#COOKING WITH CLORIS--GUEST AUTHOR LEA WAIT/CORNELIA KIDD COOKS UP SALMON MOUSSE

We’re always thrilled to have mystery author Lea Wait stop by for a visit. Today she joins us under her new Cornelia Kidd pen name, which launches her Maine Murder Mystery series. Lea also writes the Mainely Needlepoint and Shadows Antique Mystery series and historical novels set in nineteenth century Maine. Learn more about her and her books at her website, where you’ll find a link to a free prequel of Death and a Pot of Chowder, the first book in her new series. She also blogs with the Maine Crime Writers.

Salmon Mousse

from Death and a Pot of Chowder

A light lunch? An appetizer? An hors d’oeuvres with crackers? Mamie’s salmon mousse will be a hit. This amount will serve four to six, but she suggests you double the recipe so you’ll have some for tomorrow, too.

This recipe is from Cornelia Kidd’s Death and a Pot of Chowder, the first book in the new Maine Murder culinary mystery series, set on an island off the coast of Maine.

Ingredients:

15-ounce can red salmon (it’s prettier than pink) or 2 cups cooked salmon, shredded

1/2 T. salt

1/2 T. sugar

1/2 T. flour

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1/2 teaspoon cayenne

2 egg yolks

1-1/2 T. melted butter

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup rice wine vinegar

1 envelope granulated gelatin dissolved in 2 T. cold water

The day before serving:

Clean and flake salmon and put in thin bowl or mold.

Mix dry ingredients in the top of a double boiler, or a small pan you can cook over another pan. Add egg yolks, butter, milk, and vinegar. Cook over boiling water, stirring almost constantly until the mixture thickens enough to stick to your spoon. Add the gelatin and stir until the gelatin dissolves.

Pour mixture over salmon and mix gently.

Chill in refrigerator (not freezer) overnight.

At least 3 hours before serving:    

To remove from bowl or mold, put bottom of mold in hot water to loosen. Be gentle as you turn mold upside down on a plate. Then replace mousse in refrigerator for several hours to ensure mousse will maintain its shape.

Serve with crackers, thin slices of French bread, cucumbers, olives ... whatever you choose. Especially refreshing on a hot day.

Death and a Pot of Chowder

A Maine Murder, Book One

Maine’s Quarry Island has a tight-knit community that’s built on a rock-solid foundation of family, tradition and hard work. But even on this small island, where everyone knows their neighbors, there are secrets that no one would dare to whisper. 

Anna Winslow, her husband Burt and their teenage son have deep roots on Quarry Island. Burt and his brother, Carl, are lobstermen, just like their father and grandfather before them. And while some things on the island never seem to change, Anna’s life is about to take some drastically unexpected turns. First, Anna discovers that she has a younger sister, Izzie Jordan. Then, on the day she drives to Portland to meet Izzie for the first time, Carl’s lobster boat is found abandoned and adrift. Later that evening, his corpse is discovered, but he didn’t drown. 

Whether it was an accident or murder, Carl’s sudden death has plunged Anna’s existence into deadly waters. Despite barely knowing one another and coming from very different backgrounds, Anna and Izzie unite to find the killer. With their family in crisis, the sisters strive to uncover the secrets hidden in Quarry Island and perhaps, the ones buried within their own hearts. 

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#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--GUEST AUTHOR AND CRAFTER LEA WAIT

Darning Sampler

Lea Wait is the author of the Mainely Needlepoint series, the Shadows Antique Print mystery series and historical novels for ages 8 and up. Living and Writing on the Coast of Maine is her series of essays on the writer’s life. Learn more about Lea and her books at her website. 

Have You Fixed your Winklehawks and Barn-Doors?

Yes – in the world of sewing there really are such things. In the early nineteenth century and before, fabric was valuable. Fabrics were either woven at home, which took time, or purchased at great cost. So when a piece of clothing was torn, repairs were essential.

