I can tell it is late

  There is stil I am sitting with my laptop on my - yep - lap, trolling around Facebook and erasing a few of the 968 emails clogging up my inbox.  Yes, I am a hoarder - and this includes emails.

Today I pretty much finished a small piece that I have been working on for weeks. Made a cup of coffee and decided I wasn't going to bed until I had put it together.

I decided, after moving pieces around and taking a million photos, that I needed to call it DONE.  It's the one I posted in process a few posts ago, where I used a bunch of stripes from my grandmother's scraps.   It will do. Maybe I'll be happier with it when I have stitched it.  But that's not on for tonight.  Good enough for government work.

I did some work on it this morning and then went to visit my grandson Jake, who broke his arm, pitching in Cooperstown. He put on his sad face for the camera. 

 David came home from football practice, looking pretty happy.

I was delighted that my son Jeremy was home and that I got to visit with him -- as well as with Anne Marie. He had taken the week off and was working at home.  I needed to leave around 5:00 to get to my MQG meeting at 7:00, and I was glad that David got home before I left.  Between their schedules and mine, it has been months!

That was pretty much my day - the high point was seeing my kids and grands.  Off to bed now, so I can be awake enough to quilt tomorrow.  I have several sitting and waiting -- my least favorite part of the process.

a random day

Another day when I was going to get work done and instead, went from one random task to another - none related to sewing. Oh, dear.

It's not that I didn't accomplish anything:
  1) I spent the morning paying bills and moving papers around. 

2)  Called Belkin, to let them know that half the keys on their wonderful iPad Air 2 keyboard stopped working. I sent pictures, documentation, credit card bill, blah blah blah.  And I sent them the keyboard and they will send me a new one, since it is still under warrranty.

Of course, I leave on Saturday to teach at Hudson River Valley Workshops and will be gone for more than a week, so the keyboard will arrive while I am gone.. Fortunately, I have an old Zagg keyboard that only has one key missing (@2) but it works, even without the piece on top. 

3) I asked my housekeeper please not to vacuum my sewing room, since all the little bits of fabric clogged the hose of my central vacuum system. She can't stand not cleaning in here, so she has agreed to use the carpet sweeper instead. Victory! 

I just replaced the system to the tune of more than you want to know.  They built all these condos with central vacs, which are wonderful until they die of old age, as mine just did.  This new one will outlast me, I am sorry to say.

4) Went to the nail salon to have the deadly crack in my thumbnail patched.  I have never had nails until now (all those years of hands in soda ash and dyes). And now that I do have them, they need TLC. 

5)  Made a supermarket stop to buy mussels and yellow &red hot peppers so I could make this dish, which my housekeeper told me is delicious and sent me the recipe. I already had corn and cilantro and lime and onions and tomatoes, so I was almost there.

 Our local Peruvian restaurant, which I just discovered, serves this as an appetizer and the recipe calls for 12 large mussels.  But I made it as my main course and have enough mussels left over for another round tomorrow night.  Serve cool: quick, easy, and  just right for this hot weather.

I varied the proportions a bit - less onion, more tomato, cilantro instead of parsley, and regular limes. And if you don't have yellow and red hot peppers, I am sure that jalapenos will do.

On this note, I leave you with the recipe and I am going to bed.

CHOROS A LA CHALACA / Mussels Peruvian Style

Ingredients :

12 mussels tightly closed 2 medium size onions, finely chopped Juice of 3 key limes 1 tablespoon ají amarillo fresco / fresh yellow aji (chili), blended ½ rocoto / red hot pepper, rinsed, seeded and deveined, finely chopped 1 ½ tablespoon parsley, finely chopped  1 ear of corn kernels, cooked ½ tomato, peeled, seeded and cut in small cubes 1 tablespoon oil Salt Pepper 1 key lime, cut in wedges to serve

Preparation:

Rinse mussels thoroughly and scrub under running water. Discard any mussels that are not tightly closed. Sauté garlic in a bit of olive oil.  Add mussels and a little water or white wine and remove from pan as soon as they open, to prevent overcooking them. Discard mussels that do not open. Cool. Open mussels with a knife and place half on a serving dish. Combine in a medium size bowl, onion, red hot pepper, tomato, parsley, corn, ají, oil, key lime juice, salt and pepper. Let mixture stand for 15 minutes. Place approximately 1 ½ tablespoon of this mixture over each mussel. Serve with lime wedges. 3 – 4 servings as an appetizer

Losses, and so on and so forth...

