More books and a project

 Kids are back in school after mid-winter break long weekend- and this year to hopefully get them healthy after the sicknesses that are ravaging through town.  So Tuesday I was back reading to the first graders.

Kids all think the magic of life happens when they are grown up.  If they would only relish their little lives now!  These two stories are about wanting to be big, grown up, and stubbornly proving it.

I LOVE Bob Graham's books.  Oh, my.  I remember standing in front of him at an autograph table blubbering through tears because in the book he was autographing, Let's Get a Pup!, he drew the dog that looked exactly like our dog who we had just sent to heaven.  I know the poor guy thought I was a crazy lady but I wasn't over what we did to our Polly.

Anyway, April and Esme are tooth fairies and just got a call (on their cell phone) from Daniel's grandma that he lost his first tooth and she specifically asked for April and Esme to come take it.  Mom and Dad, of course, think April and Esme are too young at 6 and 7 years old.  But they beg to prove they can do big things.  Graham's illustrations are a treasure and studying the details is both wonderful and hilarious. You really have to look at every inch of the page to marvel at his detail.

Regina thinks she's big enough to go hunting on her own, even though mom told her to stay home till she gets back. Of course she doesn't and encounters her own challenges.  

Do you take photos of your projects in progress?  I try to.  I've always relied on a camera to see what I can't see because cameras DO see what we can't.  Maybe I should have tried that with those basket pillows, come to think of it.  

Anyway, I've had these ladies laying on the dining room table for a couple of weeks and am now trying to decide if they should float 

or sit on the bottom of the background, next to where a border will be.  I kept changing the layout and finally took the photo.  Seeing it this way I'm thinking next to the border otherwise they look like they are floating with no anchor. At least that's for this trip around the table. 

Progress on Elizabeth's Baltimore Album - all 20 squares are quilted and half of one border side. Had to let my needle pushing finger rest for a couple of days but the border will go well. First time I've done this but I've got three needles going at the same time on the border.  

The Sun Came Out

 The sun came out this week.  Real live blue sky sun for a whole couple of days!  Go ahead and laugh but in winter in Michigan that is RARE.  And it was just enough to get my juices flowing and start moving again.  I'm glad for so many reasons including my temperature tree leaves cross stitch will now have a different color because this week they are saying we will see the 40's!!  Open the windows!!! Wash them!!

Everyone is sick but not us and we want to keep it that way so we self imposed semi-isolation. So far so good. But the sun was shining and it seemed like such a waste.  So I cleaned out kitchen cupboards, taking everything out, tossing things that were embarrassingly well past their Best By dates, put down new, clean oil cloth and now I open them to just stare and smile. 

I also got some mojo back and started putting things out on the Thinking Bed.

There is a company called Elizabeth Wade Studio that makes dish towels with images of books and some universities on them.  I love the water color wash look of the images and bought the Little Women one because Little Women was the book that launched my reading life when I was ten years old. Washed it's ready to be the center medallion on a quilt project of some sort.  Not sure what yet but I started to audition pieces.  My habit is to leave things out on the bed for awhile while I walk past and think.  I am not nice to dish towels and they have a better chance of a good life if I don't use them in the kitchen.  

While cleaning out closets and drawers I came across some images I traced from something...don't know what or when.  But I'm in peasant mode right now and these ladies spoke peasant more than Matryoshka.  I started tracing out each of the women, going through fabrics that don't match and putting together packets for each of them.  I like that green for the background.  I'm thinking of getting them ready for retreat the end of March. I always have a hand quilting project I spend most of my time on at retreat but need something applique when my needle pushing finger gets sore.  That's the time I'm aiming for.  This is where Jo's project bags would come in handy!!  Have you seen her project bags?  She's having fun making them and they're beautiful.  I have some vinyl things I'll use for these ladies. 

These were the cut offs from the scallop border on Elizabeth's quilt.  They are the perfect shape of a funky tulip so I kept them-too nice and too big to toss.  Might find themselves on a border for the peasant ladies but I don't know. They sit on the Thinking Bed for now.

OK, here are the pillows I said I made a mistake in.  The basket pillows.  Do you see it?  Just nod your head when you do.  Like I said, if you have eyes you'll see it.  It isn't the first time I did a mistake and only saw it after the project was completely finished and in one case professionally framed!!  But I also decided after seeing it, I was not going to take it apart down to the studs to fix it.  It won't take long to fill this chaise lounge with pillows again!  I'm finding them a good and useful way to use orphans and scraps. 

