The Avocado Problem, Solved.

I love avocados.  When I have lunch with my old friend Torey at the East Bay Cafe on the Timpanogos Tech Campus, I frequently will buy a Cobb Salad because of the avocado.  You get half of an avocado on your salad and it's a big half.

Aside from the ripening challenge, I have so much trouble saving a remaining half here at home.  This week I found the solution and it's not even a gadget.

Small avocados!  The picture shows an avocado sitting in a quarter cup measuring spoon and next to a medium sized lemon.  An entire small avocado is the perfect size for one serving.  And they are even sorted that way at the grocery store because they are priced differently.  I would say "who knew?" but I've seen them before and they just never registered with me. 

Breakfast yesterday, a small egg quiche topped with the entire small avocado and splashed with some Sriracha.

Breakfast this morning, bacon, scrambled eggs, and avocado in a roll-up.  A little messy, one of those things you don't put down until you are done but so worth it.  Yum.

Finally...

It just won't stop but at least it is not sticking to roads or sidewalks.  Makes Springing ahead next Sunday seem silly.

Health Hazards

Big fires in the southeastern part of our county and about 10-15 miles from us.  The Pole Creek and the Bald Mountain have burned more than 100,000 acres.  No lives lost and possibly no homes either.  6,000 people evacuated some of whom are just tonight being allowed to return to their homes.  Air quality has been terrible because of the fires.

Kind of hard to take a picture of smoke but this is what our backyard looked like on Friday, September 14 at about 10:30 am.  It all has to do with the winds of course and so far, that has meant closing the windows the minute we get up because by then the air quality is already moving into the unhealthy zone.  Later in the afternoon it clears out and returns to normal or moderate levels.  We go to bed with doors and windows open only to start the whole air quality thing over the next day.  The fires are only at 23% containment so this could go on for some time.

For me it has meant burning eyes and feeling it in my lungs.  That's why we stay in during the day.  I'm curious what it does to Min, if anything and hopefully nothing at all.

The other health hazard:

It's Min herself, for pete's sake.  This is one of her favorite spots to snooze.  I like to think it's because she has a direct view of the front door and the house rules are no barking unless someone is actually walking up the front walk to the front door.  (I'm really the only one who follows it.)  

While this spot is not the actual center of the house, I need to step over her to get almost anywhere.  Generally I announce myself with a quiet "coming your way" or "heading to the sewing room", etc. so as not to startle her and have her jump up, knocking over me or the ironing board with the hot iron on it.  

Oh yes, and she has peeled that rug off the carpet tape that is designed to keep it from being a tripping problem.  Sigh.

The August Baby Quilts

I did finish the baby quilt with the black and lime flying geese border in August but I am not including that in the official count of August Baby Quilt.  I made two others start to finish and one that just needed the binding finished.  I am including that one here even though it was completed over the Labor Day weekend.  There will probably always be overlap from month to month, I just don't want to count any quilt twice :-)

This quilt was for my dear friend Torey's newest Great Grandson.  All the fabrics had been in the cupboard for some time, the newest being the blue and white print.  I used every bit of the red, yellow and white prints which had each been a third of a yard.  Notice that the borders on this quilt are all different.  No scraps left except some of the blue and white!

My neighbor bought this quilt for her niece's new baby.  This is the quick version of the Alex Anderson 3-Hour Baby Quilt (top).  The boarders are not pieced with flying geese which is what makes it much faster.  I was quite pleased with the end result and had plenty of the grey "rick-rack" fabric to use for the back.  Pat reported that the mother-to-be loved it!  Always nice to get some feedback.

You will recognize this quilt pattern but it's fun that while it was all stash fabric on the front, the cowboy fabric came from my sister's stash!  When I was out there in July, she suggested that I go through her stash and take what I wanted.  There was a good sized chunk of the cowboy fabric with spots that had been fussy cut for specific images.  Ha!  That was because she had used those images in a flying geese strip that she used to embellish a sweat shirt she gave me for Christmas...at least 20 years ago.

I just happened to have purchased a backing fabric this summer that was perfect. $4.99/yard from the flat-fold clearance table at The Cotton Shop. 

SMOA, visit #3

Amy and I went just last Tuesday and it seems like it was forever ago.  Tuesday was the day she went home but we discovered that the museum is no longer open on Sundays as it has been in the past and as Jan and I remembered after the fact, they aren't open on Mondays either.  So Tuesday it was.

Here are the quilts we voted for, Amy's first and then my choice:

I'd really like to go one more time...  The Quilt Show ends on September 22.

Serendipitous

I mean really, who would have thought that a rather routine book package from Big A could have provided so much delight before even reading the first sentence.  Not me.  I was a bit confused because the package felt like it might be a dvd set except that it was quite heavy and I didn't order a dvd set.

It is a book that I ordered after hearing the author, Beth Terry, interviewed by Doug Fabrizio on RadioWest,  a local program on NPR.

1 lb. 7 oz. !

with a measurement of 7"h x 6"h x1"d.

Plain cardboard covers that are 1/8" thick

It looks like it is hand bound which certainly can't be and because of this the pages lay very flat for easy reading.

Of course I don't know who Iris and Ron are but it is a signed by the author copy.

Altogether, a wonderful tactile experience.  Can't wait to start reading!

June-August Baby Quilt

I started this one in June and finished the binding in August.  I was gone 10 days in July and it threw me off in odd ways.  I think I just drifted about in the second half of July not getting much of anything accomplished.  Of course it was bloody hot here and that could have been part of it too.

This is my favorite pattern to use when there is a big bold print for the center.  I had also taken a challenge of making 100 geese units in a month and this quilt alone has 44!

What I learned.  I was intending to machine stitch the binding which means I sew it to the back and fold it over to the front and stitch again.  That was a mistake for two reasons.  I was so unhappy with my attempt at stitching on the front, I ripped out a section three times before giving up on that.  However, by folding from the back to the front, I had more that than a quarter of an inch to stitch down, now by hand.  That extra binding covered all the outside points of the geese.  It would have happened whichever method I used, machine or by hand.  No baby will notice of course, but it surely annoys me.

I took this photo in the early morning before the sun was over the mountain.  The colors look good except the corners are more coral than red.

The quilt measures approx. 45" by 48".

SMOA - Second Visit

This time it was me, Carol, Carrie and her nephew Peter who starts kindergarten tomorrow.  A very nicely behaved boy!  And, there were more visitors today often with husbands.

This is the quilt I voted for this time:

Because of the fabric choices, men's shirts, it's a very comfortable, soft, peaceful looking quilt.  Makes me think of the Japanese quilters and the colors so many of them work in.

I'm hoping to go to the museum at least one more time.