Sunday, December 12, 2010

LAST ROW!!!

I'm sorry I haven't blogged much lately.  This KING SIZE Double Wedding Ring quilt is taking longer than I anticipated.  I'm not good at estimating how long a project will take.  People who know me, know that I'm really, really, really not good at it.  Good thing I'm not a contractor,.  I'd do a bid to build a house in a week and another bid to replace a light bulb in 6 months.  I thought I could get it done in a month, and it's taking me 2 months.  A friend of mine did one of these in 6 weeks.  I bow to her... the queen of quilts.  More about her later- she's going to quilt this monstrosity for me.



I'm ALMOST done with the top.  I thought you might like to see the progress.  My grand-dog, Cooper was visiting and helped me take the pictures.

The quilt will consist of 9 rows of 9 rings and measure about 105 inches square.

"Cooper... get off the quilt!"




At the time that these photos were taken, I was starting the 8th row.  Now, I am close to finishing the 9th row.

"Cooper... I SAID, get off the quilt!"








"I don't care how cute you are when you wag that little tail of yours..... get OFF the quilt!"


"That's it... stand right next to the quilt and get your head in the picture."
Obviously, it's not pressed and I just have it laying on the floor.  I'll do better pics when the top is done, and lots more when it's quilted.

I promised you a detailed tutorial for this and it's coming!  But the wedding is in 2 weeks, and I have out of town company coming and I still don't have the tree up.  So I'm going to have to put the tutorial off until January.  I'll be starting another one for my other son and his wife after the holidays, too.  I can take a little more time with that one (they got married 2 years ago and I'm already late).

I hope to get this to my long arm quilter tomorrow.  I'll see if she minds letting me take some pictures of that process.  I'm so excited!!!  I love this quilt ALMOST as much as I love the happy couple. :-)

 

Saturday, December 4, 2010

What's for dinner?

Swedish Meatballs!

I don't remember if I ever told you about the Simply Recipes blog before.  It's my all time favorite food blog.  You can get lost in the blog- saving and printing recipes.  If you like to cook, I highly recommend that you take a peek and wander around this great blog.

The latest entry is Swedish Meatballs (photo from the Simply Recipes blog).  I remember this dish as being pretty popular in the 60's and 70's when I was growing up in Philadelphia.  My mom used to make them, although I'm not sure her recipe was as sophisticated as the one on Simply Recipes.  I can close my eyes and "see" a big plate of wide egg noodles with these meatballs and lots of gravy over them... along with a green vegetable like beans, peas, or maybe cabbage.  I'm thinking peas right now....

This recipe calls for a mixture of beef and pork for the meat.  We use a lot of buffalo in place of regular beef.  It's a lot lower in fat, cholesterol and calories.  Plus- it's local since I live near a buffalo ranch.  But the lower fat content makes it behave a little differently in recipes like these.  I think I might try mixing buffalo with pork and see if the results are good. I'll let you know how it turns out!

A big thanks to Elise Bauer and all of her wonderful contributors on Simply Recipes for giving us such an amazing blog!