Kids didn't have school Tuesday so I didn't go read so no books to show.  

Valentine books

 It's Valentine's Day Friday so I took in one book that was obvious and one not so to read to the kids. 

This one has been a favorite of mine for a long time and I didn't realize how long till I looked at the publication date - almost 30 years!

The author is great at shining a light on normal everyday everykid reactions to things.  But his one is one of my favorite of hers.  

  Gilbert's teacher told the class to write a nice poem for everyone's valentine.  Gilbert doesn't have any trouble with that till he gets to Lewis and Margaret.  Lewis once tweaked Gilbert's nose and it hurt and Margaret once made fun of Gilbert's glasses.  So he doesn't write nice poems for them and he thinks it's funny...but maybe they wouldn't.  What he does next always, ALWAYS brings a gasp or an "oh no!" from one of the kids listening. 

This one isn't a Valentine but it's about someone with a sunny disposition being nice to someone with a prickly personality. Sometimes all you need is a hug.  PH and I always told our kids "Never turn down a hug. You never know when the next one is coming."  Appropriate for Valentine's Day, I think. 

On the stitching front I am down to the last 4 squares of the BA quilt then have the border.  I'm well well ahead of my self imposed schedule so feel pretty good about that. 

We are trying to stay away from the flu that is galloping through town so are hunkering down when we can and not being frivolous out in the world. (As I say this I'm immersed with third graders at the museum this whole week and went to a first grade class to read and there isn't anything germier than kids.) But so far so good.  I spent the weekend making three pillows from scraps. After they were completely finished and ironed, on two of them there is one very glaring mistake that will stick out to anyone with eyes.  Yes, I did it twice-so I'm not showing them to you. But when I thought about what it would take to take them apart down to the studs I told myself I personally can live with it and ordered the inserts. 

Imagination

 How is it we raise chauvinists?  I mean really.  Yesterday when I brought these two books out of my tote and told the kids they were about dolls I heard groans from 6 year old boys.  Well, I hopped on that!

"Do you guys have action figures? Well, those are dolls." And one little guy said, "If that's true I'm never playing with THEM again!"  And then he said something totally inappropriate for this day and age and teacher said she would have a bit of a talk with him later. 

I then asked them if they have an imagination.  Yes, they said.  Do you use it? YES, they said.  Ok, good. Even though these books are about dolls they are also about people who have an imagination. And use it.

Elizabeti lives in a village in Africa.  She has a new baby brother and wants a doll to love like her mother loves her brother.  She doesn't have a doll.  She looks around and finds a stick but it's too pokey. She finds just the right rock and the rock becomes her baby doll and names her Eva. 

That got the kids' attention.  A rock? I looked at them and said, "Imagination, kids." 

Fanny wants a 'Connie' (read: Barbie) doll but mom says no. "They are too TOO" says mom. And I can remember feeling that way as I watched the age girls were given Barbie dolls fall from 8 or 9 to 5 and 6 and thinking the same thing.  She is too TOO.  But I wasn't as strong as Fanny's mom and caved when my daughter wanted one.  Thank goodness once owned the lustre wore off quickly for her.  

Anyway, Fanny decided to make her own Connie doll and proceeds to spend an afternoon sewing from scraps and yarn and clearly this isn't a true Connie doll.   Her friends laugh at her (and the doll.) Fanny is embarrassed but then comes to realize something she made herself has more heart value than something out of a box. 

One of the joys of Holly Hobbie's books are her illustrations.  Just studying her illustrations can take all day.

Speaking of things you make yourself, I thought I might poke my lost mojo with a stick by bringing the dreaded sewing machine out of the closet and onto the dining room table where it will be in the way, thus forcing the issue of doing something.  My intention is to make some pillows out of orphan blocks and the pink floral in front is going to be a pillow case for Elizabeth from the fabric she bought in Williamsburg.  I used a piece of it in her quilt so this might be an interesting pillow case. 

We have a chaise lounge that I had overflowing with pillows I've made over the years.  When the kids came for Christmas I told the girls to take them, "take them all.  I made all of these and they are now ready for new homes. Take as many as you want.  I'll just make more as I go along."  So they did.  There must have been 12-15 pillows. They took all but one so I was very happy.  I wish I had taken a photo of the chaise lounge before and after.  And here I am, my mojo project is more pillows.  But I find them to be much more useful than table toppers or wall hangings. I'm running out of wall space, too.

