Cold End, Colder Beginning

As I have written before, my husband takes all of the pictures. When we got up this morning and walked the dogs, we were bowled over by the hoarfrost on all of the trees. It looked pretty magical so my husband took a photo. We had about ten inches of snow for our first snow of the season and a true White Christmas and now the temperatures are down in the 20's for highs with even lower temps coming this week. Once again, Happy New Year.

Happy New Year

No matter where you are or what your religion, gender, political persuasion, race, etc., have a happy new year. We should all try to be better at everything we do.

Already Working on Next Project

As I wrote previously, I had several ideas for my next project--two are applique projects and one is primarily pieced. I like applique better and I had purchased a Sue Garman project, designed to be a block of the month but available as an entire purchase. Because the Friends of Baltimore quilt is so involved with so much applique and is also quite large, I have chosen to sew that one first. Plus, even in the relatively small area of machine sewing on the Summer Stars, I ended up with almost pressure sores on my bottom after piecing that part. That's sort of embarrassing but I don't see that it is my fault in any way, but I do need to find a way to prevent it for the Bella Bella quilt. 

Nice End to 2016

I finished the binding, sleeve, and label yesterday so my husband took some photos. I am very pleased with how it turned out. Despite a great deal of the year being difficult, my quilting this year went well.

 Above is the whole quilt. Most of the quilting is a simple diagonal grid, one inch on a side. In the inner corners of the pieced section, there is a modified scroll design. The appliqued elements are outline quilted. 

 Above is the lower left hand corner with the dandelions and pears and zucchini. Strictly speaking pears are more early fall fruit but their shapes and color fit with my plan. The zucchini fabric has a little gold sparkle to it.

 Tomatoes are a big part of our summers, growing and eating them seems to be most of our focus.

 The lower right corner has strawberries, lots of skinny stems and tiny petals. The butterfly doesn't look like any of the butterflies we get but that's okay. I always put bugs and birds in my applique.

 The pictures above and below show some of the sunflowers and Cherokee roses along with the bees. Yes, bees have four wings but these were how the original artist drew them.

Finally, here is a picture of me in Portico di Romagna standing next to the world's smallest volcano. We had such a good time in Italy and this was not the most memorable moment, but it is a fun memory. Very beautiful countryside.

So Far So Good

Our friend made it through his open heart surgery. The physician said the operation went well. Of course he is in a great deal of pain--even plain old broken ribs are very painful and this was clearly more involved than that. The doctor expects a full recovery with the resumption of all activity. Since this guy is an ultra-marathoner--you know, one of those 100 mile run types--all activity is a great deal of activity.

I did finish the quilting yesterday and have begun the process of trimming, making and applying the binding, etc.  Of course it is also only two days until Christmas, plus I cook pretty fancy stuff even on regular days so there are gaps and delays already. This morning I made polenta for our dinner tonight (polenta lasagna), Danish pastry dough for Christmas breakfast, and white chocolate bread pudding for Christmas dessert. But I have also trimmed the rough edges of the quilt and cut bias strips for the binding so I am feeling ahead of the game on several levels.

Quilting Nearly Done

I have about 14 inches left to quilt on the top of the Summer Stars quilt but it has been so hectic here that the work is going slowly. My husband volunteered to make dinner so that I could finish that part at least, but then he said he wanted cheese scones with his stew so I will have to make those. I should still finish today and get the binding started before I have to buckle down and pay attention to Christmas dinner. We are making the roast loin of pork Emilia-Style from my new Del Posto cookbook. The sides will all be more or less Italian as well but my OCD daughter in law wants the Kentucky Butter cake that she always asks for and everyone else wants my white chocolate bread pudding.

Old Friends

I had a very mixed up day today because I had arranged to meet with two of my young friends for lunch and talk but I also had a stack of "Hamlet" essays that needed scoring. So I worked for a few hours this morning on the essays,  spent some time with my friends, then returned to the essays.

One  young lady has one more semester at Harvard, expects a dual degree in bio-medical engineering and film studies. The other is a junior at Harvey Mudd who will be taking a semester at the University of Edinburgh starting in only two weeks. Her major is chemical engineering.

