Spring! Green! In Your Mouth

Flashback Friday to one of our new favorite appetizers, we tried this one out for Easter dinner. 

Smashed Peas With Mint Bruschetta  

This is super easy to make, and it tastes like Spring! and Green! in your mouth. 

My mouth is watering just looking at this picture. 

Might be time to plant that fall crop of peas.

Frozen peas, fresh mint, a food processor, good bread, and you've got it.

Bone Story

One of the decorated for charity "I Left My Heart in SF" hearts at Stanford Medical. (as seen through a very dirty window!) But why was I there? This gets a bit personal, so just pass on by the rest of this post if you're not into that sort of thing.

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Warning:

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Medical

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 x-ray

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picture

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I travel all the way to Stanford to see my orthopedic/oncology surgeon, and it's very very worth the drive. I'm glad that my insurance company agreed so easily. With my weirdo bone situation the first normal ortho didn't even want to try and operate on me. Too complicated, too unusual.

But here's my beautifully perfect hip joint that I'm now so blessed to have, stuck there in my femur-gone wrong and wrong-er, over and over again since I was seventeen. It was a big huge deal to recover from the surgery, but it was totally worth it. If you're someone with arthritic hips or whatever, don't put it off, take it from me, get it done asap and get your life back.

Hope it lasts for a very long time because it is freaking amazing to be able to walk again.

Wandering Wednesday - Marching in Santa Cruz

 Back in June the horrifying news of the family separation policy at the US border was initially paralyzing. I mean, babies in cages! Our government doing this, our tax dollars at work, ack! I donated to Raices Texas, and watched as much of the news coverage as I could take, but that wasn't enough. Then I heard there were to be marches all around the country and I felt it was time to get up off the couch and participate. My husband was also riled up enough to come with me, so off we went to Santa Cruz. The march started at the city center, and there were thousands of folks, the energy of it was great.

 How about this clever play on the jaw-droopingly uncaring jacket Melania wore on her visit to the border.

 There were so many great signs, I wish I'd gotten more pictures of them.

 One of the handmaids was there at the protest too.

The speakers at the Museum of Art and History plaza were great, but it was quite hot and very crowded so we didn't stay too long. I think a lot more people came than were expected so we didn't come close to fitting in the space.

And now I'm posting about this a few months later, and things have improved somewhat, but thanks to all the activism and some key federal court decisions, a lot of families have been reunited. But there are still more than 500 children separated from their families. Some of the parents have been deported without the children, which is unfathomably cruel.

These are people, fleeing horrifying conditions in their home countries, taking a very dangerous journey with their children, just trying to protect them, find a better life for them, just like any other parent in the world would do. And they followed the rules, they came to our country and asked for asylum. (You can't accomplish that from your home country, it's not a thing.)

And we (that's you and me if you're a US citizen) stole their children from them. With no plan in place to track the child and parent, none. They weren't treated very well, (how could they have been?), a lot of the people don't speak Spanish or English, and there was a lot of chaos. Pretty much the stories get worse and worse and my heart can't take reading all them, I'll admit that. This whole thing is Not Okay, and I'm glad that the ACLU and other organizations are taking action against these horrific policies.

It's not a thing our country can be proud of, this is not who we are supposed to be. This is not the story we've been telling ourselves about who we are. Or maybe it is, maybe there's more than one story, there's another one where those seeking asylum are all criminals, sub-human, not worthy of our care or concern, that we'd be suckers or worse for taking them in. Nah, that's not the American Way, unless we're ready to send the Statue of Liberty back to France and close our doors to the world. Nope, our country is huge, we loom large in the world and we are known for having a huge heart. We are big enough to use our huge capacity to absorb newcomers and welcome them into the fabled melting pot.

More Donation Blocks

 For some reason I ended up with two packets of fabric from the Michael Miller booth at QuiltCon to make blocks for Quilting for A Cure charity quilt, so I made some more.

And for some other un-known reason I took pictures as I made up these blocks. I cross cut the first square into four triangles.

 And I fussy cut one of the super cute and kinda confused looking squirrels.

 Then I sewed the triangles on all four sides of the fussy cut square.

 Square it up so it's even all around.

 Then I took two more of the fabrics and cut the squares in half so that I had two big triangles.

 Sew those bigger triangles on, trim up and there you go, all done.

Here's all three blocks I made.

Donation Blocks

 One of the things we picked up at QuiltCon was a pack of fabrics to use to make quilt blocks for a Quilting for A Cure charity quilt at the Michael Miller booth.  Aren't these fun kid prints?

 There was something about these cheetahs, I just wanted to highlight them.

 A "normal" block.

More kinda crazy piecing.

All three blocks together.

First Box

 Here's the first Culcita box that I received. It's so fun to get a nice surprise like this in my mailbox. Inside there's a lollipop, a quilt pattern and a very nice "handmade by" label.

And a great sturdy orange box that I'm keeping and using for something. What a great selection of fabrics inside, some I would have chosen on my own, and some I wouldn't have, so a good balance. All very very usable.

Rainbow Nails

Yet another rainbow. I really do have way too much nail polish.

Pre-Wash Photos

 I try to take pictures of the fabric that I buy, just to keep track of the input around here. And this was a series of photos before a wash day. Another great monthly surprise from Darn Good Yarn. I like the shades of blue

Another stack of rainbow-ness from Massdrop.

 This time it's reads-as-solids, Texture Illusion from Maywood Studio.

 And some delicious fabrics from friend Jaye this past Christmas.

 Nightmare Before Christmas fabric, how did I miss out on these? I love that movie. That's what friends are for, right?

QuiltCon Shopping

 The shopping was great at QuiltCon, we spread it out over several days, and hit up all the booths.

 A great Echino bundle and some cute #putabookonit stickers from Crimson Tate.

 I loved loved loved the The Patpourri/Heartway International booth, so much great Japanese fabric.

 Have I made this "The Cube" bag yet, no I have not, but that's my plan for these too cool fabrics.

 A lot of fabrics with words again, and black and whites.

 I love this font so much, I can't even express how much.

 There was a new company called Culcita, a modern quilt fabric subscription box business, so I signed up, here's the stuff I bought in their booth. I loved the orange-ness of their booth by the way, that may have had something to do with my signing up--just saying. They have all sorts of options and the fabric choices so far this year have been great.

Post washing picture of a grab bag of Kaffe plaids. I almost didn't want to iron them they were so scrumptious and full of texture.

Here's how they looked before washing, see--so much more interesting.

Pasadena for QuiltCon again

Way back in February, I was lucky enough to get to attend QuiltCon again with friend Jaye in Pasadena.

It was crowded at first when we registered, but the line went very quickly, they have things efficiently planned out. In the main halls the quilts for that year's donation exhibit were hung so that was fun to look at as we waited.

 There was a selection of Aids Quilts on display, they were terribly impactful and moving (and huge.)

 It was nice SoCal winter weather.

 The ceiling in the main lecture hall was interesting, just something I noticed while waiting for Carolyn Friedlander's great lecture.

Especially after putting it through a filter or two.

 The selection of Modern Quilt Guild branded merch was great this time around. I've gotten a lot of use out of the project zip bag.

 There were even more vendors this year. Isn't this a lovely display to show off those solids?

Interesting shadows in the convention center.

Impatient Gardening

 Waiting very impatient for the tomatoes to ripen. It's been such a hot summer, but they're still taking f...o....r....e....v....e...r!

 So are the peppers, but at least they have cute little flowers while we wait.

 And wait....

and wait.