Sunday, August 12, 2012

100th Episode Giveaway! Come Celebrate with Me!

This giveaway is now closed. Thanks for playing along! Listen to episode 100 of Quilting...for the Rest of Us to hear the winners!

I'm almost to my 100th episode--can you believe it? I want to celebrate with a big giveaway. Three winners will get stuff from me! Woot woot! Right now I'm on vacation and can't post pictures, but I'll update this post next week when I'm home again. Meanwhile, listen to episode 98.2 for a little more background information, and leave your comments here.

Here's the question:
I have 100 episodes under my belt. What would you like to have 100 of in your life? Anything goes--it doesn't have to be quilty related unless you want it to be!

Leave your comment here by Sunday, August 26th, for your chance to be one of the three (count 'em: 3!) winners. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Baby Quilt Finished and Delivered!


(Mommy and Daddy, center, with baby; grandma on the left; 
two cousins of mommy on the right and behind. Mommy is holding
the two receiving blankets, with the bunny that 
my friend made from scraps from one of the blankets.)

Friday, August 10, 2012

Food Friday--Report on CSA Week 8 and Pick-up Week 9 (and a brief moment of quilty)

If you're not a foodie and just want some fabric-quilty-stuff, here's a quick pic of one ongoing project I'm working on...

Now, back to food!

Oh, we have reached the bounty of summer!

Remember last week's haul? I've done pretty well at using it all this week, with the exception of one zucchini that's carrying over into this week's dinner explorations. (I might be resorting to zucchini bread.)

Fortunately, we had family over for dinner on Friday night so I used up quite a bit of the produce right away. We did a marinated flank steak--or three, since we had a couple of young adult males in the mix--and bought a loaf of French bread because I ran out of time to make homemade. Other than that, Dinner Brought to You by McCracken Farms.

Two cucumbers were turned into a cucumber and tomato salad with Italian dressing for starters. I had to use some storebought tomatoes for the salad because I used all my CSA tomatoes on the next dish. Unfortunately, I didn't think to get a picture. (My daughter ate the other two cucumbers--one straight up, the other in some sort of rice curry thing she makes herself. I've never been positive what all is in it, but she likes it, so hey. I won't even ask.)

The huge yellow squash, the honkin' big zucchini, the tomatoes, and the pattypan squash were cut into 1" chunks (more or less), tossed with some olive oil, salt, garlic powder (I was out of fresh garlic), and thyme, and roasted in a 400 oven for about 40 minutes. It probably would've taken a lot less time except the squash and zucchini were (have I mentioned?) freaking huge so the veggie mix took up two jelly roll pans that I rotated between two racks. Again, unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of that one either. Too busy trying to get everything on the table! It was yummy, though.

The corn on the cob was done straight up, and boy, was it amazing! Believe it or not, it was my first sweet corn of the season, and we all were raving about it--it was really, really good.

I had forgotten to include the watermelon in the original picture of last week's pick-up, so I snapped a pic as I cut into it a couple of days later. Yes, it is just that sweet and juicy!









Here it is as a salad before dinner one night--a little feta, a little fresh mint from the garden. (This has more feta on it than I'd normally do--the container got away from me. But that's okay, I like feta and watermelon. Nice combination.)







I made Italian sausage and peppers for dinner a night or two later again to use the green peppers. No pictures of that since I just blogged about it awhile back. Looked about the same, although I did better keeping the green pepper actually green. Tasty, tasty, tasty. Next time I'll use chicken sausage, to make the meat match the health factor of the rest of the dish.

The peaches disappeared pretty quickly, just eating out of hand. Very sweet.

The head of broccoli was simply microwaved and used as a side dish with chicken breasts one evening. I'm a bit of a purist where broccoli is concerned--I don't really like it covered in sauces or anything. Just steam it a little bit, add some salt, and I'm good to go.

Sunday morning I was in the mood for a big breakfast and, since I had a lot of those roasted vegetables to use up, I made myself an omelette. Or, at least, what's supposed to be an omelette. I can never get it to flip right. A couple of eggs, the roasted vegetables, a little goat cheese...nummy.






