42. Pumpkin Muffins

Hooray for frozen pureed pumpkin (or perhaps butternut, which technically is a pumpkin after all). Here's my recipe, which is actually a recipe, as opposed to my usual guidelines or lists.

Oven 350

2 1/2 c all purpose flour
1 c whole wheat flour (sometimes I ease up on the flour ratio)
1 c honey
1 c sugar
1 T cinnamon
1 t nutmeg
2 t baking soda
1 1/2 t salt

combine in large bowl, mix until large crumbs. In a separate bowl:

4 eggs, beaten
2/3 c water
1 c oil
2 c pumpkin puree (that's about 1 can but I have mine frozen from last fall)

Pour wet into dry, mix until incorporated. Add 1 c chopped pecans. Fill muffin tin cups (I line with paper) 3/4 way full. Add sprinkles if desired (I did some of mine with sprinkles).

Bake, depending on size of muffin tin cups, 20 minutes. A knife inserted comes out completely clean when they're done. Cool on wire rack but really, eat them hot so they burn your mouth. They're the best pumpkin quick bread thingy I have made.

41. Cassoulet

I made cassoulet this evening. What is cassoulet? It is a French peasant dish made from white beans and meat (usually pork, according to Wikipedia, and that's how I've had it in the past but tonight I used chicken). Here's what I did.

Overnight, soak 1 pound white beans.

In the morning, cook in crock pot on high for an hour and then on low until done. Drain, leave in pot.

Two hours before dinner:
Sweat holy trinity (bell pepper, onion, celery),
Cut up and brown 1 chicken breast,
I also added about 1/4 cup of diced volpi pepperoni. Just cuz.

This all gets combined with the beans in the pot.

Add 2 cans of diced tomatoes and about 1/8 cup of thyme. Salt to taste (or salt at the table).

Cook on high in crock pot for about an hour and a half to 2 hours. Serve with crusty bread and a field green salad and perfection.

40. Dining Room Painting

The first coat of primer went up but it was obvious we'd need more. I did the beginning of the second coat last night, but found that the walls sucked the paint in just as fast as the first coat--Jake said I wasn't rolling it on thick enough, as well, which was frustrating because it took so much paint. It's 2 gallons of white on the walls right now and I'm going to have to invest in at least one more gallon of white to do the ceiling and to finish the second coat. Bah.

It's a no-VOC paint, by Bioshield, and I'm covering up dark dark red. So I'm not surprise at the coverage problems. When I order the gray, I'll order 3 gallons. Hoping that will be enough--I think it will, since I'll be covering white, not burgundy.

It smells like play dough. So strange. It goes on, with the roller, leaving a bit of a texture that I like. Our walls are plaster, at one time probably smooth as glass but that changes with 106 years of settling and use and abuse. Jake mudded and sanded for me but the bit of texture is helpful.

The white walls, after 12 years of red, are jarring. The room is HUGE. I moved the church pew and sorted through the board games we store underneath. I cleaned out the hearth (more still to do) and considered what might be next....it's good to be working on a project again.

39. One Month

It's been just over a month without a dishwasher.

The guy at Best Buy, where Jake went to look at features, not to buy, told him I wouldn't make it 2 weeks.

Yeah, it's kind of a bummer to get up from dinner and head over to the sink to wash dishes. But I used to load the dishwasher anyway so I'm not sure if it's that much more time for an average meal.

Lisa posted over on her blog that on a weekend day, her family regularly does 3-5 loads in a dishwasher, which made my mouth drop open. I guess if my pans were dishwasher-safe, or if I put plastic in the dishwasher, maybe it would add up, but never that much. That's more than a good sized dinner party over here, actually.

I'm thinking that besides the rare party or get-together that uses plates, I'm simply not going to miss it. Too many times I unloaded the dishes and then found myself rewashing something. Too many times. And when I find a dish that I've handwashed that isn't all the way clean, I simply put it back into the soapy water. I used to get kind of ticked off at the machine that wasn't doing its job.

So I'm not going back. I warned Jake that when I go back to work, I might be changing my mind (life will, in general, get more expensive when I go back to work). But we'll see how it goes.

Right now my only irritation is with the space it takes up. I keep thinking if there would be something I'd want more in that space, and what keeps coming to mind is a pull-out drawer for trash to keep it away instead of in a can over by the fridge. Hmm.

