New Specs

Finally broke into my Oz charm pack and made a little coffee cozy. In Color Order has a great little tutorial. I don't generally buy my coffee out, but I have a friend who may or may not be addicted to Starbucks. Now her coffee will be swanky and her hands won't burn.

Month two of the Lucky Stars BOM. I am pleased to report that I printed the patterns the right size. I can't wait for March. I'm still not sold on my solids choices. The Flickr group has so many cool blocks made with fun prints.

The folks at Firmoo offered me a free pair of glasses to try out their service. The glasses are really nice and come with a hard case, cleaning cloth, repair tool, and drawstring bag. They have many different styles from trendy to traditional. You can get a free pair too by taking advantage of their special offer. All you have to pay is shipping. It's nice to have a spare pair of glasses or three. One thing I highly recommend if you wear bifocals, is bifocal sunglasses. They come in so handy while you're driving. Or reading in the sun.

Here they are on my mug. Perhaps a hair stylist or brush manufacturer will offer their services next. One can only hope. Firmoo offered excellent customer service and I had this pair of glasses in about a week. Their site is easy to navigate and they offer tips on choosing the perfect pair of specs. I was trying to go funky, but I wasn't brave enough that day. You be brave and funky if you order a pair.

Football Food

I continued with my football game dinner menus all last week. Appetizers are so much fun to make and eat. I was going to grill the chicken wings, but my propane tank had a leak. Luckily, they're easy to bake. College Boy inhaled half of these. I think he was hungry. There were no leftovers.

I had leftover pumpkin puree from making some nasty pumpkin bars. The bars were bland and not a big hit around here. Inspector Gadget took them to work where apparently people will eat anything. I told him to put them in the break room anonymously. Sneak in, sneak out. I have a reputation to uphold. This pumpkin oatmeal I mixed the night before and let sit in the fridge. In the morning I baked it off. I added a touch of milk to reduce the richness. It was okay. No more pumpkin until October.

Farm progress. Just look at that celery go. It's all organic too. I guess I better look up when you're supposed to put it in dirt. Or maybe I'll go all hydroponic like Epcot. I should have a bunch of celery by Fall. Ha.

Creamed spinach, Meyer lemon, bacon, and goat cheese pizza on the left. Based loosely on this recipe. Next time, I'll steal a car and get the proper ingredients. The whole wheat crust from that recipe is really good. I did have the proper ingredients for that. The other pizza was Italian sausage and mozzarella. Some people don't like spinach around here.

I won these five fat quarters by Kaffe Fassett from A Quilting Life. They are so pretty. I've been so lucky winning giveaways lately. I should play the lottery. Speaking of giveaways, the winner of Rene's Peace pattern is ritainalaska. Congratulations and thank you to all who entered.

Our Super Bowl menu was chicken wings, blue cheese guacamole. veggie platter, deviled eggs, bacon wrapped water chestnuts and chicken livers, and tomato caper bruschetta. We had a small crowd this year. Wasn't the game exciting? Back to normal dinners this week. Happy Monday!

Sunday Stash #66

I attended a local quilt show Friday. Tons of vendors and beautiful quilts. This one was made by the talented Juanita Yeager. Juanita does amazing things with paints and fabric.

And just look at her free motion quilting. She does this beautiful quilting on a home sewing machine. I was lucky to take a class from her and get some tips about machine quilting.

A few more of my favorites. A jar quilt has been on my bucket list forever. Love the fun appliques on this one.

 I couldn't pass up the many show deals vendors had going. Skulls, rocket scientists, and Halloween.

Fat quarters for a dollar! Who can resist?

I'm always a sucker for woven gingham. Red especially.

My first piece of Kokka. The owls were drawn by Annika Wester. Swoon.

Symphony by Yumi Tsuruta

Speaking of swooning, one of Yumi's quilts is featured in the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative monthly auction. Yumi is my friend from Japan who does beautiful hand quilting and keeps me in Japanese treats and fabrics. Love that girl.

QuiltCon Here I Come

It's hard to believe QuiltCon is in less than three weeks. Squeee! I've been quilting around six years, and I caught the fever bad. My fabric stash would choke an elephant. Modern quilting lets my quirky artistic side play freely. I've only had the opportunity to attend two quilt shows in Orlando, so I'm a total newbie to the quilt show and conference scene. I can hardly wait.

There's a linking party to meet some of the conference attendees. I'm lucky to have four members from the Orlando Modern Quilt Guild attending with me, and I'm excited to meet new quilters too. It will be fun to put a face with a blog and interact with others who share this quilting obsession of mine. Plus, I won't have to walk the dog for six days.

So, okay, five things you might not know about me. And I just had to use my Glamour Shot from the 80s. Swanky, huh? Friday night's QuiltCon party is an 80s-themed Dance Party, so I thought it was appropriate. I look exactly the same thirty years later. *cough*

1. I am a snake magnet. If there's a snake around, it will find me. More specifically, it will find my feet and I will step on or startle it. I've had snakes on my screened pool deck, in my house, and generally way too close for comfort. I've been a snake magnet all my life.

2. I love to cook, bake, and especially grill. I rarely make the same thing twice. There's just too much to try. My husband thinks this is the neatest thing ever. Even when the dishes include foods he thinks he doesn't like. I adore all foods. The only thing I'm not fond of is frozen green lima beans.

