Christmas Eve - Good Food -- Great Friend

It is Christmas Eve and I have absolutely no idea how that happened.  This year literally flew by and the past month zoomed.  Wasn't it just Thanksgiving?

We are alone this year for Christmas -- no, I am not saying that in a pity me way -- we are simply the only two in our house.  We thought and thought about what to do and then gave a call to a girlfriend who doesn't have family here either.  Upon her acceptance, we decide to just cook dinner at our house and share the evening together.

Mister puts a prime rib in the oven -- yep, good stuff.  Since we are going to his family tomorrow, this is "our" Christmas dinner.  While that gets started, I decide to make a gift for Jennie so I quickly crochet her a scarf and I LOVE the colors.

Jennie arrives with all the supplies to make Yorkshire pudding.  I am pretty excited to watch and learn from her as not only have I not made it before, but I have never tasted it.  Soon the oven is heated and the fat from the roast is put into muffin tins and then into a hot, hot, hot oven.  When the liquid is boiling, the pan is removed and the pudding batter is poured in.  Close the door and watch.  They start to puff up -- reminds me of popovers.

The roast is accompanied by twice baked potatoes, fresh asparagus, and yorkshire pudding.  Oh goodness, my mouth is watering.  It is time to eat.

Jennie and I set the table in red and white -- and everything looks amazing.

Simply divine!

After dinner, we take a few minutes to exchange gifts and she loves the scarf.  Seriously -- you know how sometimes people say they like something, but not really?  Well, not this time -- her excitement was contagious and genuine.  Yay!

It has been a fun evening.  Great conversation, excellent food, and a super friend.  Perfect evening.

After Jen heads home, we snuggle up and watch a show together before climbing into bed.  Tomorrow is Christmas and although Santa is not stopping at our house, we are looking forward to the day with family and each other.

Merry Christmas everyone.  Hope you night was as superb as ours was.

Celtic Solstice Clue #3 - Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt

Last week's assignment - that's right I have changed the wording as clue just doesn't seem to fit for me - was twofold.  We had to do half-square triangles up the wazoo and then half of them are sewn into pinwheels.  As you can tell by the date of this, I am still behind but working on catching up this week.  We were pretty busy last week with preparing for Christmas, family activities, and a wonderful sew weekend with my daughter and granddaughter.  That day deserves a post all of it's own and I will have that up shortly after this one.

I had managed to get these cut while I was working on the chevrons in assignment number 2.  I did use the easy angle ruler and 2" strips to cut the triangle pairs.  So let's start putting these puppies together.

I am using "Annie" for these.  She is my wonderful 301A and she zooms through these like they are nothing.  Within no time, I have strings of half square triangles everywhere - over 500 to be precise.

As you can tell from this picture, I had two whole strips of oops --- cut with right sides up on both strips.  Now I have to go and cut more strips and I must cut the wrong on purpose in order to use these triangles.  Grrrr.  Well, I have extras now in case I run into color duplicates in too many places.

Every cloud has a silver lining right?

Once the strings are complete, the new triangles cut and sewn, and a sample pinwheel made, my squares get pressed and then it is off to the office to sit with my sweetie and watch some television while trimming dog ears.  Yes, I am sitting on two different quilt, but they used the same material.  Years ago -- and I do mean YEARS -- I bought a kit BOM from JoAnn's and you had to purchase the fabric on your own and cut, not like the kits of today.  Well, somehow, following the supply list netted me enough leftover fabric to do a log cabin quilt out of the scraps.  Quite the scraps, huh?  The BOM quilt was hand quilted and is hanging over the back of the futon I am sitting on.  The log cabin quilt was tied and is under my -- you can see it a bit better in the second picture.  We keep both quilts here as that way we can both snuggle up while watching television.  (Oh, I say that loosely as we do not own a television.  We simply use our computer to watch what we want and have a tuner that runs through it.)  Goodness but I digress a lot.

