The Back of the Closet

Definitely pre-Utah.  8 yards and I think it was maybe a possibility for curtains or a Roman shade for our large kitchen window in Illinois.  It has a bit of a chintz feel to it so not something I would use for quilting. 

Into the DI box.  Yay!

Happy Thread or Thread Happy :-)

I went into The store the other day to buy some more Aurifil thread for my applique project.  It's the 50 wt. and I love working with it!  I didn't want to duplicate any colors so I brought my jar in with me.  Teresa snapped a quick photo because all those colors in a jar were such a happy thing.  I agree!

Slow Living

My favorite tree in the yard is the Honey Locust in the parkway.  It is slow to open but it provides lovely dappled shade and small leaves which makes for easy and almost no raking .

When I wake each morning, usually the first thing I think about is which day of the week it is.  I used to internally roll my eyes when my neighbor, who works from home, used to be unaware of the day of the week but now I know first hand that it has to do with a missing frame of reference, i.e. generally deadlines.

The second thing I think about is what will I choose to do this day.  It's not to say there aren't some deadlines and stress but I feel I now live 95% deadline and stress free.  Not that I don't have goals but a lot of them are really on-going adjustments to the way we live here on the estate.

That said, I am making some specific fabric goals for May and joining in with Judy at Patchwork Times.

• Complete QOV Hash Tag
• Complete Impromtu
• Complete one baby quilt
• Add 15 blocks to flower applique quilt
• Begin fundraising Cat House Projects
• No online fabric purchases
• Continue fabric purge and fabric folding

This last one is a little vague because it's ongoing but all are doable (she says now.)

Spring Chores- - - Firsts

67 degrees and sunny today!  Season opener for the mower and the front lawn is looking good.  Not really good but we are on a plan and at least it has been mowed.

I also adjusted the sprinkler system and if I did it correctly they will start up tomorrow morning at 5.  Of course the sprinklers won't start unless the outside water is on and so once again I put on my spider cap, made sure my phone was in my pocket and descended into the crawl space.

It's not the long crawl it is when I need to change the furnace filter though.  Once I am off the ladder, I only have to back up a couple of feet and move a foot over to the left to access the water valves in a crouched position but not on my knees at least.

With the flash

Just the light shining in from the "door"

So a couple of things to notice and then to put on your to-be-grateful-for list.  At the top of the ladder picture, if you look closely you can see white spots.  Those are cocoon things with spider babies inside and explains why I wear a hat and a long sleeved shirt buttoned up to the neck.  In the other two pictures, notice the foundation.  Not poured concrete.  When the big one, i.e. earthquake not nuclear bomb from N. Korea, hits and if we are at home... well, you get it.

A New Stoup

I for sure can't say that I am sorry that winter is over but I am sorry that I didn't try all these stoup recipes a few months ago!  This is another one where I cooked up the whole amount of meat with the spices, then put half of it in the freezer.  I halved the rest of the recipe and added the leftover half of the tomato sauce to the meat for freezing.

Also,  I used brown rice and since I haven’t seen a meatloaf mix for years, I used equal parts of ground beef, ground pork and ground chicken.

Stuffed Cabbage Stoup   Rachael Ray 2012

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided

1 cup raw white rice

1 quart plus 2 cups chicken stock, divided

1 1/2 pounds ground meatloaf mix (a combination of beef, pork and veal)

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1 1/2 teaspoons coriander

2 teaspoons smoked paprika

Salt

Pepper

1 bay leaf

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 carrot, thinly sliced with a vegetable peeler into strips then finely chopped

1/2-3/4 head Savoy cabbage, thinly sliced

1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes

1 cup tomato sauce

2 tablespoons dried parsley

2 teaspoons dried dill

Heat a sauce pot over medium-high heat with about 2 tablespoons of oil.  Add the rice and toss to coat in oil. Add 2 cups of chicken stock, bring up to a simmer, cover and cook for 16 to 18 minutes or until the rice is tender.

