Monthly Archives: November 2014

Show and Tell…

Posted on by
3

Sara sent her version of my Tree O’ Life quilt. She says:

I started this in 2012, finished it but forgot to send you a picture. I had “Live well” but changed it to “Love God”. There were a few things I messed up on, but went ahead and just went for it!  I figured you and the other people who buy your book would be the only ones to notice.
After Christmas I’ll hang it back up.  It has a place of honor in my home.
Thanks for your lessons in the gray shades of gold for the background.
Sincerely,
Sara

SaraAshauer

Made by Sara Ashauer

I actually don’t mind one little bit when a quilter changes one of our patterns and makes it her (or his) own. That’s part of the fun of quilting! Congrats to Sara for doing just that and for finishing her wonderful quilt!

Little sparks…

Posted on by
2

I just read The Little Spark—a book designed to help you be creative. I rarely buy this sort of book and never seem to make it all the way to the end of the book when I do, but this time I did.

LittleSparkCover-225

This may be the best book cover ever. Happily, the book itself lives up to the cover.

Carrie Bloomston has come up with 30 creativity ‘sparks’ and she writes very well about each one. I admit that not every spark fits me, but more do than don’t. I actually turned down pages and highlighted different ideas and have already used a few! Here’s just one:

If you are like me, you have all sorts of fun art supplies that are put neatly away. Carrie says not to hoard your supplies; instead pull them out and use them! She showed two jars, one with colored pencils and one with markers, that she keeps on her dining table with paper. That way they are out and ready for anyone to use whenever they want to.

Night before last, I pulled my very fine set of Prismacolor Pencils out of the cabinet, sharpened every one, and put them in two vases on my table.

ColoredPencilsOnTable

Last night Chris, Lorna, the kids and mom came over for Thanksgiving eve dinner. (Lorna made shepherd’s pie, Mom made applesauce bread, I made some baked apples… it was all very tasty.) Anyway, before dinner, the kids found the pencils!

KidsColoring

I doodled too, with Bear. Elanor drew a guy throwing up a rainbow (about to be hit with a pizza) and Jack decided to draw one too…

FridgeArt

So, many thanks to Carrie who has already lit some sparks at the Goldsmith house! I suspect that there is going to be a lot of refrigerator art from now on.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on by
2

Today is a time to consciously give thanks and I am thankful for many things:

  • I’m thankful for my family (who love me even when I am stressed and, therefore, cranky).
  • I am thankful for my friends. You know how there are people who have hundreds of good friends? I am not one of those people. I’d like to be, but it’s not my nature. I have a few good friends and I am so very lucky to have them in my life.
  • I am thankful that I am healthy. In fact, I recently found out that I don’t have osteoporosis—just garden-variety osteopenia along with just about every other post-menopausal woman I know. Yay! One less thing to worry about.
  • I am especially thankful that my family and friends are pretty healthy as well.
  • And I am thankful for pie…

Pies

I baked pumpkin, pecan, apple, and cranberry-apple pies yesterday. Steve rolled out the (gluten-free) crusts which was a big help.

I used a new apple pie recipe, sent to me by my mom’s friend, Coralee. It’s from allrecipes.com: Grandma Ople’s Apple Pie. It calls for a lattice-crust which is too hard to do with a GF crust so I used a cookie cutter to cut pieces instead:

Pies2

Watch the video and make notes because the recipe itself is not very complete. I realized after 2 false starts that the order in which to add things matters. You combine simmering melted butter with 3 TBS flour to make a paste (sort of like white glue, not a stiff paste). Stir in white sugar (while still simmering), then brown sugar, and then water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer for a bit… they say 5 minutes but I think that might be too long. The point, I think, is to make a toffee sauce.

I made the sauce and let it cool too long. I think it would work a lot better to have the pie ready to pour the sauce onto as soon as you are done simmering. It looks like it is going to be a very good pie!

Next year we will be in NYC with Jeff for Thanksgiving. He is, as I write, sitting in a restaurant watching the parade and having brunch which is a lot warmer than being on the street in the wind and snow.

Parade2

Even though I have never been much of a parade-watcher, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade really does look like fun. I’m looking forward already to 2015!

Parade

I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving!

It’s nice to be warm…

Posted on by
6

I’m home from a lovely time with the Cottonwood Quilter’s Guild in Omaha. The class and lectures were full of people who came in all bundled up because it was really COLD while I was there! I’m now back in north Texas where the morning temperature was in the mid-30’s and it felt almost balmy :-).

Many of you are still living in really cold conditions and I hope you don’t have to be out in it too much. Unless, of course, you feel like surfing Lake Erie…

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/112233432″>WNY – Blizzard Surfing</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user31705214″>Kevin Cullen</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

Show & Tell…

Posted on by
2

Jean Temme sent me this photo of her newly finished Christmas quilt. She took elements from two of our Christmas books and mashed them up into this very cute quilt. Way to go, Jean! I love it!

JeanTemme

FYI: the Santa, sled, reindeer and stars are from Welcome To The North Pole. The rest of the quilt is from Quilt A New Christmas, which is out of print. I still have some copies in stock so if you want this book, don’t wait too long.

Put foil in your wallet…

Posted on by
6

Millions of us now have new credit cards. In fact, I seem to be get one at least every 3 months because somewhere I have used my card has been hacked. It’s gotten to the point that it is no longer unusual. My newest VISA came with the chip and I thought that that was a step in the right direction, security-wise.

I learned something last night from ABC World News tonight and that is that those chips can be hacked by someone with a cellphone loaded with a credit-card-hacking app. The cell phone has to be close, but it happens. You can get a fancy wallet that blocks the cellphone or you can cover your card with foil!

FoilInWallet

I put a folded sleeve of foil in the pocket with my chip-enhanced credit card. I did the same for Steve. I had foil left over so I made myself a foil-dollar-bill and that will live in my wallet, on the outer edge. Can’t hurt, right?

So, in case you missed this news and in case you want a cheap fix, there you go. You can think of me when you look at the foil in your wallet :-).