Yesterday I made a yummy buttermilk lemon cake. It was/is very yummy.  The glaze over the top is not one that sinks in but sits on top in a really intense lemony accent.  I buy bags of lemons and oranges and zest and juice them and freeze.  I discovered I have quite a few little bottles of both so will use them in this plus the buttermilk I want to use up.  The recipe is for lemon but orange will be good, too. It's a loaf pan thing but I used 3 smaller pans rather than one big one.  Better for sharing. 

Something New - Again

 Last week when Friend Laurie and I went book shopping we stopped at a Bosnian restaurant for lunch. It was a new experience for me and delicious.  But the most fun was the grocery store next door.  

As soon as I saw the package of Oblande wafers I had to have them.  They look like the wafer part of the Dutch Cream cookies (do you have these in other parts of the world?)  They are a tasteless wafer with a filling.   

I had no idea what to do with them but when daughter called to invite us to supper tonight I knew I'd have a captive audience and said I'd bring dessert.

I started by google translating the directions on the package from Bosnian to English but didn't like what it said.  I couldn't understand what they meant by 'ground wafers' - did they mean ground up shortbread cookies? Graham crackers?  And it called for ground walnuts, which is a non starter with the grands and my daughter.

So I went to Pinterest and spent a considerable time looking at all the variations of Oblanda.  It was like Grandma's spaghetti sauce, everyone's is the best and the only authentic.  Sheesh.  But I read lots of them looking for an option I understood the ingredients and directions for.  

I found some variations: wafer crumbs-but no mention of what the wafers actually ARE.  Ground walnuts. PH and I would love that but we also won't eat this whole thing so it has to be passed to daughter's house. One had no mention of semolina in the ingredients but did in the directions.  I know semolina would be flour but since it wasn't mentioned, did they really mean the wafers? 

One recipe, I cross my heart swear to you, said to spread boys on the layers.  Hello??  

The wafers are quite large, the size of a full cookie sheet.  

I settled on a filling recipe that was explained in English with pictures for a chocolate caramel.  As I kept reading other versions I found there are two traditional fillings. One with a chocolate caramel and one with the ground wafers, chocolate and nuts and the wafers ARE graham crackers. OK, good.  

The chocolate caramel was actually a process to make your own dulce de leche and it would take 2.5 hours.  I balked at that but thought ok, cancel my other plans and do it this way once then see what happens.  After two, TWO boil overs of the sugar milk mixture, many words said, taking the stove apart to clean up the sweet milk spillage immediately, adjusting the temperature, checking MORE recipes on Pinterest, finally, finally I got what resembled a thickened sweet milk, added the chocolate and the butter and proceeded.  But boy, did I need a nap. 

You spread the caramel on the layers while it's hot and it will ooze.  You then put heavy books on top of the whole thing so it will press the caramel into the grooves. I put a piece of parchment paper under the books.  You let it set on the counter for a few hours then in the refrigerator, wrapped, overnight and the butter and caramel will solidify. 

Next day ( this morning ) you trim.  Use a large sharp NON-serrated knife.  It will, surprisingly, cut nicely without crumbling the wafers.  I wiped the knife after each slice because you are working with caramel.

Because of my spillage at the stove I worried I wouldn't have enough filling for the whole sheet pan sized wafers so I cut some off before spreading.  I ended up with a piece about 9 x 10. On cutting day I measured them and cut about 2 inch wide pieces. About.

Cut into serving size pieces and plated for dessert for tonight at daughter's house. 

Observations:  

1. They are sweet. Very sweet. I cut them too big for a serving but hey. 

2. Looking back, they are not difficult, just time consuming.

3. Making dulce de leche was the challenge but I learned how long it would take, the temperature that would cook the juice in the 2.5 hours

4. DO NOT put a spoon or wisk quickly in the mixture when you give it an occasional stir because it WILL boil over and words will be spoken. The directions did explicitly say this but ....

5. I looked at the idea of possibly buying dulce de leche, heating it up, putting the chocolate and butter in and trying that way.  But I don't know. That's a big experiment process that might not work and if it DID work they would say, "buy a can of dulce de leche" wouldn't they?

Yes, I would do it again. But not today.