38. Christmas Present Quilt

This one is for my in-laws. The background is browns, reds, and forest greens. A bit of gold. And then on top of that, I appliqued a big forest green bow.

Cozy.

37. Aunt Sheila's Quilt

Sheila and Bill lost their house last summer in a total house fire. Mike's dad and many volunteers put it back together and when we visited in November it felt like a home.

We draw names at Christmas for Mike's mom's side of the family, and I drew Sheila's name. I knew what I had to do.

This quilt is Churn Dash blocks from an internet exchange back when quilt block exchanges were mailing lists instead of websites or groups online. Back then I was the underdog, skill wise. These ladies made much more precise blocks. I received 8 blocks in return for my 8 blocks, and then promptly stored them away for 13 years. Here they finally are, combined with polar bears and other random Christmas fabric to make a 60x60 throw.

Sheila told me this weekend she still had it out. "The living room's still all Bridgettified."

36. In process

Bevin is coming over this afternoon to help paint the dining room, or even just play katamari damacy on the PS3 while I paint. Either is fine. We're using Bioshield, a no VOC brand of paint, in white first because we have to prime this room (the current color is a deep burgundy red). After the white is on, I'm going to order a nice medium gray. I hang so many pictures in that room I just want a nice simple background.

We got rid of the vestment cabinet and as today progresses we will move furniture into the spots where I want it for good.

I almost bought a surplus table at a Borders that was going out of business. It was exactly what I was looking for in style, very very sturdy, but as I cleared books off the top, I realized the top was just a very well finished plywood. Nothing wrong with that, except I don't want just plywood. It was the perfect height and length but not quite as nice as I would want in the end. Eventually I want to convince my father to build me a refectory table (aka monastery table). Of course.

The basement is so much nicer. I'm waiting for the dumpster to be emptied Friday before I continue.

Tiny plants are coming up in the garden. So excited.

The girls' room is laughably messy right now. I'm going on a girl scout field trip Saturday, though, so that will have to wait until I'm home. Later.

I did a bunch of mending while I watched Sherlock on DVD (yummy).

I read about chickens again, sighed, and moved on. It is not my time for chickens. It may never be, in fact. But I still read up.

35. Spring Chick Bento

Quail eggs, hard boiled, with details in dried seaweed. Yup, did the whole Japanese thing there. The rest of the bento is simpler: celery, a little wheel of cheese in a wax coating, an olive, some radish shoots, cheeze-its, and little chicks cut from carrots. This is one of two bento boxes that are stacked and silly-banded together. The other box had apple slices cut into bunny rabbit shapes, with a couple of gummy bears and sunflower seeds. Maeve had a little peanut butter, dry milk, sesame seeds, and honey ball in with hers, too, but Sophia can't have peanut butter in her classroom so she missed out (as I wrote that she said "gross" so I guess she wouldn't have missed it; Maeve ate it gone).

Gotta say, quail eggs have quite the compact cuteness factor.

34. Pie Crust

There is nothing like leftovers gussied up with homemade pie crust. We had leftover stew transformed into a meat pie tonight. I drained off a lot of liquid first, of course, and pre-baked the bottom crust.

On a side note, the stew started with a deer roast. Mike made parallel slices in the top of the roast about 2 inches deep and inserted bacon into the slices ("like bread into a toaster") and then wrapped the whole thing in bacon--this was good, but the next step of pot roast was even better. More veggies and it became a stew. It is ending its life as a meat pie. Four meals from one roast (and root veggies and peas to stretch).

But pie crust.

I used to suck at pie crust. Completely. It was a flat rock at the bottom of a pie. I tried to follow all the rules--act quickly, stay cold, use two knives or some sort of special cutter--and I was a loser. But I liked pie and detested frozen pie crust. I had to improve.

I started using a food processor.

I make good pie crust now.

My recipe for double crust.:
2 cups flour (either whole wheat pastry or white)
1/2 t salt
2/3 c butter (I know many folks use shortening but it's not part of my culture)
ice water

I put ice water in a measuring cup, set aside. Combine dry ingredients in the food processor. Stir. Add chunks of butter, process some more until combined fully. Then I turn the processor on and slowly pour water in (it's several tablespoons but I don't know how many). When dust becomes thick crumbs, I slow down. When thick crumbs congeal, I stop and let the processor do the work. If it looks too dry, I add a bit more. Otherwise, I'm done. Cold, well mixed, not overworked.

