Thimbleanna – Page 50 – My little online diary.

Fabric Surprise

29 Comments / October 8, 2013 November 10, 2013 / Chat

Gosh, a whole week has whizzed by since my last post. I’ve been busy, but not with much to show for it. I had a little trip to see TheSecondChild over the weekend. We had a lot of fun visiting and stocking his pantry. You know, like mothers do.

When I got back home I had a fun fabric surprise from SweetiePie and TheFirstChild waiting for me.

Look at those great gray prints! SweetiePie sure knows what I like! (L to R: Just Type by Patty Young (LOVE), Uno Style by Stof.dk, Simply Color by V and Co., Shades of Grey by Exclusively Quilters, and Pure Style by Stof.dk.)

I also won a giveaway from Sherri a few weeks ago. It was a gift certificate from Fashionable Fabrics and the fabrics arrived while I was gone. I thought the knitting sheepies might be fun to make a needle carrier or knitting bag or something. Hopefully I’ll get around to it before too long — my needles are a mess!

(L to R: Knitting Sheepies (I named them — they don’t have a name) by Timeless Treasures, Illumination by Yuwa fabrics, Wash Symbols by Makower UK, Wash Day Utility Room by Makower UK, and Remember by Carina Gardner.)

Other than that, not much excitement around here. The Steampunk quilt is all basted and ready for me to begin quilting — I’m excited to get started. Oh, and when I was reading Jan’s blog yesterday, she mentioned how much she loved her sewline pencil’ and it reminded me that I forgot to tell you that I put some of the Sewline gift sets into my little shop. Just in case you want one for the big event coming up in a few months LOL.

I love, love, love those Sewline pencils — they made the Steampunk quilt so much easier to work on.

That’s it! Have a good week!
XOXO,
Anna

Lop-Lop-A-Lopi

45 Comments / October 1, 2013 October 8, 2013 / Knitting

And here we are — the last quarter of the year. Can you believe it? I love this time of year. It’s sort of like New Year’s. Kids back in school and everyone setting schedules and getting back into a routine. I’ve been so happy to see several long-lost bloggers return to the fold.

It’s that time to be planning new projects too. You know, the big event is coming up soon. Please note, I didn’t actually say it. In preparation for new projects, I’m trying to wrap-up a few in progress.

Which brings us to my Lopapeysa. The Icelandic sweater for which I bought the yarn on our trip to Iceland. It’s finished! Yay!

And … drumroll please ……….

IT FITS!!!!

I can’t even tell you how excited I was when I tried it on and it fit. Fitting is always the hardest part of knitting for me — it seems like guesswork, in spite of all the gauge checking that happens. I LOVE-Love-loved knitting this sweater. Only two little underarm seams to stitch up when it was all done – my kind of sweater!

I used yummy Icelandic Lopi yarn and THIS free pattern. For the neck, the pattern gave instructions to knit 3 inches of ribbing and then fold it to the inside and stitch it down. But when I was watching the Lopapeysa video that Berglind gave me when we met in Iceland, it showed a technique that basically separates the knit and purl stitches for a few rows and then uses the kitchener stitch to bind off. It’s brilliant and I love it! So much easier than rolling and sewing and it looks a lot nicer too.

So, Yipee! A finished sweater. What to knit next? (Ha! Maybe I should finish the 10-year sweater.)

Oh Wait! My VBFF Gurney told me about an awesome knitting app for the iPad called Knit Companion. Have you heard of it? I used it at the end of this sweater and it’s great to keep track of chart rows, etc. If you’re a knitter, you might want to check it out!

XOXO,
Anna

Shrimp Fettuccini

24 Comments / September 26, 2013 October 8, 2013 / Recipes

Hello, Hello. Have you had a good week? . There’s been some Steampunk progress here — I’m putting the blocks together now. Here’s a picture of the first complete corner.

I’m going slowly and taking my time — putting one row a day together. I’ve had so much fun choosing fabrics, I’ll almost be sorry to see it all put together. Hopefully I’ll be basting the quilt together this weekend.

Gosh, this weekend. The last one in September. Wow. It scares me to think how little time is left in 2013. The days are getting shorter and the fall nesting instinct is edging it’s way into my days. Meals seem a little heartier than the lighter, summer fare. I thought I’d give you the recipe for one of our current favorites — Shrimp Fettuccini. MeMum found this recipe a few years ago in a cookbook that I brought to her after a trip to Salem Massachusetts and we love it. I don’t normally like very spicy food, but the jalapeno cheese in this recipe gives it just the perfect little bit of zing!

Shrimp Fettuccini

1 large onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1/2 cup butter
4 teaspoons parsley flakes
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined **
4 teaspoons flour
2/3 cup half-and-half
8 ounces shredded jalapeno Monterey Jack cheese
12 ounces fettuccini
1 cup shredded jalapeno Monterey Jack cheese

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Saute the onion, green pepper and garlic in the butter in a large saucepan until tender. Add the parsley flakes and the shrimp. Saute just until the shrimp turn pink. Mix in the flour.

Stir in the half-and-half gradually and cook until thickened, stirring constantly. Add the 8 ounces cheese gradually, stirring until the cheese melts; set aside.

Cook the pasta al dente using the package directions, rinse with hot water and drain well. (Note from me: Or, save time and cook the pasta while you’re making the sauce ;-D ) Add the pasta to the shrimp mixture and mix gently.

