Old Person Alert

I don't feel old yet.  In fact, sometimes I think the very core of who we are is very similar throughout the years.  There are parts of me that feel like the same person I was in high school.  I'm not so sure that is a good thing, but that's how it seems.  But, I guess I'm seen as older than I think I feel.....

A few weeks ago I had some help here cleaning the house.  When I came down the hardwood steps, the woman was cleaning the hardwood floor at the bottom.  She said with alarm, "Be careful!  The floor is wet!  I always worry when old people walk on a wet floor!"  Boy, did that one hit me.  She thought I was old!  I thought we were peers!  Wow.

Then, a few days ago I had my glasses off to read something.  I went to move on to the next task and couldn't find my glasses.  I looked all around where I was sitting without success.  So, I decided to walk into the bathroom and put my contacts in.  When I looked in the mirror, there were my glasses - on top of my head!!

Maybe the cleaning lady was right. 

The Gift of Mail

I love to get mail.  I've been this way forever.  I remember waiting on the porch for the mailman when I was growing up.  Believe it or not, during the holidays in the old days we sometimes got mail twice in one day!  Of course most of the mail was for my parents, but they allowed me to claim some of the "occupant" mail for myself.  Occasionally I received a real letter.  Of course, people wrote more back then.  Writing letters was a way of life.  My oldest sister lived in Florida and she wrote us regularly.  She sent letters to my parents but she also sent ones to me - addressed to seven year old ME in my OWN envelope!  Of course I wrote back.  Sometimes in the summer I would pick a pen pal from the back of a comic book (those were kinder, gentler, safer days) and exchanged letters until one of us lost interest.  When you met friends during the summer you would exchange (no, not emails) addresses with promises to write faithfully - or at least until the activities of the new school year took over. 

I still look forward to the mailman (or the mail lady in my case) each day.  Most of the mail is junk variety looking for my money either by direct donation or by selling me something.  But occasionally there is a letter and of course this time of year there were cards, some with little notes keeping me up to date on friends and family.  To me the mail has always represented promise.  You never know just what will show up in your box.  Each day is the chance to receive a nice surprise.  Granted, sometimes these are not nice surprises, but I don't focus on that.  I'm always hopeful that there will be an unexpected good thing in the mail.

My family is well aware of my love for mail.  Son #1 faithfully sends me a post card whenever he travels.  Often he has been home for weeks before the postcard finds its way to me.  But they are always appreciated and I've even started to keep them in a special notebook.

But this year he gave me a gift of mail!  He gave me a set of hand made notecards with my state on the front and all the envelopes stamped and a nice pen.  Then he told me that he bought a similar set (with his location on the front) for himself.  And he told me that if I would write to him, he would respond with his notecards - hence the gift of mail!

A Winter Alternative to Salad

I had commented in a previous post that I find it difficult to eat a lot of salads in the winter.  When the weather is cold, I want warm food.  And without salads my vegetable intake really declines.  Well, quite by accident I stumbled upon a great winter substitute: greens.  When I was growing up my mother made greens for most holiday meals.  They had an Italian twist both in the type of greens that she choose and the meat she used to flavor it with.  She used the shank bone from a prosciutto that she would buy from an Italian deli.  Although that cold cut is still made, they no longer use a piece of meat with the bone included.  The prosciutto you buy today in your local supermarket is make of a boneless piece of meat that will easily slice on their machines.

 My mother's greens were also sort of polorizing.  There were those in the family - immediate and extended who loved the dish and couldn't get enough.  And there were those who wouldn't touch the stuff.  Interestingly that was repeated New Year's day when I presented my twist of greens.  Son #2 wouldn't touch them, son #1 tried a small bite and then went back for more, son #3 wasn't present, but I can tell you with certainty that he would NOT have tried them and probably wouldn't even want the serving bowl near him!

