Blog Readers’ Quilts and Quilting Information: Judith Brill’s Double Wedding Ring Quilt

Blog Readers’ Quilts and Quilting Information: September 22, 2013

Judith Brill’s Double Wedding Ring Quilt

Blog reader Judith Brill sent me this picture of the Double Wedding Ring quilt she made for her daughter’s wedding.

Wow!

I love the contemporary nature of this quilt. Look at the very interesting border. And look at how she has hand quilted the wedding ring motif down the side–in the white just above the border.

Here’s a close up of the wedding ring block:

And, more of the hand quilting:

And, more of the hand quilting in the border:

Really, this border is quite amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it on a double wedding ring quilt, and I love it.

I also really like the contemporary use of colors in the wedding rings. I think Judith said her daughter helped her pick out the colors.

GO JUDITH!

And thanks for reading the blog and for sharing your beautiful quilt!

Turkey Tracks: September Update

Turkey Tracks: September 22, 2014

September Update

Late August and ALL of September are really busy months for me in Maine.

First of all, son Bryan often comes for his birthday, which is September 11th. Bryan and Corinne like to come visiting in the early fall as most of the tourists have gone home or are taking a breather before the fall foliage gets rolling. And, it’s cooler.

Second, in Maine, September is the red month (tomatoes), not July, as is true for regions south of us. Plus, the gardens are cranking out food at alarming rates. So I am busy blanching, roasting, drying, lacto-fermenting, and generally reveling in all the bounty of our earth in Maine.

Third, MOFGA, the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association fair happens in the third weekend of September. This fair, also known as the Common Ground Fair, is one of my most favorite things to attend all year.

Fourth, Coastal Quilters starts its new year in September. I agreed to be President this year, so I’ve had a fair amount of organizing and reviewing to do to get back up to speed. We had a terrific organizational meeting September 14th, and we’ll have a really good year this year I think.

Fifth, I start the process of putting the yard to bed for the winter. The flower pots are played out. The wind chimes have to be taken down. The hummers are gone. The porch furniture and kayaks have to be stored. The chickens have to be winterized. And, the garden put to bed with the new garlic planted for next year. I have LOVED having that garden fenced all this summer–especially since I never was able to keep the hens I have now inside their pen.

So….I will do some separate entries on some of these events. But I will leave you with some fun pictures taken more or less in late August/early September.

Susan McBride of Golden Brook Farm grew these awesome cherry tomatoes. I experimented with drying these to see which ones were the best. Hands down, the purple heritage cherry tomato was. They are like eating candy–and I know I will enjoy having them on hand all winter when the snow is flying. That bag of highly colored bits is corn from Margaret Rauenhorst and Ronald VanHeeswijk. I’m going to grind it and make cornbread with it any day now.

I planted random squash seeds in the blue tubs this year. One is growing a Hubbard Squash–which delights me so much. I will go ahead and collect the squashes as soon as it stops raining and put them into the garage to “sugar off” for a bit. They do better when they have a bit of time to cure. The Blue Hubbard squash can get HUGE–and is a really great all-purpose squash. It’s delicious to eat and makes great “squash” pie too.

Here is a typical Hope’s Edge pick-up day–with Giovanna McCarthy. We have sacks of food and flowers!

I found this picture on John’s computer before we retired it. It’s one of my very favorites. He really had such a great eye for a good picture. LIkely I’ll make some cards from this picture…

Turkey Tracks: Summer Salad

Turkey Tracks: September 3, 2013

Summer Salad

August is not a great month for tender leaf lettuce. It’s not a great month for any lettuce for that matter. It’s too hot. This year has been a bit different–with all the coolness and rain, some of the leaf lettuce has survived.

The wonderful Melody Pendleton came and bailed me out with painting tasks–which I hate and which she likes to do. She does such beautiful work. She brought me this gorgeous lettuce from her garden one day. (I’ve replanted and my new crop is coming along.)