And, the next day, since I still had roasted vegetables left, I picked up some naan from the grocery store, heated it up in the oven for a bit brushed with a wonderful basting oil from Wegmans (love that stuff, use it on a ton of things), then spread some hummus on top, piled the roasted veggies on, shredded some chicken, and topped it with, you guessed it, goat cheese. I drizzled just a touch more basting oil on it, popped it back in the oven for a couple of minutes to heat the veggies back up again, and it was a very tasty lunch.

So that took care of everything, except the watermelon. Somehow I ended up being the only one in the house eating most of that watermelon. It's taking me awhile.

Tonight, I treated myself to a watermelon cocktail.

Don't notice me spitting out the seeds on the patio.







And now, we're up to Week 9! Another bounty!

 

  • 12 ears of corn this time! Woot!
  • 4 cucumbers
  • 1 zucchini (I dug through the pile to find a smaller one this time)
  • 1 yellow squash (same strategy)
  • 1 patty pan squash (I got a slightly larger one this time because I decided I like it)
  • 2 green peppers
  • tomatoes (maybe 10, still small, but smell amazing)
  • 6 Jersey Mac apples
  • 4 peaches--larger this time, I hope they're still as sweet!
  • 1 red onion
  • 1 yellow onion
  • about 7 or 8 jalapeno peppers
  • 1 eggplant
I've never been a big fan of eggplant. It's a texture thing, really. Eggplant parmesan just makes me gag. Too slippery. But I'm willing to give eggplant in another form a shot. I've seen a recipe for breading and frying slices of it that looks like it might work for me.

I'm not a huge heat person either so I'm going to gift the jalapenos to a family I'll be visiting tomorrow night. They're originally from Burma, so they're all about the hot peppers. They'll love them.

Probably a good thing there's no watermelon this week since I'm still working on last week's. Time for another cocktail.








Sunday, August 5, 2012

Photos to go with episode 98

 Here are the photos of fabrics I talked about in episode 98 In Which I'm Alive, posted Saturday, August 4, 2012.

(I already posted the pictures of fabrics from The Fat Quarter Shop here.)


One set of eight 10" squares of South African fabric. 


Second set of eight 10" squares of South African fabric.


Third set of eight 10" squares of South African fabric. 











Fourth set of eight 10" squares of South African fabric.











Fifth set of eight 10" squares of South African fabric. (Which means yes, there are forty squares altogether.)

Notice how the last square is folded--it's distinctly two-sided! Although others in this set could also be used right or wrong side, this is the only one that actually looks like two completely different fabrics. Pretty dang cool.




Thanks to Vickie, my friend that gave me these. They're definitely the best quilty toys ever!




Saturday, August 4, 2012

Some wonderful inspiration

A few months back I had the opportunity to visit a friend's church on a Sunday morning. As I walked into the sanctuary, I was struck by several absolutely beautiful quilted wallhangings throughout the worship space.

As we took our seats, I tugged at my friends' sleeve. "I need to meet whoever made those, if that person is here this morning."

My friend pointed a thumb over her shoulder. "She's sitting right behind us."

There was a church luncheon following worship but I immediately tackled the creator of the wallhangings and she took me on a tour of her quilts, telling me the stories behind each one. We barely made it to the luncheon while food was still available.

I asked her permission to share images of the quilts with you. I'm not going to share the stories--too much complex church history and particular individual's stories for the space that a blog allows. I'll let the quilts speak for themselves.





The quilts' creator, Carol Fielding of Austin, Texas.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Food Friday--CSA Pick-up Week 8

I think it's week 8, anyway. I missed two weeks while out of town; I think they'd have been weeks 6 and 7. Let's just call it week 8 and leave it at that.

Bounty!





This week's pick-up includes:
  • 6 small tomatoes that smell heavenly
  • 5 peaches--and since I ate one as soon as I took this picture I can attest that they're wonderful too
  • 2 green peppers
  • 4 cucumbers
  • 2 zucchini (one of which is HUGE)
  • 1 summer or yellow squash (equally HUGE)
  • 1 patty pan squash--my first time for that, but it's supposedly just like summer squash so I'm not concerned
  • 1 head broccoli
  • 8 ears of corn
  • 1 watermelon (that I forget to put in the picture--oops!)