As you might imagine, both young women were also serious and good students in high school. They both came to me for tutoring because writing was not a strong suit but they both ended up with 5's on the AP through study and practice.

Entirely Different Subject

Someone my husband and I know is having open heart surgery next week. He was scheduled to have the procedure tomorrow but something came up in the hospital staff to put it off. This fellow is relatively young and vigorously healthy, running ultra-marathons  as most of us would walk to the library. The cautionary part of the story is that he was done in by an infection.

Slightly more than a decade ago, a very dear friend of mine who had just turned 30, died in the middle of a swim workout. He had been working on the computer side of the Salt Lake City Olympics and the opening ceremony was about six weeks away so he had been working very long hours. He had a family history of heart problems so to assuage his mother's fears he had undergone a stress test ten days before he died, coming through with flying colors. But he had caught a cold so had missed a couple of swim practices. This guy was not just a weekend warrior swimmer. He had won the 200 butterfly that year at the Masters Short Course Championships, approximately six months before his death. 

 When my friend came to the pool he jumped in the water and started to warm up. He had gone about 400 yards when he suddenly sank to the bottom. The lifeguards on staff and the doctors who were a big part of the group in the pool got him out quickly and began chest compression and mouth to mouth. My friend died at the side of the pool at the age of 30. The autopsy showed that his cold had caused problems with his heart leading to valves that didn't work.

When our other friend began to experience issues while exercising and went to the doctor, everyone initially dismissed the idea of heart problems because this fellow was so fit. I reminded my husband of my swimming friend and also reminded him that this guy had experienced a long term tooth infection undiagnosed by a dentist and had just had a very bad cold. So our friend told his doctors his history, not one that would have fallen into the normal questions, and they changed their protocol for his diagnosis.  They found that he had a genetic abnormality in his heart muscle that had been exacerbated by his long term infections, both tooth and cold. His case wasn't as bad as my swimming friend because his heart was still a fairly normal size not grossly enlarged.

No one thinks that a cold or a tooth infection can kill. I still remember the day my friend died.

Plans For The Future

I am not ancient but I am certainly not young any more. Not that I am complaining or whining but there is only so much time allotted to anyone. That does affect my quilting choices among other items. The quilting choices for the next project (close to finishing the current project at which time pictures will be posted) include an elaborate Sue Garman Baltimore Album project, an adaptation of a Bella Bella project, or my own version of a Suzanne Marshall quilt from long ago. If you aren't familiar with Sue Garman and you enjoy applique and "pretty" quilts you should Google her. I will probably end up making the Sue Garman first because it will take at least a year if not more to complete.

My other long term plan is already in motion. I ordered a bilingual copy of The Divine Comedy and it will arrive tomorrow. One column on each page is the original Italian, not the same in many respects as modern Italian, and the other column is English. I certainly don't plan to sit down and read it straight through but I want to get through it before I am unable to do that sort of challenge. I recently read an article about studying The Divine Comedy in college that included some verses from the ancient Italian and the translation (probably from the same text I purchased since mine is the well-known Longfellow version), and I had a lovely afternoon puzzling out the Italian and then reading the English. So in addition to working on a challenging quilt, I will be immersed in Dante.

Christmas Tree

My husband and I have been married for nearly 50 years. Over that time I have been collecting or making Christmas tree ornaments. I even kept all those paper chains and macaroni portraits that my sons made in school. So no theme, no purpose, just memories although we do weight the bottom of the tree with non-breakable ornaments so that the cats don't go crazy. My dog even brought a toy and placed it under the tree. It sort of looks like the Peanuts tree but we like the lopsided orphans.

December Rain

As people might remember, Salt Lake City hosted the Winter Olympics. Even at the time there was some question whether there would be enough snow for all the events. Utah had gone from over abundant moisture with the great Salt Lake reaching historic highs and running across highways to steadily declining snowfall.When my husband and I  moved here  it was the tail end of a cycle and there was abundant, record breaking snow fall including one year where it snowed nearly every day of the winter including one day with 23 inches. Now it is the middle of December and there is no snow where I live. There is some snow in the mountains, but nothing like the base that is expected at this time of the year.

