Monday

I'm having a "blah" day. Wake me up when it's over, please.

A meal... and then some

There's dinner, and then there's DINNER. Bill and I took his folks out to dinner for their joint birthdays last night at Cavallos in Easton, PA. What can tell you about this place? It is truly a one-of-a-kind dining experience. It is open by reservation only, once Bill and I were the only people there - someone came up and knocked on the door, but they couldn't come in because they hadn't made a reservation. We got there at 6 and didn't leave until close to 11. Slow service, you say? Nah, not at all. Cavallos is all about the relaxing experience of fine dining with 5 courses and plenty of time to digest between courses. The chairs range from upholstered dining room chairs to fancy thrones with high backs that stretch above your head about a foot. The tables are generously sized - no pushing silverware and glasses aside to make room for another dish. I wish I'd had a camera with me last night. Shirley Cavallo and her son Brondo really have created an oasis of a restaurant. We walked through the restaurant at one point and admired all the paintings done by Antonio and Martha Salemme. We stopped by the kitchen at one point and talked with Shirley who was putting together the next course. She is such a warm and friendly lady with so many stories of various people. Last night she came and sat with us as we were finishing up dessert to write down her recipe for the cake and she talked about when Charles Nelson Reilly came through town (I know, that was like a century ago, but I remember him on those game shows). She said she was told that they used to tape 5 of those shows in one day. After they taped the Mon-Wed shows, they would go out for lunch and get plastered. Then they would come back and tape the Thurs and Friday shows completely hammered - those must be the ones I remember because I thought they were hilarious. Anyway, I ate so much that I think I'll have to not eat for the next week to make up for it. Strawberries dipped in chocolate to start, then a vegetable napoleon thing with sausage and baked pear, followed by french onion soup, then a lobster ravioli (yeah, about this time I was about ready to keel over - these were full size plates, not those little ones), my MIL and I had the same entree, a filet mignon with sweet potato and green beans, Bill and his dad had duck with I don't know what else was on the plate(the plate was the size of a serving tray and it was heaped up and overflowing with other things on it as well as the side of duck), last, but not least was dessert - a really moist orange cake with lemon curd on one side of the plate and some kind of a whipped strawberry sauce and whipped cream on the other. Holy moly! All they needed was to put sofas along the walls and we would have all stumbled onto one and slept for hours!

One-Block Wonder - Getting started

I'm using this book as a guideline to making my own one-block wonder quilt. The book has pretty clear instructions, and the photo illustrations are really good. The technique isn't new by any means (anybody remember Stack and Whack by Bethany Reynolds?!) and it uses a ton of fabric, but at least it's just ONE fabric. And there's the beauty of it - one fabric that produces a hundred different blocks. You'll see. Follow along with me.....

The fabric I'm using isn't what I would have picked out for myself since I'm not much of a fan of black backgrounds. But I chose this particular fabric with an eye toward my parents' new condo - I think the black with touches of reds, yellows, greens and a hint of blue will go in their new great room really well. I can almost ALWAYS count on finding what I'm looking for at my local quilt shop (Kindred Quilts). Take a good look at the fabric - when it's all said and done, you'll never know that was the base of it all.

The following is going to be really abbreviated, for the whole, entire, complete she-bang, you really will have to get the book! The first step is to find the repeats in the pattern of the fabric and, to make hexagons, you'll need to cut 6 (some icky math : hexagon = 6 sides) sections of the fabric. This is why you need some major yardage - I used a little over 4 yards. Carefully stack the 6 sections on top of each other. Use pins to line up the edges by pinning through the exact same place in all six sections. This is the real pain in the butt part - time-consuming, and nitpicky. Haste makes waste. 

Now that the sections are pinned on all four sides, I carefully lay this out on the cutting board and make the first cut to trim up one edge. I only cut about 1/2". Then I make the first, gulp, real cut. It's a 3 and 3/4" strip from selvage edge to selvage edge. Put a couple pins in the large section and cut another strip.

Laying one strip out on the cutting board, I used my equilateral triangle (icky math alert: all 3 sides are equal) ruler and cut the triangle sections out. I have to take the time to pin each section together - after all, I'll have... hmm, I didn't count, but surely more than 70 of these sections, and I sure would hate to drop them and they get all mixed up!

I felt like peeking at a couple of the sections. I fanned four of them out to see what the final image will look like.

Now that's inspirational!! I can hardly wait - each one of the triangle sections cut from 6 strips will be a slightly different version.

