New Stuff

 Last spring Lori over at Humble Quilts put out a challenge to remake an old orphan block. I was  a part of her mini quilt exchange last winter and thought this would be a breeze - after all, someone already made the block, right?

About 45 years ago I went to the Shipshewana, Indiana flea market and an elderly gentleman had a shoe box of quilt squares for sale.  The entire box was marked $2.00 and even factoring in inflation, it was a good deal.  Now, HE put the price on them but as I paid my  $2. he said, "my wife is going to kill me."  There were two designs.  This one I never did anything with because they were hopelessly wonky and frankly, I have enough to do with blocks that AREN'T wonky.  These looked hopeless and there were a lot of them.  When Lori put forth her challenge (and we had a year to do it, this isn't due till May 30) I knew these pink things would be what I would tackle.  We only had to do one, it was supposed to be mini. We could do ANYTHING with the old block.

So this is what I did.  I started by taking the outer row of HSTs off and ironed the daylights out of it then auditioned many possibilities for a surround but everytime I tossed something black onto the square it just said "yes."  So now to send photos off to Lori and cross this one off the list.

Each Spring the Friends of the Library (to which I belong) and the Museum (to which I belong) collaborate on a spring tea/speaker presentation.  Real tea cups, real tea, real cookies, a real speaker who presents on a topic related to the area and to women's history month.    We really weren't  sure BOC (Because Of Covid) if the doors would be opened and no one would come or we would be stampeded.  Well, it wasn't a stampede but the most we've ever hosted was 42 people and for this we had 58!  Everyone listened to a very interesting presentation while knoshing on so many cookie varieties we didn't have room on the platters.  Myself and two helpers did all of the baking. I mean, come on, would I serve a store bought cookie???

 

 

A Finally Vacation

Our Brian and his daughter took the opportunity this week to have a finally vacation and have gone off to the Canary Islands escaping late February in England.  Now, PH and I would have loved England in February with Brian not to even imagine being in the Canary Islands at this time.  We were jealous.  Canary Islands?  Warm? Sunshine?  Other side of the world? 

After Brian knew this trip was finally really going to happen (several have been planned and cancelled during  these last two years) we were very jealous. Then I wondered, could there be a Canary, Michigan?  I found the Canary Bar and Grille about an hour from here and a plan was hatched.

I told Brian we would be at the Canary Bar on Wednesday, March 3 and at 5 p.m., would be raising our glasses to him and his daughter and thus join them in hearts and spirits (pun intended.)

We met our friends, and at 5 p.m. we raised our glasses and saluted Brian and his daughter. Immediately I sent the image to him.

and received this one at the same time we were saluting them. 

He also sent this one taken earlier in the day, which means they had a very nice head start on us!  

And it also means you can have a moment with anyone anytime anywhere.  And this makes the world even smaller.  

Cheers! (and hugs to you both)

 

 

 

It's a Wrap!

 He finished it!  In record time, too, for a puzzle this  hard.  But he had a plan and it worked.

Nudging February Along

 I'm trying to nudge February on.  Normally, I love the calm after the storm of January - holidays are over, things settle down, no baking, wrapping or cooking for anyone. I like the lull of January. February can get old, though. The weather can be nasty or nice and sometimes both in the same day. So we find ways to be busy.

PH has become a puzzler.  He started during the lock down years. It's been good for him and he's good at it. This one, I thought when I bought it, would be a challenge but didn't realize how much of a challenge till  after it arrived and I saw it up close.  I immediately told him, "ok, this one is all yours."  Usually we share working  a puzzle.  I can spot mistake fittings better than he can because he spends much longer at it and after awhile those close-but-not-right pieces just look right but aren't.  So I'm The Fixer.  I also am The Finisher.  When it gets down to the last 50 pieces or so he will turn it over to me.

