HighFiber: November 2021

Monday, November 29, 2021

Pulling Things Together

The T-shirt quilt is coming along. We went out on Saturday for "Shop Small Saturday" and picked up two lovely batiks for the rest of the top. The dark one will be the sashing and border blocks, and the lighter one will be the cornerstones and the border. I hope to get this done this week.

I cast on for Jackson's sweater. I found a little super wash yarn in DK weight in my remnants. It's Knit Picks Swish in Lava Heather. I used it a few years ago for a pullover for DH. I had quite a bit left over and had made a couple of sweaters for Rocky with it and had used it in an outfit for Daphne. The other yarn I'm using in Jackson's sweater is the same multi I used in Parker's.

Speaking of Parker's sweater, here he is in his completed sweater.

As you may know, Thanksgiving was on Thursday. We stayed home to make things easier for Rocky and us. Here's the table. We had a fancy salad, faux and real turkey (behind the water pitcher), gravy, homemade cranberry sauce, bread stuffing/dressing (in the big casserole), asparagus, yams with apple and Lanttulaatikko (Finnish rutabaga casserole), sparkling wine, homemade pumpkin pie and decaffeinated coffee. I set the table so we sat across the width of the table from each other, to make it easier to hand the food around.

We remembered that last year, DBIL was with us for Thanksgiving, no one was vaccinated, and so we had to sit at opposite ends of the table from each other. We have so much to be grateful for this year!

One of those things (Johan) is now binge-reading Harry Potter.

We had our first 10:00 in-person service at Trinity this week. Everyone who could be vaccinated was, and we all wore masks. The seating was set up for people to be distanced by households, and people were asked to drop a slip in the offering basket at the front to say that they had been at the service, in case that information was needed for contact-tracing. If you want to have a look, here's the link. The anthem was at 1:01:16. We had a good-size choir, and I think it went well. This was the first Sunday in Advent.

Johan and his brother got their second Covid shops on Sunday.

The Wisconsin family members were getting ready to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah, and everyone else in the family was busy with various things, so we skipped the Zoom meeting for this week.

People have been sending me photos of their children reading Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook or my first book, Mariah. For privacy reasons, I'm not posting them here, but it's really rewarding to me to see them. I just found out that the person who bought my first book in the silent auction for Therapy animals of Utah donated it to Children's Primary Hospital in Salt Lake City, so lots of children will be reading it there. Another writer of a blog that uses dolls as characters gave my new book a cameo appearance in a recent post.

I love seeing my books out in the real world. If you have one, please share a photo with me.

Wishing every one a happy Advent and a happy Hanukkah, and any other holidays you might be celebrating. Don't eat everything in your Advent Calendar the first day!

If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for "Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart" in Children's. Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of our first book, Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, it would help if you left an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: The second Bright Lights sweater, this time for Jackson.

What's on my loom: Still the trailer rugs. No progress this week.

What's on my sewing machine: Still its cover, but the cover will be coming off this week to finish the top for DH's T-shirt quilt!

What's in my hoop: Still the whole-cloth quilt (sigh).

What's in The Doll's Storybook: In Giving Thanks, three friends spend Thanksgiving weekend visiting each other's places of worship. They decide to make a list of all the things they found were different and were surprised by what the list told them.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Listening to State of Terror by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny on the Audible app. Just getting started.

What's in my wine glass: Two Vines Merlot-Cabernet 2015 from the Columbia Valley. Nice.

What's my tip of the week: Don't wait until December to start shopping for Christmas. Hurry up!

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with few changes. Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is now available for preorder from booksellers world wide. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is also available. The three stories in the first book are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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Monday, November 22, 2021

Making Progress

The T-shirt quilt is coming along slowly.

I managed to get each piece ironed on to the stabilizer and trimmed. A couple of the shirts were tanks, so there were big armholes I'm having to work around. Others don't take up enough of the block, so I'll be trimming them and adding something. I might need something like a strip of cloth or triangles over the corners, but I'll figure it out. There were some leftover motifs I can add. I just don't want to sew T-shirt with stabilizer to more T-shirt with stabilizer, as I think it will make a thick seam. I plan to use quilting cotton strips between the pieces of T-shirt material.

Parker's sweater is coming along, too. The body is done, and I'm halfway done with the sleeves. Matching the stripes on the second sleeve will be a challenge, but I'm going to give it a try. The pattern is Bright Lights.

