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...

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.

Spring in Caledonia

 Spring is crazy around here. (You'd have to live under a rock to not be aware that I like to garden.)  My body has been talking quite loudly: "Lady - what the fark do you think you're doing??? You sat on your ass all winter watching tv. I can't do this stuff - and if you make me, you're gonna pay!"

And yes, I'm hurting. Bursitis in my shoulder, an awful knot in my shoulder blade, golfer's elbow, and a bad knee. Oh, and whatever is wrong with my neck, that I woke up with yesterday. Sigh. HOWEVER, I still manage to get out of bed every morning, and for that I'm grateful.

In early April the Bloodroot blooms. Such a welcome sight. When the blossoms fall off and it leafs out I remove the seedheads because I do not want a whole garden of them - I have just enough.

In early May the asparagus starts showing up on the kitchen counter.

All that healthy goodness needs to be followed by something not quite as healthy. Yogurt cake.

The cake (a loaf, really) was fun to make. First you make lemon sugar with granulated sugar and lemon zest. Then you make a bowl of wet ingredients that includes the yogurt. Then you make a bowl of dry ingredients and blend that with the wet ingredients, put it in a loaf pan and pop it into the oven.

The fun part comes when you are putting all the messy equipment into the sink and notice that the bowl of sugar is still sitting on the counter. 😳

About 18 bad words later, the loaf pan has been removed from the oven, the batter has been put into the bowl of lemon sugar and mixed up, then returned to the loaf pan and put back in the oven. The result was surprisingly good.

Did y'all get to see the Northern Lights last weekend? Friday night was supposed to be our big event, but I was so tired I was snoring by 9 pm. I guess the Universe is aware of my love of these celestial events and took pity on me...on Monday morning I got out of bed before 6 am and was treated to this sunrise.

The weather has been exceptionally warm and Nina was getting very, um, fluffy.  DH gave her a bath on Saturday, then on Sunday I got out the clippers.  About 2 1/2 hours into the haircut I sat back to see where I was at and got a silly fit of the giggles.  That usually has something to do with vodka, but I was stone cold sober... check out those front legs!

I got them fixed up so they look a little better now, but trust me - I'm no dog groomer!

There is so much garden work (euphemism for "weeding") that if I live to be 100 it will still not be done.  However, maybe these will make you feel better about your own plot of ground?

It's 31.4c in the shade

So, yeah.  This is not where I am.  It's where I WAS on the weekend - up to visit my friend Margaret in the Kawarthas.

We went to the Lindsay quilt show one day, ate too much every day, hung around the dining table gossiping catching up, and of course sewing.  I got this stitched together - it will be the center of my version of the guild Block of the Month.

Here is the whole quilt, made by my Program partner.  I donated the quilting. The guild will give this to Glanbrook Community Services to assist in their fundraising efforts.

It's hard to see the border quilting...a side light helps.

THE GARDEN

Fresh veggies are on our plates... lots of asparagus.  And look at all that fresh lettuce!  

I am a messy gardener who would rather pull weeds or cut flowers rather than deadhead stuff.  Which means that after the lettuce is finished, I turn a blind eye to the flowers.  Then I turn TWO blind eyes to the seedheads that are blowing all over the place.  The benefit to that is early spring lettuce that I didn't have to plant.  DH rototills the garden but he leaves this swath where the asparagus comes up.  And it's coincidentally full of lettuce.  For many years I would start lettuce seedlings in the basement under lights, until I finally realized that those plants were edible at the same time as the lazy-man version.

Up in the top left of that photo you can see the garlic is looking very very happy.  In front of that, today I planted onions & beets, then some beans over to the right.  Yesterday I put in cabbage seedlings.  About 10 days ago I planted pea seeds but so far they are still hiding.  Unless Peter Rabbit is eating them as they sprout. 😒

Now, I'm taking a break and having a "Mommy's Special Drink".

Here's your giggle for today...

 

Asparagus & The Cost of Groceries, and the Current Quilt

 FOOD

I'm currently at the beginning of a couple months where I will pick asparagus every day.

This week I've made:

GREEN CURRY CHICKEN WITH ASPARAGUS  DH and I don't find it hot, but if you're not used to cooking with a curry paste you may have a different experience.

ASPARAGUS & CHEDDAR QUICHE (this freezes quite nicely, and I use a homemade pie crust).

I have to admit to being SHOCKED when I saw this...

