Sunday, June 29, 2025

Am I A Fraud? (also, how I cook snow peas)

 I might be a fraud because this is the ONLY thing I've quilted in June.  And I didn't make it.  This is a top that was gifted to the Binbrook Guild by Paul Leger for our donation program.


It was quilted the first week of June and it's been sitting patiently waiting for someone (ahem) to get the binding on.

I might be a fraud because I went to Quilt Canada and bought absolutely NO fabric.  Although I did buy a book.  But you can't quilt with a book.


I might be a fraud because I promised myself to give up my constant irritation with Donald Trump.  And yet:

Donny is mad at the mean Canadians because we want some tax money from what multi-billion dollar companies earn off of us.  Seriously. Everybody else who earns money has to pay tax.  Such a big baby!



Here's an explanation of the tax.  Which only kicks in after $20 million in revenue.


Does anyone SERIOUSLY think this is a harmful tax???



Take a look at who was in the Peanut Gallery when Trump was inaugurated.   Do ya think there might be a little bit of hands-in-pants going on?

So...this is The Universe pooping on MY head.

Yeah.  That's my kitchen tap.  Poor DH - I should probably have said that The Universe was pooping on HIS head.  He had just fixed the toilet that had decided to stop flushing, walked into the kitchen to turn on the tap, and the handle came off in his hand.  With my delicate sensibilities 😏 , I am glad I was not here when that happened.
The good news is MOEN is honouring their lifetime warranty and sending us a new tap, saving us a couple hundred dollars.  The bad news is this happened on Wednesday, they just sent it on Friday and now we have to wait for delivery, which will probably be at least this coming Wednesday.  Because of course these things happen over a weekend AND a national holiday when the post office does not work. Sigh.  No running water in the kitchen is not exactly fun!

Anyhow, that's a small problem in life.  This is what I picked today.  I will do my last pick of asparagus on Monday, and leave the plants to recouperate until next April.  It's been a great crop again this year.  Definitely a plant that keeps on giving.
I get a couple of strawberries every day.  
We got ZERO cherries once again.  Between the  raccoons, skunks and birds, the tree was completely denuded overnight.
Back in May I planted a row of green beans.  ONE bean sprouted.  Although, I think 🐰 was the real problem. 
No photo, but I pick a lettuce plant every few days too.  This year it's all been red romaine.  I'm a very lazy gardener(*) and let the lettuce (and cilantro, and dill) go to seed.  Those seeds overwinter and sprout in the spring.

* I am actually lazy at heart BUT I have so much garden stuff to take care of that I think I deserve a pass on this.  The garden is 20' x 40'.  DH will till the garden.  He plants and harvests the potatoes, and he waters the garden.  But that's pretty much it.  He does not weed or pick the garden.

HOW I COOK SNOW PEAS
  • wash 'em
  • nip off the stem with my thumbnail, and drag any string off with the stem
  • cut them in half
  • do a quick stir-fry... maybe 5 minutes? in a bit of olive oil, or a combo of olive oil & sesame oil
  • eat - yum!
Here's a little health advice for you. Ha ha ha...




Sunday, June 1, 2025

Happy June! (or Good Lord I'm Sick Of Politics!)

 

After You-Know-Who's inauguration in January sh*t started happening.  Every morning I was glued to the news sites, my jaw dropped, often in shock saying "honey - did you see this???".  I kept thinking that once Trump got that (whatever executive order he'd just signed) out of his system things would quiet down and politics would go back to normal.  But no!  There was more!  Every single day!  

After four+ solid months of this I've decided to give it a rest.  The USA is not my country, and I cannot do anything to effect any kind of change down there.  I made a committment to myself back in 2016 when he was elected the first time that I would not travel there, and that still stands.  My two personal biggest issues are their free-for-all gun laws, and the steady withdrawal of women's rights.  But there are so many more drastic changes in progress that I can't even keep track any more.

