Court Date and Quilting Date

I liked the Quilting Date better than the Court Date but it had to be done.  This is the Norton woman who was dumping the dogs at CAAWS, she was given probation on the agreement that she would not have animals during the probation period.  And she still has animals.  Dogs, cats, horses and cattle.  We have pictures from a neighboring property showing the animals loose in poor condition.  The hearing was to revoke her probation and send her to jail.  But since she is 74 years old the judge does not want to put her in jail and continued her probation as is the the requirement that an investigative report be done on her property to see the status of the animals.  One horse, in particularly poor condition she stated was 35 years old and has been euthanized due to ill health.  We will try to obtain pictures of that horse to prove she was not truthful in court, which would be bad news for her, we hope.

For Quilting...............

I couldn't' wait, I had to finish up the Blue Corn Flower quilt and I think it has already been claimed by Carrie as a baby shower present.  All I need is to do the binding, and wouldn't you know, I think I may have to go buy 1/2 yard of fabric.  I cannot imagine that I don't have anything to go with this, but I don't see anything right now.  I will dig in the closet in a minute after our conversation is over.

I have to tell you, my quilting machine did a BEAUTIFUL job.  No breaks, no snarls, no tension problems.  Nothing.  Probably for the very first time ever.  YEAH!  (jumping for joy)

I used polyester batting, which I don't like but I won at the Country Fair last year.  I think I will donate the other two bats I have of the polyester stuff.

She is so excited about the quilt, her friends totally LOVE getting a baby quilt.  So cool!  I have another that will go to her friend who is having a boy but I will use some flannel rather than that horrible poly batting.

I also have decided to take the poly batting OUT of Dan's quilt and replace it with either the thin 80/20 cotton or the flannel.  I can get yards and yards and yards of white or cream flannel from Hobby Lobby at 40% off or at Joann's now that we have the competition for cheap.  But a lot of work to undo that huge quilt.  I think it needs to be done though.  And I will have stuff to do on the sofa watching TV at night now!  LOL.

I really like the flannel inside.  We certainly don't need hot quilts here in South Louisiana but we do need something to cover our legs at night on the sofa when the fan is going and the TV is on and you are cuddling with a dog or two.  Or a hubby or two.....oh.......who would want TWO of those!  LOL

June's Quilt Your Quilt Tops Challenge

Patty the Quilt Lady  has thrown herself into this challenge!  I can always dangle a prize and a challenge and get some friends to tag along!  Check out her list of quilts to finish.

I like the way she has them laid out, she knows just what she has to do and can choose which one she wants to work on next.  I find, sometimes, that I want to work on this but have no interest at the present time for that.  So I like seeing them all laid out.

When Frank gets home tonight I think I will make him help me photograph them in their current state and compile a list as well.  I am always shocked at how many I have, I keep finding them in places around the house.  For example, I cleaned out the hall closet about 4 years ago, and when I looked in there for some pillow cases yesterday, I found at least two tops in there......that is all I am admitting to, anyway.

Whole Wheat Honey
Sandwich Bread

Let me go punch down my rising dough......be right back.  Looks fabulous. I am making Chicken Salad Sandwiches tonight for some people and I thought I would bake the bread as well.  I love the chicken salad with grapes and pecans, or walnuts I guess, and mayonnaise.  The bread will be the over the top thing.

Hey, join in and win and I may bake you a bread!  LOL, that ought to be incentive for you!

Back to the quilts.  I have pictures of most of them, but not all of them in a laid out manner so as to be conducive to seeing them.  And I have so many of them I have tossed in the box over the years, I really need to move them out.

I have several promised out, and several that will be Christmas presents, and of course I want them all.  I have one for Frank that may need ripping out what is currently there and redoing to make it better looking.  I tried a Quilt As You Go Technique that I didn't like.  It was too difficult and weird.   I have found a better one now.  So I guess I need to get started on ripping that out if I am going to get it back together in  June.

See, this little challenge has already garnered me one push for the Transportation Quilt and one that is one the frame right now, the Blue Corn Flower.  I have not started it yet, it is just hanging in there waiting for June 1 !!!  LOL.

Come on, you KNOW you have quilts that need to be quilted in your closet, too!

glen

Sew Day in the Red Stick

I just found out that it is Reptile Mega Month at PetsMart. Not that I am interested in anything reptile, I just thought you may want to know that odd factoid.

I left my Cheetos at home.....

Charlene, my trucker lady

Ann, my LSU friend

I, on the other hand,  spent today with 5 friends, and a few more who dropped in randomly to say hi, at the Tuesday Sew Day at Red Stick, the wonderful new quilt shop. Rachel is a sweetie to let us use the beautiful room with its natural lighting.  I can get some stuff done in there.