Pour the mixture into a lightly greased baking dish and sprinkle with the remaining 1 cup cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

**The recipe calls for raw shrimp, but I buy the pre-cooked stuff ’cause I’m l-a-a-zy. Just put them into the mix after the flour and half-and-half have been added.

Serve with some fresh, homemade crusty bread (not pictured haha) and you have a yummy, quick meal.

Have a great weekend!
XOXO,
Anna

The End of Summer

29 Comments / September 21, 2013 October 8, 2013 / Peep Days

Well, tomorrow is the big day — the official end of summer and therefore the day when I’m officially done with my 10 Things this Summer List. Just in the nick of time, I managed to get two more items completed.

1. Get Together with the Quilty Peeps. Finally! It took us over a year to find time in our schedules when we could all get together and we did the deed yesterday. I love getting together with my long-time BFFs and I love that they’ll let me take pictures of their projects. Our collective memories have gaps (ha!) so it’s nice to be able to look back on the blog and see when we got together and what we were working on. So, for future reference, here’s what we worked on yesterday:

Jewels came with enough projects to share LOL. We wanted to see all the fun stuff she’s working on and she kindly obliged. Here’s her newest project — a quilt she found in a magazine this summer. Aren’t those colors gorgeous?

Then she had a ton of blocks completed for another quilt she’s making. She showed us the flyer for the pattern and of course, I forgot to take notes. (Maybe she’ll tell us in the comments. ;-D ) I LOVE this star block and Jewel’s work is perfect.

And then we teased Jewels that she’s still working on her dresden plate project, which she was working on when we got together almost three years ago. We were laughing with her, not at here ’cause I’m pretty sure this would be a 20-year project for me.

Oh, and look at the darling little snack mix bags Jewels made for each of us — she’s a sweetheart!

Gurney was finishing the hand work on the binding for a Cat in the Hat quilt for her grandson. It’s SO cute! I LOVE this fabric and I’m hoarding some of my own.

Look at the cute back too. Gurney took all the fabrics that she had left over from piecing the front and used them on the back. So fun!

Junie was our hostess with the mostess and in addition to waiting on us hand and foot, she was cutting fabric for a baby quilt. Isn’t this fabric cute? I’d never seen it before. The line is Backyard Baby by Patty Sloniger for Michael Miller.

Did you see that beehive??? I need some of that fabric just for the beehive. Here it is in the gray colorway too.

Thank you Ladies for such a fun day and for all the good food. It’s always great to catch up – hopefully we won’t have such a long gap before our next get-together!

And lastly, during our Quilty Peep Fun Day, I worked on stitching down the centers of my Steampunk blocks.

Which brings me to,

8. Make Enough Blocks for a Quilt Top. All done. 48 blocks. Turns out I only needed 41 whole blocks and 7 partial blocks. I thought I needed 48 whole blocks and I’d decided not to use the partial blocks in my version of the quilt. But now I have extra blocks to cut up for the partial blocks. It’s going to be hard to cut them through the middle!

So, that’s the end of my summer list. I completed 9 out of 10 of the items. Can you regular readers remember which item didn’t make the cut? Ok, I’ll tell you. It’s that *&*&#@# 10-year sweater! It’s sitting out nagging me and winter is on the way, so hopefully I’ll work on it this winter. For now though, 90% is good enough for me. Making a list has been fun and making it public actually made me work on it. If you made a summer list, how did you do?

XOXO,
Anna

Checking Off THE List

20 Comments / September 18, 2013 October 8, 2013 / Chat

Wow — I have a crowd of smart gardening readers going on here! Thanks for all the information about our black tomatoes. The general consensus is that they are some sort of heirloom tomato. They taste ok, and I didn’t keel over with stomach cramps — it’s just that they don’t really look like tomatoes. Thanks for all the info though — you guys are great!

Only 4 more days until the autumnal equinox, which means that summer will officially be over. I’m cramming to get the last five items completed on my 10 Things this Summer List. I ticked off two last weekend:

7. Clean Up the Sewing Room. I didn’t remove everything from the shelves and go through it all, but I did get all horizontal surfaces cleaned off and I have a knee-high pile of old counted cross-stitch and painting magazines and books to dispatch. Where to send? Goodwill? Do they take stuff like that? A black hole??? I do occasionally send old junk to unsuspecting victims just for the fun of it — maybe I should save the pile for all the special people in my life LOL.

Anyway, no pictures of the cleaned up room, ’cause…you know. It’s a dungeon. I will show you the picture of my trusty helper though. While I was cleaning things up, PaulKitty thought he’d make himself comfy in my fabric. BAD Kitty!

9. Go On a Picnic. Hmmm. This one was a little challenging. I couldn’t convince MeMum and BigDaddy to go to a park or a cornfield or something like that for a picnic. So, I decided to bring the picnic to them. I really wanted to spread quilts on their trampoline and have a picnic there, but I decided the food would probably bounce all over while we tried to keep ourselves upright. So, we spread MeMum’s garage-sale cheater quilt on their little patio table and I brought them some Kentucky Fried Chicken in my picnic basket. A cheater picnic on a cheater quilt. Perfect!

Must run — I’m busily trying to complete my last three items on the list. At least one of them isn’t going to get done. So sad.

Oh! Speaking of sad, can we please have a moment of silence for my beloved?

My long-time do-it-all lens is in the sickly lens hospital. I’m pretty hard on my camera stuff and my lens is feeling poorly. Hopefully whatever she has isn’t fatal and she’ll be home soon — I miss her terribly!

Happy Hump Day!
XOXO,
Anna