The dish started out this way: my husband wanted boiled cabbage, another family member suggested collard greens (something I never even heard of until I moved "south").  I saw this as an opportunity to try to recreate a bit of my old Italian holiday meals.  So, I made cabbage with collard greens using bacon and onion as the flavoring.  The result was surprisingly tasty!  I could see experimenting with other greens that are readily available here.  You can pack a lot of vegetable servings in a moderate sized bowl of greens!  And since I didn't boil them - they were steamed in the water that sticks to the leaves when you rinse them - most of the nutrients stayed intact. 

I had to look up on the internet how to use collard greens.  So, if anyone is interested:  you don't use the middle vein or stem. They should be rinsed to remove dirt, although mine were pretty clean straight from the store.  They have a lot of flavor and blended well with the more mild cabbage.  A medium head of cabbage and one bunch of collards fed five people.  I would put the recipe here, but instead I'm going to suggest that if indeed there are any readers out there interested - comment or email me and I'll send it to you.

2011 Wrap Up: Year One of Retirement

Well, the holidays are over.  The tree and decorations are down.  The big meals have been made, eaten and cleaned up.  It's time to get back to everyday living.  I've caught up on most of the details of life that get pushed aside this time of year and I feel the need to touch base here before fully moving into the new year of activities.  I've had many ideas come into my head that I wanted to write about but little time to do it.  But for now, let's just stick with the recap.

Retirement:  This was my first year of not working.  I was a bit hesitant to retire at a younger age, but anxious to try it. As the year progressed I grew to love the freedom more and more.  I've purposely NOT signed up for anything this past year - no gym membership, no volunteering, no regular commitments.  I'm sure I won't continue that trend for the rest of my life, but it has been so freeing to have my time to myself each day.  I know that my retirement won't look the same for the rest of my years, but for now I'm happy with how it looks.

Diet:  I ended the year just a few pounds shy of my goal.  Over the holidays I maintained the lost weight, but didn't continue to lose.  I've stayed active and changed my eating habits for the better.  I want to lose ten more pounds in 2012.  This will bring my BMI into the acceptable range and should help keep my family history of Type II Diabetes in check (I hope).

Quilting:  I've embraced quilting wholeheartedly.  One of my gifts this Christmas was a pair of quilting books that will continue to teach me some of the basics.  My first project of the new year will be a small wall hanging summarizing my projects of the last year.  I hope to make that a yearly thing and a way to catalog what I've done.  I also have a top that needs to be quilted and a few small projects in mind.  Then I will start down my quilt list.  The books have given me a few more ideas to add to the list too!

Travel:  When I thought about retirement I expected to travel more especially with my husband on some of his business trips and to spend some time helping my oldest sister.  Neither of these happened as I expected.  I did get some awesome travel in, though, but I didn't accompany my husband as much as I thought. That may change a bit this next year.  We'll see.

Parenting:  The boys (men) are all in a good place in their lives.  It's funny that I still consider this parenting even though they are adults and one is married.  The thing is, sometimes as they grow older you see the outcome of decisions you made years ago in their upbringing.  Some, I'm glad for; some I wish I could do over.  I wish I was able to spend more time with them; I wish we were closer (relationship wise). Maybe additional years will bring that to pass.

Blogging:  I've enjoyed my first attempt at blogging.  It gives me a good outlet for writing down my thoughts and keeping track of some aspects of life.  I don't know how long I'll continue or if I'll try to change my strategies any.  I may work on changing the look of the blog some, just for the educational experience of it all.  I enjoy watching the stats, slow as they may be.  I'm curious how people come to find my blog since it has been pretty under the radar.  I have yet to get my first official on the blog "comment".  So, if anyone out there has anything al all to say, I'm all ears.

So, like it or not, the book is closed on the holidays and 2011.  It's time to move forward and see what this next year has to bring.

