Sunday Sundry 1-3-21

Here we are in a new year.  I like to imagine it stretching out before us like a winding path.  

What will we encounter along the way?  Will it be smooth or tricky to navigate?  Likely some of each.  

We can only see so far ahead, but it isn't always clear.

I don't make New Year's resolutions, but I do spend some time thinking about the past year, what I've learned and what I'm grateful for, and noting where I can do better.  

I am optimistic about 2021, and I know that it will bring more opportunities to practice presence, patience, creativity, kindness, resilience, and gratitude.

We were able to get together on Christmas with my daughter and her partner, Chris.  It was a very 2020 Christmas, and we took precautions, wearing masks and social distancing to the extent possible.  I put all three leaves in the dining room table, and the four of us sat at opposite ends during dinner.  

It was great to celebrate the holiday with them.  Even though they live less than an hour away, we hadn't seen each other in several months, when we'd been able to meet for outdoor dining in warmer weather.

Among other things, my husband surprised me on Christmas with a vintage paint-by-number for my collection.  It's really well done, and I love it!

I treated myself to some raspberry goodness.  I added these to my grocery pickup order a couple weeks ago. 

I love raspberry flavored tea and coffee, but since I drink a special low acid decaf coffee, I thought I'd give this flavoring a try.  It's perfect!  About four or five drops in a cup of coffee (or glass of iced tea) is all it takes. 

Yesterday we ventured out to a thrift store.  We've really been limiting trips to stores, and for me this was only the second time I'd been in a store since Thanksgiving.  But I wanted to find a couple t-shirts with at least 5% spandex that I could cut into strips for making the ear loops for masks.  I'd used up the versatile gray t-shirt I was cannibalizing for ear loops, and although I don't need to make any masks right now, I still get requests from friends or family from time to time, so wanted to have supplies on hand.

I found a gray and a black t-shirt, so that was mission accomplished.  I also found some nice fabric!  I was thrilled to discover this little cache of greens.  Less than $4 for over two yards' worth.  Not bad!

My husband directed my attention to a vintage Pfaff 130 sewing machine at the thrift store.  Oh, it was tempting!  I have more than enough machines in my stable already, but she was sure pretty.

(Hutch in kitchen decorated for the season)

Today feels like the holidays are well and truly over, although I've still got all the decorations up yet.  

(Orange almond cake with cranberry curd)

The rich foods have been eaten, what was left in the fridge and pantry.  

(Pecan snowballs)

I've got some organizing type projects on my mind, as well as sewing ideas.  I've joined The Joyful Quilter's Table Scraps Challenge. 

(Frosty trees outside my window today)

Before I go, I wanted to mention a documentary on Gordon Lightfoot that I watched on Amazon Prime a couple weeks ago.  I didn't know much about him personally until I saw it, but I remember his popular songs back in the 1970s.  I had the album Gord's Gold (greatest hits) that I played the heck out of back in my college days.  The music in this documentary took me right back to that time, and I really enjoyed learning more about the interesting career of a talented artist.  You might, too.

Sunday Sundry 10-29-17

We didn't have many trick-or-treaters this evening, maybe only a couple dozen in total.  It was pretty cold, in the mid-40s, so that may have been a factor.

When I was a kid, I remember trick-or-treating in all sorts of weather.  The most extreme was during a sleet storm.  But no amount of stinging ice pellets was going to prevent me from crunching across the frozen lawns, half-suffocating behind a plastic princess mask, and opening the soggy maw of my pillowcase on the neighbors' porches.

Did you come home and sort your candy stash like we did?  Sweet-Tarts, Smarties and Pixie Stix in one pile, fake banana flavored chewies, Bit-O-Honey, Tootsie Rolls and Milk Duds in another.  Suckers, Tootsie Pops and Slo Pokes over here, gumballs and bubblegum cigars there.  Finally, closest to me—my precious—went the candy bars and M&Ms, to be hoarded and protected from my siblings at all costs.  Once in a while, a random apple made it home in the bag.  More often than not, though, they were employed as organic missiles along the route from house to house.

