A culinary happening...

On rare occasions I post a recipe but this one is so loose it stretches the term recipe which implies specific quantities etc... But this was soooooooooooo good you must try it...
Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

I "chunked":
2 medium/large butternut squash
2-3 large potatoes (unpeeled)
6-8 large carrots
several sweet peppers (I used yellow, orange and red ones)

I drizzled it all with olive oil and sprinkled it with "McCormick's Toasted Onion and Garlic Potato Seasoning Mix" and roasted at 350 degrees until tender.

Meanwhile in my big soup kettle I sauteed 1 large onion and a bunch of celery chopped... After all cooled a bit I put everything into the food processor in batches and pureed...and all back in the kettle... Then I added about 2 T. sea salt, 2 cups of whipping cream and about 4-6 cups of milk to desired soupiness. Do not leave out the seasoning mix as that is the killer ingredient!!!! And of course you could substitute organic veggie broth for the whipped cream and milk....but not at my house..


I topped it with crumbled blue cheese and FRESH chives. It was simply one of the best soups ever...



It is officially spring for me when I can pull aside last fall's dried leaves and grass under my old apple tree and find chives sprouting... I put them on everything while they are so tender...

(I just knew spell check would tell me that "soupiness" was not a word and it did.... but I bet every single reader knew exactly what I meant so it should be a word.....)

New buttons painted..

An hour here and there has been devoted to painting buttons to take to CT as we're having a "vendor" night. Since Easter is approaching I thought I'd do some bunnies...and because I'm out ...a few cardinals... I'll get a few loaded on Etsy next weekend and take the rest with me... These are all 1" buttons....

I'm hoping everyone wants to go home with their very own "Gerry Krueger Button"

In addition to the bunnies I finished another series of twelve one-of-a-kind cottages... three of which are shown here... I did add a duck to the pond by the cottage on the left and the tiny birdhouse to the one on the right.. I love doing the cottages... When you see them so large on the screen it's hard to appreciate how small they are. ... 1 1/2"

Occasionally a bottle of paint will fall off my small table while I'm working.. Usually I'm concentrating so hard I don't even notice... But Morris does and scoots off with it to chew the lid off... He still has two red front feet from yesterday...

Special thanks and hugs to those who checked a reaction yesterday... Doing tutorials are very time consuming so matter how small they are so I'm so grateful when someone lets me know they find my efforts useful....

Mini tut....converting photos to sepia tones

I've accumulated several hundred pictures in my suffragette file.. and now it's time to get serious about printing them on fabric... First I need to do some editing and by far my favorite program for this procedure is Google's Picasa... If you do not have a good editing program or timid about trying software as complex as Photoshop, take my advice and try Picasa

I have and use Image Composer and Photoshop but I still LOVE Google's Picasa because
1. It's free
2. It is soooooooooooo user friendly
3. It is extremely versatile...
4. It is so quick and easy.

As you can see in just these few there is great variation in color in my collection of photos....and I wanted them ALL to be sepia (brown) tones since there will be so many of them on the quilt....

Picasa has an "effects" selection of choices and one of them is "sepia" so my first step was to apply that to all the photos I wanted to use...But even with all of them being sepia there was still more variation in tone than I wanted.

So the next step was to use the "saturation" selection.

Third down on the left....it is a choice I use on all photos, colored or not, which are to be printed on fabric... Color is always lost in that process so intensifying color in the beginning makes for a better end product. But in this case I'm using saturation to put many photos into balance. But as you can see the tools include sharpening, changing to B&W, tinting, adding a glow and soft focus among others... There are many other tools in the basic fixes and tuning sections.

On most of the effects tools there is this simple bar and button.. You can slide the button either way and watch the change in your photo as you use it and before you hit the apply button... VERY low tech here...

So using this simple technique you can see how I was able to make my photos very even in tone... Not only easily but quickly.

Just as a follow up note... To get the pictures of the Picasa tools I actually took a picture of the computer screen as it was something that was not downloadable... I do this quite often but the last time I posted about it I received such a negative response from one follower that I was hesitant to confess again... Hopefully that follower has moved on...if not I already know how you feel on this subject..!!!

Quick progress report....

In order to keep the overall piece balanced I am working on 3 (squares 4,5 &9)of the 9 squares at once... I have the braids, trims etc. on all three as far as I can go at this stage.. I have the seams on the center piece done as far as I can until I put the images on... Plan to work madly on these for the next 2 days and hopefully have the images ready to put on all three by Monday or Tuesday.. Then the fun part... I am relishing the embellishing....


If you look closely there are a couple of recurring elements...one is the circle of tablecloth lace and the other are the pieces of the rust colored bows that Susie W. sent me. Actually there is a third...a black Venetian lace rose but it doesn't show up and in fact none of the heavy black laces on the black show up. Anyone have any super tips on photographing black on black...? I have some fabulous black textures which do not show up either...

Sometimes I hesitate to mention something as I think everyone must know or do it, but just in case there is one soul that it would help... It is at this stage that I stretch my block very tautly with pins on a bulletin board. It makes them lie flat and squares them up... If I can I will leave them stretched over a couple days, but overnight at least.. I will do this several times before I am finally done...

But I am also taking time to do a tutorial on making colored photos into antique sepia photos.... the easy way.... Had hoped to work on it today but the sun is out so the greenhouse is warm and I am working there to repair Andy's damage... mutter, mutter, mutter.....

His doll and my doll.

My friend Al (91 years old) asked a favor... He brought me this little doll (4 1/2") with its head broken off and the rubber that held the arms disintegrated and could I please fix it. Al has a brand new baby in his family and wants to pass this doll on as a keepsake.



Wrapped with the doll was this note from his mother when she sent the doll to him.



I did fix it and then suggested he take it to a frame shop and have a shadow box built for both the doll and the note...





It reminded me of one of my first dolls because it is also bisque and only 5" long. Oh how I love this doll.. and like many women the very first stitching I did was for this little doll... She and all her clothes fit in a shoebox by necessity.. Until I was 10 we never lived in a house or apartment. We were itinerant and lived either in a tiny travel trailer, motel rooms with kitchenettes and occasionally with my grandmother... so my only toys were  this doll, a larger doll,  a big tablet of paper and crayons, and a box of paper dolls I drew clothes for... I had to spend long hours alone amusing myself and I can never remember being lonely or bored.


Some years ago I found this little wire pram just the perfect size to display it... As you can see the pram has a wire frame covered with wire similar to chicken wire. I had never seen anything like it and was unsure how to cover it... Luckily before I tried I went to the doll museum in Bellevue and they had all kinds of toys with similar construction... They were covered with netting and then embellishment sewn to the netting... So I did the same.

If you love dolls and are ever in the Seattle area you must go see the Rosalie Whyel Doll Museum...