It is time to head back out to the studio again and the first task is to make 1/2 of the half square triangles into one half of a pinwheel.  (Say that really quickly:  half, half, half, lol.)  This goes really fast and within an hour all are sewn and pressed.  I can feel the end in sight.

I run the two sides together in about an hours time.  Yes, I pinned each pinwheel at the center in order to "attempt" to get good center.  It still doesn't work well for me -- sometimes I think I have little point gremlins that are inside my machine and gently slide the lower piece of fabric as it passes the needle hole.  They do this just to aggravate me.  BUT -- I am winning the battle -- it's just not as important to me as it used to be.  I make my quilts to use, not to show --- therefore, my points do not have to be perfect.  It alleviates a lot of stress and after all I am pretty sure I do this because it is enjoyable.  Stress is not enjoyable period.

Let's get these opened and pressed.  Hopefully I will love them.  I know I love the orange and yellow together.  That is just full of sunshine to me.

Next up --- sliver trim to make sure we are 3 1/2".  Perfect!

And this step is complete.

As I said in part 2:  I love how they turned out.  They are truly scrappy and make my heart happy.

Piece count so far:   Step 1:  1,140 required (although I made extra                                           blocks)
                                Step 2:  1,464 required (again, I made extra                                                    blocks)
                                Step 3:     976 required (yep, you know it -- extra                                       of both units)

Total:  3,580 at this point.

244 Half Square Triangles and 61 pinwheels

Here is the link back to Bonnie's blog for more on this stage.  Thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah or any other special time for you during this holiday season.

On to four patches.

Glass Fusion -- A Date Afternoon!

Okay -- it is confession time.  Last Christmas Jen gave Mister and I a gift certificate to Quiggley's Clayhouse and we misplaced it.  We found it a couple of months ago and then forgot it again.  What can I say -- we are old.  I remembered it again today and called to see if they were open.  The lady who answered said that she was only in the shop for those who were picking up orders.  I then explained our situation to her and that the certificate would expire on December 25.  She laughed at me and and said to come on over so we quickly dressed and headed over there.

It took a few minutes for us to look through the products and make our decisions on what we ultimately wanted to make.  Mister opted for a bowl and I chose a wall hanging for my studio.

First step:  Clean the glass with alcohol.

Second step:  Listen to instructions closely.  We learn about the different firing levels and how the various glasses look when they are removed from the kiln.  There are many different tools to cut the glass and I am excited to get started.

Third step:  Select our colors and glasses.  Mister goes with browns, oranges, and whites.  I head for the broken pieces to make a quilt block or two with a mosaic look.

We spend almost 3 hours there and had to leave our projects for firing.  I wish I had used more variety in my greens, but overall I like the product.  I hope it fires well.  Mister's is perfect!  Oh please let it mold nicely as a bowl.

This was such fun and we are definitely going to come back.  There are so many cool things to do here.  Thank you Jen for giving us a wonderful experience.  Excellent gift -- even if it did take us a year to use it.


UPDATE:  January 15 -- We were able to pick up our finished projects today.  I LOVE them!!!  This was just waaaaay too fun.  Doesn't Mister's just look awesome.  I am seriously considering making him a quilt just like it.

Violets in Bloom -- Winter Beauty

I came in the house from the studio to discover Mister with his tripod and camera working in the office.  The violets in the window are so pretty right now and he wanted to catch a few shots of them.

They sit in the window and just bloom and bloom and bloom.  We have had them for several years now and they bring a bit of color into the house during the winter.  Elena especially loved them while she was here.  She slept in the office and her favorite colors are pink and purple.  She declared them hers!

Three Generations Sewing Together - Such A Memory

While talking to Jen last week, she mentioned that she hadn't had a chance to work on her quilts at all since Thanksgiving and neither had Bekah.  I told her to come up and spend a full day and night here and we would sew like wild women to get them done.  She said she'd think about it.

