Creative Insommnia

Ahem, well, its been a busy week. I haven't had time or energy to cook dinner (sorry KoA recipe challenge, I'll make it up to you this week!). Its also been my first week back to work for a full week since the holidays. Oh, and I'm training my new manager. 

But on Friday our house passed city inspection, which is a huge weight off my shoulders and leaves me with what seems like limitless free time. A delusion, I know, but one I'm perfectly willing to nurture. 

Which brings us to Saturday morning and insommnia. A rare thing for me but I take advantage of it when I can. I woke up at 4 am and tossed and turned for half an hour before giving up. 

That's how we got:

I have sliced up the remaining bargello fabric and arranged them in the correct order to make two matching placemats.

And:

This blanket for my cousin is now about 50% put together. FYI, I'd much rather sew than crochet and I doubt I'll be taking on more projects like this once I finish the four that I've started. Yes, I started four of these "quilt crochets." Oops.

And a new innovation (for me at least) is my scrap bucket, which has usurped my trash can next to my cutting table. I've found that as money gets tighter, I'm looking to reuse anything I can, so now instead of just keeping the usable pieces, I'm even saving the shreds of trimmings. I think I can use them for stuffing in draft dodgers and whatnot.

A new toy came in the mail this week. I haven't gotten a chance to play with it beyond seeing how it works, but the OmniAngle Wedge Ruler, which does six different angles (9 degrees to 45 degrees), is now in my rotary cutting ruler collection. This ruler will allow me to make nifty quilts such as this one:
 

By Completely Blocked

And last but not least, I spent a couple hours goofing around with Electric Quilt 7. I really really really want to be able to make it do non-traditional block shapes but I'm running into a couple problems. I picked up a book of tutorials that should help. I'm hoping the fact that I can't make the program function as I want it to is a lack of knowledge and not a fault of the program. After all, this is supposed to be Adobe Photoshop for Quilts.  The patterns I'm trying to use with EQ7 are from a great book called "Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts" by RaNae Merrill.

I plan to make several of these in the future. It comes with a CD for printing paper piecing patterns and EQ5/EQ6 templates in addition to full instructions on drawing customer spirals by hand and techniques for properly joining spirals. Check out how intricate these designs are:

I don't know whose designed this quilt. Please contact me if it is yours.

Now part of WiP Wednesday by Freshly pieced! Check out the current works in progress.

Bargello Table Runner

It was a busy weekend. This week is going to get a little chaotic so I'm not sure what will happen on the crafty front. This Friday is kind of make or break for Jack and I on the home front (pray for us please, if we don't pass inspection I'm going to go crazy. Bonkers. Hinky. Cuckoo). But if all goes well, my time will be my own again, without all kinds of crazy worry.

I spent the day sewing. I didn't even turn on my computer to play GuildWars. And I got a decent amount of stuff done. (Unfortunately tomorrow I have to go back to Mundania and work.) But I made excellent progress on my Project Linus quilt. The binding is machine stitched on and the only thing left is to finish hand-stitching it all up.

Bargello color sequence

I settled on a pattern for my bargello table runner. I was planning on making matching place mats but it seems I don't have enough fabric. I really haven't found any tutorials on bargello quilts that give you an idea of how much fabric they take. 16 strips of fabric will cover one long table runner or four place mats, but not both. Well the good news is I now have some idea how much fabric it takes! So I'm improvising. I'm making a short table runner and four place-mats, but the place mats will just be striped in the matching colors.

Table runner top

Place Mat

Honestly, I'm not sure I'm going to keep them. I was thinking about turning it into a table runner plus two matching place mat set. I chose the colors because I thought they would look good in our living room/dining room but somehow they just don't seem to mesh.

Christmas Tree Skirt Completed

I finally finished it! It seemed like it took way too long but here it is. I used eight 45 degree triangles, so I'm not entirely certain why it didn't exactly work out to a complete circle, but it looks great under the tree anyway.

Complete pattern

Skirt was strip-pieced from my stash. I added the spokes to make it larger since it seemed like it would be much too small. Total diameter is about thirty inches. Good thing our tree is so tiny! It works out great for our tree but would be much too small for a larger one.

I plan on finishing the surcoat I've been working on next.

Linking up to We Did It Wednesdays!

Dinner for Busy Peoples

By Kaelyn Angelfoot

Sorry all my loyal fans, but I had to take some time out of the average crafty post to talk about our new favorite recipe, Steak-Sort-of-Panini. That is to say, its a toasted sandwich inspired by a steak panini you can't get at Panera anymore.

