Poetic License

Long, long ago in a land far, far away, lived a number of beautiful, intelligent and talented women.

You may want to take a moment for a reality check here.  This is after all my blog and I can say pretty much whatever I want and call it “Poetic License”.  I don’t think there are blog police out there evaluating the accuracy of my statements.  My own sainted Mother was not always accurate in assessing my truthfulness.  I leave it to you to decide where I’m invoking “Poetic License”.

Now, where was I?  Oh ya, blah, blah, beautiful women, blah, blah.  Also known as the Woolies.  This is not a quilt group altho all of us quilt.  This is not a garden group altho all of us have gardens (I’m sure you’ll soon have one Karen) nor is it even a woodworking group even tho we all have wood in our homes.  It did take us a while to determine a plausible excuse er, reason to be together.  Well, we all like wool so that was to be our common denominator.  Obviously then, we would be The Woolies.  We did draw up a lengthy list of rules & goals for the group.  The final rule was that we would have no rules.  This works very well for us as we are morally opposed to rules and goals & deadlines.  We did briefly consider naming our group the Dull Needles but we felt it might have a negative connotation and tend to lead us into depression thereby causing us to have no fun when we got together to do nothing.  I know you’re with me on this.

We met this month at the  home of yours truly.  Since it had been about a year since I’d cleaned my house, it did take many weeks of effort to be ready.  Thankfully, I have now done that little cleaning chore for this year.  Whew! 

September means back to school here in MN/ND land so that was my theme.  Do y’all remember the Fischer Price School Bus?  I found our old one and it was the centerpiece and that kinda got the ball rolling on this party.  First of all I wanted to make sure everyone knew they were at the right party so I made it easy for ‘em:

I realized of course that the set up of the scene was terribly wrong.  I quickly moved the Weebles from the FRONT of the bus to BEHIND the bus.  We don’t want anyone to think I’d intentionally run over the wee ones.  Goodness gracious.  Now, you might notice the little chalkboard – I made one for each of my guests that day.  JM actually USED hers to take a couple notes!  Way to go JM!

Whoa, back up the truck – that was NOT what JM was writing.  I wrote that.  She wrote other important stuff.

Keeping with the school theme, I served an apple cake with hot caramel sauce.  It is super easy to make and let me warn you that you’ll want seconds of this one…….

Fresh Apple Cake

4 C. chopped apples

2 eggs

2 C. sugar

2 tsp. cinnomon

2/3 C. oil

1/2 C. chopped nuts

2 C. flour

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking soda

Put apples in bowl & break eggs over them.  Stir.  Add sugar, oil, cinnamon & nuts.  Combine flour, salt & baking soda and add to mixture.  Stir well.  Bake in 9X13 pan at 350 for about 45 min.

There now, wasn’t that easy??

Caramel Sauce

1/2 C. sugar

1/2 C. brown sugar

1/2 C. butter

1/2 C. cream (half & half)

1 heaping Tbsp. flour

1 tsp. vanilla

Combine all ingredients, except vanilla.  Bring to a boil & cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until thickened, stirring as necessary.  Add vanilla.  Serve over cake.  Top with whipped cream.  If you want this to be a diet recipe, leave off the whipped cream.  Ya, like that’s going to help……….

Now hang with me here ‘cuz I’ve got some serious show & tell for you today:

A couple embroidery on linen projects by Jean plus a small stitchery she made and then made a frame for:

This cutie is Jean’s too:

Ms. JM has finished her wool garden.  It is so awesome!

And this adorable mini – those little blocks are 2 1/2”.  Too cute for words.

And this little stitchery she’s working on:

Now here’s our favorite machine quilter girl with all kinds of wonderful goodies:

 

Penny, did I ever tell you how much I  LOVE RED QUILTS?  It would look so great in my home.  Hint.

Criminy, I almost forgot Ms. D’s show & tell:

I know, it looks like I’m hurting the little darling, but I assure you she was very happy.  There was a set of 2, but I didn’t get a picture of her other granddaughter.

One more thing.  On my last post, something happened to son #2 and his body was removed.  You can’t really tell from just seeing his arm how handsome he really is so I’m giving you all one more chance to be amazed & astounded at the perfectness of son #2.

You’ll have to refer back to my last post to get a gander at son #1.  He doesn’t usually wear a beard but has just returned from a fishing & camping  trip in the boundary waters.

You’ll be happy to know that I’ll talk about our daughter & granddaughter – the Divine Miss O – another time.

OK, that’s it.  I’m done.  This post got really, really long so I don’t expect anyone to read the whole thing.  But the pictures are good.  Probably.

Ms. Faye

My blog is broken – it’s still stuck on Brad Pitt

I cannot believe how long it’s been since I was here.  You know, when you’re on vacation with Brad Pitt or George Clooney, you just lose all sense of time.  Not that I was, I’m just sayin………You’ll hear no more about that from these lips.

