Kristel's Blog

Happy Canada Day!

I’d go into some patriotic Canada thing, all about our elders, John A. MacDonald, the railroad, Canadarm, Terry Fox, and so forth, and how great that all has been to help build Canada today/Cancer Reasearch… but well all know that stuff — you came here to read about my day, not Canada’s, right? (And like I said, we know this stuff cold, it’s been drilled into us since we entered the school system, so the history lesson can be skipped.)

So why was today stacked?

Stacked Rag Quilt Squares

What are you looking at? (besides a stack of fabric of course…) you’re looking at 168 6″ squares for the rag quilt I’m doing. I figured, I’m throwing out all those old jeans & sweatshirts anyways, might as well try to rag quilt them, and if it doesn’t turn out, the only thing that was wasted was my time, which considering my life is definately boring, said time isn’t worth that much, so to waste it is fine. Anyways, I was hoping to get it all done today. That didn’t happen. It took HOURS and HOURS and HOURS to cut all that fabric. I’m putting the jeans on the back of the quilt, and the sweatshirty fabric on the front. Yes, I realize the jeans will fray (in traditional rag fashion) and yes, I realize the tshirt will actually curl onto it self. I figure by putting it on the front, the curling wouldn’t get in (or around) the fray so much, or at least I don’t think so; plus the Jeans can handle more wear, and I’m thinking the back of the blanket always gets the most wear. Now all I have to do is sew an X 84 times, then sew the squares together, and then cut the seams… oh man that’s sounding like a lot. I could definately do it all in a day, I just didn’t think it’d take so long to cut squares. But maybe my short attention span played into that… it’s very repetetive cuting 6″ squares over and over and over. At least now I’m pretty good at it, and most of them are, at least towards the end, actually 6″ square instead of off by a little bit (which as it’s a rag quilt, doesn’t matter.)

Unfortunately, because I was cutting fabric all day, I didn’t do much else. Watched the fireworks from my window though… I’m thinking I had the best view only because I didn’t have to be out in the rain.

Made Choco Munch (aka trail mix) today as well. You can’t taste the cocoa at all, so next time, I’m thinking I’m just going to leave it (and the sugar to balance it out) out of the recipe. You really don’t need it. The rest of it was good though. (the rest = cheerios, shreddies, almonds, raisins, and some white chocolate chips for good measure.) The recipe told me to wait until it was all cool before adding the chips… I waited until it was *almost* cool, and the chips kinda half melted, but it’s definately better this way. They don’t know what they’re missing. Sure mine looks a little messier, but it’s soooo much better. Totally worth it. If you wanna try it out, I’ll post the recipe.

Yesturday I was trying to find frozen bread dough. Sounds simple, right? Yeah, aparently not in guelph. I couldn’t even find fresh dough at any of the local specialty stores. Looks like I’m going to have to resort to pizza dough for the reunion, because making my own bread dough is just so… time consuming. And yes, I know I’ve made a statement on how my time isn’t worth that much, but when you spend all this time kneading and mixing dough, it seems to drag on, and it seems to me that if your time is dragging, the task you’re doing is worth less than your time (does that make sense? i’d go back and try to fix it, or at least my run on sentences, but it wouldn’t be worth it.)

I think that’s it for tonight. Happy Canada Day!