Category: dilettante

Chicken Dilettante

Karen

After 25 years of it, I officially stopped being a vegetarian sometime last month and now I’m learning how to cook chicken. I stopped eating it before I really had to cook for myself, so there’s a whole new world of recipes and tips that I’ve read about but never put into practice.

In other words: Time to be a dilettante!

So far I’ve learned that when a recipe calls for skin-on chicken, they really mean it, because that’s what browns and keeps it moist when you cook it. I’ve had success with braises and slow cookers but that doesn’t keep me from trying things like this: Smitten Kitchen photo of beautifully brown roast lemon chicken(the Smitten Kitchen version ^ )

 

…and getting this.
my version of roasted lemon chicken. It looks underwhelming and doesn't have beautiful brown skin. This is how we learn we need the skin! (I know that looks pink but don’t worry, the meat thermometer is my best friend in these experiments.)

Anyway, this is a fun new learning curve that also, finally, gives me enough protein in my life. I’m a little surprised by how okay I am about buying and handling meat, talking about skin, thinking about the chicken as a creature but still eating it… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Such is the power of protein, I guess.

Feeling That Dilettante Interest Again

Karen2 Comments

Lately all my creative energy has been transmuted to organizing energy, trying to get the basement cleared out and finding a home for everything that was down there. That includes a handful of lamps, which have nice bases but cheap, cheap shades.

Years of reading home decor mags means I know about handmade fabric lampshades–they give a really traditional, lush look but you can make them in a cool print, too.  Of course, their prices reflect all that hand labor:
A collage of 4 shopping screenshots with patterned pleated lampshades and prices ranging from $200-$400.

Moving lamps around last night, I thought, “I wonder if you find a tutorial to make your own fancy lampshades?” and reader, YOU CAN.

Turns out you can make a “soft” shade (with the pleats) or a “hard” one that’s smooth and covered in, say, Liberty fabric or even Japanese paper–THINGS I HAVE!

A lampshade covered in blue and white floral yuzen paper
A smooth patterned lampshade being hand sewn

There’s an entire website with supplies and articles … but it’s based out of the UK and tariffs would make a kit as much as a ready-made designer one, I’m sure. But! There’s also a book that’s available for FREE at the library, so that’s where I’ll start.

Just Look At This Amaryllis

Karen

It’s not quite in bloom yet but look at this monster–my first successful amaryllis re-bloom!

This is the bulb that last bloomed in January 2024. Despite all the helpful literature included with it, I kind of made up what I did: Let the foliage grow for 6 months or so, then stopped watering until the foliage died, then put it in a cold garage for a month or two, then back to the basement and until I noticed the flower spikes, when it came upstairs.

I think the first spike is going to pop any day now–I’ve been watching that calyx open since Monday.

New Dilettante Activity Just Dropped

Karen

Not only could I make a souvenir book for trip photos, I could bind a sketchbook beforehand and bring it along with me to draw my vacation. Or so The New York Times tells me: To Savor Your Next Vacation, Ditch Your Phone and Grab a Colored Pencil.

It’s not hard-hitting journalism but it does have some delightful photos and links to places to learn more:

The internet is awash in insider tips on the size of watercolor brushes to pack and what kind of sketchbook to bring. The Reddit Urban Sketchers channel is especially helpful for perusing sketchers’ favorite kits.

New Hobby Roundup: Paper Marbling!

Karen

I finally caved and bought my own supplies to try marbling at home and wow, what a difference time and good materials make to the finished product:

 

I did have a grasp on the basic process already from the class I took in June, but the results at home are so much better–the colors floated perfectly and stuck to the paper just fine.

(Not shown, using the comb to make the non-pareil pattern, because that takes two hands.)

 

I printed 12 sheets and got 8 that I really like, but none of them were flawed because of the supplies, just beginner printing errors. I highly recommend the supplies from Galen Berry, aka MarbleArt. I got his paints and instruction book from Hollanders but I think they’ve stopped carrying the full line–I had to get the carrageenan and alum and a comb straight from the MarbleArt site (via sending an email, lol).

 

I make a lot of things and I’ve been doing a lot of my hobbies for a long time, so I don’t get the “I can’t believe I made that!” feeling very often. But look at this! I can’t believe I made that.

Dilettante Catnip

Karen

I was browsing Pinterest the other night and saw some vintage examples of letter art–decorated envelopes where the address is part of the design. That pulled up some modern examples and then I found The Graceful Envelope contest, which “was created in 1995 by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum, which administered it until delegating responsibility to the Washington Calligraphers Guild in 2001.”

This is literally everything I loved as a teen/want to dabble in again: sending things in the mail, fancy lettering (and a CALLIGRAPHERS GUILD!), cool stamps, and little paintings. You can see the current winners here and past winners here and you’d better believe I looked at them all.

Bulb Report

Karen

Turns out that being a dilettante with tropical bulbs is very rewarding: Look how huge this elephant ear is!

Look at the pattern on the leaves–it’s almost like marbled paper (dilettante worlds colliding!)

 

The cannas are blooming too:

So red it’s blowing out the camera

 

And this wasn’t a dilettante project, but over the last year I’ve been gradually moving all the daylilies from the yard, where they just didn’t get enough water or really bloom, into pots, where they now get water AND fertilizer. (And I can take them with me when we move.)

Turns out that when you give a plant what it needs to thrive, it thrives … sounds like a metaphor to me.

Book Arts Wednesday/Dilettante Update: Paper Marbling!

Karen

Last week I took a paper marbling class at the same place I took my first bookbinding class, aka The Class That Launched a Whole New Hobby to Shop For. I don’t think paper marbling will be any different, honestly.

It wasn’t the best class–the instructors weren’t all that great at diagnosing issues and defaulted to cheerily saying “It’s a temperamental art!”–but it was good to get an idea of the physicality of it before I splashed out on supplies of my own. And there’s so much info online! As you can see on the papers on the left, my paint stopped sticking to the paper. The class instructors were stumped, but one search got me to a Reddit thread that said the paint probably wasn’t diluted enough. One more search taught me the right way to do a non-pareil pattern (what I was going for with my green-and-blue sample): You have to zig-zag it before you comb it, something the instructors either didn’t know or skipped.

But again, as a way to try something to get an overview of the basics, it was a fine class. Have I spent lots of time reading about marbling online? Yep. Do I have a list of items I want to buy to try it again? You know it.

Year Of The Dilettante: Tropical Bulbs

Karen

What have I been doing for dilettantism since I talked about stringing beads being hard? Waiting for some bulbs to grow:

My sister-in-law gave me a gift certificate to Eden Brothers for my birthday so I ordered some summer-flowering bulbs at the end of January. They shipped at the end of March, I got them planted in April, and then I waited for something to happen. It took a while, but they all came up! (Clockwise from 11pm, that’s a “Cleopatra” canna, elephant ears, and Mexican tuberose.)

Other than the amaryllis, my winter-flowering bulbs from Brent and Becky’s were duds (one variety of paperwhites never bloomed, the other never even really sprouted), so I’m really pleased these Eden Bros. bros are doing what they should.

I put the canna and the bigger elephant ear into outside pots over the weekend but am still babying the rest of them along on the windowsill. There’s really no skill to bulbs other than patience, so all around an ideal dilettante project.