Author: canoepam@yahoo.com

Antelope Island (again) plus the sewing show

I spent five hours at the Utah Quilting and Sewing Marketplace show yesterday.  Four of those I staffed the booth for American Sewing Guild, and one hour I had lunch and shopped. I didn’t get anything cool (just needles and bobbins for my quilting machine – 20% off!) so I didn’t take pictures. I then took a trip to Ikea to get some more storage containers for the trailer and headed home. Since nothing at Ikea is quick, it was a long day. I baked some nice salmon with a honey and mustard glaze that was tasty.

Kevin decided he wanted to try again to see the bison calves at Antelope Island so we took off about 6:30 for the 30 minute trip. What a good choice! We saw our first deer while still on the causeway; it was running along side us. I guess folks who say early dusk is the best time to see animals are right – we saw deer, pronghorn, coyotes, and lots and lots of bison. The nursery herd had finally gotten a bit closer to humans. Not too close as you can see from the picture (take with a zoom), but at least we could see them. Notice some low and some still high on the hills.

This picture was taken with my new camera. It is definitely better than my iPhone, and I have discovered how to transfer the pictures wirelessly. No more having to fire up the computer, pull out a memory card, transfer to computer, then transfer to the iPad! I love it.

The Wasatch Mountains still have their heads covered in snow. This is looking across Farmington Bay.

Again it was a zoom from the new camera. The next one was a lovely surprise. This is taken looking west from the Island. The best sunsets in the Salt Lake Valley are from Antelope Island.

Today we pack the trailer for the trip to California. Tomorrow we are having a natural gas line run into the kitchen and the new stove put in. Samsung, dual fuel (gas range, electric oven) with 5 burners all of varying BTU so you can simmer a sauce while boiling another big pot of water for pasta. I am pretty pumped! We have an old builder grade electric stove with a glass top that I just hate. I much prefer gas so I can judge the heat much easier.

I’ve got goodies

I had a fun two days. First I had a friend with a long arm quilting machine baste my Carpenter’s Square queen sized quilt. It is wonderful! See how even the backing lies? No puckers, no wrinkles even with the fluffy wool batting. 

Any little wrinkles that show on the picture are because I had it partially draped on my ironing board. She used water soluble thread, a basting stitch about 1/2″ long, and programmed 5″ squares. She said she cussed at the thread for a little while until she got it working, but she is more than willing to do this on additional quilts for me or others.

While we were chatting, she mentioned she has a company that makes assorted quilting “stuff.” In particular, she has a new model of bobbin wonder that is programmable for up to two different bobbin types. I just hate my old-style Handiquilter bobbin winder so I was intrigued. She and her husband showed me how it worked, and I was hooked; I bought one right there on the spot. I have since tried it at home on my Handiquilter and my Happy multineedle embroidery machine. It winds both types of bobbins (Class M and Class L) perfectly. She has also wound Featherweight bobbins on it. My FW bobbin winder is getting difficult to use; after all it is made out of rubber and is over 60 years old (1952 model).

I left the snippers on it for size. The copper wire guides the thread to the tension assembly. It is so neat and clean compared to my old bobbin winder. If anyone is interested in her stuff, either quilting or quilting accessories, she can be found at www.fancyquilt.com (I wish I could make that a hot link – sorry). I highly recommend her products.

I also got a combination cup holder and mini trash can at my Bernina dealer when I was at the embroidery software class. I am always worried about spilling a cup of coffee or tea in the sewing studio, and I never have a trash can close enough. This hits two birds with one stone. I figure it will really be wonderful to take to sewing get together or classes. It screws on the edge of a table, and the cup part is HUGE, over 4″ inside diameter. It should easily hold even an insulated water bottle.

I should have more fun things tomorrow to show off after I attend the Utah Quilting and Sewing Marketplace show. I will help staff the American Sewing Guild booth in the morning, then I get to shop and look at the show quilts. So far I just have boring things to buy (needles and bobbins), but I probably will find something fun to get in addition; I usually do.