I roll half out on a piece of marble, dusted with flour. Fold in half and pick it up--line the pie plate and continue with the recipe. Then I roll out the other half and finish. Bake as directed in the pie recipe (or for meat pie, 300 degrees until done and hot (less than an hour or so).

33. Disaster Preparedness?

So, with the recent news out of Japan, I've been doing a little risk assessment. A little reading. Ok, a lot of reading. And planning.

And so far I've come to the conclusion that for the most part, we need to be ready to shelter in-place. As a family, we need to be able to see our way through a week or two without power. More than that and we'll be leaving anyway or forming a primitive culture in the backyard complete with conch shells and sharpened sticks because we live in the central city and that would be obnoxiously long to go without power. But ice storms and summer storms and tornadoes happen. Floods too, which could take out our water supply, although I don't worry about actual water here. Seriously--the whole city would be underwater by the time we had water in the house.

What I'm having a harder time with is earthquake and evacuation (more on that another time). For the most part, unless the entire city slipped beneath the earth in a New Madrid or Wabash earthquake, we would stick it out here as best we could. We live in a masonry foundation house (gulp) but even if we lost the whole thing, I feel like we have the network of friends and family to make it through until we rebuilt. Plus, if St. Louis was devastated in a New Madrid earthquake, Memphis would disappear from the map. Not to mention most of the family I've married into. New Madrid has been quiet for over 100 years. Yeah, perhaps we're due. Or perhaps we're safe. Or perhaps I can talk this around and around in a circle and get nowhere because I have decided this is where I live.

For the most part, though, any disaster would keep us home. Literally in the case of an earthquake--we are surrounded by bridges and not just the ones across the rivers. Viaducts and train tracks and even though they are slowly being improved, it is slow.

So I'm getting some things ready. More ready. I cleaned out the public area of the basement this week, and the storage area is coming soon. I've got our tub of girl toys and blankets and sleeping bags because otherwise they sit down there with us during the sirens and cry, which is never good but especially when you're already tense and hail is falling and the lights are out and the wind picks up. I'm trying to make it a less scary place, not exactly inviting but at least you can get around and find a place to sit for a moment. It will never be completely pleasant down there, after all.

And food: we've been in the CSA so long, I find that most of our food is fresh. Yes, I have ingredients like flour and sugar and all that, but I don't have any canned fruit. Or vegetables: bleah. I have dry beans, but if you're working without electricity (our stove is a lovely 1965 electric stove), that's a lot of firewood, charcoal, or propane to cook beans all the way from soaked to done.

I have found a great resource in Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient when the Unexpected Happens by Kathy Harrison. Mike got it for Christmas but of course I was the one voted most likely to join a militia back in high school. Speaking of that, don't even bother looking up disaster preparedness online unless you want to learn about the fall of the government and training your 4 year old how to use a handgun. I am not that. I just don't want to wind up at a shelter if I can stay in my house (but of course if I have to leave, ahem, nuclear disaster/toxic spill/etc, I WILL LEAVE).

More later. Just starting this process and finding I'm not as far behind as I feared.

32. Parasol Ladies and Sunbonnet Sues

These two quilts (the Sunbonnet little girl Sues and the older Parasol Ladies) went to my two nieces on Mike's side.

Many of the background fabrics are retired from church (incidental tablecloths, for instance) or from resale shops. They are linen and cotton with a patina of age that makes the whole quilt seem older than it is. I tried to stick to older looking fabrics for the dresses and bonnets and parasols as well, with fair success.

I worked on these dang things off and on all last year. I was so done with them by the time I assembled them in November. Done. But they are lovely and I'm glad I made them (my brother's daughter also has a parasol lady, as does Sophia, and Maeve has a sunbonnet).

31. Christmas Log Cabin & the Underground Railroad

While I've mentioned before that jelly rolls are pretty to look at but not the most useful to actually use in a quilt, this quilt is different--because it is a Log Cabin, which involves an insane amount of little rectangles cut to the right size, it is nice to start with strips already made.

