Quilts and Books

Four years and four days ago, I published a blog post about all of my UFOs (UnFinished Objects) and my tendency to flit from project to project. I'm always attracted to the shiny new project. Or someone decides to have a baby and they need a quilt (and by the way, I learned of a new baby on the way just this past Friday). Or I sign up for a guild or QBFF challenge. I'm full of excuses. Meanwhile, the UFOs are still patiently waiting for me. Today I'm looking back on some of those UFO posts from 2009 and 2010 because I've decided to enter a UFO challenge at my local quilt shop . The rules are simple: during the next six months finish one project per month. Bring the completed quilt to the shop and get entered to win a $25 gift card. If you finish all six projects you get entered to win a $50 gift card. Hey, that's a nice incentive! Anyhow, it's rather gratifying to realize that a few of those quilts from that first post in 2009 are actually finished. In t...

Until today I'd never tried a macaron . It's not as if these French pastries are readily found in local bakeries here in flyover country. But what do you know? There they were in my local Whole Foods when I was shopping this afternoon and I figured that even if it turned out to be a poor imitation of the real thing, I should at least try one. Because after spending the last 2 days reading Laura Florand's latest, The Chocolate Kiss , I had macarons  and chocolat chaud  (hot chocolate) on the brain. The verdict? Pretty good! I got a passion fruit and chocolate-flavored macaron . The best part was the chocolate center. I think it was a little overly sweet for my taste, but I loved the textures and the chocolate combined with the tart fruit flavor. A-hem. This is supposed to be a book review. Back in August, Florand's The Chocolate Thief was one of my Phaves . I said then how much I enjoyed the way Florand made Paris come alive and how engrossing I found that story. T...

This month's theme is something short. Thanks to all of the $.99 ebook bargains to be found, I have quite a few shorts waiting for me on my Kindle. Then the other day I read Mean Fat Old Bat's review of Table for One  by Ros Clarke and SNAP! I have that book. So I came home from work, got on the treadmill and half an hour later I'd finished the book and my workout. Nice, huh? And so was the book. Nice. It was a sweet little read that made my half hour on the treadmill fly by and well worth my $.99. Table for One  is the story of Claudia, a food critic, who winds up unexpectedly dining alone on Valentine's Day at Ward's, a trendy restaurant named for it's chef. Claudia had planned to eat there with her boyfriend, but he breaks up with her just before their date that evening. Claudia goes to Ward's anyway and Ward finds himself curious when, on Valentine's Day of all days, an order comes back to the kitchen for a meal for someone dining alone. Ward cha...

This is a picture of a spread from the Spring 2012 issue of Quilt Sampler . I saw this quilt and instantly fell in love. The pattern was designed by Kathy Thomas and Jo Thomas of Suppose Quilt Boutique of Preston, Idaho. While the shop offers a kit, I decided to use that over-abundant stash of mine and make my own version. About the same time I was deciding to make it, I learned that my niece and her husband were expecting their first child. Baby gift! So below is my version of the quilt. You can see some variation in color based on what I own in my stash. (I need to collect some brighter yellows!) There are some great memories for me in the fabrics in my version. I used a couple of fabrics that are at least 20 years old. There are remnants from other quilts that I remember quite well. A few of those purples were in this pinwheel quilt I made last winter. And here is a close-up of my quilting. I did these half-moon shapes up and down the pencils to simulate the roundness of...