split pea soup tutorial, lots of Cookie & Elsie, AJ

BTW – I know people have expressed interest in attending one of my soap making sessions, and with the temps going up I am hoping to do that this week..maybe Friday or Saturday…if you are interested in watching, let me know!

Michael was up and out of the house early Tuesday morning (1/9), eager to get back on the golf course after being away so long due to the cold weather.  First up for me was cleaning up the fish quilt and getting it trimmed so that I could add it to the to-be-bound pile!  

After that I headed upstairs to this:

I checked my backing fabric….big stain still there….I pre-treated again and put it through another wash cycle.  While I was upstairs, I got split pea soup in the crockpot:  

shredded carrots

diced onion

diced celery

3/4 c of barley

1 pound of split peas

2 quarts of good, rich ham stock

I also added another quart of water to get my crockpot to the tippy top.  It cooked on low for 8 hours....yum!

By then the laundry cycle was done and I checked again…  :~(  I can’t believe I finally get off my duff and pull together a backing for one of my bigger quilts and then it all seems to go to h_ll in a handbasket….some days it really does feel like 2 steps forward and 3 backward.  But, I finally decide it’s time to get over it and go to plan “B”, so I pull out my bolt of orange to try to make a backing out of it (I used this on the front of the quilt also).  That’s a non-starter as well since I don’t have the 5-1/4 yards I need for a backing.  Onto plan “C”…which I haven’t figured out yet.  Add to this…I am BEREFT….I have run through all of the episodes of CALL THE MIDWIFE on Nexflix….can’t wait until they film more…I love this show. According to the internet, new episodes will be on PBS in the spring of this year.   

I paused for a bit of lunch and had a nice talk with Mary Jo….we tried SKYPE-ing…but my computer kept acting up, so we just resorted to the phone.  I started to get a backing loaded up on Miss Scarlett in the afternoon….I am using up the last of my 108’’ wide blue (come on Foust!!!  This is the second bolt of 108'' wide blue I have used, so I will definitely be re-buying in February).  When Michael came home around 4 PM we went and sat out on the lanair for a bit…it was heaven…and hard to believe how warm it was after the frigid temps we have had all week.  Larry picked Michael up at 6:20 to see ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD and I continued to load my long arm (while watching LOVE ACTUALLY) and got my quilt basted by the time he got home.  

it's VORTEX on the long arm...

When I went upstairs to greet him, there was even more snuggling going on:

ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD is a re-telling of the 1972 kidnapping of the grandson of J. Paul Getty.  It was a story of greed, not only for the kidnappers, but for the grandfather himself (in Michael’s opinion the greediest rich man since Midas).  There was great acting by Christopher Plummer and Michelle Williams.  And since Michael didn’t know the story, he found it very exciting and tense.  He gave it 4 fat quarters out of 5.

OK....it's time for your weekly dose of cuteness: