Our Very Own Bear

Well, here it is  -  our very own bear!  This is the purchase I mentioned yesterday.  Last week we went to the chainsaw festival in Ridgway and we found this to buy.  I knew I wanted a bear when we first decided to go but never thought we'd have such a selection to pick from.  This seems to be the most popular item to carve.  I didn't expect the prices though.  I think it makes a very nice addition to our front porch.  It was a fascinating display to watch, what with all the chainsaws and other tools that they use.  Some of the detail was amazing as was the size of some of the carvings.  I never realized they had permanent carvings right in town along the main street.  I'd love to have the elk!

First Quilt

Well, as promised, here's my first quilt of this year.  I'm calling it a modified garden twist.  It's a twin size quilt with floral squares from the fabric book from my sil and a lot of pinks and greens.  I also have a pillow sham almost done for it.  Now I have to decide how to have it quilted.  To tell you the truth, I'm so preoccupied with the BOM class of mine that quilting this is taking a back burner.  After I get the block 2 done this month, I will post a picture of both the blocks and show you how that is progressing.  Even after block 1, I have no idea how this will look.  I kind of thought it would be a starburst pattern but if they were put together like that there would only be three and I don't know how that would work.  Anyway, that's what I've been up to and tomorrow I'll fill you in on a recent purchase.  It's exciting!

Another Three Things

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while but we've been busy.  Here's three things that I've been busy with.

1. I've been trying to get my exercise in first thing in the morning.  I found I was spending too much time on the computer first thing but when I tried having breakfast then waiting until mid-morning to exercise, it didn't happen.  Right now I'm into a new dvd, Leslie Sansone's 5 really big miles from the walk slim program.  It's with a totally new group of walkers, new music and new moves.  Each mile is different in the length of time spent, use of the resistance band and use of boosters or jogging instead of walking.  I try and do 2 miles which is a good workout for me.
2. I've been sewing up a storm since the beginning of the year.  I finished the one quilt (no picture yet) and am almost done with the pillow sham for it.  I hope I remember this ruffle I'm putting on this thing so I never do that again  -  what a job!  Then I had my first real class last week for my bom.  It took 2 hours for most of us to complete the one block.  Now I have to finish 11 more.  It's not that it's hard or time consuming (I have it down to 1 hr.) but very monotonous.  I've been doing at least 2 a day to keep me on track.  That's not the only homework I have though.  We got a list of material to cut out that's the length of my arm (the list, that is).  I still wasn't sure about my next color so I bought more and now I feel better about it.  I still don't know what block 2 will look like though.  One more thing I need to do before the next class is make a new bag to store all my stuff in.  They have a class on this one but not until later in the year and it's $30 to attend.  I'm sure I can whip one up myself???
3. The last thing I've been doing to making cookie dough and freezing it for the wedding cookies.  I have a long list of ones I'd like to try and some need to be sampled first.  I thought it might be better to freeze the dough instead of some of the cookies  -  I think they keep better. 

Well, that's what I've been up to along with making trips to Mechanicsburg, Mentor and Cleveland.  Thank goodness the weather has been holding up for me.

Good Things

Taken from Martha herself, "That's a good thing!".  I have 3 good things I'd like to share with you today having to do with food that I either ate or saw on tv.

1. The other day I was in the Akron area with my daughter and we stopped at the West End Bakery for lunch.  Their specialty was Curried Chicken Salad on a pita bread and ooh was it good.  I don't use curry all that much but now I have to rethink that.  It seemed the recipe would be similar to a basic chicken salad but with the addition of curry.  By the way, their cupcakes are delicious, too.
2. My hubby and I went out to dinner the other night at the Edinboro Hotel to sample their steak night.  We've eaten there before but I guess I've never had the baked potato and boy was I in for a surprise.  This potato was a salt crusted baked potato, and as I found out through an internet search, widely used in steak houses.  It's a very simple idea that I'm definitely going to try.  All you do is prick your potato all over, coat it with olive oil, roll it in either sea salt or kosher salt to partially cover it, and then bake on foil-lined pan until done.  I think the salt adds to the flavor, improves the skin texture and makes the potato fluffier.  Anyway it was very good, in fact, probably the best baked potato I've ever had.
3. This idea is right out of the Martha Stewart Show  -  how to separate a head of garlic and peel the cloves.  You won't believe this!  She used 2 metal bowls of different sizes, put the whole head of garlic in the bigger one and press the smaller bowl down into it very firmly.  That separates the head into all the cloves.  Then you flip the smaller bowl over so it rests on top of the bigger one (kind of like a lid) and shake like crazy.  When you open it all the cloves are peeled!  I was amazed, as was she when she showed it.

 Well, those are the three good things that I'm excited about.  Try them out.

Class Time

OK, I'm back and ready to start writing some more blogs.  I still have to take a picture of my first quilt of the year and show all of you, then I will talk about what I've learned from it.  I had one class in Jan. for my mystery quilt of the month paper pieced quilt (in the future it will be BOM class).  I was pleasantly surprised to see a couple teachers that I knew in my class.  The first class was practice for the paper piecing and included a heart square.  I have yet to finish it but I will before the next class.  I was a little too busy with other things since then but I now have a ton of homework to do.  We were assigned the first group of colors to buy and cut in the required size pieces for our first block.  I thought I already had this one but after getting the list of amounts for each color, I realized I needed to do more shopping.  So on the way back from Mechanicsburg I stopped at my favorite LQS' in Belleville.  Boy did I find the material and they are so nice and helpful there.  So I think I'm all set as far as fabric  -  now to the cutting.  I'm assuming that each month I will have a fair amount of homework to do so my idea that I would spend just 2 hrs. of class time was a little silly on my part.  I do have some other projects to work on such as my idea for a memory quilt.  Just like I knitted an afghan using leftovers from previous projects, I'd like to make stars with scraps of material from the quilts or project I make.  Looking back at all of these is really fun for me  -  can't wait to start!