Inspired by an younger generation of quilters and an ever-growing scrap fabric stash, I decided to give English Paper Piecing (EPP) a try. I quickly fell in love with the rhythmic quality of sewing small pieces of fabric together. The secret to my success has been to use thick cardboard rather than paper for my template pieces. Since I am glue basting the fabric to the templates, the thickness is not a problem but instead provides me with something more substantial on which to hold. I will admit, having the ability to laser cut out all my templates is a huge help. While I certainly could have just purchased pre-cut shapes and worked on patterns from those shapes, I decided to give myself the challenge of designing blocks in computer software so that I could share what I was doing with others.
Harvest Berries is the first of the EPP blocks I plan to share over the next year. I chose it to be first because it is built on one of the most beloved EPP shapes – the hexagon. I chose to applique this block onto a solid background rather than to combine it with many others to make a hexagon quilt. While I used 1.5″ (side measurement) hexagons although any size hexagon could work for this pattern. I have provided a pdf with the templates, but precut hexagons can be purchased from many sites.
Harvest Berries was a fun block to make, and it is a great pattern to introduce a beginner to the world of EPP.
Imperfection fades away, replaced by snuggly comfort.
In the crafting world, the stress created by seeking perfection is offset by a simple 3-foot rule. Whatever is not noticeable from 3 feet away should not cause the maker angst. While this rule is not always as effective as one might hope, when it comes to quilting, there is an additional rule that usually covers all but the most egregious flaws. The comfort rule.
If the quilt provides comfort, then the quilt needs only be structurally sound to be perfect.
Sometimes in life, we lose perspective, focusing too much on imperfections rather than on purpose.
“What is the purpose of what we do?” “What is the goal we hope to achieve?”
There will always be situations where perfection must be the purpose, but those situations rarely extend beyond life-saving, safety-critical, or technology-focused tasks. In most cases, seeking perfection is a goal but not the purpose of the endeavor.
When we focus the purpose of our task, imperfections fade away to be replaced by the comfort a good perspective on life provides.
Change is unavoidable and sometimes very painful. It can also open us to opportunities we may otherwise never have seen had the change not occurred. However change, especially when it is a mighty life change, can bring on a sense of loss, even a sense of mourning for that which we had or for whom we were before the change occurred.
Mourning a loss is never an easy process, and it is seldom a speedy one. Permitting oneself the time and space to mourn is not merely important, it is vital.
Simple steps each day can help us through both the change and the loss we might feel because of the change, but sometimes even simple steps can feel overwhelming.
Sometimes we need the quiet that solitude provides us. Sometimes we need space – the space to process, to mourn, and to adjust. Other times we need companionship.
While no one can adjust, heal, or live for us, many can give us a helpful hand.
One of life’s greatest lessons is learning how to move each day – physically and mentally move each and every day. When we stop moving, we stop life.
Sometimes, no matter how strong willed we are, we need help moving. Just like when we seek physical therapy after an injury or severe illness has made our body struggle, we may need to seek help when it is our mental or spiritual health that is struggling. Seeking help and acquiring help may also require us to experience more change, but this change might be one of the most valuable aids to helping us through the bigger life change which is causing us so much struggle.
We must find a way to keep on keeping on. To keep on living, and to keep on looking for those opportunities that now might be more clearly seen because of a mighty life change.
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I will vlog again, and probably sooner than later. This is just breathing time.
What do we seek on this journey or from this experience? Taking time to ask this question of ourselves affords us the opportunity to understand the answer despite any excitement or anxiety we might feel.
Do we hope to learn something? Connect with someone? Are we planning to challenge ourselves, or are we simply hoping to embrace the joy of the experience? Maybe there is a bit of all of this in our plans. However, it is not just the meandering, spur-of-the-moment journey that includes unforeseen excitement or anxiety. We can become frustrated or even lose our way if we have not taken the time to understand what we are seeking.
Origins of This Thought
When this thought first began swirling around my head, I was contemplating the way personal relationships can devolve. A brief conversation with a stranger had left me troubled. The stranger had conveyed how difficult they were struggling now that they were the guardian of their young grandchild. Their struggle was one of lost hope, as much as one of real challenge. Their expectations of this new, full-time relationship was fraught with the dread of knowing life was going to be forever changed, and was going to be quite difficult due to the child’s very specific struggles.
I was troubled by the lack of hope the stranger shared. Many hours later, this thought came to mind.
What do we seek in our personal relationships? What do we hope to learn or experience?
While we may not be able to change the specific elements of human existence that make life hard, sometimes so hard we struggle to see a way forward, we are able to reimagine our expectations. Sometimes this can be achieved by simply identifying what it is we truly seek from the situation or the relationship. Often we are counseled to changed our perspective, but first we might be wise in understanding what it is we seek. From that understanding, our perspective, or in other words, our vantage point might become clear. We might even discover that our frustration is not from the challenges we face in this new journey, but simply from having become lost in the fog before reaching the summit.
Holidays, especially national days of remembrance, are days often flooded with memories; some memories more poignant than others, some tinged with sorrow rather than joy. We can feel even a bit conflicted as we navigate these holidays, questioning our activity choices or fighting feelings of inadequacy. Too often we may find ourselves questioning whether our own service is enough when others gave so much more.