Some Holiday Thoughts

Blogging has been difficult the past few weeks.  As I mentioned, my room is being used as a bedroom so I'm relegated to the desk in the laundry room.  This is a high traffic area and everyone who comes through finds it necessary to check out what I'm doing making the writing a bit difficult.  But I'm glad for the busyness of the season this year.  Ironically I have more time to enjoy the activities surrounding the holidays but we won't have a full house of children around us this year.  I knew this day would come and honestly I thought it would have come sooner than this.  Even now, five days before Christmas, plans are not settled.  It appears as though we will have a sort of drawn out holiday with different groups coming at different times between Christmas Day and January 5th!  We are going to try to keep our live Christmas tree up for the entire time, but I have a feeling it will be little more than twigs by the end.  I like our tree this year.  It's symmetrical, narrow and fragrant.  However, the male members of my family (that would be ALL the rest of the members) feel that if a tree isn't so big that you have to wrestle it into the house and into the stand and then cut a substantial part off so that it will fit, then it isn't big enough.

Gifts:  I'm satisfied with the gifts I've purchased this year.  My only regret is that I'm seldom able to find a "wow" gift for my husband. There are a tremendous amount of presents under the tree awaiting the great unwrapping.  Most of them, I hope, will be useful to their recipients.  We started early and bought and bought and bought.  Then we wrapped and wrapped and wrapped.

Baking: I will make our traditional cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning breakfast, but I don't think I'm going to bake cookies this year.  We won't have enough steady company to use them and with my diet and my husband's Diabetes, we don't need the added temptation.  But there will be pumpkin pie for Christmas dinner desert.

The house is decorated.  The cards are sent.  The only shopping left to do is for groceries.  The boys are all in good places  in their lives for this year and that is truly the best Christmas present I could have although I know I will enjoy the many boxes my endulgent husband has placed under the tree addressed to me as well as those thoughtfully picked out by my sons.

So, Merry Christmas to all my mythical readers out there and to my one special reader in New Jersey (you know who you are!)

Table Runner: Branching Out

The holiday season has taken much of my time lately.  This is the first Christmas in my adult life that I wasn't juggling a job or a house full of children along with the holiday activities so I've had time to actually enjoy the decorating, shopping and wrapping.  Along with that, my sewing room is now being used as a bedroom for son #3 home for the college break.  But he took a short trip to visit his friends last week and I decided to work on a small project that I had planned.  I wanted to make a table runner for son #1 using signal flags to spell his name.  He has had a sort of nautical theme to his decorating so I thought it would fit in and provide a little color to his place.

I've learned a few design things on this project:  It's hard for me to make anything small.  I don't think this is too big, but it turned out much bigger than I planned.  Even though I tried to make the whole thing un-frilly the quilting alone sort of adds a feminine quality to it.  I think it will still be OK. 

And a few lessons learned about construction:  It is difficult to make reversible even when you are working with the multiple layers of quilt construction.  Making the binding the same color as the border helped camouflage a bit of unevenness.  Try as I might something became uneven in the quilting.  You can see what I mean in the pictures.  I don't think it is too unsightly and might only be noticed by another quilter.  The points will hang vertically so they won't be very visible.  I got to try my hand at applique for the black circle in the yellow box. I used the iron on stuff to stick the fabrics together and then used a blanket stitch around the edge.  I would rate my effort as not bad for a first attempt, but there is room for improvement.  And since the piece is reversible and to be used on the table, I sewed the second side of the binding by hand.  I used a needle with an open eye (sometimes called a cheater needle) and was very pleased with it's performance.  It was easy to "thread" even for my old eyes and pulled through the fabric nicely.  I don't know why these needles are not more poplular. Overall, I'm pleased with the project and I hope son #1 will like it.

3D Fish Quilt - Done!

I've been trying to finish this quilt for Christmas.  And it has been SO many things to me:  the most difficult quilt I've made, the prettiest, the most "artsy", the least well executed, the most fun and the most frustrating.  I've learned about a variety of techniques and I've made mistakes that I didn't know existed.  The quilt appeals to me because it ISN'T perfect and is unique in many ways - including the mistakes!

