Snowy Saturday

23 and clear at dawn, but a little snowfall overnight turned everything white again. A beautiful morning! The woodpeckers must be courting as there is much noise from them in the mornings--or maybe they're just establishing territory? Here's one of our loud visitors.

Elinor Wylie's wintry poem speaks well of how we humans also line our nests in winter:

Winter Sleep  by Elinor Wylie

Just as the spiniest chestnut-burr
Is lined within with the finest fur,
So the stoney-walled, snow-roofed house
Of every squirrel and mole and mouse
Is lined with thistledown, sea-gull’s feather,
Velvet mullein-leaf, heaped together
With balsam and juniper, dry and curled,
Sweeter than anything else in the world.

This morning, a slight tinge of pink in the east...

And sun creeping across the hills in the west.

In the house, the view from the bedroom window is comfy--nice and warm inside, whiteness outside.

I found this little oil painting a few months ago. It's perfect for this time of year. It's signed J. Heuk or Helk, but I cannot find anything about this artist online. Maybe one of you knows who he/she is?

Today is more tax work--I cannot make myself stick with it more than an hour at a time--then pricing things for our booths, and maybe I will finally finish the little table I started the other week. I thought I would finish it yesterday but found some loose veneer that needed to be glued back in place. So now I think it's ready.

I am looking for a good biography/autobiography to read, preferably a diary. Any suggestions?I find that I really enjoy reading the real-life stories in journals and diaries. Maybe it's the storyteller in me, or is it a fairly common interest?


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Eggs-actly, Actually

30 and light snow falling, just enough to coat everything. Now, at 11am, the sun is out.

Birds and squirrels are acting twitterpated, to quote the movie Bambi. They seem sure that Spring is just around the corner. I watched two gray squirrels chasing each other up two prongs of a tree, then, as if choreographed, they both jumped, criss-crossing each other in mid-air to land on the opposite prong. So funny! In the same tree, two red-bellied woodpeckers chased each other up and down and around until they both flew off into the woods. Twitterpated. Yes indeed.

The ground-creeping rufous-sided Towhee is back at the feeders, pulling cleanup duty on the ground below. These birds look very like robins but have a different shape, a long perky tail, and the gray area is much darker. They also have white bellies. The Towhee is one of my favorite birds for its sweet song and cute bobbing walk.

Inside the house, spring cleaning continues, ahead of spring but I know that once the weather warms up I will have little time for it. So it's getting done now while I am mostly house-bound. It's funny to think how once I spent hours outside in winter and loved it. I still like being outside in cold weather but my asthma doesn't enjoy it so much, and even inside I find myself a bit wheezy. So now I just go out for short periods, and confine my activities indoors.

This morning I made biscuits, a treat that I don't make often because neither of us really need those calories. I also made a fruit salad, and fried apples to use up a few apples that were getting soft. I hate to waste fruit--or any food, for that matter. With eggs fried in light olive oil, and apple butter for the biscuits it was quite a morning feast. Hot coffee was the finishing touch. Our usual breakfast is soft-boiled eggs and sourdough toast, much lighter on the calories.

Speaking of eggs, Larry is making egg salad at the moment, trying to use up a bit of our egg surplus. The hens are working overtime, it seems! It will be good with the leftover biscuits and a salad for lunch.

There are some things about eggs most of learn experience. For instance, a good egg will sink in water, but a bad egg will float. A well-done boiled egg will dry quickly when taken from the water; fresh egg, when boiled, will be a mess to peel; old eggs are glassy and smooth of shell, and might not be a good idea to use.

Did you know that at one time farmers scattered eggshells on their fields, believing that eggs represent fertility and would bring them a good harvest?

Then there is this English rhyme:

Break an egg, break a leg;
Break two, your love is true;
Break three, woe to thee.

In Ireland, people left empty eggshells outside to provide shelter for the fairies. However, others believed that witches made boats out of eggshells and used them to travel from place to place, Witches must have been quite small!

A double-yolker, as we call the eggs with two yolks, were believed to bring good luck. In reality these eggs usually indicate a young hen just beginning to lay, or an older hen getting ready to stop laying. 

An egg left on your doorstep can be very bad news, or very good, depending on what culture you are from. In Brujeria (Spanish/Latin witchcraft) it's very bad--means someone has put an evil spell on you. To break the spell you must urinate on the egg and then sweep it into the trash without touching it (who would want to?). But the egg would also indicate someone wishing you good luck and/or fertility. I'll take that meaning, thank you.

