More summer bounty

My neighbor, Mary Mac, works at a farmers' market. She brought me some strawberries the other day. I was tempted to eat them all while standing over the sink. But I did stop soon enough to make a quick fruit cobbler before they were gone.

This is so simple and you can make it with any fresh or frozen fruit you have on hand.

Ingredients:
2 Tablespoons butter
1/4 cup and 2 Tablespoons flour
1/4 cup and 2 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup and 2 Tablespoons milk
1 cup sliced strawberries, or raspberries, or fresh peaches, or nectarines, or whole blackberries
1-1/2 teaspoons sugar

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Put butter in a small casserole dish and put it in a microwave to melt it. Remove from microwave and swirl it around to coat the sides and bottom of the casserole.
In a separate bowl, whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt to mix. Add milk and whisk it into the dry ingredients to make a smooth batter. Pour batter into the casserole, then scatter your fruit over the batter. Sprinkle 1-1/2 teaspoons of sugar over the fruit.
Bake at 350 degrees until the batter browns and the fruit bubbles. My oven takes 50 minutes.
Serve warm with ice cream, or cold with cream.

Lights for Christmas

I finished some Christmas lights just in the nick (St. Knick) of time.

Remember those old, old Christmas tree light strings? The kind that were so delicate and temperamental. If one light went out, the whole string went dark. To fix it you had to remove one light bulb at a time and replace it with one you knew was good. You would go from bulb to bulb and finally two bulbs from the last one the string lit up!

This was a tedious process. It was important to plug in the string and see that it lit up before you hung it on the tree. My father did this. After a few days of admiring the tree with its festive display, one string would go dark. To do the testing and replacing one had to crawl around and into the tree. It was worth it.

Today, I sewed up some 4.5" square Christmas lights quilt blocks that will never blink off.

If you would like to make your own paper pieced Christmas lights, click on the graphic below and you will find a three-part foundation to print out. If you don't know how to paper piece, go to my Paper Piecing Primer http://www.winnowing.com/ppp.html

Here is a suggestion for fabric placement:

Merry Christmas.

Before summer ends

Try this delicious cheesy casserole before we run out of summer squash or zucchini.

 This is a recipe for one or two people, but you can expand it easily to serve more.

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon butter
1 slice of bread crumbled
1/2 onion chopped
1 medium summer squash (or zucchini)
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1/2 teaspoon milk
1/2 teaspoon "Perfect Pinch" or any other non-salted herbs of your choice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

 Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter the inside of a small lidded casserole.
Crumble the bread slice and mix the crumbs with soft butter and set aside.
Slice the squash into thin rounds.
Chop the 1/2 onion.
Sauté the squash slices briefly in olive oil in a skillet.

 Next, add the chopped onion and sauté until the onions are soft. Sprinkle vegetables with your herb seasoning. Add some pepper and a tiny bit of salt (to your taste).
In the meantime, in a separate bowl, mix together the cheeses, sour cream, and milk.

 Put the warm squash-onion mix into the casserole.
Gently stir in the cheese mix into the vegetables.
Use your fingers to drop the bread crumb pieces over the top.
Bake covered for 25 minutes. Take off the cover and bake five minutes more to brown it a bit.

So Mochi fun

 I've been having such fun. Mochi is a yarn from Crystal Palace Yarns. It's 80% Merino wool and 20% nylon and comes in all sorts of marvelous colors. There was a Mochi Hat contest on Ravelry and I wanted to enter. I ordered two balls of Chunky Mochi intense rainbow from K2TOG in Albany, CA on Friday, February 21.

 It was delivered to my post office box on Monday the 24. I had until Friday, the 28 to get it finished and post a photo before noon. I was still knitting the last row of ribbing Friday morning. There was no way I could get it blocked and photographed and uploaded before noon. Well, darn it.

 The beret project combines knitting and weaving. First, you warp your loom-board on a kraft paper pattern.

 Then you weave the weft yarn to make your circle beret top.

 The woven circle does not have to be hemmed. Pick up the warp and weft loops all around the edge and begin knitting.

I think it is really neat. To toot my own horn: please check out my book, Knitter's Weaving Book. There is a free downloadable PDF pattern for another beret using the same technique on that page. The book is also available on Amazon.com

Decorating finished

 I was a little late this year but I managed to finish my Christmas decorating. Whew!
This year the log cabin tree has ornaments! I designed this in 2009. If you want to whip one up before tomorrow, click HERE for the pattern.

My sons and grandsons visited me this week so I am feeling content and cozy. Now that I have the decorating done I can sit back and read with my new Kindle.

I'm also weaving a collar for a sweater to use in the forthcoming Knitters' Weaving Projects book.

Hat's off!

No, the beret is on.

 The beret was blocked and came out just fine.

How to block a beret? Find a large dinner plate (the same size as the kraft paper pattern used for weaving). Thanks to Elizabeth Zimmerman for this tip in her book Knitting Without Tears.

