Mischief Managed

Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life. –Adele Brookman

I suppose it is just as well that I haven't blogged in several months because the cobwebs on the decor seem to fit nicely with the theme of the day.

I'd really like to dust off the old blog and get back to regular posting. It's been one wild and crazy adventure at Bug Cottage lately, and totally in a good way. I increased my work hours over the summer to close to full-time, which is counter-intuitive since the Not-So-Little Bugs are home more during the summer, but things all worked out. When school started, I took on some new responsibilities at work and so bumping up to full-time followed.

As time has gone by, I've been keeping a mental list of all the things that I want to blog about, but the list keeps increasing and it seems so daunting a task that I haven't had the nerve to start. I've done lots of fun sewing though, and I'm hoping to get in a few posts about that soon. In case you were curious, I did finish the Signature Quilt for the woman who turned 100 in September. The party was 11 days before her birthday so it was close, but I got it done in time.

As you can imagine, I've been spending a little more time than I used to at work. They are a really wild and crazy bunch. One of the programmers pulled the best prank ever today.

Halloween is my favorite. Dressing up is so much fun. There was a costume contest today {winners to be announced Monday} and my office mate and I decided that we were going to be Minions. We were nicknamed the AdMinions {Admin + Minions}. It was a great collaboration and I think we pulled it together nicely.

Same Familiar Packaging with New and Improved Functionality

"This is the cabin for Hypnos, the god of sleep," Annabeth said.

. . . Soft violin music played from somewhere. The air smelled like fresh laundry. The cabin was so cozy and peaceful that Jason's eyelids started to feel heavy. A nap sounded like a great idea. He was exhausted. There were plenty of empty beds, all with feather pillows and fresh sheets and fluffy quilts and—Annabeth nudged him. "Snap out of it."

Jason blinked. He realized his knees had been starting to buckle.

"Cabin Fifteen does that to everyone," Annabeth warned. If you ask me, this place is even more dangerous than the Ares cabin. At least with Ares, you can learn where the land mines are." –Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero

I am beginning to wonder if I am a child of Hypnos because a nap always sounds good to me. But since that is probably not the case, I had a septoplasty {warning: link contains gross photos} with turbinate reduction, which probably isn't the most logical choice of treatment but let me explain. For as long as I can remember I haven't been able to breathe well through my nose. I couldn't breathe out of my right nostril at all. And I clench my jaw while I sleep, so I wondered if I might not be getting enough air at night, which was causing or at least contributing to poor sleep quality. I never wake feeling rested and refreshed. As a matter of fact, it is very difficult to wake up. Most mornings, I push the snooze button a few times and then turn the alarm completely off and go back to sleep. And no matter how many times I tell myself that I will get up when the alarm goes off, my mornings pretty much always go like that. Obviously, I don't make good decisions when I'm asleep.

When I finally do wake up, I feel like I have to take several minutes to breathe deeply enough to re-expand my lungs and come to my senses. The coming to my senses parts takes about a half-an-hour, at which point, I start scolding myself for sleeping past the alarm again and promising that tomorrow I will do better.

Whether or not there is any real correlation to my hypothesis, I went ahead and made an appointment with an ENT about a six weeks ago. The PA asked lots of questions and then she donned a forehead light and took a pair of cross-lock tweezers, stuck them up my nose and expanded my nostril so she could have a look in there. She told me that it looked to her like about an 85% blockage and explained that to repair it the surgeon would remove the cartilage from my nose, shave the bones spurs from it, smooth it out, make it nice and straight and put it back in. Easy peasy. She said it was a very non-invasive procedure {which is kind of debatable in my non-educated opinion, because they go right up your nose} and a quick recovery. She made me feel very confident that it was a good option and would be less than a minor interruption to my life. So I signed up.

Cut to Thursday-before-last. Mr. Bug and I had to be at the same-day surgery center at 8:45 am. After we checked in, the nurse led us back to a little room where she gave me a lovely lilac-colored paper gown about the same weight and feel as a reusable grocery sack and a pair of large and unattractive boxer shorts of the same material, for which I was very grateful. I supposed that in the event they needed to open my chest from my collarbone to my navel, they could get those babies off and out of the way in a jiffy and in the meantime, I could keep from hanging the moon on my way to the bathroom. It was a win-win situation.

Then they started explaining the procedure in more detail. That's when I started to worry. The anesthesiologist came in and explained how the anesthetic would work, which didn't worry me {sidebar: my first c-section, which is major surgery, was a semi-emergency but by the time we got to that point I was so tired I didn't even care and just wanted a nap, although they didn't put me under. I breezed right through the second c-section. But when I had a bunion removed a few years after that, the thing that worried me the most was the anesthesia. What if I never woke up? Of course I did, and I was really annoyed that they wanted me to leave the blissful and best sleep I'd ever had so soon after I arrived there. After that, I wasn't worried about it anymore, and kind of looked forward to it when the opportunity arose. Weird, I know. But sleep and I have a long and complicated history.} What did worry me is all that they told me about after-care. Namely, that there would be swelling, bleeding and crusting. And I was not allowed to blow my nose. That was a deal breaker and I was ready to get out of the paper gown and go home. Fortunately for them, they had powerful sleeping agents at their command and before I could make a break for it, I was under.

I have to add that when the surgeon came in to talk to me between the anesthesiologist and the surgery nurse and the guy with the drugs, I was working on one of the embroidery labels for my Patriotic Sampler quilt. I put it on my lap while he went over what he was going to do, but I saw him look at it several times as he was talking to me. As he was turning to go, he hesitated and then asked what I was working on. I showed him and he studied it for a minute and then complimented me on how precise my stitches were and said something like, "you could do surgery."

