Kitchen Parking Pad

We have a TV in the kitchen and I got tired of seeing this mess on the table … And … where’s the pen?

So, I decided to make a place for everything and everything in its place.  I call it the “Parking Pad”.

I drew around each item on a piece of Freezer Paper:I took those rough measurements and came up with this layout in EQ7:The finished Parking Pad:
  And how it looks with everything in its place:
What you don’t see is the little notes I can hide away underneath it.  An added benefit – if I’m sitting across from the Parking Pad, I don’t have to get up to grab a control or the phone, I can just pull the Parking Pad towards me.

It’s the little things in life …

Living vicariously

Today while I was at the grocery store, there was a young girl behind the counter in the bakery and she was talking to a fellow employee about going home to wash her face & put on new make-up and get ready to go out.

I said that I can’t remember the last time I’d talked to someone who said they were going out on New Year’s Eve and neither could all the other eavesdroppers! 

I asked if she could let us know her plans for the evening.  She said she was going to a Peruvian Restaurant with her boyfriend and his parents and then to Bayside in Miami for the rest of the evening.  I told her I would be living vicariously through her evening!

I remember when I went out to a restaurant on New Year’s Eve with a young man & his parents.  Fifty years later, that same young-at-heart man & I are staying home on this New Year’s Eve & will be lucky if we stay up as late as 10:30pm !

Oh, and at that restaurant of long ago – I had lobster.  It was $4.50.

Hope you have some Happy New Year’s Eve memories, too. 
Let’s all make a Happy New Year’s Eve memory …

Pretzel Jell-O Salad

My younger sister sent me a recipe and I just had to share it.  She said it’s an old recipe and had made the rounds in the Midwest about 10 years ago.  I had never heard of it.  Maybe you haven’t, either.

The tartness of the raspberries, the sweet of the Jell-O and sugar, the coolness of the cream cheese and the saltiness of the pretzels make a song in your mouth!

Pretzel Jell-O Salad

1.  Spray or butter a 9 x 13 pan  (you could cut recipe in half for an 8 x 8 size)
    2 CUPS CRUSHED PRETZELS (crush to the size of chopped pecans)
    3/4 cup of melted butter or margarine
    2 Tbsp. sugar
Blend together, press into bottom of pan.  Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.
Let cool.

2.  Cream together:
    8 oz. cream cheese (room temp)
    1 c. sugar
     Fold in:
     8 oz. Cool Whip (room temp)
Spread on top of cooled crust.  Put into freezer for an hour.

3.  2 small or 1 large package of Raspberry     
    TWO    12 oz. packages of frozen raspberries
    2 cups boiling water
Mix Jell-O with boiling water.  Mix in raspberries. 
Chill a little until sort of set.
Spoon over cheese layer and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. 

You can use any kind of pretzels you have on hand.  I used the skinny stick ones.  But, twisted or rods will do fine.

Only in South Florida

Interesting reading in this morning’s Miami Herald.  Yes, I know you can get newspapers online, but I like the feel of the newspaper in my hand as I drink my cup of morning coffee with the other. 

DH & I tend to switch between our local newspapers down here.  We’ll get the Herald for a period of time and then switch over to the Sun-Sentinel for awhile.  Since “the South Beach Scene” is in Miami Beach, the Herald is loaded with Celebrity Gossip.

But what I found very interesting this morning was the crazy headlines and crazy stories that, I suppose, if you wanted to write a book of fiction, no one would ever believe these things -- too preposterous.  But, they are real life.  I read them in the newspaper!

How about this one -- “Worker finds head, body parts near a canal”  Not an everyday occurrence, eh?  Did the worker quit his job?  Or did he come back to work the next day, figuring the odds were good that this kind of thing would never happen again?

And then there was “The trial against a police officer accused of raping a family member while his allegedly drugged wife and 4-year-old child slept in the same bed begins”  He also allegedly drugged the family member.  Gives more meaning to “let’s keep it all in the family”.

And in Miami-Dade county, you can pay your property taxes online.  But, they charge you $87.25 for the privilege.  They call it a “non-refundable convenience fee”.  I think writing out a check and putting a 44¢ stamp on an envelope would be much more convenient.

And the most bizarre of all.  It seems that a book published this past summer, which didn’t really sell many copies, might have been possibly the inspiration for a recent murder.  You’re just going to have to read this one for yourself – another book will probably come out about this whole thing.

Do these stories happen in your neck of the woods?  Or is it just South Florida? -- “Things are different here” was a clever advertising phrase to sell tourism in South Florida, at one time.  I don’t think it was intended to be a derogatory comment.

I know South Florida won’t disappoint.  I know I’ll be back with some more “Only in South Florida” stories … all I have to do is open the local newspaper …

Radiator Cover

It all started with this article in Quilters Newsletter Magazine, dated October 2003.

The fabric above was bought specifically for the making of a wallhanging.  The fabric at top is a panel print and there are 4 fabrics below it.

