Weekly update: wildlife, RBG, kaleidoscopes, and JAB

 It was still unseasonably warm on Monday when we went to Middlefork Savanna on the far west side of Lake Forest.  The property was formerly J. Ogden Armour's farm. (I have yet to find out the location of the other tallgrass savanna in North America.)   

The front came through on Tuesday. It was 30 degrees colder when I walked at Illinois Beach State Park.  The frog blinked when I nudged it with my toe but it did not move. The buck watched me for a couple of minutes. His mind was more likely on the does -- I got a photo of one nearby.  

Saturday was blustery and cool for our exploration of   Pine Dunes Forest Preserve .  I didn't see very many pines and the soil wasn't sandy (unlike the dunes at Illinois beach).  But, wow!  There were twelve trumpeter swans a-swimming in this pond. They were vastly outnumbered by Canada geese who were a-honking (not a-laying).  I have never seen so many swans in one place. What a treat! 

On Wednesday Waukegan Area Branch-AAUW hosted a virtual happy hour (4 p.m.) tour of the Ruth Bader Ginsberg exhibit at the Illinois Holocaust Memorial Museum.  You can take a mini-tour here

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In the studio: I continued with the Civil War Reproduction Stash Reduction Project (CWRSRP).   I was inspired by a pattern by Julie Hendrickson published in the April, 2004, issue of American Patchwork and Quilting.  I used the same fabric genre but a very different setting.  

I had made kaleidoscopes once before (here).  Those were paper pieced. These were strip-cut. Advantage: no paper to pick out.  

I taped two templates to a ruler, one to cut one side and the other to cut the other. 

I wanted 35 blocks for my design.  I discovered that ten were too-undersized so I had to make ten more.   I thought I'd use cheddar for sashing, but the only cheddar I had enough of was too dark. After auditioning several possibilities I tried a brown leaf print that unexpectedly worked fine.  The flimsy is 49 x 76 and used 4-1/8 yards. 

The blocks are 8" unfinished / 7.5" finished.

I'm making little kaleidoscopes out of the cut-away triangles. 

They're 7" unfinished. 

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This week's book review: 

James Beard lived large -- literally (13 pounds at birth; high 200's as an adult) -- and figuratively: epitomizing the gastronomic good life for nearly 60 years. His exuberance, broad smile, and twinkling eyes belied an essentially unfulfilled, unhappy life as a closeted gay man in an anti-gay era (though he had plenty of company in the New York food-and-publishing world). As Birdsdall writes, "...a restless search for what he wanted from life. Perhaps he'd find [a job] that stuck, something that would bring him happiness." (p. 244) and "Sooner or later, James distanced himself from all of his closest relationships, as if he were doing his friends a favor, cutting them out before they could see just what an unworthy thing he was." (p. 282). "James had built his public life around concealment....Would he still be lovable if everyone glimpsed the truth of who he was?"

I was surprised to learn how many of Beard's cookbooks were spectacular flops and that he freely plagiarized published recipes by other cooks/writers and failed to give attribution to contributors.
It would be interesting to look up Beard's 1964 memoir, "Delights and Prejudices" and Robert Clark's 1993 "James Beard: A Biography" to see how adroitly the homosexuality was covered up. I don't have time to read either, however, so I will content myself by re-reading the text of "James Beard's American Cookery," the 1972 bestseller that is one of my tried-and-true cookbooks. (Eggplant Parmigiana, p. 518, Raw Apple Cake, p. 673, and Snickerdoodles, p. 705.) 

Linking up with Oh Scrap!    Monday Making     

Design Wall Monday

P.S.  Yes, it's colder, but no hard frost yet.  An oak seedling, a persistent thistle, and a green-leafed something at Pine Dunes.