I've signed up for the 2022 Rose City Yarn Crawl Mystery Knit Along. I'm supposed to pick out two fingering-weight yarns having good contrast between them, although one of them can be a variegated or speckled yarn. We get our first clue January 5th, then once a week through February 2nd. The Yarn Crawl will be February 24-27th, and I hope to go up to Beaverton to participate in person.

Remember my green onions from last week? They're making progress, too. All of the green part is new growth since I cut the onions and placed them in filtered water. I haven't cut any yet, but probably will harvest for salad this week. (To find out more about what I did to get the ends of the onion to grow and to see how much progress they have made, see last week's blog post.)

The Wisconsin grandkids got their Covid and flu shots, as you can see:

They waited until Tuesday, because Daphne was performing in the ballet last weekend. It could have made her sick. (It didn't.) They didn't have to rush, though, because both of the kids have had Covid recently enough to still have immunity.

The parents had their scheduled for Friday, so they would have the weekend to recover. Everyone is doing well.

We're getting ready for a quiet Thanksgiving here. DH got a turkey breast for himself, which we will also bring out at Christmas. I'm having this.

We decided against driving up to Beaverton for Thanksgiving and attending a big celebration with about 13 other people, partly because we're still uncertain about how the pandemic is going and Rocky needs so much supervision now, because he can't see where he's going. When he gets up, someone actually needs to carry him to the door when he wakes up or has finished eating, so he doesn't have an accident while he's looking for the way out. We wouldn't be able to leave him alone for several hours. I have to get up very early to take him out, too, so I wouldn't get enough sleep. I'm really glad he doesn't weigh 53 lbs., like his predecessor.

In case you wonder what a quilter does with a real turkey, I post this just about every year:

Just a reminder that we have a lot of people in this country who are living on the streets, many without a reliable source of food. We keep a packet of food in the car, in case we encounter someone who needs it. We include whatever we can scrape together from these things:

Canned vegetables, tuna, beans 

Can opener (Walmart has them for under $1)

Individually wrapped crackers, granola bars, raisins, etc.

Plastic cutlery, paper towel or napkin

Space blanket, especially in winter

Toothbrush, dental floss, toothpaste, mouthwash samples (from the dentist or the airlines)

Hand sanitizer, soap

A list of soup kitchens, homeless shelters or other useful information you might need if you are living on the street.
I hear they also like to get clean socks.

(Another advantage: If you get stuck somewhere in your car, you will be all set to survive. When we were moving to Bend, we left our Utah house for the last time late at night. We had accidentally left our food in the storage unit, which was closed, because it was after hours. We had no food in the trailer yet. We had a car problem so could not drive to the store. We were homeless, so we got our homeless packet from the car. We didn't starve. All we missed was a bottle of wine. I wonder what the pairing with peanut butter crackers, tuna, mixed veggies and baked beans would be?)

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Parker's sweater.

What's on my loom: STILL the trailer rugs. No progress this week, but I do want to finish the warp before the kids come for Christmas.

What's on my sewing machine: Still its cover.

What's in my hoop: Still the whole cloth quilt. A little more done on it..

What's in The Doll's Storybook: In "Homework? What Homework?" Pippa learns how to be a better student from Mariah.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished listening to Wildwood by Colin Meloy on the Audible app. As I write this, I haven't decided wish of my many books in my two libraries to listen to next.

What's in my wine glass: Are Vivendi Langhe Rosso 2018. Delightful. It's a blend of Barbera and Nebbiolo, two grapes that complement each other.

What's my tip of the week: If you only need to use half an avocado, leave the pit in place and store the rest of the avocado with the pit in a plastic bag. The pit will help keep the avocado from turning dark so quickly. You can also put the avocado pit into guacamole to slow down the darkening.

Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is also available. The three stories in the first book are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less.

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Monday, November 15, 2021

Things That Grow

The T-shirts have been cut. I cut off the side seams and sleeve seams, then the neck ribbing.

The biggest design is 15 1/2" long, so I will cut the squares at 16". Some of the shirts are sleeveless, and they may not be that big, so I will have to put borders on them to get them up to the same size. I hope to get the designs cut off and ironed to the stabilizer this week. We have decided that, given the larger size the blocks will have to be, we will use only 16 blocks.

I finally cast on one of the doll sweaters for the Oregon grandsons' Christmas dolls. Here's Parker, modeling the start of the first one.

