Quilt Along ~ Episode 2: I Don't Enjoy The Cutting So Much

Well now!  The "quilt along" is going well.  I mean, in the sense that it's taking me two weeks to do each week's assignment....you know, that kind of well.  I cut 7.5" x 3.5" rectangles, ten each from ten different fabrics.  I still need to cut 100 3.5" x 3.5" neutral squares...I'm thinking a blue sheet? Or maybe a pale pink sheet?  I think I have both.  After work tomorrow, I'll go through my thrifted sheets and pick something that says, "I'm a quilt!"

Nancy and her friend are cut and ready to go...I love those paisley squares! And although I'm counting on Carmen to be 10 days behind at all times, she's let me down by completing most of her sewing already. 

We're following the (long ago finished) quilt-along from "I Have to Say".   It's never too late to start...and, the good news for you?  You'll pull ahead of me in no time at all. 

Home sweet home!!!

After being out of town for a week, it felt so good this weekend to settle back into home life!  I took a gaggle of boys to the park.  Tommy and his friend were swinging on one side, and I was alternating pushes between Scotty and my grand-nephew, Matthew.  As I stood there, pushing and giggling, I thought a lot about how all of this was a metaphor for mothering and life in general, but then the sprinklers came on and now I can't remember what it was that I thought was so profound.  I just passed off my push-duties to the older boys and that was that.

Except for our time at the park, there was little reason to get out of our pajamas.  There were legos to be made...

...and based on the number of boxed snacks lining our counters (crackers and fruit snacks and cereals, oh my!) there was an emergency baking session that needed to happen.  Immediately.  My favorite oatmeal raisin cookies, and easy homemade granola bars.   (I assure you that these granola bars are not Laurel approved!!)

It was time for a quick tour of the gardens...the first of the plants meant to be my future butterfly garden on the back hill are doing just fine, and my wonderful husband (who kept my gardens watered in my absence!) is taking a well-earned rest in the back there.

Eggplants and cucumbers, rosemary, tomatoes, squash....check, check and check!

The first of the cucumbers, making an appearance!

Hundreds of green tomatoes...cherry, grape, roma, beefsteak...hundreds.  Slurp!

This giant bumble bee makes me smile!  For the longest time, I thought I had one big fat bumble, but after snapping this picture in my overgrown sage plant out back, I noticed three more just like him in the lavender bush out front.  I love him.

There must have been three dozen honey bees in the overgrown marjoram plant (um, a theme, perhaps?) in the backyard.  They love this!  Which reminds me...we should head out to the front side yard to check on our friends in the green bin...

W

Whoa.

Crochitting Party

Miss Laurie!  Isn't she beautiful?  Such a sweet, gentle, soul.  Confidential to Laurie:  Did I ever tell you that the notecard you gave me when you retired, and you wrote about the fun we had and the things we learned teaching math, is one of my greatest joys?  Yep!  I've saved it and I treasure it.  And you.  :) 

The food she prepared was so delicious!  All of it was so fresh and healthy.  Veggie pizzas on whole wheat dough, green salad, and this other salad of roasted veggies and rice, I think?  Was it rice or wheat?  Well, I'll sort it out and let you know, asap, because she gave me the recipe and I WILL be making it this weekend.

Laurie is working on this beautiful knitted blanket.  Ha!  Funny story:  She had a bit of 'scrap yarn' that she thought would work into a nice lap-afghan.  Wouldn't you know it?  It was nothing like enough yarn, so the stash-busting project suddenly required a wallet-smashing trip back to the yarn shop!  As you do.

A crochitting party is the best place to get help on a new project.  Here, Nak Min makes great progress on her first knitted scarf, after Susan helped her to cast on. 

My dear-sweet-Linda was off and running on a crocheted blanket she is making for her first granddaughter, due in early fall.  I think it may have been her first experience at actually reading and following a pattern, so I was only too happy to help her get started and continue to trouble shoot when she dropped a stitch or got lost in her row.  hmmm...it seems I didn't upload the picture of Laurie's friend knitting her Waldorf-style dolls...perhaps I was making some play at respecting somebody's privacy?  Who am I kidding?  ;)

Anyway, once everybody was well underway (I was working on a crocheted baby dress ~ not for me, I assure you! ~ and it's almost done now), I asked Laurie about her trip to New Mexico.  Laurie is an artist, and soon enough she was sharing some art that came home with her.  It was beautiful, and led us to a small tour of where it might be hanging in the future. 

Which found us in this hallway.  Aren't these trees beautiful?!?  The one on the right was a gift from her son.

Here, see if we can get closer.  I think you can't really get a feel for the beautiful blue here, but I think the tree itself can be appreciated.  I thought it looked like a person!  Doesn't the trunk look incredibly human?  I was quite taken with this piece.