However, I was sort of scattered today. I brought the bottom part of my challenge block to do, but not the block to put it on.......duh!

Jeanette, my shirt expert

And I brought the fabric to make the small duffles, but not the batting To make The quilted outside ......duh!

So I just gave up and helped Jeanette cut 5 1/2 inch squares out of her late husbands shirts.

 Duh..........I can do THAT!!!!!

Good thing Frank was in charge of the planting of the sweet bay leaf trees this weekend.  Hugeaux approves.  He stayed with us for the weekend because his momma and daddy went to the Country Music Fest at LSU.  Did I show you these already?  Such a long weekend, I can't remember.  And there is that scattered thing........duh.

Can you see the tiny tiny tiny parsley plant to between the drain pipe and the left tree?  Tiny is the operative word here.  I am thinking I need some lettuce around them as well.  Carrie is having a bad problem with slugs this year.  And something is eating my coleus.  The coleus always do well.  I have not found they have many enemies, which is why I love them.  But for some reason they are getting eaten this year.  And my petunias and marigolds are eaten all up.  Greg brought me some bromilliad pieces and I tore up the petunias to put them in.  The petunias were totally gone down to the stalk.

Sigh.......but the birds have left the tomatoes and the figs alone.

glen

A June Challenge

Are you up for a little healthy competition?  You bet!

I will have a prize with this one too!  No out of the US please.  Shipping is just too expensive to send it across the world!  Sorry!

Here is the deal.  I have a lot of quilt tops to be quilted.  How about you come and get a box full and see how many you can finish.......no not really, although it would be nice!

I have a lot of quilt tops to be quilted.  Ones that have been around since the beginning of time it seems.  How about if we see how many of our UFO tops we can get done in June?  I count 25 or 26 just in these two boxes and a stack.  That is the majority of the tops from the last 10-12 years that got put aside or I had no idea how to quilt them.  Well, now with my machine working and a set of patterns being drawn up, I can handle it.

Can I remember that far ahead into June?  I will put a thingy on the side of my blog and get rid of some stuff there cluttering it up, how's that?  And if you want to join in, we can have a list of those working on the project.

If you just want to get a few done and play along, let's have fun.  It may be me and one other person and that is fine.  I do have a lot of tops and I need some sort of incentive to get SOMETHING started! LOL.

glen

Bay Leaf Trees Finally Planted

Hugeaux the Grand Dog is Back!

Today was work around the house day.  I also wanted to get another quilt on the frame for some quilting work, but that never happened.

Watermain Break

We clipped bushes in two areas including the Holly that has overflowed into Dale's yard.  Then we pulled up the two azaleas that are 25 years old and not doing so well and moved them to the back where the soil is rich from 27 years of clippings being deposited there and the shade will help them heal.  In their place I put my two sweet bay trees so I will have bay leaves next year.

See the water coming from
under the sidewalk?

And I planted a curly leaf parsley in between them.  Well, near them.  I bought an eggplant to put with either the bay trees or the fig that will be planted when Dottie  marks the lines.  We have the cable lines marked but need the phone lines done.  I know there are some phone lines in that area.  When they were putting the crepe myrtle trees in the front yard yesterday they hit the water line, but luckily did not break it.  We have already had two main water line breaks on our property during the drought a couple of years ago.

We reset the sun dial my father made, the ants had tunneled under it and it was leaning like the Tower of Pisa.  It used to be set to tell the time but now it is about 12 hours off!  LOL.  Tomorrow we can reset it to the correct time.

Two kinds of bread baking

Then I baked the rest of the bread dough in the refrigerator for rolls.  I want to make some cinnamon bread next.  I can taste it already

The quilt I wanted on the frame

We needed some mulch and some rye flour that I can't find anywhere in the city (and wouldn't you know the two stores I went to today both had it, go figure.)   I want to make a pumpernickel bread as well for some Reuben sandwiches this week.  Mmmmmm.

So no quilting yet, and we are off to dinner with Press and Ann soon as I feed the dogs!

glen

Duffle Bags 2

Love that black and white
and red all over

I am all stoked making these duffle bags.  It was so cool to have done all that work and at the last moment, when you sew the very last seam, and it all seems to be coming together....and wham! it is done and perfect!

dark blue and green paws

I loved it when someone else would finish and the amazement would be there for everyone all over again!  It was so great.

