Three days of the Quilter

Friday Alice and I got to Emmittsburg a little after 8am and had plenty of time to settle into the class rooms. I took a class called Italian Tiles and managed to complete about 18 blocks of  the 80 I will need for the quilt. I finished cutting all my fabric on Sunday, sitting in Susan Grancio's classroom. Susan was kind enough to let me use a table as she helped her students work on their landscape quilts.

Saturday I took the best class - beginning beading. It was so fun. We did little sampler squares of a bunch of beading techniques, we "caged" cabochons, and then did a Peyote stitch to lock in another cabochon. Our $10 class fee got us a bunch of beads. I am inspired to design a small 6" x 6" block to practice some of the techniques we learned.

It was such a good time. In the evenings I went up to the suite of some friends and we hung out and ate snacks and drank a little wine and talked and laughed. Toni said she wasn't sure where to find us and I said she should have drifted down the hall listening for the sound of women shrieking with laughter. Toni spent a lot of her free time holed up with the new book from George R. R. Martin.

On Saturday my Jo-Ann's machine carrier gave up the ghost. The handle broke completely off, leading me mutter profanities under my breath. The rest of the weekend moving my stuff anywhere was a pain.

I came home tired but happy. I look forward to this weekend all year long. Being around a bunch of people who like the same thing you like, who want to learn, and share tips and tricks, I learn a lot every year while having fun. And you can't beat that with a stick.

After the fruits of summer are gone...

Yesterday I used up the last of the fruit we got at Larriland Farm making a Blackberry-Blueberry Crumble. For those of you who want to use up fruit but don't make your own piecrust and have found yourself without a pillsbury crust in the freezer, Crumbles are the easiest! You can use any kind of fruit or mix of fruit: think peaches, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries...

You just mix your fruit (about four-five cups) with 3-4 tablespoons of white sugar.  Dump that in a 9" x 13" casserole dish.

Mix together with a pastry cutter or two knives or your fingers:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups rolled oats
• 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 1/2 cups butter

 Dump this crumble mix over the fruit and spread it out. Don't pack it down too much, this thing is called a "crumble."

Bake at 350 F for about 40 minutes until berry/fruit mixture is bubbly and crumble is golden brown and crumbly.

Enjoy with vanilla ice cream.

Summer Camp

Today feels like Friday. The reason I have that happy-end-of-week feeling is that early tomorrow I will be driving up to Emmitsburg, MD to join my fellow quilters for three days of grown-up sleepover camp.

All over Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (and even farther parts) women are packing their khaki pants, flowered blouses, and sensible shoes. They are packing pounds of 100% cotton fabric, sewing machines, rotary cutters, rulers, and cutting mats into their handy-dandy rolling carriers.

Quilters are checking their class lists one last time to make sure that they have all the fabric, thread, and notions they need. Then they are throwing in a few extra items, just in case. Quilters don't like to run the risk of running out of something and having to miss class time going to get more.

Bags of chips, hundreds of cans of Diet Coke, and quite a bit of wine are ready to head to MAQ. At Summer Camp for Grown Up Ladies, people like to have something to snack on in the evenings.

Next Monday it will be back to work, routine dog care, and the real world. For the next three days I'll sleep in the dorm, eat at the dining hall, learn some new skills, and enjoy hanging out with my people, the People Who Quilt.

Fresh food

I am on a roll, a food roll. Not a bread roll, but a raspberry roll. We picked over 5 lbs. of raspberriess and then I made:

a peach-raspberry crumble
a blueberry-raspberry pie
four beautiful pints of raspberry jam.

Went over to Toni's yesterday and we...jammed? We be jammin? Anyway, after about an hour of gentle cooking and stirring and stirring and cooking, we had jam. So pretty. Smelled so good. We tasted, and both agreed that I probably used too much sugar, but I don't care. I am Jam-Master Amanda.  Making a real food item out of ingredients you picked yourself is very satisfying.

I planted seeds in my raised bed yesterday too. I am getting a ridiculously late start and may not get much bounty from the garden this year, but we have three more months of hot/warm weather. I'll get something to eat out of it, I'm sure. I planted radishes, onions, squash, beets, and corn salad (mache).

So much for Saturday as a day of rest

The first thing I would like to say is that we should all be grateful to the people around the world who work hard to plant and harvest the food we eat. Considering how hard they work, they ought to be paid more.  Also! Be grateful for how cheap food is in this country. We are so blessed!

All this is by way of saying that Thomas and I picked raspberries today for about 90 minutes. We were hot and sweaty, our backs ached, but we felt very proud of ourselves. Then I tried to extrapolate how exhausting it would be to pick raspberries for 12 hours a day, or harvest lettuce, or carrots, or all the other yummy vegetables we get to eat all year long. Thank you farmers and farm workers.

Then we came home to find that Jake had been very ill in our absence. Poor, poor baby. Monday I want them to see him, to give him an x-ray or something. I am worried that he may have cancer. He's losing weight while eating ravenously, like he can never get enough food. Then he gets tummy trouble. It's worrying.

We spent the rest of this afternoon building a raised bed. We bought the kit online and assembled it ourselves, and it looks good. It is 3 feet x 6 feet x 16 inches. As soon as we get the top edging boards on I will post a picture. I also want to post how proud I am to have such a hard working husband. He leveled an area for the bed, built a brick footing for it, lined it with mesh so evil little rodents can't tunnel in, and shoveled  a metric assload of soil to fill it. I helped a little, but he did the yeoman's share. Thomas, I salute you.

We came home from Larriland Farms with 5 lbs. of raspberries, a pint of blueberries, a pint of  blackberries, a basket of peaches, two kinds of squash, and a quart of cherries. The cherries have already been eaten. Tonight I am making peach/blackberry pie, raspberry pie, and some raspberry jam. I got the recipe for the jam from that book I read, A Feast Nearby.

Now, I must go. Poor Fat Baby looks like he's thinking about peeing on the floor.

As soon as T get