From here, I managed to finagle a tour of her reclaimed studio.  (Previously functioning as her daughter's bedroom!)  Linda gave these plain letters to Laurie as a gift for her studio, and Laurie decorated them by collaging inspiring and colorful images.

Right here on the R is a scrap of paper that reads:  May all your dreams come true.  (Note to self:  Start saving your pennies for a nice macro lens.  You won't regret it.)

Her inspiration boards!  I love inspiration boards!  I would have one, except I have no place to put one...for now I'll live through my friends.  You can't see it very well in these pictures, but one of the greatest things about this room is that every wall is painted a different color!  This was her daughter's choice when this was her bedroom, but I love that she kept it.  Pale green, lavender, pale yellow...it's a really beautiful effect. 

When I say that Laurie's an artist, I'm not kidding.  Her talent astounds me.  I guess there's a whole school of thought that would say we're all artists, and shouldn't we claim the artist label, and take ourselves seriously as artists when, say, we're crocheting baby dresses or making shirts out of sheets or repurposing material into quilts?  And, in fact, each of those activities can be elevated to an art.  Look at this baby dress, or these quilts, and you will never doubt that it's true.  Still... I can't look at these pictures and not know, there's a huge difference between what I do and what she does!  I can do everything I do, make everything I make, and really, it requires not talent so much as tenacity.  And don't imagine I'm downplaying or pishawing the importance of tenacity, either, as having it and using it is definitely it's own kind of talent, but I am just saying...there's a difference.  A huge, undeniable, awe-inspiring difference.

Next stop was her 'private retreat', but you need to know that, should you invite me to sit in your living room and enjoy some ice cream with fresh strawberries, I am totally the kind of person that will end up taking pictures of your bedroom and plastering them over the internet.  Prepare accordingly for my arrival.  Do you see what she has there, instead of a headboard?

It's all painted on!  The fern and flower leaves are a mix of stencils and freehand work.  The photo is from Hawaii, one of her favorite destinations.  Who could blame her?  I smile now, seeing the wooden "Dream" letters on the shelf... a theme, perhaps?  One of Laurie's dreams was to sell her art, and she's making that happen even as we speak!  She takes her drawings and watercolors and prints them on notecards and they are beautiful ~ I've purchased a set and, in fact, I need a refresher set.  She doesn't have an online site, but I'm encouraging her to get an Etsy shop or something, ASAP. 

One last picture, from her bedroom.  This trio of pressed leaves was her mother's.  Her mom collected the leaves and pressed them onto cloth herself, I believe Laurie said in the 1930s!  The display is one of the most beautiful objects I've ever seen in person.  I'm thinking I might do the same thing, though I can only hope that in 80 years, somebody could appreciate it as much as I do this one.  It's so old that the leaves and the cloth they lay on have actually begun to sort of 'meld' into one entity.  I love it!

Thank you, Laurie, for letting me share these pictures!  It was such a fun night; the hours flew by with great food, amazing friends, both deep and silly conversations that I love so much, and a little uninterrupted crafting time.  Savored!

Laurel's Kitchen:: Falafel and "Arab Bread"

I was at my friend Laurie's house last night for "crochitting" party (crochet and knitting) and it was so fun!  Laurie reads this blog sometimes, so if she gives permission, I'll share some awesome photos I got to take of her art studio and some bits around her beautiful home.  Oh, and the food!  Holy cow.  The food. 

Well, in fact, the reason I bring up Laurie just now (besides hoping she'll be moved to grant us permission!) is because she is one of the people who recommended Laurel's Kitchen to me in the first place.  She was showing me a second LK book, called The Bread Book and it also looks fantastic.   I have just a wee bit left on my gift card, so I'll be looking for a second hand version, once again.

Last weekend I made the falafel.  I used to get falafel at a deli near my work in the Financial District of SF (back in the day! :) and it was a round ball and it was darkish....green from the parsley, perhaps, plus it was a bit of a crunchy, fried-like kind of texture?  When you ordered it, they'd heat it, mush the ball into a patty-shape, and pop it into a pita with some shredded veggies and either yogurt or humus... pick your poison.

For all I know, I may have done something so wrong here, but they tasted fantastic anyway.  Falafel is pureed garbanzo beans, held together with some potato and lots of parsley...the flavor comes from garlic and lemon, plus some spicy-spices, and there's nothing wrong with that, not at all!

The pitas start off as pretty much the basic whole wheat bread dough.  I have to say...this batch of the whole wheat dough was by far my best attempt.  It was elastic and soft and moist-ish.  If you weren't around for the canneloni disaster, you may not be able to fully appreciate the beauty that is this dough. 

You cook them for five quick minutes, and they puff up.  Then you slice them open, fill them with vegetables (lettuce, cucumber, and tomato for us) and plop the falafel patty right in there.  This book was published in the early 70s, and I have to giggle at the "Arab Bread" moniker! 