I don't remember much of the afternoon after my surgery. I think we were supposed to start at 10:00, but they must have been running behind because they didn't wheel me out until 10:45. We made it down the hall and around the corner and I was out. They told me I'd have to move from one bed to another, but I don't know if that even happened. The next thing I remember was trying to wake. My lungs felt heavy and it was difficult to breathe. Then I was in a recovery room and the nurse brought me applesauce, pain meds and soda. Mr. Bug hung out and read and I slept. About 2:45, it seemed like the nurse kind of wanted to shoo me out the door. She brought in a nose sling, which wrapped over my ears and had padding across my cheeks and then a plastic strip under my nose, which you placed a gauze pad on to catch any blood that might be dripping out. Up to that point, my nose seemed pretty clear, but when I stood up, it started to drip. It was uncomfortable, but not unmanageable. And according to the nurse, it wasn't a lot of bleeding. So I got dressed, they trundled me out to the car in a wheelchair and we went home. I slept on the way. When we got home, Br. Bug set me up in a comfy chair {they recommended sitting up, or lying at an incline}, I had a popsicle and watched TV for about 10 minutes. Then I had another nap. One of my kind neighbors brought dinner, after which I'm pretty sure I had another nap. And then Mr. Bug and the kids came in to watch TV with me and I dozed in and out and went to bed before 10:00.

At about 2:00 am, I woke up and wandered into the kitchen to get some more pain meds. I decided that a popsicle would be a good idea, too. It took me about 15 minutes, and the whole time I stared at my sewing table and seriously debated about doing a little something. In the end, I decided it was too much effort and went back to bed. I got up a few times to use the bathroom or get pain meds, but mostly I slept until about 1:00 in the afternoon. I set up camp on the living room couch and trimmed frayed threads off the cut edges of my latest fabric acquisitions fresh from the wash {sidebar: I used to serge the cut edges but quit doing that and instead I wash on the "hand washables" cycle, which is very gentle. I get about a fourth of the amount of frayed threads than with a normal wash and because there are less stray threads, there isn't a tangled up rat's nest that has to be sorted before the fabric goes to the dryer. I figured that the time I spend trimming that off is about the same as the time it takes to serge the edges, but saves on thread and wear-and-tear on my machine.}. The rest of the weekend was spent mostly sleeping interspersed with saline flushes, pain meds and popsicles, alternately. I wasn't in too much pain following the surgery and after the first few days Tylenol and Advil did the trick.

Resting was nice, but also difficult. I have kind of a hard time sitting still {another sign that I may be a demigod and that Hypnos is indeed my father} and am always working on something. I almost never sit and veg in front of the TV, but I did a lot of that because I was so tired. I wanted to sew, but it seemed like too much effort. I had four whole days off and all I managed was one set of four blocks for the signature quilt I'm making.

Four blocks. That is all. Admittedly, I pressed 3 yards of pink Kona and 2½ yards of white Kona between naps. But four - 5" blocks seems like nothing for a four-day weekend. OK. I did get all of my stash fabric washed, folded and put away in rainbow order. Some of it wasn't as recently acquired as I may have previously led you to believe. Some of it has been sitting in my laundry room since last July. So, that is a good thing.

I other happy news, after the first few days of crustiness and several dozen saline flushes, my nose functionality has improved. And so has my sleep. This was recorded by my sleep app {Sleep Cycle for iPhones and Sleep as Android for Android} just a few days after the surgery. That has been my best day so far, but I've moved from the mid 70's on average into the low 80's on most nights, which is a step up from a C to a B- and I'm encouraged by that.

I'd planned to go back to work last Monday, but by the time I got up and dressed, I needed a nap so I worked from home. Tuesday was much the same, except I had a popsicle for courage {don't ask me why, because I don't really know} and actually went to work instead of working from home. Wednesday morning I had a follow up with the PA, who again donned the light headband and armed with the cross-lock tweezers and a suction tool, went up my nose and cleaned it out. At one point, she got a pair of tweezers and pulled something out—I didn't look—and went back to suctioning. I wonder if she goes home at night and says to herself, "best job ever!"? She told me that the doctor had used the word "severe" in his notes in reference to the deviation of my septum. Part of the reason I put off going for so long {I've been thinking about it for a couple of years now} was because I was afraid I would get there and they would say, "nothing is wrong, you big whiner, so quit whining." It was a relief to know that there really was something wrong and that it has been corrected.

The PA noted that there was still quite a bit of swelling in my previously good nostril {the left one, in case you were wondering} because that was the side that the surgeon went in on. She told me that the swelling would go down, and after about four weeks I would be better than ever and I would wonder why I had put it off so long. That put me at ease, because on my way in I was wondering if the large chunk of change that was our portion after insurance had been worth it. I felt even better on my way out because I noticed a huge improvement from the little vacuuming job she did. Also, I was cleared to blow my nose. In the past week, there have been several times that I have noticed that breathing is a lot easier for me. I even woke up one night and realized that both my nostrils were open and that I had a nice flow of oxygen going there. I settled back to sleep with a smile on my face.

I constantly marvel at the amazing-ness of the world we live in. Sometimes, when I'm cooking up something yummy in the kitchen, I wonder if they had simple, ordinary, commonplace ingredients as readily available a century ago as we do now? Could Laura Ingalls stop at Olsen's Mercantile on her way home from school and pick up some chocolate chips? Or did their Coconut Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies just have oatmeal in them and she didn't even know to imagine chocolate chips and coconut? What if they wanted to have a curry? Did Nels stock Garam Masala {sidebar: I made the MOST FABULOUS Black-Eyed Pea Curry last night. You seriously have to give it a try, and make sure to add some cauliflower to it.}? What if the reason Nellie was so cranky is that she was lactose and gluten intolerant? Diagnosing that would have been next to impossible and changing her diet would have been entirely impossible. What if Ma had trouble delivering Carrie? Doc Baker couldn't give a her an epidural, let alone begin to imagine performing a c-section. There wasn't an outpatient treatment center for when Albert was hooked on morphine. He had to go cold turkey. And even the fancy doctors in Mancato couldn't have done my septoplasty.