I'm still planning to read the news over my coffee & breakfast in the mornings, but no more wasting my life until noon - which is what I have been doing.  Stupid, giving up my time to keep track of him and his antics.  WE'RE DONE, DONALD.  I'M DIVORCING YOU.  YOU'RE FIRED! 😆

The quilt above was a challenge for TWO guilds.  The Binbrook Guild had a President's Challenge to work with circles.  Any kind of circles.  Circle quilt, circle fabric, appliqued circles, pieced circles, quilted circles, whatever.  Maker's choice.  The Caledonia Guild let us buy a 5" strip of fabric for $2 that had to be used in any quilt with a max perimeter of 80" (I think 80"??).  80" would be too small for my intended space, so I played along anyways and simply disregarded that rule. 😯  The fabric is the mottled turquoise/green used for the appliqued leaves.  

The design was copied from a Dover copyright-free book on Art Deco designs.  I'm pretty happy with it, it looks nice hanging on the wall.  I didn't win the challenge in Caledonia, since I admittedly did NOT adhere to the rules but that's ok - I wanted to play anyways.

That was finished in February.  Next up are the March finishes:


These are the two small leader/ender quilts I've been working on for several (!) years,
Cute labels:  


Here's a Disappearing 9-Patch that took me several years to get around to finishing.  I don't like anything about this quilt except maybe the border. 🙈

The Super Bowl Sunday quilt is finished. I always like the way these turn out.

In April I made a big bag to carry a Tupperware Cake Carrier, as a birthday gift...both the Cake Carrier and the bag.

I also made a BARN QUILT.  Diane (beach girl, you know) made arrangements for us to have an early Beach Day at her place.  We took a class with KADI BARN QUILTS (check 'em out on facebook).  I still have to hang mine - I think it's going on the wall of the front porch.  Maybe this coming week.

In May I managed to get this little quilt pieced.  It's mostly from fabric donated by a customer and will end up going to the women's shelter with my other donation quilts later this year.  The pigs-on-motorcycles border fabric is from my stash. Cute.

There's also been a lot of this in May...




I'll close out this post with two of my favorite memes this year.



Sunday, February 9, 2025

Super Bowl Sunday!

 First - the January completion.  This is the top I pieced in the fall up in Tobermory.  It's ready for a label & the washing machine.


I'm very happy with the way it turned out.  And I used a new-to-me panto which I'm also pretty happy with.


This month I'm working on this.  There will actually be TWO of these.  It's a leader/ender project that I've been poking away at for a couple of years, and I finally finished all the blocks.  98 of them.  Those half-square centers are cutoffs from a baby quilt I made for my friend's daughter.  Setting is 7 x 7 blocks, and they're 7" each, so both of the finished quilts will be approx 48 x 48.


Now for today...I wait ALL YEAR for this.  The lasagne is in the oven and the salad is made (no thanks to me - DH made that).

Here's my setup:


DH will be sitting on the couch, watching the game.  I'll be stitching during the game, and watching the commercials and the half-time show.  The noise of the sewing machine makes him turn the volume up on the tv, so the workaround is a little sound barrier (which is normally my small design wall). Here's a closeup with a couple of descriptors:

Not shown - the martinis.  It's still a bit early for that but don't worry - my setup is within arms-reach of the bar. 😁  Apparently the (ahem, cough cough) leader of the free world will be at the game.  If I have to look at him very much I may end up a little drunker than I originally planned.  I've been so angry at the United States since January 20th that for a few days I couldn't even think straight.  Anyhow - no more air time for him here...going to find my shot glass.




Tuesday, January 7, 2025

December sewing & today's pop-quiz

 I was asked to make a Christmas table runner.  This was pretty easy to do, using my 60 degree ruler and 1.5m of border print fabric.


I cut two 10" swaths along the length - if you look you'll see there is waste fabric * in between and along the top because the swaths need to be identical sections of the print.  Using the 60 degree ruler, cut triangles.  This makes an 'uppy' and a 'downy' set of triangles.  You can see from the finished piece above how to put them together. 
* we all know there's no such thing as waste fabric, ha ha ha


I also finally made myself a new purse.  The old one was at the point of being embarassing, it was so worn.

