Category Archives: Notes from a quilter

If only it were this easy to go places…

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As I was driving home from my morning walk the other morning, I spotted this well-worn VW Bug parked on the street, with a surfboard strapped to its roof! This is not a common sight in land-locked Sherman, TX.

VWBug-SurfBoard

 

It looked so out of place that I decided to fix it with Photoshop. First I made the background go away. I sort of like the look of it floating on the white background. It’s easy to imagine it being in a snowstorm, except that the pavement is dry.

VWBug-SurfBoard-2

But the bug w/surfboard needs to be by the ocean…

VWBug-SurfBoard-4

I tried parking it at more than one beach because, by this time, I was just playing…

VWBug-SurfBoard-3

I’m resisting to urge to put it in more locales. Seriously, I need to get some work done :-).

 

Too many choices…

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I spent much of Sunday piecing and listening to TED talks. This one, given by Barry Schwartz, was particularly interesting to me. I hope you enjoy it, too.

We believe that more choices are always better when, in fact, that is not always the case. To bring that idea home to quilters, here’s a thought: Have you ever felt over-whelmed when you are trying to choose fabric for a quilt? If your stash is over-flowing and you have visited every quilt shop in your area, it’s probably not that you just haven’t found the perfect fabric—it’s that you can’t decide which of the hundreds of great choices is best for you. In this case, it is helpful to limit your choices so that you can begin to make decisions.

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll follow you anywhere…

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You’ve heard that phrase before, right? Blow in my ear and I’ll follow you anywhere…

I don’t watch basketball, but if all games had moments like this I might be tempted to tune in :-).

Perspective…

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While walking, I came upon this scene…

StripedStands-1

The way those striped things* are placed, each one farther away than the one before, so that your eye is drawn along them—into the distance. I liked the placement, and their orange stripey-ness, and the orange cones in the street. I took more than one picture.

In the next photo, because of where I am standing, those things* are lined up more precisely. You can put yourself where I am, looking down them.

StripedStands-2

This vantage point keeps the viewer on the left side of the image. It’s subtle, and it’s interesting. Scroll up to the first photo and you’ll see what I mean.

Why is this so? It’s because the line of those striped things* curves just a bit to the right in the first photo, which leads your eye toward the center of the frame. In the second photo, they are in a straighter line and the endpoint stays on the left side of the frame.

Most quilts, mine as well as those make by others, are designed in such a way as to keep the viewer centered. This makes me want to design a quilt (or quilts) that puts the viewer in a different place.

*What are those things called?!

 

And there were flowers!

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Succulents don’t flower a lot but when they do, the flowers are lovely. Here are a few, seen at the Ruth Bancroft Garden last week:

The yellow flowers on this little barrel cactus were practically translucent…

YellowCactusFlower copy

 

Another tall cactus wore what appeared to be a corsage, albeit not one I would want to wear :-).

CactusCorsage

There was a lovely stand of poppies, taller than me! I kept thinking of the poppies that put Dorothy, et al, to sleep in the Wizard of Oz…

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These little purple flowers were all over a small hump of what looked a little like grass but was instead pretty spikey. You wouldn’t want to walk on it…

TinyPurpleFlowerMound copy

There were several flower that could have been designed by Dr. Seuss…

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And a personal favorite, the ones that look like spikey fireworks!

PurpleBurstingFlower-Succulent copy

 

Well, it’ll taste good…

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I made chocolate cake for our Mother’s Day dinner. (All the mothers did a little cooking, Steve is grilling.) As you know, I bake a lot and I’m not sure why, but this cake fought back.

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I made the cake layers yesterday. The recipe starts with melted, un-sweetened chocolate pieces. After that cools, you add it and the vanilla to the batter in the mixer. I added the vanilla to the lukewarm chocolate thinking that would make adding them to the batter easier. Not so much… the chocolate got stiff (I believe the term is ‘seized up’). I managed to blend it all and the batter looked normal so I put the cake in the overn. The layers didn’t rise as much as usual and the cake was a little crumbly but I figured that that would be OK.

Today I made the frosting. It calls for a box of powdered sugar. I didn’t have a box, I had a bag, so I measured the sugar (4 scant cups). I must has used too much because the frosting got hard not long after I started spreading it. In fact, it didn’t take long before it started tearing the cake apart. I gave up on it when I made one obvious divot in the top edge. Sigh.

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I made another half-batch of frosting and it hardened pretty fast too. Mom says it could be the humidity in the air.

FrankensteinCake-2

Honestly, while it isn’t a show-stopper, the finished cake has kind of a nice texture… tree-bark-ish. I know that it will taste good and that’s what really matters.

I did think, though, that if I were a new cook and this happened I might be tempted to give up on making cakes from scratch. If that’s you, please don’t let one cake stop you from baking. These things happen :-).