We live in an age of abundance and modern convenience. This fairly non-invasive surgery {which will not result in my nose caving in. I asked.} has the potential to improve my quality of life on a very fundamental level. Or at least I am hopeful of that. I'm already feeling better. If my sleep doesn't improve to at least a B+ average, I'll pursue other diagnoses and treatments, which will involve gadgets and gizmos and tests the likes of which Doc Baker couldn't begin to fathom, even in his wildest dreams. In the meantime, I will continue to marvel at the technology that made my little modern miracle possible.

Tuesday Tales

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser — in case you thought optimism was dead. –Robert Brault

I forgot to post two Personal Progress Totes I finished this month with the bags I posted yesterday. I was planning to put them all together in one post but forgot, so you get to hear from me two days in a row, with is an altogether uncommon occurrence around here these days. We only had one April birthday girl in our ward.

And this second one is for one of my cousin's daughters. I made one for her other daughter earlier, and casually included it into my post with the ones for February and March birthdays, hoping she wouldn't notice her daughter's name. I sent both of them to her a few weeks ago as a surprise and she was tickled to receive them.

For me, that is what it is all about — I love it when someone loves what I have made for them. I put a lot of thought into the things I make and try to use fabrics and colors that suit that person. When I first started working with the Young Women, I had each of the girls fill out a questionnaire so that I could casually find out their favorite colors for the ribbons and their embroidered names. Even though all of the totes are made with the same fabric, I wanted them to be personalized for each girl.

A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by someone wondering if I would make a Gumnut Baby quilt, like the one I made for one of my Twi-Quilter friends. It was a collaboration quilt and we all made blocks for it. I did the center block, which featured the main characters, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.

For the most part, I turn down requests for commissions. Honestly, it takes all of the fun out of my "me time." It makes my hobby a job. I'm torn, on this one though. I love needle-turn appliqué. And I'm very flattered that someone liked my work enough to pay me to do it. But that's the sticky part right there. I don't know how much to charge. I'm sure those Gumnut Babies took at least 20 hours. Add to that quilting time and supplies and we're looking at $500+ for a baby quilt. I don't know if I would dare ask that. Another sticky spot is that I tend to procrastinate something I perceive as a chore. Creating for money makes it a chore. The person who wants the quilt doesn't need it until Christmas, but that just means I have lots of time to put it off and then I'll end up stressing myself out trying to pull it together at the last minute. I also don't know if I saved my pattern. I don't even know where to start to look for it. I'm a fool if I threw it out, regardless of whether or not I will ever make this block again. And then there's real life; kids, husband, church stuff, job, summer vacation . . .

Do all of those "cons" outweigh the joy of creating something so individualized? I don't know, but I probably should e-mail the person back to let them know I'm still considering. That is the polite thing to do. And whether or not I make the quilt, I can be polite.

Today's post brought to you by:

P.S. Don't tell, but I think those Gumnut Babies are a little bit creepy.

Perhaps You Will Not Find Her Common Now

Buttercup was raised on a small farm in the country of Florin. Her favorite pastimes were riding her horse and tormenting the farm boy that worked there. –The Princess Bride, book and screenplay by William Goldman

Anyone seen The Princess Bride? 1987. Robin Wright. Cary Elwes. Mandy Patinkin. André the Giant. Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True Love. Ring a bell? Among my siblings, The Princess Bride is probably the number one all-time favorite movie. We can all pretty much quote the entire movie.

The designers over at Fandom in Stitches, organized by the talented Jennifer Ofenstein, are having a Princess Bride-themed quilt and stitch along. And, well, when I say the designers, I kind of mean me, too. I've tested some of the Sesame Street patterns for one of the designers and I have a handful of my own patterns over at Fandom in Stitches. But I was surprised and excited to get an invitation to design for the As You Wish Quilt and Stitch-Along.

Jennifer had the characters chosen and quilt design already laid out when block sign-ups began, but each portrait or quote block was left entirely up to the designer. I signed up for an embroidery block; Princess Buttercup's embroidery block. I had my design finished in a matter of days {it was one of the things I was doing while I was procrastinating working on P's quilt, but I couldn't tell you that because it was totally under wraps}. And then I started to dabble with a paper pieced design for Buttercup herself. No one had signed up for her and so I timidly said that if no one else wanted her, I would do it. A few weeks went by and she was still available, so I designed my first every portrait block. It is very different from houses and trees and that kind of thing.

I used this screen cap from the end of the movie and Quilt Assistant to draft the pattern. She's not perfect, but she's pretty OK. The nose was the hardest thing to get right. After I put together my test block, I made a few tweaks to the pattern, so hopefully she will go together smoothly.

The embroidered quote block for Buttercup is actually a collection of quotes. I couldn't narrow it down. After I started stitching, I realized that this was a pretty ambitious block, so I also did an intermediate and a simple version, which are both included in the Buttercup pattern.

Patterns will be released every two weeks through May 7^th. I've seen them. They are going to be fabulous. I wasn't certain whether I was going to make the quilt or not, but now that I've seen the blocks and Jennifer's awesome layouts {four-patch or book pages; I'm going with the book pages} there will be blood tonight a Princess Bride quilt at my house.

