second sewing class for kids

My quilt group, Mt Washington Quilting Bees, held the second half of our sewing class for kids earlier this week.  This time focusing on hand stitching.

Not as many girls attended this time, so I didn't really do any instructing.  The girls were in good hands with my capable fellow Bees!


Sandy had small embroidery hoops ready for the girls to practice hand stitching.

 Here is Carol demonstrating how to get started.
 In the background is the daughter of one of our members (she is a member too), a high schooler. She came to teach English paper piecing. She was so good with the younger girls and you could tell they felt flattered by the attention from someone older, but not old-old.

Here is Shirley, teaching "sewing on buttons".  Sandy had cut out tree shapes, which the girls had to stitch on to a background fabric...then sew buttons on each branch.

This little girl was so cute and enthusiastic...full of energy and personality. 

By the end of the class the girls started relaxing and feeling comfortable around each other.  They were sitting there chatting and laughing while they sewed...just like we quilters do when we get together!

I think they enjoyed the classes and learned a few  things.   We Bees sure enjoyed having them!

saga of the throw pillows

Last week I mentioned how we had rearranged our furniture before we hooked up the new TV.
We're happy with the layout for the most part,  but our dark colored furniture in the center of the room looked ....well, dark.

Thinking some light colored throw pillows would cheer things up, I bought some fabric to make a few.

I have been saving our old lumpy bed pillows, planning to use the stuffing from them for this very purpose.

The project started off so easy. I trimmed the fabric and squared it up, then sewed around the edges leaving an opening for stuffing.  That's when things got messy and difficult.

Have you ever opened a bed pillow?  There is stuffing in there...some is fluffy and can be pulled apart, but some is more tightly put together and has to be chopped up with scissors.

It took well over an hour to get all the stuffing apart and in to the new pillow.

The next bed pillow I opened was a different kind. Full of soft easily to shred stuffing.

oops, forgot to try and match stripes on the sides!

I thought everything was working like a charm while stuffing more new pillows...until looked down and noticed everything was covered with white dusty particles.

I whacked one of the newly stuffed pillows a couple of times with my hand, and sure enough...white fibers sifted right out through the fabric.  I had to empty both of those out and shake them clean outside.

At this point I stopped everything and started shopping for throw pillows on Amazon. 

But then I remembered a big bag of quilt batting scraps that I had been saving for....hmmm, what am I saving those for?  This seems like the time to use them up.

So, at least another hour shredding and chopping enough of that to stuff one more pillow.

I'm not even sure that I like them now...and the fabrics don't look as good together as they did at the store.

At least I used up some stuff and I know I can  throw away the rest of my old bed pillows.

veggie garden is just so-so

It's hit and miss with our vegetable gardens this year.

Lonnie had the same problem as last summer, his tomato plant leaves turn yellow, then shrivel up and die. In spite of this he does have a lot of big tomatoes growing...but a few of those have gotten pecked open (by crows?) just as they start to get ripe.

Several weeks ago I had pulled up my zucchini plants and stuck a few chunks of a sprouted sweet potato in their place. Something keeps eating the leaves on those.

But it's not all bad news, I picked all of this yesterday morning. Lonnie's green peppers and jalapenos are really producing.  The jalapenos are the really HOT ones too! I've already got a bunch in the fridge, so I need to figure out what to do with them. 

Not garden related, but here is something that I am happy to see. I think this is a very newly hatched Monarch butterfly caterpillar.

It's on one of the Asclepias (milkweed) that I planted this year for these caterpillars to feed on.

The Monarch Butterfly population has greatly decreased over the past few years.  The only plant that the Monarch caterpillars will eat is milkweed, which is becoming more scarce as land is developed.

I am giving the milkweed plants a trial run, planted close to my butterfly bush in the flower bed.  If I get a lot of caterpillars this year, I might plant a larger milkweed patch back in the field. 

The Monarch life cycle is interesting to read about.  The amazing thing about them is that they fly thousands of miles to California, Florida and Mexico...and back, each year.

They only make the trip once though, because they die after returning here, mating and laying eggs.  It's so hard to imagine something as fragile looking as a butterfly making that long journey. 

szechwan carrot soup

Usually, we don't have soup very often in the summertime, but I decided on making this carrot soup after bringing a three pound bag of baby carrots home from the store and then asking myself what I was going to do with that many carrots.

It's not a heavy or starchy soup so it's an okay soup for summer.