Repairs should be invisible, so the clothing could continue to be worn. When the fabric was so worn it could no longer be repaired, it was either unwoven (as with wool) and re-used, or, at minimum, re-purposed, into hooked or braided rugs, quilts, or clothes for children.

Learning to mend clothing and strengthen weak fabric, was an essential skill for young women of most classes. Either at home or in schools for young ladies, girls were taught how to mend, or darn, fabrics of various textures.

And if you’re wondering – “winklehawks” were L-shaped tears, and “barn-doors” were holes. An experienced stitcher could mend tears and holes by perfectly simulating the cloth’s weave, so the mend was invisible. (The most difficult problems to repair were corners, where not many threads were left to work with.)

To learn these skills, girls practiced on “darning samplers.” An instructor would tear cloth in various ways, and the young lady’s task was to repair each hole or tear so it could not be seen. Once this exercise was completed to the satisfaction of the instructor, the girl might add a little embroidery to her work, and sometimes the result was framed.

Very different from the usual samplers done to illustrate mastery of embroidery stitches, these darning samplers, particularly done in Holland and Great Britain, can sometimes be found at antique shows or auctions, and are examples of the practical arts of the past.

Thread the Halls

A Mainely Needlepoint Mystery, book 6

There’s little time for Angie Curtis and her beau, Patrick West to linger under the mistletoe. Angie is determined that this should be a perfect Christmas – and so is Patrick’s mother, a Hollywood actress who envisions a Maine Christmas as a Currier & Ives print.  Patrick and Angie work to set the stage for the holiday, but no one scripts the addition of a body in a snow drift to the holiday festivities.

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(Click here for a free prequel to Thread the Halls.) 

#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--GUEST AUTHOR LEA WAIT ON ANTIQUE EMBROIDERY

USA Today bestselling author Lea Wait lives in Maine, where she writes the (so far) 5-book Mainely Needlepoint mystery series and the 8-book Shadows Antique Print series, as well as historical novels for young people. Learn more about Lea and her books at her website where you can find links to a free prequels of her books.

Old Embroidery That Tells Stories

Growing up as a fourth generation antique dealer, and then as a dealer myself for 35+ years, I sometimes saw embroideries that had been treasured not only as decorative works of art, but as illustrations of family stories.

For example, some samplers didn’t just have a verse and several alphabets. Some preserved family records. The stitchers embroidered names of their family on trees or more often (considering the 10-18 children I’ve seen listed), included names and birth (and sometimes death) dates and bordered the names with embroidered flowers.

Mourning embroideries usually picture a tomb shaded by one or more weeping willows, and several people (usually identifiable as family members) grieving next to the tomb, which is engraved with one or more names.

But not all “story” embroideries were sad. Patchwork memory quilts were sometimes given to new mothers, new brides, or young women heading west. Organized by friends of the recipient, the patches were often from garments that had been worn by the stitcher, who also embroidered the patch before the quilt was assembled, often at a quilting bee. Some simple quilts had patches embroidered with the names of those giving it, perhaps women in a church group, or young women who’d gone to school together.

(As a side note, today, at least in Maine, a popular library fundraiser is to cut quilt pieces and send them to authors, who sign and return them. The names are then embroidered over by volunteers, the quilt assembled, and then auctioned off.)

One of the most beautiful quilts I’ve ever seen was pieced with velvets and silks, and each piece was embroidered by a different person. The skill of the embroiderers varied considerably. I’d guess that some were very young, while others were very accomplished. Although we’ll never know what the exact message of the quilt was, an educated guess was that it was given to a new bride who was leaving the town where she grew up – probably a seaport.

 

The embroideries of the patches appeared to be memories that the recipient could take with her. A clipper ship. Strawberries. Holly. A pine tree. A dog. A cat. A house. Daffodils. Queen Anne’s Lace. A cardinal. A chickadee. A music note.

  

The quilt pictured has embroidery on the patches … and the embroidery linking the patches is designed to look like seaweed. (Collecting and preserving seaweed was a popular Victorian pastime for young women. But that’s another subject!)

