Comfort food

I made a big pot of a Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscany soup yesterday....or at least a big pot of my version of it. I use all the same ingredients (though I doubt they use canned potatoes) just maybe not in the same proportions they do. I have a tendency to use as much of something as I have on hand, so I use "the rest of the bag of spinach" and the small pack of sausage and any cut onions already in the fridge and whatever bacon we have leftover. Then I add chicken stock and other stuff until it "looks right" to me. I don't add the cream until I serve a bowl of it though so I can freeze it without worrying about it. A bowl (or 3) of this and some good French bread and I'm set for the night. I also tend to eat it for several days running and when it gets low in the pot, I add more chicken stock. I can stretch it out for a week and live on it. But not tonight! Tonight, my sewing machine has been giving me FITS and I want some curl-up-and-pet-myself food and for me, that happens to be a big bag of Lays and an entire carton of Ranch dip, with a big glass of orange juice. I can hear the gagging from here, but that is my absolute last resort go-to comfort food. And my DH realized I was on the verge of tears earlier after the top thread broke, then the bobbin thread, then the top thread, etc.......so off he went for his daily trip to the grocery store and that's what he came home with. It was a sweet thing to do without even saying a word to me. He just handed it to me when he got in.

And Jessie's

Three down, one to go. I have not the clue what to do for the roommate. The best the other kids can tell me is that he plays the drums and loves Sublime and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Not much to go on, but I have until Sunday to work on it. They all need to be assembled, but other than that I'm done with them. Not bad for a morning's work.

And my son's

Believe it or not, with the exception of trimming less than 1/2 inch off the back of the heel, this one is exactly the same size and shape of the flamingo. If you didn't believe before that shapes and colors and negative space can change visual perception, I bet you do now.

'Tis the season

For silly Christmas stockings. This is the beginning of the one for the girlfriend, and it's the most detailed. The others should go pretty quickly. I don't think you can tell in the picture, but the wing is a separate little quiltlet so it gives it some dimension to balance the legs. The eye is a push pin temporarily until I find a button I like for it.

About that lack of sleep thing I mentioned....

It was just idle thoughts, not my Christmas wish! If I'd said getting older was my preference, I'd have probably been 63 when I woke up. (I've actually been awake for over an hour already.)

My apologies

To everyone who has commented and I haven't responded to, and also to those of you who I read regularly that I haven't commented on your blogs. It's been a very tough few days and my mind doesn't seem to be tracking properly. I'm still not sure my friend's death has really hit me, but it definitely has me preoccupied and a bit weepy. I've decided that getting old, being on medications, not sleeping, being ill, and emotional upheaval all have pretty much the same effect on me. Too bad I can't pick just one of those if they're all going to make me feel the same way as a result. I'd pick lack of sleep, since I've been dealing with insomnia most of my life anyway. Getting old (strangely enough) would probably be my second choice.

They never grow up.....

They just move away from home. My son called last night and asked me if I could make personalized Christmas stockings for him, his girlfriend, his roommate, and the GF's best friend. They called from the Dollar Tree in Hattisburg, where they sounded like they were having TOO much fun picking out Christmas decorations for the apartment. After a few minutes of discussion we decided on a pink flamingo shaped one for the GF (he has been mortified for years by the real ones in the front yard, so that was a surprise) a ballet toe shoe shaped one for the best friend, a music note one for him and something "hippie and tie-dyed" for the roommate. I got all the patterns but the hippie one drawn off and printed out this morning and since he desperately wants us to come for a visit Sunday, maybe I can finish them in time to take them with me. It may mean writing the names with fabric paint rather than having them embroidered, but it's a small price to pay for a child who WANTS us to come see him. He's excited about having the decorations up, and the GF parents will be there Sunday and he wants us to meet them. That's sort of a scary thought, but he's getting to that age and she really does seem to be a sweet girl. And she makes him happy. What more could a mother want?

No news, thank goodness

A lazy Sunday so far. DH has a HUGE pork roast started for this afternoon since the oldest daughter announced on Friday that that's what we were having today even if she had to buy it herself. She and the BF are in Starkville this morning and will call when they get on the road back to Jackson so her dad can get breakfast started. That's one of the nice things about the kids being gone for the most part. He gets up and fixes a big breakfast every Sunday morning. Even when I'm not hungry, the smell of bacon frying is enough to kick-start my appetite. Of course, the onions and garlic and olive oil he seared the roast with did that before I ever thought about breakfast.

