matching points and seams

Posted on January 10, 2021 by is there any more pie?

I made this quilt top in 2004, shortly after buying my first computerized sewing machine, a Janome 6500.  That machine was cutting edge at the time and I was so proud and yet so intimidated by everything it could do.

I finished quilting this top yesterday.  Yeah, I know.  Fourteen years later.  There were a lot of unfinished quilt tops on the top shelf of my closet and this was near the bottom of the pile.

My daughter had given me this collection of fabric for Christmas in 2004, so I found a pattern and made it.  50″ square and the size of a baby quilt, but who wants a black and yellow baby quilt?

No one I’ve met so far.

So I am now calling it a wall hanging.

As I was stitching along–sewing the top, batting and backing together– I realized that the points and the matching seams were perfect.  99% perfect.  I couldn’t believe it.  This was one of my very first–if not the first–quilt top I made after I returned to quilting.  And it was perfect?  I must have agonized over each pinwheel block, making sure everything was absolutely in line.

I don’t do that any more.  So, I pondered as I stitched along, I have become sloppy.  Obviously.  I no longer sew with 99% precision.

Sloppy.  That wasn’t a pleasant revelation.

Pin basting the future wall hanging.  Many pinwheels, large and small, somehow all go together.

I kept stitching.  Nothing fancy, just outlining the blocks and triangles along all of those lovely straight lines.  And while I stitched I kept thinking of the many, many quilts I’d created since 2004.  There has been a progression of carefully followed patterns to projects where I’d done my own thing–either playing with a pattern or experimenting with color.

Here’s a quilt (Kaffe Fasset pattern) from 2018, finished last week:

I love this quilt.  Banjo Man does, too.  He’s afraid I’m going to give it away.  I’m not.

It’s not perfect, but that’s not the point.  It’s joyful, which is more important.  I had such a good time creating it, selecting fabrics from my giant stash, stitching blocks and columns together and then, last week, finally machine quilting it.

It’s not even close to perfection, but I don’t care.  No one else I know would either.  It’s not going into a show to be judged.  It won’t be displayed anywhere for others to criticize.

I’m sure I had a better time making it than I did the little black-and-gold quilt.

I will keep doing my best to match my seams and points, to carefully cut strips and squares and triangles (I love to cut fabric!), to starch and press, to carefully sew with the elusive scant 1/4″ seam.  Because after all, that’s quilting.  That’s the name of the game.

Seeing each quilt top come together is so much fun.

Which of course is the point.  Because creating art should be joyful.

 

And perfection just gets in the way.

 

 

Posted in quilting, rhode island | 2 Comments

welcoming 2021

Posted on January 6, 2021 by is there any more pie?

The New Year came to Texas and I was there to celebrate.  Yay!

Somehow we managed to stay awake past midnight.

Have you heard of the custom of eating grapes for good luck in the new year?

Eating twelve grapes guarantees good fortune for the next twelve months.

As you can see, we were prepared.

I found special 2021 wine glasses at the local grocery store (when Will and I made our one and only trip to the supermarket).  Amber filled them with sparkling apple juice.

The Funny Grandson really enjoyed the party.  Especially the noisemakers.

We made little pigs in the blanket for party food during football-watching.

Check them out:

A good time was had by all.  Other highlights of the trip?  Tacos from Torchy’s the night I arrived–Will ordered take out–and tacos in Round Rock for lunch.  Ben dropped me off at a quilt fabric store on his way to get them–win, win!

We went for a drive north of Round Rock and ended up with hot fudge sundaes.

We made French fries in the new air fryer.  We all loved playing CLUE, Uncle Will had little patience for Monopoly and I won a game of SEQUENCE.

So. Much. Fun.

I don’t know about you, but 2020 was a year of waiting for the next bad thing to happen–and it did.

Now, in 2021, I feel as if I’m waiting for the next good thing to happen.  Bring on the vaccines!  And let’s all get together.

At the Saxon Pub in 2018. No social distancing and lots of great music.

 

 

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starting 2021 the right way…in texas

Posted on January 5, 2021 by is there any more pie?

December 26th I packed my suitcase and headed to Texas for some much-needed time with my boys, grandson and daughter-in-law.

Was I nervous about traveling during Covid?  Honestly, not at all.  

In case you think I’m a bit nuts and/or delusional, let me explain that I have had Covid and I am not afraid of it (for myself).

But I have had cancer and I’m terrified of it.   I just can’t be afraid of everything any more–it’s way too stressful–so I choose not to be.

When I arrived I hung my winter coat in the closet for the rest of the week and I put my traveling clothes in a plastic bag for the laundry.  I didn’t hug Will until I’d changed into a clean clothes, just in case any germs had clung to the fabric.

And then it was time to party.  And we had so much fun!  We played UNO and Clue and Monopoly and Sequence.  We watched Star Wars shows (I learned about Mandelorian) and Wonder Woman 1984 (pretty terrible movie) and lots of football.

We ate lasagna and cinnamon rolls (fresh from my suitcase) and hamburgers and pizza and carne asada.   We celebrated New Year’s Eve with sparkling cider and noisemakers.

It was such a fun week.  

Texas party animals!

Tomorrow I’ll add more pictures, but right now WordPress is being difficult so I have to end this post.

Stay well.

Posted in austin, family, texas, travel | 2 Comments

heading out of here

Posted on December 26, 2020 by is there any more pie?

I’m packed and ready to go to Texas.  I’ve had my tickets for a few weeks but knew that anything could happen–and probably would–to change my plans from traveling to going back to the sewing machine.

But I get to go see my Texas family for a week.

With the blessings of my oncologist and my GP.

The three boxes of Christmas presents are still missing and are hopefully heading west and will arrive while I’m there.  Otherwise I’ll be shopping online in a few weeks and hoping that the postal service has caught up from the gridlock of the holidays.

One last thing:

Daughter Nancy received one of my quilts for Christmas.  I finished it just in time.

Your Christmas cards will be late!  Banjo Man has volunteered to get them to you.

Happy New Year!!!

Posted in austin, family, quilting, rhode island, travel | 1 Comment

a little joy

Posted on December 24, 2020 by is there any more pie?

This was in my friend Pat’s email today.  I loved it and wanted to share.

I have been busy.  I accidentally tripled this recipe (don’t ask) and have enough cinnamon rolls for my entire town.  I finally gave up baking them and froze the rest of the dough.

It could be another 33 years before I do this again, so those of you who received them better make ’em last.

It was another stressful only-in-2020 week as we discovered Sunday that our propane supplier no longer understood the concept of “automatic delivery” and had missed filling our tanks in November and December.

They no longer believed in answering phone calls, replying to desperate emails, updating websites or even the sometimes helpful “chat” option.  I spent many hours on hold only to receive sympathy, apologies, promises and then…nothing.  Finally last night a driver called and said she’d come but if she didn’t like the condition of our driveway she wasn’t driving down to the house.

Apparently they had forgotten they’ve been delivering to us, via our driveway, for the past eighteen years.

(There had been that one incident on a very, very icy winter when the propane truck slipped and went into our pit and a huge crane had to be called and everyone was very intense and thought it was going to explode but that was very long ago and only happened one time.)

Banjo Man rushed out to meet her when the truck arrived around 8 PM last night.  He of course wanted to convince her that our driveway–which had been nicely plowed after last week’s storm–was fine.  Whatever he said and whatever she saw met with her approval and we now have full tanks.

Since we heat the house, heat the water and cook using gas,  you can imagine my stress level.  I envisioned draining all the water pipes and moving to the Hampton Inn–worst case scenario–if we lost heat, but learned they were booked with local college students until March.

So much for that escape plan.

But we are fine today and have happily turned our stoves back on and put our portable electric heaters in the closet.  There was plenty of gas with which to cook four or five hundred cinnamon rolls and tonight we will enjoy long hot showers.

Christmas Eve is certainly different this year.  But we’re pleased that daughter Nancy could join us for steaks tonight.  I’m going to experiment with onion rings in the air fryer.

Good times, even during 2020.

Merry Christmas, my friends!  I hope you are with someone you love tonight and all is well.

 

 

 

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time to spare

Posted on December 23, 2020 by is there any more pie?

Yesterday my friend Barb and I were on the phone commiserating over these long, quiet, pre-Christmas days of 2020.

“I am so bored,” this previously perpetually active woman said, “that I have set up my train set.”

There had never been enough time or space when her house was filled with excited children and grandchildren, she explained.  But in 2020 she and her husband don’t have that going on.  Her children and grandchildren will stay in Pennsylvania and Barb and Rod are stuck in Rhode Island.

We commiserated about our decades of Christmas busyness and how exhausted and yet happy we had been making the holiday special for our families.  And how strange that it had all come to a screeching halt.

I told her that I was going to make seven pans of cinnamon rolls.

“My God,” she said.  “That will take you all day!”

“I HOPE SO!”  was my reply.  “I need something to do besides feel sorry for myself and sew.”

I told her the rolls were going to be her Christmas present.

She was very happy about that.