My son is coming home for dinner tonight, so we've also invited my nephew and my in-laws as well, since no one has seen much of the kid this summer. We'll be doing marinated flank steak on the grill, and I'm planning on making homemade bread--either French bread or dinner rolls, haven't decided yet as of this writing. I'll be using up a lot of the CSA produce for the rest of the meal. Definitely corn on the cob, then I may roast up some of the zucchini, patty pan, summer squash, and tomatoes (maybe with some roasted garlic as well, maybe with some onion); I can't decide if I'd rather put the tomatoes in with the roasted veggies or do a cucumber and tomato salad to start. I'll see what strikes me when I start getting everything together.

I may or may not do something with the watermelon as an appetizer. We won't actually have a lot of time for dinner so I don't know that I'll bother with appetizers at all. And my MIL is bringing dessert. So if we don't end up using it tomorrow, we'll eat it Saturday.

The green peppers will go into dinner Saturday night--I've had a hankering for that sausage and peppers dinner I made a few weeks ago. I'll probably use the broccoli with some fish on Sunday night; it'll just be my husband and I home for dinner so it's a good night to go super-light and healthy!

So that's the plan. We'll see what actually happens!



Thursday, August 2, 2012

It's like Christmas! Thanks, y'all!

I got wonderful news right before I skipped town--I'd won a giveaway on the EverythingEtsy blog: a gift certificate to the Fat Quarter Shop. Woot! I waited to get home to spend it and got my order today--three fat quarter collections: two of batiks, one marbles. Like candy!

Thanks, EverythingEtsy!

Thanks, Fat Quarter Shop!

 

Honey, I'm home!

Got back from my work trip a few days ago and am mostly recovered. Still a little nonverbal. It takes us introverts awhile to recover from having to pretend to be extraverts for a couple of weeks running. So I'm slowly getting myself into the swing of things. I sent out a few tweets this week, now I'm writing a blog post...eventually I'll work my way back up to recording a podcast episode.

Meanwhile, here's the project I'll be working on this month.

Pretty, ain't it?

This is the last of the Momufos. What's a Momufo?

Check here.

And here.

And maybe here too, if you're really into it.

There may have been others, but that's all I am awake enough to dig up in past blog posts. I consider this project the last of the Momufos because it's the last of her work-in-progress projects that I decided I'd finish myself. I have clear memories of talking about this project with her, and I had even given her some fabric out of my own stash to use with it if she wanted--that fabric is still in her project bag with everything else for the quilt. It's one she designed herself in EQ, and I know what she intended to do with it when she was done. So it was the last project of hers that I really felt I needed/wanted to finish on her behalf.

It'll take some doing. Unlike all the other projects of hers that I mostly needed to just bind, or quilt and then bind, this one hasn't been fully pieced yet. It's a combo platter of paper piecing and standard pieced blocks. There are 8 blocks left to finish, and unfortunately, she didn't seem to have gotten to the point of printing off all the paper piecing foundations for those blocks. There's one block from that set done, and one printed paper pieced pattern. Unfortunately, the two aren't the same size. Go figure. I need to do some math to figure out how much to blow up the printed pattern to get it the same size as the one finished block, and then try to print off additional foundations on my own printer and hope the size differential isn't too substantial. (Each printer prints a little differently, so there will always be some variance.)

Then I get to put all the blocks together and hope they all play nice in the sandbox!

It's a design and colorway that I appreciate but wouldn't necessarily do myself at the moment--not my current idiom. Which makes it almost more fun to do, I think. It's a little hard to tell right now, but I think it could be stunning when it's finished. (Beautiful design, Mom. Nice job.) I have a vacation coming up the middle of this month and this will be my primary vacation project--if the whole "resizing the foundation" thing goes well, I should easily be able to get the top pieced by the end of that week. Famous last words, of course.

I do have one other set of random blocks from Mom but that one isn't clearly a UFO to me. It could have easily been a class project that she never intended to finish, but stored the blocks away anyway. Those blocks weren't kept with all her other ongoing projects, so I don't think they were on her own UFO list. I love the blocks, though, so eventually I'll do something with them. They were too cute to toss. Through this process of finishing Mom's UFOs, by the way, I've found that I have a very clear definition of what a UFO is. In my mind, a UFO is a partially-done project that you actually intended to finish. Mull that one over for a bit.

Time for bed. The Olympics have been keeping me up far too late this week.