Turkey Tracks: Becca-Babb Brott’s Latest Quilts

Turkey Tracks:  October 16, 2018

Becca Babb-Brott’s Latest Quilts

Becca’s “Long Time gone” quilt top, designed by Jen Kingwell, is done.  This quilt was a challenge in our Mt. Battie Modern Quilt Guild.  Note that Becca used a variety of neutral strips to piece her blocks together.  She is not going to add a border.

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Becca took an improv piecing class with Denyce Schmidt this past summer at Alewives Quilt Shop in Damariscotta Mills, Maine.  The quilt top emerged the other day—all finished.  It’s colorful and fun, and Becca really enjoyed the process she learned.  Denyce Schmidt’s web site is as follows:  http://dsquilts.com/

I am really intrigued by quilts made with the gorgeous solids on the market these days.  There is one in my future for sure.

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Turkey Tracks: Yummy Dinner 2

Yummy Dinner 2

SIL Maryann Enright visited this past weekend.  We had grilled lamb chops for dinner Friday night.  It poured rain Saturday, so we settled for an inside easy meal:  creamed fresh haddock–local and so fresh–with vegetables and rice.

We also saw some sweet peas at the Belfast Coop, so we picked up a few handfuls.

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This meal is so easy and so delicious and cooks in about 25 minutes.

Lay fish in a flat pan with sides:  I use a pyrex glass pan.

Salt the fish.  Add whatever veggies you have on hand or buy.  In season ripe tomatoes are yummy with this meal.  I can’t eat them though.  I had some leftover sautéed chard from last night’s dinner, so scattered that about.  Then I added some THINLY SLICED onion, red pepper, tiny baby zucchini, and carrots.  Slice thin to cook fast, especially with firm veggies like the carrot.

Salt more and scatter lots of herbs over everything–fresh if you can, dried if you can’t but not so much as you would fresh herbs.

Then, the magic, spread LOTS of raw heavy cream over the layers.  I used about 1 1/2 cups.  The fish will make a sauce with the cream.  You could add a dollop of white wine if you like.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes in a preheated oven.

Serve in a kind of bowl plate so you can add lots of the sauce.

Leftovers are delicious gently reheated in an oven.

PS:  you can do a similar casserole with chicken.  Lay raw rice on the bottom of a thick pan you can cover.  Lay boneless chicken cut into pieces over the rice.  Add in whatever veggies, cheese, and herbs you might like.  These veggies can be a thicker cut as the dish will cook longer.  Add the cream and a little more liquid as you have to have enough to cook the rice.  Bake longer–more like 40 or so minutes.  See if rice is cooked through.

Or cook rice separately, use the cut up boneless chicken, and keep veggies sliced thin for a quicker cook time.

I have used whole, bone-in pieces of chicken, too.  That would have a 45 minute or so cook time.

Enjoy!

Turkey Tracks: Another Lark Knit Shirt

Turkey Tracks:  October 11, 2018

Another Lark Knit Shirt

Sue Kandziolka gave me this knit fabric last spring.  It will go with so many of my clothes, including the soft red knit jacket I made last spring.  I used the Grainline Lark Knit shirt pattern and cut out the shirt last June.  I then got “summer busy” and didn’t get back to actually making the shirt until last weekend.

I did remember how to use the serger, and it didn’t take long to sew up the shirt.  I have set up my Janome 6600 next to the serger and put in a ball point knit needle, so I can just go back and forth without having to change eveything on my big Janome 8900.  (The Janome 6600 is an excellent workhorse of a machine.  I’ve had mine for 15 years now and still love it.). I have a sweat shop organized for winter sewing!

 

 

The Lark is very long, so tucks in beautifully.  Or, hangs out beautifully.

I put on the shirt right away—it’s so soft.

Thanks Sue K. For this gift.

On to the next!

Turkey Tracks: Yummy Dinner

Turkey Tracks:  October 9, 2018

Yummy Dinner!

Everything on this plate is local food.  And organic.

Grilled lamb chops (I get a whole lamb each fall and eat it from nose to tail), beets, fall spinach sauteed in butter and garlic, late summer cantalope—all from Hope’s Edge CSA.  The boiled fingerling potatoes swiming in butter are in our local markets now as well.  I look forward to them every fall.

A friend asked me to take a look at the food documentary THE MAGIC PILL.  It’s excellent and features many of my food heroes.  I highly recommend it.  You can get it on Netflix, Amazon, or UTube.  It’s well worth taking some time to watch.  I’ve been eating this way for many years now and have never been healthier, even in spite of the Histamine Intolerance issue, which I believe to be genetically acquired from my dad.

Turkey Tracks: Lynn Vermeulen’s Tula Pink Quilt

Turkey Tracks:  October 9, 2018

Lynn Vermeulen’s Tula Pink Quilt

She’s finished it and is putting on the binding!

It’s a spectacular quilt!

The longarm quilting is awesome in both the sashing and the individual blocks.

Here’s her backing.  I also like the darker binding she chose.  It’s making a really nice final framing.

Go Lynn!

Documentaries: RBG

Documentaries:  October 9, 2018

RBG

I watched the other night on Netflix the movie RBG—a documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

As a young woman, newly married and busy with babies, I kind of slept through the time when RBG was working to change laws that discriminated against minorities of many kinds, including men whose wives died leaving them with an infant to raise but who didn’t qualify for federal aid in the way a woman would.  She fought for women to be able to control their own bodies.  She fought for women to receive equal pay with men.  She fought for military women to have the same housing allowances that military men received.    She fought…to educate men blind to the inequalities they supported in a democracy.  She fought to put in place legally what the constitution decreed.  She appeared before the Supreme Court many times, defending these principles.