Heat a deep pot over medium high heat.  Add the remaining extra-virgin olive oil, when hot,  add meat and begin to brown, 2 to 3 minutes.  Season the meat with allspice, coriander, smoked paprika, salt and pepper.  Add bay leaf, onions, garlic and carrots. Cook veggies 2 to 3 minutes to begin to soften them, then add cabbage and wilt it down a bit.  Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, remaining stock and cover.  Bring  soup to a simmer.  Simmer about 10 minutes.  When  rice is cooked, add to the soup and continue to simmer for 2 to 3 minutes.  Stir in parsley and dill, adjust salt and pepper to your taste, and serve.

This is fabulous and makes me want to try more stoup recipes!

DIA

The snowy peaks of Denver International Airport

All I have to do is leave the state by air and I am reminded how small and almost cozy the Salt Lake City airport really is.  DIA seems very sprawling and large but I don't know how it really compares to other airports.  Still, note to self: allow lots of time to catch a flight.

Terry made Rachel Ray's chicken and dumpling stoup and while I have made it, it was a long time ago.  As Rachel says, yummo!  I made it yesterday because foolishly, I did not ask to take the leftovers home with me.  (That probably would have turned out badly for the check-in luggage.)

Chicken Chicken Dumpling Stoup  Rachael Ray 2007

    2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

    4 ribs celery, chopped

    2 onions, chopped

    4 carrots, shredded (1-1/2 cups)

    1 fresh bay leaf

    Salt and freshly ground pepper

    6 cups chicken broth

    1 pound ground chicken

    1 egg

    1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs

    ½  cup freshly grated Parmesan chees*

    2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

    ½ teaspoon nutmeg

    1 1-pound package  gnocchi

    1 cup frozen green beans

    1 tablespoon dried parsley

    Crusty bread, for dunking

 In a soup pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat.  Add the celery, onions, carrots and bay leaf, season with salt and pepper and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the broth, cover the pot and bring to a boil.

 Meanwhile, in a bowl, season the chicken with salt and pepper. Stir in the egg, bread crumbs, cheese, garlic and nutmeg. Roll the mixture into walnut-sized meatballs (you'll have about 40) and add to the stoup. Simmer for about 10 minutes . Add the gnocchi to the stoup and simmer for 5 minutes.  Add green beans and parsley and cook for 2 minutes.  Remove the stoup from the heat, discard the bay leaf and let cool for 5 minutes.  Serve with bread.

* If you have to use the green can Parmesan, it will make denser meatballs.

This is the full recipe.  I made the entire meatball part of the recipe and froze half of them, then made only half of the rest of the recipe.  Half of  this recipe still makes 4 generous servings especially if you serve it with bread.

Tristan Will Be Proud

• I found the Wii controller.  (Buried under a deep pile of fabric.)
• Replaced the batteries and cleaned off the corroded connections.
• Hooked it up to the tv with only a small problem... it took me some time to notice the power button on the controller.  It's right there in plain view, top left and once I pressed it, hooray!!
• Consulted the Netflix site on how to connect with the Wii. 
• The Wii did not like my router password to connect to the internet.
• Trying this, trying that, at the computer, at the tv.  Remarkably calm, determined and curseless.
•  Almost two hours to the minute and I was watching TWW on the tv on Netflix through the Wii.
• Technology.  It's a wonderful thing when you can get it to do what you want it to do!

TWW = The West Wing, yes, the tv show that started in 1999.  I never watched it, so now I have SEVEN years of episodes to enjoy.  It's very fun and really, a parallel universe.

The next project

1 Down...79 to go!

And it shouldn't surprise you when I say that this one will be worked around other new and old projects.

 

The Tumbler Quilt

This was a fun quilt to make!  It was made using an Accuquilt die cutting machine and a stack of fat quarters I had pulled two years ago.

The template die is designed to cut the corners off

which makes for accurate piecing

(although not infallible)

and perfectly aligned seams!

About 58 x 64"

 It's a bit breezy today so the quilt is not crooked as it appears in the photo.  The small border was left over from another quilt, the binding was left over from the back of a quilt and the back is a chambray from the stash.  A very satisfying use of what was on hand!  I would like to donate this to the veterans home but I think it is too small.

And speaking of the stash... as of this week the stash has been reduced by 24.14 yards since the beginning of the year.  Yay!