Another memory quilt I’ve seen was made from the clothing of a union soldier who’d served in the Civil War, and the flag he’d carried. Embroideries on it included his dates of service, the battles he’d fought in, his unit, and the states he’d traveled to. It was pieced and embroidered by his wife, who wrote an explanation for the patches, which was saved with the quilt.

Unfortunately, not all quilts have legends.

But perhaps, the stories we made up about them are almost as interesting.

Tightening the Threads, A Mainely Needlepoint Mystery

I

n the coastal town of Haven Harbor, blood runs thicker than water—and just as freely…

Antique dealer Sarah Byrne has never unspooled the truth about her past to anyone—not even friend and fellow Mainely Needlepointer Angie Curtis. But the enigmatic Aussie finally has the one thing she’s searched for all her life—family. And now she and long-lost half-brother, Ted Lawrence, a wealthy old artist and gallery owner in town, are ready to reveal their secret connection…

Ted’s adult children are suspicious of their newfound aunt Sarah—especially after Ted, in declining health, announces plans to leave her his museum-worthy heirloom paintings. So when Ted is poisoned to death during a lobster bake, everyone assumes she’s guilty. If Sarah and Angie can’t track down the real murderer in time, Sarah’s bound to learn how delicate—and deadly—family dynamics can truly be…

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FAVORITES, FAILURES & FRUSTRATIONS--GUEST AUTHOR LEA WAIT

We’re always happy to have return visit from author Lea Wait, here today to talk about her newest Antique Print Mystery and one of her biggest frustrations. Learn more about Lea and her books at her website where you can also find a link to a prequel of Shadows on a Morning in Maine.

I’m convinced that being an author is, by definition, one of the most frustrating jobs in the world. (And – yes – it is a job.)

When I was writing my first book – a mystery rejected by forty of the best agents around – I would have said repeated rejections were the major frustration.

When my first book (Stopping to Home) was accepted by a major publisher (yippee!) I was frustrated that it got fantastic reviews but didn’t sell more copies, let alone (yes, I was fantasizing) win any awards.

By the time that first mystery (Shadows at the Fair) was published, despite positive NY Times reviews, I was frustrated by conflicts between writing two books a year (they want my books!) and caring for my mother 24/7. (She repeatedly told me I should “stop playing with that computer” and start doing whatever it was that she needed or wanted me to do.) A no-win situation.  

After she died, I had more time – wonderful! I married the guy I’d loved for more years than anyone can believe. Life was perfect.

But my publisher wanted me to do more appearances, in more places. That took time – and money. (No – publishers don’t pay for travel or promotional items or conference expenses for most authors.)  I went into debt promoting my books, which were doing fine, but not “breaking out.” An investment in the future,” I told myself. And, after all, Simon & Schuster was publishing two of my books a year. I was really an author!

And then within a few months it all ended. My mystery editor retired, and my series was discontinued. Historical novels for children went out of fashion.

I was beyond frustration. And, yes, tears were involved.

But I kept writing.

No one wanted to continue my mystery series, so my agent suggested I write an historical mystery.

It was rejected.

I wrote two more historical novels for children (I’m stubborn) that were rejected. So was my contemporary mystery for ages 8-12.

And the nonfiction book I wrote for teachers.

And I won’t even mention that dozen manuscripts that were researched, partially written, then dropped because my agent said selling them would be “doubtful.”

I changed agents. More than once. It didn’t make a difference.

Yes, I’d had eight books published in under six years. But then – for another six years – nothing.

Frustration? Oh, yes. And – an important side effect of frustration: publishers may not know this, but authors are addicted to housing and food, too. I was in debt (that book touring and promotion that was supposed to pay off) and, to top it off, the market crashed. I looked for a day job but couldn’t find one.

