Cooking and Sewing

This is Luna, Devourer of Worlds. She is our recently[ish] adopted house bunny. Here she is enjoying some outdoor playtime. She helps me sew.


She helped me narrow down the layout of my Moda Friendship Sampler Blocks. For info on the blocks themselves, including color codes, look here and here.


I have also been working on my fox for the Secret Fox Swap. I came up with this mug rug/mini quilt thing. Obviously it needs facial features.


Luna, however, was not impressed with the fox. Here she is illustrating how not-scary the fox is by pretending to sleep. So I made the fox a teensy bit bigger. Gosh, she is so helpful. In all seriousness, isn't she adorable when she sleeps???


Anyways, this semester I am teaching one less lecture and two less labs than normal so I find myself with more time to sew. I pulled this fabric to get started on a quilt for my old college roommate and her boyfriend who just bought a house!


And this is the layout I'm working on. The quilt will be comprised of 8" blocks and the blocks that are colored in are what I'm using to make the quilt. So it will be 8 x 9 blocks. If you can see on the bottom of the page, I sketched each possible block then assigned everything numerical values so I could really randomize the quilt by rolling dice to pick block order. I might write a post to explain what exactly I did because it was a really fun and stress free way to decide on a random layout. I also thought it would look awesome to have the colorful blocks surrounded by a border of monochromatic blocks, but KT wants lots of color, so that would not work this time.


In other news, all three of my hens are laying eggs! From left to right: Bullroarer, Eglantine, and Polydontasaurus.


I used some of their eggs to bake some challah bread that we used to make lemon poppyseed French Toast. Yum!


Speaking of cooking, last week the boyfriend and I decided to do some themed cooking. The theme we decided on was South American. The first themed dish is keshi yena, an amazing treat from the Dutch Antilles. We first had it in Bonaire and loved it!


The second dish for theme week was feijoada, a Brazilian black bean stew. Omnomnom.

Begrudgingly Back to Blogging after Bonaire

My sewing machine was in the shop for weeks. I was out of the country and underwater for a over a week. Boyfriend is working 16 hour shifts. With 3 days notice, I took over teaching summer classes, mid-semester.

...These are all moderately legitimate excuses for my lack of blogging enthusiasm. But the truth is: I should be blogging because the only thing actually in my brain is "It's summer and I don't wanna!" Here we go.

Since my sewing machine really was in the shop for weeks, we begin with hand sewing. This is for Mug Rug Revival.




Then I really was out of town and underwater for over a week. Before we left, one of our three hens laid an egg!


Oh gosh, I love Bonaire! This is the view from the dock. Do you see where the water gets darker just past the boats? That's the coral reef! It goes down to about 150'!!!


Oh, and there are wild iguanas everywhere.


If you want to see underwater footage, here is a video Eliott (one of my friends/dive buddies/roomies in Bonaire) compiled with the best of his GoPro footage from the week. The boyfriend and I were the lighting technicians for the octopus footage! This video also has footage of my favorite fish ever, the honeycomb cowfish. It changes color!


If you don't want to watch all of that, and/or want to see more octopus footage and also a slipper lobster (that I spotted!) that didn't make it into that first video, check this one out.


The chickens seemed pretty happy that we were back stateside.


So much so that they even helped me with some hand sewing.


Especially Eglentine. She was all about it and hopped up in my lap in an attempt to help tackle dog-ears.


Then they just wanted to sneak inside and/or wander away.


Oh! Our tomato plants are kicking ass! Clockwise from top left, Red Phoenix, Juliet, Sweet 100, Black Cherry.


Then I made some taco salads to deal with the random leftovers that I found in the fridge upon arrival. All of the tomatoes went into this.


Now that the boyfriend is working 16 hour days, I'm trying to keep him eating well. Dang engineers. Left to his own devices he would live on ramen and cheese. Luckily the pork tenderloin, Greek potatoes, and roasted veggies convinced him to eat real food.

Fence Quilt Finish

I was able to finish my goal for the May round of Lovely Year of Finishes (goal setting post, over here), a barn COOP fence quilt. Originally I wanted to make a barn quilt since I will never be able to make a quilt for my chickens that they would appreciate (and by appreciate I mean not stomp on and cover in feces). Then it occurred to me that we don't have a barn, so I better make a coop quilt. So I got started making a plan. Halfway through the process, it occurred to me that their final chicken coop might not have a convenient place to hang the finished product. Then my boyfriend suggested I hang it on the fence for everyone, chicken and human alike, to enjoy, so the name evolved again.

When I last showed a progress update, I had finished painting the block design and was utterly flummoxed with the sealing phase. I am pleased to announce that after sanding off the spray enamel, I was able to successfully add three coats of satin polycrylic and I could not be happier with the end result. I opted for a satin finish because I didn't want to be blinded by the dang thing whenever harsh South Texas sun was shining, which is basically always, btw.

So this is what I see when I go out the back door and turn left. 

This is what the chickens see from the front of their coop. I think everyone has a great view.

Here is a closeup shot that really illustrates the colors and the awesomeness that is the satin finish.

And since I coudn't get the lighting correct anyways (I told you harsh South Texas sun was ever-present) here is a fun artsy shot. Look at how well those seams match up! ;)

The quilt was screwed to the fence just in time for the chickens 14th [week] birthday on Monday! Aww! Here they are celebrating with a nice bouquet of babies breath that grew out of the ground just for them (or so they would like to believe). They celebrated by eating the babies breath.


