THE KALE HARVEST

About the end of April I seeded a package of kale into a big pot for on the patio.  Today I harvested a good amount of lovely, small leaves.  How did we want to use this kale?

I looked in my few cookbooks but didn't find a recipe that appealed, so I made up my own version.  In a 12" teflon frying pan I put about a teaspoon of Sesame oil and a good hunk of butter.  When it was melted and hot I added 2 cloves of garlic crushed and about 1/4 cup of chopped onion.  I shredded a large carrot in the Cusinart and added that.  When that had sautéed for a bit I added the washed and stemmed kale.  Add a good shake of "Vegetable Seasonings" and some raisins.  Sauté until the kale is wilted and serve.  It was delicious!  I'll do that again some time.

Now I wish I had taken pictures of the process, but maybe next time the kale is ready to be cut I can remember.

Just got back from a week in Fort St. John, B.C., a visit to our younger daughter's family that included our grandson's grade 12 graduation.  He plans to take his first year of college there and then transfer somewhere that has a good accounting program.  We had a very good time with them, in spite of almost continuous rain, low temperatures and dark skies. I flew there and back with WestJet for just under $300, flights of just 1-1/2 hours--SO much easier that a 10 hour drive!

A REALLY BIG QUILT

About 15 years ago I made a large quilt, a duvet really, for us to use in the winter.  I was able to purchase 13 ounce polyester batting at a Fabricland in Edmonton.  For the top and backing I used two king-sized white sheets.  The plan was to machine quilt this together, but it was just too puffy to sew on the machine, so I hand stitched it on my Qsnap frame.  That worked well, and it was wonderfully warm and light.

It has a line of stitching every 6" across.  That was enough to hold the batting in place.

Last winter we needed to use our summer light weight quilt with it because over the years with many washings, it had become quite thin.

The summer weight quilt I had made around that time also, with a 3 ounce polyester batting.  That is still the quilt we sleep under in warm weather.  Over the years this quilt has also thinned out considerably, making it comfortable even in quite warm weather.

Last year I was given some bolts of material that weren't suitable to use in quilting because of a continuing problem of the fabric dye "bleeding."  I took two of those fabrics, cut them as long as wide, about 115" (they are quilt backing fabrics) and sandwiched them with two (!) High Loft King-sized batts.  This is destined to be our new winter duvet.

The plan was to sew "knots" at 8 inch intervals to keep the layers together.  I hoped to do this on the Q'nique, but the Q'nique didn't cooperate with that plan.  Well, I thought, let's try hand stitching this.  There were a few "false" starts with this, but now, finally, I have a method that works:

That's a curved upholstery needle that pokes nicely back up through the fabric, and that's a cone of very strong brown upholstery thread.  Here's how nice a little "tie up" looks:

This is in contrast to the machine stitching:

And the hand stitching with the light beige upholstery thread.

I think I've hit my stride with this, as it is spread over the dining room table and is reasonably comfortable to handle this way.  The rest of this project shouldn't take too long!

The "Practically Perfect Pinwheels" blocks are all complete.  They just need to be sewed together, borders added, sandwiched, quilted and bound.  This will be a nice-sized lap quilt to donate either here or in AZ.

In the meantime I have two very good books to recommend:  Bonhoeffer by Erich Metaxas and A Higher Loyalty, truth, lies and leadership by James Comey.  The first is an excellent detailed biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Protestant pastor and theologian who was executed by the Nazis just a few days before the end of the Second World War.  The second, by James Comey, is just out, a defence of his actions as head of the FBI and a searing look into Donald Trump's "style" of leadership.  Scary stuff!!!  Comey is obviously opinionated (he says so himself) but also seems to be honest and insightful.  I heartily recommend both books.

PRACTICALLY PERFECT PINWHEELS

Several years ago I made a queen-sized quilt of patches and pinwheels.  I struggled with the pinwheels and I mean really struggled!  When that quilt was finished I promised myself that I would never make pinwheels again.  But that quilt is pretty nice.  It’s the quilt that covers our bed here during the day.  We don’t sleep under it’s too heavy.

But then one of the members of our quilting club brought a pinwheel block that she had made according to the directions on the Missouri Star Quilt blog.  It was very nice BUT all the outside seams were on the bias.  That didn’t look so good to me.  I decided to try to make up a method which I liked.  After a few tries I did succeed in finding a reliable way to make a pinwheel block that had the bias seams on the inside, and the points almost always turned out well.

With the left over material from a recent quilt another pinwheel quilt is taking shape on the design wall.

Well, this was an experiment.  I typed the entry on my new iPad, took a photo of the pinwheels with my iPad, but was unable to move the photo to the blog entry.  That's stumping me.  There surely is a way to do that, but I haven't found it yet.  So I took a photo with my camera, downloaded it to my laptop and finished the post that way.  I'd like to be able to do all that with the iPad, as it would be much less hassle when travelling.

Maybe when I visit our daughter and son-in-law, he can show me how to do this!