In 1993, President Clinton nominated her for the Supremes.  She had a 90+ approval vote from the Senate, which included, for instance, Orrin Hatch’s vote.

It’s a fascinating story—one women should see, of course.  But also men.  RBG’s history is American history.

Like her or dislike her, she is an amazing woman.  When I compare her character to Donald Trump’s or Brett Kavanaugh’s, I despair.  Trump uses courts to bully people, and Kavanaugh has never actually tried a case in a courtroom.

Now, the court, which has acquired a partisan majority that is backed by only a minority of the American population, is rolling back a lot of what RBG accomplished for minorities—much of which, I would argue, too many people are taking for granted until they discover what they, personally, have just lost.

So, RBG is reduced to being a dissenting voice on the court.  She is no longer a path setter as we roll ourselves backwards to the place where the wealthy control the levels of power in our country.  RBG can do no more than try to hold firm in her convictions about what is ethical, moral, and just in a democratic society.

This movie is important. There is a docudrama about RBG coming out at Christmas time, but this one is solid.  Take some time to watch it, ok?  It’s available on Netflix, Amazon, and UTube.

Turkey Tracks: My “ `Long Time Gone’ Cotton+Steel” Quilt

Turkey Tracks:  October 9, 2018

My “ `Long Time Gone’: Cotton+Steel” Quilt

It’s done!

And it’s another quilt that has surprised me in that I really like it.

Jen Kingwell designed this improv quilt, which uses traditional block forms but in an improv setting.

I quilted with a light grey thread and “McTavished” it.  I really love the texture formed with this dense quilting method.

The backing is also a Cotton+Steel fabric.  I wanted something where the quilting would not show all that much.  A colored fabric just wasn’t working for me.  The first fabric I chose was orange (one of the big butterfly prints), and I didn’t like how the grey thread was looking on the orange.  I bound with the same backing fabric.

Here are some random pics of blocks on the front:

I like how the black and neutral fabrics are working in this quilt, which is another reason that kind of backing was better for the quilt.

 

Slater helps with everything I do.  Everything.

 

Turkey Tracks: Take A Walk in the Woods With Me

Turkey Tracks: October 7 , 2018

Take A Walk in the Woods With Me

I am so lucky here in Maine to have access to gorgeous “wellness” and other woods paths where one can take one’s dogs and walk them off-leash, providing they are well behaved and that any waste is picked up.  Even having to walk a dog on leash is better than village streets and sidewalks.  There is so much more for everyone to see, and a dog like Slaty can really work out his kinks.

Here’s the start of one such trail.

To walk a dog free of a leash, the dog must come when called.  Every time.  Slaty does, thanks to the training method I learned years ago:  Peter Loeb’s SMARTER THAN YOU THINK.

The woods are beginning to show the advent of fall.  The ferns are all turning color now, and some of the trees are as well.

The woods are becoming a fairy land of gold, orange, and red.

While No No Penny and I stick to the path, Slaty is making big circles out to our right or left, running at full bore through the woods, underbrush, and over rocks.  He often finishes a circuit by coming up behind us on the path at full speed.

I can see him up ahead of us, but sometimes I lose him in the dappled shadows of the woods.  “Slaty where are you?” Always makes him pop back on the path so I can see him.

The underbrush can be dense in our woods.

At times he waits for us in the bends of the path.  He always knows exactly where we are.

After some recent rain, the woods are full of brightly colored mushrooms.  Here are pictures of the yellow Amanita muscaria, whose common name is Fly Agaric.  Yes, it is poisonous, but it is so pretty.  As it ages, it turns deep orange near the center.  It often has sort of scaly patches over the cap, remants of a covering (voluval) when it begins to emerge from the soil.  I saw patches of 40 or more in these woods.

 

Here mushrooms work to degrade a rotting tree.  This particular kind of shelf mushroom is not poisonous, but not really edible.  Some are, though, like the delicious Chicken of the Woods and Oyster mushrooms.

A spur of the path crosses a stream:

This huge old beauty is on the down-hill swing:

And now Slaty comes, even when he’s tired.

 

This path, with its spur, is about 2 miles.  It’s a joyful gift.

Turkey Tracks: AC Slater Points

Turkey Tracks:  October 7, 2016

AC Slater Points

 

I’ve seen him raise his right front foot numerous times now if he thinks “there’s something in those bushes” when he’s out in the woods with me.

He’s mostly Jack Russle terrior, for sure.  There’s some hound—his big old bark is hound.  But somewhere, there’s some hunting dog pointer.  His tail does not go out straight.  Instead it curves over his back.  But the point is there.  You’ll see it at the end of this little video.

This dog is so much fun!

Turkey Tracks: Mt. Battie Modern September Show and Tell

Turkey Tracks:  October 4, 2018

Mt. Battie Modern September Show and Tell

Lynn Vermeulen has completed her New York Beauty quilt.

Next to Churn Dash, this block is my favorite quilting block.  Lynn’s quilt is AWESOME!

Tori Manzi’s Katja Marek millifiore is taking shape now.  Tori and Becca Babb-Brott have figured out a way to sew these blocks without using paper piecing and glue sticks or thread basting.  They swear it is much faster and easier on the wrists.

Margaret Elaine Jinno’s medallion center to a Jen Kingwell quilt is almost done.

Sarah Ann Smith showed us her new lupine quilt.  Check out Sarah’s blog for more of her work.  Sarah is a nationally recognized quilter and teaches at the Houston Show, among other places.  She had her own exhibit there this past year.  Sarah is known for her quilting, in particular, and has published at least two major books.