One year my mom had the idea of making popcorn balls for Halloween.  This sounded good, in theory, but you'd have to know my mom to appreciate the anxiety this triggered.  She was an inspired cook, yes, but also a master procrastinator with an internal clock seemingly set a couple time zones behind.  What could go wrong?

I remember the doorbell ringing with the first trick-or-treaters before her sugar syrup had even reached the soft-ball phase.  Then pandemonium ensued, and my dad was sharply commanded to assist as emergency sous-chef, all voices escalating to near-panic levels.

Meanwhile, knowing some of the kids on the porch were likely friends, I wanted nothing more than to melt straight into the floor.  Since that wasn't a viable option, the second best thing to do was don my mask and loot bag and skedaddle out the back door on my own personal candy quest.

Well after trick-or-treat hours, I returned home to a kitchen full of popcorn balls.  And I'm pretty sure that what I sensed in the air, aside from the lingering aroma of popped corn and sticky sugar, was the forswearing of any such artisanal creations ever again!

Post-Christmas Wrap

Things were hopping in the sewing room in the run up to the holidays.  I made a quite a few zipper pouches and Christmas tree mug rugs, and stitched the binding down on a quilt on Christmas Eve.  It didn't feel stressful, though.  I enjoyed every moment of it. 

I baked another loaf of Orange Date-Nut Bread (recipe back one post)

Our family does a gift exchange on Christmas called the "Dirty Santa" game.  You are probably familiar with it.  Everyone brings one gift to the party.  They all get put in the center of the floor when it's time to exchange.  We pick a number (or draw a playing card, as it were).  The person with the lowest number starts by choosing a gift and opening it.  Then the next person can either choose a gift to open or steal one of the previously opened gifts.  If your gift is stolen, you choose and open another one. You want to be a higher number in this game, so you have your pick of a variety of previously opened gifts, or take your chances and open one of the other ones.  

It's fun to see what shows up as a re-gift from prior years.  The current record is a cupcake maker that's been re-gifted five years in a row!  Most gifts are new, though.  Most are of the general sort, maybe something edible or drinkable, oftentimes useful, and sometimes funny or totally off the wall.

I went with "useful" this year, and the gift I brought to exchange was a quilt. One I'd been working on, off and on, since October, when I started piecing it on vacation.

I used the layer cake of Aspen Frost fabric won in the Hands2Help charity quilt project giveaway earlier in the year—very pretty, holiday-themed fabrics.  I followed the tutorial for the Precious Gem quilt, found HERE.  

It turned out to be a nice lap quilt size, just right for relaxing on a cozy winter evening.

This was the first time I'd brought a quilt to the Christmas gift exchange.  Judging by the fact the quilt was stolen twice, though, it won't be the last.  It was fun and encouraging to see a couple people vying to stake their claim on it.

Ultimately, it went home with my niece, who, in her words, was happy to "add it to her collection."  I've given her two baby quilts in the past, when each of her boys was born.

She announced her engagement on Christmas, so that was pretty exciting too.  That's her fiance photo bombing in the background!

In the process of quilting this quilt, I found my missing Kwik Clip!  It had rolled underneath the table of my Juki.

* * * * *

In the past few days, I've been giving the blog a little facelift.  Made a new header (not at all sure about my design skills, but I gave it a decent effort, anyway).  Also tweaked a few things on the sidebar, did some general cleanup, and updated the gallery tab and a few other things.  Let me know what you think, if you're so inclined.  

Some after-gift-exchange music time.

I've been listening to and reading some year-end reviews in the past few days, and it got me thinking on the events of my own year.  As always, there were ups and downs, good times and not-so-good.  One of the highlights was that Norm and I got new bikes earlier in the year and had fun exploring the trails on them this past summer.  It also gives me something to look forward to in a couple months.  Yep, Christmas is barely over, it's not even the New Year, and I'm already thinking ahead to bike season!

What's near the top of your personal highlight reel for 2016?

Quilty 365 Progress

This month's Quilty 365 circles are brought to you by the color orange, or what may pass for orange, anyway.  I had to stretch the boundaries a bit to align with the stash, so we have everything from rusty brown to peach, with a twist of gold to boot.