And then … gradually … the clouds began to part. A small publisher on the west coast decided to pick up my Shadows series. The fourth book in the series (Shadows at the Spring Show) was published in 2005. The fifth, (Shadows of a Down East Summer) in 2011. I was being paid a tiny fraction of what I’d previously earned, but somehow my readers found me. Hurrah! The eighth in that series, Shadows on a Morning in Maine, was just published.

A small Maine publisher decided to take a chance on Uncertain Glory, one of my historical novels for children. It was published in 2014.

And through a writer friend who knew an agent (not mine) who knew an editor, I was offered a contract for a new mystery series. Much less money than my first series but more than the small press. The fourth in my USA Today bestselling Mainely Needlepoint series (Dangling by a Thread) will be published in November. It will be my eighteenth published book.

So—is my life perfect?  Not exactly. Yes, I’m back to writing two (or three) books a year that are being published. I have supportive friends in the writing community. I now know my story isn’t unique – authors have “down years.”

I’m working with a credit consolidation firm. I’m doing few appearances out of my home state. My husband and I don’t eat out often, don’t travel, and keep the temperature in our home down in winter. It will take another four or five years, I estimate, to work our way out of debt.

But my (new) agent is excited about a project I’m working on. I’m hoping my Mainely Needlepoint contract will be renewed. I do a lot of library and craft show gigs, to let people know about my books.

I think -- I hope -- there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

But now I’m a realist. I know how rewarding being an author can be. But also how frustrating.

And – by the way – my wonderful supportive husband understands, because he’s an artist. Don’t get me started about the frustrations of that job!

Shadows on a Morning in Maine

Antique print dealer Maggie Summer's making big changes in her life. She's taken a sabbatical from her college teaching job and moved to the coast of Maine to run an antique mall with Will Brewer, her significant other, and is finally hoping to adopt the daughter she's been hoping for. However, the troubled girl referred to her doesn't want any part of the plan, showing affection only for harbor seals, which remind her of her "real mother." Maggie's distraught when someone starts shooting the seals -- and the a young fisherman is murdered. When Will then confesses a secret from his past, she begins to wonder if moving to Maine is the biggest mistake of her life.

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#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--GUEST AUTHOR LEA WAIT

Today we’re happy to have back Maine author Lea Wait who writes the Mainely Needlepoint Mysteries and the Shadows Antique Print Mysteries, as well as nineteenth century Maine-set historical novels for young people. Learn more about Lea and her books at her website.

American School Girl Samplers

“Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that – one stitch taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right, like embroidery.”-- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

A number of readers of my Mainely Needlepoint mystery series have asked me about the quotations I put at the beginning of each chapter. Some, like the one above, are from books printed in the nineteenth century or before, but most are moral verses embroidered by American girls as young as six on samplers stitched in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Samplers made during this period usually included several alphabets (in different stitches,) and numbers, a verse, a (usually floral) border, and perhaps a scene, or a family tree. They were works of art often preserved by the young woman or by her parents. Although most girls were taught sewing and embroidery skills by their families, the larger, more elaborate samplers seen today in museums and private collections were often designed by skilled teachers and taught to girls as part of their education in private schools in the mid-Atlantic and New England states. Populations in other areas were sparse at that time, and girls living there didn’t have the luxury of time to create what were really works of art.

Samplers from states outside Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington.D.C., Maryland, Delaware and the New England states are today especially valued by collectors because far fewer of them have survived.

Verses found on samplers may be from hymns, from songs of the period, from poems, or from religious texts. Primers, whose reading exercises were often moral lessons, were also a source of verses for many girls. And because of the high mortality rates of the period, verses about death were common.

For example:

           

“Beauty and virtue, when they do meet,

With a good education make a lady complete.”  (1774 sampler)

Or:             

“This work in hand my friends may have

When I am dead and in my grave

And which when’er you chance to see

May kind remembrance picture me

While on this glowing canvas stands

The Labour of my youthful hands.” (1752 sampler)

Perfect epilogues for a mystery series!