I think Girl Kitty knows she messed up by being gone a week. Either that or someone had her in their house and she couldn't escape. She has not left my side (and my lap) since she showed back up, and she was never one to be held, just petted. She's also very vocal and has talked non-stop since she got back. She even hopped up on the bed this morning to tell me something. I'm still waiting on delivery of my cat-talk decoder ring so I have no idea what she was saying, but it sure sounded important. All I could think of was "Come quick, Timmy is in trouble!" That's a huge change from Gumbo the mime cat who makes no sounds at all. He just opens his mouth and makes the meow movement.

That's Gumbo at the bottom (notice the white mime gloves) waiting for belly rubs, and Girl Kitty (her real name is Canola) at the top, worn out from helping me sew. And Gumbo is sleeping on a WIP quilt too.

Take the good with the bad....

About 5:00 this morning my sweet baby Girl Kitty showed back up on the deck after a week of being missing. I've been feeling sort of like the Crazy Cat Lady out there at all hours of the day and night calling for her, but I'm thankful she's home and if that's what it took to get her back, it was worth it.

About an hour later a dear friend called from the hospital. She's been admitted with a stroke, undiagnosed diabetes and COPD, among other things. CAT scans and MRIs scheduled for today so I'm not real sure what else they're looking for. I'm heading out there in a bit with some treats for her (and NO I'm not taking the candy bar she asked for) and her Christmas present a bit early. She has one 25 year old son who lives in Louisiana but they have a terrible relationship so she's pretty much on her own as far as support goes.

We are much too young to be getting sick and dying. Marion was 53, Terry will be 53 in two weeks. Monday was the 8th anniversary of a dear friend's (and oldest daughter's Godfather, and my boss for 7 years, and husband of one of my oldest friends) death too, so it's been weighing on my mind all week to begin with.

And never let them go....

Very hard day yesterday. Middle of the afternoon I got a frantic call from a young woman I have been close to for almost 20 years. She and my oldest daughter started kindergarten together and have stayed close all these years, even though their lives have taken very different paths. Her mother was admitted to the hospital Thursday evening and by Friday afternoon they gave her about a 1% chance to live. Kristen is the one that the medical decisions ultimately fell to, since it's only she and her brother as next of kin, and the brother is in jail. Knowing her mother's siblings, I didn't hold out much hope for them to do anything other than argue about everything. So she calls practically in hysterics and her only words were "I need you." I raced to the hospital just in time to sit with Marian while the doctor told the family they needed to discuss letting her go. I actually felt fortunate to have the time with her with nobody else in the room. After a bout of pneumonia a few weeks ago and a scare then, she had talked with Kristen about her own wishes, so the decision was relatively easy for her, knowing exactly what her mother wanted. And Kristen is blessed to have a husband who has HER as his main concern. I just can't see him letting her crazy family bully her into anything. Anyway, they came back to the house and ate when they left the hospital and got a chance to visit with everyone, including my oldest daughter and her fiance. After a quick trip back to their own house for showers and clean clothes, they headed back to the hospital to sit with her through the night. She called about midnight and said her mom was gone.

Kristen is 21 years old. No child should ever have to make that decision about a parent and my heart breaks for her. We're supposed to be meeting with hospital staff today to see if there is any sort of assistance for her funeral. The last thing her aunt said to her before her mother died was that they had decided to have her cremated because it was cheaper, and they weren't chipping in any more than $50 each. First off, it's not their decision to make, it's Kristen's. Second off, the bullying has already begun. Kristen has 3 kids and doesn't work, and I just can't see how James is going to come up with funeral expenses, but with the help of the hospital staff and the Church, we'll come up with something. Say a little prayer for all of them, please.

Macy's Parade

My friend and his troupe of gymnasts were in the Macy's Day parade this morning and they looked great. It's the first time I've ever actually watched the parade and it's about the same as an NFL game. If you can watch it muted, it's not too bad. If you have to listen to the burbling inanity, it's damn near unbearable. Thank goodness there were about 10 kids in there with me keeping me aurally occupied so I didn't have to listen to the drivel from the announcers.

