I Found a Quilt Show!

 Earlier this month, I saw, online, that there was going to be a quilt show at an elementary school in a town only about 15 miles away.  It was being put on by a quilt guild in the county south/southwest of the one I live in.  (Not the same quilt guild as the shows I went to in 2023 and 2025).

Being as DH was going to be out of town that day, I figured --other than horse and chicken chores--my time was my own, and I was going to spend some of it at the quilt show.

It was not nearly as large as the two quilt shows I'd been to at my county fairgrounds (here and here), but it was still a nice show with lots of lovely quilts to look at.  They even had a section that was heirloom quilts ranging in age from about 70 years to over 100 years old!  I wish I had though to take pictures of those, but I didn't.  I was just in awe that they had survived for so many years, and was looking at the fabrics they had been made of.

I did take some pictures of the new quilts, and I will share those with you.

This pattern is called Board and Batten, and is all squares and half-square triangles. It can be bought online. Frugal me, I took a few up close pictures of it (that I'm not going to post) because I can more than likely figure out the size of pieces used and replicate it that way (rather than buying a pattern), only using different colors.

The calm colors of this sampler quilt look so inviting.  Who wouldn't want to cozy up in a bed covered by a quilt like this?

This one also caught my eye.  I like the diagonal flow, as well as the toned-down and ombre rainbow color aspect.

This one is also a variation of using rainbow type colors.  It is all rectangles made out of triangles if that makes any sense to you.

The maker of this quilt has amazing talent!  She took a photo (of her husband), then using that photo, designed a quilt, found all the fabrics in colors like the photo, cut and pieced them together and, after 10 months, had made this!  It was fascinating to examine all the little pieces she used.  Talk about fabric art!

This is another that caught my eye.  While the colors aren't 'my' colors, I like the concept.  The quilting was also very interesting.  

This quilt was made using an Eric Carle fabric line.  My grandkids (and kids) would love it!

I took a picture of this quilt because the blocks are Crossed Canoes (although the quilter called them something else).  I have templates for Crossed Canoes, I used them to make a baby quilt a few years ago. This is a different setting than what I made, so I took a photo for inspiration of possibly using those templates in this way in the future.

A little snippet of a quilt that did a variation of the braid pattern.  I kind of liked it, which is why I took this close up picture; to remind myself of trying a braid horizontally (and with a neutral on one side) rather than vertically and with colored pieces on both sides.  Done like this, it brings to mind books tilted on a shelf, or maybe fallen dominoes.

This quilt was a combination of rows of piecing and rows of embroidery.  And while I myself don't really go for row quilts (the assembly style of this), I really loved the embroidery on it.

I did not take a picture of this quilt in its entirity, as when you backed up far enough to get it all in the camera frame the quilting did not show up.  But this is a whole cloth quilt, where you take one color of fabric and use that for the entire quilt (rather than piecing multiple fabrics together) and then you quilt it to make the designs and texture.  So elaborate up close.  It was a big quilt, probably queen bed sized.

This log cabin quilt was made of so many tiny strips.  Hundreds, maybe even thousands.  

This quilt was all applique and embroidery.  I can only imagine the hours put into it.  And the patience.  I think I'd probably try doing all those tiny little strips of the previous log cabin quilt rather than spending just as many hours on applique and embroidery like the maker of this quilt did.

Happy Friday Things

 This week has flown by.  It's been a busy one for sure, and in some ways feels like it may possibly have been 14 days long rather than the regular seven.

Here are some things that made me happy this week:

>Beautiful weather.  Truly, you couldn't ask for better October weather in Michigan than what we've had: chilly nights, cloudless (and mostly windless) days, and highs in the 60s.  I have done so. much. riding. this week, taking advantage of the great days while they last.

I am so in love with that blue sky!

>Because of the great weather, I've still been able to hang laundry out to dry on the clothesline.  And because I've been out at the clothesline, I discovered mushrooms under the leaves that have coated the grass there for the last couple of weeks.  I don't know what kind of mushrooms they are, and because of that, I won't be eating any of them.  But I still like seeing them.

>DH got home from elk hunting in Colorado.  While he himself did not get an elk this year, his hunting buddy finally did (buddy has gone every year with DH and until now never shot anything).  Buddy insisted that he does not like tenderloins, so he gave those to DH.  We enjoyed several meals of tenderloin this week.

>I made a trip to the nearby Amish market for spices, baking supplies, and raw milk cheese, and happened to be there on the day that they make cinnamon rolls.  So I brought home a pan of those to share with DH.  Two breakfasts I don't have to cook!

>The road I take to get to the Amish market is nearly covered in trees in a few places.  It was hard to get a good picture of the fall colors through there, but it was a really pretty drive.

>One of the days I was riding the Poetess, she actually took proper dressage contact (versus racehorse training contact) with the bit at the trot, rounded through her back and just gave me the most big beautiful trot!  This is something we've been working towards for a while, and it was such an outstanding feeling when it finally happened.  Of course, as all things go when training horses, the very next ride we couldn't reproduce it.  *sigh*  But at least now I know it's in there and she is capable of it.  I will hold that powerful yet floaty feeling in my memory and keep working at making that our normal trot.

