fresh food/felt food

Our garden is in full production mode and we've been having fun putting together semi-local meals this summer!

This afternoon, I tried out my new cheesemaking kit (a birthday present from my parents) and attempted to make mozzarella. Let's just say that a caprese salad covered up the taste just enough to make it a good meal. Next time, I'll be sure and use a stainless steal pan, whole milk and cheese salt to make the cheese taste how it should!

We're starting to rake in the tomatoes and next weekend I hope to can up our stock with canned tomatoes and tomato sauce. Jon and I both prefer the cooked version of tomatoes, so we really only grow them to can or freeze them.

My parents also got me the book Warm Fuzzies for my birthday. I went thrifting for wool sweaters a few weeks ago and found four different wool sweaters in one store! What can I say? Michigan is a chilly place!

So, I made this little cupcake and trimmed it with some ribbon that I found at a sewing expo last year. Decor8 had a nice little feature on their booth, Nifty Thrifty Dry Goods, a while back. Unfortunately, they do not have a retail or web store.

up north

I had a relaxing weekend up north with my friend, Catherine, and her mom at her mom's lovely home in the woods. There was lots of napping, Olympic watching, reading and sewing going on.

We had lots of fun watching their 3 (or 4) hummingbirds fighting for the feeder.

 

And I finished this sublime stitching embroidery pattern (from the Craft Pad) while I was there and turned it into a tea towel this afternoon. I was a little burnt out on embroidery after my stitchette mania last winter, but it's so much fun to break out the bright thread and play around with color combos.

it isn't summer without...

-an abundance of zucchini from our garden. So far we've made chocolate zucchini muffins, zucchini bread, sauteed zucchini, zucchini stir fry, and this delicious zucchini crustless quiche...and we still have tons of zucchini to eat up!

-a trip "up north." This was my first time tubing...it seemed a lot more dangerous than this picture makes it look. I'm pretty sure I was screaming the whole time!

-Rainbow jello! I got the recipe for this from my friend's mom back when I was in college. Here's the recipe:

You'll need:
a half gallon of sherbet (any color or flavor)
6 different packs of jello: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple
a 9x12 glass pan

Starting with the purple jello, mix one cup of boiling water with pack of jello mix. Whisk for about 2 minutes, then add 1 cup of sherbet. When it's well mixed, pour into glass pan and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Repeat 5 more times with the remaining colors.

According to reliable sources, this tastes just like skittles or sweet tarts.

finished quilt tops

It's been a productive week around here! I finished the Plain Spoken
top on Wednesday night. I've been procrastinating making this quilt
because I was always so paranoid about not having matching corners and
matching corners is what this quilt is all about. I guess I've been
improving in the area of accuracy because about 95% of the corners
match on this top. For that other 5%, the corners are pretty close! I'm
glad I waited a while to attempt this. Once I pick out a backing for
this quilt, I'll get started on the quilting part.

Do you have any
great up-close pictures of free-motion quilting that you've done
yourself or that you've collected in your internet browsing? If so,
please link because I'd like to try something different than the normal
stippling that I do for this quilt.

and I finished the quilt top for my Common Threads Quilt last night. You can read more details here.

random goodness

I’ve been doing a little experimenting with canning and pickling lately thanks to this great book that I found, The New Preserves: Pickles, Jams, and Jellies.

Here’s a quick and easy recipe that I tried out the other day with some fresh cucumbers from our garden:

Alicia’s 24-Hour Chips

1 salad cucumber or three small pickling cucumbers
1/2 cup vinegar
1 tsp. Sugar (optional)

Wash and peel the cucumbers and cut crosswise.
Layer the slices in a suitable container with lid, then fill about halfway up with vinegar. If desired, sprinkle with sugar. Eat in one to three days. Store in refrigerator.

I absolutely love fresh cut tomatoes on pizza…it’s fun having garden and farmer’s market food to depend on in the summer to pull together quick and easy meals like this. The crust recipe is from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

In quilting progress, I was able to arrange the blocks yesterday for the Plain Spoken quilt. Unfortunately, due to a user error on my part, the quilt no longer looks like this. I had stacked the blocks in rows for easy sewing and then inadvertently turned the rows into columns. Luckily, I caught the error of my ways halfway through sewing the top, so I was able to arrange it and cover the mistake without having to use a seam ripper (yay!).

Here’s a finished object that I’ve been working on since Father’s day. It’s Elisa’s Nest Tote from thepurlbee.com. I procrastinated on this way too long because I didn’t have time to sit down and figure out how to do an applied I-cord and I finished up the Kitchener stitch for the handles this afternoon. While I was looking at whipup this afternoon, I noticed a post with a tutorial for a modification for this bag. I have an unfinished yellow version waiting in the wings that I might use to try out the new handle option. The bag was made with size 10.5 needles and turquoise Sugar N Cream yarn. Now I'll have to see if my shoddy craftsmanship holds up with a trip to the farmer's market this weekend! It's looking doubtful!

chain piecing and a quilt block

I just discovered the joy of chain piecing on my last quilt and now I can successfully manage sewing blocks together without wasting thread or time. Why didn't I try this sooner? The only downside of this is that the kitties discovered my pile of sewn fabric while I was away from my sewing and turned it into a temporary bed.  Oh well, I guess it just meant more ironing for me.

My blocks are all sewn together, pressed and trimmed and they're ready to be formed into a quilt top. I'm wasting no time on my month long break from school because I've got lots to accomplish!

And here's my block for Liz for the Common Threads Quilting Bee.

Isn't this chestnut fabric great?!

birthday stuff

Jon and I went to the Shadow Art Fair in Ypsilanti last weekend and came home with these two darling treasures:

Gladys, the Chimean from the morninglorivine

and this adorable mole print from Tugboat Printshop (so ugly it's cute). Jon picked this one out and now we have to find a floating frame for it so that we can hang it up.

And, it was my birthday on Friday. Jon's mom is so great about sending cards for every holiday imaginable...and she always manages to find a card to "son and daughter-in-law." Before seeing all of her cards, I had no idea there were so many cards like this available! It's fun to get happy cards like this every once in a while.

Jon gave me this adorable Miso Soup tote bag that I fell in love with at the japanese bookstore last weekend. It's now home to my embroidery works in progress.

Because it's my "birthday month," I took the liberty of stocking up on a few new treasures for my craft collection...

I'm on an embroidery kick again with these new patterns from Sublime Stitching:

Here's my bird embroidery in progress (everything around here these days is in progress, hence the lack of posting)

And, I bought this stack of Kona Cotton fabric from Pink Chalk Fabrics

and I've got the fabric cut and ready to go for my Plain Spoken Quilt. This is actually the quilt pattern that first inspired my desire to start quilting, so I'm excited to put this one together. It was so easy having all of the colors chosen for me with the fat quarter kit, so I'm all set to go.

I finished my first class for library school on Friday and now I have a month off before I start the fall semester. My crafting to do list is long and I'm hoping to fit everything in before I have to return to using my free time for paper writing!