Our Life in Maine, My Craft Projects, Quilting, Recipes, Book and Media Reviews
Turkey Tracks: March 7, 2015
My mind has been imagining the daffodils I planted last fall.
I can’t wait to see them.
Meanwhile, New York blog friend Judith Brill sent me this tantalizing video: “Dance of the Flowers.”
Each flower is filmed for days and the film is collated for seven minutes to produce the “dance.”
Enjoy!
The Life of flowers (Жизнь цветов) from VOROBYOFF PRODUCTION on Vimeo.
She also sent this cartoon, which amused me to no end.
Turkey Tracks: March 6, 2015
I stopped on the way into the driveway to check for mail and thought you might get a kick out of seeing the “problem” of snow plows and mailboxes in Maine in deep snow.
Here you can see how thoroughly shorn my mailbox is from its post.
Most folks do exactly what I did: stick the mailbox into the snow bank as best as one can until the snow season is over and the snow bank is gone.
Here’s a picture that shows you how vulnerable the mailbox is to the plows when they are dealing with a lot of snow on the side of the road:
You can see how far out into what is left of the road the mailbox would be. I put up several reflective markers, but with all the snow we’ve had, the plow drivers are tired and often are coming down a very steep, curving hill with a load of snow in front.
Stephen Pennoyer tells me “come spring” we’re going to replace this box with one that will swing to the side with the plow’s movement.
Turkey Tracks: March 2, 2015
I was coming back from Rockland the other day and saw this house caved in.
At first I thought it was fire damage.
But, no, the weight of snow on the roof caved in the roof.
I have no idea how sturdy the building was to begin with, but, the picture makes a good metaphor of the damage inflicted on this part of the country this winter of 2015.
Turkey Tracks/Quilting: February 25, 2015
And, for now, it has stopped, after about five hours or so…
Here’s the view from my kitchen doors and through the windows of the lots and lots of snow we have–higher than my window, higher than my height:
Through the open door–you can get some perspective on all that white by looking at in relation to the top of the door the snow shovel, which is more than two feet off the ground:
The paths leading off the deck–I can’t see the hot tub anymore. The stakes on the hill (you can see their tops) are five feet plus tall.
Meanwhile, I’ve been quilting, quilting. It’s always fun to pull a quilt off the long arm and see how the quilting is working over the whole quilt for the first time:
For this very traditional quilt, I used a traditional clam shell quilting pattern done with groovy boards:
The soft green blends with the backing, which is not shown here.
These three scrappy quilts I’ve made recently are brightening up the downstairs sitting room so much.
I’m sewing down the binding on the streak of lightening quilt at night now–but am so drawn to the hand sewing project with the octagons. Those scraps are on the yellow table. And here’s what it’s looking like now. I put in some side triangles last night:
I think I’ll applique this piece when it’s done–to a set of borders–so this will be the center. But, who knows?
I think I’d like the octagons better if they were SMALLER. But, you know I love small pieces for the most part in a quilt…
February 21, 2015
Here she is: Bonnie Hunter’s 2014 Mystery Quilt, “Grand Illusion,” inspired by the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan.
You may recall that Bonnie gives out her colors in early November some time. We all scramble around picking fabrics and getting ready to go. Then she releases the first “clue”–which is the making of the quilt’s first set of units–on the Friday after Thanksgiving. (Why on earth do they call that Friday “Black Friday”?) After that, we are off and running at the pace that each of us can manage. Some times we fall behind, some times we take months to finish the quilt, some times we finish it about a week after Bonnie releases her version–the “reveal”–sometime between Christmas and New Year’s.
I finished mine this week. And I will say up front that I need better pictures of the whole quilt than I have. I’ll get some at our next quilt meeting (we’ve had to cancel both the January and February meetings due to the Maine weather) when friends will hold her up for me.
See the secondary pattern that forms around the turquoise square? See the big blue star? And the diamond that outlines it with the darker pinks?
