Long Lost Recipes

Two years ago, I hurriedly packed my belongings and moved out to my parents' place. The first year, me, my pets and my most essential belongings stayed in a 26-ft. travel trailer. Late last summer, the shed for my studio was built and I had just enough time to put down flooring, get insulation on the walls, and get boxes of fabrics and books and other stuff stashed in there before bad weather hit.

This week, I started what now seems like the never-ending job of unpacking more boxes. At this point, it's mostly the boxes that got packed last - the ones that have no labels because they contain a bit of everything. Some things I'm delighted to see again. Other things I toss in the trash while wondering why they got packed in the first place.

One of the treasures I unpacked yesterday was my box of collected recipes, the ones I liked so much that I actually took time to write them down, by hand, on 3x5 cards. The oldest one is from childhood, a recipe for gingerbread. My fourth grade teacher loved the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and read each one to us that year. One day, she brought us a treat: gingerbread made from Laura's recipe! I'd never liked gingerbread until that day, so my mom got the recipe and somewhere in time I copied it for my collection. I'm not sure I understand all the instructions, but you're welcome to try it! I'm guessing that you add the cup of water to the batter and that a "moderate oven" is 350 degrees. And I think my mom baked it in a 9" x 13" pan.

Laura's Gingerbread

Blend together:
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup shortening
Mix in: 1 cup molasses

Add 2 teaspoons baking soda to 1 cup boiling water. Be sure cup is full of water after foam has run off into cake mixture. Set aside.

To 3 cups flour, add:
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt

Sift flour mixture into cake mixture and mix well.
Add 2 well-beaten eggs and stir.
Note: the mixture should be quite thin.

Bake in moderate oven for 30 minutes.

Variations: add raisins and/or candied fruits and/or a chocolate frosting.

Bunny Baskets Update

I finished setting my bunny basket blocks last week - thought you might like a peek at how it turned out. I choose to set then on the diagonal with alternate white blocks and sashing. Setting blocks on the diagonal is not my favorite setting option. Working in a small space without a design wall like I do at present, it's easy to get diagonal settings mixed up. But I really liked the garden lattice look it gave these blocks so I decided it was worth the struggle. Now all I have to do is sew the borders on and I'll have another top ready for quilting this summer.

The Gammage Cup

Have you ever wondered what inspires quilt designs? Sometimes it's a fabric or collection of fabrics. Sometimes it's our pets or children. Sometimes it's nature at her finest beauty. And sometimes it's just something wierd.

This week, I had the dubious honor of undergoing one of our society's initiation rites into the Past 50 Club: a colonoscopy. Those of you who have already suffered this pleasure know that it's a 2-day ordeal, at best. I had it figured that I wouldn't get any work done the day of the procedure, but I'd planned to get my taxes done the day before. Oh, how naive! When I realized that I'd be sitting on a porcelain seat, not an office chair, all day, I decided to make the best of a yucky situation and pulled one of my all-time favorite children's novels from the shelf, The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall.


It's been years since I'd last read this book, so I lost myself in it despite my uncomfortable setting. First published in 1959, it was a Caldecott Honor Book way back then. It's always puzzled me why this book hasn't been more popular through the years. Although the story lacks the complexity of Harry Potter books or the Hobbit, it has a simple, witty charm that I find delightful. The theme (as I see it) is a fairly universal and timeless one, that of finding the courage to stand up to peer pressure and be yourself, and allow others to be who they are.


As I lost myself in the land of the Minnipins, and fell in love with Muggles and Gummy and even Mingy once again, I decided that I'd try to translate this wonderful story into a quilt when I'd recovered. So yesterday afternoon (I slept all morning!) I sketched and figured out measurements and began cutting, and today I sewed up a prototype block of a Minnipin cottage. In the beginning of the story, all Minnipin cottages are white-washed and have thatched roofs, and all are supposed to have green doors. I chose to make the walls of my cottage from 1" (finished) white-on-white strips to make it look like clapboard siding. As in most fantasies, electricity doesn't exist in this story. The minnipins use candles and reed-lamps for illumination, so I chose a yellow-with-white fabric for my windows. The door is green, of course. Most of the cottage is pieced, but I chose fusible applique for the thatched roof. The finished cottage is 10" x 10", a bit larger than I was originally planning, but the perfect size for my Wee Folk (applique patterns) who can easily be turned into Minnipins.


Not bad for my first cottage, but I see a few things I want to change. I'm going to move the second-floor window up a notch, and make the thatched roof a bit wider. The soft-yellow windows look nice up close, but in the scan they blend in too much with the white walls, so I might need to find a more intense yellow to create more contrast. I can't wait to finish my taxes so I can build my next cottage!

Experimental Gardening

Today was sunny and warm (mid 60's), so I planted tulips! I know we don't normally plant tulips in April here inthe US. They're supposed to be planted in the fall. I bought the bag of bulbs last fall, fully intending to plant them within a week. But the weather turned nasty earlier than usual so they didn't get planted.

I then resolved to plant them in February. Almost every February we get a week or two of beautiful, spring-like weather before winter weather returns for another 6-8 weeks. We got one week of almost-nice weather this February, but I totally forgot about the tulip bulbs. I spotted the bulbs last week and decided to try planting them soon as it quit raining and got above 45 degrees for awhile.

When I opened the bag today, I almost changed my mind. Although most of the bulbs had pale, yellowgreen shoots sprouting from them, showing that something was still alive, the bulbs themselves were really squishy. I wondered if it was worth the bother. In the spirit of "nothing ventured, nothing gained," I dumped the bulbs in an old planter, set them as upright as I could, and covered their heads with soil. They're not buried as deep as they should be, but they're certainly deeper than the forced tulip bulbs that the local grocery store was selling before Easter.

Now I get to play the waiting game to see what happens.