(If you’re interested in more information about the history of schoolgirl samplers and needlepoint, Lea has compiled a bibliography of sources. There’s a link to it on the home page of her website.)

Thread and Gone

When a priceless antique is stolen, murder unravels the peaceful seaside town of Haven Harbor, Maine. . .

Angie Curtis and her fellow Mainely Needlepointers know how to enjoy their holidays. But nothing grabs their attention like tying up loose threads. So when Mary Clough drops in on the group's Fourth of July supper with a question about an antique needlepoint she's discovered in her family attic, Angie and her ravelers are happy to look into the matter.

Angie's best guess is that the mystery piece may have been stitched by Mary, Queen of Scots, famous not just for losing her head, but also for her needlepointing. If Angie's right, the piece would be extremely valuable. For safekeeping, Angie turns the piece over to her family lawyer, who places it in a safe in her office. But when the lawyer is found dead with the safe open and ransacked, the real mystery begins. . .

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#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--GUEST AUTHOR LEA WAIT AND THE #NEEDLEPOINT OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS

The emblem of Mary, Queen of Scots

Today we’re happy to have back Maine author Lea Wait who writes the Mainely Needlepoint Mysteries and the Shadows Antique Print Mysteries, as well as nineteenth century Maine-set historical novels for young people. Learn more about Lea and her books at her website. 

When I started writing the Mainely Needlepoint mystery series two years ago, one of the first things I learned was that Mary, Queen of Scots, had been a famous needlepointer. I’d grown up hearing stories about Mary: my grandmother had come from Edinburgh, where her family (the Stewarts/Stuarts) had lived for generations. She’d always believed Queen Mary was somehow related to us. (Our family home was just down the street from Hollyrood Castle.) So, of course, I started reading about Mary’s needlepoint.

I’d known castle walls were warmed by woven tapestries. But I learned that some were stitched by professional embroiders (most of them men) who lived and worked in castles. The clothing of noble ladies was also embroidered, as were bed hangings, curtains, valences, pillows and cushions, panels, purses ... almost any cloth that could be decorated. Wealthy and noble women also did needlepoint, although on a smaller scale.

Scotland-born Mary was sent to France when she was five, destined to be the bride of Francis, the Dauphin. She and her ladies learned needlework at the French court from her future mother-in-law, Catherine de Medici. One of the tasks of the court embroiders was to draw designs on canvas, silk or satin, for the noble women to embroider.

As an antique print dealer, I was fascinated to learn that the designs of flowers, birds and animals the women embroidered were copied from natural history engravings of the period.

Mary did marry Francis when she was sixteen and briefly was Queen of France, but Francis died only a year after their wedding. When she returned to Scotland to become Queen of the Scots, she brought with her a few servants from her French household – including two embroiders. Their work was needed in the cold stone Scottish castles.

Mary herself did needlepoint all of her life, but she is best known for the work she did during her long years of captivity. (Her cousin, Elizabeth of England, fearing Mary would act on her claim to the English throne, had her isolated in an English nobleman’s home.) Mary and the wife of her “host” in England, Bess Hardwick, spent hours each day embroidering. It was one of Mary’s few amusements.

Once she even covered a red satin skirt with embroidery of flowers as a gift for her cousin Elizabeth, hoping it would soften the queen’s heart. She embroidered gifts for friends. And before she was executed, she arranged for her needlework to be distributed among her friends and family.

In my latest book, Thread and Gone, I’ve managed to connect Mary’s needlepoint to the coast of Maine. How? To find out, you’ll have to read the book! (There’s a link to a free prequel on my website, www.leawait.com)

And if you want to know more about Mary’s needlework, I suggest Margaret Swain’s The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots, Santina Levey’s An Elizabethan Inheritance: The Hardwick Hall Textiles, or George Wingfield Digby’s Elizabethan Embroidery.

Thread and Gone

When a priceless antique is stolen, murder unravels the peaceful seaside town of Haven Harbor, Maine. . .