One jelly roll creates exactly 25 Log Cabin blocks with no, I mean no, leftovers.

So if I wanted to really be able to create something more than a throw for the back of the couch at Mike's brother and sister-in-law's apartment, I'll need two that coordinate or match outright.

But this one was pretty. I set it as "Fields and Furrows", meaning the light and dark of each block created diagonal stripes.

Log Cabin quilts have a lot of mystery and tradition built up around them. Different settings that only apply to them (as opposed to other quilts, that can be set on point, with sashing, without sashing, interspersed with plain blocks, etc)--Sunshine and Shadow, Barnraising, Courthouse Steps. It is also the only block, as far as I know, that has a name for one of the pieces in the block: the center square is referred to as the "hearth" and in traditional quilts it is yellow or red. I have heard references to this quilt pattern used on the Underground Railroad (with a black hearth), but, like Aran knitting patterns and Scottish tartans, I believe we are trying to find symbolism where there isn't. I simply cannot believe there was a true meaning behind different quilt patterns flung over the clothesline, in an era when fabric was expensive and quilts were sewn entirely by hand when there was plenty else to get done. I can completely believe that a quilt, any quilt, on the line had meaning: it was a simple sign easily remembered but not easily found out by authorities. But the idea that Log Cabin meant this and Shoo Fly meant that? Seems pretty far fetched to me (especially considering a few of the patterns these researchers claim weren't popularized until the 1930s).....

But I digress. This Log Cabin isn't a sign of anything except Christmas.

30. I Spy a Quilt

I made 2 I Spy Quilts this Christmas. Actually, I made 3 and I still have one waiting in the wings for some baby shower sometime. But Billy received one and Jake's cousin's son got the other. Around the edges in the border I wrote objects to look for in the quilt blocks, and each block is a novelty print with a variety of things to see.

Leo is still too little to really care, but I hear it went over well with the 3 year old recipient.

29. Shoes

I do not own many shoes. Two pairs of black heels. A pair of "Sophia made me buy them" chunky green mary jane-ish things. My black leather heeled things I wear all winter. Flip flops. A pair of white sandals that are no good to me. Biking shoes, garden shoes, hiking boots (but those three all live downstairs). Gretchen down the street pressed me on this the other weekend. Was I forgetting any special occasion shoes? No. I wasn't. Seriously.

All of them (except the work shoes--meaning gardening, biking, and hiking) I will be keep on these shelves at the bottom of this closet organization center I put together this past week. And note how I store them. My cousin Joey showed me this. You know him. He writes little books about how to dress right and what to keep in your closet--his day job is a stylist/personal shopper kind of thing for women with not enough time and too much money. His life is bizarre. But still every Christmas my sisters and I compete to see which one has dressed "right" for Joey. More bizarre.

But the shoe thing. Store them one facing in and one facing out so that you can see the front of the shoe and the height of the heel at the same time. I love those sorts of little tricks that take no time to set up but actually do work.

It might make me buy more shoes. Not like Bevin level or something. But maybe a few more pair as time goes by.

28. Happy Pi Day

Pi Day: March 13 (3/14, or 3.14).

I made a pie for Pi Day, of course. I have pretty often in the past as well. I went with something new: a cooked custard pie. Since Sophia is a fan of chocolate pie and few other desserts that are not ice cream (which she gave up for Lent), I gave that a whirl. Note, in these photos? My stove top is gross. That is the disadvantage of having a stove top that is a drawer--I can push it in and forget it until next time. I do this more than I want to admit. But I do clean it. Really I do. First, into a medium saucepan, combine 3/4 c sugar, 1/4 c cornstarch, 1/4 t salt, and 3 cups of milk.

Warm it over medium heat, stirring. While it warms, separate 3 eggs--you keep the yolks and not the whites, but get rid of as much white as possible. Put this bowl to the side.

Then add a cup of chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli milk chocolate) to the milk and sugar mixture as it warms up. Stir this in and let it come to a boil eventually and stir it for 2 minutes while it bubbles.

