In the Hive

My featherweight has arrived.  I learned to sew on an old black Singer my Nanny had.  I think of her when I sew on this little machine!

It was a busy day today, running Karl for a well visit and getting my flu shot!  The weather was cold, rainy, windy, and we had our first snowflakes of the season.

Karl, Thomas, and I carved pumpkins today and I made Martha Stewart's Sweet and Spicy Pumpkin Seeds for a treat!!

The trees in front of the university were so pretty yesterday!  I love Fall!  I did a little sewing but my arm is still giving me problems from my accident so it was not a good day today!  Andrew auditioned and made it into the senior county chorus! This is a tree at the local bank! Karl made corn muffins for his homeroom class today!  They came out great! Dorie Greenspan’s Corniest Corn Muffins -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recipe By: Dorie Greenspan’s Yield: 12 regular-sized muffins or 48 miniature ones Ingredients: 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 cup yellow cornmeal, preferably stone-ground 6 tablespoons granulated sugar 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 pinch ground nutmeg, fresh ground 1 cup buttermilk 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled 3 tablespoons corn oil  1 large egg 1 large egg yolk 1 cup corn kernels , fresh, frozen or canned (in which case they should be drained and patted d...

Not much sewing the last two days, but lots of kitchen work.  Yesterday I made Red Lentil Soup, Heath Bits Peanut Butter Cookies, and fresh yogurt.   Andrew was asking about pumpkin pie the other day - it is one of his favorites.  That got me in the mood for something pumpkin-flavored.  So, when Karl got home from school today he helped me make Pumpkin Chip Muffins.  We used up odds and ends bags of chocolate chips and white chocolate chips!  They smell wonderful!

I made another darting bird today... I was playing with the layout in EQ and I think I like having the blackbirds going one direction and the white birds going another.  It makes an interesting contrast!  If you look at my post from yesterday you can see the plain diagonal set.  Which do YOU prefer??  Leave a comment, if you like! This is my slow-going Milky Way quilt.  When I first started quilting in 1999, I loved this quilt in a book but I said "No Way, too hard for me!"  Well, I have gotten better over the years and now I am tackling it.  I love tessellation quilts, but lordy are they a pain to keep straightened out!  On the positive side, it teaches me patience and organization!!  This will eventually be king-sized for my bed!

YIKES!!!!!  Alfred Hitchcock any one?

Andrew got his acceptance letter from the University of Pittsburgh!  He is not sure if this is his final choice or not yet, but it is the first school he got a response from!

I have been working on my in-betweeners off and on.  You know, those little projects that sneak up in between the big ones?  To be fair, the english paper piecing project is my "on the road" project and I made a bunch of those you see while we were in Coudersport.  I got some moda crackle black that i think I will use to fill in the blocks and join them.   Below is my new in-betweener project, I confess,  but I love the blocks and coloring.  It is the new quilt block lotto block for October.  It's called something like Darting Blackbirds on a Blue Sky. So, I try to make one block a day in-between my other chores/quilting!

I got to visit Fabrics Galore in Bloomsburg, Pa while we were on vacation.  These two bee fabrics are from Moda's Honeycomb Harvest line...of course, there is bees on them! These yellow and green reproduction fabrics are from Windham's Dear Jane line: This is from Windham's Indigo and Gold line: Today, I got these fabrics from my local shop: This is from Marcus Brothers Metro Blue Goes Green line: This is from Moda's Friends and Flowers line:

We definitely missed my home cooking on vacation!  This recipe is from the Food Network's Down Home with the Neely's show. Broccoli Soup -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recipe By: Down Home with the Neelys  Yield: 3 to 4 servings Ingredients: 4 tablespoons butter, room temperature 1 1/2 lbs. fresh broccoli 1 large onion, chopped 1 carrot, chopped Salt and freshly ground black pepper 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 4 cups low-sodium chicken broth 1/2 cup cream Directions: Melt 4 tablespoons butter in heavy medium pot over medium-high heat. Add broccoli, onion, carrot, salt and pepper and saute until onion is translucent, about 6 minutes. Add the flour and cook for 1 minute, until the flour reaches a blonde color. Add stock and bring to boil.  Simmer uncovered until broccoli is tender, about 15 minutes. Pour in cream. With an immersion blender, puree the soup. Add salt and pepper, to taste, and then replace the lid back on the pot.

We decided to get away for a weekend.  We were going to stay in Wellsboro, but that rental did not work out.  We happened to find this house in Coudersport (literally at the last minute, after almost canceling the trip) and took the kids to see the Grand Canyon of PA.   The house we rented was built by a famous chemical engineer, Donald Othmer. The house has a lot of history behind it, the owner was filing me in on it and there was a book about the Othmer's in the house. It was built by famous chemical engineer Donald Othmer.  We found out that the Othmer's were good friends of Warren Buffet's.  He took their initial investment of $25,000 and when they died - their estate totaled $800 million, which they donated anonymously to various charities.   Eliot Ness lived and worked in Coudersport in his later years and eventually died there.  Andrew thinks he probably died of boredom, so that tells you there is not a lot to do in the town! Andrew ended up sleeping in the right sid...