Done. Though these aren't mine - these are from Smitten Kitchen. If you don't already have it, I'm smitten with Deb Perelman's cookbook, Smitten Kitchen.
Packages wrapped?
Done.
(And no, these aren't mine either... but it's late and the lighting is bad so this will have to do.)
What is "mine" is this - I wish everyone a safe, merry and happy Holiday season!
Merry Christmas. Joyeux Noel. Feliz Navidad. And so on.
Happy Hanukkah.
Happy Kwanzaa.
Happy Holidays.
Did I forget anybody?
I've been a bit late... slow... forgetful.. and out-of-touch this year but since your humor, camaraderie and friendship are the best gifts a girl could ask for, I didn't want to miss this opportunity to thank you, and to wish you a wonderful holiday.
Have you entered yet? There's still time... but the clock is ticking! Leave a comment with the fabulous Pat Sloan and you could win a prize box from Rosie.
It's a Gomer Pyle moment... surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
(Spoken with the inflections and twang that only Jim Nabors could do as Gomer. Yeah... do I ever feel really old right now. Thanks for that, Pat!)
I knew it was coming... I just couldn't remember when. Soon. Later. Huh? Now? You mean today? Yikes!
(See... I knew there was something about January in there.)
Here's the most important thing you need to know - go here to enter to win a Holiday package from moi. Pat Sloan's Place. You have until New Year's Day to enter to win.
Now I have to explain a little bit about the rest... Pat likes to ask us these questions and sometimes the answers come easily, and other times... not so much. Maybe it comes easily but it's kind of like an avalanche of 382 possibilities. Or maybe that's just me. Yeah, yeah... it's me.
So here's what Pat asked:
What's your favorite drink?
Maybe it had been a long day... maybe it was the time of day... whatever the reason, my first thought was something "adult". Age-wise, not necessarily behavior-wise.
I love a really good Bloody Mary. I've never been a fan of fruity drinks or sweet drinks. A Chocolate Martini? Uh, no thank you. Unless you can add a healthy dash of Tabasco or some wasabi, I'd rather not.
No, I do not add Tabasco or wasabi to my lattes. I love Cappuccinos - especially the very traditional kind served in a small cup with just a little bit of milk added to the single shot of good espresso. Love those. But when I go to Starbucks - I live about three blocks away from one - I get a Triple - that means one more extra shot of espresso - Venti Sugar-Free Cinnamon Dolce Latte made with 2 Percent milk and no whip cream. If the barrista isn't incredibly busy, I ask for extra foam. And because you're not already shocked enough, I occasionally have a Quad - two extra shots of espresso... and hold the Cinnamon Dolce, please.
More than you wanted to know, huh?
What is your favorite food to eat, make or buy?
This was hard - I come from a family that loves to eat. And it's the time of year for baking and cooking. And have you seen the Williams-Sonoma, Zingerman's, or Dean & Deluca catalogs lately?
My Mom is of German descent so the holidays have always meant Stollen. My Mom used to make it and I've made it but I confess that I much prefer buying it - especially when what I can buy is much better than what I can make - especially when you figure out that I probably spend more on the ingredients! Our two favorites are from Zingerman's in Michigan and Big Sur Bakery in California. (The picture is from Big Sur Bakery.)
As for baking, that's on my schedule for today! I'm going to make just a few kinds of cookies - Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal Raisin, these Walnut Bars my Mom likes, and I think that's it. Oh, and Lemon Bars! We picked the last of the lemons this past week and we've still got about 50 pounds of lemons that need juicing and freezing.
On Monday, I will also make White Christmas Pie. My Mom first made this recipe about 40 years ago and it has been our family "Christmas Eve" pie ever since.
My favorite Christmas picture...
Rosie would prefer this...
Rosie loves snow. And she loves walks in the snow. Since I would love walking in the snow here, we'd both be happy. Joyeux Noel!
Every year I get one of these from Sur la Table - every year, the design is a little different. They're always pretty. And there might be one in the box... that you could win... if you enter.
Favorite Christmas Song.
This one always makes me happy.
Another favorite.
I love The Christmas Song. I have always believed - and still do - that Nat King Cole's version is far and away the best. But this one comes close.
And since it's Christmas...