What makes me smile in particular today is the one below, made with one skinny string's worth of skeletons on orange background fabric, plus a stripey narrow string of something else between.  Happy Halloween!

Here is the whole month's worth of orange October blocks.

I missed last month's link up because we were on vacation, but here, too, is the August/September lot of yellow and tan circles.  I made 33 blocks for those two months combined, plus 31 in October, making the total for this project 277 so far.

Now, I'm kind of stumped on November.  In the beginning of the year, I scribbled down color themes for each month, but November was "vintage fabrics?" and December was "holiday fabrics?".  Note the question marks.  I was moving away from the color theme of the month and into the realm of other possibilities when I jotted down those ideas.  

Right now, I'm thinking November may be a free-for-all.  I don't have 30 different vintage fabrics, I know that for sure (and besides, I've used a few vintage fabrics in blocks already; see the orange/teal/black scribble block in the October group above, for example).  So we'll see what happens.

I also finished the quilt top from the Aspen Frost layer cake. It's ready for pin basting and quilting one of these fine days when I feel like moving the kitchen furniture out of the way and mopping the floor.

And I don't think I've mentioned yet the Friendship Circle I had put together before we left on vacation a month ago.  I used the half-square triangles of made-fabric trimmed from the Quilt for Pulse.  When this is finished, it'll be wall hanging size.  (Also, you won't see the gingham check showing through.  That's my design wall covering, the fuzzy back side of a gingham check vinyl tablecloth fabric.)

Did you have many trick-or-treaters at your house?  We only had a handful this year.  Maybe the fact that trick-or-treat hours yesterday were during the Packer game had something to do with it.

Linking to:  Quilty Folk

Snow Day

I woke up to find Norm's car stuck and abandoned in the driveway, with footprints leading away from it.  He must have had to walk to work this morning.  That can't have been fun.

We had a winter storm yesterday and into last night with snow, sleet, and wind.  I ventured out this morning to put the recycle bin upright.  Walking on the snow, it felt like styrofoam, dense and hard.  Perfect for building a snow fort, although that's not in my plans today.

Though the weather outside was frightful, it was comfy in the sewing room yesterday.  I'm piecing strips together for a new quilt.  The pattern is called "Joy in the Morning" by Gayle Bong, found in her book, S is for Scraps: 18 Great Quilts.

These gorgeous fabrics were sent to me by fellow quilter Marei as part of a scrap swap last year.  I finally took time to sort the 3.5-inch strips over this past weekend.  Thanks again, Marei!

I put the brightly colored pieces into one pile and then started pairing them.  I'd like to make a bigger quilt than the one in the book, but we'll see how it goes once I get a count after cutting the strip sets into pieces.

The big-stitch hand quilting on the improv quilt is slow going.  Here's how things look so far (and you might have to look closely, lol).

I wove in and out of one of the straight stitching lines with a red thread, just for kicks.  Something a little different, and my favorite part about the stitching thus far.

We spent some time at my daughter's place on Christmas.  She couldn't travel because she was tending to the medical needs of her cat which had surgery a few weeks ago.

Keaky is hanging in there but is not out of the woods yet.  He apparently had a fairly good day on Sunday, though, wanting belly rubs and rediscovering his favorite mermaid toy.

Later in the evening on Christmas, I attended the regular family get-together.  Even Dad got into the crazy sweater spirit and wore his vintage John Deere sweater from 1971.  Nita's and mine were from the thrift store.  I thought about sewing some tacky garland around the neckline of my ugly-sweater vest, but that didn't happen.

My brothers provided the entertainment.  It's always a treat to listen to them jam.

There was the annual Dirty Santa gift exchange as well, where stealing is allowed and encouraged.  My first gift was stolen, but I kept a scrap of the paper it was wrapped in.  Why?  

Quilt inspiration, of course!

Trimming the Towel

I bought a 10-pack of flour sack dish towels at the local big box building supply store last week.  I needed to replace a few of the more pitiful ratty rags in my kitchen towel drawer.  Also, I thought they might be good for a quick little Christmas gift or two, embellished in some way. 