3. I was a band geek. I played the glockenspiel (loudly) in marching band and the bass guitar (quietly) in stage band. My band mates called me "Peterless" Frampton. Took me years to get it.

4. I've had my own graphic design firm for 20 years after working 12 years in the marketing department of our local newspaper. My company is very small, but I manage to find design projects that interest me and pay a few bills. I'd much rather be quilting.

5. Now that my kids are in college, and homeschooling is not an option, I'd love to be a stay-at-home mom. My husband is not on board, so I make him eat spinach whenever I can. He hates spinach.

I hope to meet you at QuiltCon. I'll be the one with the messy hair and red gloves. See you there!

--Michele

Really Drunk Paths

I stumbled upon this gorgeous improv circles quilt over the weekend and I can't get it out of my head. The tutorial to make the blocks works like a charm. You can always count on the blogging community for inspiration and guidance. I used some scraps to try the technique. It's fun! I think I may make some blocks for our guild's Madrona Road challenge.

I turned the practice block into a potholder. Now on to make some more. I've always loved the Drunkard's Path quilt block and although sewing curves is scary at first, the blocks have a striking appearance when put together.

Don't forget the Peace Quilt pattern giveaway. It's been so much fun seeing Rene's pattern interpreted by so many talented quilters.

This little drawstring pouch was my relaxation yesterday morning. I made it to hold a menagerie of finger puppets I scored for $2. They're super cute and should provide some entertainment to a little one. I love the yellow duck the best.

We practiced Super Bowl Sunday last night for dinner. I've been seeing all kinds of delicious recipes for appetizers. My family doesn't follow football, but I usually put the Super Bowl on if just to catch the funny commercials and the halftime show. Plus, it's an excuse to eat appetizers for dinner. Yeah, like I need an excuse... Last night's dinner included a vegetable platter with goat cheese stuffed peppers, Buffalo chicken dip, and salad caprese with sourdough French bread. Tonight I'm grilling chicken wings. You gotta love Florida in January. The high is 83 today.

Monday Again

This Creamy Spinach and Sausage Pasta was really easy to make and delicious. It's like Hamburger Helper for foodies. And you can't beat the simplicity of one pot meals. I served it for dinner with a tossed salad. For lunch leftovers, I added a fruit salad. Easy. Go look at her photograph, this is the leftover version. It was much prettier the night we ate it.

And since I saved so much time preparing dinner, I decided to farm a little. Ha! I'll be harvesting scallions and celery in no time. I've tried this before and only ended up with moldy roots. This time I'm changing the water out every day or so.

I finally made myself a potholder. The tutorial was really easy. I used some Monaluna retro blenders and other scraps. The hardest part is trimming the seam allowance and flipping the thing right side out through the small opening. My man hands hate scissors. Stinking thumb joint still hurts.

I also tried this Greek Pork Spinach Lemon Egg Sauce recipe from Rachel. Delicious and very easy. I made my own yellow rice as I didn't have any yellow rice in the house. Now I don't have any white rice in the house. The natives will have to eat the brown stuff next time we have rice. I can hear them moaning now. As Rachel said, the lemon and egg sauce (avgolemono) would be delicious on all kinds of stuff. It made a tangy and rich sauce when mixed with the braising liquid. Yum!

I took Hollywood's charge fishing while she completed an online test for one of her college courses. Humanities. Yawn. The Gregorian chants were freaking me out. So the little and I meandered down to my favorite fishing hole four houses away. I've taught many a kid to fish down there. You catch fish one after the other with bread ball bait and a tiny hook. He was so excited and laughed hysterically at me trying to unhook our catches and flick them back into the pond with my flip flop.

Stick a Salad Fork In It

Ta da! Scrappy Trips is done. Well, the top and backing are done. I think I messed up the top section layout, but I'm leaving it. It's a scrappy quilt. Hopefully by the time this posts, Scrappy Trips and several other quilt tops and backings are headed over to Eagle Mountain Quilting. I've used this quilting service for years and highly recommend them. They are super fast and very economical. Even with shipping costs, I can't get local quilting done for the price and turnaround. Not to mention they are spectacular quilters. They're having a 15% off special through February if you send them two tops. And, if you spend over $50, they'll ship your quilts back to you free.

So here's my stack of tops and backs ready to roll to Utah. Lucky ducks. I wouldn't mind a bit of downhill skiing in Utah. Eagle Mountain is only about 90 minutes from Park City and they're getting fresh powder today. I usually struggle with quilt backs, but only one had to be pieced. Love those baby quilts and just one hunk of fabric for the back. I unearthed some 54" wide cotton that worked like a charm.

Another finish for AAQI. There are only a few more months to make quilts for this organization. One of Yumi's quilts is going to be in their auction. I'll link it up when it goes live. Go Yumi! I have an idea for another quilt that I plan to start today.

In my huge tote of tops and orphan blocks are pieces of old T-shirts. One day these might turn into a T-shirt quilt. I researched yesterday how to accomplish this and it seemed pretty easy. Now to see if I have enough pieces to make a quilt. I also found some fun heart blocks that I may do something with for Valentine's Day. Never a dull moment around here. Happy Friday!