This table we  dragged back from his brother's cottage a couple of summers ago turned out to be the perfect puzzle table.  It's big enough for the 1,000 piecers, it fits perfectly in this place in the room so he can work the puzzle and watch a movie on TV.  But it's like potato chips.  He can't just walk by without trying to fit a  piece and one turns to another to another to another.

So before you know it he's sitting down and spending real time.  I am  really surprised at how organized he is.  Believe me, a close up look at this one sends shivers down my spine.  But puzzlers have a technique that works for them.  When he and my cousin get together and compare puzzle techniques you'd think they were discussing something serious.

 I have been helping at the museum with the third grade immersion program.  All of the third graders in the city come and spend two full school days at the museum immersed in our local history.  They learn how to design their own museum, they learn mapping skills, they learn about the people, the Native Americans, the fur traders, settlers, the immigrants, the way a museum works and why, they learn about archives, they choose an object in the building they want to know more about and write their own artifact labels for them.  It's an intense full, full two days but is so much fun.  In January we had an 8 day group, this week and next there is a 10 day group, in March a six day group (each group is a school, each school has certain number of third grade classrooms, each classroom is there for two days.)  

Thus not a single needle has been picked up so no stitching has been done.  Not on museum days. 

Improvisation

 We were going to do dinner last night with friends. We celebrated three of our birthdays that all converged.  I made a cake.  You have to have a cake for birthdays, right?  

My friend thinks everything that comes from my kitchen is magic.  I can do no wrong. It's all wonderful and she said she wants to live in my freezer.  Well.  No pressure there, right?

I decided the cake would be a cake I made before and it's delicious and moist and chocolate and made with lots of malted milk powder - in the cake, the filling and the glaze.  It's a winner.  

But not this time.  I spent ALL DAY Friday on this cake, the steps are many, cooling time is needed, but it's worth it - usually.  This time I couldn't get the filling right.  I spent hours trying to make it right, to fix it, to fiddle with it, to figure out what the problem was.  I knew mostly the problem was something called Clear Gel from King Arthur Baking and I didn't have any this time.  It's expensive for the amount you get and I didn't reorder after I ran out so, as usual for me, I tried to improvise. 

I improvise ALL of the time when I cook but generally know not to try it when baking.  Usually.  But I had to this time.  I tried everything in my magic box of tricks and nothing could or would fix this.

 That ooze?  It's the filling.  I even tried to stabilize it by putting it on the front porch in 1 degree temperatures.

But you know what?  I served it anyway.  I spent just too much time on this thing, it still would taste great,  and above all I wanted to prove to my friend that not everything that comes out of my kitchen is magically perfect. 

And we all practically licked our plates clean.  It was delicious even it if looked like a final result on Nailed It!

There are times, well, most times, I DO improvise and change things up.  When baking that can usually only mean change things up with flavors.  In the midst of the baking of the cake I had it in my mind to make cinnamon rolls but not cinnamon rolls.  I thought lemon instead of cinnamon would be nice.  Lemon and blueberry.  So I made some lemon curd and opened a small jar of home made blueberry jam

It was gooey because I used more curd and berry jam than I should have but that mess was easily wiped away.

This improvisation worked beautifully, deliciously.  No cinnamon needed.  I divided up the  booty and shared it with the group.  

 Improvisation number three.  These stars are another of Friend Sally's cast offs, I put them together and bordered them and  by the end of today this will be another pillow. I will *gasp* machine quilt it (that's the improvisation.)  I can hardly say that out loud but I think after ironing it really good, pinning it really well and going slowly, I can't mess it up too bad.

 

It's Birthday Time

 Goodness, it's been so long I almost forgot the steps to putting up a new post.  I've been working through a bit of a medical issue this month (not covid related) so just didn't have anything new to say.  

But now I do!

Yesterday we gathered, the eleven of us, for Mike's and my birthday lunch.  It was wonderful to be together in a place where none of us had to clean the house or cook.  It IS so nice to be the guest once in awhile and yesterday we were all the guest.  This restaurant gave us a separate room so we felt quite comfortable gathering just the family of us.