I Got Set Up By Sixlet

This boy.  He's gonna be trouble.  Smart as a whip, and devilish too.

He's just two and a half, yet he took something DH told him, thought about it and an hour or so later had a joke on me.  It went like this:

We had him and him alone for a few hours one afternoon.  One of the first things he did after coming to our house, was to walk over to the counter in the kitchen where I keep my cookie jar, and ask his Papa if he could have a snack.

DH, noting Sixlet's chosen location by the cookie jar rather than the fridge or the pantry, where we typically dole out snacks from, told him that we didn't have any cookies because "Amma ate them all."  

I protested that I had not eaten them all; that the day before there had been two cookies, Papa had taken one and then given me the other--the last one.

We offered him some grapes, or an apple instead, both of which Sixlet declined.

They went outside to play for a while.  When they returned inside, Sixlet again asked for a snack, this time opening the door on the side of the pantry where I keep crackers and things like that.  I told him I had (mini) pretzels, and asked if he would like some of those.  He loves pretzels, so he eagerly accepted my offer.  DH put a handful of pretzels in a small bowl for him, and the three of us went into the livingroom.

Sixlet and I were sitting on the couch, with DH in his recliner, and Sixlet offered me a pretzel, then ate several of his pretzels, and offered me another one of them.  I like pretzels, so I ate what he gave me. 

When his bowl was empty, he asked DH if he could have more, and DH put another handful, which happened to be the remainder of the bag, into Sixlet's bowl.  

"That's all there is," DH told Sixlet.

Sixlet ate this second serving more slowly, offering me the broken parts of the pretzels and eating the intact ones himself.  As the bowl got close to being empty again, he paused, eating the last two whole pretzels before picking out four small pieces, which he offered to me.  I asked him if he wanted them, but he shook his head and said "for you, Amma."  So I ate them.

No sooner had I chewed up and swallowed those four pieces, than Sixlet turned to DH, holding up his bowl and tipping it upside down so DH could see that it was empty.  

"Amma ate all the pretzels!" he announced accusatorily, quite proud of himself.

That little squirt set me up!  He'd eaten all the unbroken pretzels, and then, when there were only crumbs left, he'd given those to me--without me asking for any--and insisted that I should eat them.  And once I had, he couldn't wait to show his Papa that there were no more pretzels.

If he can plot that in his head and execute it at just two, I can only imagine what he'll come up with as a teenager.

Another Experiment With a Tiny Casserole Dish

 Recently, I indulged myself in a kitchen experiment utilizing one of those little glass baking dishes I'd bought at Goodwill back in 2024.  For a while, I'd been toying with the idea of trying to make a small deep dish pie.  Because, while DH and I both love pie, we really don't need to eat an entire 9" pie between the two of us in the few days that a pie stays good.  If I could make a little pie in my little casserole dish that would enable us to still enjoy a pie now and then without overeating it (because it would be sacrilege to let a pie go bad). 

Finally I decided what the heck, I might as well go for it.  The great thing about kitchen experiments that involve desserts is that unless you burn them to a crisp, even the flops are usually still edible.

By my calculations if I halved my single pie crust recipe for a 9" pie, that should probably be enough dough to fit my little glass dish.

Pie crust:

2 Tbsp +2 tsp lard (shortening)

1/2 cup flour

pinch of salt

1 1/2 Tbsp cold water

Cut lard into the flour and salt until crumbly.  Stir in water until moistened.

Roll into an 8" circle on a lightly floured surface.

I gently eased the rolled out pie crust dough into the little dish, making sure it went all the way to the bottom, then trimmed it to about 1" more than the dish's opening.  After folding the excess under and fluting the edge, I poked the dough with a fork before baking at 475 degrees for about 10 minutes until lightly browned.

As you can see, the crust shrank during baking.  Next time I won't worry about trimming the excess; I'll try to leave more on the edge if I can get it to not flop down the outside of the dish.  Hopefully that way, even with shrinkage it will stay above the rim.

Once the crust had cooled to room temperature, I took a box of instant chocolate pudding from the pantry, and mixed it with 1 3/4 cup milk for about 2 minutes.  Then I poured roughly a cup (maybe a cup and a quarter?) of the pudding into the cooled pie shell--almost to the top of the crust--and put it in the fridge to set and chill.  

The leftover pudding was a nice snack for the baker during kitchen clean up 😊

At dessert time, I whipped up a little bit of heavy cream with about 1/2 tsp of sugar, cut the pie in half, and served it with a big dollop of whipped cream.

YUM!  Next time, I might try a tiny fruit pie; that will be more challenging to see if I can figure out how to adapt the cooking time so that the fruit filling (probably apples) is neither crunchy and underdone nor cooked to mush.  My current theory is that the cooking time won't be very much different than a regular sized pie, since the casserole dish is just as deep, or maybe a tad deeper than, a pie plate, so even though the diameter is smaller the thickness of the filling is about the same.

