Quilted bag, towels, and more!

Here's the quilted bag using new equipment and techniques, mostly from Craftsy... DH immediately declared it to be useful and has taken it from me for his weekly shopping trips. I'm thrilled he likes it!

Thanksgiving has come and gone... We ordered ribs from Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City, via GoldBelly.com. Tasty, tasty ribs, but the sauce was surprising; not sweet at all and very much on the salty side.  I made beans, cole slaw with apples, and corn bread to go with it; and a apple crumble for dessert. 

I neglected to mention the November cookbooks; I cooked from the Zuni cafe cookbook, and made a fish dish with potatoes, leeks, and a whole bunch of butter, as well as Socca, these chickpea flour pancakes from the south of France. This month, DH has selected Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat; I snuck a few recipes worth of ingredients onto this weeks shopping list.

I've been procastinating all kinds of projects but did manage to finish four towels; one is in use, the middle one will stay with us and the far left one is going to live with someone else. The far right one will either be for the guild towel exchange, or stay in my kitchen. 

Puttering in the Studio

What's his name is quarantined for a few days after attending live business meetings... So I've PLENTY of time to putter around the studio. Here's what I've been working on.

• I am still knitting away on the Double Your Pleasure cowl. Someday when it's done I'll have a photo to share.

• 

  Wanna be towels
  

  The towels are on the Gilmore loom... I'm debating how much they're going to shrink up off the loom so I can figure out how long to weave them; There really isn't any excuse not to sample. I am thinking of weaving the first one 36" then pulling it off and finishing it just to see what happens. This one has a single color weft but the other two I'll play with multiple weft colors.  I'm also designing a 2nd run of towels to go on to the Baby Mac using some variegated 8/2 cotton I hand dyed a few years ago.

• 

  1/2 of a quilted tote bag

  I recently purchased a premium Craftsy subscription, with access to tons of classes for all kinds of crafts, gardening, cooking etc. I'm so tempted to play with frosting cakes! Instead, I'm working on a few new techniques/projects. I watched The Scrappy Market Tote with Christina Cameli for "intuitive" piecing techniques, and quilting with some new free motion techniques from The Secrets of Free-Motion Quilting  (also with Christina Cameli).  Sadly I forgot to push the purchase button on some strapping for the handles so will not finish the bag until next week.  I used my new piecing foot, the Bernina Quilt Stitch Regulator, and the ruler work foot with my new rulers. The QSR is surprisingly easy to use, the ruler work is surprising hard and needs more practice.

  

  What was I thinking?
  

• Next up, The Machine Embroidered Quilt with Eileen Roche, if I can figure out where Craftsy hid the embroidery files...

I've also been spending some time cleaning and rearranging the studio and found a box of fabric. It looks carefully curated, as if I were going to start a new project with it's contents. I have no idea what I was planning.

There's nothing new on the food front. Honestly it's not very interesting to cook for one. I did make a lovely brocolli salad with a honey mustard dressing, and some green chili stew, leaving some on the porch for the DH as if he was a feral cat or something. Yesterday, election day,  I was tempted to make an almond cake per Alice Waters but remembered that comfort food only comforts me while I'm eating it (so not very long) but exercise seems to put my brain at ease for much longer. I did stress nibble my way through the kitchen but also got out for a late afternoon walk which was quite soothing.