A few days later, I received a call saying that Bekah needed to be in Arlington on Saturday for a soccer clinic and so the two of them would come up Friday as soon as school was out.  Yay!  They arrive around 7 and after a quick dinner, the three of us go to the studio and soon the place is humming with the sound of sewing machines.  Jen and I set to work on the Minecraft quilts and Bekah starts in on her borders.  She is doing a solid orange one first and then randomly putting her extra squares together and  piecing an outer border.  Believe it or not -- it comes out exact for her.  Amazing.

Jen and I are busy playing with bright green and black squares.  I am hoping with each stitch that I haven't gotten anything out of order or the "creeper" won't show up.  Woot woot --- it works for me.  Here is my top.  I do one in the time that Jen does 3 -- not sure how much help I am.

Bekah takes her quilt into the house so we can cut the backing and the batting.  Soon she is back out in the studio attaching the whole thing in order to turn it and tie it.  After two sides, she is shot and needs some sleep.  One of the corners is giving her grief and at midnight it is definitely time to call it.  Off to bed she goes as she has her clinic in the morning.  Jen and I work a bit longer and soon all the tops are complete.  Time for bed for us as well.

The next morning Jen and Bekah are up and gone before I even wake up.  On the way back from dropping Bekah, Jen's wipers stop and it is raining like crazy.  She limps to the Shell station near us and drops off the van.  Drat.  Just what everyone needs at this time of year --car repairs.

Once back home, a small breakfast and it's off to the studio for the two of us.  We have borders to make and attach.

Here is my top.  I do one in the time that Jen does 3 -- not sure how much help I am.















When those are complete, we decide to go watch Bekah for awhile before picking her up.  She is at UT-Arlington and they certainly have a great facility.  Wow.  Bekah is playing in an alternate gym and we arrive just in time to watch her for one minute before she is pulled and the game ends.  Ugh -- waiting on the van to get fixed and $400 bucks later screws many things up.

On the way home, we make a stop at JoAnn's for yarn and somehow discover other goodies to do together.  This is a really bad store for me sometimes.

When we get home, Mister has dinner almost finished so while we are waiting, I take Jen down to Tuesday morning to look for a gift for Josh and Bekah heads to the showers.  We score big time at the store and soon return to a wonderful ham dinner.  I am absolutely starving.

As soon as we finish, Bekah and I start working on fixing her corner of her quilt and we are all three soon pinning it for her to sew.  Jen and I also discover that the backing fabric is not wide enough so we quickly cut it into sections to make giant 4 patch backings.  That works for 3 backs, but we run out and are left with just a few strips.  I take everything out back and start making the backs while she cuts batting.  As I complete each one, I return to the house with it and she cuts it to fit as well.

A couple of hours later, Bekah has finished making her sandwich, turned her quilt, and is ready to tie.  I tell her to take it into the house and her mom can help her.  Little did I know (and darn that I didn't get to see it in person or in pictures) but Mister sat down and helped tie it too.  What a great guy he is!

Here is her finished product:

Didn't she do an awesome job.  This is her first time doing anything like this and it is entirely her vision -- colors, fabrics, pattern, etc.  I am so very impressed and certainly hope her girlfriend will be also.

She finishes watching her episode of CSI (yep, that has been going the ENTIRE time out here) and soon heads to bed, leaving Jen and I to put the other 4 quilts together.  We each do two, close the openings, and call it another night.  Jen is staying a second night since the weather is crappy and we didn't finish until almost midnight again.  All she has to do when she gets home is tie them.

I am beat! BUT BUT BUT --- I have loved every  minute of this time with my daughter and granddaughter.  It has been the best Christmas present I could have had and wouldn't want to trade those memories for anything.  Please let it happen again.  Please.

Celtic Solstice Clue #2 - Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt

Wow!  Chevrons!  This clue almost beat me.  It seemed to take forever for me to complete it, but I also keep forgetting that regular life, shopping for Christmas, shipping Christmas, doing cards, etc. all need to take place.  For some reason, I am unable to accomplish those things while sitting at my sewing machine.  Drat.