Sometimes--again, usually when beginning to lay or ending a hen's fertility--a hen will lay a very small egg. I mean like robin's egg size of smaller. In Appalachian lore, these eggs should be thrown onto the roof of your house to placate the witches. We've always just mixed them into scrambled eggs. I wonder if that was a good idea.

There are many, many other egg superstitions. Here are links to a few:

Learn Religions website

Bon Appetit magazine's website

Food & cooking superstitions

Egg dreams

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

26 and snowy blowing this morning. So pretty. And another good day for Larry to lay low and recover from his cold.

It is nice to see snow. And even to hear the wind howling, because this is still winter and this is how it should be, to me. I am afraid the plants may not agree with me as so many things are springing up and even budding because of this mild winter.

It's a good morning for reading, too. Here's one website I follow. Icy Sedgwick posts some of the most interesting folklore, like today's post on sin-eaters. Have you ever heard of this practice? I have read about its occurrence here in Appalachia, but I wonder if it was a common practice in other places.

Another interesting person to follow is Old Weird Britain. She posts on Twitter, some fascinating folklore. Then there's Folklore Thursday that shares a wealth of folklore through Twitter every week. I sometimes join in the fun there with a post. You can find it on Twitter here.

Back to enjoying the snow I go. I should call these two photos Man, Interrupted. You can see the ladder to the left of the first photo--he was planning to clean windows there,

And here he has the grain cradle down while he was working on the porch, and hasn't put it back yet. The scaffolding is still up from when he was working on the roof. Eventually all these tasks will be completed, but not until he feels better.

Have a lovely day, my friends!



Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

A Puttering Kind of Day

The day started out well enough. 47 degrees, the same as yesterday morning, and cloudy but the air felt nice. This afternoon an icy rain has started. After the mixture of sun and clouds yesterday and warm enough to go without a heavy coat, we are now returning to winter.

Which is okay by me. Poor Larry has caught a bad cold and is couch-bound today. Yesterday we had our shopping day--groceries, thrift stores, the bank, the library, etc. We were both tired when we got home, but it wasn't long before Larry was more than tired: he was running a fever.

So today he is laying low, drinking fluids and sleeping. I'm catering to him, because after all, as hard as he works, the Lord knows he has earned a little coddling.

I am puttering. I have three pieces of furniture waiting for me to get back to work on them, but instead I'm doing homely things. Dusting, cleaning, laundry, dividing and re-potting aloe plants, things like that.

All clean and washed up. I love changing out the colors of glass I display with the seasons. The funny pink bird on the end of this photo is actually sold and will ship out tomorrow. I think I'll miss him!

This pretty teaset is for sale on ebay, but until it sells I can enjoy it. The square plate in the back is actually quite old, and will glow neon green in black light. The other glass in this photo is all antique too, except perhaps for the sugar and  creamer set front center. I haven't identified it yet, but it may be American Brilliant Period glass.

There is such satisfaction in these little chores, and it's a welcome rest after the busy day yesterday.

The kitchen window is full of rooting aloe plants. I hope they take! The star above left is Blenko glass; the ball on the left is a witch ball, and the one on the right is a friendship ball. 

I also took care of something that's been needing to be done: calling the cell phone company to see about a replacement phone. I looked on their website but the phones are so expensive.

I haven't been writing much poetry lately, as it needs a certain amount of headspace, so to speak. My head has been full of worry over the roof leak and stress about getting the taxes done, neither conducive to writing. As I was sorting files the other day, I found these lines, written some time back. It must have been a much snowier winter than the one we've had so far!

Ode to a February Thaw (February 2014)

Late last night as I tried sleeping

I thought I heard the sound of dripping,

dripping dripping dripping from my roof and eaves.

Rain was falling, wind was blowing, snow was melting

Melting, melting , from my roof and eaves.

Listen, I cried to my comfy husband,

do you hear that sound from off the roof-end?

That dripping dripping dripping from our roof and eaves?

He was sleeping, loudly snoring, eyes unopened,

Did not hear the melting melting from our roof and eaves.

I raised the window, outward gazing,

listening to the drip, drip, dripping,

that oozing, sogging, melting flowing from our roof and eaves.

In the yard the mud is showing, gushing, mushing,

turning brown the melting thawing as it leaves.

Goodbye! Goodbye! Farewell to ice,

to snow of dreadful frozen height!

Soon I’ll be slogging, slogging, slogging

along the paths all round my yard.

Mud will be sucking, slurping, pulling, tracking,

coating floors and boots and dogs and cars.

Then I will search the clouds above me,

hoping, praying to somehow see

some hopeful sign of falling, falling,

 gentle whiteness from above

Some sifting, freezing, drifting, snowing

It’s snow! I’ll cry. The mud is gone! What’s not to love?