 Dampen the top of the beret in lukewarm water, squeeze most of the water out, roll in a terry towel to absorb more moisture, and then stretch it over the plate.

 Don't stretch the knitted ribbing.

Let it dry away from heat or sunlight for 24 hours.

This project will be in the next book following Knitter's Weaving Book. The next book will be called Knitters' Weaving Projects.

Around and around and around

This is fun. I am knitting on a circular needle around my checked beret fabric. After I darned in the outside yarns (picks and warps) of the circular woven piece I picked up the loops around the edge and knitted two rows. (See my last post for a starting picture.) I then did two decreasing rows and went back to plain knitting.

As a quilter I've been using store-bought fabric for years and years. Now I'm weaving my own fabric. I love the way the red and white check came out.

I'm doing the final ribbed band right now. I hope I get it off the needle and block it tonight. Blocking wet wool takes a least a day for drying. Tune in again soon.

Night visitor

This opossum has been hanging out in my house. He (or she) has been coming in through the cat door and eating the cats' food and drinking water. The critter scattered food and dipped some in the water bowl. I put out a call for help on the Bethel Island area of Facebook. I received over 50 suggestions -- some of them were very funny.
One nice lady, Linda, came over to my house and brought a cat trap for me to borrow. I set it up last night and this morning the possum was in it. I took him for a long car ride (in the trunk so he could not see where we were going). He has a new home in as yet not built waterfront development. I hope he is happy there.
Thank you all in my community for your support.

My laundry today

Here is my laundry hanging to dry.

I just washed a bunch of 4-inch paper pieced blocks I made way back in July of 2009. They needed a good wash because the other day my cat, Feather, got locked in my sewing room all day. When I finally discovered him late at night he had been confined for at least 12 hours. He was very happy to get out and I thought all was well. NOT. My sewing room smelled very peculiar (that's putting it nicely). Today I searched and sniffed every pile of fabric in there. I found one small collection of blocks that the poor cat had decided to use as his temporary sandbox. Whew!

After this wash, I hope they will be as good as new. If you want to see some of the blocks, go to the July, 2009 archive here. I did a block-a-day series that year. There are free paper piecing foundations to print out, too.

Got some 'splainin' to do

I made the chocolate quilt top and took progress pictures as I went along. I know what I did and how it went together, but now I have to explain how to do it so I can put out a pattern for others to follow. I have 10 draft pages of Dear Hearts so far. I will look for a pattern tester to try it out in another color-way. I'll show the tester my project and hand over the pattern draft pages. I won't add any verbal explanation. If she or he gets terribly stuck we can talk and I can add more words or pictures. It is an interesting process to come up with a final, salable pattern.

 

Where did Feather go?

Last evening, way past dinnertime, I started to worry about my cat, Feather. I called and called him but his big white form did not emerge from the darkness outside. By 10:30 PM I was really worried. I had to go to bed. I passed by my sewing room door and thought I'd peek in there. To my great surprise, there was Feather. He had not made a sound. I did not go into my sewing room all day yesterday. I don't even remember opening the door once during the day. Very strange. I am sure he was comfortable because he had lots of soft piles of fabric to cuddle with.

 

And, speaking of cats, we have a new resident in the house. Her name is Phoenix. She is less than a year old. She was abandoned by a family which moved out of a rental house on Taylor Road in late March. The day after they moved out, the house caught fire and burned to the ground and burned up the house next door, too. A cat rescue organization found her and she was in "foster cat care" for a while. A friend called me and asked if I wanted a cat. I did not want a cat, but when I heard her story I said, "bring her over." When I saw her I was so surprised because she looked just exactly like our old cat Aucuba who lived with us for 18 years. Phoenix seems to be the right name for her because her coat looks as if it is "sooty." She knows her name now, is very pleasant, and gets along very well with Feather. I've tried and tried to take a good photo of her with no luck. She looks grumpy in her pictures, but she isn't.

Chocolate craving

This project has increased my craving for chocolate. The top is finished and I can sandwich it and quilt it. Ice cream sandwich? Next I am going to do a vegetable one -- you must have all the food groups. This is for my Dear Hearts series.

Filling the box

I'm halfway with my chocolate box quilt top. I had to run to the store and buy a Hershey bar because I got so hungry while working on it.

I started at the top left corner and pinned the patches on my design board. Halfway done now. We have dark chocolate, milk chocolate, strawberry, raspberry, a gold foil-wrapped surprise, chocolate-marshmallow, butterscotch, and I am just adding a honeycomb (or seafoam) piece now at the bottom left.

My mother used to make honeycomb candy and I believe See's Candies still sells it. I looked up recipes for seafoam candy on the web and here is a good site with step-by-step instructions and a video -- http://www.howtocookthat.net/public_html/honeycomb/

Delicious fun

Sometimes you need a bit of inspiration to get going. I received a gift certificate for See's Candy. It's been sitting on a counter that I pass by every day. So tempting.