On the Instant Pot front, we had a great stuffed pepper casserole last night. The night before we made pork chops in the Anova sous vide again. We have been eating quite well.

Getting ready

We have been at home for a very long time – since mid February! However a new trip is coming up, and we are getting things ready. Kevin is continuing to rehab, visiting the PT three times a week until we leave on Tuesday. It is helping, so we should be able to take a lot of nice bike rides in California. I bought a new camera to take along too!

Note this one is waterproof. I like the water, and I have lost two cameras to it. One was in the Great Salt Lake and one on a river. Sigh. I should have learned my lesson after the first one. The new camera has all kinds of bells and whistles my 4 year old camera doesn’t, so it will probably be my main one now. I am not a sophisticated photographer, so I like point and shoot cameras.

We did go out on Sunday to see the bison babies at Antelope Island State Park. The park had posted on Facebook the nursery herd had moved to the east side where the roads are, and we were hoping to see lots of the little “red dogs.” Sadly we saw nothing except 15 – 20 solitary males. We did get a nice lunch out of it (take out Chinese eaten in the car) and some good sightseeing. I also got bit by one of the nasty biting gnats out right now. Those things love me, and they generally bite my scalp. I only was out of the car for a minute putting trash in a can. Sigh. This the view from the east side of the island across Farmington Bay to the Wasatch Mountains. The snow line is probably about 8500′. The lake is about 4200′.

Taken with my iPhone camera so not as nice as the new camera will be (I hope).

This morning I am just enjoying a delicious spring day on my front porch. It has been rainy for weeks it seems! We have gotten almost half our annual rainfall in the last 3 months, so I am looking forward to forecasted dry weather. Kevin says he isn’t even going to try out the sprinklers until June. We have so much water in the soil he won’t need to.

Cleaning up the sewing room leads to distractions

I took my Carpenter’s Square quilt to my long arm friend yesterday and got a nice tour of her lovely, very clean sewing rooms (yes, she has two!). Sigh. My sewing room is a mess. I decided to at least sort a bunch of stuff before I start on my next project, and I did get a good start. However I also got distracted with sorting scraps. I decided to make some more rice bags for my hands since I had a piece of cute fabric just big enough. I have arthritis in my thumb and forefinger joints near my palm, and they get sore and achy on a regular basis. I had some other rice bags, but they somehow disappeared. I made two of them, one with a 3×5 finished size and the other 4×6 finished. I think I prefer the larger one. They are just two rectangles sewn together with some elastic on one side to keep them on my hand. I fill them with dried rice, then heat them in the microwave 20-30 seconds or so. The rice heats up and provides nice relief to my sore hands.

If you decide to make rice bags, be sure to use 100% cotton fabric, not something like polyester fleece. You also don’t want to heat the bags too long or they could burn since they use elastic. In fact, even 100% cotton and very dry rice can burn if left too long in the microwave so be careful.

After leaving my friend’s house I headed to a class on my Bernina V8 Embroidery Software. The dealer I use is 45 miles away from my house – a good hour drive. They are very knowledgeable though. I have been using this software for 12 or more years, and I really just need to learn the new features. It is still beneficial to go to a class for beginners since I pick up little tricks I hadn’t caught before. Last night was about variations on automatically digitizing a graphic, meaning converting a graphic into embroidery stitches. Wow, the software has improved significantly in this area since the previous version! The class doesn’t get out until 9:00 so it means a late night drive home. We won’t meet again until after we get back from our Yosemite trip. That reminds me that the NPS announced yesterday they enough road repair done to open up the road we need to take you Monday. Yeah! No change in travel plans needs to be made.

