Le Weekend

Saturday I played frugal Susie Homemaker games, and made my usual yogurt (whole milk-greek type), and some dill rolls:












(Michael stole two did some taste-testing for me!)

I also made Karen some granola:












Granola Recipe

12 cups steel cut oats
1 cup karo syrup or honey
1 tablespoon vanilla
4 tablespoons margarine or butter
1-2 cups desired dried fruit (coconut, apples, mangos, berries, etc)

I put the oats in a huge mixing bowl. I heated the syrup, vanilla, butter in a sauce pan until hot and mixed. This was poured over the oats and tossed until evenly coated. I figure since it makes a gazillion servings of morning cereal, its about a half teaspoon of butter and probably about a scant teaspoon or less of syrup (20 calories of syrup or less) per serving. The rest is oats and fiber and traces of dried fruit scattered through. Lots of healthy! Anyway, once coated, the oats are baked at 300 for 40 min, tossed again, and baked another 25 minutes. Then once cooled, the dried fruits are stirred in.
















(Karen scarfed two cups to take to BFF TiJae and I took a cup to Karene to sample! That's a 12 inch tall container, 6 inches wide....still lots left!)

Yum. Looks pretty on the counter too, and it's a good snack compared to the Pringles hiding in the pantry.

I got to attend a machine quilting class at Timeless_Quilts taught by Ruth Blanchet. What a delight she is! (not to mention a walking encyclopedia of knowlege and techniques, etc!)












(Here we are in the classroom. Notice the flag quilt on the wall.... That one made Yvette drool! The walls are covered with some of the most beautiful pieces - Ruth's work is just indescribable! If you get a chance to run by the shop, DO!!)

Karene, Yvette and I were the only three in the class! Below is a picture of the sample piece we worked on, with different techniques.













If you embiggen the pic above, and look for the red arrows, the number of bars in the line of the arrow corresponds with the technique listed below:

1. We took freezer paper, cut out a shape, ironed it (shiny side down, please!) onto our fabric and free-motion stitched around it. Then, to make it show more, we used a smaller stipple stitch around that shape. Me likee, but me needs practice.

2. We aimed for something in the realm of a quarter inch inside the squares and stitched each block, individually. Lots of starting and stopping, which for yours truly, the obsessive one, means a lot of burying threads and/or somehow trying to disguise my stops/starts. Cos I am weird that way. Me likee less, but I see the usefulness for items that I make like table runners or maybe even masterpiece quilts where I really want that level of pretty detail (and have a few drinks nearby).

3. Echo quilting attempt using free motion quilting. The goal was to closely match, I believe, the initial shape of what I was quilting around, the first time, and then with each successive evenly spaced (oops!) row, to somewhat lessen the sharpness or clarity of the shape and round it out a bit.... Okay. Me likee, when Ruth does it on her quilts. Her pieces are truly works of art, just gorgeous, every one! I am fully aware that I need practice and could get better; and I will try it from time to time, but it's not really my favorite.... By the time we were done, however, it was growing on me!

4. Oh yeah! Familiar territory. A grid, either marked with masking tape, or penciled on with washable quilt marker.... This is one of my favorites!

5. Free motion, following a penciled on (washed out later) design. This is really fun. I see lots of this in my future.... along with lots of P3 (practice! practice! practice!)

All in all, a WONDERFUL class, super teacher - and I expect I will be checking out her on-line classes pretty soon! Neat concept! Take a class when you can, even the middle of the night! I bought a beautiful table runner pattern of Ruth's... can't WAIT to start that one!! (2014?!)

:)