busy-ness

 It's time for baking, and I'm really trying to be faithful to it. There was a butter cookie recipe in my magazine the other day, and afterward I realized I'm so out of practice in rolling out cookies! Some were too thin and several broke apart, I think because I didn't let them cool enough before moving them. Today I baked some with oats, cranberries and chocolate pieces. I didn't have dried crans, so I cut up frozen ones, didn't want white chocolate, so I used dark. I also decided to make them with einkorn flour, which turned out rather interesting. 

Before they went in.

Einkorn feels different than regular flour, it doesn't seem as dry, or flyaway. And they say you should use one quarter less liquid in your recipes, but cookies don't have much in the way of liquid. Two eggs and a tablespoon of vanilla in these. It didn't occur to me to increase the flour but I will do that next time. This flour absorbs liquids and fats differently and you have to take that into account. If you can figure it out. So they spread out quite thinly but I have to say they're good and einkorn is easier on my digestion. It's going to be trial and error for a while.

I took photos of a couple more quilts hanging at the library -

and

This one has some sparkly fabric in it. And lastly, this quilt, which isn't part of the current display, but which was made for the library thirty years ago by a quilt group in town. It hangs above the stairway going up the the children's area. I just love it.

I was thinking since I find Christina Rossetti's poems so appealing, I could maybe find a book about her. So I got a copy of Georgina Battiscombe's  A Divided Life. I like the way it's written, and am glad I had the idea. Funny thing: I got it on Tuesday and was reading chapter one. It said she was born on December 5th. That was the day I was reading it! And today I picked up my issue of Plough - I have to finish it, because a new one should be coming soon - and the article speaks of the influence St. Ambrose had on St. Augustine, and how extremely busy a bishop could be back then. Well, today is the feast of St. Ambrose! Everything means something, but I have no idea what. Still, it is funny. 

Anyway, Augustine described how Ambrose would just quietly snatch moments for reading, in between all the pulls on his time and attention. The article says, "Ambrose has chosen to use his spare snatches of time to return within himself, to become an island of stillness. His reading, certainly, is an example of leisure."

That pretty much sums up Advent, trying to make oases of quiet and stillness in the midst of the other stuff.