Holy Mackerel!  $7.99???  I had to employ my mental coping technique of adding an imaginary question mark.  

Apparently this will "mentally" put you back in control, at which point you can say "um, nope" and walk away without causing any embarrassment to yourself.

QUILTING

If you follow me on either Instagram or Facebook you may have seen my last few posts about working on this quilt.  The top was pieced by my program partner in the Binbrook Quilters' Guild.  She used this as the sample while she ran the Block of the Month program for the guild, so there will be several of these quilts completed by the members over the next little while (quilt pattern by Phoebe Moon Designs, with permission granted to us to run as a b.o.m.).  LINK.  

The guild is paying for all the materials, I'm donating the quilting, then the guild will donate the completed quilt to Glanbrook Community Services who will use it as part of their ongoing fundraising campaign. 

The last several days have found me working on computer designs to do the remaining quilting - the s.i.d. is pretty much complete, although I may do a bit more as I progress.  This is design version number...4?  It has taken an inordinate amount of time to figure out something here that made me happy.  There is a LOT of negative space on this quilt which will show off some beautiful designs, but I need to control that so it doesn't get too crazy/busy.  

I don't want it "quilted to death"  because that makes quilts pretty stiff.  This design should give me lots of quilting, but still leave the quilt with a nice drape. That inner white star that appears in the background is such a weird shape that it's been giving me fits. 

That's a terrible pic, I know, if you're trying to actually SEE what the quilting design looks like.  Sorry about that.  Anyhow... my basic plan was to stick to:

• straight lines
• feathers
• curls

Feathers are a little tricky sometimes because they're quilted in many different shapes, which can look (to me) like different shapes.  And that's what I'm trying to avoid... too many different things going on will ruin the cohesion holding the designs together.  The sashing design of pumpkin seed & line doesn't fit into my "plan", but it IS the same shape you see in the block pattern, so I'm calling that OK because it's repeating the same shape as something that's already there.  I may yet change the mid-size border design (curls & pearls) to something more... feather-ey.  I'll probably quilt other areas and leave that empty while I think on it.

BLOG POSTING

Why have I been gone since the end of December?  I dunno.  Had nothing to say?  Winter doldrums?  My brother being a stupid asshat and continuing to criticize me for no good reason, which put me in a crabby mood for months?  Sadly, yeah, I'm going with the brother theory.  He's my only remaining immediate family, and probably 50% of our conversations devolve into him giving me shit for something, or insulting either me or DH.  So once again I have had to put him on "ignore" status for the sake of my mental health.  If you have siblings who love and respect you I sure hope you appreciate how lucky you are.  Sigh.

 

I CAN'T leave this post with a tone of misery.  Here's one that makes me laugh at myself.  And that helps. 😄

Two Pretties from May, and life-in-general

 Here's a gorgeous, soft & gentle quilt made by Margaret (of the Kawartha Margarets 😄).  She manages to seriously tackle several UFOs every year.

Margaret & I talk almost every Tuesday just to keep up with each other's lives.  It's nice to get a parcel in the mail from her and send back something interesting in return.  Those boxes don't usually contain a whole quilt, but sometimes...

As you know I love scrappy quilts.  That shot of pink running between the columns adds a great touch.

I've never made a braid quilt myself, but it's on my list.

One of the items on my to-do list for the last few years has been to GET TO THE LAWYER.  That was finally taken care of, so we now have proper Power of  Attorneys for both property and medical, and we have updated wills. 👍

Coco has been having a great deal of fun at Doggy Daycare. 

But I'll tell ya, she's not good for anything later on.

My plan for today is to try and get the garden planted.  I don't think I've ever been this late with it before, and there's no really good reason for it.  I've been out there quite a bit pulling weeds.  Apparently what I should have been doing is pulling a weed out and sticking a cabbage seedling in.  I've been eating lots of asparagus (pulling weeds out of that patch, too!).  The other day I made an asparagus quiche for the first time and IT IS DELICIOUS.  Recipe here.  I substituted dried basil for fresh, but otherwise I followed the recipe.

I still have lots of fruit in the freezer from last summer, so I decided to make a cherry/strawberry pie (since I was in the kitchen anyways making the quiche).  I made a full batch of pastry which splits into 6 x single pie crusts; I used one for the quiche and two for the pie.  The others are in the freezer, keeping the fruit company.  Now, half a block of lard has settled on my butt.  I guess I will have to move my diet to another day.