After cutting the pieces for 1 block, I decided I didn't want to make a whole bunch more – a little too much fussy-cutting.  So, I set the fabric and the block aside.

Then, came the winter of 2010. It was cold.  More days in a row of cold than we've ever experienced living in South Florida for 38 years. We bought a portable room radiator and used it more times in January thru March than I care to think about.

I knew just by looking at that radiator that it was going to be a dust-catcher! It needed a cover. I remembered that fabric and the lonely block.

I went into my EQ7 with my measurements for the radiator cover and started to design.  I even scanned my fabric so I could use it in the design in EQ7.  In order to make what looks like the panel print, I took a digital picture of the actual fabric and brought the image into EQ7.  If you do that, make sure the image is “square” so that the proportion will be correct.  You end up with some real silly looking images if you use rectangle-shaped images.I took a screenshot of the upside-down back portion of design and brought it into MS Paint. I am delighted with Windows7 version of MS Paint. I can manipulate images with ease and it doesn’t have the learning curve that the high-end graphics programs do.

Here’s the layout, in progress, on the design wall.

Here's all the layers pinned together, ready to be quilted.

After a couple of movies on the Hallmark Movie Channel, the "bones" of the cover are quilted and now the "fun quilting" begins …

I used Sulky Blendable 12 wt cotton thread for the quilting.  I like the heaviness of that thread.  Makes the stitching stand out.  I use a 90/14 Topstitch needle for the 12 wt. thread.

I find I get a better fit if I wash & dry the piece after quilting and before sewing the sides together.  Especially if I use cotton batting as I did in this project. 

Finished cover – front

 
Finished cover - back

Dolphins on a radiator?
In South Florida - but of course!

Convert WMV to iPad compatible file

I like to combine digital photos with the movies that I take with my PureDigital Flip Camera and make them into slideshows using HP Memories Creator which came bundled with my HP printer.

Thought it would be nice to have a slideshow presentation like that on my iPad.

Well, I figured out how.  And I didn’t have to buy any new programs to do it - the necessary programs were free.

I got the Windows Live Movie Maker program free from Microsoft.
Get yours here.  It comes as part of the Live Essentials package. You have to have Windows 7 to run WLMM.

In Windows Live Movie Maker, I can combine photos, videos, music and have special effects and all kinds of cool stuff.  It generates a WMV file.  WMV files can be viewed in a Windows Media Player.

You cannot upload a WMV file to the iPad / iPodTouch. 

You will need to convert that WMV file into a MP4, which is compatible with the iPad and iPod Touch.  And to convert it, you need another free program - Any Video Converter.  Get the “Any Video Converter Free”.

Once you convert the WMV to MP4, you upload the MP4 through iTunes, the usual way. 

I’ve been looking for a WMV file convertor for a long time.  The ones I’ve seen cost $40 to $50.  Free is so much nicer!  And you can convert WMV to AVI, also.

And Microsoft has another nice free program that does a nice slideshow of zooming in, out and across photos – Photo Story.  It really makes a nice presentation of your quilts, with music.  Or make a slideshow of the construction of a particular quilt (or gift) for a special occasion.  It will generate a WMV file that you can convert to MP4 for iPad / iPodTouch.

An Innocent Quilt Block

The above photo appeared in an article by Jenny Deam of the LATimes in my morning paper about the above quilt.  It mentions that the “swastika block” is known by other names (aren’t all quilt blocks): Whirligig and Catch Me If You Can.  After reading the article, I was intrigued and went on a quest.

I had to go and see what information Barbara Brackman had in her Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilted Patterns book and in the software program Block Base v2 about the above mentioned quilt blocks.

Blocks known as Whirligig
~ screenshot from BlockBase v2 ~

The blocks from the photo at top is not in image above.

 Blocks known as Catch Me If You Can
~ screenshot from BlockBase v2 ~

There’s the block from the photo at top in the image above, block on right.  But, there’s 2 borders around that block, a white one and a blue one which makes it a tad different than the blocks in the photo at the top.

So then I decided to do a search in BlockBase for “swastika”.

 Blocks known as Swastika
~ screenshot from BlockBase v2 ~

I just don’t see how all the blocks in the first row could be named Swastika.  They don’t even resemble one.

By the way – here’s a Swastika --

And here is a symbol for a Unit in the United States Army 45th Infantry Division in World War I which was mentioned in the article --

And this block (left) is not to be confused with the Rail Fence (right):

The block on the left is drawn on a 5x5 grid.  The block on the right is drawn on a 6x6 grid.

I think I’m going to call the block on the left Catch Me If You Can.  After all, it is not the block’s fault that a despicable little man chose that symbol and turned it into something hateful.

Will I ever use the Catch Me If You Can block in a quilt - no, I don’t think so.  Would you?

I made the above image in EQ7, trying to duplicate what was in the photo at the top of this post.  I wonder if the maker of the quilt meant for the blocks to be mirrored from one to the other.  Maybe not, cuz there isn’t a pattern to the mirroring.  Maybe that wasn’t a concern for the quilt maker.