Oh I see, Your collection

My collection...here it is...

I have a collection of recipes.

This is my big black book. Attractive, non? It contains all the recipes I have enjoyed from magazines and online. Lovingly organized in page protectors.

See.


Also have a few cookbooks.

Most used are Giada's family dinners, Anne Lindsay's new light cooking and Beyond the Moon by Ginny Callan, though it is vegetarian and I'm a meat eater now. Eat, Shrink and Be Merry is brand new and I have high hopes!


I have completed my very last patch for the quilting month's patch along at Sew, Mama, Sew!

A Pinwheel. It is considerably smaller than the other squares and I fear much math will be involved in figuring how to sort that out.

I leave you with my youngest darlings newest obsession.

Just checkin' in

Thanks for all your kind words about my mom. She's doing great, her blood index (INR, RNI??) is reached the target and she even got a day off today from the blood tests and shots. Today was also my dad's first day of retirement. When I talked to them they were camped out in the basement figuring out their new washer and dryer (Hallelujah!!), shredding the mass of paper clutter that my dad dragged home from his office and trying to figure out what they were going to do with themselves for the rest of their lives.

The cold that plagued me last week has worked its way through my family. Clarabel being hardest hit during the late night drive to my parents and resulting in a detour through Brockville searching out an all night Shoppers. I believe we are all on the mend, though I suspect I might lose my voice shortly.

If you are keen for a contest, visit Sarah. She's interested in collections. Quite fun really. I am dusting my collection off and will play along.

Down and Out

I've got the sick. I am not happy about it.

On the upside I have many meals ready to eat. My team met on Sunday to cook.

Turkey pot pie. That's reading Heather flashing her fancy apron. Isn't it cute?


A Mexican bake.


Juile kneading the pastry for the pot pie. We also made a tortellini sausage bake and a chicken ragu pasta sauce. Usually we are 8 and aim to make 5 recipes but Sunday we were only 6.
It was a good news day. Sewing Heather got a new job, Julie passed a board exam. YAAA!

The latest installment in the patch along. The log cabin.

I struggled with the math but it turned out ok. One more patch this Friday. I think I will make a little doll size quilt with these sample patches to practice the quilting part.

We are heading out tomorrow night to my parents. My mom is out of commission and going a little crazy. She broke her ankle a few weeks ago, then started to get a serious pain in her leg under her cast. It was a blood clot. She has to go to the hospital everyday for shots and blood tests. Scary. She is slowly responding to the medication. So we are going to keep her coming and maybe do some laundry for her.

A day in pictures

Just a little fib

It would appear that I am not entirely done with knitting.

These are my monkey socks. I am on the fence about whether or not to actually go with the monkey pattern. It has been freezing the last few days and I'm not really sure I need socks with yarn overs in them.

Notice my fancy knitpicks. My sister went to great pains to order the dpn sock set for me for xmas. They are heavenly.

Last week I braved the 407 to join my best Knitter Connie (Hi Con!) for her guild meeting. Sally Melville was speaking. I took a few pictures but they weren't all that attractive, it's not easy work getting a good shot of someone chatting up a storm.

The next quilt patch in the patch along. I believe it is called Shoo Fly.

I am not crazy about the fabric I chose and I did not enjoying cutting the triangles.
Next I am going to give a disappearing 9 patch a go. Turns out it isn't nearly as tricky as it looks.

Great Valentine Day sale at our in house fabric store.

Store hours are 6 am to 7 pm. We are looking for someone to supervise the 6 am to 7 am shift.

I am so over this idea

The last 2 weekends I've spend a whole lot of time freezer cooking. Preparing meals to freeze. Tama over at The Den of Chaos was talking about Frozen Assets, cook for a day eat for a month. I checked it out of my library and gave it a go. I did chicken last weekend and ground beef this weekend. I certainly did not prepare a month worth of meals, maybe 12 meals with leftovers for lunch.

