Valerean

Have a peaceful Memorial Day, everyone.

Here's a quick and easy dessert to make if you just want a few servings (double or triple if you want more): Apple Puff Pastry Cups 1 Granny Smith apple 1/8 cup brown sugar 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon butter or margarine 3 frozen Puff Pastry cups Decorative sugar (optional) Preheat your oven to 425F. Peel and thinly slice the apple. Melt the butter in a small skillet, adding the sliced apple, brown sugar and cinnamon. Cook the mixture until the apples are soft, remove from heat and set aside. Arrange the puff pastry cups on a greased cookie sheet, and bake at 425F for 14 minutes. Remove from oven, take off the little disc of pastry on top with a fork, fill the cup with your apple mixture, replace the pastry disc, and bake for 4 more minutes. Makes three servings.

I got the results of my latest carotid doppler, and my clogged arteries are in the same condition they were the last time I was scanned. It seems my strategy of eliminating nearly all fat from my diet and drinking oat milk every day is working in my favor. I really need to watch my cholesterol like a hawk, but otherwise I'm okay for another year. So that's the good news. The first time I was scanned the technician noticed some nodules on my thyroid, and this time she noted that they've grown larger, so I'm going back in two weeks for a thyroid scan. If there's something going on with that it might explain my perpetual fatigue and some of the other symptoms I've been having. I also have blood tests next Friday, and a GYN check on the following week to cover all the other bases. Keep your fingers crossed for me. :)

There are a couple of quilts that every diehard traditional quilter wants to make, but for me the top three have always been a silk crazy (crashed and burned on that last year), a bed-size wholecloth (no patchwork; just two large pieces of cloth + batting that are stitched together), and a completely hand-stitched double wedding ring (I collect them, and I've restored several, but I've never made one on my own.) Since my ability to hand stitch anything is fading fast I've had to adjust my expectations. But I still have enough dexterity to quilt, so I bid on this lap size hand-stitched double wedding ring on eBay, and I won it. I love the colors, and it's small enough for me to handle the work, so this will be my summer art quilting project.

My love for birds and a two-buck price tag prompted me to pick up a remaindered copy of An Enchantment of Ravens , author Margaret Rogerson's debut YA novel. I wasn't expecting much; I'm not a fan of fairy stories or YA, and it is the writer's first book, which for me usually means earnestly over-written and almost always badly plotted. Honestly, I left it in the bathroom to have something to read when I had to spend time in there. This is when the Universe muttered, "Time to teach her a lesson." The story is deceptively simple: in a Tolkienesque world where immortal Fae and humans exist together, a mortal portrait artist makes the mistake of painting a Fae prince with human emotion on his face. The results get her dragged off by him to the Fae world to stand trial (evidently making a fairy appear mortal is an unforgiveable sin.) Along the way the Fae prince falls in love with the artist, and both become targets of a hidden foe. Every writer who read

Today my girl and one of her friends are driving up north as she moves for her new job. It'll probably take her three or four days to get there, and then we're flying her friend home. Send good thoughts their way, please. My fingers are pretty sore so I'm going to take a short break from quilting, but I have this lovely pile of recycled and vintage linen waiting for me when I decide I'm ready to start a big quilt. I also picked up a couple of hand-dyed fabric bundles so I can do some smaller slow stitch projects: I have a thing for moire satin, and I thought the peachy color of the vintage yardage I bought (on the bottom) would go nicely with this green and apricot bundle. I don't know what I'm going to do with this bundle. It came with about a yard of burlap, but I'm saving that for something else. Maybe I'll turn it into some mini art quilts for my journal. I'm also going to see my doctor today, so if you have extra good thoughts

I wrapped up the last of the embroidery and embellishments on my crazy quilt tote, which came out better than expected. After that I sewed the sides together and lined the inside with a pretty Asian print. Here's how it turned out: It took awhile, but it feels really good to finish this as my first project started in 2021.

Over the weekend I quilted the final tricky patch on my crazy quilt tote; a hand-dyed swatch of heavy silk satin that I've been saving for a long time. Instead of fluttering like the habotai it slithers around as if it's trying to avoid the needle. Once again I taped down the fabric to keep it from moving while I worked and went with a grid quilting stitch in light gold holographic Sulky. I wanted the dye pattern to show through the stitching, and that worked well. I placed a second vintage brooch I bought in the center of the patch, and embellished the gold lace edging at the top with violet crystal montees in two sizes. If all goes well I might have the stitching on this project finished tonight.

I found a reliable seller of authentic overseas DVDs -- knockoffs are a real problem when you're shopping for these -- so I'm investing in some kdrama series I haven't been able to find anywhere else that feature three of my favorite Korean actors. On the left, What's Wrong with Secretary Kim? , a romantic comedy-drama that features a hilarious office romance between a narcissistic boss (Park Seo-joon) and his patient secretary (Park Min-young). On the right, Healer , an action thriller with Ji Chang-wook playing the title role of a secretive night courier/fighter and Park Min-young as an endangered journalist. This should keep me busy for the next couple months. One of the pleasures of watching series in a foreign language with English subtitles is that my bad hearing doesn't factor in, and I'm actually picking up a lot about Korean culture to help with writing the NA series. :)

I finished embellishing the habotai silk patch last night. I didn't tear it, either, which was a big relief. About 3/4 of the way done now. One more tricky patch to tackle, and then I can head for the finish line.

