a little bit of shopping

Posted on December 8, 2017 by is there any more pie?
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Love the colors.

Twice a year we look at fabric, talk about fabric and…buy fabric.  By “we” I mean Harley Chick and Aunt Pat and I.   We returned to one of our favorite places, the fabric store in an old mill building in Franklin, Massachusetts.

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Checking fabric requirements on the phone?

I love this parking sign.

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And this welcome sign.

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Harley Chick and I wore our cowboy boots because, well, we love to wear our cowboy boots.  It’s what we do!

We spent about two hours in the store until we were practically fainting from hunger.  But before we found a restaurant, we stopped at one more quilt store.  I bought a lot of “neutrals” there, because it’s the time of year when I make the Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt and she requires a lot of neutral fabrics in her designs.

I am not a fan of neutrals.  Give me colors and flowers and designs of all kinds, but don’t give me these.

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I really hope they liven up once they’re in a quilt.

We ate at a Mexican restaurant and then, bellies full and wallets empty, headed back home.  Aunt Pat would be dropped off in Grafton and Harley Chick and I would make the long drive back to the RI coast.

Such a fun tradition with such good friends.

 

Posted in friends, quilting, rhode island, shopping | Leave a comment

escape to mystic

Posted on November 28, 2017 by is there any more pie?

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I escaped the house on Small Business Saturday.  I would like to tell you that I was determined to support the area’s small businesses, but that would be a…fib.  While I never would have ventured outdoors on Black Friday, I really needed to get out of the house on Saturday and it didn’t really matter where I went or what I bought or didn’t buy.

You see, we’ve had a leaking pipe underneath the kitchen sink and Saturday morning Banjo Man was going to dismantle the insides of that kitchen cabinet and remove the rotten wood.

This was going to be a messy and frustrating and smelly project.

So by 9 AM I was in the car, fleeing the scene.  It was a gorgeous morning.  I had coffee.  Life was good.

Thirty minutes south of us is the seaside town of Mystic, Connecticut.  Right off the interstate is the shopping village of Olde Mistick, a lovely walking area of cute shops.  Everyone who visits us loves strolling and shopping there.

Down the road, on the water, is Mystic Seaport, the largest maritime museum in the United States.  Want to know more?  Check it out at:  https://www.mysticseaport.org

Keep driving and you’ll arrive at the actual town of Mystic, with its old buildings and waterfront views.  And yes, “Mystic Pizza” of movie fame.

My destination was a tiny fabric store–of course– in the middle of Mistick Village.

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I was home by noon, in time to get a beef stew assembled and put in the oven.  Banjo Man had successfully completed his project.  I had a little bag of new fabric (25% off in honor of Small Business Saturday–hurray!) and some time to clean the house.

While I was gone, the propane stove in the lower level of the house quit working.  We think it’s a thermo-coupler (???) and can’t get a repairman out here for two weeks.

On Monday morning my internet browser caught a virus and I haven’t been able to get rid of it.  I’m using Google Chrome for the moment, but it’s not easy.

The pipes under the sink are still leaking.  The cupboard door won’t close.

And the dishwasher is making some seriously bad noises.

I think it’s time to go on vacation.

 

 

 

 

Posted in rhode island, shopping | 1 Comment

happy thanksgiving 2017

Posted on November 23, 2017 by is there any more pie?

I am so grateful for a sunny day.

 

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Centerpiece for dining table #2.

 

I am grateful for pumpkin lights.

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I am grateful for velvet pumpkins.  I love them.  In fact, I love pumpkins of all kinds.

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And I’m so happy I found this little trough at a consignment store.  It was white with red scrolls–very Christmasy–so I sprayed it with ivory chalk paint and filled it with pumpkins and little lights.

Not quite Pinterest-worthy, but it will do.

The turkey is in the oven, the dressing is in the crock pot (a new recipe–hurray!) and the vegetables are ready and waiting in the fridge.  And I think the house is finally clean enough for company!  Banjo Man and I have to shower and dress, but we’re taking our time.

Wishing you all a lovely, family-and-friend-filled Thanksgiving Day!