Sighs.... of disappointments and relief

Well, VT lost to Ol Miss. That was a real bummer. Major bummer. Crushing. Disappointing. Did I mention bummer? Oh well, they have a good team with a bunch of up and coming freshmen so I predict they will just get better and better each year. Will had such a blast at the games with friends, screaming, painting their faces and hair, and just the whole experience - it just cements his love for the school all the more with each day. VT is so great about giving students access to the games and events - he even got to go to the Baseball game when the Yankees came and played a couple of weeks ago. As a Yankee fan, that was really neat. I can't say enough good things about Virginia Tech. I am thrilled that Will loves it so much.

Now if I could just get Steven to feel the same way.... he did visit York College and ...... drumroll please...... hated it! Ha! I'm kind of glad but also sad because I do hope he finds a school to love the way his brother does. So I asked him what it was that he didn't like in particular and he said the surrounding town seemed really depressed and that the school itself seemed too small. Okay, those are concrete elements that can help narrow a list of schools. Ahem, Blacksburg, VA is a great college town..... and the campus is not too small either..... ahem, just saying! Steven wants to be able to ski - I reminded him that Will's roommate went skiing almost every other weekend in Jan and Feb. Just putting that into the hopper, ya know.

Ramblings

Well, American Idol last night was much better than the recent rehash of the Beatles. A couple of standout performances (to ME) from Syesha, Brooke, Michael and David Cook. I did like David A, and Carly, Chickeze and Jason were okay. Ramielle and Kristy were not favorites. I keep expecting Ramielle to belt it out and last night was the closest she's gotten to doing it... I was disappointed. Kristy did okay with her patriotic song, dressed like Marcia Brady (!), but it was too little, too late for me. I won't watch the results show tonight since VT is playing again in the NIT, but then I never do like watching the results shows. How long does it take to eliminate one singer?! Apparently a whole hour, ugh. Nevermind all that filler stuff, just give me the last five minutes and I'm good.

Today Bill and Steven are going to visit York College in PA. It's a good 3 hours away. Decent premed type program which is what Steven thinks he'd be interested in. Cracks me up - premed. Puh-leeze, the kid has no idea of the amount of work he'd be in for. It's not like he's that much of a student right now either, and definitely he's not an aggressive go-getter. But at least he's thinking about it a little, and if this is what he's come up with for an interest, then great. Like many, if not most, college students, he'll probably change his mind once he gets going with classes. Heck, I was 100% certain that I wanted to major in Chemistry in college. I graduated with a BA in History instead.  But, I'm really hoping that after his visit today, he'll prefer Virginia Tech. I would LOVE for both boys to be at VT. Love it. They wouldn't even be in the same school there, and would have to make a point to see each other since by the time Steven gets there, Will would be off-campus so it's not like they would be on top of each other or anything. But it's such a great school, and if Steven changes his mind on what he wants to do at VT, they have EVERYTHING! Oh well, I refuse to push him into what I want, so this opinion is on the downlow (is that really a word?). 

Go Tech!

Well, no close up of my baby at the game although we did get just a glimpse of him in the final seconds of the game. He was cheering like crazy in the split second we saw! It must be such a blast to be at a college game like that, surrounded by at least hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow students all revved up over the same thing. Sure beats watching it on TV. Then again, watching it on your own TV, curled up on your own sofa, without an obnoxious fan screaming in your ear...... and no line for snacks or the bathroom... hmm, staying home sounds pretty good! It was a fun game to watch. I hope Virginia Tech can keep the momentum going. The next game is tomorrow night.

Today is the first really pretty day in quite awhile. The sun is shining and the crocuses are blooming. I feel like spring is really around the corner. In fact, I'm feeling so chipper that I even bought fabric for a new project! 