I began to pull together some other combinations from my stash.  This is a quick project, as quilts go anyway.  Even though you work hard and long on it, it is relatively quick.  I can see all kinds of possibilities.  Some of my dog fabrics are in smaller quantities, so they will have to be pieced.  That will be OK for sure because they will all be different.  I have a great use for lots of them!  I want to start stockpiling things for the National Specialty and the Regional Specialty next year in April in Perry for Southbound.

dark dog fabrics

And it is a great way to get rid of some of the fabric that has been hanging around.  Won't all of these be totally radical!

On the pattern is a smaller version and some other totes with zippers, and I am looking forward to doing a couple more next week.

I have big plans for some ribs and frozen yogurt this Monday with some friends!



glen

Duffle Bag Class

Oh, boy!  Are you going to be impressed with me now!  I made a duffle bag.  A big one too.

my fabric i quilted it last night

Mine and Bonnie's

We had a class today at St Paul's with the ladies from Bright Hopes in Mandeville, Chris and Linda Kay.  They were fabulous.  Not big worriers like some people are.  But they handled everyone and all the questions just fine.

Melba's with Sashiko

Caroline Sewing

And these babies are BIG! 

Everyone left with a completed duffle bag.  And even though they were the exact same thing, they all looked so different.  It was fairly easy to make, you can't be a worrier or you won't ever get through it.  

And these will be wonderful Christmas Presents, Dog Club Raffle Items and just plain useful for me!

Lois'

My completed bag

I LOVE LOVE LOVE them.  Jeanette and Ann, I KNOW you are lusting after my duffle bag, huh!  Maybe that needs to be our next group sew.







glen

Dark Shadows and Odd Occurrences

Ok.  (You know how I love that work, and all the drama it adds.)  Ok.  I exerted some power over the men because they agreed to go see Dark Shadows rather than Battleship.  I was not going to see Battleship mostly because the words "action packed" does not impress me and the reviews said it was a movie that would be interesting to a 10 year old over stimulated boy.

the original 

Four of us went, Dan and Amber and Frank and I.  Dan and I remember watching Dark Shadows (the soap opera) after racing home from school and turning the TV on (in black and white no less) (oh, and without a remote we had to get up and physically turn the knob.)  I loved Barnabas Collins.  He was so exotic and sexy and vampiry.  Remember I was friends with Velvet the witch in real live already.  And the Maine coastline was so oddly beautiful and scary and so wonderful.  Having a family who had such loyalty to one another was another dream that was odd to me.  I craved what the Collins' had.  Family.

Jonathan Frid in 2001

The info I read last night told me that Jonathan Frid, the original Barnabas, was in the film as one of the townspeople but had died in April this year.  He did not get to see the film released.  But it was cool he knew the film was being made.  Johnny Depp was the perfect person to play old Barnabas, he is exotically feminine in his movements and his looks are so vampiry.

I loved it.  It was everything I wanted and more.  I only have one thing I would change, But I won't tell you because when you see it you don't need me to spoil the plot.  Just suffice it to say I would have stopped the fire.

And the really odd thing was this.  When I got home, there was a package on my doorstep.  It was another yogurt maker.  Two?  And the Big Bang Theory T-Shirt I ordered for Father's Day for Frank also came in two orders.  How did I get two of everything, separate orders, separate shippers.  Two of the exact times for the order.

So I am returning one of each.  But don't you think that is odd, very odd.  Vampiry odd? No, maybe ghostly ethereal......whoooooooo whoooooo!

glen

Free Meal - How You Can Have One, Too

Tonight we had a free meal for dinner.

Supper, whatever you call it in your neck of the woods. Here in the Deep South we call it dinner. By the way, if it is Sunday, dinner usually means lunch. Confusing? Talk to Frank. When he was first dating me, my family invited him to have dinner with us on one Sunday. He didn't show up. Then at some time later that day, he shows up to eat. Guess what? No food! LOL. We still laugh about that day. Although I was not laughing then!

So, back to my free meal. For Christmas, my wonderful vet cousin gave me some really beautiful pastas. This one was intriguing. So free pasta. Then I had used a jar of Bertolli's sauce on the pizza last night, the Italian Sausage poboy and the calzone the night before. Since it had already gone through three meals, it was free tonight.

Then, being a good Italian girl, I couldn't just have bottled sauce, so I cut up two stalks of celery, a half an onion and some garlic with some already chopped up bell peppers and sauteed them down with about 1/2 lb of left over ground meat. I had one Italian sausage left over from the sausage Poboy day and the pizza day so that went in there as well after I took it out of the casing. We like chunky sauces so the chopping was minimal and quick. All this went on while the pasta took ten minutes to cook.

After the sauce was going, I sliced some of my freshly baked bread, put some nice olive oil on it and popped it into the toaster oven. I cut up a tomato I scored for 79cents a pound and added some buffalo mozzarella I had in the deli drawer. It all came together on the table at exactly the same time. 