Progress

You do a few here, a few there, and before you know it you've actually made some progress. I think of this as my "15 minute quilt" although truth in advertising doesn't exactly apply, since the QUILT isn't done in 15 minutes, that's just how I've assembled it. 15 minutes to cut some wonky strips, 15 minutes to put at least one strip on each center block, 15 minutes to press and cut more strips, 15 minutes to add some rust-dyed stuff to get them closer to square, 15 minutes to lay the pieces out for a progress picture.

Anyway, I'm still happy with the effect of the fabrics and the shapes for this one. By this point, I'm usually ready to lay a project aside and do something else, but this one has kept my attention. Maybe it's the whole 15 minute thing that's keeping me interested. Not any one chunk of time large enough for me to get bored with the tedious repetition of this particular technique. And besides that, I LOVE working with batiks, even though I'm on my third needle so far. My deepest respect to people who can hand-quilt batiks.

Back in the Saddle Again

I just KNEW Rissa was going to jump in with an agreement on WordPress! The only reason I haven't swapped over yet is because she's the only person I know well enough to ask questions of who uses it and I don't want to overload her. Jonathan, you have a great blog yourself and the video tour of other blogs was a stroke of genius. So we can chalk up TWO advantages to the NaBloPoMo movement (with apologies to Arlo) in that not only has it gotten me blogging regularly, but I've discovered some really good blogs I would have never found otherwise.

I got started on a new quilt yesterday, thinking I needed to get in gear making my annual donation to the Draw Down silent auction at the school. It's held in February and I tend to start thinking about it, oh, the end of January, usually. This will be my 5th quilt and it's Aidan's last year at St. Joe. Once she's gone, I may hang up the needles for that particular fund-raiser, but maybe not. After 17 years of daily contact with that same group of people it may be hard to just walk away. So anyway, I had no plan, no design, no well-thought-out idea of what the hell I was going to do, but I was saved by my constitutional inability to EVER put anything back where it came from. Lo and behold, I was tripping over the bin of batiks in all those gorgeous jewel tones and Earth colors. I've been wanting to actually USE some of the rust-dyed fabric I make rather than just making it too, and the colors seemed to work very well together. I made half a dozen or so blocks with curved piecing before I remembered why I DON'T do curved piecing. If I'd stuck with that ill-conceived plan, I'd be making a new quilt come the end of January anyway. Sooooo.....from scratch, wonky log cabin-ish blocks and some weird ladder things and some strange triangle things, and free hand cut strips and not-quite-square rust centers and I was off and running. After a trip to the Big Lots for a new iron of course. Alas, I finally conceeded defeat to an electrical appliance that IS smarter than me. The power strip threw the breaker the first time I used it and the 9 lb cord tended to get in the way. I'll report back on the new Proctor Silex next week after I've used it. Unless I kill it before then. I do like the HUGE water tank on it and the 1 hour shut-off. A simple button on the side turns it back on too. I think I can handle that.

Anyway, the quilt will ultimately be the blocks and filler things, and some of the blocks I'll just keep building on until they're big, some will stay relatively small. I want the rust stuff in the center of the blocks to be spread out sort of randomly over the face of the quilt and not lined up like little tin soldiers in nice neat lines and rows. I will ultimately quilt this one to within an inch of its life with (most likely) copper colored thread. It surprises me how pleased I am with this one too, since it's NOTHING like my usual. Not my colors, too busy, it's pieced, no negative space, and for damn sure no design to it. No metallics, no primaries, no lime green, and no appliques. The blocks in the picture are basically just scattered across the ironing board at this point but you can see the colors and general idea I'm shooting for.

Blogger problem

This is what I've been getting since yesterday mid-morning whenever I try to post to my blog.

Blogger Problem
This server is currently experiencing a problem. An engineer has been notified and will investigate.
Status code: 1-500-3
Please visit the Blogger status page or the Blogger Knowledge Base for further assistance.

They make it awfully hard to post daily if we can't get into blogger.