I started with this pattern.  I actually saw this in my local quilt store.  But....they didn't sell the pattern, just a kit to make this exact quilt in a very small size.  That presented me with two problems:  I didn't want to use an aquarium fish pattern, I wanted big ocean game fish.  And I wanted to make a full sized quilt.  I found my fish print fabric online and then went to my favorite quilt store to pick out the fabric colors that would coordinate with the colors in the new print.  I've never done this kind of thing, so I was grateful for the help of the people at the store.  I choose mostly batik prints to add texture and that brings me to the first thing that I would do differently:  I would have made a few different choices in the fabrics themselves, particularly some of the blues.  I've never worked with batiks and so my question is this (answers are welcomed): how do you keep track of the front and the back or does it really matter?  The fabric is so similar on both sides.  I finally used tissue paper between the layers as I cut out the pieces to help me remember which was the "right" side until I made the first seam.

Everything was cut on a 30 degree angle making the piecing a bit more challenging than simple squares and 45 degree triangles.  And there was very little tolerance for error.  If you were off a smidge here or there by the time you put the larger pieces together you were off by a LOT.  I also thought that some of the assembly directions were weird.  I tried it "their" way for a bit and then just did what made sense to me.  The end result was the same, I just pieced the sections in a different order.  I'm really amazed that the overall look is as nice as it is.

Then there was the back.  I found this fabric that I really liked for the back.  It reminded me of the deep sea with it's greens and blues and flowing pattern.  What I didn't consider was that I would have to piece it horizontally and a random pattern is next to impossible to really match.  I struggled with this and had plenty of extra fabric to work with but this is the best I got:

I decided to use the extra fish print on the back to make it look like fish swimming in the ocean.   I like the idea and it's probably the pretties quilt back I've made, but I wasn't pleased with the lack of fabric match particularly in the center section.

Then there's the quilting.  I wanted to try my hand at some free motion quilting.  I'm inspired by this website and the artisticness of this technique.  I wanted to do edge to edge quilting in the center that was wavy like the ocean and then a curvy pattern on the border to remind you of seaweed or ocean plants.  After practicing just how to accomplish this, I settled on using my walking foot for the edge to edge quilting.  I did use gloves this time to help me manage the fabric and found that very helpful.  The challenge was keeping the randomness within bounds.  You want the stitching to be fairly level with the quilt borders and the spacing somewhat even while still being free form and random.  I used pins as guides.  Keeping a smooth flowing line was also a bit difficult.  My success there was only fair.  The borders proved to be difficult in other ways.  I used a darning foot and a Supreme Slider for this part. Again, a big part of the challenge is getting even stitches and an "organized randomness".  I did find that the faster I ran the machine, the better my stitches looked since the machine isn't advancing tha fabric - I am. The speed made essentially for smaller, neater stitches.  I don't think my pattern looks like seaweed but once you commit you pretty much have to follow through.  I would have done a more random pattern if I started again.  Here's a look:

I should also mention that I decided to use a variegated thread with blues and greens - again the ocean theme. 

Now, a few of my success:  I made the best mitered corners on the border in my quilting career.  And the best binding attachment I've ever accomplished.

And my biggest failure:  When I got to the end of the border quilting, the border didn't lie flat.  I was going to rip out a whole section of quilting and was pretty depressed and disgusted by the whole thing, but instead, I cheated.  I hid the extra fabric in the quilting itself by just stitching it down.  The colors of the thread helped me hide this a bit and close examination will reveal my errors but I'm hoping that these mistakes don't take the appeal away for the recipient.  This quilt is going to a teenager who loves to fish in the gulf stream.  This past summer his big catch was several dolphin fish which are well represented in the fabric.

So, it's time to wrap this one up - really wrap it up - along with the other Christmas presents.  It's been a fun first year of quilting and I already have my ideas forming for next year.