My mother loved candy, especially chocolate in any form, and one of her favorites were Ice Cubes by Moritz. These German candies are very strange; the chocolate has a hazelnut flavoring, and starts melting the moment you touch the candy. They also taste cool without any mint flavoring at all. When I was a girl I'd beg some change from my grandmother and buy a little bag of them for Mom for Mother's Day or her birthday. I've kept an eye out for Ice Cubes for years, but I've never seen these for sale anywhere since I was a child. Because they're made with sugar and Mom was an insulin-dependent diabetic I couldn't give a bunch of them to her, but I would have bought her a few just to give her that sweet memory. Yesterday we had our first sit-down dinner inside a restaurant in over a year, and when I came out I saw a little pack of Ice Cubes by the register. I bought them and tried one tonight. I don't use sugar so it was a bit too sweet for me, but t

I'm working on the one patch on my crazy quilt tote that worried me. The foundation is hand dyed habotai silk, which is so thin and fragile it's like a ghost fabric. It moves if you breathe on it, and it can tear with one wrong move of the needle. Despite all that I love this fabric; nothing else has such a lustrous hand to it. I kept the quilting simple, and taped down the fabric as I did the starburst stitching in lavender holographic Sulky. Now I'm adding a lace fan applique and some beading on top of it. So far so good.

The farm where we buy produce from local growers is open to the public again, so we made a trip over there yesterday to pick up a bag of fresh corn and some greens. My first thought when I spied this tomato plant was "Do I look like that in the morning?" (Minus the tomatoes, probably.) Watermelon season has begun. With a vengeance. It always awes me a little to see the farm's harvest in person. It takes me two or three days to use up just one of our homegrown cucumbers. Picking them also acquainted me with how sticky and unpleasant cucumber plants can be. What would you do with a truck filled with them? Ha.

I've finished one side of the crazy quilt tote, which is turning out better than I expected. Now I have to tackle the other side: Violet and gold were good choices for this project. It's starting to feel very royal. :)

My working hand gave me some grief this weekend, so I decided to keep my wrapping paper recycling project simple. I cut the stack in half and tucked it in a mini clipboard to use as a note-to-myself pad for my desk. Last month I bought this guided journal over at BAM: I thought it might help me to open up a little more, as I haven't been writing much beyond diet and work notes in my desk journal. If I do one entry every day it should be decent handwriting practice, too.

Back in March I tried out an e-mail offer from Shutterfly.com for a "free" 15" X 18" canvas tote that I personalized with one of my own photos. To get these offers you need to register an account with them on their web site, and they send you promotional e-mails and offers pretty much every day. I usually take advantage of the "free" 101 4" X 6" prints they regularly offer, and occasionally get a "free" coffee mug or calendar I make with my photos as gifts for the holidays. Nothing they offer is actually free -- you have to pay tax and shipping -- and my canvas tote cost $9.99 to ship plus $.70 tax,for a total of $10.69. The regular price for the bag is $16.50 plus shipping and tax, so while not free it's a good deal. Now every time they offer the free tote I order it with one of my favorite photos. Eventually I'll have enough that I can use them for my weekly grocery shopping and eliminate using plastic bags altogether

The other day I bought some picture frames, but I couldn't throw away the four big pieces of newsprint the cashier used to wrap them. I folded and cut the paper into this stack, and my creative challenge this weekend will be to make something out of it. I finished another patch on the crazy tote with this beading -- not my best work, but still good practice for my stiff fingers -- and got in a few hours of stitching calm. Kat leaves in two weeks for her new job in the northwest. I'm thrilled for her, but also a little sad to see her go so far away. I think spending a day with her doing our favorite things together before she goes is the best au revoir I can give her.

I see the CDC is now encouraging vaccinated people to go maskless and return to (relatively) normal life, which I find more troubling than relieving. I've also lost a lot of faith in the CDC over the last year, so my doubts mostly come from that. I'm still listening to Dr. Fauci over anyone else because he makes the most sense to me. Next week will be the three-week, post 2nd-shot for all of us, so we've been talking about having a meal inside a restaurant. We haven't done that since March of last year, and Kat is leaving for her new job soon, so it would be nice. What are you all doing differently? Is everyone vaxxed? Let me know in comments.

Yesterday I showed the first book in my NA series to my partner, and we discussed what I want to do with the series. She's encouraging me to self-publish it, which is probably the best route, and made some very helpful suggestions. I have a lot to think about now. If I go one way, I'm going to end up becoming an independent author/publisher. If I decide against doing that, then I'll probably have to consider scaling back or even retiring from the business in the near future, depending on my partner and my health situation. It's another one of those crossroads moments. You'd think at my age this stuff would get easier, especially as I've done it so many times in the past, but nope. It's still as difficult as it was back in '98 when I got the call from New York. Maybe more so because I know how easily I can fail even with a great idea for a novel series. So: thinking. :)

After several weeks of not sewing I'm back to work on the crazy tote. I've already added all the seam trims, so now I'm embroidering and beading. The swirls in the faux fur patch look like flowers to me, so I decided to add a freshwater pearl to the center of each one. The result turned out super luxurious.

Our two new fruit trees look tiny compared to the others on our property, but I'm hoping they'll grow up strong and stick around for a long, long time. In the garden the oregano has shot up and bolted, so we're just letting it do its thing. The strawberries are still thriving, too. Kat's experimental artichoke seems to be doing well. We've started a few more radishes. The basil is doing great so we're harvesting that now as we need it. The pole beans have started producing as well. The cucumbers have taken over the back fence and are starting to creep out onto the driveway. I'm glad I'll be making a lot of salads and have neighbors that like cucumbers. It's cucumberpalooza here. And we're still picking strawberries every two or three days or so. I think overall the garden is a success.