I'm not sure I like freezer cooking. It's a whole lot of work. I get together with my team of greatest friends once a month in a big church kitchen and cook our hearts out for 3 hours. It is a lot more social and I don't have to do the dishes all by myself.

Course I will likely really enjoy the meals.

A few FO's to share

Ken has been freezing in the night and he has to get up 14 times to put on more layers and it makes me crazy. So I sewed up some flannel jama pants. He enjoyed the photo shoot.
He also also started wearing more clothes to bed.
That's Laila's head, she's trying to get her mitts on the camera. She's working very hard on walking.


And special for Clarabel, a Valentine's Day dress. It also twirls. She insisted that the she model it with her pajamas.
I had some trouble with this. I didn't have enough fabric so I had to make a smaller size, it just fits. The shoulder has buttons and I had a whole lot of trouble with the buttonholes. Also I didn't hem the bottom, just left the raw edge cause I think it looks cute. Is that ok?

More Snow, More Fabric

I've done it! I've made a quilt patch. It is not bang on perfect but you know I'm just learning.

Clarabel is presently using it to wrap presents as we play birthday. Which really means she just wraps up toys and brings them to me and I say "Oh! That's just what I've always wanted." Then I do my best to encourage her to put the toy back where it belongs. Sometimes I am successful, sometimes not.

I am aiming to have Wednesday as sewing day, yesterday it worked out great and I got a lot done. Definitely not a fan of cutting out patterns. It's kinda fiddely.


While I sew, Clarabel enjoys playing fabric store.

Fun game. I was mostly unsuccessful at encouraging fabric store manager to fold up her wares and pack them away.


Major snow last night. Ken shoveled out before bed and then again this morning.
Birds are fed though!

I am Learning Already

It is a good thing that I am starting my quilting experience slowly because already I have learned a very important lesson. I will share my new wisdom with you. 1inch + 1inch + 1inch + 1/2 inch DOES NOT equal 4 1/2 inches. (I suspect this it true with other things like centimeters, apples and kiwifruit but have not tested the hypothesis yet!)
Oh well, I was cutting pieces for the block along, so they will just be an inch smaller.

On Saturday, we suited up to locate our friendly neighborhood quilt store. (LQS?) I spent my allowance on some accessories. It is lovely.

These are some of the funnest craft supplies EVER! They are like the swift and ball winder of sewing. Thus making it really easy to cut a whole lot of fabric in the a short time before you even realize that you are cutting the wrong size.

Moving on...

We will be back to the quilt store soon. Out of a store full of fabric and stuff, Clarabel was able to locate princess fabric in 3.7 seconds.

Thought I would flash you my ancient Singer. Notice my pink magnetic pin cushion, another fun notion. My sewing basket in the background.

I really thought that this machine was finished. I was preparing to throw it out. Change of plans because it works great. Here's what I think happened. I think it was broken and I think my Nana Ferne found Mr. Singer, up there in sewing Heaven and gave him a piece of her mind. She was good at that. Likely he got jumping and sent his sewing machine minions to sort this machine out. As I said it is what I think happened.

P.S. I can't get my spell check to work.

Twirly Twirly Snow

This is my front step this morning.

Well, not the step but the greenery on my step. Obviously.

We had a bit of bad news this morning. Ken and Clarabel went out to shovel and Ken came right back in to tell me that the passenger side door was open on my car and the car was full of snow.
Oops. Then it occurred to me that Ken would have seen the open door and closed it when he came home from work. As I was telling him this, we both realized that our new car stereo was likely missing. Indeed it was. Nuts! Then I was extremely cross that some jack$#& broke into our car, took our stereo and didn't even have the manners to close the door so the car wouldn't be full or snow and soaking wet. Really!

I was up early this morning to finish Clarabel's Twirly Skirt so she could wear it to a party.


It does some serious twirling.

On the way home from the party, she said "There wasn't any dancing." I guess she thought everyone would be twirling.