Drop a quarter cup or so of the thickening milk mixture into your egg yolks to accustom them to the temperature (I assume?). Then dump the egg mixture into the saucepan and stir while it combines fully and thickens up.
Off the heat it comes, and stir in 2 T butter. Once that is incorporated/melted, dump it all into a pre-cooked pie shell. Chill for 3 hours. Top with whipped cream or cool whip if you're too lazy (I was tonight)It is awesome. Next time I will work more diligently to pull out the yolks completely, because egg whites in a custard create lumps. Not too many lumps, but Sophia was totally turned off by the lumps and had only a few bites. More pie for me. Maeve and Leo didn't seem to notice (but you can see a few there on the slice I photographed).

It makes me happy. I will perfect this one.

27. Clean Closet

How about this? It's my winter storage--sweaters in the cubes, winter pajamas and turtlenecks in the drawers (three drawers are empty as of yet. And then on top, my costume jewelry (my good stuff is elsewhere) and chains and bracelets organized so I can see it all.

All from Target--just their flat pack build it yourself closet storage stuff bolted together. Cost me $85.

Above on the built in shelves are still items that I keep in my closet although would work better in a hall closet--a large pack for long camping trips, my old baby sling, my flute, a few stocking stuffer/last minute birthday gifts...

And below, my shoes. Yes, I own few shoes. But I'm going to store them right. More on that tomorrow.

26. St. Patrick's Day Potatoes

The old wives tale is to get your potatoes in the ground by St. Patrick's Day. That, of course, is a week away, so I'm hurrying outside to get things ready. I'm going to grow them in containers this year, and since potatoes grown in containers are not the prettiest creatures, I'm planting them back by the compost heap.

This sounds like a good plan, except that due to various factors (babies, hypothyroidism being the biggest two), my yard has totally gone to seed. Literally. My trifecta of weeds is: (1) wild violets, (2) morning glory, and (3) Indian (wild) strawberry. An "also ran" in that race would be English Ivy, although when I'm diligent, I can keep that in check and it isn't as ugly as the other three.

My compost heap is in the back corner of my yard. To make this make some sense, here is a quick drawing. The top of the drawing is north. Our house is south. Don't ask me why the former owners built the parking pad this way with the two skinny strips of land on each side. One side is closed in like a chicken yard, which is where we grow crops that squirrels desire (mostly tomatoes). The other skinny strip of land is fallow. At the end is our compost heap. Just north of it was this huge 100 year old mulberry tree that we took down Fall '08. Now it is a 4 foot tall stump, but it's on the other side of the fence.

ANYWAY. That whole strip of land was all English ivy and morning glory vines. Plus some other unidentified weeds and compost bits that the girls didn't get to the compost heap all the way (our compost heap is open, and is made of a 4x4 and 2x4 frame with chicken wire holding it in).

So I spent two hours this morning clearing out that crap. Then I put down all the containers that will become potatoes. After lunch, I'm going back out to fill the pots.

I have high hopes for my yard. I am a different person than three years ago when I stopped paying attention because I felt too bad. I'm planting greens today, too, in the closed in garden. So here's hoping for a good growing summer and that all goes well enough for me and the kids to pay attention.

25. Spring Cleaning: Closet Update

Umm.

My closet is a small thing, a footprint of about 8 square feet with a regular door that opens out into my room. It has 10 foot ceilings like the rest of the house, though, and so it is one of those spaces that would be more useful if it were turned on its side. But no. It has two shelves above the standard closet hanging pole.

I started by taking out all the clothes I will never wear again. What I had left was so little at this point--I'm not working outside the home and so I don't have a bunch of work clothes, and my standard wardrobe is all folded in drawers. I counted what I had left and stood there blinking. My closet was a waste of space.

I took the hangers with the clothes I do occasionally wear, including three wedding-appropriate kind of dresses, along with Sophia's First Communion dress and a few other things that were stuck in my closet for whatever reason, and took them to Mike's closet.

Mike's closet is probably more appropriately called a "trunk room." It is a big walk-in closet off the bathroom. I say "big" in comparison to the rest of my house's closets. I have, of course, a total of 5 closets if you count the pantry. Pantry, hall closet, one in each of the second floor bedrooms, and Mike's closet. Oh, and there are two linen closets but really they aren't, since they don't have doors. More like built in shelving.

So yes, it is a big closet. Big enough Mike keeps his dresser in there. There's a chair to stand on to reach the top shelves. We use it for storage and his hanging clothes.