Today's post brought to you by:

It Was Supposed To Be TARDIS Blue

{Image Source}

I'll be a story in your head. But that's OK: we're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know. It was the best: a daft old man, who stole a magic box and ran away. Did I ever tell you I stole it? Well, I borrowed it; I was always going to take it back. Oh, that box, Amy, you'll dream about that box. It'll never leave you. Big and little at the same time, brand-new and ancient, and the bluest blue, ever. –Doctor Who, season 5, episode 13, The Big Bang, Steve Moffat

I'm finally jumping on the Doctor Who Stitch-Along bandwagon over at Fandom in Stitches, even though I completely missed the boat {talk about your mixed metaphors. If I were really clever, I would have come up with something all time-wimey, TARDIS-y, bow-tie and fez cool. But I'm not.}. I have my patterns all printed out. I'm doing everything at half-size {4" instead of 8"} and am going to make a wall-hanging using the alternate TARDIS layout. {No. P.'s quilt isn't finished yet. This weekend. I promise. I only have a tiny bit to go on it. And I love how it is coming out. But this is what I do when I tell myself I can't work on anything else until the thing I'm currently working on is finished. Because technically speaking, thinking and planning new projects to work on is not actually working on something else.}. I even found the perfect wood-grain print fabric in TARDIS Blue. {It's an actual color. Pantone 2955C - 012C57 HEX - 1,44,87 RGB.}

So I ordered 2½ yards of it. It came in the mail yesterday. Did it not look TARDIS Blue in the swatch from the on-line listing above? Tell me that's not TARDIS Blue. It's totally TARDIS Blue. Below is what was in my package. This is definitely not TARDIS Blue.

Mr. Bug suggested dying it. Can I just say how much I love this man? He is a really great sounding board. I was actually already planning on discharging the dye from a small portion of the fabric to use to stitch the nine different Doctors on in the lower portion of the TARDIS, so that it would look like the panels on the side of the box, but give it a little bit of contrast in color. In my very quick perusal at Paula Burch's site on hand dyeing {thanks for the link, P.}, and with some fiddling around and probably an on-line dye order, it might be possible to pull it off. But sheesh. Why doesn't wood-grain print just come in TARDIS Blue already? I mean, it comes in Gray and Straw and Teal and Violet and whatever color it is that I got and about twelve other unlikely colors. So why not TARDIS blue?

Today's post brought to you by:

Wizards, Demi-Gods and the Half-Dead

Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen,
Voices whisper in the trees, "Tonight is Halloween!"
–Dexter Kozen

Costumes have been donned. Faces have been painted. Chili has been eaten. Thinly veiled threats have been made in order to garner candy. It is Halloween!

I love Halloween. It runs in the family. Seriously. Check out my sister's totally awesome Star Trek costumes. Anyway, sometimes I tend to go a little overboard in the planning of the costumes. And the execution and completion of said plans often takes longer than expected. Nevertheless, this year the challenge has been successfully met. And I didn't even have to stay up all night to do it. Almost. But not quite.

LadyBug has been planning her costume since last year. She is Annabeth Chase from the Percy Jackson series of books. We bought and dyed the t-shirt the perfect Camp Half-Blood orange and then I appliquéd the logo on it. We bought the cap {which allows Annabeth to turn invisible} and we made the necklace together.

LadyBug is all about the details, so we couldn't have an Annabeth costume without the necklace. We made beads from cornstarch dough, painted them and strung them together to look like the beads the demi-god kids at Camp Half-Blood get at the end of each summer. The beads have something on them that represents the most significant event that happened in the past year. After we dried the beads for a few hours in the oven, we let them sit overnight. LadyBug put the first coat of paint on and then I put a second one on. She either painted or drew with a metallic paint marker the designs on all the beads except for the green one with the winged sneaker on it, which she asked me to do. Annabeth's beads, from left to right: Thalia's Tree, A Centaur in a prom dress, Greek Trireme, Winged Sneaker, Arrow from the Hunters of Artemis, Trident, Golden Fleece, Daedalus' Maze, Empire State Building.

Cornstarch Clay
1 cup salt
⅓ cup water
½ cup cornstarch
¼ cup cold water

• In a small saucepan, heat the salt and ⅓ cup water over medium-high heat for about 4 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Remove from heat, stir in the cornstarch and add ¼ cup cold water. The mixture should now look like thick mashed potatoes; stir until it thickens.
• Let cool for a few minutes before kneading or shaping.

Notes
• If the clay is too sticky, knead in a little bit of cornstarch as needed.
• If the clay is too crumbly, place a little bit of water on your fingertips as you work with the clay to moisten.
• Air dry 1 to 4 days. For faster drying, place items on a cookie sheet and place in a 225˚ oven for 4 to 6 hours.
• Food coloring can be kneaded into the clay as desired.
• Store clay in a zippered baggie with a bit of wet sponge or a wet paper towel for up to 2 weeks.

Grasshopper asked me to make his costume in the middle of August, so I couldn't let him down. He found a set of instructions on-line for a Magicka Wizard Robe. Putting the pattern together was a bit laborious and I've almost forgotten how to sew a seam allowance bigger than ¼" or how to use pins. Once I got going, though, it was just like riding a bike and it came together pretty well.

Pretty snazzy mystical, huh? All the tweaking to the pattern paid off. The robe fits Grasshopper so well it's almost like it was custom made for him. Oh. Wait. It was.

This year, I wanted to do something besides my usual Professor McGonagall or Little Red Riding Hood. Pinspired, I decided to go with a little face paint.

Between you and me, I'm exhausted. I was up until 1:00 am finishing up and midnight the night before. I'm going to wash my face, turn off the porch light and go to bed early. Hopefully we won't get egged because we stopped giving out candy before 10:00 pm. And tomorrow I am going to do all the things I've been ignoring in order to pull off Halloween.

Today's post brought to you by:

"C" is for Cookie and "D" is for Dairy-Free

Now what starts with the letter "C?" Cookie starts with "C." Let's think of other things that start with "C?" Ah, who cares about other things.
"C" is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
"C" is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
"C" is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with "C!"
–Cookie Monster, The Cookie Song

I'm not a big fan of baking cookies. It takes a lot of time {a minimum of 2 hours a batch. Perhaps I'm just slow?}, dirties a lot of dishes and they disappear all too quickly from the plate only to reappear on my hips and thighs later. So I mostly buy cookies. Or at least I did until I gave up dairy. I still buy Oreos, because they are dairy-free {which makes me wonder what sort of chemicals they use to concoct the "creme" centers}, and I started buying a really yummy Coconut Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookie at a health-food shop downtown every once in a while when I'd stop in to pick up vegan sour cream for taco night. And then I decided that a $1.79 for one - 12,000 calorie cookie was kind of ridiculous. I figured out that I could buy a bag of dairy-free chocolate chips and make about 12,000 - one hundred calorie cookies {which comes out to about 8₵ a cookie} instead, so I changed my tune.