Finding Nirvana in a Piece of Buttered Toast

 I have been baking our bread for more years than I can accurately remember.  I'm pretty sure it's been this whole century, but at this point in my nearly 55 years of being on this earth, there's a lot of minor details of life before this little place here that I just don't remember.  (We built this house in 2002/2003).

This summer, after returning from our family vacation to Myrtle Beach in July, I found myself just totally swamped and overwhelmed with trying to run my horse business, catch up on tending the garden, do household chores, make sure the bills got paid on time, and have time for family members as needed (as they needed me).  That, plus the unrelenting heat and the fact that we don't have air conditioning so often my house was 80+ degrees inside--to hit 88 was not uncommon--led me to decide that of the many things that had to give so I could not break down physically or mentally, one of them was going to be baking bread.  

And so, for part of July, and all of August and September, I bought our bread at the store.  Seems like every loaf I was trying a different brand, different style, etc., because none of them were to my liking.  

Some were too 'mushy' as I call the airy fluff that is prevalent on the grocery store shelves.  Some were reasonably dense, until I toasted them.  Then they either shrank (what?!? shrinky dink bread??) or became the texture of an unused brand-new sponge back in the days before sponges came presoftened with antimicrobial whatever-it-is that "they" put on them.  Some breads were too sweet, some were too chunky with grains, some were just not right in a way I couldn't put my finger on.

Instead of giving me a break by not making our bread myself, finding a 'good' loaf of bread at the store became a stressor.

In October, with the weather cooler, I started baking our bread from scratch again.  That first loaf I cut into was so good! Oh, what joy I got from eating a simple piece of buttered toast.  The texture was right.  The flavor was right.  The toast that came out of the toaster was the same size as the bread that had gone into the toaster.  What bliss!

I never really thought about toast as a sacred object, but after nearly three months of unfulfilling bread, the sense of nirvana that simple piece of buttered toast brought me was amazing.

Simple joys are the best kind.

A New Roof For The Chicken Coop

 DH built my chicken coop 22 years ago. For the first few years, its roof consisted of OSB covered in tar paper.  At some point after 2006, he used some scrap steel to cover the tar paper, making it more weather resistant and prolonging the life of the roof.

While the steel roof was better than just the tar paper alone, it had not been intended to be permanent.  The steel used was long, narrow pieces and there weren't enough of them to cover the roof if DH ran them the correct way, which would have been so that water would run off down the slope of the roof.  Instead, he ran them the 'wrong' way, which meant that the ridges in the steel prevented the water from running entirely off.  

That wasn't really a big deal, at first.  But, as the years went by and temporary became sorta-permanent (or whatever you'd call almost two decades), strong winds and storms worked on those horizontal seams of the roof, loosening a few of the pieces of steel and also allowing rain to get driven up under it in spots.

It also meant that the water that did run off didn't exit at the back of the coop, but at the sides, typically at the base of a ridge, including right where I stood to latch and unlatch the door of the coop where I go in and out.  Not a big deal either, except on those shoulder season ice cold rains, where it would pour on my head or down the collar of my jacket--BRRR!

For the last few years, whenever we'd have a big storm from the west (which is where most of our storms come from), water would leak through the roof and into the coop in a couple of spots.  This year, one of those leaks got really bad, and after each storm I'd have a large spot of soaked wood shavings/chicken litter inside the coop.  Which is neither efficient use of the bedding/shavings, nor is it good for the plywood floor.

Finally, DH got to 'replace coop roof' on his To-Do List.  He had scrap steel from building his shop, and thought it probably was enough to cover the coop.  On Saturday morning, he tore off the old steel.

After lunch he started putting the new steel on.  I helped here and there, such as handing up the pieces of steel so he didn't have to climb up and down the ladder for each one, snapping the chalk line for where to cut, holding the overhanging ends of the steel while he cut them, and operating the tractor for our redneck steel brake.

DH had decided to bend the steel overhanging the short sides of the coop, to help weatherproof that so driving rains couldn't get under those exposed ends (he has plans for trimming out/covering the front and back ends).  Since we don't own a steel brake--or even an aluminum brake--he DIY'ed one with a chunk of oak 4"x4" and me manuevering the tractor forks to put pressure in the right spots to bend the steel.

So now the chicken coop has a new roof.  Where the metal runs in the correct direction and the seams run front to back instead of side-to-side. And water won't run off onto my head and down the collar of my jacket when I'm trying to go in or out collecting eggs and feeding and watering the chickens.

Photo-ful Week

 This past week, in pictures.

Saturday, at a small old-fashioned (no agri-tainment, only cider and doughnuts) cider mill with most of the grandkids.

Sunday, Rascal's flag football game, where Faline cheered.

Monday, sugar maple leaves getting bright.

Tuesday, Jedi loving his after-ride itch-relieving roll, and the last of the flowers from the garden.

Wednesday, beautiful weather could it be Indian Summer?

Thursday, sunrise looking like another great weather day.

Friday, cranes in the pasture and the maples are popping!

Saturday again all ready, caught the pre-dawn bruised looking sky.