Tuesday, March 31, 2009

The quilt show is over...





























...and here are some of the best.

Number 1 and 2 is the viewer's choice best of show. The stippling is what looks like flat spots in the cream background.

Number 3 is by the National Featured Artist, Judy Niemeyer. She likes sharp points.

Number 4 looks even better in person, there are all sorts of beads accenting the stars.

Number 7 is the guild challenge winner. The theme was "Through the Garden Gate."

Which brings us to the joke I just found in the Jan 09 Reader's Digest: Seattleites haven't had enough coffee until they can thread a sewing machine while it is running.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Another baby quilt


For Opal, a jewel: turquoise, rubies, emerals, amethysts, topaz

Note: all the horses are right side up.

another top completed. almost


I made this for a class at http://www.quiltuniversity.com/, Landscape Sampler, taught by Linda Schmidt.

The silver lame in the clouds has not been ironed on the cotton setting. Yet. There are silver sparkles in the lake that need to be photographed better.
The circular top was frustrating, but it is done!!!!


It needs something.

A focal point.
More orange, much as I hate to admit it.

Friday, March 13, 2009

adventures in cooking

Last night I tried to make butterscotch pudding. The recipe is in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I forgot and added white sugar instead of brown sugar, so I was forced to make vanilla instead (I added 1 teaspoon each vanilla and almond flavoring). This recipe is very rich and is better warm. Mine always turns out grainy (not to mention having pieces of cooked egg white in it), so I poked around on the net to look for tips on how to avoid this. I got completely side tracked by this site:

http://www.messygourmet.com/index.html

mostly by this particular page, which should appeal to the scientific among us:

http://www.messygourmet.com/tips/issue4.html

I still don't know what my pudding is grainy, or how to get the last of the egg white away from the egg yolk.


And then tonight I needed a new chicken recipe, and found this:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Angel-Chicken-Pasta/Detail.aspx

absolutely wonderful. We used to rate recipes on a 1-10 scale, with a side notation of "abc", which means approved by C., the original picky eater. Now the rating system is make it: once a week, once a month, once a year and never again. This one is a once every two weeks rating.

And abc.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

catching up







In the last post, when I said I cleaned up, that actually includes the fabric stash. I folded every piece of yardage and fat quarter (18 by 22 inches) around my 5 inch ruler, folded them over, and stacked them in my closet. I have ten stacks of fabric about 2 feet high stuffed in a closet. Took 3 days. This does not include Christmas fabric (which is stuffed in a large blanket bag, whites and off whites, and some 30 bolts in the bedroom. The tiny scraps are in the shoe bag. I need about 3 more shoe bags for the rest of the scraps.

This system works well. I needed to look for purples (which are behind the blues) and I just got out the card table, but stacks of fabric on it, and then found what I needed right away! Then I restacked everything in record time.
The second picture is taken from Blewett Pass on February 18. Great day for a drive in the mountains. Unlike this last week, in which Snoqualmie Pass has been closed intermittently.
The last picture is what my garden should have looked like for Laurie's wedding. The white are snowdrops, the yellow, crocus, and the purple are dwarf iris. There are a lot of tulip leaves. You can barely see grape hyacinth coming up (don't look, it was in another picture). These things are 5 WEEKS LATE! They should have started blooming in January. Laurie should have had no snowdrops at all, instead that was all she had!
I blame global warming!
Wedding pictures will come when I can get to the directory that has them. Then one who knows where they are is asleep, it being 11:00 pm and he believes that you should be awake on the job.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

I still exist.

Since I posted last, my daughter got married on 2/14. The house got tidied and deep cleaned, meals got prepared ahead of time (messing up a clean house), 4 trips to the airport, one screaming arguement with the bride about whether utility bills include electricity (can you tell we were stressed?), someone fell on the younger daughter's arm (it wasn't broken), large amounts of food were leftover...when everybody left the dog wondered where all the ear scratchers were. The kitchen painting plans were delayed.

Our Czech exchange student came for it, and stayed a week. We took a day trip to Leavenworth, spent several days at the mall (clothes are cheap here) and she went to Starbucks nearly every day. It just opened in Prague, where she doesn't live, and she hasn't had Starbucks in nearly 12 years.

I took the exchange students to a pizza party and hockey game. On paper it is simple, but I had to call a whole bunch of them because they just don't plan ahead! Then several didn't show up.

I went away for the weekend to sew. YES!!!

Now I am dealing with a $4000 overcharge on a credit card bill.

The younger daughter is now realizing that she can't blame things on the older one anymore. She is the only one who leaves towels on the floor!

Pictures later.