Here are some closeups of my lovely ladies, in no particular order. If you want to read about why they have such odd names, I tried my best to explain it all over here.

First up we have Eglantine (Eggy).


Then here comes Bullroarer (BRthur).


And lastly we have Polydontosaurus (Polly).

Wow! They are growing up so quickly!

WIP Wednesday

Apparently I am trying so hard to relax after submitting my grades that I am rebelling against sewing because not much got worked on this week. I have been staying busy with a ton of non-sewing projects. Here is the nearly completed mug rug for Mug Rug Revival.


Here is the exterior of the bag I'm making for Super Swaps. Now to bust a move and finish the interior and add some straps. I want this and the mug rug to be in the mail over the next day or so.


This is the progress I have made on my May LFoY goal: A barn chicken-coop quilt for my hens that will now be hung on the fence near the coop. I have finished the design and now just need to seal and hang it. I used spray enamel and it came out horribly so I'm going to add brush-on polycrylic and hope that it can adhere or else I'm sanding it all off and starting again.


Speaking of my little ladies (I can no longer call them girls, but they aren't quite women yet), here they are being utterly confused by their first experience with rain. We had to put them in their house when the rain started because they didn't know how to stay dry.


Oh my gosh, aren't these just the cutest hens in the world?? From left to right: Polyodontosaurus (Polly for short), Eglentine (Eggy for short), & Bullroarer (BR to my boyfriend, Bea Arthur to me).

Maybe I should explain the names. Bullroarer has hilarious feathers growing out of her legs, feet, and toes which reminded me of a hobbit. She has always been the biggest hen, so that seemed like a good fit even though the actual hobbit named Bullroarer was a male.

Then we were trying to find another hobbity name for the one on the left. We had already been calling her "Polly" though since she has an extra toe (genetic trail of extra toes is called polydactyly) but there were no hobbit names that started with "Polly" so naturally we started searching through dinosaur genera and found Polyodontosaurus grandis, a small, bird-like dinosaur. Perfect!

Then we come to the middle hen. Eglantine was another distant hobbit name, but it also happens to be the name of Angela Lansbury's character in Bedknobs & Broomsticks aka my favorite movie ever. Doesn't she even look a little like Angela Lansbury?? It can also be shortened to "Eggy" which is kind of the best chicken name ever. I'm always singing this song to her though my rendition is a little less dancey.


Oh yeah! Back to projects! I'm also refinishing my sewing chair. This has been my chair since I was about 6 years old, which means it had all kinds of stickers, nail polish, and strange carvings on the surface. I have sanded and primed it, now I'm just trying to add enough coats of this dark grey so that it stops looking blue.


Then we come to cooking! All recipes we used are linked. My boyfriend, cousin, and I successfully made a souffle following a Julia Child recipe. Check out the puffiness!


This was a makeshift breakfast my boyfriend and I put together. The kale and potatoes were leftover from other meals, so we just scrambled eggs with corned beef. Omnomnom!


Then we have salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, and roasted cabbage. The salisbury steak and mashed potatoes were incredible, but the cabbage wasn't, which is bizarre because I absolutely LOVE cabbage. I think I would have liked it more cut smaller because this was difficult to eat. I also might have preferred the taste of the cabbage raw with the same marinade, which I altered and used sesame oil instead of olive oil because sesame oil and cabbage reminds me of Japan.

Quilt, Purse, Chickens

Last week I volunteered to donate a quilt for a silent auction. The proceeds from which will go to San Antonio Girls Inc. and their STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) summer programs for girls, which is something I think is desperately needed. Woot! So I wanted to make something moderately sciencey. The only bad thing is that the quilt needs to be done by April 25th, because that is the only chance I have to drop it off. AHH!

I decided to do a gradient of blues to represent astronomical twilight--the time of day when the sun is far enough below the horizon so that stars are starting to be visible. The blues I decided on (in order) are: Michael Miller Cotton Couture in Royal, Bella Amelie Blue, Bella Bright Sky, Bella Little Boy Blue, and Kona Bahama Blue

I wanted the stars to be different sizes and shapes, so I ordered fabric from Fat Quarter Shop on Monday and had it by Wednesday. Yay for living so close to them! By the time I left town for the weekend on Friday, I had this much done. Pretty impressive considering how much grading I had to do. But then not so impressive when you factor in that I didn't work on anything else and had one night of total insomnia where I just kept sewing all night because I wasn't sleepy.


Yesterday was my odd day when I teach from 9-11:30 then not again until 7pm, so in that big gap of time, I finished up the front. Backing fabric was purchased today, so it will get basted tonight and hopefully quilted Wednesday.


Since I had a big gap of time yesterday after the quilt front was finished, I decided to work on a purse. I am in need of a fancy purse since every other purse I have made is covered with crazy fabric. I combined the shape of this bag with the fabric cones from this bag. I am loving the way it turned out! The grey and green are both linen.


Close-up of the cones. It looks frumpy because I didn't have fusible fleece, so I had to settle for FMQ on some regular batting.


And I couldn't resist throwing in some Star Wars fabric since the colors matched so well. My inner nerd is very happy about this.


And continuing with the bright green, we have the now 10 week old chickens! They are huge! Also, they now live outside in a bright green enclosure.


Eight have already gone to their forever homes, so we are left with seven. Four of these are still needing to be re-homed, which will leave us with the three we want to keep.