I rearranged hangers in his closet so that they were all decent, tossed the beat up wire ones, and put my clothes to the left-hand side. Everything fit.

Going back to my closet, I took out the random assortment of "put this in my closet" stuff. I have a sewing machine in there that I need to do some repair on, for instance. There is a tub of vinyl records. A tube with a couple of posters we've always meant to get framed but haven't yet (this year we will, or we will get rid of them). Leftover boxes from Christmas packages. A sweater I forgot I owned (and kept, I like it).

So now I'm on pause. What do I do with this closet? Do I hire the folks that are doing Ann's closets and have them redesign it? Do I do it myself? Do I stick a bunch of tubs full of crap in there? Hmm. What to do.

24. Spring Cleaning: Closet

This week's goal? Clean out my closet and dresser drawers.

For every day, I wear one thing: black and denim. Jeans in the winter, capris in the summer. I throw a sweater on over a black t-shirt in the fall and spring. I rarely break out a sweatshirt or turtleneck. Everything on top is black and everything on bottom is denim blue.

Yes, I will dress up for a wedding or party. And there are a few items I keep because I use them when I need them--like the blue t-shirt to volunteer for Sophia's Irish dance school's feis (competition). I also have some bike pants that I wear under capris when I bike at the extremes of weather.

But this doesn't explain the the pair of green corduroy pants I will never wear again. Or the yellow, spring yellow, capris. Don't get me started on the weird collection of dress shirts in my closet. What?

I'm saving them because I'm lazy. It's not a case of "I'll get skinny and wear them" because THEY FIT NOW. Time to go.

After that, it's Mike's turn. He has t-shirts dating back to the late 80s, complete with the holes you would expect of that sort of vintage. Bleah.

23. Tools

22. Pew

I have two church pews. Part of the 90% of the furniture in my house that has been scrounged--either given to me by friends or relatives, or picked up used and cheaply, or in the case of one my church pews, carried out of my parish church.

I did have permission.

One church pew is protestant--there is a shelf underneath the seat for a hymnal but no evidence of a kneeler. It sits in my front hall and is the catch-all for everything that walks in the door: groceries, mail, bookbags, dance and tae kwon do paraphernalia, mittens, coats, baby shoes, anything and everything. It is the girls' job, but usually this girl does it, to clean it off every evening. It fits perfectly in front of the landing of my stairs, right as you come in.

The other church pew is from my parish, like I said. It is longer, although it is one of the short pews from church, a side one that ends in a pillar, so there's a little curve out of the seat to account for the location. It wound up taken out a decade or more ago, when the parish opened up the back of church as a greeting area (and because we didn't have enough people to really need them). Many of these extra pews wound up in the basement lining the walls. I know one wound up on Joey's front porch where it weathered badly and I hated her for that--she also had a house of old furniture but it was all purchased from auctions and high end antique shops and so her church pew wasn't anything she cared about. I love mine. Eye of the beholder.

The parish one is in my dining room. I would love for it to fit in my front hall but it doesn't. There is no other logical place for it, unless I moved it to the attic to take up space there. I just don't have enough walls in this house, designed for air flow between high-ceiling rooms. This isn't a big deal right now--it sits in front of the old fireplace in the dining room, which has no hearth or mantel. Mighty beat up, you might call it. It is extra seating for parties and girl scout meetings. It does fine.

But in a few years, or sooner if we can swing it, Jake and I would like to put a wood burning stove in the dining room--for heat as well as just simply that I've always wanted one. St. Louis has improved its electric grid but I really want a back up plan in case of bad weather in the wintertime. I watched Astrid freeze out of her house 4 years ago and I don't want to wind up in that position. This will involve lining the chimney, which is pricey and can't be done ourselves. That's the hold up--after we do that, in goes the stove.

And out will go the pew. I look around the room and I can't see what to do, unless I get rid of the bulky unattractive vestment cabinet from SLU and put the pew along that wall (opposite the fireplace wall). The piano could stay on the north wall, the table in the middle, the cabinet I swear I will finish this spring in the same corner where it is. That could work.

And that vestment cabinet, while well-designed with wide, shallow drawers, is really not a good fit in my dining room. Maybe the time is coming, soon, to empty it and move it on to a new home. Because even though it is impractical in many ways, the church pew wins.