Angie Curtis and her fellow Mainely Needlepointers know how to enjoy their holidays. But nothing grabs their attention like tying up loose threads. So when Mary Clough drops in on the group's Fourth of July supper with a question about an antique needlepoint she's discovered in her family attic, Angie and her ravelers are happy to look into the matter.

Angie's best guess is that the mystery piece may have been stitched by Mary, Queen of Scots, famous not just for losing her head, but also for her needlepointing. If Angie's right, the piece would be extremely valuable. For safekeeping, Angie turns the piece over to her family lawyer, who places it in a safe in her office. But when the lawyer is found dead with the safe open and ransacked, the real mystery begins. . .

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#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--GUEST AUTHOR LEA WAIT

The Loara Standish Sampler

Lea Wait is the author of the Mainely Needlepoint series (Twisted Threads, Threads of Evidence and, coming in December, Thread and Gone.) She also writes the Shadows Antique Print mystery series and historical novels for ages 8 and up. Living and Writing on the Coast of Maine is her series of essays on the writer’s life. Learn more about Lea and her books at her website. 

Being able to sew a fine seam and embroider were for centuries considered basic skills for women. In the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries needlepoint, the most decorative of these arts, was done primarily by wealthy women and the men hired by them to create tapestries, bed hangings, and elaborately stitched clothing.

In seventeenth through nineteenth century North America, tapestries were not common, but before central heating, bed hangings were common in wealthier households. And as in Europe, girls were expected to demonstrate their dexterity with needles at an early age, and often did this by stitching a sampler using various embroidery stitches, often including an alphabet, a scene, and, almost always, a devout verse.

Possibly the first sampler stitched in the New World was done by Loara Standish (pictured above,) daughter of Miles Standish, in 1640. It is now displayed in Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

By the nineteenth century, embroidery skills were taught in girls’ schools on the east coast, and teachers designed elaborate samplers for their students to stitch, frame, and give to their parents to thank them for the gift of an education.

One of my favorite sampler verses was stitched in 1827 by Mary Chase, age eleven, in Augusta, Maine:  “Let virtue prove your never fading bloom, For mental beauty will survive the tomb.”

Girls like Mary Chase inspired my Mainely Needlepoint mystery series. (Twisted Threads, the first in the series, was published in January, 2015.)

In an unexpected twist for a craft mystery series, my protagonist, Angie Curtis, is just learning to do needlepoint. But her grandmother is a master, and has started Mainely Needlepoint, a business that employs a variety of men and women in Haven Harbor, Maine, to do custom needlepoint and identify and restore antique needlepoint. (In Threads of Evidence, the second in the series, clues in needlepoint they are restoring give clues to a mysterious death in 1970.)

I love the (often depressing) verses on samplers, so I’ve included a verse, or a quotation about needlepoint, at the beginning of every chapter in this series.

For example, this verse was embroidered by Lydia Draper, age thirteen, in 1742:

           

Nothing is so sure as Death and

Nothing is so uncertain as the

Time when I may be too old to Live,

But I can never be too young to Die.

I will live every hour as if I was to die the next.

What better sentiment for a mystery series?

Threads of Evidence

It's hard to imagine anything bad ever happening in picturesque Haven Harbor, Maine--until a famous face rolls into town and unthreads some very dark secrets. . .

Angie Curtis and the Mainely Needlepointers are all too familiar with the Gardener estate. The crumbling Victorian mansion, known as "Aurora," has been sitting vacant for nearly twenty-five years--and some say it's haunted by the ghost of Jasmine Gardener, the teenage girl who died there in 1970 under mysterious circumstances...

Harbor Haven is abuzz with excitement when Hollywood actress Skye West decides to buy Aurora and sell off its furnishings. And Angie is intrigued when Skye asks her to appraise the estate's sizable collection of needlepoint pictures. But the more she examines the pieces, the more they seem to point toward Jasmine's murder--and the murderer--and it's up to her to stitch the clues together. . .

              

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