I found this recipe at The Live-In Kitchen. It was already in its third iteration, so I think it is OK to share my take on it because I've made a few tweaks.

Coconut Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup brown sugar
½ cup sugar
1 cup butter or butter substitute
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1½ teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut
2½ cups old-fashioned oats
¾ cup semi-sweet mini chocolate chips or dairy-free mini chips

• In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth.
• In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and coconut. Slowly add to the butter, sugar and egg mixture and beat until combined. Add the oats and chocolate chips and mix to incorporate.
• Drop by rounded tablespoon onto a baking sheet. Bake at 350˚ for approximately 10 minutes; let stand on baking sheet for 2 minutes before removing to a cooling rack. Store in an airtight container.

Makes about 6 dozen

Notes:
• If you are using real butter, use it at cool room temperature. If you are using butter substitute {I prefer the kind made with olive oil}, use it straight from the fridge.
• 10 minutes in my oven plus 2 minutes on the baking sheet {a preheated Pampered Chef baking stone} produces the perfect cookie — not to crispy and not too doughey. You may have to adjust for your oven and/or baking sheet, especially if you make larger cookies.

--

And everyone needs a good chocolate chocolate chip cookie recipe, even the dairy-free folks.

Arlene's Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup shortening
½ cup butter or butter substitute
2 cups sugar
1 cup brown sugar
5 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
5 cups flour
⅔ cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
¾ cups milk chocolate chips or dairy-free mini chips

• In a large mixing bowl, cream together shortening, butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth.
• In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Slowly add to the butter, sugar and egg mixture and beat until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
• Drop by rounded tablespoon onto a baking sheet. Bake at 350˚ for approximately 10 minutes; let stand on baking sheet for 2 minutes before removing to a cooling rack. Store in an airtight container.

Makes about 8 dozen

Notes:
• If you are using real butter, use it at cool room temperature. If you are using butter substitute {I prefer the kind made with olive oil}, use it straight from the fridge.
• The type of cocoa powder you use makes a difference. In the first batch, I used regular cocoa powder. I was disappointed with the color and the flavor. The second time I made these, I used Hershey's Special Dark, which is a blend of regular and Dutch-processed cocoas and it made a huge difference. Someday, I may even get my hands on 100% Dutch-processed cocoa.
• Obviously, the flavor will be different if you use milk chocolate chips versus the dairy-free semi-sweet chips. Whichever chip you use, I highly recommend that you use mini chips. They're just so darn cute.
• 10 minutes in my oven plus 2 minutes on the baking sheet {a preheated Pampered Chef baking stone} produces the perfect cookie — not too crispy and not too doughy. You may have to adjust for your oven and/or baking sheet, especially if you make larger cookies.

The Early Bird

The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. –Unknown

According to Phineas and Ferb, there are 104 days of summer vacation. The Not-So-Little Bugs say it is more like 77½. Whatever the case, the annual problem is finding a good way to spend those days. We're only mid-way through our first week and I'm running out of ideas.

One of my goals before turning 40 was to learn to love mornings. Mornings have been my arch nemesis for many years. On-again off-again insomnia, pregnancy and having newborns and naughty energetic toddlers who wouldn't stay in bed interrupted my sleep patterns and I never had a pressing need to adjust them back. I grew to love the quiet time at night. I felt my best in the evenings and liked to create at that time of day. But I realized that it might be beneficial to make friends, once again, with the early hours of the day. I made a little progress; if not friends, mornings and I are at least allies. Logically, I know that getting up earlier and getting a jump on the day is less frustrating for me. Physically, by about 9:30 pm my eyelids are drooping and I no longer want to stay up until 1:00 am sewing. But mentally, I miss that quiet time after everyone's gone to bed. And I never spring out of bed bright eyed and bushy tailed when my alarm goes off. As a matter of fact, when my alarm goes off I wonder why it is going off so early. I can't ever think of a reason for it and sometimes sleep until my back-up alarm goes off. It is only once I get up and get moving that I remember why I needed to get up so early. I'm not a very clear thinker while I'm half alseep.

It was with great trepidation, then, that I decided that I would push my alarm time back a full hour so that I could get to work and back before the day has barely begun. There were many factors that went into this decision, but being home for the greater part of the day to help the Not-So-Little Bugs fill their summer vacation weighed in the heaviest. They have lists of chores and suggested activities they have to do, but I just feel like a kid needs his/her mom around during those long, lazy days of summer, to at least try to keep the chaos from getting too out of hand.

Having a day that is heavily weighted during the daylight hours is very interesting. Although I was getting up early enough to shower and get dressed before helping the Not-So-Little Bugs get to school, I also took a little time for myself to read blogs eat a leisurely breakfast, balance my checkbook, or send e-mails, among other things, before I went to work. I've cut all of that out of my routine and I'm out the door with my breakfast in hand before the Not-So-Little Bugs are even awake. When I get home, we have lunch, do our afternoon chores together and by 4:00 in the afternoon I'm wondering what to do with myself.

Getting up at a quarter-to-the-crack-of-dawn is definitely not my favorite thing ever. It requires that I go to bed at 9:00 pm, so that I can toss and turn the requisite 45 minutes before falling asleep. And even with a full eight hours of sleep built into the schedule, I still wonder why in the world my alarm is going off so early. I've discovered something interesting, though. The world is just as quiet in the early morning as it is late at night. The difference for me is momentum. At the end of the day I'm already moving, so it is easier to keep on moving. In the morning, I'm at a dead standstill and it is harder to get that momentum.

