SHQ show & tell

I was up early on Thursday (1/3) to make a dessert for quilting.  Paula has scheduled a Mexican theme for Cooking Fingers this month and asked me to make dessert.  I wanted to try it out before I make 80 servings for the club, so I made EASY SOPAPILLAS for our quilting luncheon:  

By then it was time to get everything packed in the car and head out.  I headed out before 9 AM so that I could stop and return yarn to Anne and also to stop at the library since I couldn’t after quilting.  

We had a wonderful and loud time at quilting after being off for 2 weeks…show and tell was wonderful:

Jeanne was on fire with several very cute table runners

I love this one....so different!

Sue snuck away from Christmas company to get in a bit of hand quilting

this was made by Jerri's granddauter

Mary Ann is trying to suck me into doing another Christmas tree....I LOVE it!

one of our prayers & squares quilts

and the food….OMgoodness…the food was fabulous (of course, once again I neglected to get any pictures  :~).  

I went straight from quilting to a meeting at the Lake House.  I recently volunteered to be a part of a committee which will be revising the manual we use to govern and direct all of our clubs.  The meeting started at 2 PM and I didn’t get home until just after 4!!!  It was our initial meeting and I believe on the whole, it went well.  I got to talk to Paula for a bit when I got home, but I had no energy after my day out and sat and read for a long time.  I just had a snack for dinner (still full from the wonderful lunch) and finally around 9 PM I got a bit of energy back and got a bit of beading done while watching TV with my honey.

I have to show you an incredible art project.  My Florida friend Inez (remember, the woman who came here for vacation for a week and worked like a dog in the kitchen baking and baking every day???) just finished a bit of Christmas art.  She wanted something special for her house, and this is done with acrylics on canvas:

I cannot believe just how good this is!!!

Trellis quilt totally finished, Loree's necklace

My honey was up at 7 AM Wednesday morning (1/2) to head out at 9 for golf here at SCCL.  After about 45 minutes of work, I finally got my blog entry out and started to think about what to work on today.  My trellis quilt has been on the to-be-bound pile forever, and was being used as a bed by the kitties for most of that time.  In the spirit of cleaning up all of my UFO's, I spent 15 - 20 minutes (and many, many pieces of tape) getting every bit of kitty hair off of it, while stitching out a label 

and beginning to get it bound.  I worked on it all day and by dinnertime, it was totally done:  

I absolutely LOVE it!!!  This is the quilt that I told Michael what I wanted, and he drew it out on graph paper for me, and it will be donated to BEDS=DREAMS.  

After that I worked on one of the quilts on Miss Scarlett and got it totally cleaned up and ready to take to quilting tomorrow:  

Michael and I had leftovers for dinner, then I settled in to SKYPE with Janice for 1-1/2 hours.  I just watched TV for the rest of the evening.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Loree has been down with a wicked cold and upper respiratory illness for over a week, but she finally felt well enough to get dressed up and take a picture of her new necklace.  I like the picture since you can really see the spiral on the necklace, which is what I particularly like (not to mention her pretty tree in the background!):

New Year's Day Brunch

We both hopped up at 7 AM on Tuesday (1/1/2019…yikes!!!) to finish getting ready for our brunch.  I got the sticky buns out of the fridge and set them to rise a bit more before baking:  

Then I got into making the egg casserole:  

nuked broccoli

then some feta

cubed ham

and finally carmelized onions before pouring in the eggs

while Michael worked on a fruit bowl:  

Michael ran to Dunkin' Donuts for a box 'o joe: 

and our guests started to arrive at 10 AM (although there was one couple that arrived at 9 AM…luckily they live close by (who doesn’t in SCCL?) and so they headed back home for an hour), many bearing a variety of food 

and the party got into full swing.  

Gale & Paula

Evelyn & Phil

Martha & Harry

Larry & Joanne

Ralph & Candyce

Phil & Evelyn

Carol

Ed

Deanna & Ralph on sofa, Doug & Jerry behind

Bill

Pam

Joe & Larry w/ Joanne in background checking out the loom

Anne

In the interests of keeping our guests on their feet and not tripping over our furry babies, the kitties were shut up in the bedroom, while Cookie was banished to the basement:

We were so fortunate that it got into the 70’s today as people were able to be out on the lanair, otherwise it would have been WAY too crowded with 30 people :~).  Everyone was gone by 1 PM and after a bit of clean-up, Michael and I settled into reading and napping in our chairs in the living room.  We had ham for dinner and I even headed downstairs for a bit.  Part of the studio clean up has been cutting found/leftover fabric into useable pieces and I now have a completely cut out QoV to get started on whenever (it will be another Four Patch Frenzy):

After which I collapsed on the TV sofa for the rest of the night.

Arizona Mary is ready to start 2019 in her beautifully neatened up sewing studio…..

hopefully mine will look as good by the end of this week!  

You know, I was talking to one of the party guests and I mentioned that usually, the week between Christmas and New Year’s is very quiet and I can get a lot cleaned up…somehow that didn’t happen this year, but hopefully this first week of 2019 will do it for me.

New Year's Eve, Russian story, sticky buns

It’s time to tell you a strange story about one of my blog entries.  I have a blog entry from 2016 when I was visiting BG in Connecticut.  There’s a bakery we like to go to that has absolutely spectacular Russian dark rye (although sometimes I call it Russian Pumpernickel) that we both love to eat.  I talked about it, and put the word Russian in the title as well:

https://foodandfiberfloozie.blogspot.com/2016/08/russian-pumpernickel-hard-at-work-in-ct.html

I think Russian people have been doing a search on the internet for all things Russian and have found this ONE blog entry.  As of this morning it had 655 total views, and 84 comments.  And the comments read like people who do not have English as their first language.  Some of the comments are a real hoot and worth checking out.  Sometimes they ask me questions, and ask for a reply.  But, even though I have updated the post to indicate that they HAVE to leave their email address within the comment to get a reply….no one does.  It’s really strange and for the past 2 weeks I think I have gotten comments every single day on this old post…..weird!

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It was another gloomy day on Sunday (12/30), but a good day for continuing cleaning in the studio.  My honey made me a fabulous breakfast to keep me going: 

and I spent the rest of the day gathering things to give away and sewing up some HST’s I found.  

I had an idea to use them all up in a quilt, here’s what I’ve started with:  

Michael and I had a reprise of our Christmas dinner and I strung beads while watching TV in the evening.

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We were up and out of the house at o’dark hundred on Monday morning (12/31) to make it to an early morning eye appointment for Michael.  The doctor said everything looks ok, but she may have been seeing some residual effects from a clot.  She recommended a dye procedure with a retinologist, so we set that up and left to have a smufy breakfast at a place just down the street called EDDIE’S PLACE.  We were finally home just before NOON, and Michael ran to the grocery store while I worked on redding up the upstairs, vacumming the downstairs and in general getting ready for our New Year’s Day Brunch.  

Michael and I decided days ago that we would have spaghetti & meatballs (something he almost NEVER gets at home) for our New Year’s Eve dinner…..the best part was that he totally forgot about that and so was surprised and pleased when he came to dish it up!  I put together Killer Pecan Sticky Buns after dinner:  

I poured the honey/brown sugar mixture in the pan and started to break pecans over it

I think I finally have enough pecans!

this dough was so beautiful...rolled out to 20'' by 8 ''

laved with the butter/cinnamon/brown sugar filling

sprinkled with dried apricots, re-hydtated with apricot brandy

can't wait until tomorrow....

and then we settled in for date night with popcorn and MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY (a fabulous and family fun movie you should all see).  We decided to forgo the champagne since we’d be serving it for New Year’s Day brunch.