I warned her that I haven’t made cinnamon rolls in 33 years.  She didn’t care.  She wants some.  She assured me that baking cinnamon rolls was a life skill that never went away.  And because she is an excellent baker, I believe her.

The Funny Grandson Face-timed yesterday afternoon.  I hadn’t talked to him for a couple of weeks and he had plenty to say.  He was swigging a rare and exciting treat– Cherry Dr. Pepper– and wearing his prized Dallas Cowboys hat.

I caught up on many, many details of his life and how he feels about all sorts of things.  He showed me every single one of his new football cards and his favorite funny tv commercial, via Youtube.

I told him about my plans to make cinnamon rolls (one of his favorite treats when he is at the lake with us) and he wished I could mail him some, which led to discussing the problems with the mail and how his Christmas presents from RI were going to be very, very late.

He had questions about the Covid vaccine.  I gave him hints about his gifts.  He gave me hints about his mom’s gift.  I got an update on flag football (it starts in January and his team is the 49’ers).  After almost an hour (this kid is wonderfully chatty) I suggested that he might want to hang up and see if his dinner was ready.

He was shocked that I would suggest ending the call.

“Grandma,” he declared, “I have all the time in the world!”

Oh, my heart.

And–of course–I had all the time in the world, too.  So I curled up on the couch and chatted for another half an hour or so.

It was the best thing that’s happened for weeks and broke through my gloom and doom.  I miss him terribly.

So today I’ll fill the hours with baking.  Banjo Man has requested sugar cookies, the thin crispy kind.   And I’m excited about the cinnamon rolls.  They bring back memories of raising my little ones in Idaho, when baking every day was part of life, and cinnamon rolls shaped like Christmas trees were distributed to the neighbors on Christmas Eve.

This year, for better or for worse, I have all the time in the world.

And I plan to play with Barb’s train set tomorrow.  The Funny Grandson will like hearing all about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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some notes in december

Posted on December 21, 2020 by is there any more pie?

Good morning.

It was 15 degrees here Friday morning.  That first mug of coffee tasted really good on such a cold winter day.  This morning I’m looking out my window at snow and ice.  Winter is here, for better or for worse.

Yesterday was my Great Uncle Mac’s birthday.  He would have been 122.  I always called him on his birthday and, with long-distance phone calls being so expensive back in the 70’s and 80’s, my Great Aunt Laurabelle would insist he cut the conversation short in order to save me money.  My protests would earn us a minute or two more, but Aunt Laurabelle always prevailed.

I came across a box of his letters the other day.  He always typed them and only used half of a sheet of paper (and cut the bottom half off for a future letter).

Have you mailed anything this Christmas?  I read that the postal system is gridlocked.  It’s a perfect storm of delays:  shorthanded due to Covid, the huge snow storm last week and the massive amount of boxes being shipped (online shopping, presents to family, etc).

I mailed boxes to Texas on the 11th but tracking shows they were spotted on the 15th but nothing more.  This could take a while!

If you’ve ordered something online and it has arrived?  Count yourself lucky.  The days of two-day delivery from Amazon are pretty much over for now.

2020 strikes again!

What’s on tv, you ask?

MANHUNT:  DEADLY GAMES.  On Netflix.  A fascinating mini-series about Richard Jewell and Eric Rudolph (the real bomber).  This is season 2 of this show and we will be watching Season 1 (the Unabomber) in the future.

Also…MAGIC CITY, on STARZ.  It’s a mini-series set in 1959 Miami at the city’s most gorgeous hotel.  I’m not sure about this yet, so I’m not going to recommend it yet.  We’re in the middle of it and I’m finding the episodes a bit intense with all the Mafia stuff and bodies dumped in large bodies of water.  The clothes are absolutely gorgeous, as are most of the cast.

Last night CBS broadcast Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood live from their home studio.  They took requests and sang Christmas songs.  I was glued to the couch and even cried when Trisha sang “Oh Holy Night”.

I was so lucky to see her in person at a concert in Austin a few years ago.  And on my bucket list is going to a Garth Brooks concert.  Alas, live concerts will have to wait a while longer and tickets to Garth are few and far between.

But I have been a fan of his forever so the Christmas show last night was a very happy hour for me.  I recorded it and will watch it again tonight before episode 8 of MANHUNT.

My BELOW DECK addiction continues at 9 PM tonight, on Bravo.

And LIVING ALASKA, BUYING ALASKA and BUYING THE YUKON are always hard shows to resist.

VIRGIN RIVER on Netflix is one of my favorites.  I’m trying to make Season 2 last so I am not binging the episodes.  I read all the books in the series a few years ago.  Romance, drama and a small town?  Yes, please!

