Three Kitchen Fairies

Three jars of good luck.

Summer has taken me into a hectic rhythm, or no rhythm at all. I'm still having a hard time to set a kind of routine that gives everybody time to do what we have to, and what we want to.

Still, I found something worth blogging about...I got these jars at the local artisans markets. I thought they were good for displaying, like with trims and notions inside. I'm not trained at all in antiques but I can tell you I've never seen something like these in my day to day life.

If "good luck" used to come in jars...

The same vendor sold me this cigar box full of stuff. It said: "$2 for all." A great deal for a pleasant afternoon  looking at its contents: eleven wooden threat spools, two packages of needles, a 29 cents box of staples, a set of clay modeling tools, some metal clasps, marbles, buttons, lots of junk too.

These two tiny plastic dogs where in there too.  All these for only 5$: a dollar for each jar, and 2$ for an antique cigar box full of stuff.

I'm not the kind of person that looks for something "to buy." I'm usually in the look for eye candy, for things I can feel inspired by but I don't have that great need to buy, at least that's what I think.  I would say that this time I bought myself a box of goodies to be inspired by, and three jars of good luck.

   

From Around the World.

A year ago or so, I joined the Around the World Quilt group. This was my first quilting bee. Although skeptic at first that this project may get to the end, I compromised to go through it with the twenty five blocks we were expected to make, and to send them along with each package of blocks that came by.

My quilt (well, my blocks) took a whole year to get done, and now little by little the rest of the quilts are getting finished and finally are going home to their owners. I’m so happy and grateful for such a fun bee. I thank Summer Sadie for her hard work. Her monthly e-mail full of encouragement to get this bee done were really helpful. Thank you also to the twenty something quilters that made it through with so many beautiful blocks.

I finished sewing the rows of blocks together, and made two extra blocks in “mute” colors, and added a thin border too. I can’t stop looking at it!! I feel truly inspired by it. It makes me think that there is still so much goodness in this world. It talks to me about the willingness to make something together even though we have not met each other. It talks to me of tolerance, acceptance, good communication, patience, love, and peace. Lovely friendships were made through the process; it was so fun than a second round was organized to make Christmas quilts this time.

The next step will be making a quilt stretcher since I don’t have enough floor space for it. I also want to embroider something on top to tell a bit of the story of this quilting bee…

Thanks so much to all of you ladies! Virtual group hug!

 

Craft Hope

Spills could coat sea birds and limit their flying ability and damage fisheries by injuring marine organism's systems related to respiration, vision and reproduction.

Savitz said that the Gulf of Mexico is host to four species of endangered sea turtles and bluefin tuna, snapper and grouper. "Each of these can be affected," she said. "Turtles have to come to the surface to breathe and can be coated with oil or may swallow it." And, she added, the Gulf is one of only two nurseries for bluefin tuna, more than 90 percent of which return to their place of birth to spawn

"This may be the worst disaster in recent years, but it's certainly not an isolated incident," Sens. Bill Nelson

A similar spill off the western Australia coast last year took 10 weeks to bring under control. Source:The Washington Post

Look at all these horrible things! I’m especially concerned about what Jacqueline Savitz said: “Oil spills are extremely harmful to marine life when they occur and often for years or even decades later." I’m extremely

worried about all the poor animals that got caught in the oil spill. Aren’t you? My mom found out about a website called Craft Hope, and it explains about what you can do to help the animals. Of course you want to help them because once you hear about it you get this “What can I do to help?” feeling, right? Well, you can send rags and dish soap so you can help the animals that got stuck in the oil spill (mostly dolphins).The website said cotton and terry cloth is probably best for this, and try not to make the rags too fancy because they’ll only be used two or three times.

This is what we did (yes, we’re doing it!): All of us got the job to cut the cloth and pillowcases. My youngest sister decided it was too hard and went to play with her dolls. After my other sister and I finished, we tried to sew on the border of the rags. It was too hard so we let our mom do it. Once we were finished we folded the rags and I counted the money we were going to use to send it. Together had $14.48 to use from our allowance to mail the rags. My mom said it was enough to send the package and get Icees.

I feel happy about what we are doing because dolphins are my 2^nd favorite animal and I really want to help them get better. I hope that you all will do this. Thanks for making a difference in the world!

-Kitchen Fairy #1

   

Chocolate cover everything

Today Isabel and I spent most of our day in the kitchen. We made bread in the bread machine, and we also made chocolate covered pretzels. When the pretzel were all ready we still had a lot of melted chocolate. We got the marshmallow from the pantry. We gave the little guys a top of chocolate and sprinkles. It's the end of the school year, and all the goodies will go into baskets as gifts for the girl's teachers. This year we're graduating from pre-school, and all our girls will be in elementary school by September. Wow!! time flew by. It feels like yesterday I had a four year old, a two year old, and my new born baby, ah!!

I dipped the pretzels, and the marshmallows in the chocolate. Then she did the rest of the work with the sprinkles. As we were standing by the stove she was telling me her plans for the future. She said she wants to have a store with me. There we'll make and sell chocolate "covered everything," we would be selling coffee too: like starbucks!! "It'll be like bring your child to work everyday, because I'll be working with you." My heart melted like the chocolate on the stove.

Like that I have tons of stories in the back of my mind, but I think I better tell you who are the three winners of my apple pattern.

I did used the random number thingy and the winners are:

Trash , Sudi-Laura, and Wynn.

More apples

I'm having a great time reading all your ideas on the apple pattern post. Thanks to all of you that so far have joined me in this giveaway/brainstorming session. I did think of a table runner to as some of you suggested it, and gave this a try while working on the pattern.

 

I mixed my apples with some hour glass block. I love the look of linen as border. I hand quilted it a bit, still I think I'll be going back to keep adding stitches here and there. I like it a lot, and I'll be using it a lot no matter how stained it may get. 

So remember I'm giving away three copies of this pattern, click here to participate.

Apple pattern, and giveaway too!!

I’m finally done with the writing and the editing of this my first quilting block pattern. I’m really, really excited to finally blog about it !! I’ve been working on it for more than a month. It sounds like I’m kind of dumb but believe me this mommy business keeps me very busy.

This PDF consists of 10 pages with:

- instructions to make a square apple block

- instruction to make a on point apple block

- instructions to make super cute apple pot holders.

- the apple paper piece pattern.

My PDF also include 14 color pictures for those like me with a more graphic mind.

Because I have tons of pictures of the process, so I made this mosaic of pictures to give you an idea of what you’ll have in your hands when you get this pattern.

And last but not least: to celebrate this project is finally done I’ll giveaway three copies of it on PDF. You just have to leave me a comment and tell me what else (beside the potholder) you think will be fun to make with these apples. I’ll leave this giveaway open for a seven days. I’ll post the winners on June 15^th. Sounds good?!?

Oh! By the way, this pattern is also for sale in my shop with some already made pot holders too.

 

Almost ready

 

What am I being up too? Well, the last couple of weeks have been kind of busy around here. The pool is now open and we just can't get enough of it. But whenever I find a bit of time I used it to work in my new pattern. Inspired by this apple, I came up with this apple 'kind' of paper piecing pattern. It's not totally paper pieced. I tried and tried until it came totally neat, and clean, and center, and pretty.

This pattern will be ready to go next week, and I'll present it to you with a little giveaway to celebrate that I did something creative in the last month or so. In the process, I cranked up like twenty of these blocks, and a bunch more in the intent to make them on-point too, with reasonable measurements, and the pattern came up nicely. I'm just have to fix a few typos, and add one more picture, and I'll be done.

See you soon!!