The pattern is Bright Lights. It's designed for American Girl/Boy dolls, but I think the bulky look will be good for these two, and their new brothers are AG size, so they can share clothes.

I've made some progress since that photo. Soon I'll be ready to divide for the sleeves.

I learned about another neat way to add to your fresh vegetables when it's too cold for the garden outdoors. When you cut a green onion for salad, first remove any leaves that are starting to decay, then cut the onion about 2 1/2" above the root, leaving the bottom and whatever root is left intact.

Put the root section in a glass or jar with filtered or dechlorinated water* and leave where it has light, changing the water every few days. The leaves will start to grow again. (You can cut up the rest of the onion you cut off and put it into a salad or sandwich, or just eat as is.) The leaves will grow back.

In this photo, you can see four days of growth, from left to right, day one to day four. The roots get longer, too. When the leaves get long enough, you can start harvesting, keeping the onion in the glass to start over. I'm guessing this would work for chives, too.

We've had a lot of rain lately, but managed to get in a few walks in during the time when the rain held off. Rocky is still enjoying the walks with the family, and sometimes he walks most of the way, with the stroller reserved for when we need to move fast.

Rocky had his annual physical last week. The vet kept him for a blood draw that had to be timed just right after his thyroid and blood pressure medication. We left him with the vet and buzzed over to the dog park, so Dusty could have some social time with the other dogs. We need to take Rocky again soon, too, but it would be too much for him to go on the same day as a trip to the vet or the groomer.

Rocky was tired after his time at the vet, but the checkup went well and the blood work looked good, except his thyroid levels were high normal. He has lost some weight, so the vet decided to cut the dosage of the thyroid medication. He will check both thyroid and blood pressure in about three more weeks. The first night with the lower dose, Rocky slept all night. (He's been waking up most early mornings to drink and then go out.) We'll see if this keeps up.

Sunday afternoon we went to a concert. The performers were a group called "Hammers and Bows." They played Shostakovich's "Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor" and Dvořák's "Piano Trio No. 1 in B♭ Major." The music was good, and it was fun to get out.

Toothless the Fairy has had to make another visit to Johan.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, Daphne got to perform in the Ballet LaCrosse production of "Heidi."

We got to watch online. She was one of the school children in the first act. They also made a shorter appearance in the second act. We were very impressed with her performance, which was lovely, even if you consider that we're her grandparents. The ballet was very entertaining, and even funny in places.

Now that the danced performances are out of the way, the Wisconsin grands have decorated their Holiday Tree.

There's no "War on Christmas" at their house. They use the tree to celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas, and Hanukkah is early this year. They will be at out house for Christmas, along with their younger cousins. Yay!

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: The Bright Lights sweater for Parker.

What's on my loom: Still the trailer rugs. No progress this week..

What's on my sewing machine: Waiting for a new assignment.

What's in my hoop: Still the whole cloth quilt. Only a little progress this week.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Sky Blue, the retelling of a well-known fairy tale, but with some twists.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to Wildwood by Colin Meloy on the Audible app.

What's in my wine glass: Sashay Cinsault 2020 again. Very nice, and a good value.

What's my tip of the week: We're back to growing sprouts. You can do this year 'round, but when fresh vegetables are easy to grow outdoors, there's less incentive. Here's the equipment you need: Seeds, a tablespoon, a quart canning jar, the outer lid with a circle of window screen cut to fit the lid and a tray that's big enough for the jar to fit into, but not big enough for it to lie down all the way.

First, soak a tablespoon of seeds overnight or all day, then drain. You can put the jar in the sink and then move to the tray when most of the water has drained. (Mushrooms came in my tray.) It will look like this when you leave the jar in the tray:

Every morning and every night, rinse the seeds. In four days or so, you will have a jar full of sprouts.

*You can use filtered water, if your water is heavily chlorinated, or leave some water sitting out in other jars or a bowl, so the chlorine will escape into the air. This can take several days. The sprouts seem to tolerate a quick bath in chlorinated water fairly well, though.

Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is also available. The three stories in the first book are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less.

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Monday, November 8, 2021

Tea and T's!