I’m also watching lots of cooking shows on the food channels.  I love the holiday shows that were filmed pre-Covid when the hosts are planning holiday parties for friends and family.

The 2020 versions, when everyone is on Zoom and someone holds up a chicken to show you how to season it, are just too annoying.  Give me the 2019 version so I can pretend to be entertaining my friends and family!

In case you think I spend my days on the couch in front of the tv, please know that I have a small tv in my office/sewing room from which I “watch” (aka listen to) shows as I turn quilt tops into quilts.

The name of the game is to keep busy until Covid is a thing of the past and we are free to live our lives again.

Thank goodness for cable tv, electricity and Banjo Man.

 

 

Posted in family, rhode island, television | 1 Comment

what’s new on the tree

Posted on December 18, 2020 by is there any more pie?

No one had a better Saturday than Banjo Man.  He loves the tree.

He so happily hauled the boxes of Christmas decorations from the basement and decorated.  I stayed on the couch, but I supplied the history of every single ornament he held up to show me.

That, along with decorating the mantle, was my contribution for this Christmas’s nonexistent festivities.

So what’s new on the tree?

An anniversary ornament from Dancing Mandolin Player and her Boyfriend Bob:

And from Jeff and Angela, a touch of country music:

Willie Nelson.

Dolly Parton

My Christmas gifts have been purchased, wrapped and either tucked under the tree or shipped to Texas.  There is nothing else to do but think about making cinnamon rolls, which I haven’t done in 30 years.

It’s about time.

My grocery store was completely out of powdered sugar last week.  Does that mean everyone in RI is frosting Christmas cookies?

Daughter Nancy snagged me a few bags from another store on Tuesday, so I can now drizzle frosting on these fantasy cinnamon rolls.  I’m quite excited about it because I love making big messes with yeast and flour.

But that will happen next week.

For now I’ll sew.  And make soup.  And coffee cake.

And count the days ’til 2021.

 

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first snowstorm, hot soup and Hillbilly Elegy

Posted on December 17, 2020 by is there any more pie?

A “nor’easter” hit last night.  We had plenty of warning, as the storm had trekked across the Midwest and the Mideast before hitting New England.

At midnight we had 3″ of snow.  This morning there is about 6″, but we’ve had sleet and rain and now it’s snowing again.  The predicted 50 mph winds are what bothers me.  Because, you  know, I love electricity.

The problems come when the temps drop later this morning and this stuff freezes.  Oh, the joy of winter!

Yesterday I made a massive amount of sausage-pasta-vegetable soup in the crock pot.   My goal was to use up as many half-empty bags of frozen vegetables as possible.  I found a frozen glob of red paste in a little plastic container in the freezer and assumed it was tomato paste, which would give the soup a nice color and flavor.

At dinner time I discovered the paste I’d used had been Thai red curry paste.

Let’s just say the soup  had a lot of flavor.  I added more chicken broth and then more chicken broth…

Banjo Man loved it.  I didn’t.  I’m going to make an old-fashioned chicken noodle soup today.

And now for a movie recommendation:

This is one of my favorite movies of 2020 and I’ve seen a LOT of movies this year.  Based on a memoir by J.D. Vance and produced by Ron Howard, this Netflix movie is a story about a family’s struggle to survive and a young man breaking the cycle of poverty and dealing with his mother’s addiction.  The acting is incredible.

Banjo Man told me the movie received tons of bad reviews.  I don’t get that.   Sure, it’s a grim subject but there was also a lot of love between the characters.  And that love was what held them all together, no matter what.

If you’ve loved the movie or hated it, I’d love to hear about it.

And now it’s time for more coffee…

 

Posted in food, movies, rhode island | 2 Comments

the one you’re not getting

Posted on December 14, 2020 by is there any more pie?

Here’s the Christmas card you’re not receiving this year.

As you can see, the photo came out too dark when printed on the cards from CVS.  You can’t see Banjo Man’s face!  This photo was taken on our 50th wedding anniversary as we bundled up and shared a bottle of wine on the dock.

I wanted to send you a card that toasted the arrival of 2021.


At least that was the plan.

So I had to start over, meaning the cards will be late (again!) this year.

And I thought I was so organized this month!

But things are looking up, as the vaccine hits our hospitals today.  Medical staff are first in line.  Daughter Nancy should get her dose this week or next as we protect the nursing home residents and their caregivers.

It’s very exciting, especially since last week our state was listed as the “worst in the world” for virus infections.  No one knows why.  Rhode Islanders have been exceptionally obedient mask-wearers since May.

But…brighter days are ahead, right?

 

 

 

Posted in family, rhode island | 1 Comment