My chicks are not so little anymore.  I can't even spread my wings wide enough to gather them all in but I tried.

On my actual birthday I had a  surprise call from Donna in Australia - what a fun surprise visit THAT was! I was telling her about the cake we have just one day a year, my birthday, bought from a local bakery.  How do you describe a chocolate cake, especially a bakery cake?  It's just a chocolate cake, right?  I've had some really good home baked chocolate cakes in my life, it's hard to say any chocolate cake isn't good but this one is specially good just once a year.

This is what I've been plugging along with this month.  It's not much but I couldn't do much and so this simple something that should have taken just a week to hand quilt has taken all of a month.  I am determined to finish the last two of these plates today so I can bind it and be done.  I think I can do it.I'll put on my cold, cold winter DVD movie and settle in. 

This is my winter, blizzard, cold, snowy movie.  I watch it once a year during the coldest, snowiest day because it takes place in Malaysia and Australia's outback and is five hours long. Forever and years it's only been available on VHS and so I've dragged our VHS player along with us on every move - specifically for this movie.  It's my absolute favorite and it has be available to me, thus the VHS player.  I looked and looked for years to see if it was ever going to be made into a DVD and this year I found it!  I was so excited I ordered it, got it the next day and put it in to watch immediately.  I'll do it again today just because I can! 

It's cold, cold, cold here and they promise a messy week but we've been spared the behemoth storm the East Coast is getting so we will be thankful all we are putting up with is the cold. 

Zoom again

Last weekend, New Year's Day for me, the next day for Australia, Chooky organized another zoom chat with like minded quilty bloggers.   It's a great selfless plan she has to send out word and a link approximately once a month - as her schedule  allows - to her blog followers turned friends to keep in touch.   This started as a way to alleviate some of the angst of being shut in for most of the world this past year.  We log in, stitch, chat, compare notes on our lives, laugh, and feel like we were at a stitch-in or even a retreat.  Some of us even arrive in pajamas and one, who will not be named here, just about rolls over in bed, switches on her computer and joins us. Early Saturday morning isn't for her.   Some come and stay for the whole duration, some go in and out as chores and other things dictate.  My longest stay is 5 hours and then the battery goes dead and I have to charge up.  Even at retreat I have a hard time sitting that long at once.  

Some who come get a LOT done, some like me, not so much.  This time I even had hand work prepped and I did stitch but I have a short attention span and find it's also nice to just sit and chat.   We come from all over the world, Germany, Austria, Norway, Canada, U.S., England, France, New Zealand and of course Australia.  We've discovered we are all different, we all have different taste in quilts, we all are all going through this pandemic thing in the same ways and we are all the same. 

Chooky talked about this link on her blog

https://appuntipatch.blogspot.com/2021/05/insieme-in-video-conferenza.html 

I thought it was such a clever way to commemorate how we manage to stay sane. 

Also, I knew I would never go through what this  quilter did to remember this zoomy time but I did, in my dream state, think of this.

There was a fat quarter of this map fabric in the stash. I cut it in half.  There are a LOT of bits and pieces in the scrap box so I cut 2 inch squares, drew a grid on the map and am now hand applique stitching patches of fabric onto the map to commemorate the coming together of quilty people via Chooky's generosity.  Little patches of people covering the world.

Just a little way to remember how far away we are but how close we can be.  After putting all squares down I'll quilt it along the grid lines which you can see if you squint.  Each square is centered and measures 1.5 inches.

On my post about the clamps I mentioned that I had to leave the quilt group I was in here because of their non-vac and non-mask take on life.  Janet commented that it's a shame I don't have a group of like minded quilters with which to gather.  I emailed back, "oh, but I do!  Chooky's zooms!"

Thanks again, Chooky.  What you are doing IS appreciated.