Love,
More Pie

 

 

Posted in family, food, friends, rhode island | 1 Comment

happy birthday, ben

Posted on November 21, 2017 by is there any more pie?

This is my absolutely favorite picture of my eldest son.

 

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Doing chores in Idaho on a sunny fall day.

He wore that football helmet a lot.

A lot.

He was the preemie who no one thought would live past two weeks, if he lived that long.

And now he’s 45.

45!!!!!!

How lucky we are to have had this boy–this man–in our lives!!!

Happy Birthday, Ben.

We all love you more than you could ever imagine.

 

 

 

Posted in family | 2 Comments

barn owl

Posted on November 19, 2017 by is there any more pie?

 

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This stunning picture is from treehugger.com, by Donald Quintana.

 

This is what I saw flying towards the house as I stared out my office window yesterday morning.  Isn’t he gorgeous?

He flew low, above the driveway and right over the roof of the house.

I searched through owl pictures online until I found him.  In almost thirty years of living here I’d never seen one before.  We have Great Horned owls in our woods and I often hear them (much more often than I see one), but a barn owl?

He is my new favorite bird.

I’ll be watching for him from now on.

In the meantime, it is a windy and rainy Sunday morning.   Banjo Man won’t be raking leaves today.  Instead we’ll be getting ready for Thanksgiving.  I’ll make and freeze the spinach casserole and we’ll peel potatoes and make the huge whipped potato casseroles while watching the Patriots play this afternoon.

We’ll also put the leaf in the dining room table and organize the seating.  We’re not having Thanksgiving at Mom’s this year and will instead have it here.  Last year we moved tables, chairs, dishes, food, turkeys, glasses, silverware and tablecloths to my mother’s house.   My house isn’t as big–meaning I’ll have to get very creative when it comes to seating everyone–but I do have a dishwasher!

And a barn owl.

 

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Beautiful photo from:  gettyimages.co.uk.  Just unbelievably gorgeous.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in family, food, just for fun, rhode island | 2 Comments

the ice cream date

Posted on November 18, 2017 by is there any more pie?

This four year old came over yesterday afternoon.

 

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My friend Sam.

We made ice cream and topped it with mini M&M’s.

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I found them at Walmart, in a little tube in the candy display at the register.  If you plan on eating ice cream with a four-old I highly recommend these.

He quickly discovered the new Matchbox cars in the toy basket and played with them for a little while, but his heart was set on ice cream and television.  He wanted to snuggle up on the big couch with my special forty-four-year old tv-watching blanket and relax in front of the big tv.

Banjo Man is the same way, so maybe I have that affect on guys.

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Posted in friends, rhode island | Leave a comment

the brakes broke me

Posted on November 16, 2017 by is there any more pie?

I totally lost it yesterday afternoon.

I had a screaming fit in the driveway while Banjo Man leaned on his rake and looked very, very worried.

You see, I was in the midst of dragging the new lightweight transport wheel chair out of the back of the SUV while shrieking that I was going to throw it down the hill and beat it to death on the rocks.

Banjo Man put his rake down and intervened before the destruction began.  I think he said something like, “What the hell happened?”

I had just arrived home after a very intense, very upsetting three hours with said wheel chair, my 91-year old mother and a trip to a urologist’s office (which, by the way, had a broken heating system and was at least 100 degrees).  The hand brakes on the new chair that Banjo Man had nicely assembled for me that morning were so stiff that they were practically unusable.  It took everything I had to operate them, and I had to operate them every time my mother needed to stand up or sit down or get out of the car or get into a car (which was a lot of times, let me tell you).

A concerned onlooker in the office waiting room told me, “Something’s wrong.  It’s not supposed to be that hard.”

Which made me feel better.

And made me want to beat that chair into a metal pulp.  I burst into tears instead, shortly after Banjo Man rescued the chair from destruction.   Then I stomped upstairs to my computer, filled out the return form on Amazon, told Banjo Man not to bother to try to fix it (one of the reviews said the brakes could not be adjusted) and crawled into bed.  Fully clothed.  With a box of Kleenex.

As I wrote on the Amazon return form, you’d have to be an arm wrestling champion or a Navy Seal to operate those brakes.  And I am neither.

It has been a very long week.  I guess something had to snap eventually.