Verdict:  We LOVE this!  It's tasty and oh-so-healthy.  I was telling Laurie yesterday, and I'll tell you today, that in the future I think I would just pick up whole wheat pitas at the store.  I don't mind some bread-work, but many of these puffed, and then got too hard; others puffed appropriately, but then deflated and were difficult (read: impossible) to slice.  In fact, just tonight I served Erik what I called a "flasammy", which involved two pitas with the falafel and veggies stacked between them, rather than couched inside one!  But I love having the falafel on hand (for lunches, snacks, and dinners, it's that good!) and it's so easy to make.  It will be a standby from now on.

Summer!

Last Friday, being the last day of school, guaranteed us a weekend chock-full of graduations and birthdays! 

Fortunately, the people we know have backyard graduation parties with pools and birthday parties with rock climbing walls and that makes for a great weekend! 

To celebrate the end of school, and the start of summer, we got ice creams...and then I went to work.  Ugh!  Yes, I'm swamped this week!  I'm teaching a summer institute next week, and the week after that, so there's lots to prepare, and I'm packing my office/classroom (oh my!) and hopefully, before this week is over, there will be news bout that!!!

Whew!

School is officially out!  We went to the end-of-little-league pizza party tonight, so it was an exceptionally long day...but it was hot and the kids are in full summer mode already(oh, bed time, where are you!?), and I FINALLY had a minute to comment here to folks who left sweet notes over the last two weeks.  How did that happen?  You know, it's funny, I never used to comment in the comments on my old blog.  I was so self-conscious!  Now, I don't even care how dorky I am ~  I love the tips and sweet comments and I pretty much feel so much better when I get to write back...I'm going with better late than never?  :)  Also, I'm just going to pretend anybody cares.  haha!

I'm looking forward to this weekend...it's swamped with graduations and birthdays, but I plan to get some serious yard time in tomorrow, and I have project lists and crafty fun on my mind.  Plus, my dear friend Glenn just called and invited Erik out onto his sailboat for a day on the bay!  Oh, yes, summer is definitely arrived! 

I just can't get over these tomato plants.  The one in the back and the one in the front were planted on the same day.  The one in the back is towering over the top of the cage!

(Confidential to Jason:  Doesn't kitty look majestic?!)

This tomato plant?  Planted on the same day.

Here...these tomato plants?   You guessed it!  Same day.  Why so different?  The ones closest to me our taller than Scotty; but look at the ones just to the right here....so tiny!  It's really so strange!

Looking at this picture...aren't the flowers so pretty?  They remind me that....

We still have visitors!  When they showed up last weekend, I was so (happily) bewildered.  What could they possibly see in our underdeveloped patch of land?  The flowers above were planted last year, virtually ignored, and now lookit ~ so pretty.  It makes me wonder if they're suddenly so stellar because that's what bees do...make things flourish.  I know bees travel far and wide to get their pollen, but still, I have to believe our little gardens are majorly benefiting!

One of the things their arrival has done is to make me so much more aware (and appreciative) of all the plant life.  The green bin they've moved into is under a pine tree, and for the first time ever, I realized how gorgeous these purple blooms are that become pine cones.  I'd never stopped to notice such a thing!

There's also a wee-bit of blooming going on inside ~ my fabric!  This is the fabric I won in a giveaway at Beautiful Beatta's blog last fall, and I'm finally going to make it into a quilt.   I'm joining Carmen for a quilt along...this will be the first quilt I do from start to finish!  Wish me luck.  It's six weeks, and each week to tackle just a part of the project.  This was the week the wash and iron the fabrics.  Check.  It's never too late to join if you want to throw your hat in the ring!


Alright.  Just so you know.  As I was writing this up and waiting for pictures to upload, we got another nasty (but quick) jolt.  Earthquake.  There were two last Thursday night, too.  Almost exactly the same time.  All three have been between 2.5 and 3.0.  I'm a native Californian, so I won't even get out of my chair for less than 5.0, and even then, I wait to see how long it will last ~ I perk up, but I'm not going to get hysterical.  It could be over by the time I finally stand, so why break my neck hopping up?  Anyway, when I came home tonight, Erik said, "Earthquake weather."  I'm pretty sure he did it to tease me, as it is one of my long-standing pet peeves (right up there with stickers on fruit) that any time it gets "muggy" in the Bay Area, some dork starts in on 'earthquake weather' (I assure you, there is no such thing) but man....now I'm wondering!  The epicenter last week was less than 2 miles from our house (we live ON the Hayward Fault, I'm telling you) and this one I'm seeing here was also 2 miles away (in the other direction) and at 2.5.  Even when you're right on top of a 2.5, it's not a whole lot of shaking...but man, they're just loud when you're that close.  You hear it before you feel it, even.  Anyway, all this to warn you, that I'm fairly certain I feel a hey-I-updated-the-earthquake kit kind of post coming up.