More on the HANDS exhibit

Strolling through the backlog of 15 quiltart digests this morning and I came across a post from Barb Douglas at www.stonecottagequilts.com/ about the HANDS exhibit. I was totally shocked that out of however many jillions of hands they had, she mentioned mine specifically! She said "One touching story is the workman's glove from hurricane Katrina, holding the FEMA bill, from Louisiana." So unless there were TWO gloves from Katrina submitted, she's referring to mine. And even if she isn't, I'm going to allow myself to believe she is and just assume she misspoke about it being from LA and not MS. Any of you who've read my past hurricane posts know how important it is to me that people not forget. At least in this one instance the glove touched someone enough to remember it months after the fact. I don't think we can ask much more than that from our art, can we? She also has a link to http://www.handsasart.org/ with a slideshow at the top which shows all 4 hands I submitted. They're all together in one picture and they are the 3rd picture after the big hand holding the bird if you want to catch a glimpse of them on a real website. Unless I followed my usual pattern and forgot, I may have pictures of the completed hands and I'll post them shortly if I can find them.
OK, I found them, but I apparently didn't get pictures of JUST the hands. Over look the paint-stained jeans and scraped back hair.

Addendum: Mary Ann Littlejohn has some more pictures of the hands up at http://picasaweb.google.com/malittlej/AShowOfHands
Thank you for doing this Mary Ann. I hated to have to miss out on the trip to Houston to see them for myself.

The New Iron

I woke up this morning thinking that since, as a rule, I'm smarter than most electrical appliances that I would just get in the habit of turning the iron off each time I used it. That way I could just turn it back on instead of having to unplug it each time. It was a great idea while it lasted. I soon discovered that THERE IS NO OFF on this iron. The lowest setting is still ON.

So much for being smarter than the electrical appliances.

Just do it!

Glumping around not feeling well has demotivated me to sew, and the longer I went without doing anything the worse I felt. Last night I started on a scrappy quilt for someone else, and once I got past the lightheadness of standing at the table cutting all the little squares, it went together very fast and sort of sparked me to go ahead and finish it up. I did over half the piecing last night and the rest this morning. Everything but the border and cornerstones are done, and I can't do those until a trip out to Hancock since the guy only sent me EXACTLY enough fabric for the squares. This will be THE END of the Aunt Grace stuff (thank goodness) but at least it wasn't the pastel AG I had to use on the last two. Yuck. I think I dislike AG as much as I do Thimbleberries. At any rate, at least I finished something and got back in front of the machine. This one will get a very simple diagonal grid quilting pattern and then I'm done with it.



Next up: A very graphic, limited pallette piece using a pair of hands drawn by my friend. Lots of black and white, maybe some red and yellow. A "study in shape" if it works out as I envision. I also get to do some more thread painting on it and I'm chewing on the idea of making each element a separate piece with them all attached. Why is it that the simplest designs are sometimes the hardest to execute? I'm sort of excited to get to work on it but don't want to jinx the result by overthinking it too much.

To sleep, perchance to dream.

My "never fail" trick of coming up with some of my very best design ideas while in the grip of a fever seems to have let me down this time. I'm thinking a low fever works better than a high fever. My concentration and creativity is non-existent the last few days, and I miss lying there drifting off to sleep with the shapes and colors of future quilts dancing in my head. I did get two finished quilts out the door yesterday and another one due to be picked up today or tomorrow. Still waiting on the name block to come back from my friend with the embroidery machine and get that one done and gone, and a simple 9 patch and I'll be through with OPS for a while. Maybe by that time, I'll have some motivation to get back on my own.

I killed another iron the other day, this time the good Panasonic. My one absolute requirement for any iron is an auto-off feature. That's an absolute imperative, between my forgetfulness and my cat's penchant for sleeping on the ironing board. I can do without spade-shaped burn marks on the floor, ironing board, cutting table, fabric, what ever it happens to land on when he's ready for a nap and shoves it off because, as we ALL know, he IS the king of the entire known universe and nothing is more important than his comfort. Well, food maybe, but that's about it. So, back to the auto-off thing. I had the choice of 2 different styles at Fred's so got the lighter one with the shiny sole plate. Only AFTER I get it home, get it fired up, play with the burst of steam thing, press some binding and a sleeve, then come back to it, do I realize that the damn thing shuts off after 30 minutes, whether you're using it or not. And when it shuts off while you're actually ironing, it spits water everywhere. To turn it back on you have to UNPLUG THE FREAKING THING and plug it back in. Not nearly as convenient as the box leads you to believe. I may put this one back for a spare (for the many times I've needed one at night and killed the current one) and go back to Target to replace the Panasonic.