Inspired by THIS tutorial on Crazy Mom Quilts, I thought I'd sew up a Christmas-themed towel.

First I put them through the washer and dryer.  The towels came out of the dryer a wrinkled mess, so I pressed one before I began.  And that's when I noticed how flimsy they were.  As in really thin, loosely woven, not quite cheesecloth or gauze.

Definitely not good.

Okay, maybe okay for dusting or mopping up spills (while they last, anyway), but not good for embellishing.  It'd be like polishing a tur...well, you get the point.

But I was in the mood to sew, darn it, so I poked through the stash and came up with something appropriate in feel, and made my own towel.

Then I embellished it per the tutorial mentioned above.  Et voila!

Here it is hanging over a curtain rod in the kitchen window.  See the grass in the background?  That's right, no snow! 

This time of year, the backyard usually looks like this, taken two years ago after a six-inch snowfall.  

According to the extended forecast, it looks like it may be a green Christmas in 2015.  Fairly odd for the Upper Midwest, but a plus for any travel plans.  

I'm not complaining.

Pecan Fingers

Yesterday I tried my hand at adapting a family favorite Christmas cookie recipe to make it gluten-free.  

Pecan Fingers.  I think they're known by other names and shapes...Wedding Cakes, Pecan Crescents, etc.

The good news is they tasted pretty good!  I substituted a gluten-free flour blend and ghee instead of butter. 

However, they were much more delicate than the traditional version made with regular flour, and tended to crumble and break easily.  That's not surprising, since the gluten in regular flour is what makes dough sticky.  The GF flour blend compensates for this somewhat by including xanthan gum.

You're supposed to roll them in powdered sugar after baking. The rolling part was a no-go.  They were too breakable, these gluten-free cookies. 

Instead, I resorted to sprinkling them with powdered sugar sifted through the tines of a fork.  That worked pretty well.

After an initial small test batch, I decided to use a cookie dough scoop to just plop the rest onto the baking sheet, no fussing with finger shapes.

So instead of Pecan Fingers (aka Broken Fingers), we had Pecan Snowballs.  They tasted even better today.

Here is the original recipe, in the words of my mom.  I'd asked her to write down this and a couple other family favorite recipes for me about 10 or a dozen years ago.  I like how she included helpful hints and her own words of wisdom. 

Next up, caramel corn!  What's in your oven?

Three Amigos

Now that certain gifts have been duly gifted, I can show you what I've been working on.

I finished a couple of Christmas table toppers for friends.  I did one in a Carpenter's Star pattern.  

It measures about 19 inches square, which is, yes, an odd size.  Reason being, I flubbed the math.  I cut 3-1/2 inch squares to start with, but then my half-square triangles ended up being too big.  So I had to trim each HST down about a quarter inch.  How did I know it was too big?  Well, I had one of those "about yay" measurements to work with, where someone separates their hands by a certain span in illustration, and you take mental note of that size.  I'd be shooting for about 18 or so inches, in other words. 

See, last month my friend had asked if she could commission me to make her a Christmas table topper, something to set her poinsettia on.  I gave her a halfhearted yes, which she may have interpreted as more of a no from my lack of enthusiasm (sorry!).  But inside my pea-brain, a light bulb clicked on and I was thinking it'd be the perfect thing to give her for our Christmas gift exchange.  And I'd make one for our mutual friend and fellow gift exchanger, too.

So that very afternoon, I started working on them.  I used parts of a charm pack of Blitzen fabric for the center star, and supplemented with other things in the stash.

For the second topper, I decided to make a string star, slicing some of the remaining Blitzen charm squares into strips, mixing them up, and re-sewing them together into squares. Then I made HSTs from those strippy squares and put them together to make the star.

I still had some charm squares left.  I'd been using all the reds and greens in the pack for the previous quilts, and had separated out the aquas and grays.  So I made another string star for myself!

Have you been doing any stealth sewing this season?  Do tell! Mum's the word!

Linking to Confessions of a Fabric Addict's Can I Get a Whoop Whoop.