Perhaps if I keep plugging away at it, I'll get the hang of mornings. In the meantime, I'm going to see if I can figure out how to get my iPhone to play a few get-up-and-go tunes instead of an alarm in the mornings. And I'll keep looking for things to add to my list of fun {free} things to do during summer vacation. Maybe that will help me get rid of the earworm I've had since last Friday.

More Piano Guys

Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead. –Benjamin Disraeli

Saturday night we, the Not-So-Little Bugs, Mr. Bug and I, had the wonderful opportunity to attend a concert by The Piano Guys. They are a favorite at our house. We saw them in concert a little over a year ago, and when I saw their tour schedule had a stop in Salt Lake City, I jumped at the chance to see them again.

The hall was at capacity and as expected, it was a wonderful concert. One of the highlights for me was when Steven Sharp Nelson, the cello player, invited his wife on stage and they performed together. She played the violin and he played the guitar. {He also plays the violin, piano and kick drum. Whaddaya know?} The piece is Ashokan Farewell.



Other highlights include Jon Schmidt's daughter performance in the choir, which sang Simple Gifts during their Somewhere Over the Rainbow/Simple Gifts mash-up. And Alex Boyé performed Peponi with them.

It was nearly 2½ hours of pure musical enjoyment.

And here's another amazing Piano Guys video.

Fabulous Fandom Mash-Up

Mash-up: noun, a creative combination or mixing of content from different sources

Fandom in Stitches is a really fun site that hosts lots and lots of {free} patterns for all kinds of fandoms. You can find Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Disney Princesses. That is where I got the patterns for the Sesame Street quilt I'm working on, and where lots of Twilight patterns, including the few I've designed, are hosted.

Jennifer, the owner/editor/designer of Fandom in Stitches, announced a little mash-up challenge last month. The rules were simple; choose any Fandom In Stitches pattern and make it into a project for a different fandom than originally intended.

I didn't think much about it, until just before the entry period closed and one of the Twi-Quilters suggested that I submit something I'd already done. The wheels in my brain started to turn and I realized that I had two other things I could submit. So, I did.

Voting is going on now through the 7^th, over at Fandom in Stitches. Go. Have a look. And vote . There are so many clever mash-ups over there, so don't feel like you have to vote for me. If I weren't voting for myself, I would probably vote for this one.

Twilight Saga Charity Quilt

When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it’s not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end. –Bella Swan, Twilight, page 1

I know. My geek is showing. But we're all friends here, right? And it's no secret that I ♥ Twilight. Since January of 2009, I've been working on a Twilight-themed quilt {which I really want to finish this year} and also collaborating with an on-line group of friends to create more Twilight-themed quilts, which have been auctioned or "raffled" off and all the proceeds given to charity. We call ourselves the Twi-Quilters. And we all love Twilight. But more than that, we've become friends.

All told, we've made seven eight quilts together and we are proud to show our ninth quilt and to give you an opportunity to win it—all for charity, of course.

My part in this quilt was the center block; representations of the four book covers. The patterns were designed by Cat, and I'd done three of the four covers several times each. The Eclipse cover was the only one I hadn't done and I was excited to try it. I enlarged the patterns to 12" and used my favorite Fairy Frost fabrics to put them together.

Our group members have donated all the fabrics and supplies as well as our time, to create this beautiful quilt, which includes our favorite scenes from all four of the Twilight Saga books. Angie, our quilter extraordinaire, has expertly and artfully finished the quilt and we're going to give it away to one lucky fan! For every $5 donation from you, which will go directly to George Mark Children's House, you’ll get one chance to win the quilt. We hope you'll give generously to this worthy cause. Donations will be accepted through March 9, 2013 and the winner will be announced by March 15, 2013.

Visit the Twilight Saga Quilt Page for more information and links to posts about the individual blocks..

Make your donation

Favourite Things Friday: River Song

The only water in the forest is the river. –Doctor Who, season 6 episode 4, The Doctor's Wife, Neil Gaiman

I ♥ Dr. Who. I may have mentioned it once or twice. Twelve or thirteen episodes a year is, frankly, not enough. So when season seven started in September of last year, preceded by a showing of all the Doctor Who episodes from the beginning of time {or since the series' reboot in 2005, and by the way, that's funny because it is a show about time travel}, I DVRed them all and started watching again from season one. And I fell in love all over again. The Doctor is brilliant. His companions are amazing, every single one of them. But my favorite of them all is River Song.

Best. Story Arc. Ever.

River drops into The Doctor's life mid-way through season four in a two-part episode that ranks in my top five favorites. She's called him for help using psychic paper and greets him with a very familiar, "hello sweetie." She knows absolutely everything about him, only he doesn't know who she is. Not a clue. But with one whispered word he trusts her completely. And it's absolutely maddening because we may never see her again. His first meeting with her is her last encounter with him.

The beauty of a show about time travel is that anything is possible. As River puts it, her timeline and The Doctor's timeline are back to front. River turns up again in season five, with her signature, "hello, sweetie," and an air of confidence that rivals The Doctor's. The more we see River, the more questions there are about her. She knows things The Doctor doesn't even know. And when she shows up with a six shooter on her hip in episode one of season six and blows the Stetson right off The Doctor's head, we know we're in for a great season. {Sidebar: how did I not know they were filming in Utah? I totally would have gone to see them!}


I searched high and low for a video that would give you the flavor of River Song without any spoilers and this is one of the rare times that the Media Pirates at YouTube have not come through with something brilliant. I wanted to show you her amazing bravado, her cool-headed brilliance, her knowing demeanor and especially the clever things she says. Most of the videos were set to music, and didn't allow much of the dialogue that makes River River. This is the closest I could come to what I wanted, which means, of course, that you'll just have to watch the series and find out for yourself. Netflix has got you covered. And may I recommend you start from season one? Even though Mr. Bug insists that each episode is entertaining on its own, there are things in there that you really can't miss {see also, The Face of Boe}.