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Booth Update: Riverbend Antique Mall

40 this morning, cloudy with a chance of rain later in the day. Larry decided to seed the lettuce bed, but I have little hope that the seeds will germinate in this chilly weather. Ah well, it made him happy to do it, and the seed is inexpensive.

I am working on taxes today, inputting receipts that piled up during the last 6 months of the year. Just slogging through it all.

We did a bit of booth work at Ravenswood recently. Here's a look at some of the changes we made:

We just moved this desk in this weekend. It was a squeeze to make room for it!





We brought the table in last week. I really like this one. Sometimes it's hard to part with the things we fix up!



I have been slowly adding toys to my offerings. Eventually I hope this shelf will be all toys.




Also brough in some more cast iron pans. These are always steady sellers.

I love the way this display came out. I added a couple crock bowls to it.

I've had this shelf for sale for a good while. Maybe it's the color that doesn't work for people?

Tilt! I was sure holding the camera at a funny angle for this shot!

Moved around some of the glass--sometimes just moving something will attract attention and get it sold.

Cute little teacup nightlight. Who takes the time to make these things?

Well, back to the paperwork. I made potato-leek soup yesterday, and there's plenty left over for today. At least I won't have to worry about making dinner.


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

The Russian Ballerina of Coal Grove

23 this morning and frosty. Yesterday and the day before were the same, with plenty of sunshine. Such a blessing to see the sun for a few days in a row. I don't mind cloudy and rainy weather, but some sun to dry out this soggy part of the world is very welcome.

I checked something off my bucket list yesterday: a trip to Coal Grove, Ohio, to find the grave of a Russian ballerina.

Image from findagrave.com

Antoinette Sherpetoksy was born in Lithuania May 7,1894, in the days of Imperial Russia. From an early age she trained as a ballerina until as a teenager she was performing with the Imperial Russian Ballet, in front of royalty. It has been said that Czar Nicholas II was so taken with her that he gifted her with valuable jewelry.

Her family left Russia, possibly due to the turbulence of the political situation and the poverty that had much of the Russian population in its grip in the early 1900's, and moved to Chicago sometime before 1910.



Antoinette continued to perform in her new home. She became a member of a Chicago ballet company, and was given the nickname "Teeny" because of her small stature. She was considered, however, to be a perfect physical specimen and was featured on the cover of a magazine of the time as a prime example of the human form.

Teeny met her husband James Peters in Chicago. A native of Ironton, Ohio, he was an industrialist, an inventor who worked within the steel industry; he was also a writer, according to his obituary, although I do not know what kind of writing he did. This was the heyday of the steel industry in both Ohio and Chicago, and the Peters became quite well-to-do and well-known, he in industrial and business circles and Teeny in the art world. She toured extensively for many years.

Teeny opened a school for dance In Chicago. After James retired and the couple moved to his hometown of Coal Grove (originally named Petersburg for his father who was and early industrialist in the area and laid out the town), she continued to operate her school in Chicago and taught dance in Florida as well when the couple moved to Del Ray Beach in the Sunshine State. The Peters kept a home in Chicago, however, and often visited the Chicago area. I can imagine that Teeny longed for the artistic world of the city in which she had lived for so many years.

It was the day before her birthday, May 6, 1962, that tragedy struck. While in the Chicago area to visit family, the Peters' car was struck by a car driven by a young man whose vehicle swerved across the median and struck them. Teeny was killed instantly, as was the young man and his companion.

James had his beloved wife's body brought to Coal Grove, Ohio to be interred in a glass-topped casket in a mausoleum in his family's plot in the historic Woodland Cemetery. The jewels given her by the Tzar were buried with her. Eleven years later James would be buried in the mausoleum by her side.

But Teeny was not to enjoy eternal rest. The mausoleum was vandalized, her coffin opened and the jewels stolen. The Peters' coffins were moved to a new mausoleum and enameled portraits of the couple were placed on the outside. Sadly, vandals targeted those too, and the portraits were eventually destroyed and removed. You can still see the outline of the ovals on the outside of the mausoleum.

The cemetery is beautiful, filled with mature trees and wandering lanes.

One section is reserved for veterans of the Civil War.

The Peters mausoleum stands quietly beneath the trees, in Section 7 of the cemetery.

There were flowers on the door, testimony that Teeny has not been forgotten. A stained glass window graces the back wall.

Peeking through the barred front entrance to see the stained glass.

Local legend has it that the ballerina is still dancing. She has been seen twirling among the gravestones at night to some ghostly music that only she can hear.

