class results & insomnia

Sooo, did anyone else find themselves WIDE AWAKE at 4:30 this morning, eating apple crisp straight out of the pan?  On the plus side, it gave me lots of time to finish up the wee quilt I made in class yesterday.  I definitely need more practice with the Square in Square ruler.  I am accustomed to my block units all being the same size.  But these?... not so much.

And, I am scheduled to present the Block of the Month at the Binbrook guild tomorrow night, so I did up the pattern for that, too.  This is a 12" My Blue Heaven block from Quilters Cache.  I will hand out sixteen patterns,  have the gals make them in white with pastel, and someone will win enough blocks next month for a nice baby quilt.

Weather, Red Hat Outing

You can let your imagination run wild and GUESS what the weather is like. The fire has been going for several days, keeping me warm in my workroom.  So far the furnace has not been turned on, although the living room is chilly when we are watching tv. Thank goodness I know where to find a quilt or two to wrap up in.  :-)

Thursday was Red Hat day. We started at the Red Bobbin quilt shop in Brantford, then headed over to neighbouring Mount Pleasant to the Dutch Windmill restaurant for lunch.  Mmm... quiche & salad for lunch, then a pumpkin roll for dessert.  I fell off the wagon as far as my fabric moratorium goes, and bought 2 m. of a cute baby print.  No, the baby print is not for me - pffttt!!!  Afterwards we headed into Hamilton to Gage Park and wandered around the Mum Show.

The chrysanthemum Dragon and the chrysanthemum Fire Dog were both very well done.

Today I'm taking a quilt class on the Jodi Barrows Square in Square ruler.  I'm not even there yet and already I'm a bad student.  I don't like the project the instructor chose, so I've picked out another one to work on.  I hate students like me.  :-)

retreat meals, coleslaw, bookkeeping

Ah, one of my favorite moments at retreat is 4 pm cocktail hour. My little red freezer shoes came in VERY handy. (thank you Mel)

We still managed to enjoy a glass or two of wine with supper.

I love getting away with the girls.  It's a chance to revert to the silliness that is often frowned upon, but which seems to energize our souls.  And unbelievably I managed to pack on four pounds over five days.  Once or twice I actually went to bed with a bellyache from eating too much.  Oy yoy yoy.

Let me see:  pulled pork, couscous salad, eggs benedict, leek & potato soup, biscuits, salmon, roasted potatoes, fresh baked danishes, butternut squash soup, biscuits, meatloaf, scalloped potatoes, oat pancakes, smoked pork chops, biscuits, chocolate cake, banana cake. Now that I've been savagely thrown back to reality I'm enjoying (?) spinach salads for a few days in a hopeless attempt to regain my girlish figure (which I actually lost about 12 years ago, but who's counting).

On Sunday I cleaned up a bunch of the veggie garden.  The friggin' rabbit has helped himself to three of my cabbages.  Bastard.  I pulled the last good one and made a large batch of Forever Coleslaw.  This is not exactly my recipe, but it's close.  Today I did laundry, worked, and figured it was time to do the September bookkeeping.

Can someone please tell me why two people have eight pairs of glasses on the table?

Yee ha - Tobermory Retreat Week

I will leave you with a cute little baby quilt.

Quilted with a strawberry design. I think the pink put me in mind of strawberry ice cream.

I'm heading up to Tobermory for a week with my longarm friends. This is the forecast, which will mean lots of time for sew, eat, drink, gossip, repeat.

I have the salmon purchased, the potatoes dug, and the martini fixin's all ready to go.  As soon as my friend Deb shows up, we're off.  In preparation for a little overindulgence, I was very good and had a spinach salad for lunch.  Home grown spinach and tomatoes, two hard boiled eggs, a hunk of feta cheese crumbled up, and a dressing of olive oil & balsamic vinegar.  Yum yum yum.  Then I blew it by eating the two Reeces Pieces that were sitting on the kitchen table.  sigh.

I'll talk to you in a week.

Drunkards Path, Kitchen, Mini Cooper day

This is a strip of Drunkards Path blocks set into a sampler quilt.

Kitchen progress.  Yaay - running water!!

More kitchen progress.  A working cooktop!!

Thursday was my fun day out with a free Mini Cooper, and Jean & Teresa.  This was a promotion by Budds BMW for Virgin Mobile customers - a 24 hour test drive.  We went out to see Jean's farm then headed over to Angels Diner for lunch.  It was a gorgeous fall day.

If I weren't so darned lazy I would have stopped the car and gotten OUT to take this pic of the farm's laneway.

Here's how I celebrated the new cooktop.  Yummy, and great for Meatless Monday.  This would make a dandy side dish but I ate it for supper with spiced beets on the side.

Rice and Chickpea Casserole with Tomatoes

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1.5 onions, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped or minced
• 1.5 cups brown or white rice
• 3 fresh, ripe tomatoes, cubed (substitute canned if you like)
• 1 can drained chickpeas, or 1.5 cups cooked chickpeas
• 1 tablespoon Tamari or soy sauce (for gluten-free)
• 3 cups vegetable broth or water

Instructions:

1. Heat oil and saute onions in a large saucepan for about 5 minutes.
2. You can saute the garlic with the onion, or add it after the rice.
3. Add rice and continue to brown, another 5 minutes.
4. Stir in the rest of the ingredients.
5. Bring to a boil, stir, and cover.
6. Lower the heat and cook for 18 minutes for white rice, 30 for brown.

Here is my little rant for today.  I may have to start setting limits, because I'm tired of hearing "I have to go to work today, so could you... (insert some chore that interrupts MY work)?"  There is an assumption that working at home gives me all kinds of time to spend taking care of things that should not be my responsibility.  Helloo... I am not retired, I work every day.   I need to earn a living, just like you, and I don't want to work all night because I took three hours off to take care of your problems.  OK?  Thanks.

Scrappy donation quilt & kitchen reno

A quilt top made by Thelma and quilted by me, donated to the women's shelter.

Sunday 8 pm - sink & cooktop & range hood all coming out. Dishwasher too - gone!

Monday 9 am - Tony & Tibor rip out the old countertop and strip off the wall tiles.

Monday 11 am - new countertop installed.  T & T head out for lunch.  A long lunch - they return at 1:30.

Monday 5:45 - wall tiles on, new sink & new cooktop in place but not hooked up.

T & T are coming back on Wednesday to finish up the grout work.  They were planning to come tomorrow but I'm taking a personal day and going to Greenwood Quiltery to see the gallery exhibit.

This is all very exciting, but washing dishes in the bathroom sink is no picnic.  I don't even have the dishwasher to stuff dirty dishes in, because it was removed too.  I suppose I could still hide them in the oven (an old trick from my single days).

Supper tonight was leftover Chinese food from Saturday night.  I think tomorrow will be leftover spaghetti from Sunday night.  Wednesday might be takeout?  Plumbing for the new sink will be 'involved' because the new sink is 9" deep, where the old sink was 7" deep.  I had no idea that normal sinks were so shallow, so I'm really looking forward to having all that room for water and soap suds.  This has very awkward timing, since we have overnight company coming for Friday & Saturday nights.  How much McDonalds can we eat over two days & nights?  Hmm - just might find out.