Amazing......and essentially free. Our bill would have been at least $30.00 or more had we gone out.

Quilting Away

Can you believe I am just getting to Dan's Quilt from Christmas?  Well, so many problems and they have lived it with me.

Now I am finished with the quilting on one of the quilts for them, the big one.  I will have to decide if I am doing the smaller one on the frame or my domestic head.  Not that I have a domestic head, I mopped floors this morning and didn't really care for it.  You know.

I chose freehand clamshells since I didn't have a panto ready and I wanted to get started.  I have had trouble with the tension, but thanks to three wonderful people I actually got things straight.

Trudi, your advice helped me the most.  I turned everything to zero, stitched away changing the tension until it worked perfectly.  And the back looks wonderful, the front looks wonderful.

Paula, thanks for showing me how you put your quilts on the frame, it made my whole life easier and took about 1/8th the time I was taking to pin EVERYTHING!

And I do have to thank Frank for crawling up under the frame with a flashlight and looking for me.  I just couldn't do that floor stuff.  He is so much more agile than I am now a days.  I had to teach him how things worked, why it worked that way, what it should look like, what to do if it didn't look like that, where to look, why to look there, and on and on and on with the questions!

Where's Chloe?

Now I just have to perfect the stitching arm!  There are some pretty shaky clamshells in there, especially around the ends.  I need to figure out how to do the ends smoothly.  I don't think I left enough on the edges.  This was a quilt without borders, like Doctors Without Borders but without the medical supplies.

Can you see me now?

The quilt shifted at some point to not be straight towards the end.  I need to correct some problem areas but I can do that on my domestic head with no problem.  I took the quilt off the frame and laid it out.  I don't think you can see the odd shapes in there, not all are perfectly arched.

Here is your bonus today.  Can you see Chloe?  They is why they have that stripe, so they can camouflage themselves in the Aztec Grass.

Yogurt is Good But Calzones are Better!

In the oven

I made a calzone last night.  It was so exciting.  I grabbed a hunk of my Olive Oil dough sitting in the fridge, and rolled it out in a flat circle.  I spread some mozzarella cheese, ricotta with spinach in it, and sprinkled some pepperoni slices on it.  Once it was folded over it was set to bake for about 20 minutes and it came out beautifully golden.

I really could have used less dough and rolled it thinnner but it was good for a first try.

The yogurt came out so beautifully this morning.  I will do another batch and make some frozen yogurt tonight with this one.  The glass jars are nice to have but not necessary, the plastic ones did fine as well in the other set up, when it was working, I mean.

The interesting thing is that EuroCuisine has a statment on their box that says if you have trouble you can bring it back to the retailer, but they would really like you to call them.  They want  to make sure you have a working unit and are happy!

So unlike Waring Pro who didn't care whether my unit was working or not.  Nor did they care to replace it with a working unit.  So I think I will call EuroCuisine in Los Angeles and let them know how much I appreciate that statement!



glen

Did You Know Yogurtville Was in Italy?

Fresh from the Italian Riviera, brought to you by FedEx Brown, introducing the Roman Numeral II yogurt maker, the EuroCuisine!  (clapping, clapping, clapping)!

So if it is made in Italy than why does it have French on the box?  Hmmm.

And it has these wonderful glass jars.  The others were plastic, but I still have them and will use them for the second batch tomorrow.   Aren't they cute?  They look like tiny mason jars!  I am sure they will pop into the dishwasher so nicely.  Not that we don't wash everything before we put it into the dishwasher.  It should actually be called a dish sterilizer.
 So here is the whole deal.  It looks like an alien spacecraft.  Maybe we could get on TV on that show that debunks the claims of ETs.  It could fly through space looking like that with its red lights flashing!

I got out the pots and thermometers and milk and measured out 42 oz and began heating it up to 180.  I added some powdered milk for thickening and tried some agave nectar.  I see this is vanilla flavored so I did not add my usual vanilla.



Agave Nectar is 1.6 times as sweet as sugar and has a much lower glycemic index so it is not as fattening as sugar is to our bodies.  So that means we use less because it is sweeter and it affects us less, even better. It is more expensive right now, but you can go online and order through Amazon and get a larger quantity for less money.  I got mine from Albertsons and I forget how much exactly it was, like around $4.50 or so.  And the bottle is small.  When I tasted some leftover milk it was pretty sweet, so I will use less then the 1/ 4 cup I used this time in the next batch.

Here is my pretty little flying saucer yogurt maker heating up!  Yes!



And here is my little flying saucer still heating up two hours later!  Yes!



And in the morning..........YOGURT FROM OUTER SPACE!

glen:  And I am off for my mammogram.....