Mid-month

 Well, progress report for mid-month Chookshed Challenge has me completing seven squares on Elizabeth's Baltimore Album quilt, which surprised even me.  I'm doing a cross hatch quilting on it so it's easy, uniform, and goes relatively well with the open blocks.  I can do close to a whole square in an evening before my hands tell me to stop.  Can't show a picture yet.

The Temperature Tree cross stitch is more difficult than I thought.  I haven't done cross stitch for probably 45 years and my eyes are 45 years older and the technique cross stitchers must use is long gone from memory or supplies. With this craft I am just out of practice.  So I have been spending these very cold and somewhat snowy afternoons watching A Town Like Alice and old movies while I struggle along.  It's coming but just not fast enough.  I want the tree done completely because I see that as the hardest and I don't want to have to come back to it.  I want to just add leaves as the rest of the year goes by.  Probably all of January's calendar squares will be noted with a number on them signifying the temperature that day.  I'll get caught up.  I will.

Yesterday was reading day at school and I didn't decide to go till the very last minute.  It was snowy and I wasn't sure of the driveway.  We have a very steep, long and curvy driveway and it doesn't behave well in the snow. We've already had two driveway adventures this winter and I'm not eager for another.  At the very last minute (the school is about 15 minutes into the countryside with open fields and blowing snow)  I was comfortable it was ok to go.

I always ask the kids what the word "terrible" might mean here.  Is he very good at being scary terrible or is he so bad at it he is a terrible monster?  Well, for Leonardo, he just isn't good at it.  He can't scare anyone.  He decides to remedy this by finding the most scaredy cat kid and scaring him.  

The first thing this book says is "I had the idea to staple my brother's hair to his pillow" and then goes on to list 16 other things that she tries and is told she can never do again.  There was one little girl listening who couldn't see how the child in the book was so wrong.  Oh, Dear. That child's mom might need a bottle of wine with a ribbon on it. Maybe a spa day.

It's below normal cold and we've been getting snow just about every day so when I passed a display of hyacinths at the store I had to bring a pot home.  These are my all time favorite flower because the aroma fills the house.  In the middle of January it's good to smell something.   When our daughter was a toddler she came running in the house one day and said, 'the hycynthias are blooming!"  so for us they have ever more been hycyinthias.

Learning Something New

 Last night PH and I took advantage of his Christmas gift - a sausage making class .  I have never been a big fan of sausage but he loves it so I thought this might be a fun time for him. And I've discovered I didn't like sausage because I didn't like the standard breakfast sausage.  But this! Wow.  There is a sign on the wall of this shop:  If you want to cook good food you have to eat good food.  Right.  And if you are a good enough cook you can read a recipe and know whether it's going to taste good.

This class was completely hands on.  While the shop instructors had all the ingredients on hand we did all of the slicing, dicing, chopping, mixing.  There were twelve people and we were all involved.  Each doing a different task.

We learned two recipes.  Ours was scallion pancake flavor sausage and it had chopped garlic, shallot,  green onions (scallions) lemon grass, ginger, pork stock and hoisin sauce, salt, some green leaf thing I didn't know what it was but it was kaffir leaves, and the scallion pancake which we decided was really a pita bread with scallion baked in so easily substituted at home with pita and some extra scallion chopped in. 

The Mexican Street Corn sausage had salt, cayenne, cilantro, cojita cheese, lime, jalapeno, red onion, and corn stock.  Now I had never heard of corn stock but they said to cook down your corn cobs AND husks like you would any stock you make.  I can't wait for summer to try this!

We put the meat through the grinder, two sizes.  This was the first and larger grind then it was put through a smaller grind.

Next the seasoning is added and it's done either by hand at home or a mixer because you obviously don't want the seasonings to get caught in the grinder.

Then we stuff 'em.  This is trickier than you'd think.  The casings are slippery, we really couldn't use gloves because you really have to feel it.  

The casings are delicate and easily break if the pressure we exert on turning the crank is too much.  We all had breakage. 

We came home with three of each recipe, PH was till working on his scallion pancake sausage.

We all got to taste what we were making because the instructors cooked up some of each. They were both delicious!!!  The Mexican Street Corn had a kick to it as you would expect from the ingredients and the scallion pancake was amazing.  I just might actually like sausage AND found a new fun thing to make on our own.  The possibilities are endless.

New project and books

 Yikes, it's been a bit since I've posted and even I get bored looking at the same post when I open the blog to read yours.  Things have been blessedly slow since Christmas and I'll say it again, I love January.  I love the abrupt stop.  I love the quiet.  I love the empty calendar squares. I love the Christmas ads and movies being gone.  I love clearing out the fancy food from the freezer.  I love when at night PH asks, "we have anything going tomorrow?" I can say, "nope."  