As for my continual experiments with Instant Pot meals, we had boneless country pork ribs two nights ago. I cooked them in high pressure for 40 minutes, and I should have added another 5 minutes. We live above 4000′ elevation, and I am still learning how to adjust the standard recipes for the altitude. I had added about 10% additional time, but I could have used 20%. They were still good. I can’t say the same for the “boiled” eggs I tried! I loved making hard boiled eggs in my old pressure cooker, but the Instant Pot is a slightly lower pressure system. My first two tries resulted in very soft eggs, but I finally discovered that 14 minutes at low pressure makes a nice hard egg like I enjoy for breakfast. I finished the last one I made for lunch, so I need some more.

Volunteer sewing with American Sewing Guild

Big sewing day today, and we got so much done! The local American Sewing Guild activity ended up making 70 completed medical dolls. We had between eight and ten sewing machines and sergers going from 10:00 – 4:00, plus between five to ten non-sewers turning and stuffing the doll bodies. There were another 19 doll bodies completed just waiting on clothes. I took a number of doll bodies home with me to finish to go with clothes I have already cut out. It should keep me busy for a while. Others took doll bodies and cut out clothes. I would imagine we will eventually donate another 30-40 completed dolls.

Here are the 70 completed dolls.

Notice how plain they are? The children are able to color the dolls to look like them. Here are a couple of examples. That is why we try to have lots of shades of doll bodies. We can’t make dark ones because the crayons don’t show up on them. The darker tan is the compromise.

The dolls go to Primary Children’s Hospital in SLC. A big thanks to Floyd and Lizzie’s Sewing Center for letting us use their space. They also contributed quite a bit of muslin for doll bodies.

Charity sewing and yummy food

Today I spent four hours with other members of the local American Sewing Guild at an “open sew” meeting. We meet once a month just to sew and talk. The projects are whatever you want to do, and I always use the time to do charity projects. I have been sewing medical dolls, complete with little hospital gowns. Today I concentrated on making dolls, and a lovely woman next to me decided she would cut out gowns from fabric I brought. She also marked the doll body pattern on a bunch of muslin I had. Tomorrow we are having five hours of sewing specifically to make medical dolls. It will be great to have so many items already cut out and ready to sew. I will post pictures of the group result tomorrow. The hospital needs hundreds of these a year, so it is a good group project. I also like to make these while camping. They are small and easy to sew in small pieces of time. That’s what I will do with the left over pieces I don’t get sewn this time. I also have a new quilt I am getting cut out. I can piece it while we travel.

We also made wonderful beans in the Instant Pot. I have never been a big fan of beans, but these were wonderful. The pinto beans were seasoned with bacon, onions, garlic, chipotle, and green chili. We had grilled hot dogs with them.

It was warm enough we ate on the front porch. While the temperature was only 50 degrees, the western sun made it quite toasty!

I actually do know how to spell and use correct grammar!

I was looking through old posts, and I can not believe how many errors they have! I am in the process of editing a number of them.

And I probably should have posted about our latest kitchen toy, an Instant Pot! I made stew first, and it was lovely.

Today we are going to make steaks with the Anova sous vide and garlic mashed potatoes with the Instant Pot. Nothing like good food!

Carpenter’s Square quilt top finished!

I finished the quilt top I am making for one of our spare bedrooms. This will be a queen sized bedspread when I finish it. The second picture is the backing I am going to use. I really wanted a blue or gray backing, but none of the extra wide backings I found were the right shade. This white and gray will work fine, and I think it will hide the tiny dots of dark colored thread better than some of the other options. I think I will be using a very light gray on the “white” sections and a much darker gray on the rest. The bobbin thread will be either the pale gray or a white. Even though I am good at adjusting my thread tension, using widely different thread colors generally results in tiny dots of color showing through. It is a dreadful picture because Kevin had trouble holding it up! The fabric are all batiks, and gorgeous in person.

This is a good way to make sure your triangles are good. I don’t like the “mark down the middle and sew on each side then cut” method. I prefer cutting the triangles and then sewing them carefully. It works for me.

I am also working on some dolls for Primary Children’s Hospital. I have made a dozen or so, and I decided to experiment with some options. The dolls themselves are super simple, but the hospital gowns that go with them are much harder. The default approach is to use bias binding, but it is the devil to put on the curves correctly. I always end up having to redo at least a few inches. Another American Sewing Guild member, Paula, said she made them by just serging the gown edges. I decided to try it and see how it works.