21. Old Thread

I use old thread when it's not going to show--mostly to piece blocks together. I don't use just any old thread, however. When I pick it up at an antique/junk shop or at Leftovers (which is/was a recycling store that sold by the grocery bag--great for cheap teaching supplies and I got all my metal knitting needles from there), I test the thread first to see if it's worthwhile.

If it snaps in my hand, for instance, under little stress, then it's no good. If it smells like mildew or musty in any way, I don't bring it home. One time I found a bunch of spools that all had tiny puncture wounds, and I figured out it was cat bite marks. The saliva, I am guessing, rotted that thread completely.

But if it's strong and on a wooden spool, it almost always comes home with me. Even if it's too thick to use in a sewing machine I know I'll put it to some use. And sometimes? If it's a wooden spool and has a nice label, I might still bring it home because I'm kind of silly that way. But not with cat bite marks. Bleah.

20. The Story of a Quilt

I taught school, once upon a time. I taught math to middle schoolers in a Catholic grade school, at least that was the last thing I did before I retired to have these kids. The year before I took the job, I'd had a student in my first grade class with Asperger's Syndrome. Very mild in comparison to some, but definitely in that spectrum. He needed everything to be the same. He needed to know what was coming next. And so I learned to be very, very boring. In a good way.

Math went like this, on a two week repeating cycle with no deviation: regular class Monday through Thursday. On the first Friday, we took a test, no matter where we were in the book or with lessons (7th and 8th followed the book, but 5th and 6th skipped around to build our own curriculum to suit). The second Friday, we worked on a project, which was year-long and themed according to year. Fifth grade did consumer math. Sixth grade was the math of sports (statistics, mostly, but some geometry and physics). Eighth grade was the stock market and economics. Seventh grade was 2-dimensional geometry and quilting.

The first quilt block the seventh graders made had to involve a mathematical concept--like the Pythagorean theorem or A=lw or something. Many were very very simple but they still got the idea across. The second quilt block they made was for a quilt to put together and raffle off at the school picnic.

The first year was, well, fine. The second year, they made enough blocks of a pretty 4-point star that we made two quilt tops to raffle off. I got the first one done in time and I remember being jealous when Olivia won it. But at that point I was hugely pregnant and tired and folded the second one up and put it away.

The school closed and life went on. The quilt top lived in my cedar chest with other unfinished projects. I liked it. I thought about that class a lot, who had been my first homeroom at the school, whose names were not lost to me even if I never saw them anymore--but I did, or at least parts of them. A few still came to church. A few had parents who came to church. I liked them. A lot.

This year, I found the quilt top in my cedar chest and felt bad that it had never been brought to the light. I thought about those students and how maybe I was betraying them by finishing it for someone else--but there's no school picnic and anyway, I did complete the first one and successfully raffled it off (earned over $500 on that raffle, too, not bad). I decided I'd done enough penance. And so had this quilt top. So I finished it. I backed it with a pretty celestial print and quilted it with little 5 point stars all over it. Gave it to Jake's sister. It's a twin sized quilt, not just a throw, although I don't know what she's using it for. In that deep blue with multi-colored stars, it could pass for Christmas if it needed to. I'm sure the class of 2002 would forgive me. It has a good home.

19. Christmas Star

This one went to my parents. It's from a jelly roll, which is a whole set of coordinated fabric (from a "line" of fabric)--each print in the line is represented, sometimes twice depending on the line. Each print is cut the full width of the fabric (about 44 inches), but only 2 1/2 inches wide.

They are prettier than they are useful. Mostly because you really can't make a whole quilt top out of one--but you can make a Christmas throw. The other thing that bothers me is that they are so well matched. There is nothing quirky or off-kilter. It blends too well. This is often a plus for many folks, but I feel, well, a little quirky and off-kilter compared to most folks. So I'm not the biggest fan.

But they're sold in a roll, like a jelly roll. They are so pretty. You want to buy them and bring them home and put them on a shelf. I wound up with three by the time it was time to start Christmas quilting. I made two of them into quilts (the other waits patiently for its turn--it is an indigo and white batik set, ah). This is one of them. I think this one was "The 12 Days of Christmas". Probably Moda? I like the quilt. It is jazzy. It lives in my parents' house now.