Here’s the main block in my quilt–surrounded by the green/white/black sashings
:
Here’s the very cool border. ( I love how the yellow is working in this quilt.)
Here’s the backing fabric–which I think is an INSPIRED choice for this very contemporary quilt. I found the fabric at Fiddlehead in Belfast, Maine.
Bluebirds, bicycles, and daisy’s–both in the bicycle basket and, larger, in the background. The fabric also has a very French feel to it…
I quilted with a warm yellow, using a Daisy pantograph from Anne Bright called “He Loves Me” at 10 inches.
Here’s a view from the front of one daisy:
And one from the back that as chance would have it, kind of overlays one of the white daisies:
It’s an awfully cute quilt–especially for a teen age girl.
(Wild-haired dolly will soon be going to her owner, who will be 2 in April and probably reeling from the shock of a new baby.)
February 20, 2015
How’s that for alliteration?
And. oops, this one published before I wanted it to. It was meant for tomorrow…
I finished Bonnie Hunter’s 2014 Mystery Quilt, “Grand Illusions,” and will show that on a separate blog post. It’s a spectacular, exciting quilt and was so much fun to make.
Look at this big red border! This scrappy streak of lightening quilt top is done. It will go on the long arm later today. Remember that this quilt top has come entirely out of my stash and from the leftovers of two other scrappy quilts that I am using in my downstairs tv/sitting room.
I’m working on another hand-sewing quilt: octagons.
I am playing around with the opposites on the color wheel. This one is blue and orange. Remember the Lucy Boston quilt I did was two more opposites: red and green.
Here it is again:
Purple and yellow may be hexies…
Who knows?
This year, American Patchwork and Quilting magazine has issued a challenge to make quilts with 4-patch blocks. Bonnie Hunter is one of the quilters–and you can go to the magazine’s web page and get the complete list. The current magazine has all sorts of gorgeous pictures as part of this challenge. Remember last year that their challenge involved low-contrast quilts–or, “tone it down” is how I remember them phrasing the challenge.
Anyway, Bonnie is doing something mysterious with this kind of block, put on-point, and which starts with 2-inch squares. Here are two I have made, and I love them!
Look at my 2-inch square box. It definitely needs to be cleared out…
So I will be making 4-patches of light and dark, regardless of what I do with them all. Four-patches are endlessly useable. So this will be a new leader/ender project.
I am also playing around with blocks for a low contrast quilt–in more of the Kaffe Fasset mold–color drenched, I hope.
I didn’t want that central set of blocks to have any order to move your eye around… Or to line it up–in the way alternating light/dark squares would do.
It’s a work in progress, and I am having fun playing.
You can see the backing for the streak of lightening quilt on the long arm…
Turkey Tracks: February 15, 2015
The sun just came out for a few minutes.
The wind gusts have stopped.
Blizzard 2 of 2015 veered 50 or so miles to the east, which made it mostly miss us in the Camden, Maine, area.
We got blowing snow with only about 4 to 5 inches accumulation and high winds. The storm hit southern Maine and the Bar Harbor area north of us pretty hard though.
I took my chickens a bowl of warm food a bit ago. Here’s a video of them inside the coop:
You can see that the bedding is really beat up. I keep adding more, but I have no where to put old bedding at the moment. Clean up of the cage/coop is going to be a tough job this spring. The door to the left leads into their cage. And you can also see that the frost bite on the roosters comb has almost healed.
This coop is getting really beat up. I’m hoping Stephen Pennoyer will help me repair it this spring…
Or we will come up with a different kind of coop–maybe placed up against the side of the house…
Here’s a pic of all the snow around and on the coop:
And here are the eggs you just saw in the coop. Aren’t they pretty?
One (or more?) of the hens is occasionally laying a tiny egg. I have not seen this before now. I broke one open, and there was a tiny, tiny yellow yolk in the white inside.
Turkey Tracks: February 14, 2015
It was -15 on friend Gail’s garden thermomenter this morning. She’s in Camden, which is lower than where I love. Just the kind of “valley” place where the temps were predicted to be the lowest.