Santa. I've been good. Really.
Okay, mostly.
Good enough?
Go say Hi to Pat - and remember, enter to with HERE.
You will not eat the last bite of that grilled cheese sandwich!
That makes this a "grilled cheese face".
My Mom wanted soup for lunch and you can't have tomato soup without a grilled cheese sandwich. There's some kind of law about that. And if there is grilled cheese around - okay, any kind of cheese around - Rosie wants in.
Rosie has been enjoying the cooler weather - she actually bounces out the door in the morning and her nose is even colder than usual. Which isn't always a good thing.
I think I've told you that Rosie gets a treat at bedtime. Because she's "getting older", she has trouble getting up on the bed by herself so when I call her, she comes to where I am standing and waits for me to help her up. Front paw are lifted up and then I hoist her up... where she prances around in a manner that belies her age. The other night, I think she suspected I might have another biscuit after I turned off the lights. I was just about to fall asleep when I got a very cold, wet nose and loud sniffing right in my ear - Rosie was trying to find my hand.
Yes, I had another biscuit. Clever girl.
Me? Not so much.
Have you finished your Christmas shopping? Not me. I'm waiting for a few purchases to arrive so I can wrap them and get them on their way... but I'm actually in pretty good shape this year. The lights are up but the tree won't be up until Sunday - after my class on Saturday. There's too much to do before then so it will wait. But there are poinsettias on the tables and Christmas pillows out... and I've been burning my favorite Christmas candles. I can't believe I remembered to order those early. The candle that used to be my favorite - Banana Republic's Winter Candle - is no longer made, but a year or two ago I found a new Winter Candle by Linnea's Lights that is just as lovely. The Forest Fir is also terrific. (Find retailers here. I buy my favorites here.)
I have been busy sewing - though I feel like I've been mostly cutting strips...
And making block parts...
Both of the boxes/trays are drawer organizers from The Container Store. I originally got them for drawers and... well, they were re-purposed as quilting organizers. The little half-triangle squares measure 1 1/4" - they finish at 3/4". I know. It's nuts.
Have you ever noticed how quilter's seem to collect boxes, bins and anything even indirectly "organizational"?
More parts. It seemed easier to get a whole pile of parts done and then make my blocks. Yes, I know. I'm a bit late for Halloween... except that I'm way ahead of schedule if this is for Halloween 2013. (Actually, at the rate I'm going, I'm probably still running late. Maybe I should aim for Halloween 2014.) The fabrics are Reproductions in black and orange/rust, and they're mostly Jo Morton.
There are still a few more days for the quilts on eBay - thank you for the support there. There have been a whole lot of page views and there are a lot of watchers - a heads-up to the snipers out there.
Which means I need to ask - are you a "nibbler" or a "sniper"? If you're a nibbler, do the snipers make you nuts by swooping in at the last second? Just curious.
I'm off - I have to pack more patterns. The pattern for Marguerite is finally done and it will be in the shop by tomorrow.
The quilt is at the quilter so this is the only one I've got right now. While I would love to get it back, I'm not in a rush so I think it might wait until after the Holidays.
If you're interested, there will be a few kits for Marguerite. The kit includes a Fat Eighth bundle of Chateau Rouge by French General, a Fat Eighth bundle of additional French General fabrics - mostly backgrounds, the Pale Mustard print I used for the alternating squares and the gray binding I'm using.
I think that's it...
Don't worry. Rosie got part of my sandwich. Could you say "no" to this face?
It occurred to me that if I did a listing in the middle of the night - as is my wont - then the listings would end in the middle of the night. (Note to eBay - can you fix that please? Can you let me set the ending time for my Auction?)
So they're done. They will end next Thursday - December 13th - in the evening... depending on your time zone.
Just so you know, while there is an opening, minimum bid, there is no Reserve Price. If the Schnibbles sell for $25.01, that works for me.
I will keep posting the links over the next couple of days... because I will be back before next Thursday.
Really, I have some silly things to share... like how I got glue all over my fingers and self last night making a really cute "primitive" snowman using cotton stuffing, mica snow and styrofoam.
I'm a California girl... mostly. With quite a few other places thrown in... to the point that one of my classmates in grad school commented that I often spoke like a "Texas Valley girl". The "valley" being Southern California. Like totally.