Some would use this time to purge closets and such and sometimes I do but I've been catering to a bad back attack since the kids were here the weekend before Christmas so not much has been done in that respect. 

I have managed to quilt five blocks of Elizabeth's BA quilt and feel good about how it's going. It's not slow, no slower than I am, and it's not big stitching fast. I am doing the cross hatch and using masking tape to guide the stitching so it's ok.  

It's ok enough that I took on another project.   I can't believe I'm saying that.  But Susan was doing this temperature tree cross stitch thing and while I think the temperature quilts are interesting I know I'd NEVER complete it nor want to be nagged by it.  But this tree looked relatively easy and each little leaf is only five stitches and once the tree is done it's easy peasy.  Remind me later that I said that.

I found the instant download pattern on Etsy.

Let me tell you again how old my eyes are!  I haven't done cross stitch in DECADES.  But it's working out, if not a little slow. I'll just keep writing the day's temp on the calendar.

It's not moving much, that thermometer.  The temperatures are stuck in the low to mid 20's.  We've been spared the big storm that moved just south of Michigan, thank the snow gods for that. Outdoors it just looks like powdered sugar on brownies. You can see the ground but it is COLD.  I have said for years that I don't care how cold it gets, just so it doesn't snow.  Snow tells you whether you are going to get where you want to go.

This is the weather when I watch  A Town Like Alice.  In that movie everyone is dealing with the heat so it warms my toes to watch it when we are either confronting the cold or a storm. 

School started back this week from the Christmas holidays and it's Tuesday so I was back at school reading to the kids.  

This week I chose two compatible books about feeling or being left out. 

Brian isn't noticed.  His teacher doesn't even notice him because her hands are full dealing with the loud child and the drama queen and Brian just isn't one of those.  He is the last one chosen, eats his lunch alone and spends recess drawing on the pavement with chalk.   But he is also the only one who makes the new kid feel welcome.  Teacher notices his drawing talent and through an assignment and imagination, Brian is no longer invisible.  When I held it up to show the kids the cover one little girl said, "OH! I love this book!" So.  Good.

Same basic principle.  Nerdy birdy's glasses are too big, his wings too small and he isn't one of the cool birds like Eagle or Cardinal or Robin.  There is a flock of nerdy birds who welcome Nerdy Birdy and he notices that there are far more nerds than cool birds and they stick together.  Till vulture shows up, alone and ignored by the cool birds, too.  Nerdy Birdy shows the way to accepting all types of nerdiness. 

Not everyone can be a jock, right? 

Aftermath

 Christmas 2024 is a wrap, pun intended.  We were on our own after the kids left on the 22nd and that's ok. We spent a few hours on Christmas Eve at our daughter's house then on Christmas Day we went to see the movie A Complete Unknown.  PHENOMENAL!!!    I was 10 - 11 years old when Bob Dylan's career began.  And my first fan experience was The Beatles.  But I knew Dylan's songs, his style, his voice so was very anxious to see this movie.  If you go to movies, if you like movies where no cars are exploding or earth isn't being invaded by aliens and there are no graphic sex scenes, and if you are of an age to know who Bob Dylan is then PH and I can't recommend this one enough. We can't stop talking about it.   After, we went out for Chinese.

Our tree completely died the week after we bought it, crinkled needles, sounding like stepping on potato chips so we took the tree down BEFORE actual Christmas.  We begged it to not spontaneously combust till the kids had been here.  No suggestions about an artificial tree, please.  PH said that will happen when he dies. So there you have it.

 Once I finished constructing the flimsy for Elizabeth's BA quilt I had to put it down till after Christmas. I needed to just put it down for a bit.  I needed to think how I wanted to quilt it, even though I had the cross hatch in mind the whole time but then of course I second guessed myself.  

I did, though, finish a small table top piece for Friend Dodie.  I hope she isn't reading this because it's on it's way to her in Florida as we speak.  

She told me last summer that she has pieces of art from many friends and relatives that she cherishes, they daily remind her of her special people.  She asked me to make something for her.  Of course my selfish mind went immediately to "OH!  I have this BA quilt to concentrate on!" but told her of course I'd make something.  

When I finished the flimsy I turned my mind to something for Dodie that would mean something.  I usually think of things like this as I'm trying to get to sleep.  