I've had expensive Rowenta irons, cheap Continental irons, and everything in between. I manage to kill every single one of them within about 6 months. For a while I was buying a more expensive one each time, thinking the quality just wasn't there with the cheap ones and a good one would last longer. I did that for a few irons until I realized that the expensive ones didn't last any longer than the cheap ones and I'd rather pay $15 twice a year than $60 twice a year. I have no idea why my mojo with irons is so bad either. They don't get dropped (I do move them off the ironing board when I'm not actively using them....see reference to Gumbo the cat above) and they don't stay on all the time (see reference to auto-off above) and I don't do much weird with them beyond maybe melting some Tyvek or something and I don't let them run dry while on the steam setting. No real explanation of why I can't keep one for more than a few months at the time. By the way, did you know you can blow out the thermostat and ruin an iron if you add cold water to a hot iron? If you HAVE to add water while the iron is hot, turn the iron to no steam and pour a tiny bit of water in first, then add the rest of it. I can only imagine how many more I would have killed over the years without doing that.

I'm telling myself that I will get back later today and post some pictures. Maybe if I post some quilt pictures it will motivate me. Or maybe I'll post a picture of the cat. Something besides words in any case.

First Five update

I have 2 finished, one almost finished and 2 more waiting in the wings. They should have been done by now, but whatever this bout of the mulligrubs is that we all have has knocked me flat almost. Whatever work I can manage to get done fairly early in the day is pretty much what I get done period. Me, DH and both kids living here have all been 'round and 'round with it this week and I'm ready for it to be GONE.

OK, that was my whine for the week. Come back tomorrow for sweetness and light.

THANKS Y'ALL

We had signs all over the interstates that said "Thanks y'all" about a year after Katrina hit. It was for all of the people headed north on the way home after helping with the clean-up and rebuilding. The signs have pretty much disappeared, but the people helping haven't. It's slowed a good bit, but it seems to be steady. This little blurb was in our paper yesterday:

HENNIKER, N.H. — Fifteen New Hampshire college students will spend their winter break in Mississippi helping renovate homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina.The group from New England College will work in teams in the Gulfport area. The effort was organized by Project Pericles, a nonprofit that encourages social activism among college students.The students will go to Mississippi on Jan. 4 and work for nine days, sleeping in permanent tents that were built to house hurricane survivors.

I think it's great that people in New Hampshire, especially young people, haven't forgotten us, and they seem to realize it's not all fixed by now. What does strike me as odd though, is the fact that they use a story from New Hampshire, instead of reporting on the kids and adults from here who are going in groups. My oldest is going twice in the next few months with organized groups. Once with her Church and once with a group from MS State. And there are many other groups doing the same. High schools, colleges, churches, businesses, and just groups of people who feel moved to do something.

One of the hardest things for me to accept is that my memories of the coast are already being altered, and in some cases lost altogether. We drove Beach Blvd the other day and found ourselves discussing what had been on that corner, or what this empty space used to be. Occasionally there were enough visual clues to narrow it down to an almost certainty (thank God for recognizable shapes of signs, and trademark color schemes) but just as often, we passed by without ever deciding for sure what it "used to be." I resisted taking pictures for over a year for the simple fact that I didn't want the permanency of the pictures to become my memories. That's happening anyway with each new trip to the coast. The pictures are all in my head now, and when I remember the drive through Long Beach, it's the miles of Hanes in the trees, not the beautiful homes that my mind conjures up first. The piles of debris and heaved up boardwalks, the prehistoric skeletons of Coke machines and retail shelving littering the beaches, instead of the miles of pristine white sand and sturdy fishing piers. Gone are the kites and jet ski rentals and brightly colored umbrellas and string bikini booths. No more lobster-red tourists from Michigan asleep on their towels, or children with boundless energy running in and out of the water, squealing with each new "treasure" discovered. Now there are front end loaders and cranes, great slabs of asphalt highway waiting to be hauled off for landfill under someone's new home. And the naked ribcages of the piers.

If you're interested in "doing something" to help, www.hands.ms has some opportunities. The into to the site is worth watching whether you help or not.