But as usual, I digress.
My Mom was born and raised in Palisades Park, New Jersey, and went to Leonia High School. She'll wring my neck if I tell you when she graduated so ixnay on that. Her sister, and her nephew and his family still live there and like most folks, we worried about them during Hurricane Sandy. We were relieved and happy to learn - a few days later - that they were all safe and had fared well.
Not everyone was so fortunate so we did what many folks did, we made donations to the Red Cross and hoped that it would help. We tried to think of what else we could do because even though the news has moved on to other things, there is still a lot that needs to be done to get way too lives back to some new kind of normal.
While I was moving quilts around and re-organizing, I had an idea... and then I saw something on eBay that would make actually doing it a whole lot easier. Like totally cool.
I have a lot of quilts. I have like way more quilts that I will ever use or need in my lifetime. I expect I'll make more quilts in the coming years so maybe if I sold a few of my quilts with the proceeds going to the Red Cross, it might do a little teeny bit to help.
So this Friday, I'm going to list a couple of quilts on eBay. I'll post the links to the auctions then - I just wanted to let you know what I was going to do... if you were interested.
These are the quilts I'm going to be listing...
Message in a Bottle.
Message was made using the Butternut & Blue collection by Barbara Brackman & Terry Clothier Thompson for Moda. The quilt measures 72" x 80".
Quadrille.
Quadrille measures approximately 87" x 87" and it was made using the Aviary collection by 3 Sisters for Moda.
Little Red measures about 30" x 38" and it is made with an assortment of Reproduction prints. Lots of them.
And Bennington.
Bennington measures approximately 28" x 28" and is made with the Autumn Journey collection by Kansas Troubles for Moda.
There will be more pictures on eBay - including a few close-ups - but I think it's a pretty good bet that while there will be more, they probably won't be "better".
All of the quilts have been washed and used for quilt samples, meaning that they have traveled and been displayed but never used on a bed or table, etc. They come from a smoke-free home but obviously not a pet-free home.
If the quilt was appraised, I will include the appraisal form with the quilt. And I will pay for all the shipping costs.
Payment will be done via PayPal and the money will go directly to the Red Cross. The only thing I'll get is your mailing address.
And yes, my Mom said that as long as I wasn't selling Birdseye, it was okay.
So I'll be back on Friday - really. This Friday - not the one in three weeks.
Did you know that if you do a Google search for songs about "surrender", you can wind up on a website with a page listing over 100 songs?
This one is by LeAnn Rimes...
There's a white flag rising, About to catch the wind. And I don't wanna fight it. Alright, you win.
So what's my point with all this?
I give. I have been out-voted. Over-ruled. Vetoed. Superseded. Over-turned! Quashed. And squashed. Ruled against. Counter-manded. Thwarted. Vanquished. Perhaps even trampled.
(But obviously not silenced.)
The Crumbler.
Make that THE CRUMBLER.
I look at it this way - it isn't like I don't already have a track-record with quirky names that require some explanation. And this one always makes me laugh, though I am happy to say that the Dr. Pepper-up-my-nose thing doesn't happen any more. Thelma really ought to warn a girl when she puts this kind of thing in an e-mail. The space-bar on my keyboard still sticks a bit and I know it's from the Dr. Pepper.
I have to tell you that one of the things that delayed me was trying to figure out what to put in the middle - the instructions, directions, whatevers. With a regular quilt pattern, it's easy. This is what you cut and this is how you put it together. If I made quilts and wrote out the pattern instructions for all the ideas I've had for Crumbler variations, the instructions would have run to 83 pages.
So I re-thought my plan and decided to approach the ruler the same way I think about patterns - this is everything I can think of that might be useful to know.
Which means the directions are three sentences long.
Yeah. Right.
This is it. There are six sizes, right? Actually, by my count, there are at least eleven. Yes. Eleven - 11. There are the six sizes you get by cutting strips and aligning the edge of the strip with the bottom - the narrow end - of the template. There are five more - it doesn't work with 5 1/2" wide strips - if you align the edge of the template with the bottom - the wide end. That makes for a wider, chunkier tumbler. I also used tape to cut some narrower tumblers. That's the kind of thing I put in the instructions.