I made a gorgeous salad with her lettuce one day for lunch. I’ve been so hungry for sautéed zucchini all summer. So I sautéed some for this salad–and broke a fresh, soy-free egg into it at the end. I didn’t add cheese as to the pan as I had some fresh goat cheese. The last of the grated carrot/kohlrabi/corn/mustardy and garlicky dressing went on the side. And, some of the Sun Gold cherry tomatoes from the garden. And I had a very quick feast. Thanks to Melody! And the garden and the earth and the summer…

The garden is steadily producing. Here’s a morning’s offering:

And look at the cherry tomatoes I’ve amassed. I have enough to start a flat to dehydrate, though I’ll let them get a little riper on the counter first:

See those saladette tomatoes at the back of the cherries? I got those from Hope’s Edge CSA. And Melody brought me some, too. They are TERRIFIC roasted in the agro/dolce style. I learned that from Skye Gyngell’s book A Year in My Kitchen. Skye takes the notion of having “assets” around the kitchen to whole new levels. Thanks to Tara Derr Webb, of the Farmbar and Deux Peuces Farm in Charleston, SC, and Awendaw, SC, I have this book in my kitchen.

Here’s a very bad picture of the saladettes roasted. Agro-dolce means sweet/salty. So, basically, you sprinkle a bit of sugar, a bit of salt, grind over some pepper, and SLOW, SLOW roast at your oven’s lowest heat–which can take 3 or so hours. OK, if you get in a hurry, you can roast them quicker, and they are still delicious. They’re good hot or cold. Rose Thomas, La Dolce Vita Farm, roasts these guys in her wood-fired oven, and oh my gosh–the smoky taste from the wood fire is heavenly. I’m planting more of these guys next year.

With all the vegetables needing to be used, I made a “deep summer soup” one day. I had some frozen bone broth as a base, so I just sautéed veggies and lots of garlic–some ginger as I had a Bok Choy cabbage–and added some dehydrated mushrooms from a year or two ago. I threw a handful or two of short-grain brown rice into it as well. Once it’s cooked, or reheated, I spoon some of my sauerkraut into it and add a dollap of fermented piima cream. It’s delicious and so good for you with the rich bone broth as a base.

I know summer is over, but I can still feel the summer love.

Turkey Tracks: Easy, Fun Knitted Dishcloths

Turkey Tracks: September 3, 2013

Easy, Fun Knitted Dishcloths

At our (mostly) annual auction, one of Coastal Quilters members always gives a stack of knitted cotton dishcloths for the Silent Auction. They are beautiful, uniform, and wash and wear like iron.

I always buy as many as I can for gifts. Both of my daughters-in-law love these cotton knitted squared as much as I do.

“They’re easy,” my friend always says. she got the pattern from Cut ‘N Sew Fabrics and Yarn, Globe shopping ctr, Littleton, NH.

Now, don’t laugh, they are easy once you master the “yarn over” stitch–which I always seem to get garbled in my head. Here’s my first one–made with size 7 needles, I think. The best I can say is that it’s serviceable… (I used Peaches and Cream varigated cotton yarn–which needs to be used up and gotton out of my yarn stash.) I thought the knitting was too loose… We won’t even talk about the border the YO stitch forms…

Here’s the second one–which is much better, but knitted with much smaller needles (1’s?), which made it really tight and way too small. (I was starting to feel like the Three Bears story…)

Here’s the last one–and by now I felt at ease and as if I could crank these babies out. I forget, though, what needle I actually used. Maybe a 3?

Best of all, the yarn stash went down by three balls!!!

Here’s the pattern:

Row 1 K2 YO K1

Row 2 K2 YO K2

Row 3 K2 YO K3

Row 4 K2 YO K4

Continue to increase in this manner until there are 50 sts on needle. (If you want your cloth smaller, 45 sts will do, or if you want it larger, go to 60 sts)

Decreasing:

Row 1 K1 K2tog YO K2tog K to end of row

Continue to decrease in this manner until there are 5 sts. on needle. Next row:

K1 K2tog YO K2tog (four sts remain)

K1 K2tog K1 (three sts remain)

Last row: bind off last three

Weave in loose ends. Happy dish washing!

Interesting Information: Interview: Reza Aslan, Author Of ‘Zealot’ : NPR

Interesting Information: September 3, 2013

Historical Jesus

Yes, I’ve been listening to a lot of NPR, especially FRESH AIR, as I’ve been cutting up my quilting stash. I am happy to report that I am fifteen minutes away from being done with that task. YEAH!!!

Terry Gross interviewed Reza Aslan recently about his book on the historical Jesus–who was, apparently, a Zealot, or part of an historical movement that sought to make radical change in his world.

