Fibers on Friday: My New Friend, Gus.

Hello! Hello! Welcome to Fibers on Friday....this fun party dedicated to knitting and crochet and occasionally some fabric projects (like quilts :-)....

My quilt is a mere binding away from being complete and keeping my happy girl tucked in at night. I took my long arm class on Tuesday. I was there for 3 1/2 hours and did not complete the quilting. Yikes! So, I scheduled some time to go back and finish it up today, which only took an hour...plus, I was able to get some pictures of "Gus", the long arm machine, in action!

And here are the fabrics I'm swooning over for Madison's quilt:


What? Have I been knitting? Barely.....but here's my lonely little sock in progress:


I'm engrossed in a really, really good book. I saw it recommended on NPR showcased for Women's History Month. It is heartbreaking. It is tragic. It is beautiful. It is unbelievable. It is real. It makes this Ani lyric play over and over in my head:

why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun
cuz we'll never live long enough
to undo everything they've done to you

Sprucing up the "Space"

Our house is on the market to be sold. Have I told you that? We are due for a military transfer this summer and we are hoping to move to Florida. I say "hoping"....really, I'd prefer not to ever leave here. We have been "home" here in NJ for 5 years. 5 glorious years of living near my family; my siblings, my parents, my nieces and nephews, and aunts and uncles. We have savored it thoroughly, but it's time to go. The thing about moving (when you HAVE to) is that one MUST wrap their head around it immediately or else wallow in misery. So, although I dread leaving here, I have already changed my way of thinking in to excitement. We've been moving around for 15 years, but this is the first time we're doing it with children who are old enough to understand what's happening. It's exciting and scary and sad. But it's taken me this long to put my finger on what happens when we're looking forward to something new....this place we are now just becomes stagnant...static. All our future plans or daydreams are not here right now. They're in Florida. It's hard to say that and hope the people we're leaving behind understand these conflicting emotions.

I didn't mean to go into all that....thanks for listening!

Anyway...how lucky are we that we get to sell a house in this age of HGTV where everyone is brainwashed into thinking we can't have family photos or personal affects in our house while it's on the market? Not only that....but that ROOMS are not called ROOMS, but "SPACES"....argh, I can't stand that!

But, we complied. We took down all the pictures of our smiling happy faces so it would not deter the dreams of another happy faced family who needs to see themselves living here. And this is what we're left with:

Thankfully I saw this post by The Magic Onions and knew it would be perfect for this "space" hahaha! So enough ranting and bellyaching.....here's my craftiness to make things happy, but not personal!



No more blank walls where pictures should be! Nice, EASY, paper stars now hang in their place!

Meatless Monday! Prep for St. Patty's Day

Do you have fun on St. Patty's Day? I do! I like to have a green dinner party! I even send invites :-)

Get yourself prepared to make this soup for the upcoming St. Patty's Day. It's yummy. It's meatless. It's green (somewhat). I got lots of ooohs and ahhhhs over this one. It's from Cooking Light.

Irish Colcannon and Thyme Leaf Soup

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter, divided
• 2 1/2 cups diced peeled baking potato (about 14 ounces)
• 1 cup diced onion (about 4 ounces)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided
• 3 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth ( I use veggie)
  
• 2 cups water
• 3 tablespoons water
• 8 cups thinly sliced savoy cabbage (about 1 pound)
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves

Preparation

Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add potato, onion, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Cover and cook 6 minutes. Add broth and 2 cups water; bring to a boil. Cook 10 minutes or until potato is tender.

Combine 3 tablespoons water and remaining 1 tablespoon butter in a large Dutch oven; bring to a simmer. Add cabbage and thyme. Cover and cook 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat; stir in remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and remaining 1/4 teaspoon pepper.

Place half of potato mixture in blender. Remove center piece of blender lid (to allow steam to escape); secure blender lid on blender. Place a clean towel over opening in blender lid (to avoid splatters). Blend until smooth. Pour into a large bowl. Repeat procedure with remaining potato mixture. Add potato mixture to cabbage mixture; cook over medium-low heat until thoroughly heated.

Fibers on Friday: Poppies....Poppies....

Poppies will make them sleep....sleep...sleep....



Welcome to Fibers on Friday! A fun day to share our knit and crochet projects (or a quilt or two!).

Last week I showed you my quilt top and asked for opinions on which way I should go with the actual quilting process. Well, I decided to take a long arm class and do it myself at the quilt shop. So, that class is happening on Tuesday. Hopefully next week I'll be able to show you the finished quilt.

On the knitting front, however, I did finish another hat. This is the third one I've knit with this pattern called "Poppy" (The yarn is Bernat Felting Natural Wool in Crocus). It's so flattering on this girl! But, she grew out of her older one, so I made her this one. (Plus, I started a new pair of socks).



Two administrative notes :-) I added a new comment system to the blog. Now we can respond in thread-form to one another. Make sure, though, if you want to be notified of follow up comments, to check the box. I like this system when you ask a question, you don't have to deliberately go back and check for responses, you'll be notified. Also, I did not leave a comment on every single link this week like I have been trying to do. As you see, we got upwards of 30 link-ups! That's AWESOME!! I look at and revel in each one, but I just didn't have to time to comment on all.

Meatless Monday! Fear Not the Artichoke

I'm not sure if I'm the only one who was a little intimidated by prepping, cooking, and eating whole artichokes, but now I'm a pro! I ate an entire artichoke...by myself...two days in a row! Delicious!

I bought two because they were super cheap at my grocery store last week. I googled instructions for how to cut and cook them. This is the one I went by.

I served mine with mayo and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Like edamame, I couldn't stop eating it! If you've never cooked these on your own, I encourage you to try!

Also, check out Meatless Monday for reasons to go meatless at least one day a week and inspiring recipes to make it easy!

Fibers on Friday: A Quilt Top

OK, OK, this was not the direction I was going when I decided to host Fibers on Friday, but you'll just have to accept my quilt as my work with fibers this week. Rest assured, I knitted. A little. But, man, I REALLY got into this quilt!

Before I show you, can I just tell you again how happy this party makes me? I thank you sincerely for accepting my invites, hopping over from whichever blog you were visiting, linking to, or writing from and checking us out and linking up! I love getting new followers every week and I adore seeing the same people return each week. It's nice that this party is so intimate that when someone is absent for a week or two, they're missed :-) And most of all, I love that the days with the most hits to this blog are days when I'm just posting about knitting and this party...because it means that all of YOU are checking in, sharing, and having fun!

Fiber time!



I gave you a sneak peek of the fabric last week. I spent Monday, almost all day, cutting.

How does this little pile of squares turn out to be a twin sized blanket? I spent quite some time pairing up the colors and designs...

Had my nice little stack ready for assembly line-style sewing...

Purple loving girl spent at least an hour diligently placing squares in an appealing order...

And today I finished the quilt top....here it is!


I'm so happy with it! But now I have a very difficult decision: do I quilt it myself? And in doing that I know I'll only be able to do straight line quilting. Do I take a class at my (somewhat) local quilt shop and learn how to use their long arm quilting machine? Or do I just contact my great quilt lady who finished my big quilt for me a couple months ago and have her do a really cute, whimsical, job on it? I'm torn.

Anyway....now I'm looking forward to seeing what you've been up to....do tell!

Wordless Wednesday: Read to Me