We miss the Camino so much...we drink Spanish wine, we eat Spanish foods, and we also have Spanish tapas with our wine in the afternoon.
Today it is olives stuffed with anchovy paste. On our last pilgrimage, we sometimes made dinner of a tallish can of these and the local regional wine.
(Edited to re-upload the picture.)
This is the fruit, leaves and, at the top, flower of bitter melons, also called bitter gourd.I received the seeds from DSIL and she told me to soak them for 5 days before planting. The seeds sprouted vigorously and came up like gangbusters. After fruits began to appear I took a bowl to my DSIL, a mix of green and some bright yellow fruits.
The internet tells me that people in a number of East Asian and South Asian countries use the green (underripe) ones as food. Supposedly the vegetable is good for digestion. There are videos on the internet of people planting it, and people cooking the green ones. Boy was I surprised to learn that DSIL was not interested in the green ones! She tells me that her ancestors treasured the really ripe ones as medicines. Though one of the medicinal uses is supposed to be taking it in small doses as a stomach tonic.
We don't know about these things. I am just glad that I can grow it and don't have to figure out how to cook it.
On another topic, I am up to my ears in about three simultaneous craft projects, and inspiration for more pincushions is dancing in my peripheral vision as well. Soon I hope to have a completed ... something ... to put up here. Even if it's just food or a garden photo like today's post.
I took a small break from a larger project to make another Stash Pinny. This one is all in blue tones and white. Most of the blue on the top is batik leftover from the patriotic wall hanging. The back is a charm square. This time I got brave and put some walnut shells into the middle of the stuffing for weight.
Here is the top.
And here is the back side.
These little scrap projects are addictive, as they go together fast, even if the small pieces are a bit fiddly to join up. A stacked tape seam guide helps to keep the 1/4 inch even.
After our most recent Sewing Club meeting, a group of us went for something to eat. When I was going in, I saw this:
Aren't the baby swallows just adorable? And if you let them live in the area they will gobble down mosquitoes, flying termites, and other things. During the times we had a swallow box in our yard there were a lot fewer yellow jacket nests, too. I love the various swallows!
As there is a LOT of suitable small-pieces stash in the house, there has been made another new pinnie.
The red square is 1" across. The front and back were charm-sized: 5 inch squares. All of the fabrics are from stash. The stuffing is also from stash and the batting that backs the outside fabric is some leftover fleece.
The quilting and piecing were done with my old Kenmore computerized sewing machine. (These ones were made by Janome.) The vining stitch line that crosses the red square is one of the built-in stitches that came with the machine.
This is the older one of my machines. Over time I became dissatisfied with this machine's lack of an adjustable presser-foot pressure control. The newer machine (still not new, of course) is a Janome machine, simple but more rugged I think, that does have that dial. I happily use both of them. A project that will involve more layers is likely to be done on the newer one, while a more "standard" level of difficulty, especially if fancy stitches might be involved, will come to the older one.
This past weekend at our monthly sewing club meeting we did an embroidery project. We learned how to embroider on a coozie blank and sew the final seams to have a nice gift to give.
My DH loves his new coozie!
This was a fun project and the coozie fabric was surprisingly easy to work with.
Updated to fix spelling. "Embroidery" is not a verb, and I hate autocorrect!
This is another "bonus" project based partly on the cut-off corners from the patriotic hanging. There are some other bits of scraps included, that were being kept largely "just in case" a use would be found for them. The back side is a Michael Miller charm piece, orange with dots, quilted in a contrasting thread in a decorative stitch that came with my Kenmore made-by-Janome machine.
The patriotic wall hanging is finished. It is similar to a flag but it's really more of a bunting, as the stars are very much an abstract of the field that is found on a real flag.
The blue is a lovely batik I found at my local quilt shop. (It does bleed a little, but I learned this too late for a prewash.) The whites and many of the reds are from stash. A few of the reds are from new fat quarters. The border is from a new fat quarter, one of those "words" prints.
This was a fun little project. If I did it again, I would make the little corner squares larger.
The cut-off corner triangles are of course raw materials for another pincushion from the new book.