Aslan, an Iranian, came to the US when he was around 16–escaping from Iran with his family. He converted to Evangelical Christianity at 16 and set off on a spiritual and educational journey that has filled his life. From Wikipedia: Aslan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in religions from Santa Clara University, a Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa‘s Writers’ Workshop, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. Aslan also received a Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology, focusing in the history of religion, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.^[7]^[8]^[9] His dissertation was titled “Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework”.^[10]

Aslan is now a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Iowa. Sometime before Harvard, he returned to being a Muslim.

Whatever you think of Aslan or the historical Jesus (versus the spiritual Jesus of metaphor), Terry Gross’s interview is fascinating from many angles. You can hear the interview and read all the comments following it at this url. And, yes, there was a flamboyant Fox interview that went virile–where the interviewer was trying, unfairly, to create a sensational event and where Aslan made more claims about his historical credentials than maybe could be made. (But blended degrees like Aslan has can contain a ton of historical work–which criticizers might not fully realize.)

Have fun. I think the book would be an interesting read. If only my read pile wasn’t so out of control…

Interview: Reza Aslan, Author Of ‘Zealot’ : NPR.

Interesting Information: Paying Till It Hurts: Why American Health Care Is So Pricey : NPR

Interesting Information: September 3, 2013

PAYING TILL IT HURTS

Terry Gross of the NPR Program FRESH AIR interviewed Elizabeth Rosenthal about the series of articles she is doing for The New York Times on our very broken medical system–a system which is overcharging patients and which has no rational, controlling mechanism to keep costs (or to provide science-based good medicine) within reasonable levels. Reasonable here can be determined by comparing US health care costs to the rest of the developed world.

Terry’s interview with Rosenthal is so interesting. And in the following link, you can find that interview AND links to Rosenthal’s pieces on colonoscopies, joints, and childbirth in the US.

Don’t miss this one!

Paying Till It Hurts: Why American Health Care Is So Pricey : NPR.

Turkey Tracks: Fifty-year Friendships

Turkey Tracks: August 27, 2013

Fifty-year Friendships

For an Air Force Brat whose family moved around a lot, old friendships go back to either my mother’s home town, Reynolds, Georgia, or to high school.

I went to about 14 different schools over the course of my education. So I can’t remember who my teachers were or, in a lot of cases, who my friends were. Something about that kind of transient life just whisked away memories other people hold very dear.

The closest I can come to these old memories is high school. We were stationed in Omaha, Nebraska, home of Strategic Air Command (SAC) headquarters. I think this posting was the longest we ever had–and I still went to three different schools. I arrived at Bellevue High School in Bellevue, Nebraska, which was adjacent to Offutt Air Force Base, in my sophomore year. (I went to Central HIgh School in Omaha my freshman year, and made a long bus ride to get there. I didn’t know a single soul and could not break into cliques of students who had known each other from pre-school.

But a lot of Air Force Brats attended Bellevue High School–and I knew Becky Reavis (now Meyer) from Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana. After Barksdale, we went to Tampa, Florida. I don’t know where Becky went, if anywhere, before Bellevue. But she was there, and she took me under her wing immediately. She is a year older, class of 1962.

I had many friends in the class of 1962. Among them is Carroll Risk Rhodes, who called me out of the blue the other day. And guess what? She’s a passionate quilter too and still makes a lot of her clothes.

Here are some pictures of her beautiful quilts:

Like me, she loves using squares. This one is all batiks. Isn’t it lovely? It reminds me a bit of the “La La Log Cabin” quilt that Rhea from Alewives Quilting here in Damariscotta Mills taught local quilters to do. There’s one of mine on this blog elsewhere called “Sun, Sea, Sand.”

Here’s a stunning, contemporary “rail fence” idea. I love Carroll’s use of color here. Isn’t the border fabric wonderful? I wonder if she chose the block colors using the border fabric or chose the border using the block fabrics? This idea would be a fun way to use stash fabrics, too.

Here’s another contemporary quilt, and again, I love the way Carroll uses color. This one hangs in her sewing room.

And, finally, how fun is this quilt which Carroll has back of a grey couch. Love the contemporary way she has used the bar form, and the piano key border with random widths is terrific.

I’m trying to talk Carroll into coming to Maine to visit and quilt with me. But she lives in Florida with a water view, so I know it’s going to be tough!

It would be so fun for our Coastal Quilters group to meet her and see her quilts.

Thanks for calling me, Carroll!

And, my own 1963 Bellevue High School class is having its 50th reunion this September in Omaha. I have reconnected with so many of my classmates recently, and that has been wonderful, too.

Interesting Information: “Furloughed Federal Employees”

Interesting Information: August 27, 2013

Furloughed Federal Employees

John and I lived in Falls Church, Virginia, for almost 40 years.

Former neighbor and dear friend Gina Caceci has a recent letter published in The Washington Post‘s letters to the editor–July 30, 2013, A12.

I loved it.

Here it is:

Here are two suggestions for “out of office” messages that furloughed federal employees can use in their emails or on voice mails:

1. “I am currently out of the office on unpaid furlough. Please contact Congress for assistance. They are actually not working but still getting paid for it.”

2. “I’m currently out of the office on furlough. If you don’t understand what this means, please go to your bank, take out 20 percent of your last paycheck and burn it.”

Gina Caceci, Falls Church.

Somewhere I read that Congress is only slated to work NINE DAYS in September. Good heavens!

Here’s a picture of my beautiful friend, Gina

Books, Documentaries, Reviews: Don McLean: American Troubadour

Books, Documentaries, Reviews: August 26, 2013

Don McLean : American Troubadour

A remarkable new documentary about the Don McLean story produced by multi Emmy-award winning film director Jim Brown due to air across the PBS network in March 2012.

* * *

A few months back, the Strand theater in Rockland, Maine, screened the new documentary about Don McLean, AMERICAN TROUBADOUR. Both Don and Patrisha were present and hosted a question and answer session. Both are treasured members of our community–they do so much really good work here.

I missed this event at the time and was sad to do so as Patrisha McClean is a friend. Barb Melchisky went and told me that she really enjoyed the film and the time with Don and Patrisha. “It was,” said Barb, “a lovely and interesting evening.”

So, I treated myself. I ordered the DVD, and one night when Mike and the boys were here, we watched it. And we had a “lovely and interesting evening, too.”

Don McClean’s music was iconic for my teenage and young adult years. (Who in my generation could forget the plane crash that took the life of Buddy Holly?) Don’s music was apparently iconic for my son Michael as well. As we watched, and smiled, and laughed, and said “oh, I didn’t know that,” we began to realize that ten-year old Bo was fully engaged with the film as well. And, indeed, Bo went around for days afterwards singing the refrain to “Bye Bye MIss American Pie” and kept asking “well what do those lines mean?” And, it turned out that Michael had done a paper on this very famous song in college and had never forgotten it.

Perhaps more importantly, Bo could see that he could learn to play the guitar well and could do that own his own if he wanted to badly enough. He also took home the idea that he could write songs for himself. And, others. Important songs that capture an era. It will be fun to see how all the tropes in Don’s life percolates in Bo’s head.

I plan to watch the film again this winter–and to maybe will invite some friends to watch it with me. Maybe we will do that even sooner as other visitors and family are coming who would be interested in this man and his music.

In any case, I recommend this documentary to you. And I thank Don for being who he is and for all the gifts of his music.

Interesting Information: Did You Know?

Did You Know?

That SOY is being added to Whole Foods chicken, duck, and goose liver pates?

Yep! Soy Protein Isolate (SPI)–which is a highly processed, industrial food which, according to Kaayla T. Daniel in THE WHOLE SOY STORY, is full of toxins and carcinogens.

Why? To pad the real ingredients in order to make more money.

* * *

Here are some other surprising places soy is found.

Celestial Seasons Teas (some) contain soy lecithin.

Vaccines can contain soy adjuvants.

Instant Oatmeal (which is a poor food choice to begin with) can contain SPI, partially hydrogenated soy oil (a trans fat) and high fructose corn oil.

Soft drinks (Mountain Dew Squirt, Fanta Orange, and other citrusy sodas) can contain brominated vegetable oil (first developed as a flame retardant)–which works to emulsify the citrus-like flavors.

Artificial fire logs and soy candles can put soy into the air you breath-which is a serious issue for those with soy allergens.

Corkboards and floor mats.

Meltaway cupcake liners.

Coated cast-iron cookware.

The takaway here: keep reading labels as they change all the time.

This information was taken from “Soy Alert!” in the Summer 2013 “Wise Traditions,” the journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation–and was written by Kaayla T. Daniel. This journal is fully available on-line.

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