Service to others – a family, a community, a nation – is not measured by volume. It is measured by impact, if it is even something that can be measured at all. Measuring the impact our service has upon a recipient isn’t something easily done, thereby requiring a huge amount of faith upon our part. The ripple affect of even the smallest act may simply be too imperceptible, or too immeasurable, and so, we may never fully understand the impact of our service. Therefore, we must exercise faith, and live in hope.
We can teach ourselves to serve with a hope that our service makes a difference. We can teach ourselves to seek out a need, rather than to serve from our own convivence. We can teach ourselves to put aside our own good intentions, so we can more clearly see the individuals who require our efforts. We can teach ourselves to look for opportunities and individuals, rather than waiting for others to ask for our help.
Holidays make good days to remember the person we want to be, even as they remind us to celebrate our efforts in becoming that person. Sometimes the opportunity to serve really is simply staring back at us in a mirror.
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In my latest vlog, I talk about service as a way to bust through our stashes – whether they are fabric, yarn, or any other crafting stash. Finding ways to share directly with others our precious stash can bring added joy into our lives.
We’ve all heard the saying “when life’s hands you lemons…” In the world of making yarn, the result of this can-do attitude often results in unique creations. In the case of this particular yarn, a bobbin of “oops” was combined with some left-over “forgot what it was” which produced a “crazily energetic yarn”. Not to be discouraged, I then added some “I think I know what it is” into the mix. The resulting yarn is unique, but it is also quite functional.
Oops Yarn is also a reminder to embrace the mistakes in life’s journey. If we need a good cry, then we should cry. If we need a good laugh, then we should laugh. The thing we shouldn’t do is throw out the mistake or pretend it didn’t happen. Life is full of mistakes, but like the Oops Yarn, there is value to be had if we embrace them rather than toss them away.
In my latest vlog, you can hear all about my Oops Yarn as well as some projects that went as planned.
The smell of cookies baking, the extra warmth from the oven, and the comfort of a sweet treat, lots of reasons to mix up another batch of cookies. This time it is the Peanut Butter Cookie, which I have reduced to a small batch bake for those of us seeking a small indulgence rather than a mountain of cookies. If you do need a larger batch, no worries, this recipe is very simple to multiply when more than two dozen nutty delights are needed.
Important Tip:
Not all peanut butter is made the same. The peanut butter made in the U.S.A. is a sweeter cousin to the peanut butter made elsewhere. It is perfect for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, peanut butter cookies, and other peanut butter sweet treats. So if you are not in the United States, see if you can source some from the international section of your grocery store.
If you don’t already have mini ice cream/cookie scoop in your kitchen, treat yourself to one of two. They are a time saver when working with a wet cookie dough or when trying for consistent-sized cookies. I prefer the small one often used as a melon baller for this recipe (1/2 tablespoon). The cookies with spread during baking so a little dough goes a long way.
A Vlogmas Spin-a-long with a Sweet Treat at the End
The countdown to Christmas is fully underway. This year for Vlogmas, a YouTuber’s countdown, I decided to find a way to take a break from the hectic pace of Christmas, at least for a few moments each day.
With that goal in mind, each day I am spinning a small bundle of fiber, enjoying a tiny chocolate treat, and choosing a rejuvenating suggestion from a jar I filled with suggestions back before Vlogmas began. So far in the first days of December, I have crafted with beads, made a savory treat, tried a new embroidery design, and started reading a new book. Today when I withdrew the small folded paper from the jar, I was delighted to see that it suggested I make a sweet treat. I’ve been looking forward to this suggestion appearing because I have a brownie recipe I have been wanting to share.
A few months back during the heat of summer, I invested in a small convection oven, marketed as an air fryer, it really is just a fancy toaster oven, but with excellent versatility that past toasters lacked. There didn’t seem much sense in heating up the house by using the large oven during the summer months, now that my husband and I are empty-nesters again. A smaller oven would heat up the house less and would correspond with our smaller food preparation needs. It was the perfect solution with just one hurdle to cross – smaller batch recipes. Cooking, and especially baking, just for two is not the easiest thing to accomplish. Most recipes are designed for feeding 4-6 people. Cakes and pies are especially difficult. The humidity and the heat of Virginia makes sweets treats fuzz up quite quickly unless they are refrigerated, and there is nothing that makes a crisp pastry go limp like refrigeration.
So with new mini-oven and a goal to make smaller portions of favorite foods, I embarked on an Autumn of culinary experimentation. In my previous blog, I share some of my Autumn favorites, but now the temperature have turned cold chocolate is what is needed.
After years of a love-hate relationship with the classic American dessert, the Brownie, I have finally figured out a recipe both my husband and I will consume with joy. It has both crisp bits and gooey bits, and is small enough to bake in an 8″ x 8″ (200mmx200mm) baking pan that fits just perfectly in my Instant Vortex Air Fryer. I am sure the recipe would also work in a regular oven or full-sized convection oven with just the minimal baking time/temperature adjustments.
I hope you find joy in this basic, but tasty comfort food.
Happy Holidays
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If you choose to take a few moments and watch my Vlogmas video, you will also hear how I stumbled upon a second chocolate delight when a foggy brain necessitated making a second dessert.
By simply adding extra sour cream (about 3 tablespoons total) and steaming it in a pressure cooker for 60 minutes, rather than having a Brownie, you will have a Chocolate Steamed Pudding instead. If you have never made a cake in a pressure cooker, I highly recommend looking up Instant Pot recipes by Amy & Jacky at https://www.pressurecookrecipes.com/
Pithy Ponderings 