance of cleanliness and all things associated with the care and use of knives, especially safety. Then the cutting began.

We cut and chopped and otherwise mutilated all sorts of vegetables.

It will take much more practice before my victims (otherwise known as vegetables) are cut in smaller and more uniform pieces.

If it grows, our class was probably busy chopping it.

Vegetables were not our only victims; we also practiced on chicken and ham. Some of the vegetables ended up in the soup pot for our lunch along with our choice of chicken or ham (or even both).

Vicki donates all the vegetables cut in class and not used in our lunch soup to various church soup kitchens. Vicki and her staff kindly loaded my car with boxes and boxes of freshly-cut vegetables which I promptly delivered to my church for our soup kitchen ministry in feeding homeless folks.

My experience at Kitchenique was thoroughly enjoyable and will improve my cooking techniques. I am definitely going to try another class with Vicki soon.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Rumor Control

The spring 2011 semester at my college began Wednesday. The first day of classes is always interesting. Students filter in and immediately look for seats in the back of the room. I can almost see a cartoon bubble flashing fearfully above their heads: “Eeeew, I hate writing; I’m going to fail!”

To help them relax, I made a game out of scrapbook paper and quotes found online. The colors were chosen to reflect the college’s logo scheme. I named the game “Rumor Control”; it is much like “Gossip” or “Telephone” you might have played years ago. The activity helped a lot last semester, so I gave it a go again in my new classes.

This is one of five different quotes I used. There is one card per row of students. The first student reads the card to the next student who listens and relays the information to the next person who writes it down and passes it along. The process continues to the end of the row. When the class is ready, the first person in each row reads the original card aloud and the last student verbalizes the message that he/she received.

The class ends up laughing at some of the absurd distortions resulting from the exercise. Besides the amusing factor, the students learn that communication and understanding changes from person to person. The map to understanding is not always clear.

The imaginary bubble of fear hovering over their heads evaporates. Now my students are ready to learn and I am eager to teach them.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Minh’s Vietnamese Pork and Shrimp Egg Rolls

I appreciate everyone’s help yesterday with my knitted slippers dilemma. I shall overcome the problem and make the slippers work. Once done, I’ll let you know how it worked out.

Today I want to share a cooking project I enjoyed working on with some friends. My friend Minh is Vietnamese; she generously offered to teach a group of us how to make her family’s pork and shrimp egg rolls. Janel offered to host this event at her house and helped Minh translate the recipe to English for us.

First thing is to wash your hands really well. Actually, I took this picture during our preparations and thought it was really nice so I just want to show it to you.

Janel had tables everywhere because there were so many of us crowding her house. In this picture, Margie (on left) and Dena (her daughter on the right) are working with the egg roll wraps. Both of them are also members of my UFO crafting group. They’re a riot and make me laugh a lot.

We made two versions—pork and shrimp which was quite considerate of Minh since I’m allergic to the shrimp component. Everything was carefully segregated so I didn’t fall over dead from contact.

Once the egg rolls were ready, it was time to cook them in the fryers we all brought. Living in Tucson means you can do lots of activities outside, so we lined up our electric fryers on Janel’s back porch.

Here are some of the egg rolls frying their little selves. Minh taught us a trick for this; you add a teeny bit of vinegar to the hot oil and it keeps the oil from boiling over when you put in the egg rolls. Another trick was to stand the egg rolls up on one end around the pot as you can see in the photo.

In this photo, Minh demonstrates how to prepare an egg roll for eating by wrapping it in lettuce with some mint leaves. Naturally we all had to eat a few egg rolls right away.

© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

We spent the whole day making hundreds of egg rolls. Every participant went home with large bags of each version. The shrimp egg rolls were pounced on by my shrimp-loving husband.

Minh kindly said I can share her recipe with you. Since it’s quite involved and too much to post, I’ve converted it to a PDF document you can access here or via my Tutorials section in the right-hand column.

This was a wonderful day learning a delicious recipe and cooking together with friends. Thank you, Minh and Janel!

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

My Wellness Journey Project

The end of December was actually the start of a wonderful new project for me—a Wellness Journey class at Big Picture Scrapbooking. December 31 was the first day of this 8-week class. There’s still time to join if you’re interested.

Class members are documenting their wellness journey through scrapbooking. Marrying the creative with physical exercise is a brilliant concept and enables me to be crafty to mediate something I really don’t enjoy—exercise.

© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

My class journal/scrapbook is an American Crafts chipboard binder with 6”-square pages (purchased from Scrapbooks.com) and a black cloth spine. I covered the chipboard parts with paper purchased at Making Memories Unforgettable. The cover title is framed with a decorative metal plate found at Jo-Ann’s.

© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

The first page is my signed wellness contract witnessed by my husband. You can also see my tabs, one for each week of class, made using Melstampz’s template and adding numbers. Thoughts of coloring in the tabs with colored pencils are flitting through my head.

© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

I decorated a small clipboard from Office Max to hold exercise checklists I created in Microsoft Word, using categories personalized for me.