Can anyone guess what I'm up to now? Here's a hint:

DH has about 10 boxes of T-shirts, mostly from Hash runs while we lived in Indonesia. T-shirts were given out to participants to commemorate a special event, like a member's 100th run or some special holiday in a participant's home country (usually Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, France or the US). The shirts are loaded with advertising for the companies they worked for or brewers of beer (the organization's beverage of choice). He wants a T-shirt quilt made out of them. When we have 20 fronts and backs cut away from the sleeves and neck binding, we will have to figure out which one is the largest and cut the others that size. I have iron-on stabilizer to use to keep the blocks from stretching. I've never done this before. This will be my first attempt.

Getting ready to CO for doll sweaters for the Oregon grandsons' dolls, Parker and Jackson. (I'm certain they will be getting new names. Stay tuned.) Here's the pattern I'm planning on using: Bright Lights by Sharisse Dunn. Remember this yarn?

It turned out to be too thick for Pippa's Chilly Days of Fall, so I switched to another yarn. I don't know if I have enough of the grey yarn, and I would have to hold it double. I will probably have to go stash-diving.

A few more picks on the trailer rugs and another section of the quilt got done, but sending out books cut into my play time.

I made a big batch of "Six-Weeks Muffins," a La Leche League recipe I've used for years. It came from their book "Mother's In The Kitchen." I have adapted it somewhat.

Here's my version of the recipe:

Six-Weeks Bran Muffins

Servings: 6 dozen
Prep time: 23:26

Ingredients

• 6 C wheat bran, divided
• 2 C Boiling water

• 1 C Olive oil or melted butter
• 1 1/2 C honey (I spray the measuring cup with cooking spray before measuring.)
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1 quart cultured buttermilk

• 5 C whole wheat pastry flour
• 5 teaspoons baking soda (I used 3 at 7200' elevation and 4 at 3600')
• 2 teaspoons sea salt or lite salt

Directions

Add the boiling water to 2 C of the bran in a large bowl while you assemble the other ingredients.

Mix the wet ingredients.

Sift the flour, salt and baking soda together into a bowl. Add the remaining 4 C bran and mix well.

Add the buttermilk mixture and the flour/bran mixture to the soaked bran.

Store in refrigerator for up to six weeks. (I make a note on my calendar, so I know what day they need to be used up.)

To bake, spray enough muffin/cupcake papers for the number of muffins you want to bake and place in muffin pan. Put about 1/4 to 1/3 C batter into each paper cup. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes.

Raisins, dates, other small pieces of dried fruit or fresh apple may be added to the batter in the paper cups. Don't overfill.

Notes
I just rediscovered this great recipe of mine that was inspired by the recipe by the same need in "Mother's in the Kitchen," a cookbook put out by the La Leche League. My copy was published in 1971. I don't use shortening or regular sugar, so I've made some changes, but it still works.
What I like about this recipe is you can mix it up once, leave it in the fridge and bake only what you need. However, if you bake the muffins all at once (!) it makes six dozen.

Here's some tea to go with it.

The Oregon grandsons got their Covid vaccine on Saturday. No side effects so far. The other two young grandkids have already had Covid, so they're waiting until Daphne is finished with her ballet performance this coming weekend.

50ºF and breezy is a bit chilly for a walk, even with the sun shining, but we managed to get nearly a mile in during a walk to the Rec Center and back on Saturday. As usual, Rocky rode in the stroller for a while and then wanted to get out and walk.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Getting ready to CO for doll sweaters.

What's on my loom: Still the trailer rugs.

What's on my sewing machine: Its cover, but I'll soon be piecing the T-shirt quilt.

What's in my hoop: Still the whole-cloth quilt. A little more progress this week.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Help comes from a surprising source in The Rescue, this week's story in The Doll's Storybook.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to Wildwood by Colin Melloy on the Audible app.

What's in my wine glass: Apothic Dark 2018, one of my favorites.

What's my tip of the week: If you use dried lentils or split peas in soups and stews, the first direction usually says to rinse them first. It's a good idea to pick through them to see if there are any small stones before you rinse, but the rinsing can be simplified after that. Rinsing them in a colander leaves you with a sticky clump of lentils or peas that are hard to get out of the colander after the liquid has drained. It's much easier to rinse them in the pot they will be cooked in, unless you're using that pot to also sauté onions, etc. Just put them into the pot, pour water in until they're covered, swish around in the pot and then drain off the dust over a small strainer or your colander. The clump of washed lentils/peas will then be clean and will just dissolve into the cooked dish.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with few changes. Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is now available for preorder from booksellers world wide. Book Baby already has stock. The link is here. The three stories are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is also available. The three stories in the first book are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, please buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less.

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