Naps

My friend's new baby and Jon with Pete.

Bananarama

When your bananas look like this, it's time to make banana bread.

The eggs I used, from Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm in Illinois, were super-fresh and free-range, resulting in brilliantly bright yolks. Purty, huh?

It is really naughty to put butter on this bread, as it is very rich on it's own. I couldn't resist though, not while it was still warm.

Super-Dense Banana Bread

4 or 5 over-ripe bananas

2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup butter

1 tsp. vanilla

(1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips)

Mix flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon in a large bowl. In a mixer or a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar, then stir in bananas, vanilla, and eggs. Add flour mixture (and chocolate chips) and stir briefly. Pour into greased loaf pan and bake at 350 for about an hour.

Unicorn Pillow

I finished my unicorn pillow. I thought about embroidering some more details on the unicorn and adding some yellow flowers around it, but then I thought I might ruin the simplicity of it. I tried to imitate the shape of the unicorns of the fabric, I love their plump bellies and round faces. They remind me of fat little shetland ponies. So sweet!

Dogs

Here is a charming little guide book I found at a second hand store.

It was printed in 1946, and there are some unusual breeds mentioned, including the Bush Dog, somewhat cruelly described here as "unlovely." I'm not entirely convinced it's not just a badger of some sort after all.

Some drawings of my dog Pete on the couch. I've no idea how he makes himself so compact and so perfectly spherical.

And here's the original, soaking up a sunbeam. As you can probably tell, he is in a near-constant state of complete relaxation.

More Sea Creatures

Tuesday was beautiful here in Chicago, and as I happened to be downtown, I walked along the lake to the Shedd Aquarium. I took some (mostly fuzzy) pictures with my phone, but some of them came out surprisingly well. I love the Moray eel's wrinkled old man face. Also, there was a puffer fish with a gorgeous long swishy tail like a rust-colored scarf. The spikey fellow I think was a Crown-of-Thorns starfish. Finally, there were these bright gold Cichlids with huge lumpy protrusions on their heads. I came home and did a quick small watercolor of them with a tiny Windsor and Newton travel set I was given as a gift. I love this little set, it is so portable and I use it a lot. I liked the way the envelopes I had used for blotting and mixing the colors looked, so I threw in a picture of them as well. I think maybe I like the unintentional abstract version of the fish painting a bit better!

Plans

So, for a while now I've been wanting to start a larger quilt with a kind of pinwheel pattern using black and pastel colored triangles. Now that I finally finished the lap quilt, I am starting to cut about a gazillion small triangles. The second picture shows the fabrics I plan to use. The orange one on the left is by Heather Ross for Kokka, bought at the Needle Shop in Chicago. The three in the middle came from fabricworm's shop on Etsy, so pretty! The black/gray fabric came from Joann's. Lastly, I also bought a yard of this gauzy unicorn print (another Kokka) at the Needle Shop. I love this kind of bright orange and the hand-drawn style of the unicorns. I thought I might make a pillow using this and some wool felt I usually use for hooked rugs. I cut out a unicorn from the white to sew on top of the dark green...We'll see how it turns out.

First Post and First Quilt

So, I thought I would start taking pictures of the things I make and start a blog, both to keep a record as I go along as well as to motivate myself to stay creative. The last picture is actually just my breakfast, but I wanted to share a picture of the beautiful marmalade my dad made. He and my mom received a minature orange tree as a wedding gift 29 years ago and it is still going strong, producing tons of tiny oranges every year. Recently, he decided to make use of all that fruit and has been making this heavenly marmalade. It is not at all bitter but has a nice floral kind of a flavor. Super yummy with some fresh goat cheese from Prairie Fruits Farm in Champaign, IL.

Also, I finished my first ever quilt (a Sea Creatures Quilt) yesterday. It is a lap quilt, measuring about 44" x 60". There are 6 blocks, each a different traditional patchwork pattern. All 5 fabrics I used have sea creatures on them, hence the name. I especially love the school of fish pattern which I also used for the backing. (first photo) All these wonderful fabrics came from the Needle Shop here in Chicago. I made this almost entirely by hand, including the piecing and quilting. I did use the machine to attach the lattices etc. once the blocks were done. I loved making it and I can't wait to do another...a big one this time!