Walking is my main thing, Tai Chi is for balance/strength/and various good things, and the Other category is so I can switch-up activities such as biking, working with weights, yoga, or whatever I choose to do on any given day.

Source: Goddess Guidebook

Sundays, by the way, are sacrosanct. On my checklist, I put a graphic from the Goddess Guidebook site that says Switch Off Sundays as it’s a truly excellent idea.

Resources

Big Picture Scrapbooking
Goddess Guidebook
Making Memories Unforgettable
Scrapbook.com
Tabs template from Melstampz blog

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Go: Life and Death

My list of resolutions posted in January are never far from my mind. Setting up anything with the word “resolutions” in it is fraught with potential failure as it implies a problem will be completely resolved. My list really should be called “intentions” as not everything can come to a closure—such as learning to play my flute or improving my golf game. Some things are just ongoing in life.

Source: The Vintage Workshop, text added by me (I've cropped the picture, too)

Learning to play the ancient game of Go has nicely been marked off the list, although it is also a continuous learning process. It’s a thinking game requiring skills in tactics, strategy, and observation, necessitating a great deal of patience.

An extremely brief and simplistic explanation of the game is that black and white stones are used. The point is to capture space—space captured is then considered dead, hence this is a game of life and death. The stones themselves are living until they, too, are captured. Essentially, Go is a game of war, conquering a geographical area means you win.

According to Wikipedia, “Legends trace the origin of the game to Chinese emperor Yao (2337–2258 BC), who had his counselor Shun design it for his son, Danzhu—supposedly an unruly sort—to teach him discipline, concentration and balance. Other theories suggest that the game was derived from Chinese tribal warlords and generals, who used pieces of stone to map out attacking positions. Go was considered one of the four cultivated arts of the Chinese scholar gentleman, along with calligraphy, painting and playing the musical instrument guqin”.

It’s not an easy game to learn on your own. I put out feelers on the Internet and managed to connect with a Go group at the University of Arizona. One of the members kindly arranged to teach me how to play. My dad taught all of us to play chess; Go reminds me of that game. I’m enjoying my new Go adventures and, hopefully, I’ll enjoy more life in future games and much less death.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Working on My Golf Game

At the beginning of the year, I listed improving my golf game as one of my 2009 goals. Whether I play a good round of golf or have an abysmal game, the bottom line is that only I am responsible.

To improve, I’ve got to figure out what I’m doing wrong as well as those things I’m doing right and that means tracking my progress or lack thereof. The SporteeGal Golf Journal I ordered at the beginning of the year is helping me do just that.

This helpful journal has thoughtfully-structured sections providing a means to record all details of my game, plan for improvement, and note my growth. And it’s not limited to just those functions, there’s so much more packed into this journal that you can’t help but get better.

If you play golf or need a gift for a golfing friend, Susan is offering her journal for 20% off right now; $1 from the sale of each journal is donated to Newborns in Need.

I made new golf club covers in 2007 as my old covers were falling apart. Since I’ve replaced my woods with Callaway Big Berthas, I’ll need to make a new head cover for my driver as it’s huge and the old cover doesn’t fit. As I’m working on getting new irons, too, I may have to make a whole new set of club covers.

Isn't it wonderful that no matter what our hobbies are, there’s something creative we can do to enhance the experience? I have a tee time early Friday morning, my journal is going right along with me.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Fly Fishing Classes

Have you wanted to learn fly-fishing or how to tie fishing flies? Maybe not, but that’s my new adventure this week.

Source: Moldychum

Pima County Natural Resources, Parks and Recreation Department is offering free fly fishing classes and I jumped on the opportunity. Instructors are Joe Fagan from Arizona Game and Fish teaming with Jim Martin, a professor of geography here in Tucson.

Who’d ever think you’d find fly fishing aficionados in Tucson? I looked online and discovered a lot of folks here enjoy fly fishing. There are clubs and even a local fly fishing store such as Dry River Outfitters.

Yesterday we were introduced to fly fishing and the art of tying flies. The class is well organized, and they've kept the student count down to eight which is very helpful. I am the only woman in the class, a bit disappointing as it would be great sharing this experience with fishing "sisters".

Look at the cute Zebra Midge I made, very tiny, about the size of my thumb. It's amazing how sewing skills translate into making flies—I was very comfortable with that aspect. I did manage to snag my finger twice on the extremely sharp barb.

Saturday morning we'll learn to cast at Silverbell Lake. Rods, equipment, and other materials will be provided to us; a good thing since all I can offer is my enthusiasm.

I’m quite enjoying this venture, which is weird on my part since I cannot eat any type of fish (major death-inducing allergy). Now if I can just avoid hooking a saguaro or two on Saturday.

Resources

Arizona Game and Fish Department
Dry Creek Outfitters (Tucson)
Field and Stream magazine
Fish & Fly
International Women Fly Fishers
Moldy Chum blog
Patagonia Fly Fishing
Pima County Natural Resources, Parks and Recreation Department
This is Fly online magazine
Women's Flyfishing