No question that the bound one looks better, but it takes 5-6 times as long! We have an ASG charity sew meeting on Saturday to make these, so I hope the serger version is acceptable. The hospital needs hundreds of these, and even though lots of people make them, they are always running out.

No pictures today

I really should learn to take more pictures! We have been mostly hanging around the house waiting for Kevin’s knee to heal. The arthroscopic surgery went well a week ago, and they took out a bunch of torn meniscus. We both have what my family called “itchy feet” meaning the itch to travel, so on Saturday we headed to Snowbird ski resort for sightseeing and lunch. It is the last weekend most of the resorts will be open, so it was pretty busy. We like having lunch in the lodge, sitting next to the big windows opening onto the slopes. They were having a water competition where you ski or board down a slope then try to stay on top of a big pool of water at the end. It was hilarious watching folks in costumes try it. Some actually made it! This is why I should take pictures.

Yesterday we went to Park City and Tanger Outlets to look for Kevin a new winter coat. His last one finally gave up the ghost, and he needs something good below freezing. Sadly the Columbia store only had medium sizes in the ones he liked, and he isn’t a medium. I liked some vests, but again they only had mediums left in the women sizes too.

On the home front, I think I will finish the borders on my current quilt today. I will take a picture when I do. I am having a friend with a long arm do my basting with water soluble thread, then I will do the real quilting on my Sweet 16 sit down. I have no interest basting a queen sized quilt with a wool batting! Next project is a new king sized quilt for our bed. In the next couple of weeks I will get it cut out (I have the fabric and the pattern) so I can sew blocks while traveling.

I am getting anxious about our next trip. We are planning to go to Yosemite, but the Highway 120 entrance near our reservation site is closed due to a big landslide. I look at the road status every day, and I am getting nervous. If it wasn’t for the rain they would probably have it ready by now, but there has been a LOT of rain. Our backup plan is Yellowstone, so it won’t be a bust either way, but I have never been to Yosemite and the water falls will be incredible this year. I am crossing my fingers for luck.

New power converter, table, and other trailer mods

A travel trailer (or any RV) is always a work in progress. First there are the inevitable things that shake loose while traveling. For example, I need to recaulk the shower because the flex from traveling has loosened up a few pieces. Next comes the new and improved things. We call these “mods” in the RV world, and huge amounts of time are expended on discussing, planning, and then finally building them. Kevin loves to have a project going most of the time we are home, so we have lots of lovely mods. The latest is replacing the OEM power converter with a much higher quality unit. This will charge and maintain our batteries much better and make for a faster battery charge when we use the generator. It definitely took Kevin more time than he thought it would. The electrical center of our trailer is a modular system with breakers, switches, fans, and 110v/12v conversion. There are only a few things in the trailer that really run on native 110v – the microwave, the air conditioner, and the 110v outlets. Everything else actually runs on 12v power. The converter charges the batteries and converts the 110v power (when hooked up to “shore power”) to 12v so the rest of the electrical systems (lights, heater fan, etc) will operate. This is what he bought:

And here’s what got removed. Lots of cutting and resoldering connections.

A quick check with the power meter shows everything is working well!

Other mods include replacing our dinette table with a Gidgit brand sewing table. You can see the cutout in the middle that can be lowered when you want a sewing machine to sit level with the table cloth. You can also see the fitted tablecloth I made for it. This table is just a little bit smaller than the original making it easier to slide in and out of the dinette. I like it!

Some other mods I will show include taking out the incredibly uncomfortable jackknife sofa and replacing it with two recliners from IKEA. Kevin modified a small table (with under lid storage) to sit between them. Of course the cats must have a place to relax, so he adapted a purchased cat tree to fit behind the table. The cat tree is attached to the table so it doesn’t fall over while traveling.

Nice huh?