Pockets ring the inside of the bag.  I've stitched these into the appropriate size to accommodate all the junk that we think we need to carry around every day.  Like:  who would dare to go out without their emergency binder clip?  weirdo


TODAY'S POP QUIZ
Today's pop quiz is brought to you by the Canadian government.  What follows are the comments made by some of our political well-knowns (aka political leaders) in regards to Justin Trudeau's resignation.
The game is to figure out who said what.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.


My personal opinion on these comments is:
1 & 2 - mean-spirited
3 - a neutral remark but at least it's polite
4 - apparently responding to a different question.  Hellooo...?
5 - what you should say to someone (and I mean any politician) who has spent the last ____ (insert some length of time) in government

Whatever.  No one cares what I think.  Here is the newspaper article with the pop-quiz answers, from today's Hamilton Spectator.

More of my opinion (that no one actually cares about)...Pierre Poilievre is the worst.  Right up there with Donald Trump.  P.P. wants us to think we're living in a dystopian nightmare ("dark chapter", "break the country").  DJT wants to suck us into his realm of gun violence and everybody working their way towards the bottom, except for his mega-billion dollar buddies.  See the disgusting comment that P.P. made when Charles Angus annouced that he would be leaving Ontario politics (Hamilton Spectator 4/17/24):



As far as Jagmeet Singh's comment, also being mean-spirited: IMO he took excellent advantage of the collaboration between the Liberal party and the NDP and got some very well-received legislation passed.  But now, does he think that if he acts like a prick too maybe he'll gain more popularity?

And Doug Ford's comment?  I guess there were none of his cronies involved, so he didn't know what was going on.

I have to confess here - I DO like Chrystia Freeland.  (Not as much as I love Elizabeth May, but still.)  Yes, I find her a little tedious, but she's one smart cookie.  I was glad to see that Chrystia's comment was polite and expressed gratitude - which is what a 'normal' person would do when their remarks are going to be preserved for a very long time.


Sunday, November 24, 2024

How's Your Blood Pressure?

I'll start off with a little quilty-stuff, then move on to the topic du jour.

Pieced at Tobermory retreat but not yet quilted:


 Started an embarrassingly long time ago, finally quilted, and heading to the hospice as a guild donation:


TOPIC DU JOUR

Dad died of a heart attack when he was 72.  He was a tough guy.  A contractor, specializing in drywall I think.  I was one of those teenagers who paid zero attention to the people who really had some import in my life, so I don't honestly know.  As a teenager I slept until noon, by which time he was more than half way through his day.  Dad made himself bacon and eggs, every. single. day.  In spite of his hard, physical labour, his diet may or may not have had something to do with his early demise.  I fell heir to his 7" cast iron frying pan, which has so many years of seasoning on it that NOTHING will EVER stick to it.  DH and I have a pretty significant collection of cast iron pans now, and in spite of their weight, they are the BEST things to cook with. 

Next...

Mom developed alzheimers, most likely caused by several small strokes.  She lived to 94, but her last, um, 10 years or so (?), were not good.  And the 10 or 15 years before that were filled with sticky notes on the bathroom mirror reminding her of coming events and appointments, forgetfulness, repetetive questions, and confusion.  I didn't realize what was going on with her for a long time.  She'd ask me over and over again "how much money have I got in the bank?" and I'm ashamed to say that after answering this question 10 or 15 times during my Friday visits, I would lose my shit.  For the last few years she couldn't walk, couldn't talk, couldn't hear, couldn't see, lost her teeth several times, and another stroke had left her unable to safely eat 'real food' - everything had to be pureed.  There was a day when my brother told me that he'd been to visit her.  He'd brought a box of Timbits, and she'd scarfed down every single one.  OMG.  "Bruce!!  She can't eat solid food!!  WTH!!  She'll choke!"  Well, no, that didn't kill her thankfully, since he was telling me this story after the fact. 😳  She passed quietly at the nursing home on a cold March night.