All I can say is, dance on, Teeny.

Thee local historical society sometimes offers a ghost walk through the cemetery, and I believe it would be well worth attending.

If you want to visit Teeny, here is the easiest way to find Woodland Cemetery:

From Huntington, WV take Route 52 West to the Coal Grove exit (Route 243). At the end of the exit ramp, turn left. Go about 1/2 mile or maybe less, past a Wendy's and a Speedway. You will come to a 3-way stop. Turn right--you'll be on old 52 West. Go about 1-2 miles and turn right onto Lorain Street. Stay on Lorain for a pretty good way--at least a mile, I think. You'll pass some industrial/business sites and go over the 4-lane highway. The cemetery is on the right. (It closes at dusk, so please do not trespass!)

Sources:

1910 US Census

Ironton Tribune newspaper article

Russian Revolution, History.com

Findagrave.com

Balletwebb

The Lawrence Register

Theresa's Haunted History of the Tristate

Ancestry.com


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Winter Canning

Amidst all the painting and roof repair and cleaning, I managed some time to can beans and make berry jam.

(The table is full of glass because I'm cleaning the buffet, the windows and a few other places in the kitchen.

It's a mess in there right now, but I found enough space to work somehow. I'm waiting on Larry to finish his roof work (finger crossed, I think it's done!) and get the ladder in to help me with the high places.))

I like winter canning. We can use the extra heat in the house in winter, and there's not the pressure of piles of other veggies to be done, garden work and lawn work.

So this week I put up black beans and kidney beans. The black beans were a great deal at the local dollar store, and the kidney beans were free at a local church thrift. While canning beans isn't cost-saving if you have to buy the jars and pay for your heating source, it is a savings for us, as I have lots of jars and free gas.

Making jam in winter is easy with frozen berries. I put these in the freezer in the summer, and the cranberries in December when they were on sale. I mixed raspberries, blackberries, a few strawberries and cranberries for this jam. It's seedy, but that's how we like it. Some people prefer to strain the seeds out, but for us it's a reminder of the jams our mothers made when we were children.

While I was in the kitchen I put the crockpot on with a pot roast for dinner, using more vegetables put up from the summer and a roast bought on sale last week. The house smelled so good. It was a dark and drizzly day, perfect for cooking and puttering about in the kitchen.

I may can some butternut squash soon, as we still have many left from last year's bumper crop. Today, however, is pickup day from my pickers and maybe some booth work, so any more canning will have to wait. I need to get back to the paint projects too and try to get at least one more out of the way.

How about you? Are you still putting food up this winter, or is that a summer-only activity for you?


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

In Progress

50 degrees and showers this morning. Nice enough to have coffee and tea on the porch, and enjoy the antics of the many, many birds at the feeders. They can be a quarrelsome lot!

I seem to be working on multiple painting projects at the same time. I need Larry's help here and there on them, so I just move from one to another as I wait for him to have time to help. Here's some of what's keeping me busy right now:

This little rustic table is actually finished. Yay! Larry jad to give it new legs and build a drawer for it. I cleaned it up, sanded and waxed the wood, and added a cobalt glass knob since the table's edge was blue.

I have been working on this secretary for 2-3 weeks, off and on, and it still needs work. I guess I'm about 1/2 way with it now. The drawer and lower door don't want to close properly since being painted so both will get some planing and then painted again.

Repainting has been the name of the game with this one. First I thought it might be cool to paint the inside a light aqua. Bad idea! So I painted over that awfulness with white--and a pink bleed came through. That meant shellacking it a couple coats to prevent the bleed-through of the old wood stain, then painting yet again, another 3 coats. Why did I think this would be a quick project!

Another interesting thing happened when I painted the door over the shellac. It crackled! I like the look so it stays just like this.

More of that pink bleed on the lower door, which had to be given two more coats of shellac. Tomorrow I'll try painting it again. At least this is on the inside.

Here's the secretary before painting. It is, I believe a 1930's reproduction of the older, oak secretaries, and had several issues. I hope the paint is bringing it back to life--and Larry's work is bringing it back to good, sturdy condition.

Another joint project. Larry put new shelves in this one, and added a base. I have painted sides, but will leave the door as it because I think it looks pretty cool. I'm still painting the inside.

Another project that I don't have photos of is a small sewing machine table that had no sewing machine in it when we got it. We took the top off, removed the pieces that supported the machine, and put the top back on to convert it to a table. It has a door on the front with spool holders, so cute. Larry put a bottom in it (it didn't have one, as the machine would fold down inside). I've started painting it while he works on the door so that it closes properly.


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.