I also included:
Instructions and diagrams on how/where to line up the templates for cutting, and where to line up edges for piecing.
Pressing? That's in there.
Guidelines for cutting side pieces - or not. Trimming the edges straight is discussed.
Yardage information - how many tumblers can be cut per strip, etc.
How to calculate how many rows and tumblers you'll need to make a quilt [ t h i s b i g ]... covered.
Options! Pieced tumblers? Check.
The directions on how I cut the two sizes of tumblers for this quilt is included - it was really easy. Tape.
Before I forget... I've been asked about the fabric in this quilt. I used the Indie collection by Pat Bravo for Art Gallery and added nine or ten other strips of other things to get the 30 total strips I needed to cut all my tumblers. The background is one of my favorites, it's from Modern Vintage by Bonnie and Camille.
As soon as I finish the binding on this, I'll show you the whole quilt. I would be done but I was side-tracked packing Crumblers...
Do you want to make something like this?
It's easy - it's just two matching tumblers put base-to-base and off-set from the adjacent tumblers. The elongated hexagons are vertical but the quilt is assembled in horizontal rows. I think it took longer to cut all the fabrics and lay them out than it did to sew it all together - especially since none of the fabrics are repeated. These strips were cut at 3 1/2" wide and the "hexagons" are 6" from top-to-bottom.
This one is getting quilted and I promise, as soon as it's done, I'll get another picture.
It seems as though I have some explaining to do... something about an unexplained absence. I've been here. Where were you?
It's the fall-back ploy of a guilty conscience - change the subject!
As with everybody else, life just got a little busy and the days flew by without my realizing it. My brother was here for Thanksgiving and by the time he left, I was whupped, whipped and wiped out. So were Rosie and Mom. The visit was great and like most visits of this kind, it was way too short. That probably means it was just the right length.
It is funny spending time with my brother though. I learned two new words - anthropogenic and farkle.
Anthropogenic - caused or produced by humans; especially as it relates to environmental pollution. How does that relate to turkey? Don't know. But we got to talking about climate change and so on.
As for "farkle"... it is a combination of the words "functional" and "sparkle." For example, a hood ornament on a car or a pretty bow worn by a little girl would be "bling". It's pretty but its purpose is entirely ornamental. But chromed exhaust pipes on a motorcycle or a sparkly headband that keeps your hair out of your eyes would be "farkle". It has a functional purpose and it is sparkly or pretty.
What can I tell you? We're an odd genetic bunch.
Since then I've been trying to get caught up with the pile of stuff that I have to have done in the coming weeks. A magazine project, a couple of quilts for classes in March, projects and "extras" for the two classes I've got at local quilt shops in the next couple of weeks, and so on. While the class projects are done, I do have to finish some of the patterns and "little extras". I promise to share those as soon as I have them.
This will be the December project at Olde World. It's a variation of Two Percent from the Another Bite book - with sashings and a different border. The fabrics are "mostly" Fellowship by Brannock and Patek with a few additions for variety. The collection is terrific but it seemed like most of the prints were the same scale and value so I added some "helpers".
I've also been working on the binding of this tumbler quilt - I'll show you the whole thing when it's done.
And yes, the tumbler instructions are done. Finally. I won't bore you with the trials and tribulations of getting that finished, mostly because it is entirely a mea culpa - a mea slowa sort of situation. Those will be ready to ship by Wednesday or Thursday so I'll let you know as soon as they are up in the shop. I promise. Really.
I've been trying to get caught up with blogs and parades and all the exciting goings-on. The Drop quilts in Sherri and Sinta's parades are seriously cute and I'm happy that so many people took the plunge with those itty-bitty pieces. The bad thing with small piecing is that it becomes highly addictive. If you think I'm kidding, I'll have to show you the blocks I'm making with 3/4" finished half-triangle squares. It's something fun I'm playing with for next year - I think.
One last thing... I copied the posts I wrote about pincushions and saved them as PDF files. They're now in the sidebar under Random Stuff... so if you want to remind yourself what I was babbling about, they're a whole lot easier to find.
That's all I have for now but I did want to let you know that all was well here. I've just been behind... tired... forgetful... distracted... basically, all the regular stuff. Can I blame that on crazy hormones?
