mystery quilt finish and kitchen chores

This week saw little sewing again, but due to the mystery quilt, it was more sewing than I would have done otherwise!  (Also, since we were putting borders on, the LOOOONG seams took a while!)

What does it look like?

Well, I had a bit of help...

After the first border, I wanted to lay it on the floor and make sure the borders didn't make it wavy.  Of course I did all the things to ensure they weren't, but there was a little easing to be done, so I wanted to make sure.  Nothing like a wavy border that just gets worse with each addition.

Toby claimed it right away.  And he was ROWDY!

Two more borders down and it's a top!

Again, I put it on the floor and Lily claimed it immediately.  The colors in both photos are a bit off - it was late and my camera doesn't seem to see colors the same way I do.  I adjusted it some, but it still seems wrong.

You can see Finn peeking out from behind the door there in addition to Lily being front and center.  Everyone but Gabby was helping, they just didn't plop for photos.

I don't have a photo of the whole top, but you get the idea.  This is about 2/3 of it.

I'm very happy with it.  I still need to get it quilted before baby comes in September, but I'm really good at procrastinating, so you know it will be September before I do that, right?!

Quite a few shifts at work again this week, mostly closing, so I didn't get much done at home other than chores and some reading in the mornings.  We'll get to the reading soon.

This weekend, however (well, starting Friday), I got busy in the kitchen!

It kinda started at work with a gal asking for pectin.  I took her over to where the canning supplies are, but to be sure I was understanding what she wanted (sometimes you miscommunicate a tiny bit and end up with a thing that is nowhere near what you thought you were getting!) and she said dandelion jelly.  Huh.  I've heard of wine, but jelly?

I let it go, but learned something.  (Happens a lot!)

Then a friend posted a video/recipe of violet jelly on Facebook.

I knew they were edible, but jelly?

Down a rabbit hole and next thing I know, I'm at the store buying sugar (I didn't have quite enough on hand), more pectin (needed the low-sugar kind), and cheesecloth.

And then...

Followed by...

The violet "tea" is fun, as it changes color when you add lemon juice...

Before - it was a lighter blue, more like the color of the old time canning jars that are tinted blue, but again my phone...

And after.  You can still see a bit of blue at the top, as I hadn't stirred it yet, but what a fun chemical reaction for science nerd Katie!

The dandelion stuff just turned yellow and looked gross with all the petals floating in it. (Not that the discolored violets looked much better at the end...)

Then, some boiling and ladeling and waterbathing and...

(And yep, there's cookies in the background...  They're chocolate chip rice krispie cookies and quite good.  You can find the recipe here - use a BIG bowl, and I used two cups (one package) of milk chocolate chips.  They don't quite look like the photo, but that's okay.  I made these Thursday on a whim.)

I'd share the recipes, but I haven't tasted these, so I'll let you know soon.  (But honestly, there are dozens of recipes out there and they're all about the same.)

But what to eat these on?  Plain toast seems boring, but I've had some English muffin bread, bought at a fundraiser bake sale, a while back and my brother has made it and says it's easy, so why not?

After a minor mishap of having two dribbles of milk (we often throw out spoiled milk around here, so having almost none was unheard of!), I got these two loaves started.  (Pardon my old rusty pans.  I have one glass one that is nicer, but this needed two and I wanted them to bake the same, so the old pans came back to visit!)

I let these rise while I paid bills and started my blog post.  They went into the oven shortly and, being a quick bread to make (no kneading even), they were beeping at me just a minute ago, so...

I'll share this recipe too, once I've tried it.  I found quite a few recipes and they're all a little different, but this one seemed easy and it was.  (I'll have lots of recipes to share next week if things go well!)

In the middle of all this, we went out to use my brand new rototiller (the old one died and parts are not to be found) and get my (larger!) garden spot prepped to be planed in a few weeks.

Well that's not good.  It sheared the tine right off.  We bought an extended warranty, so on Monday we'll see what we can do about getting it repaired or replaced.  But sheesh!  There's a lot of rocks in the area that we're adding, but it has a kill switch when it gets to be too much, so I'm not sure what happened here.

(The good news is that the original spot is ready to be used and the new spot almost ready, so we could probably work it by hand if needed.  But this was an expensive investment and shouldn't be worn out so quickly.)

So it's been a busy couple of days at home and it feels good!  I can't wait to plant my garden in a few weeks!

I've also finished two books this week!

Another good book!

Set about the time of WWII again, this one was in the Balkans and mixes some local mythology with reality.  A young woman, a doctor, is working with a volunteer aid group, taking vaccines and Western medicine knowledge to remote villages in the area where she grew up.  The actual country is never mentioned, but the fact that borders of countries shifted regularly in a recently finished war means what used to be one place is now another and it doesn't really matter once you know about where on the globe you are.

Mixed in with this story are her memories of her grandfather, also a doctor.  Two of his stories are the deathless man (not a vampire!) and the tiger's wife.  Both seem like folklore except HE saw them, and being a man of science (a doctor, you know), gives them credibility, particularly in the eyes of his granddaughter, who is telling the story.

Though at times this book threw me for loops in the timeline, I did enjoy it and would definitely read more from this author.

Second:

This was another that somewhere on the interwebs someone had mentioned it and it sounded good.  (I can't figure out where I got the recommendation or I'd tell you...)

It was a good story.  Magical happenings mixed in with reality in a believable kind of way.

There are two timelines with two women, both trying to find their way in the world of men trying to control them, which made it inspiring.  They both get a story and tell part of the story from their perspective and I really enjoyed the one set about 100 years ago.  The current one was good, but I like historical fiction, so I'm biased.

Where it got tricky was the third narrator - a man from the current time story who told half of the story set in today's world.  It was hard to flip from a male perspective to female from one chapter to another and I found myself rereading pages to figure out who was speaking.  And that's why this book wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.

It was a quick read and I enjoyed it.

The next book is going to be a bit of a slog.  I want to read it, though, and I'll get into that after I've finished.  Right now I need to get dressed because the hubby has promised me lunch out at a favorite restaurant!

Happy quilting, reading and baking and canning!

Katie