I will have to buy another chair, and soon.  But I’ll think about that tomorrow.

Or maybe Monday.

 

 

Posted in family, personal female whining, rhode island | 4 Comments

tools of the trade

Posted on November 15, 2017 by is there any more pie?

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Meet the Accufeed Flex.  It’s a walking foot on steroids and…I love it.

Well, I love it when I can figure out how to attach it.  That was a mystery at first, until a kind quilter in my online sewing group told me what I was doing wrong.

I did it all wrong on this baby quilt last week.

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I am hoping that once it is washed and dried no one will notice the tight quilting seams due to the fact that I didn’t know how to engage the foot.  The foot is designed to glide, from the top and from the bottom, feeding several layers of fabric in perfect harmony.

Yep.

This Accufeed foot is one of the major reasons why I bought the new machine.  I even ordered special Accufeed feet for it, because I am always in pursuit of the perfect seam, the perfect stitch, the right tension.  Blocks go together when corners match and seams line up.  And if they don’t?  I don’t worry about it.  I figure I gave it my best shot and because I don’t make “show quilts”, no one is going to judge my work.

That’s comforting.  I spent thirty years fretting over book reviews and hoping Romantic Times, etc. would give my latest work 4 or 5 stars and some ecstatic comments.   Sometimes that happened and sometimes it…didn’t.

It’s difficult to create when you wondering what the critics will say, when that devil on your shoulder is whispering words of negativity and doubt.

Making quilts is such a different process.  And when the quilt is finished?  Just like a finished manuscript, it goes on its way.  With my love.

(But it doesn’t come back with revisions from the editor and line edit notes in the margins!)

 

Posted in quilting, rhode island, writing | Leave a comment

gifts

Posted on November 14, 2017 by is there any more pie?

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These arrived in the mail yesterday.  Flavored pumpkin seeds from Dancing Mandolin Player!  What a lovely surprise.  I felt so very loved.

And last night my friend Barb called.  “I made you something,” she announced.  “Can I bring it over?”

It was 8:15 PM.  Cold and dark and pouring rain.  But she drove over to bring me a present.

 

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A little apple pie with the best crust in the world.

I couldn’t believe it.  But actually, I could.  Because Barb is like that.  I’ve known her big heart since I was a skinny thirteen-year old.

This has been an incredibly stressful month.  Mom is back at her assisted living home, but requires special care three times a day.  I’m up early and in bed late.  Banjo Man drives me there at 10 PM each night.  He has made friends and joins in on the nightly conversations in the 2nd floor social area while I attend to Mom and get her ready for bed.

I’m really grateful to my friends who have called and emailed and planned dinners out, who have offered future lunches and listened to my frustrations.

My brother and his wife gave me a gift certificate for a long, lovely massage.  I cannot wait.  I’m debating about doing it before Thanksgiving or after.  But I’m looking forward to it, believe me!

My daughter, a skilled nursing assistant, will take over Mom’s care on Thursday.  I am so lucky to have a CNA in the family and it is a relief to know “Grandma” will have the best of care from now on.

Banjo Man had planned an overnight getaway for us this weekend, but it is going to rain.  We were planning to go to Portsmouth, NH and spend a day roaming around the shops and eating seafood and exploring a town we’d never seen.  We are hoping the weather forecast changes so we can get in the car on Saturday morning and take a little time off.

I’ve been cranky and whiny.  Yes, I admit it.

But who can stay grumpy while eating pumpkin seeds and apple pie?

Not me.

 

 

 

Posted in family, food, friends, rhode island | Leave a comment

outlander season 3

Posted on November 13, 2017 by is there any more pie?

outlander 3

Banjo Man and I are binging this season of Outlander.  We couldn’t wait for the dvd to go on sale, so we took advantage of a free introductory week of STARZ on Amazon.  Now the challenge is to watch the entire season in one week.

We’re doing our best.

Much of the early episodes in this season take place in Boston in the 1960’s and it is great fun to recognize the clothes and the hairstyles.

And there is quite a bit of steamy sex (don’t say I didn’t warn you).  Jaime and Claire can still get it on, twenty years later.

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Posted in television | 2 Comments