Szechwan Carrot Soup
1 medium onion
2 stalks celery
1 pound carrots
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 cups chicken broth
1 clove garlic,minced
1 Tbsp minced fresh or candied ginger
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp.black pepper
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. peanut butter
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
1 cup milk

Dice the onion, celery and carrots and saute in olive oil until vegetables are tender.

Add chicken broth, minced garlic and ginger. Add the cayenne and black pepper. Simmer until vegetables start turning mushy.

Stir in soy sauce, peanut butter, sugar, sesame oil, and milk.

Turn off heat. Using an immersion blender, puree to desired consistency. I like to leave a few chunky pieces.

Reheat a bit if necessary but don't let it boil.

Serve hot with a dollop of sour cream on top of each bowl.

This recipe came from a blog I enjoy reading,   The Art of Doing Stuff.

It's written by a Canadian lady named Karen who is always, always doing something interesting...from making her own bacon to laying a kitchen floor to digging up her front yard for a vegetable garden.

I did make a few small changes to her recipe (using cayenne instead of red pepper flakes - adding the carrots earlier and the garlic later and so forth).

We like it spicy hot and but you could always cut back on  the cayenne and ginger if you want to tame it down some.

It freezes just fine, too. Just remember not to boil when reheating later.

frogs..catalpa worms

The Sasquatch has a new phone that takes really good photos. Much better than my little camera.

Or maybe he is just a better photographer than I am!

He took these pictures of a big frog by his driveway.  (look how you can see the dew drops on the grass)

This frog was born for a modeling career!

This is a different frog nearby...about one third the size of the first one.

If you are interested, here is a short video (just over a minute) that the Sasquatch filmed when he took a catalpa worm over to feed it to the frog...



He will be turning it into a pet!

Those catalpa worms must be so delicious...everything wants to eat them.
This is another photo he took of a wasp feeding on a dead catalpa worm.  You can see cocoons of parasitic wasp larvae are also attached to the worm. That's probably what killed it.  (great photos, right?)

This is the Sasquatch's huge Catalpa Tree (my photo).  He said, after a storm recently, there were two turtles and a frog under the tree, hunting around for any catalpa worms that were blown down in the storm.

Some times in the summer, the catalpa worms eat every leaf off of this tree. It doesn't harm the tree though.

I have a young Catalpa Tree that I started from the seeds of his tree..maybe about four years ago. It's already about seven feet tall.    It hasn't had any worms on it... yet!

burnt ends - ever eaten any ?

Chopper, my older son, saw something interesting while watching one of those TV shows where they travel around the country and try out  restaurants.

They were highlighting a barbecue restaurant in Kansas City, where they serve, what apparently, is a specialty item there..."burnt ends".

It sounds like something you would just push aside on your plate, doesn't it?  It turns out that it's the tip ends of beef brisket, which become crispy and burned as the brisket is smoked.  (like pork rib tips?)
You can click HERE to read about them.


Knowing how Lonnie loves barbecue, Chopper asked him if he had ever tried burnt ends. Negative...Lonnie hadn't heard of them either...but his curiosity was piqued.

So, Chopper found a restaurant in Louisville that has them and brought some over for us all to try.

The restaurant is"  Momma's Mustard, Pickles and BBQ "....so named because they make their own pickles and mustard (sold by the jar there,too).

The burnt ends were nice big tasty chunks of brisket,  although not exactly what we were seeing when we looked at pictures online. They didn't have any charred areas on them at all.  Maybe we would have to actually go to Kansas City to get the real deal.

It was a really good meal, though. The servings are huge and the sides have a good homemade taste...and their pickles and mustard are good!
Lonnie wants to go there to try their BBQ pork one day soon.

Thanks for the nice meal, Chopper!

what I've been sewing

I've been working on blocks from  a pattern called "Bertie's Year".  It's  part applique, which I'm not very practiced at...and I  am moving really slow with it.

Each block comes as a kit, with all the flannel fabrics needed to make that block. The applique pieces are pre-cut and ready to iron on the background.  You hand stitch around them and add some embroidery, which I'm not very practiced at either.

The chain stitch (in red) on the block below is new to me. Now that I've  got the hang of it, it's almost done!

The patchwork around the edges is machine sewn.

"Bertie" is the little bird, and she will be on each of the twelve blocks that represent a month of the year.

So far I have finished April and May and when I finish that chain stitching on this one, that will be June completed too.

Sorry, not good lighting...took these photos at night.

Nine more to go. It's going to be a while before they are all done!