Dishing Up Christmas

 

Bowl Cozies

This year I dusted off sewing skills that had been dormant for decades by taking a couple sewing classes. One of the classes featured bowl cozies, which I've found so useful that I thought these would make great Christmas gifts.

‘Sew’, after a trip to a nearby fabric store for supplies, I set up the sewing machine and got to work. Selecting fabrics that reflected interests of the recipients (family members) allowed me to make the bowl cozies personalized.

After sewing was finished, I turned my projects into gift bags with the addition of a bowl, instant oatmeal, hot soups, and crackers. With some raffia to fill in spaces and some Christmas-themed gift bags, these made nice little gifts that were made with love and didn’t cost a fortune (except for mailing, sigh).
 

 

Following several YouTube videos, I discovered another super easy and cute pattern for pocket tissue holders. Using leftover fabric, I made a tissue packet holder to match each bowl cozy. After all, this is cold and flu season, so I added some vitamin C drink packets, tea, and cocoa mix.

 

Once Santa’s helpers at USPS had whisked away these gifts, I hunted around for more Christmas sewing projects and found these cute little mouse ornaments on Etsy from PinCutSewStudio. The ears looked daunting but the hardest part ended up being sewing around the curves. The pleated ears were a cinch.

I’m following a couple sewing crafters on YouTube for easy project ideas not only for Christmas but birthday gifts also. Browsing beautiful fabrics for projects is almost as much fun as finding stunning papers for card making.

Apple a Day Cafe

 

Original art work by UDFB staff

Apple a Day cafe is the free meal program provided by the University District Food Bank in Seattle near the University of Washington. Two mornings a week I volunteer helping to prepare, and sometimes serve, freshly made meals to anyone who wants one.

Our cozy kitchen

A typical day finds five volunteers at work in a small, galley-style kitchen. I have learned a lot through my volunteer work here. Our cafe manager is well-educated in the culinary arts and has years of experience that allows her to create daily menus and help us prepare in just two hours. 

With the manager's guidance, we pay close attention to food allergies including not only the usual wheat and dairy, but also soy, tree nuts, and fish. The menu is posted on a large white board daily and each menu item notes allergens specific to that dish.

While preparing food, we also take great care to use separate cutting boards and utensils for vegetarian meals and to the noted food allergies. For instance, a cutting board used to slice bread cannot then be used to prepare items that are to be gluten-free. 

Veggies ready for today's salad

I love seeing how a menu comes together depending on what donations we’ve received that week or just that morning. Every meal comes with a freshly made salad, usually made by me on the days I volunteer. Preparing these salads has introduced me to new ways of using vegetables. My usual salad dressing at home is a balsamic vinaigrette, but at the cafe I’ve watched our manager prepare fresh dressings from scratch, such as a recent cherry-berry vinaigrette.

Some days I get to prepare large pans of fresh fruit crisps. This day's started with the blueberries pictured and included fresh apples. While we have the small oven as seen in this photo (far back), for soups and rice we use several pressure cookers like the one next to the oven and in the foreground.

 

 Eleven-thirty comes and we are ready to serve meals out to those standing in our cafe line. Every meal comes with a hot food item, freshly prepared salad, soup, and a dessert.

I'm grateful for the food we can provide to our hungry neighbors and enjoy working along side other highly dedicated volunteers. My latest book, Generous Hearts, is informed greatly by my experience here and all proceeds will go to the food bank.

Prepping and Plotting

 

The busy holiday season is upon us again! I’ve had so much fun this month preparing Halloween, Thanksgiving, and general fall-themed cards. 

I have stacks of all these types—some needing envelopes and some still waiting to see what kind of card they will be.

 

 

 

While watching card tutorials from Gina K on YouTube, I discovered foiling products I’d never used. That changed quickly! I love foiling and these new materials make it so easy—easy to use up a lot more foil, but they make beautiful cards with plenty of shine.

Gina's products enable me to use both the original foiled design as well as the leftover foil. Another product came out recently that makes it easy to foil without heat and the results were very satisfying.

Leftover foil

Original foil

 

 

But that’s not all the preparations I have going. There are already many, many Christmas cards to donate to the food bank clients, and I’m eager to put more new supplies and designs into use.
 

More stacks of cards--all Christmas

Amidst all this card making fun, I'm also busy plotting for NaNoWriMo. This year’s sweet romance story involves heroine and hero working to keep residents at a senior living facility jolly and safe throughout December. Their two goals don’t go hand-in-hand, so my characters will need a little compromise to find their happily ever after.

What I haven’t planned is the title for my NaNoWriMo story. While the days are growing shorter, I'm hoping for a flash of inspiration for a title idea or two.

Eeek!

 

 

Yes, Halloween is approaching, but that’s not what frightened me this month. No, it was the apples that needed to be sliced for freezing, or

turned into applesauce and apple butter. Then it was the cucumbers to be pickled, followed by tomatoes to be sauced. Garden cleanup for final fruiting began and next month I will be transplanting these raspberries as well as planting a few new blueberry bushes. 



Halloween cards are under way and I’ve used a few different techniques this year. One new technique involved quite a learning curse, er rather, curve. 😉 There were many stencils that I wanted to buy for making cards but instead, I went to my Cricut to cut stencils with happy results! This simple pumpkin face and the photo at top are done with stencils I made on the Cricut.

Bowl Cozy

Soon Thanksgiving and autumn cards will be started, and of course, Christmas gift planning is already underway. Learning curves continued when I took another sewing class to make bowl cozies. They turned out great and gave me ideas for Christmas gift bags!

And what else happens in November? Why, it’s NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month. I’m plotting another Christmas story to write in November. It’s 50,000 words in November for the “win”! 

With all that fall planning underway I'll be sure to stock chocolate for the trick-or-treaters! (And a piece or two for myself 😊.)

Unraveling

 

 

Aprons in progress

Sew, I wanted to make part of a medieval peasant’s dress for a local renaissance faire this year. But, since I haven’t sewn in decades, I took a refresher sewing class. Not only did we sew this plushie cat, but we were also introduced to the embroidery machine—very intimidating, but also so enticing. 

 

More plushies!

Class went great and I made more plushies from dozens of adorable free patterns that are available at cholyknight.com.  Well, more
plushies meant more embroidering ideas. So, with my husband’s knowledge and effort, we now have an embroidery pattern that we will put on aprons for the food bank where I volunteer. 

 

Litster's shop at Camlann Village

My first apron was made from unbleached muslin. So blah. But combined with my interest in medieval history, I wondered how I might color it with plant dyes. I signed up for an online natural dyeing class. Soon after, I had the great fortune of talking with a dyer, or litster, at a nearby medieval village, Camlann. She gave me great advice on using rhubarb leaves for a pink color, and there are plenty of rhubarb leaves in my garden.

Etsy shop

This next part is no less tangled. All these textile projects merged with my interest in medieval history and led to curiosity about weaving. My new loom recently arrived and I’m looking forward to creating, um, something. Certainly not enough fabric for an apron! :)

 

Image from Liverpool Museums

 

There's one more thread to untangle. Most recently, I've discovered Tataki Zome, a method of pounding flowers into material. I have a lot of unbleached muslin and look forward to practicing this craft.

What a tangled adventure. For now, I’m dyeing to see how a rhubarb leaf mordant and color turn out on that plain muslin apron! (The stalks were combined with blueberries for a tasty crisp.)