Today's post brought to you by:

A Little {Piano Guys} Love

It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
–Unknown

My favorite way to spend Valentine's Day is doing something special for the people I love. Flowers and chocolate and paper hearts never live up to their expectations and waiting an hour for a table at a restaurant is not my idea of relaxing. I find that I enjoy the day much more when I find a way to do something nice for the people I care about. Today I'm doing individual heart-shaped pizzas topped with whatever the Not-So-Little Bugs and Mr. Bug want. They like it and it makes me happy to do it for them.

In the vein of love and sharing, something that I love and always want to share is the The Piano Guys. Their newest video is so much fun! As a side note, we have tickets to go see them in May! I'm so excited!

Available for purchase from The Piano Guys, at Amazon or on iTunes.
Tour Information

I also really loved the vocal version.


However you celebrate today, may you find love in one of its many forms.

Something New: Mission Impossible Style

Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others. –Jonathan Winters

A couple of years back, I made a section of Double Wedding Ring and framed it. It was a wedding gift for a girl in our ward {congregation}, who I didn't know very well at all. Another woman in the ward made the wedding dress and contacted me about making something keepsake-ish with the left-over wedding dress fabric. She had the scoop on the wedding colors and flowers. The planets aligned and the perfect line of fabric in those colors fell right in my lap and it worked out beautifully.

In a few weeks, another girl in our ward is getting married. She comes from a wonderful family and I know this girl a lot better. She was my favorite babysitter, when I could get her. You sometimes had to book two weeks out. When I heard she was getting married, a single thought fluttered around in my head for a few minutes about doing something special for her and then it fluttered on its way.

When I received her invitation in the mail, I started thinking seriously about making something special for her, realizing that I only had a month until the wedding. After all, I went to a lot of trouble for a girl I barely knew, at someone else's suggestion. I wanted to do something equally special for this sweet girl. I decided to recreate the Double Wedding Ring in a frame.

I started asking around about my young friend's wedding colors and flowers and if she was having her dress made. She bought her dress. No problem. I could just use white fabric for the background fabrics. Her flowers are white roses with a bunch of other random flowers. Again, no problem. I can do white roses and random. And her wedding colors are Eggplant and Lilac and Sage and Lime Green. And that's where things got sticky. Purple is the hardest color in the universe to match precisely and my ideas of lime green and sage green don't go together. I wanted to keep this a surprise from the girl and her mother, so there were a few days of debate in my head on what to do about choosing the right colors of fabric. I shopped on-line because it is convenient and I can do it after the Not-So-Little Bugs go to bed. But matching colors on line, especially when you're going in blind, is a crap shoot.

I started by searching "eggplant." I found a pretty Joel Dewberry floral and looked for fabrics to go with it, in shades of dark and light purple in the eggplant and lilac family.

I agonized for ages about which fabrics I'd picked and kept shopping carts open for three days in two on-line stores, taking things out of the carts and putting them back in. It took a week for all the fabric to get here and when it did, I started to worry about the colors all over again. I worried that I'd missed the mark, especially with the lilac I'd chosen. Then there was the fact that some of the fabrics didn't match at all. The dark solid fabric on the far left is more raisin than eggplant. And those polka dots are way too pink. Some of the greens were a little off too.

With no small amount of further internal debate, I decided to see if I could get color swatches without arousing too much suspicion. I called the mother of the bride-to-be and she was most obliging and didn't ask too many questions, presumably because they were right in the middle of dinner when I called. She sent one of her boys over with the swatches, and I was relieved to find that most of what I ordered will work.

I did a little stash diving to flesh out the color ranges {I'll show you later; it was too dark to get good pictures} and threw the new fabrics in the wash.

In the meantime, I've been doodling quilting designs. My pencil sketches kind of remind me of blue prints. When I quilted the first DWR, I did what I knew, which wasn't much; echo quilting ¼" away from all the seams. My quilting skills have improved since then, and I want to do something really special.

I'm pretty sure this needs a little more work. Perhaps just a single half-feather?

And I'm not really sure about this. I love how the curved lines converge in the corners, but I don't like the uneven gap it leaves in the center. Mr. Bug says it looks like a Crusaders' Cross and I can see what he means. He also said it looks too "plaid," but that I can't see, because what I see in my head is solid white fabric, quilted in white, with little crystals in each of the small squares that are created when the lines intersect. If only I could get rid of that gap and still keep the cool corners, but I might just have to quilt this in straight lines. Opinions?

I don't even have an idea of what to quilt in the rings. If you have ideas or have seen something spectacular quilted in a DWR, please point me in that direction.

The wedding is February 16^th. That gives me 19 18 days to get this finished. It will probably take a week to get it framed {remind me to call on that tomorrow, so I know for sure}, so that gives me about 9 days to cut, assemble, quilt and mount this little project. It will be cutting it close, but I think that will give the framers enough time to get it back to me so I can get it to the bride before the wedding.

Mr. Bug asked me if it was even possible for me to get this done, knowing that the last week and the first week of the month are my busiest times at work and I often work 40 hours during those weeks. I told him, probably not, but I'm going to try anyway.

A little theme music, please.

Random Bits: Christmas Wrap-Up Edition

The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. For instance, you can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can't. But pirate is in your blood, boy, so you'll have to square with that some day. And me, for example, I can let you drown, but I can't bring this ship into Tortuga all by me onesies, savvy? So, can you sail under the command of a pirate, or can you not? –Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

Calling this a wrap-up post isn't quite accurate since you get pretty much everything about Christmas this year in one post. But I love a good pun, so just go with it.

What I Can Do
In the past few weeks I've been thinking a lot about what I can't do. Perhaps there has been some tiny shift in the cosmos that has caused time to speed up, and therefore, I can't get as much done in one day as I used to. Quite possibly, my responsibilities at work have increased and I have 10 to 15 fewer hours each week to work with, depending on the week. Or maybe I just overestimate my abilities. Whatever the case, it seems like there is an awful lot of stuff that I can't do.

