PEEP, PEEP, PEEP!

Now, I can deal with jelly beans, chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs - they are like the true Easter candy.  I am NOT particularly fond of PEEPS, however.  The sugar coated, yellow marshmallow chickens were not part of my youth, and they seem like some sort of alien  food - all I have to do is look at them and my teeth start to hurt from the thought of all that sugar.  But my hubby loves them, especially when they get a little old and chewy. No, PEEPS were not part of his youth, either.  But nowadays he just loves the little critters. A couple of years ago a friend told me that you can "age" fresh PEEPS by putting them in the microwave and nuking them for 20 - 30 seconds.  The first time we tried this we ended up laughing our butts off as we watched these critters blow up to 3 times their size as the marshmallow heated and made jokes about the PEEPS that Clayton.

So imagine my joy when I found another novel recipe using PEEPS on the Facebook page of my friend Tina.  This is called a PEEPS Sunflower Cake, and is supposed to serve 12. But the recipe calls for 19 PEEPS, and how do you divide 19 PEEPS in 12 servings?  You can find the recipe here  on the Taste of Home website.

I guess you could change the flower up and make it a dahlia or mum by adding a second row of PEEPS on top to make more "petals" .  Then you could change the color of the frosting and the PEEPS as well, and use the pink or purple chickens.  Or you could just forget about it and make an angel food cake with rainbow sprinkles in the batter - at least that looks like Easter.

Do any of you readers have a PEEPS recipe that you would like to share with the rest of us? Just click on "comments" below and share.

Add This Quilt to the Finished Pile

Well, the quilt that was in my photos from my February 16th post - the entry about basting a quilt - is finally finished.  I so love the colors, although they do not appear to be as vibrant in this photo as in real life. Look at the post from February 16th to get a better idea as to the colors.  It only took a week to get this quilted and bound after it was basted.

The pattern is called Illuminata, and was purchased at The Pincushion Boutique quilt shop many years ago.  This is one of their Pressed for Time Patterns, which are designed specifically for use with their Sweet Treats.  I saw Pincushion Boutique at last week-end's quilt show (Guild of Quilters of Contra Costa County) and spent some time looking at their latest Sweet Treats.  I am madly in love with Crocodile Hunter because it has a very African look to it.  Unfortunately, I am counting pennies right now and had to pass.

Overall, I was disappointed in the quilt show this year even thought I won a door prize from Sew Ewe Quilt in Brentwood.  Nothing really grabbed my attention and made me say WOW! at the show, but a few ideas were hatched for using up some of my batik stash.  I just need to find the patterns now. I was also disappointed in the vendors this year. Fewer vendors with fabric meant fewer fabrics to fantasize and drool over. But I think the most disappointing part of the show was learning that The Pincushion Boutique is no longer a brick and mortar store in Davis, although it can still be found online.

So, back to the quilt.  It was marked for quilting with my favorite stencils for machine quilting - Full Line Stencils. The stencil that was used on this quilt is Loopy Square.  The full stencil was used in all of the blocks, and 1/2 of the stencil was used in all of the triangles.  I then did a mimic of the design in the outside border - tall and short loops).  I love these stencils because they are so easy to mark onto the quilt top using  Pounce Pads.  And the designs will then either iron or wash right out after quilting, depending upon the type of Pounce that is used.

OK, that is it for now!  Hopefully I will stay healthy long enough to keep updating this blog on a more regular timeline.  The cold that I had 3 weeks ago just really took a lot out of me.  But I am feeling much better (except for the stupid cough which is still hanging around), so here's hoping you hear from me over the week-end!

What's New?

Sorry to have been away for so long - life keeps getting in the way of letting me do want I want to do right now. 

But I have finished a few projects to share with you.  A few weeks ago my friends got together to celebrate the birthday of my good friend, Marilyn.  She is one of my best and oldest (not in age, but in years we have known one another) friends.  We go back to the "good days" at Siemens, when it was actually fun to work there and the company was still located in Walnut Creek. 

I love to make gifts for Marilyn because we love the same colors and we like the same style in our artsy-fartsy way.  So here is a look at the gifts I made for her this year.  First up is a coffee cup cuff made of different purple batik fabrics.  It is quilted and then decorated with fuschia rat tail cord and light teal fabric.This "personal coffee cup cuff" is a great gift for anyone who likes to stop and pick up coffee at Starbucks, Peet's or Seattle's Best.  The pattern was made by deconstructing a cardboard cuff from Peet's. There are 2 layers of lightweight fusible pellon batting in the middle.

The second gift was a crocheted bead bracelet in shades of teal.  I am still working on paring down my bead collection, but I ended up having to buy a few more beads in different shades of teal to finish this project.  I know that some of you are crocheteres, so I am going to provide you with directions to make a bracelet like this.

The finished bracelet was 7 1/2" long before sewing the ends together. These are the supplies needed to make a bracelet like this.
15 yards of size 10 Perle cotton
60 each of size 6 glass beads in however many different colors you want - I used 6 different colors
Size 7 steel crochet hook
Wire beading needle
Tapestry needle

DIRECTIONS:  Thread the beading needle with the Perle cotton.  Sort beads and place each color in a separate dish.  You will need to determine an order that is pleasing to your eye and string beads in that order.  The smaller the number of different beads (say, 5 different beads versus 6 or 7 different beads), the smaller the diameter of your bracelet will be.  I used 6 different beads for this bracelet.  They were strung in order - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on - until all beads were used up.

Now, take your crochet hook, and beginning with the last bead you strung (#6), chain 7 and join with a slip stitch to form a ring.  make sure you leave a tail of Perle cotton that is at least 6".
ROUND 1 - * Slide a bead next to work, single crochet in next chain (bead will be on right side of your hook). Repeat from * 5 times. Do not turn or join your rounds, you will continue to work into the next stitch and the beads will spiral on the outside of your work.
ROUND 2 - *Slide a bead next to work, insert hook under the thread that comes out from the left side of the next bead, make a single crocket. As you look down onto the work in your hand, this new bead will be to the left side of the same color bead in the row below. Make sure that you do not make a single crochet in the single crochet of the row below, but ensure that you are making your single crochet under the thread that is coming out of the right side of the bead.  Repeat from * around the rest of that row, until you have a  #6 color bead ready to crochet once again.

Repeat the last round until you have used all the beads, or until the bracelet is the desired length. Cut excess thread, leaving a tail of 12" or so, and pull the thread through the last stitch on your hook.  This will fasten off your last stitch.  Thread the end of this thread into a tapestry needle.  Bring the ends of the bracelet together and turn the ends of the bracelet so that the spirals line up. Sew the 2 ends together,  making sure that you maintain the integrity of the design. Run the extra thread through the center of the bracelet (the "tube") and pull the needle back out to the outstide.  Place a drop of clear nail polish on the thread where it exits the tube, and let dry.  Repeat with the other length of thread from the beginning of the bracelet.  When both drops of nail polish are dry, cut thread as close a possible to the bracelet.

Off to help my daughter study for her SAT exam next week. And finish sewing the binding on the quilt that I gave you a sneak peek of last time - yes, I finished quilting it but forgot to take pictures of the quilting process as I promised.  Will share machine quilting with you in the future!  And I am going to try my hand at dyeing some llama fiber with Easter egg dyes - won't that be a riot?  Stay tuned for a llama update, and you might want to listen to the llama song, at least once!