I've got it! I'll make a chocolate box quilt. I pulled fabric from my stash. I had everything I needed -- lots of browns and a few accent colors. Now I am putting it together. At last, I am making a table runner with my "Dear Hearts" pattern. I'm photographing the steps as I go along and writing the instructions. Such fun

Mixed blessings

 It’s good to go to church, at least for me. You never know what abundance you will receive. Today, at St. Alban’s in Brentwood a parishioner brought lots of fresh fruit to give away. That’s the wonderful thing about living in East Contra Costa County, California. There are fruit orchards, berry patches, and corn fields. It’s the perfect growing spot. I took some plums and peaches home.

My neighbor, Mary, works at a farmers market and yesterday she stopped by my house and gave me a basket of very ripe strawberries. I ate most of them last night.

To preserve these treats, I made a quick batch of mixed fruit refrigerator jam. My jam is 100 times better than the stuff called “mixed fruit” at the supermarket.

My blessings were mixed, but all good. Here is a guideline recipe. I did not use any water or lemon juice, just fruit and sugar today. It cooked for about 20 minutes.

The doors rolled down this morning

 A few of us were there at 8 a.m. this morning, July 1, 2012, when the last shift went off duty. A new shift didn’t arrive to take their place. Our Bethel Island Fire Station is closed.

Ben Whitener, Karen Israel, Captain Robert Ruddick, Joni Fraga-Pratt, Page Pratt, Bob Kenny

It was a sad goodbye. A volunteer fire department started on the Island in 1948. In the early 50s, a Quonset Hut was erected to house the engine. In the 1970s a paid chief and an assistant were hired and the station was manned 24/7 with paid-on-call volunteers. The firefighters have been protecting the Island for 64 years.

A single medical emergency person will be on the site for a while. Engines will come to the Island from the nearby towns of Oakley and Brentwood (over 5 miles away). The reason for the closure, we are told, is that a bond measure on the recent ballot did not pass.

This morning, about 45 minutes after the station closed, a medical call came in. The firefighters just stood there. They could not go to give aid. About 10 minutes later a fire truck from Oakley arrived on the Island.

Plans are afoot to preserve the station and get it designated as an historic structure. You will learn more about this in further posts.

It's Flag Day

The flag is flying at my house

JP Morgan Chase needs to keep better track of things

creative commons photo from Wikipedia

 Poor Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase Bank, had to appear before the Senate Banking Committee today to explain a little bookkeeping error of $20+ Billion dollars.

I wish he would appear at my house and explain a somewhat smaller bookkeeping error his bank made with my mortgage. I was notified last month that there was a shortage in my escrow account. The escrow account is used to pay my homeowner’s insurance.

“What did I do?” I wondered.

It turns out I didn’t do anything wrong. They made an error and did not withdraw enough money from my bank account to cover the insurance. I’ve had the mortgage for many years and the insurance goes up maybe $10 to $20 a year. Pretty simple. But now they say I owe them $500 and they will take it out of my account in increments of $70 a month starting in July. Darn.

Good

 A bowl of cherries (nectarines and grapes) was my side dish for dinner tonight. My son and grandson came over this afternoon and brought me cherries and squash from a local produce stand. Life is good.


Bad

For the last two months I have not been able to stay awake all day. I’d get up at 6:30, get sleepy and go back to bed at 10:30 in the morning. I’d be awake for a couple more hours and then take another little nap. I’d have dinner and go to bed early. It was disconcerting. Finally it dawned on me that perhaps I was experiencing side effects from Simvastatin (a cholesterol lowering medication).

I’m sure you don’t want to or need to know all the details, but some of the effects were peculiar. I ached all over, the skin on my feet began peeling off (in 1/4 inch chunks), and my vision was blurry. At last, I figured out that it must be an iatrogenic (eye-at-ruh-JEN-ik) illness. Meaning: caused inadvertently by medical treatment.

It has taken three week for the effects to wear off. I feel perfectly normal now. I can stay awake and enjoy my days. Whew.

Fiber fondling

I’ve been working on a reprint edition of my old spinning booklet, Spinning with a Drop Spindle. It will be the 40th anniversary of its original publication in 1972. I can hardly believe it has been such a long time. I dug out some old spinning projects. My grandson, Victor, took some photos for me. I think they look better today in his photos than they do in real life. The bottom photo is one of mine from an old dyeing book.

I also found an old manuscript called “The Knitters’ Weaving Book.” After I’ve re-published the spinning booklet, I’ll see what I can do with it. Years ago, when I submitted it to a publisher I was told there was no interest in such a limited subject. However, there has been a resurgence of knitting and yarn spinning.

Gone but not forgotten

 The five Featherweights are heading for their new home in a north coast state. A mother-daughter quilting team wanted to take the machines under their wings. (See March 21st post.) An intricate traveling schedule involving grandsons, sons, and a sister going on vacation facilitated their journey.

I won’t forget the machines because I’m quilting a Featherweight wallhanging to put up in my sewing room. It has been a PhD (Project half done) and now it will soon be finished. It's being quilted on one of the Featherweight's big sisters -- a Singer 301.