The day the clue came out, we were hit with an ice storm here in Dallas and Mister deemed it too cold and dangerous for me to be out in the studio, so we brought in the cutting implements, mat, rulers, and fabric.  I set up a temp cutting area in the office and set to work.  Here is a look at my chevron process:

After cutting, I needed to draw a diagonal line on each square and then a second line 1/4" away to use as stitching lines.  That meant 1000 squares and 2000 lines.  I set up with a lap table while watching a movie and soon Mister was looking to improve my working conditions.  My fingertips were getting sore from picking up the ruler twice with each square.  He came along with his trusty duct tape and hooked the ruler in place along the edge of my tray and then made a little handle to lift the ruler with each time.  It may not look good, but dang it worked well.  Ingenious Mister.


This took all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  I was really glad to see this stage complete.  Monday, I bit the bullet and went out to the studio, cranked up the heat and started in on these puppies.   Step one is to attach the neutral squares to the green rectangles on the diagonal and then to stitch again on the second drawn line.  This nets me a bonus triangle when I trim the seam.  Yay!

It does make the pressing process take a bit longer as well though, as I have to press the chevron seam and the bonus triangle.  Lots of little pieces everywhere.  The picture below is the last of this side of the chevron and as you can see, my container is almost overflowing with bonus HST's.  Too fun!

Same process with the yellow squares and the other chevon half.  Yes, I still need to trim all those dog ears off the bonus triangles, but that is a job for a long drive.

Finally, I am to hook the halves together and get chevrons!

Yes, I am getting nice chevrons and 3 1/2" squares.  Awesome.

The last string is off the machine.  Now all I have to do is press their seams open and then tackle my pile of unacceptables.  I have about 20 re-dos but out of 250, I figure that is not too bad at all.

Yep - 249 completed, beautiful chevrons.  On to clue 3.  (I did take time on Friday, when the clue came out to get it cut, but that is for another post.)

I love how they turned out.  They are truly scrappy and make my heart happy.

Piece count so far:   Step 1:  1,140 required (although I made extra blocks)
                                Step 2:  1,464 required (again, I made extra blocks)

Total:  2,604 at this point.

249 Chevrons and 996 bonus HST's --- What to do with them -- what to do!

Here is the link back to Bonnie for this stage.  Enjoy.  Onto to pinwheels!

Monkey King - Finally!

Looking for something to do this evening, we discovered that Monkey King is now open for dinner on Friday and Saturday nights.  Yay!  We have wanted to try this place out for weeks now, but are never in that area for lunch.  It looks like a trip to Deep Ellum is on our agenda tonight.

Our first stop is at Lulu B's antique shop to check on a hand crank sewing machine that we spotted there awhile back.  It is still there, but $125.00 is still too high for the shape it is in.  Drat.  From here we are off to Monkey King to get some wonderful soup which we will take over to Calais and enjoy with Benjamin while sipping on a superb glass of wine.  (It is wine pick up night for the club so we are multi-tasking.)


Monkey King is this great Chinese noodle kitchen where the noodles are hand pulled to order.  There is always a line, but it is rather cold  out tonight and so we are lucky that the line is short.  I am not sure how Mister caught a picture of me without anyone else around.

They have a wonderful window with stools in front of it that you can sit and watch the noodles being pulled.  You all know how much I love this kind of thing, right?

Obviously, I take a seat as soon as I can and sit back to enjoy while I wait for our order.

I am not disappointed.  The process is fun to watch and yet at the same time, very intriguing.  Could I do this?  I would love to give it a try -- now to find a recipe as this noodle dough looks a bit tougher than my own.  I will do some research though.

We forgot to take pictures of the food or our time with Benjamin -- I know, I know - I am falling down on the job.  It was a great night though and we will certainly return to Monkey King.