I’ve got so much to share, I don’t know what to say – yes and the sun rises in the west…..I’ll find the words, ok?

There are two groups that I have infiltrated – well truthfully, I may have helped form the groups but that is only because then they have to include me.  Just a little tip for y’all.  One is a quilt group.  We are the Loose Threads – previously the Peacemakers and came close to being the Noxious Needles or the Ladies Thursday Afternoon Bowling League (we don’t bowl) or LSD - Ladies in Support of the Downtrodden. (this was meant to be a cover for the fact that this was another social not humanitarian group)   We are a group of 9 that have been together for I think 12 years.  Good friends all.  And oh, how we’ve grown in taste, ability and friendship in that time.  We’ve always a lot of laughs and sometimes a few tears AND great show & tell. 

The threads met this month at CD’s house on the lake for a sewing day.  Usually we just gather for a good time but this month we added a sewing day to the schedule.  Each person brought fabric already cut to make 12 blocks of the same pattern.  The blocks will finish at 4 1/2” and will look like this:

There are only 2 colors and we are using the civil war type repro fabrics.

Now, if you do the math, there are 8 flying geese per block.  Times 12 blocks per person and that is 96 geese.  Next, take 96 geese times the number of people – of which there were only 6 that day and you come up with 576 geese.  Now,  let’s just carry that one step further and consider that all 576 geese need to be checked for size/trimmed on all 4 sides and now we have 2,304 cuts to make.  That was only for making the flying geese and does not include making the rest of the block.  So, try as we might, we didn’t complete our task.  But, undaunted, we stacked up our piles and will continue making our blocks by planning another sewing day ASAP.  This is what it looks like to tackle this job:

We started out with 3 sewers, 1 presser and 2 cutters.  The cutters had a tough job so we did rotate duties.  Then 2 sewers, 1 presser & 3 cutters…….

 

Where are the sewers?

 

 

 

Where are the cutters?

 

 

 

They must be walking toward this lovely work station on the porch…….

 

Yes indeed, we couldn’t string 3 nice days together all summer long and when it turns into September, BAM, we get a string of 80+ degree days.  It was so beautiful.  But, I’m losing the thread (hence “Loose Threads”) of my story.  Lunch is always important to us and I doubt that we’ve ever had the same thing twice in all those years.  This day our afternoon “snack” was a great Weight Watchers Peach Pie.  Sorry I don’t have a picture but I do have the recipe:

Pie was only a minor highlight of our lunch break tho.  You see, one of our group is going thru chemo treatments.  She’s the 2nd of our group to go thru this.  We don’t want them to go thru it alone tho.  It almost could have been scripted, it was so perfect.  Ms. Jean was taking a quilt out of a bag for show & tell.  Our special gal, KL, asked if this was a quilt for someone special.  Ms. Jean replied that it was for someone very special.  You see we have a friend who is going thru chemo and we made this for her.  There was a second of silence before KL got it:  OMG, you made it for me????  Yes, KL, it’s a wellness quilt and we want you to take it to chemo with you and use it at home so you can wrap our love around yourself anytime you need us. 

 

Is this quilt for someone special?

 

 

 

 

You made this for ME?????

 

 

 

 

Oh you girls – I love it!

And we love you KL

The yellow shirt gal received the “wellness quilt” and the black shirt gal lost her husband to cancer I think it was 2 years ago now.  (her shirt says “cancer sucks.”  Guess we’d all agree with that!!!)

I think I’ll save “Woolie Day” for the next post ‘cuz there’s a lot of eye candy in that story, girl. 

Some of you gals were taking pictures of textures in  your homes and they were so much fun to look at.  It got me thinking a little about textures so yesterday I took this shot.  See if you can tell me what it is….

If you guessed the ceiling of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome In Minneapolis – you’re right!!!!  (no prizes)  The roof is held up with air pressure and it is so very weird when you leave the building – you get literally blown out the doors.  Hang on to your hats and  your kids and grandma!  I kid you not. 

See if you can tell by our travel companion’s clothing what we were doing there:

Son #1 and wife.

 

Son #2 and friend.

Minnesota Twins Baseball.  The Boys of Summer.  The young men who get paid a lot of money to do what they love to do anyway.  Scratch & Spit.  Did I say that? 

Anyway, it was another 80 degree day and we drove 3 hours to go INSIDE to a ball game.  But I wasn’t alone.  Me & 42,999 others were there to watch the game.  And a few more besides.

Only 4 games left to be played in this stadium before using a new outdoor stadium next year.  Now, I’m all for watching baseball on a beautiful day but come on, this is Minnesota.  Do you know how cold it can still be in April?  Or October?  Or any month in-between?  Can we say Rain?  Sleet?  Snow? 