I have a piece in process on my wall and have walked away from it umpteen times.  I have been working with some of the pajama/apron/who-knows-what fabric scraps left over from my grandmother's 1940's and '50's stuff.  She worked in a dress factory during and after The War and made blanket covers for everyone in the family (aka duvets).  

Decades ago, after she died, I wanted to use some of those fabrics in my quilts. So I took apart the blanket covers and saved whatever fabrics were not worn through.  Seersuckers, plaids, stripes -- woven, not printed - so the patterns went through both sides.

You can see - on the left is the back of the fabric; on the right,the front.

Here, the front of the fabric is on the bottom - with the black stripe.

In my early quilting days, I used them in baby quilts.  And I made a wall quilt for my mother out of her mother's fabrics, which she loved.  It disappeared off her wall when she was in the PLACE.  Gone. Vanished.

 In any case, I have gotten out the bags of fabric straps and am playing.   This is what I had the other day - in its 300th "move-the-pieces-around till you are happy'' incarnation.  I am still working on this small piece and have already moved things around.  But at least, for the moment, I am working on something for myself.

On the subject of things disappearing, my beloved bracelet that I have worn every day for almost 35 years, is gone.  The catch must have come loose and it must have slipped off my wrist when I was shopping or walking or whatever on Tuesday.  It was my 40th birthday gift from my not-yet-husband.  I have never seen another exactly like it. But this is close enough for me to have sent a photo to the insurance co.

I keep telling myself that it is only a THING.  But it was a thing with emotional attachment.  Never mind - I can keep the emotional attachment without the THING.

On another subject: I posted an article on facebook a little while ago that a woman won her lawsuit against the state of NJ, who said she could not have a license plate that said "8thiest" She said she received a message stating her request was ineligible as it "may carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency." that if she wanted one that said "Baptist," no problem.  What happened to separation of church and state??  Censorship by some self-appointed decency police was knocked down by the court.  Hooray! Interesting article - and list of license plates that are now acceptable, since those decency police at the DMV lost their case. Big smile.

On another censorship note - there was a discussion on Quiltart about quilts being censored from exhibitions or not published in magazines because someone decided they were offensive.  Really?  This still goes on?  

In any case, if you haven't read Tanya Brown's brilliantly funny blog post on the subject, click on this link and don't miss it. An hilarious post on a serious subject.  The Decency Police live on in the Quilt World.

And on that sad note...

g'night.

home again, home again, bloggity blog

For the last couple of weeks I've had my head down at the sewing machine, quilting several pieces. Takes forever - a relatively small piece took three days, just to quilt straight lines.  Drudgery, which I am not about to outsource unless it is an emergency.   But even when two of my pieces (one, a bed sized quilt) were outsourced, I still have to trim them and face them.  Not a pretty prospect...especially late at night.

On Monday I was recruited to babysit for Miss Emma, whose mother was in California and whose father was in Vermont - both working.  So, I hopped the bus and the subway and picked Emma up at ART camp at 4:00. We walked home (I got my 10,000 steps in on Monday) and Emma complained that she was running out of fabric. LOL - I guess I'll have to remedy that situation.

Then we went out for dinner.  Emma ordered her favorite cavatelli and broccoli (which turned out to be broccoli rab).  She loved it,thinking it was spinach.

and I, needing protein, was seduced by what was called pizza carbonara. Yep, pancetta and eggs. Sounds odd, but it was divine! And oh, if I could only make a crust lilke that...

This morning, I dropped Emma back at ART camp.  Led by a 6 year old tour guide, we took the subway one stop. We took the wrong exit out, but Emma knew how to approach where we were going from the opposite direction -- and led me by the hand. LOL. Then, I was on my way back - subway to 42nd st.  Before I got on the bus, I stopped at the international grocery and stocked up on spanikopita, taramasalata,Greek feta, tatziki, olives, and pita. I figured it would get me through Wednesday and Thursday.

Here is the view from the helix, coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel on the NJ side.

I was home by lunchtime and back to work.