Pickles!

I have been sewing like crazy, working on some things for Anna Maria Horner's booth at market but somehow I squeezed in some time for pickles! I picked up these cukes at the local farmers market last week and finally got around to pickling them on sunday. I made 'fridge cukes (no canning time around here!) so they are almost instant gratification. I tried one today and they are delish, spicy and salty. Yum.

Here's my no fuss recipe...

1lb pickle cucumbers

4 c water (2 c boiling and 2 c luke warm)

1 3/4 c white vinegar

2 tbl pickling spices

1 1/2 tbl kosher salt

6 cloves garlic

Some sprigs of fresh dill

Slice the cucumbers however you prefer-chips, spears etc...

In a large glass bowl mix the salt, pickling spices, dill and cucumbers. In a large glass measuring cup mix the white vinegar and boiling water. Pour this over the cucumber mixture, and then add the remaining lukewarm water. Stir and let rest for about 30 min at room temp. Once your water is no longer dangerous to transfer pour the batch into a large glass/plastic tupperware and place in the fridge.

This will keep, in my experience, for a couple weeks in the fridge.

If you want to make them a little spicier add a tbl of red pepper flakes.

Sewing Machine

A friend sent me this great animation of how a sewing machine works. It shows how the needle thread interacts with the bobbin and bobbin thread to make lockstitches. Too cool!

Hex Crazy

So I have been recovering from what we're pretty sure is H1N1 and I needed soemthing to do while trapped on the couch for over a week.

I had picked up some paper hexagons from The City Quilter when I worked there, and had made a few hex's here and there. I grabbed my scrap bin and went to town last week and this is what I ended up with...

Paper pieceing in this method is very easy, but it is only fun if you enjoy handsewing. Each hex is made of a fabric piece basted onto the hex shaped paper. Then each basted hex gets sewn to the next by hand along each edge. Very addictive finding all of those little motifs and placing them perfectly on each hex!

Summer of Change

This has certainly been a summer of change for us. In April we thought this fall I would be at Parsons finishing my degree and here we are back in Nashville! It is good to back, right now, and we look forward to the ease with which I will be able to complete school here. It is good to have a back yard again, something I had hoped to solve in NY by moving to a different neighborhood. But it still would not have been as spacious as what we have here. We have been drying laundry outside, cooking more and I have an entire art/craft/sewing room that is amazingly inspiring. You just never know what is ahead, and for now, I feel content with where we are.

Caught

 

Who me?