HHW

Household Hazardous Waste collection day!

The city does this once, maybe twice a year.  Today the collection site was on the west side of the mall and they had quite the set up with police barricades to indicate where to enter and exit as well as drop-off lanes.

I had quite a bit of old paint that had been in the garage for years, a small box of aerosols, years and years of old dead batteries since I have already been using rechargeables for years and a couple of CFLs.  All of the workers were wearing white haz-mat suits which did make one pause to think about the whole thing.  I never had to get out of the car as there were BYU volunteers unloading.  One guy was griping about all the "freeking" paint that was being dropped off by everyone.  I'm guessing 9:30 am was too early in the morning for him but I was sorry I didn't have a box with this on the outside to give them something to talk about.

Just kidding of course, radioactive materials were on the What NOT to Bring list.

I'm counting this as a good to the earth offset for the bad for the earth caving I have done by putting chemicals on the lawn again after all these years.

Oh and there was a student asking questions about where you lived, how did you hear about it and would you be willing to pay something to drop these things off.  While I was thinking of how much I might be willing to pay she said like $15 and I said sure because I was about to say $20.  Thinking about it now though, I wonder if that would deter some people and I suspect yes it would and more than just some.

Spitting

Gross and disgusting and even more so when a woman does it.  Yes, I was witness to that.  Eeuuw.

When people spit, I say to myself, upbringing.  When my beloved iron starts spitting, I cry out Noooooo and try not to fall to my knees weeping.  Dogs snap awake, jump to their feet and start barking.  Panic ensues and rightly so.

I spent more than an hour giving the self-cleaning (ha) iron a vinegar treatment.  Because the iron turns off after 15 second of not moving, the only way for me to steam the vinegar through was to stand over the sink waving the iron around.  The noxious fumes took much of the fun out it.

I had to attack the calcium deposits around the steam vents with a toothbrush and when it was ready for a test run I was lucky to have a pile of clean kitchen towels that were waiting to be ironed.

End result is that it doesn't spit while ironing but it will spit occasionally when I lean it back into its resting position.  If I am ironing solid fabric I don't use the steam at all anymore but use Mary Ellen's Best Press diluted with water and a dry iron.

A lot of quilters do not use steam but I always have so I am missing it!  I know I am an iron abuser because it is plugged in every day for most of the day.  Irons have a short life in this house so I do not spend a lot of money on them.  Still... there is a cool looking cordless iron on my wish list.  Maybe if I get a tax refund.

I Heart Change

Prone or lying flat on the floor just can't be done in this house without being molested.  The boys find it quite bothersome and probably on several levels.  Tristan can vouch to that fact as he sleeps on the floor when they visit and Dylan does not leave him alone.

I wanted to take a picture of the change jar.  It is a heavy jar when empty and very heavy at half full.  I can barely lift it and I was afraid that the jar might break in my hands.

soup can for perspective, dog for protection (hahaha)

All of us crowded in 3 feet of space

I have a good idea how much is already in this jar but I would really like to get it filled to the very top before I take it to the bank.

One for the Cupboard

Baby Quillt 40x46"

This was my second practice quilt and I finally got the binding on it.  I really like this little quilt but one of the reasons it stayed in the UFO pile was because it has a glaring error on it.  Apparently it mostly glares at me because I had to point it out to one of my friends.  I'm guessing that a baby won't see it either.

The pattern is called Cheddar No Crackers by Modern Quilt Relish.

10 Minute Table Runner

I wanted to post this on the Easter weekend but did not get around to it. I made an Easter basket for a friend of mine and the basket itself was from the garage with gardening tools in it so I needed a cloth, aka piece of appropriate fabric, for lining the basket.  The fabric I had though was not a square as I had hoped but a piece 25x44 inches.  Holding the chick fabric in my hand, I thought of the 10 Minute Table Runner, glanced at the kitchen table and laid my eyes right on a piece of coordinating fabric.  It was meant to be!

Of course, it took me more than 10 minutes and the pointed end should really be turned  with the other fabric (yellow) showing but I liked it better this way.

If you haven't made one of these,  here are written instructions. There are several youtube videos out there too but I can't seem to load the one I like the best.