It was -8 on my thermometer when I went to bed last night. And -3.5 when I got down to the kitchen around 8. The girls and I snugged in a big longer. I didn’t want to open the chicken coop until the temps had come up a bit anyway. All the turkeys were in the yard paths when I went out to dip some sunflower seeds on the front deck.
The sun was out–which brought the temps up quickly. When I went to the garage to get more chicken food and down the hill to the mailbox, it was about 15–which felt almost warm. Ah, the relativity of…low temps.
Now, the sky is snow white.
Snow is coming hard off and on…
I took the chickens some “love” early morning: a big bowl filled with some old bacon I had that needed frying, all the grease from the fried bacon, some raw hamburger, and some warmed milk.
Nothing says love to chickens in the cold like warm food–something I have learned from Rose Thomas, aka “Chicken Rose” in my family as I am the lucky friend of TWO Rose’s.
Then I came in and made myself, aka Lovey, a hearty breakfast: a delicious grapefruit half, two fresh eggs, fabulous local bacon, real butter on the GF toast, and homemade blackberry jam from blackberries picked last summer.
I am one happy woman this morning.
Happy Valentine’s Day Everyone!
Turkey Tracks: February 13, 2015
The other night on the local news I heard that Portland, Maine, has had 6 feet and 1 inch of snow–that total has climbed as it snowed more on Wednesday and Thursday.
Here in Camden, which is just under two hours further north, we’ve sometimes had more snow (much more) and sometimes a bit less. So, it’s pretty safe to say we’ve had at least 6 feet of snow this past winter–and most of it landed in the last three weeks.
We’re all braced for the blizzard that will start tomorrow afternoon late. Predictions are for up to 24 or so inches of light, blowing snow. None of us has a clue about where we’ll put another two feet of snow.
I’ve had a go-round with the electricity in the chicken coop, but that’s solved now. I have TWO lines going out there from different outside outlets. The water heater is working again. Our temps tonight are dropping to -14 degrees. That’s NOT wind chill. Or, that’s the prediction anyway. So getting electricity back to the chicken coop was really important.
I have two more longarm passes on the Bonnie Hunter 2014 Mystery Quilt, Grand Illusion. So, I will be binding that quilt later today. It’s always so much fun to unwind a finished quilt and to see the whole of the quilting in it.
I finished two knitted wool hats last night–made to go with wool scarves I made last year. I went a little crazy with buttons.
I put pics of this cowl (infinity scarf) up last year.
And:
There is a good match with the hat yarn in the lighter yarn in the scarf–it just isn’t showing in this picture.
Here’s the quilt-in-progress on the design wall–a streak of lightening pattern. This fabric is the leftover from the other two scrappy quilts I recently made from my 2 1/2 strip bin. I was left with some shorter pieces, so I cut 2 1/2by 4 1/2-inch rectangles.
I’ll use an inner border that’s about an 1 1/2 inches and put on a wider border of some sort–yet to be determined. This quilt will look very traditional when I’m finished. Simple and useful. This quilt will join its sisters in the downstairs tv/sitting room–replacing sturdy but ugly couch dog blankets. So far, so good in terms of looks and wear.
I wondered why the suet feeders were disappearing so fast. Then I saw this guy yesterday:
It’s the best picture I could get in a series. The Pileated Woodpeckers are HUGE and very jittery and scary. He’s been around off and on all winter, but today he treated me to quite a show. At one point he sat in the middle of the flat green feeder and just rocked himself back and forth. As long as I didn’t move a muscle, he stayed around.
Stephen Pennoyer has been working on more pour over coffee stands. Here’s the most recent picture he sent me:
I see a two-hole in this picture…
OK, bring on the blizzard. I’m ready.
Turkey Tracks: February 9, 2015
The snow has stopped!
And the sun is very weak in the cloudy sky, but one can feel its warmth and see the brightness.
