Sunday Sundry - Vol. 37

Where-oh-where does the weekend go?  I hope yours was a good one!

Dad is my CSA
I was the beneficiary of some goodies from Dad's garden today—gorgeous green and purple kohlrabi, green onions, and leaf lettuce.  

Wearing rubber boots for the wet soil, Dad lobbed baseball-sized kohlrabi in my direction, and I trimmed off the muddy root and leaves.  Then he pulled onions, reminiscing about the many thousands he's peeled in the past 70-something years, starting as a child working in his grandfather's gardens.  Back then, after cleaning the onions, he'd hand them to his grandmother who sat on a stump and tied them into small bunches with string.

My great-grandpa Max was a fur trapper and market gardener, also known as a truck farmer.  He raised and sold vegetables and fruits door to door, bringing the farmer's market directly to the customer, instead of the other way around like it is now.  At first it was by horse and wagon, then later by Model A truck, covering nearby towns as well.  When he used real horse power, the story goes that the animal knew the routine so well that when great-grandpa walked from door to door, the horse would follow on its own when beckoned, stopping in front of the next house on the route.

My dad maintained two big gardens at our place when I was growing up, and he still has a large plot, roughly the same size footprint as his current house.  He blesses family and friends with produce in season, and I am very glad of that and happy to help in whatever way I can.

More Good Eats
On Saturday night, I made Greek meatza with this recipe.  Oh, it was good, and the leftovers on Sunday were even better, along with the above-photoed vegetables as a salad (and I still have onion breath some 12 hours later).  

My dairy-avoiding self even enjoyed the bit of feta cheese crumbled on top of the meatza, and lived!

Kaleidoscope Continued
I am still plugging along on making kaleidoscope blocks for the quilt-along.  I think I've got about 15 more to go before I can do the final arranging and sew them together to complete the top.

Here are a couple tools I'm using.  I've double-stick taped the main triangle template to the underside of a ruler I already had.  After watching a couple YouTube videos for a tool designed specifically for kaleidoscope quilts that I was contemplating buying, it dawned on me that just about any right angle ruler would work.  

For this quilt, I cut a strip 6-1/2 inches wide and then lined up the template/ruler along the top and bottom.  Voila, perfect pieces!  For the corner pieces in each of the blocks, I cut a strip 4-3/8 inches wide, sub-cut that into 4-3/8-inch squares, and then cut each square in half diagonally.  Easy-peasy.

This next "tool" is a piece of thin red acetate, which in its former life was a report cover.  I can't remember where I picked up this tip (it was a while ago), but it helps to check the value of fabrics.  

It doesn't seem to work as well as a black and white photo where you can more finely discern gradations of gray (as for mediums, for example), but it does give a general idea as to whether you've got a light enough fabric paired with a dark enough one.  

I've been using it for each block of this kaleidoscope quilt, holding it in front of my eyes while looking at the fabric combinations before I sew the pieces together. Again, not perfect, but very helpful as far as getting the general idea.