Saturday, September 29, 2012

A Few Odds 'n Ends

This month has seemed super busy, but then most months feel that way!  Violin lessons and group started again the first week of September, and they always require great amounts of time the first few weeks, until everything is in place and rolling along, which is the point we've reached now.  That's relief!

Quilt club also started up again, the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of this month, and Carroll and I introduced this year's Club Quilt at the first meeting.  There was a lot of preparation involved in that, including drafting a paper pieced pattern from a 2 1/2" strip pattern.  We wanted paper piecing because that demands and results in much more uniform blocks.  Here's the sample block that I made.  And wow! did I learn a lot from making samples.

We are making a somewhat controlled quilt.  We purchased the background to keep that uniform and are requiring that the fabrics used with the background are "autumn coloured" batiks.  Some of these fabrics don't fit in very well, which provided a good illustration of what not to do.

Everyone pays $25 to the kitty because this is a fund raiser for the club.  We each make a block and one of us sews the top together.  We then have a draw and the lucky winner takes the top home to finish.  We will be sewing these blocks together with sashing between them--a way of avoiding the sometimes painful chore of making the points meet.

I think this will be a particularly attractive quilt, and you will see pictures when the top is completed.

Jim was working out in the garden this month and was puzzled as to why this bed of gladioli had no blossoms.  The plants looked healthy.











But a closer inspection reveals what had happened.  See the snipped off ends of the stems in this photo?  The blossoms provided "dessert" at the deer buffet.  Well, at least that means the bulbs benefited from this year's growth and will be bigger and better for next year.






This is the first year that our pear tree has produced a crop.  In fact, it was overloaded and the ground beneath was dotted with pears it had already dropped.

I picked several, ones that came off with a gentle tug.  Pears should actually be picked fairly green and left to ripen, as these small yellow fruits showed when they were cut up for the morning's fresh fruit salad: They were already brown in the centre.









Here they are with the potato for dinner, a Russet Burbank.  Scrubbed up, sliced in half and baked in the oven, it was delicious!



And since the oven was on anyway, we also halved, seeded and roasted this lovely acorn squash at the same time.  All accompanied by a small piece of pork with some garlic/honey dressing.

Nothing is as delicious as food harvested 50 feet from the back door and served hot a few hours later!











3 comments:

  1. Lovely quilt - love the colours!
    Might I suggest that you use your bruised pears as sub in an "apple crumble" - wonderful taste!

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  2. another good one is pear pie or pear sauce (like applesauce)

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the hints. I'll keep them in mind. I can imagine that pear sauce would be lovely over some roast pork.

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