I went out this morning and had no problems getting out to Hope to pick up chicken food, mealy worms (my chickens are ecstatically digging for them out in their coop and cage), and more black-oiled sunflower seeds. (The turkeys are totally famished in this desert of snow.)
I don’t have to cook today because I cooked yesterday, so I will be able to get Bonnie Hunter’s mystery quilt on the long arm and to start quilting it.
I made a winter stand-by–a beef bone broth soup. Look at the color and jellyness of this broth which I made earlier in the week. Remember that I cooked this broth with the bones and added carrots, onion, garlic, a bit of celery, some salt, and a dollop (1/4 cup) of vinegar which helps leach the minerals out of the bones. (If I had leftover wine, I would have used it.)
I removed the solid layer of fat (beef tallow) from the top of the cooled broth–it all came up in one round piece. I rinsed it, warmed it in a pot, and poured it into a jar. While I cooked, the tallow softly jelled, and I spread some on a piece of toast, salted it, and YUMMO, what a treat. (It jells a creamy white, and I had some this morning too.) People used to routinely save the fat drippings from a roast and spread them on toast for breakfast or lunch. It’s delicious and good for you. I will eat it and use it as an oil to sauté…whatever.
I have been yearning for a French onion soup, but decided to upgrade that a bit. I started with 6 or so BIG onions–sautéing them SLOWLY in my enamel/iron pot in a mixture of coconut oil (UNREFINED–I get my oil from Wilderness Family Naturals) and raw butter. I also added two whole garlic heads–after I smashed and roughly cut the cloves. (Garlic is a GREAT immune system builder, and both onions and garlic contain sulfur, of which we all need more.)
I cooked these onions for about 40 minutes on low heat–until they were golden and the onions were starting to stick to the pan. At the end you have to lower the heat and watch and stir often. If they start to burn, add the broth immediately.
After adding the broth, I threw in several handfuls of the kale I dried all last summer and stored in Mason jars:
Taste now to see if you need more salt. I used a local salt dried in Maine in hoop houses–it comes in different coarseness. This one was fine. I keep different kinds of good sea salt–some are coarse, some are flaky, some are lovely colors of pink or are grey and moist–depending from where they have come.
I wanted a bit of thickening, so I added two handfuls of short-grain organic rice. (My pot was rather large so this isn’t too much rice–it will swell to about 2 cups when cooked.)
I let the broth with the rice simmer slowly for about 30 minutes to cook the rice, then turned it off and let it sit UNCOVERED on the stove. It’s not going to spoil in the few hours before I ready to eat dinner. If you cover it, that’s trouble as the trapped heat can grow bacteria.
Meanwhile, I made a meatball mixture using the defrosted grass-fed hamburger I keep in my freezer.
I added two of my eggs to one pound of hamburger:
I grated a carrot into the mixture. Look at these pretty rainbow carrots. They are so sweet.
I tore up some of the gluten-free bread heels I had leftover, added some salt, added some Penzy’s herbal spice (a Provencal mix I keep on hand), and made meatballs.
I put the meatballs in the refrigerator–not even bothering to cover them–until I was ready to reheat the soup gently. The meatballs cook in the hot simmering broth in about five minutes. Don’t boil them please. They float to the top when done.
I grated some raw milk Swiss cheese and put it in the bottom of my soup bowl, where the hot soup melted it. I could also have used a cheddar or somesuch and added it to the meatballs instead of in the bottom of the bowl. But I wanted the French Onion Soup feel of the cheese melted into the soup.
It was a delicious dinner–eaten with a few crunchy organic, GMO-free tortilla chips.
The broth just screams healthy, healthy, healthy, and it goes down so, so easily.
You cannot, cannot, cannot get the taste and health of this soup using a boxed or canned broth.
And today I don’t have to cook!
Tonight I will add some of the lacto-fermented sauerkraut on the top of the soup as a condiment, which will add some lovely probiotics and enzymes for digestion.
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