Slice two small onions and several mushrooms thinly. Finely mince two garlic cloves. Melt 4 Tbsp butter in fry pan. Saute garlic and onions, and mushrooms in butter over medium-low heat until caramelized. This caramelization takes a very long time (15 - 20 minutes). Be careful not to burn the onions and garlic.

When veggies are caramelized, remove from pan and place on paper towels to drain. Raise heat to medium. Cook two four-ounce top sirloin steaks to desired doneness, turning once.

I undercook the steak a little, since you're going to be toasting the sandwich later and this will cook the steak more. While steak is cooking, cut a french demi-baguette in half. Slice longways. On each half, spread 2 Tbsp of spreadable garlic and herb cheese. (Boursin or Rondele work great.) Split the onion mixture between the baguette halves.

When steak is done, slice thinly and layer on the baguette. Pop in toaster oven, set to toast, for 2-4 minutes, until heated through. Remove from toaster oven, make sandwiches, and enjoy!

Simple, fast, easy, and deliciously tasty! I call is Steak-Sort-of-Panini because its not technically a panini. I wanted to purchase a panini press, but it turns out they are horrifically expensive. So, I came up with a toaster oven alternative that I don't plan on changing, even if I ever get a panini press.

Mmmm... tasty

This recipe makes two large sandwiches, so you could easily stretch it just a little and make enough food for four by using two six-ounce steaks and a a little extra on the veggies.

New Year, New Goals

So we all do this... hey its the new year!  Every year I make all kinds of grandiose resolutions that I rarely keep. All sorts of things from exercising more to eating healthier to keeping up with the laundry (and there are only two of us, so laundry shouldn't be that big of a deal, but it is.) It gets to the point where you wonder, why should I bother making resolutions? I never keep them. After the initial bang of excitement and bright lights, they go up in smoke. Like fireworks. Pretty while they last, right?

But lets take a step back and analyze that.  EVERY YEAR I make new resolutions. Every single year. Usually mental ones. "I'd really like to learn this." or "I want to weight lift." or "I plan to cook at home more often." But I make them EVERY YEAR. What does that tell you? That there are tons of things I WANT to do and I WORK on (if only on the short term). How is this possibly a bad thing? Working towards continual improvement in my personal, academic, and social life. So what if they fizzle? At least I'm trying.

Supposedly, in response to a reporter's question, Thomas Edison said this:

"I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work."

Well, I have succeeded in proving that several methods of organizing my home and finances do not work.  Last year I created a "Master Plan" notebook based off a blog I found, with printable sheets from that blog. That is all well and good, but I don't want to have to re-handwrite my chore chart every single week without failure. I don't want to hand write everything. Some stuff is okay. But if I'm in a hurry, my handwriting is generally illegible. The problem? PDFs can't be edited unless you have a special program. 

The solution: A free online PDF editor. I downloaded organization sheets I thought might work for me from LifeYourWay and started uploading them to PDFescape. This lets me make basic changes to the PDF without starting from scratch to design my own to-do list or hand-writing everything. 

I know I sound like a bad infomercial right now, but with all the chaos of buying a house and moving this year, there are things I'm not doing (like I forget about one bill per month. oops.) Editing these to-do lists online will hopefully allow me more organization because next month I just have to open last month's and make a few minor changes. (Hint: I haven't found a "Save As" feature, so if you need a duplicate format for a different task, you'll have to upload it again under a different file name.)

The other change I'm making this year is to make my goals more specific, with deadlines, task lisks, and measurable accomplishments. A study at Dominican University proved that people who write down goals generally accomplish more than those that do not. Make a list, check it twice, cross off the ones you've completed and ADD MORE! Don't stop when you reach the end of your goals. There's always more interesting things to do! This also means that you don't have to have everything planned out by January 1. It is an ongoing process.

One of the things I did succeed over the last year is reading the Bible more. I have YouVersion on my phone. Every morning I try to get to work a little early, sit in my car, and read a couple chapters from the selected Bible Reading Plan. The app tracked my progress. I got through most of the New Testament in a year and every day that I opened it there was a little green progress bar that said "Hey, you're doing great, only x more to go!" Did I finish it? Nope. Did I read significantly more than the year before? Yep. So did I fail because I didn't complete the goal or did I win because I made progress?

I'm calling it a win.