Woohoo! An Announcment

If you know me at all by now it should be clear that I am not enamoured of my desk job. I have grand fantasies that may or may not come true about making a career out of being a creative soul. But in order for me to have even a remote chance of achieving that dream I have to start somewhere. Today I am pleased to announce that I am taking the first step in that direction.

I got a teaching job!  Let's be clear, a job teaching quilting.  Okay to be even more precise, a job teaching Improvisational Piecing.

A month ago I took an afternoon off work with the nanny at home with the girls.  I pressed my sampler, prepared some pitches, and hit the stores.  And the first one bit!  I actually pitched three classes and they picked up Improvisational Piecing.  How cool is that?

So, if you are in the Calgary area in late November, please sign up and I'll do my best to educate and entertain you. To register you can do so at Along Came Quilting.

Here are the details:

November 13 and 20

1:30-4:30 pm

Along Came Quilting

Unit 12, 1220-59 Avenue SE

Calgary, Alberta

See you in November!

Too Lazy to Cook

It isn't too hot. There is no family crisis. And we aren't being pulled in ten million directions.

Nope. It's just a week filled with dogs using beds and carpets as bathrooms, teething babies, whining and sniveling Monsters, taking care of the neighbours' incredible barfing cat, and a miserable time at work. So no, I don't feel like cooking.

Last night we went out. Yeah, that was a mistake. The girls are normally great in a restaurant, but last night they were not. So rather than resort to true laziness and simply boiling water for pasta I pulled out some leftover bread from Aviv. A quick survey of the counter and fridge revealed the rest of the ingredients for dinner: tomatoes, peaches, and some mallow and green onions from last week's CSA delivery.

Yup, when you are too lazy to cook you can still have a damn tasty meal. Just 10 minutes of chopping and a quick drizzle of oil and vinegar and you've got panzanella. For us non-italians, that means bread salad.

This is a technique more so than a recipe. I've never made this without tomatoes, but the rest of it depends on what herbs and other veggies I have around. Sometimes cucumber and red onions. Sometimes coriander and roast peppers. And today, peaches, mallow, and green onions.

Basic Panzanella

serves 1-4, or more

1/2 to 1 loaf of day old crusty bread

1 pint cherry tomatoes or two to three tomatoes, chopped

peaches, cucumbers, onions, peppers, or veg of choice - a couple of chopped handfuls

1-2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2-3 tablespoons of fresh herbs - basil, mint, oregano, mallow

olive oil

balsamic vinegar

1. Tear or cut your bread into rough 1 inch pieces.

2. Place bread in a bowl, add tomatoes and remaining ingredients of choice. Add garlic and herbs.

3. Drizzle generously with olive oil and vinegar. Season generously and eat.

Oh, and in case you thought that even this dinner was immune to the daily frustrations of life these days this was half of dinner, before we even started. I was coming inside after taking a few pictures and the dog jumped up, knocking the bowl from my hand. Sigh.

That's A Lot of Thread!

Wow, I finally finished the grass quilt.  And I can tell you that I lost count of how many bobbins I used but I went through five spools of 100 metres and two half spools on 500 metres of thread! That's a lot of thread!

Speaking of the thread, I used my new favourite kind of thread for quilting: Presencia Mercerized Egyptian Cotton.  I've made a few quilts with this thread now and I'm hooked.  It doesn't break, the lint isn't too bad, and the colours are wonderfully saturated. For the grass quilt I used three different greens and alternated colours for each row of grass that I quilted.

The binding still needs to go on, maybe tonight.  It will be another multi-pieced one.  First I need to sneak into the closet in the girls room and grab my bin of green fabrics.  Smilosaurus was having a rough day and went to bed early, early tonight.  Hmm, maybe I'll skip the binding and head to bed myself because I feel an early morning coming on.

PS  Stay tuned for one of my announcements later this week...

Chips and Chopsticks

A few months ago The Monster and I made a special trip to Chinatown.  In addition to paying the taxman we wandered around in search of something very special - kid friendly chopsticks. I couldn't tell you the name of the store we found them in, with me not speaking Cantonese or Mandarin. But we found the pint sized chopsticks and the little black plastic chopsticks training.  I don't know if that's what you call it, but I refer to is as the training wheels for the chopsticks.

And here is the household's favourite use for chopsticks: eating potato chips. Hubby has been doing this for as long as I've known him.  Before you scoff and giggle at this odd habit, think about it for a minute.  Most of us eat chips while watching TV.  If you use chopsticks you do not have the lick your fingers or get the remote greasy.  Ingenious, right?

So Hubby has The Monster trained up.  Now, if only I could get him to stop feeding her chips.