My sister Sharon, who was 10 years older than me, died at 72 of a heart attack.  She'd been suffering with several forms of cancer, along with non-alcohol-related-cirrhosis for several years prior to her death.  Everyone in our family drinks so much that the "non-alcohol" bit surprised me, but she'd also lived in China for several years and may have contracted Hep C?  I know she had a heart attack while she lived there - that was during the SARS epidemic and the Chinese government keeps all news of that sort very quiet.  I don't think she knew about SARS while it was going on.  Now, I'm unsure if the fatal heart attack was an inherited weakness, or incidental to her other health issues.

The firstborn in the family, my brother Ted, also died at 72.  He was felled by cancer.  In the mid-80's he left with his boat and his girlfriend for the islands, and basically disappeared from our lives. His life was a complete mystery to us after that, until I received a call this summer from his wife (who'd been his girlfriend at the time of his departure so long ago).  She was surprised that none of us knew that he was dead.  Um, hello???  He never contacted any of us. Ever.  How he managed to show up for dad's funeral 39 years ago remains a complete mystery to this day.

My 70-year-old brother Bruce, 1 1/2 years older than me, is still kickin' up a storm on Vancouver Island. 💕  We are the only ones left from our family of origin.

Now you've got the lay of the land.

DH does most of the cooking around here, for which I'm very grateful.  We get into some ahem disagreements over nutrition occasionally.  Based on my story above you can see that three out of four deceased family members died at the age of 72.  Three out of four deceased family members had disastrous results related to heart troubles.  I'm already on cholesterol meds, thyroid meds, and heart meds.  And I'm 68.  

If you follow me around the grocery store you'll see my cart filled with apples, bananas, lettuce, avocados, peppers, sweet potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower.  I gave up cream and sugar in my coffee a looong time ago. I mean, I'm no saint - don't get me wrong. I can empty out a bowl of cheezies faster than you can say 'Those aren't good for you, you know, and by the way I like your shoes.'  I'm really lucky in that I like healthy food.  I don't wrinkle up my nose when faced with brussel sprouts. But as a rule, I try pretty consistently to stay away from salt.  Outside of baking I don't use it when I'm cooking.  I rarely add it to food on my plate, unless we're talking about potatoes - in which case all bets are off. 

Last week I was cleaning up after another good meal cooked by DH when I noticed the salt shaker on the cooktop.  

me, pretending to ask an innocent question:  "Honey, why is the salt shaker on the cooktop?"

DH:  "I salted the pasta water."

me, fanning away the steam that was spurting out of my ears:  "YOU PUT SALT IN THE WATER???!!  WHAT??!!?"

DH, wondering when my hormones came back:  "Um, ...yes?  It was only a little?"

me, carrying on:  "Blah blah blah (about my health issues), blah blah blah (about high blood pressure), blah blah blah (about how he's trying to kill me), etc..."

DH trying very hard to be cooperative:  "Um, ok. I won't do it any more?"

Last Friday I bought two lovely cabbages at a farm stall.  Half of one was made into coleslaw.  For the second half I suggested a recipe that I cut out of the newspaper several years ago, but have never tried.  The cooking fell to DH because I ended up having a quilting buddy come by to talk about her book.  When she and I were through and she left for home, I wandered into the kitchen to check on hubby's progress.  The casserole was heading into the oven at this point.

DH:  "Did you see the first ingredient on the recipe?"

me, looking at the recipe:  "Uh, cabbage."

DH:  "Nope."

me, looking at the recipe again:  "Yeah, cabbage!"

DH:  "Nope."

me, getting a little annoyed:  "Yes it is!"

DH, wandering over and pointing at the first word - salt.  Sigh.

Don't ya just hate it when someone does that to you?

CABBAGE AND POTATO GRATIN

This was very good.  DH added some cooked & sliced Italian sausages to the mix.



Monday, October 21, 2024

Mom, where are you going??

 

Tobermory!


A better lunch than I'd usually get at home.

And chicken pot pie for supper, with apple crisp for dessert.


Head honcho of the Beach Girls to crack the whip and keep us in line.

Second-in-command who likes to pour the wine.

Traveling companion who keeps me awake on the road (and makes my bed every day!).


Best week of the year. ❤❤❤