She and Bob are in their 90's and while they live in Chicago and Florida they spent considerable time in South Haven, Michigan during the summers and that's how we met.  Now, they come just twice and always during blueberry time.  South Haven is a huge blueberry area and while there are orchards everywhere with apples, peaches, cherries, it's the blueberries that put SH on the fruit map. Well, that's not entirely true, it was the peaches and if you eat a Red Haven peach, it was developed in South haven.

 I thought I remembered I had some of the baskets left from a covid project our group did.  I did mine all in blues.  Ah HA!  Blueberry baskets!  I dug out all of my blueberry fabrics and the baskets, chose something simple so I could get it done and got to work.  I really, really wanted her to get it during Hanukkah.

There was no rhyme or reason to the border, I just sewed four patches and put them on. I'm not good at little things but I like how it turned out.

This will remind her and Bob of how we met, where we met and shared summers together.

 I might make one for myself!

Christmas 2024

 Hello all,

Not sure if or how you mark Christmas, but however you do - or don't - keep yourselves safe and calm.

PH and I had our Christmas weekend with the kids and grands on the 21st and 22nd. That's how we always do it, we get the weekend before Christmas.  They all come at noon on Saturday and stay till noon on Sunday.  Our son and his family are 2 hours away and while Australia miles don't think this is much, here, in winter it can be. We were lucky again this year with dry roads, sunny but cold weather.

They are all getting so tall and old!  Things aren't like they used to be when they were little and this weekend was one long, wild time.  Now they are calm almost adults and were very respectful about staying off their phones and actually visiting with us adults.  Especially if I gave them the evil eye.  I was button popping proud of them.

We had LOTS of food all day and a table full of cookies to nibble on.  I cooked and cooked and baked and baked.  And when they left it was with grocery bags full of leftovers.  

In the evening instead of little kid chaos we played a couple of card games.  Adults know the game as Screw Your Neighbor but our son's kids know it at Quarters.  Even their dog had a seat at the table! 

But this is what I loved the most.  After we all went to bed....we adults, that is, the kids all sleep in the living room on the floor and couch except for Charlie who gets a bed, decided to roast marshmallows in the fire. I didn't think anything of it when they fed and stoked up the fire just as I was going to bed.  I think this was project probably Elizabeth's idea.  She comes up with some good ones.

We never heard them as they found mini marshmallows in the cupboard and used cake pop sticks ( I don't know why I had those but there they were...) and they threaded minis onto the sticks and roasted marshmallows for a midnight snack.  I know it was a midnight snack because I went to bed at 11:30.  I don't even know for sure if it worked and they actually roasted those minis or just tried to.  

Elizabeth and Adelaide have grown up as part of our lives here.  They know what they can and can't do at our house and we've never squashed their creativity.  We trust them implicitly.  So when Elizabeth showed me the pictures she took of their midnight marshmallow adventure I loved it and told her so. This was complete pure cousin time with no adult around to tell them what to or not to do.  They don't get this kind of alone time together.

So while I bask in the glow I hope you all have a peaceful holiday season. 

Chookshed Challenge

 

Deana has launched another Chookshed Challenge for 2025.  We are supposed to choose ten projects, one a month, to focus on for this coming year.  I made a list last year but had to abandon it in June when Elizabeth asked for a Baltimore Album quilt for her high school graduation THIS June.  Well, I stayed on my self imposed schedule and the quilt is now pin basted and waiting for Christmas to be over before I start actually quilting it.   

So. My Chookshed list from 1-10 is to quilt that project.  Like last year, I have to completely focus on it till it's done (hand quilted.)  When I give it to her I will post a photo but not until. If I can squeeze in a project or two in the meantime you will be the first to know.  

So. Am I joining the challenge?  Yes, sort of. There will be time for more projects once we get to June first or I finish the quilt.  

Last of the Christmas books

 OK, last of the Christmas books with a little departure, too. 

You all know how I feel about Ryan T. Higgins' work.  His books are genius and his illustrations are hilarious, even for adults.   Bruce is a VERY grumpy bear who loves eggs.  He robs nests for them and cooks them in interesting ways.  One day he robs a goose's nest, takes the eggs home, puts them on to cook, gets distracted and when he returns the eggs have hatched.  You all know about imprinting, right? Well, Bruce the bear has now become Mother Bruce to a small flock of goslings. Exactly what Bruce does not want.  

This is the first in the Bruce books and what really launched Ryan T. Higgins.  He followed Bruce through many adventures and responsibilities with other woodland creatures.

How about this for a grumpy Santa?  But grumpy as he is he is still caught in the enthusiasm of Christmas. 

If you have any chance to find the Mother Bruce books, do.  But start with Mother Bruce, it introduces the characters that stick with the stories throughout the other books.