I just celebrated my 2-year anniversary at work. Since I started working, I've been struggling with finding the right balance. And I've never actually considered myself as "working." In my head, this has only been a temporary thing. Two years is less temporary than I'd hoped. We have a plan in place, which makes my employment status even more less temporary. But I'd still like to think of it as temporary. What's a couple more years, right?

In the meantime, I'll continue to work on balance. I've been finishing far fewer projects and blogging a lot less than I would like to. And it will probably have to stay that way for a while. LadyBug, Grasshopper and Mr. Bug are my top priority, and that is how it should be. In the mean time, I'm going to focus on what I can do, for and with my family as well as my personal pursuits.

Neighbor Gifts 2012: Felted Wool Ornaments
It is with the "what I can do" mindset that I approached my Christmas crafting this year. I love to give handmade gifts. But there just wasn't time to do something for everyone on my list. So, I focused on what I could do. In our neighborhood, we have a tradition of taking around a little something to each other. Over the years, I've done several different things, but my favorite thing, by far, is to make ornaments. I've been collecting ideas for handmade Christmas ornaments, and have decided that I'm never going to bake and decorate 42 dozen sugar cookies, or mix up 250 servings of minty hot cocoa mix ever again. Granted, making an ornament for each family on my list probably takes the same amount of time, but there are so many fewer dirty dishes that it is worth it.

This year, I didn't get started on my ornament making until the 20^th, but I was determined to get it done. My brother got married on the 15^th and I was trying to get a quilt done for him {still working on that}, as well as make skirts and blouses for LadyBug and me for the wedding. I also had work and laundry and snow shoveling and life to fit in there. And then there was the matter of finding the right felt for the job. I was inspired by the pretty red felted wool ornaments P. made and who graciously shared her pattern, but was going to make due with some cheap acrylic felt. After further consideration, I decided that felted wool was the only way to go, but wasn't sure if I'd be able to find the right wool item to thrift/get enough thrifted wool to make my ornaments so I bought a yard of winter white wool at JoAnn's {thank you 50% off coupon} and felted it. I'm not 100% sure, but I think I saved money by buying wool yardage and felting it myself vs. buying felted wool at a quilt shop.

This year, I had 55 families on my list. I know. I'm nuts. Once you make my list, the only way to get off is to move and not leave a forwarding address. As I assessed the situation, I realized that I could not get 55 ornaments done and delivered by the 24^th. A few cuts had to be made. Since our families have the gift of us, I crossed off members of both mine and Mr. Bug's families, reducing the number of ornaments to be made in 3½ days from 55 to 38. Here are 25 of the 36 I finished before Christmas. 11 had already either been hand delivered or mailed out when I took this and I still have two more to make and send out. Obviously, those are going to arrive after all the decorations have been put away. But it's the thought that counts, right?

Yes, I'm feeling the guilt for cutting our family members from the list. But it was what I could do. I'm starting next year's ornaments tomorrow so I don't have to leave anyone off the list.


Christmas Greetings
Not everyone who gets a Christmas card gets an ornament, but everyone who gets an ornament also gets a card. Again, the only way to get off the list is to move and not leave a forwarding address. Even then, I may still track you down. We send out 108 cards this year. I've tried to cut my list, but it is pointless. I don't want anyone to feel left out. That includes you, so I hope you won't mind a virtual card.

The Great iOS Debate: Escalated
Ever since the iPhone came out {in 2007, I believe}, I've wanted one. The problem is, I think it is absolutely ridiculous to pay $80 a month for service. When the iPad came out, I kind of lost interest in the iPhone, because an iPad seemed much more useful. I discussed this at great length several months ago, when the iPhone became available through Virgin Mobile, but the debate was tabled because we needed a new oven.

After Thanksgiving, the prices of the iPhone 4S dropped and I decided that it was time. To tell you how truly busy things have been around here, I've had this awesome new piece of technology in my possession for 2½ weeks now and haven't blogged a peep about it.

As a matter of fact, I've already dropped it hard enough to break it, if it weren't for the OtterBox I got to go with it. You can see the divot on the bottom corner, there.

Apple iPhone 4S, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. OK. I won't. Because if I did, I'd go on and on and on for more than you all would care to read. I'm guessing that a lot of people have already lost interest in this extremely long post and quit reading two subtitles ago. So in the interest of keeping it interesting, or at least from getting more long winded and boring, I'll cut straight to the chase. I love my iPhone SO MUCH that I now want an iPad also. Or maybe an iPad Mini. Or maybe both. It is that awesome.

Christmas Joy
Christmas at Bug Cottage was pretty good this year. Mr. Bug and I had the shopping done by the 19^th and I have enjoyed watching everyone enjoy their presents. As for me, aside from the iPhone, which is part Christmas and part because it was time for a new phone, I think my favorite gift was a Gingher rotary cutter from my Mom. It was unexpected, unnecessary and extravagant. In other words, it was perfect.

I've already put it to use. About 2½ years ago, Shay and I did a fabric exchange. I sent her some random bits of brown and pink fabrics and she sent me a completely awesome layer cake of Sparkle All the Way. Since then, I've been on the look-out for the perfect quilt to put it to use in. I entertained several ideas, but nothing seemed just right. A couple of weeks ago, I was inspired by the Brights Christmas Quilt Amy over at Diary of A Quilter put together. I hopped on over to her Etsy shop to check out the pattern she used, and found an even better fit for the layer cake. I ordered some Remix dots, found a couple of the Sparkle All the Way prints, as well as some prints from a couple other Robert Kaufman Christmas lines, and voilá. I have a complete kit for one fantastic Christmas quilt. For sometime in the future. Don't mock. It's what I can do right now. And it's all cut out for when I finally get around to it.

We Three Kings
I know Christmas was yesterday, but The Piano Guys' awesomeness doesn't have an expiration date.