Up to some quilting, cooking and stuff …

Prepare for an extremely random post of different stuff. The annual fundraising luncheon I co-organize is happening in 1/2 a week. Six hundred something people for lunch. So not only am I tired, I’m feeling sort of scatterbrained as well. Coherency is not my strong suit at this point. Collating large quantities of data is.

So I’m really, really excited because I finally bought a walking foot attachment for my machine, and a 1/4″ walking foot. Can you tell I’m thinking of making another Large Size Quilt? I must be crazy.

I’m not sure if I should admit this, but I’ve never gotten any extra feet for my machine. I’ve been shy of learning new techniques for my machine, so for a long time I just stuck to the standard metal machine foot. Eventually I graduated to the zipper foot and others. I’m behind on learning machine gadgetry because I am self-taught. I figured out four feet by myself, and honestly some of it, well, it never occurred to me that some of the attachments existed (a ruffler foot? honestly!).

To educate myself about feet and what they do, I bought this book one day when I found it at Half Price Books. <– the Sewing Machine Attachment Handbook. It’s pretty good. There are a crazy number of things that you can do with machine attachments, as it turns out. Ruffling, pleating, smocking, hemming, cutting, darning, whatever. The book has quite a bit of history about machines and their attachments, which I found really interesting, partially because one day I’d like to own an antique machine. Anyway, if you’re interested in crafting gadgets or maybe you’re self-taught like me, it’s an interesting read.

In other news it’s farm market season again, so I brought home a bunch of leafy greens (I love lettuce with the roots still on), beets, eggs, fennel, zucchini and more! I’m (as usual) not thrilled with the hot weather, but I am excited that it’s produce season again. This year I’m going to join a CSA if I find one I like. I’m also starting to cook more again. Yesterday evening I cooked a really nice sweet asparagus and lentil soup – has carrots, onion, peas, roasted garlic and red bell pepper with prickly pear jelly and hot curry. For lentil soup, it’s on the pretty side, and it’s spicy and sweet. I made about a gallon of it, so it’s good that I like it.

Wesley has completed Obedience Training part 2. He took his test with two very excited Staffordshire terriers, a funny Corgi/bulldog mix, a crazy dorky Husky and a chilled out Labrador. Everyone passed the test, which was staying in place while the owner was out of sight, and then coming to the owner on command past a plate of food, sitting in front of us, and then heeling back to home. I must give most of the credit to my mother-in-law, who spent a lot of time training him while we were on vacation. Next I think we’re going to do agility classes since he has the basic commands down. This apparently involves lots of running around and using equipment (for me as well), which I think he will find awfully fun and interesting. He still has tons of energy that not even walking 3-4 miles a day can burn off.

Anyway, I’m 90% done with my new Memory quilt, I’m excited to say, and when I have some spare energy I’ll explain my rather abstract concept for it and how it ended up looking.

Woo! Back to … well, I’m going to sleep actually. Ta!