Book Drive

This morning, Steven and I got up early, well, 8am is early for Saturday, and got ready to go to the book drive and help out. We got there at 9 and things were just getting set up. It seemed like total chaos when we got in there, but we got our instructions and figured it would make sense as we went along. It's amazing how many books are donated for these book drives. Thousands and thousands. It was a pretty chilly morning and there was a snow flurry as we started. Cars would drive up, and volunteers would unload the boxes and/or bags of books from the back. The boxes/bags would get put on the ramps with wheels so they could just be shoved down to the sorting tables. There were 6 of us sorting at first - the books would get sorted into paperbacks and hardbacks, children's books, oversized, etc. So I get into a rhythm, pile here, pile there, this here, that there, toss the bag or throw the box over to where the box cutting guys are. Bag after bag and box after box...I was really getting tired when I looked at my watch and it was only 10:30! Ack! Darn it, I'm not having fun and time is NOT flying! And just when I think I'm really making a dent in things, I turn around and, gasp, there must be at least 20-30 bags/boxes stacked up behind me! Where did they come from?! And I realize that the bags and boxes are piled up knee deep under tables, under the wheely ramp, beside the doors, stretched out behind the row of tables, and on and on and on. OMG. What in hell did I sign up for?! It reminds me of the "I Love Lucy" episode where she and Ethel work in the chocolate shop wrapping chocolates and the ramp carrying chocolates moves faster and faster and Lucy and Ethel panic and start shoving chocolates in their mouths and in their shirts. 

This must be what it's like to work in a post office, where the mail simply never stops coming in, and there is never an end in sight. Or a factory job where you're doing the same thing over and over. I completely appreciate that it takes a special person to be able to do that kind of thing day after day after day when you never truly feel like you have finished a job. Ah well, there's something for everybody in this world, I always say. And I'll go back and work some more for the book drive. After all, many hands make light work.

Friday Quilts

I think I'll make every Friday a quilt day. I'll put up a picture of either a finished quilt (by me), a current quilt project, or a vintage quilt from my collection. Today's quilt is the one in the April 2008 issue of McCalls Quilting Magazine. It was made from the Katmandu line of fabric from Mark Lipinski*. Actually I made this quilt for Mark for the 2007 Spring Quilt Market to help debut the new line. His booth was just amazing - filled to the rim with projects such as clothing, bags, quilts, embellished works of arts - it was really beautiful. If you haven't already seen this fabric line, get thee hence to your quilt shop and get some! It's perfect for embellishing, but just as great for regular piecework. I'm not much of an artsy-fartsy quilter, much prefer the traditional patterns with a twist. This is about as artsy as I get!

*I'll write about Mark one of these days. He's one of my most favorite people in my little quilting world.

A Virginia Tech fan

I totally forgot that Virginia Tech was playing Morgan in the NIT last night. I meant to tape it since it was playing on ESPN. So imagine my surprise when my brother calls out of the blue saying "I just saw Will on TV! He's painted up, but it's definitely him!" I asked him to back it up and take a picture of the tv screen for me. Here's my baby on the right sitting with a buddy, another engineering student, on the left. Orange hair?? Hope it washes out! 

Hybrids....and other bells and whistles

After driving a minivan for years (and years and years), dear H asked me to think about getting a new car. I spent weeks checking out various models on Edmunds.com and other car sites. I narrowed it down to the Toyota Highlander Hybrid and the Lexus RX400h. Both pretty much the same (except the Lexus is much prettier), but the clincher was that the Toyota takes regular gas while the Lexus takes premium. Well, with gas here going back up to $3.15 a gallon (and probably higher), it was a no brainer. My only caveat - no silver! I've driven silver cars for over 15 years and hate it! I've always wanted green or red. So H takes the minivan and negotiates a really great deal on the trade-in plus the Highlander. He calls me down to the dealership to help empty out the minivan and to give me the "bad" news. Because there are apparently so few hybrids in stock, the dealer gave him a great break in the price on the fully loaded model on the lot. Fully loaded - there are so many bells and whistles on this thing, it will take me 2 weeks to get through the manual, never mind setting everything up.  Actually it's kind of nice and exciting - the bluetooth phone thing is going to be a godsend now that NJ has made cell phone usage a primary offense. The dvd player probably won't get much, if any, use, but whatever. A backup camera could be fun in the grocery store parking lot.... and the navigation system should be a hoot. Maybe I'll start branching out now that I'll have a safety net for my poor sense of direction. So all in all, pretty dang cool car. 

The bad news.... heh, yeah, it's silver.

A beginning...

Excuse my mistakes as I experiment with the whole blogging thing. I think I'll pick up a few tricks like adding pictures as I go along, but for tonight, I'll just keep it simple. I'm working on a Macbook Pro, a first after many years of frustrating experiences with PCs. I may never go back. I've never had a computer so user-friendly. I think when the desktop computer dies, it will be replaced with another Mac. I hope it happens soon :) The only thing I wish were different would be that my quilt design program, EQ6, was available on the Mac. Instead I have had to get the QuiltPro program and it's nowhere near the same in the ease of design as EQ.