If you have a place to move where there is more reliable water, now would be a good time to make that move. Our politicians and leaders in Utah are completely feckless. Our president elect is not necessarily a climate denier but his opinion seems to be if decisions hurt the bottom line (even if they ultimately help everyone) then they are wrong because great leaders couldn't possibly make poor decisions.

We have heard this all before and it doesn't end well.

Family Tradition

While we have been messing around with some of our traditional meals this year, there is one family tradition that is practically sacred. My husband is part Japanese and his mother was completely Japanese, from Tokyo, so we eat more Japanese food than the average American. Most of what we eat is simply because we like it such as chicken katsu and miso shiru but every New Year's Day we eat o-zoni. This is a Japanese chicken soup flavored with gobo (fresh burdock root) and served over grilled mochi. The soup is always eaten on New Year's Day and it's supposed to bring good luck for the entire year. Since no one really wants to mess around with superstition, we will certainly have o-zoni again this New Year's Day. In order to make that easier, we are roasting a chicken tonight so that we will have some chicken meat, and chicken bones with which to make the soup base. I make a pretty basic roast chicken with thyme lemon butter rubbed underneath the skin on the breast, thighs, and drumsticks so right now my kitchen smells delightful yet again.

Baby It's Cold Outside

We haven't had much snow yet but in the valley that is pretty normal. What we have right now is clear and cold. It is still higher than 20F as the low but not by much. I try to tell my dogs that it is too cold to go for a walk at 5 am but they simply salivate when they even think about a walk and they have a daily routine that doesn't take into account what the weather is like. It's funny because the two dogs are so different. One is a rat terrier. At this point he is our oldest pet but he is bouncy and excited at even the idea of walking and chasing a ball or a frisbee. Our other dog is a bluetick coon hound and he is just a lazy lump of love with a nose. He goes on the walks because he wants to smell all the smells, both new and old, and I carry a treat bag and the poop bags. We got the second dog to keep the first dog company because that worked very well with our previous two--another rat terrier and a border collie. But these two just aren't interested in each other. They aren't antagonist at all, the coonhound is too lazy for that, but there isn't any interaction at all--they simply ignore each other. The coonhound is better friends with the Maine coon cat with daily grooming and dancing.

Coincidence

During our recent trip to Italy, my husband and I stayed in Siena for four days. Though we had been told that the town was mundane (told by Italians), we enjoyed our time there including those places that were not geared toward the tourist trade. We liked the restaurant Tredici Mori very much and we walked outside the city wall to the communal garden area which has to be one of the oldest in the world. We purchased a work from a man who restores old texts, creates new illuminated pages, and repairs old books. This week we will pick up our piece from our local framer to hang in our bedroom. We did walk down St. Catherine's path which we found remarkably free of tourists. Perhaps that's because the walk is steep so going and coming back are not as easy as other parts of the town.

Coincidentally on our recent trip to Cambridge, the whole walking down memory lane, we went into Houghton Library at Harvard--the repository of many rare books, for a display and lesson about illuminated manuscripts. It was fascinating as well with the volumes displayed and interactive videos about how and why they were produced. Now I feel even better about buying a hand made, hand inked piece from the Sienese artist.

Utterly Delicious

The slow cooked roast beef was fabulous but the real star was the gravy. I always begin by making my own demi-glace. The only disappointment was minor. I took the popovers out about five minutes too early so they slumped a little but they still tasted good.

At Husband's Request

My husband decided he wanted something else for Christmas dinner similar to the decision to change Thanksgiving. But the difference is that he still wanted roast beef for dinner which turned out to be this week. So tomorrow I am making the usual Christmas dinner (slow cooked roast beef, roast potatoes, baked mushrooms and baked onions, peas and carrots, and popovers) for dinner tomorrow. To top that off my husband invited our sons and at least one other guest to come. He's lucky he's a great husband otherwise I would smack him upside his head--at least figuratively. If you haven't tried slow cooked prime rib you should check it out. You stick the seasoned meat in a pan at a very low heat, whatever the lowest setting on your oven is (for most that's 200F) and cook it for a very long time. For a 5-6 pound roast that takes about six hours. Then you let it sit for 30 minutes, then broil the top to brown it, slice and eat. I make a beef gravy that takes two or three days so taking six plus hours to cook the roast is nothing, plus I have two ovens in my kitchen, one gas and one electric.