And this?  This is Mr. Baseball, Joe Mauer, the face of baseball for the Twins.  A catcher who is a power hitter.  (and a cutie).  We were in row 7 & he was warming up just below us.  I waved & said Hi Joe!  He never even looked.  But I really wasn’t having a “good hair day”.  You hear what I’m sayin?  In any case, Joe won the game.  I mean, the Twins won the game.

Our little precious (sick) Baxter went to the Bed & Biscuit again and had a sleep-over because it was late when we got home.  He loves it there.  As soon as the Mr. dropped him off, he took off like a rocket to play with the others and forgot all about his “master”.  AND he brought home a very good report card.  It was almost perfect in fact – just like Baxter.

 

BRAD PITT

I might have mentioned the other day that I was having a Good Hair Day?  And it hasn’t, to my deepest sorrow, happened again.  After all, lightening doesn’t strike twice and all that.  But here’s the “rest of the story”.  (I shoulda been Paul-ette Harvey.  Get it? Oh, Botheration.)  Anyway.

I only mentioned Brad Pitt in the title because you know I was expecting him to come a callin’ during my Good Hair episode.  What actually happened was that I did go to town – stricly because we were out of milk.  While in the store, I did not run into anyone I knew.  Neither friend, nor foe nor Pastor.  Walked up & down every aisle (looking for milk).  No one took a 2nd look.  When I got to the check-out I figured that now for sure the checkout person would be struck with the perfect-ness of my “do”.  The only thing she said was:  “paper or plastic”?  The whole experience was kind of a downer and yet on a Good Hair Day it is impossible to have a Bad Day.  You hear me Sister?

I rather dejectedly headed for home.  But of course I still had the visit from Brad or Cameron to look forward to, right?  Cheerfully now, the miles just flew by as I thought about what I’d say when I opened the door.  (it’s easy to get tongue-tied by their total handsomeness if you’re not prepared.)  I had any number of clever & witty things I could say but I didn’t have a paper & pen to jot them down.  (mental-pause you know). 

But wait.  Lo & behold who’s in that car leaving my yard just as I’m pulling in?  Brad/Cameron is here already?  What if a hair has shifted out of place?  OMG.  What to do, what to do?  No, wait, I just remembered the electrical inspector intended to stop in today.  Oh, great, this’ll be fun…….some old guy with a bald head, and beer belly. 

Never assume ladies.  As we stopped our cars for a little chatty-poo, I realized that Mr. Baldy had morphed into Mr. Hunk.  Lean, angular face, nice tan, 5 o’clock shadow and (Brad Pitt) sunglasses.  To tell you the truth, on a scale of 1 to 10, he was a 12 on my hunk-o-meter.  As we chatted, I turned my head slightly so he would get the full effect of my hair.  Possibly he was looking for someone 20 years younger, 150,000 pounds lighter and SINGLE, or maybe he just didn’t notice my hair.  Whatever.  Conversation over.  He drove away.  Brad/Cameron never showed and I didn’t see anyone the rest of the day. 

I can only say that the whole experience has been very unsettling.  So unsettling in fact that I’ve decided not to even TRY to have another Good Hair Day until I recover from this one…………….I’d better not shampoo my hair for a few days just to be safe, huh?

This story is true.  The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Ms. Faye

One of Life’s Connundrums…….

OK you caught me.  I’m having a good hair day. 

BUT, why is it that when you’re having a good hair day (and it doesn’t happen to me all that often!), you have nowhere to go and no one sees you?  Except your husband and lord knows he’s not likely to notice.    I mentioned this question to Mr. Picket Fence at lunch today and he said, “actually I did notice you hair was nice today”.  To which I replied “thanks for not sharing that thought with me”……

Has this ever happened to you?  Well, of course it has.  What do I do now?  If I go outside, I’ll ruin my hair in the breeze.  If I stay in the house I’m taking a big risk that no one will pop in.  I don’t know Brad Pitt, Cameron Mathison or any other hunky movie star.  And Lord knows, I don’t want to be a home wrecker but I gotta tell you that if one of those guys stops at my house today, he’ll take one look at my hair and say, hey sweetie, wanna go out for an adult beverage?  And it will snowball from there & pretty soon you’ll read in the tabloids about this old woman in Minnesota who’s short, fat, ugly and well, old……..who has broken up (fill in name here)’s marriage. 

There’s only so much pressure I can handle.  You hearing me sister? 

Now I don’t want any of you people that I know personally to stop over today.  ‘Cuz I’m thinking YOU’D be thinking:  HUH?  That’s nice?  Well, I think it’s nice and that’s all that counts. 

I think I’ll go to town which is only a quick 25 mile round trip.  We’re out of milk…………….