“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”-Albert Einstein
“Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”-Jules Verne
‘We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”-Carl Sagan
“Seeing a full display of humanity involved in space is a game-changer for everyone. We’ve all looked at the stars; we’ve all imagined what was going on. Not everyone wants to go, but everyone wants to know what it’s like.”-Mae Jemison
“We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its beauty. Neither do I believe that the spirit of adventure runs any risk of disappearing in our world.”-Marie Curie
“The scientific method is about trying to remove our own bias and subjectivity, and be as objective as possible. But then you can put it back into context and you’re allowed to be emotional and human about the way you engage with it.”-Alice Roberts
“I tell my daughter every morning, ‘Now, what are the two most important parts of you?’ And she says, ‘My head and my heart.’ Because that’s what I’ve learned in the foxhole: What gets you through life is strength of character and strength of spirit and love.”-Viola Davis
‘Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”-Mahatma Gandhi
“Don’t worry about not fitting in. The things that make people think you’re weird are what makes you you, and therefore your greatest strength.”-Birgitte Hjort Sorensen
“Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible; not to run away.”-Dag Hammarskjold
“Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.”-Ernest Shackleton
These cards are all from a deck of artist inspiration cards I keep in my office for people to choose the ones that speak to them. The artist is Kate Allen, who is a mental health author and illustrator. This set of cards is all work appropriate, but if you are looking at more on her website, they are not always work language. I really like them because they are so soothing and also very realistic and normalize mental health concerns. I hope they inspire you today! Here’s her website if you want to see more. https://www.thelatestkate.art/
“When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life or the life of another.” — Helen Keller
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” – John Lennon
“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”—Swedish proverb
“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far.”—Jodi Picoult
“Some days, doing ‘the best we can’ may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect—on any front—and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.”—Fred Rogers
(I swear this isn’t a sponsored post!) I’ve had my Accuquilt machine for a while and it’s been super useful and fun, so I wanted to share some things about it. The Accuquilt is a die cut machine for fabric. Here’s the machine when it’s ready to go:
I was introduced to it through my MIL when we used to cut our jellyroll strip pieces for our Jellyroll Quilt class. (She’s fond of getting me hooked on “sewing game changers” that happen to be expensive. Not that I mind, obviously!) I finally got one of my own after a really bad tendinitis flare made it impossible to quilt or sew. I just can’t cut fabric for that long without hurting myself. Cutting fabric is my least favorite part of sewing, only shortly after ironing in levels of “eww.” Since it’s more accurate than rotary cutting as well, it makes my quilts look much more professional. Sadly, it does not iron my quilt squares for me, so it’s not quite perfect, but you can’t expect everything I guess.
On to how it works! It has dies that are plastic on the bottom and foam on the top with some mysterious heavy thing, probably metal or wood, I would guess, in the middle. It has blades hiding deep in the foam that form the pattern you are trying to cut. Here’s a picture of what the die looks like. This particular die is a Block on Board one, which means you can make a whole block with just these pieces. They are turned to make sure your fabric is cut on grain, as a lot of quilt fabric can be slightly off grain.
This particular block is a Bear’s Paw block. Isn’t it cute? I’m going to make a Scandinavian Christmas gnome quilt with it.
To use it, you make a sandwich with the die on the bottom, up to 6 layers of fabric, and then a special cutting mat. Then you put it on the flat part of the machine and gently guide it through. The machine compresses the sandwich/foam and allows the blades to come out and cut the fabric. It comes out the other side, as you can see. but you have some time to get around the machine and support it on the other side.
After it comes out of the machine, you can pull off the extra fabric and you’re left with the cut out pieces for the quilt square. Then you can do the fun part and actually sew!
This quilt will be a Scandinavian Christmas Tomte quilt. I have this fabric in a bunch of different color ways and I think it will be super cute!
I’ve been enjoying collecting all my die cutters for it and have used it to make a bunch of quilts without hurting my hand. This was the first one I made, although I used my MIL’s Accuquilt. We took a jellyroll quilt class together and decided to make our own rolls instead of buying one. The borders weren’t cut with it, but the strips for the blocks were. I have this quilt in my office currently for naps and times when people might need a comforting blanket.
This quilt is one I made for my boss for her wedding. It’s the same pattern, I just had forgotten the sashing in my office quilt. I really liked how sunshiny it is!
This is probably my favorite quilt I have made and I gave it to a friend of mine because I thought it belonged to her after I made it. It uses two Accuquilt dies- the Gnomies and the Snail’s Trail die. The Snail’s Trail is one of the block patterns that I really wanted to make, but I was intimidated by the smaller pieces. I didn’t think I could get the pieces cut accurately enough, so I was super pleased with how it turned out.
The latest quilt I’ve finished is this one for my friend above’s mom. It did get a little wonky. I think I forgot to flip the rows as I was sewing them together.
I can’t find the picture of this quilt finished, but it had another row of hexagons and then also another big black border on the top. I made it for my Secret Garak swap in one of my craft groups. I was pretty pleased with it.
I have three more quilts cut out so far: one hexagon with gnomes, one similar to the quilt above with really pretty florals, and one made of strips to be a bookshelf quilt! Won’t these two be super pretty?
I hope you enjoyed seeing what’s been helping me with doing more quilting lately. I’m excited to start using more of my die cuts once my sewing area is more set up. Wish me good, quilty luck, smooth thread, and never empty bobbins!
Otherwise known as “How Piggy survives the winter.” Also features blankets (and a shirt) made by either myself or my MIL. May your Wednesday be as cozy as Piggy is here!
Hello! Such a belated post, but I still wanted to share. I’ll combine Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day, since we celebrated them on the same weekend. We had a small game night with some friends this year for Lunar New Year which turned out to be super fun! I think part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was that I was finally able to relax because I only cooked a couple of things and tried really hard not to beat myself up over not making everything. We held it potluck style, so everyone brought something. That way we got to try a bunch of different dishes, but I wasn’t chained to the stove all night. I ended up developing a really awful migraine the day of the party and so spent two hours attempting to nap it off and lost a lot of prep time. But the world didn’t end and everyone got enough to eat.
I was so busy eating and having fun that I forgot to take a picture of the whole table, but I’ll tell you what we had at least. We had: Egg Drop Soup, Fried Rice- veggie and chicken, veggie lo mein, and fortune cookies, of course. I made bao- pork and chicken and 5 spice fried donuts. There were also egg rolls, but they were pork, and we had enough food, so didn’t end up serving them.
These were baked chicken bao. A friend asked me for the recipe on social media and I had to laugh because I made my own chicken filling and used a steamed bun dough, but then baked it, guessing at the time and heat. They turned out really good! If I was going to follow a recipe though (ha! but it could happen!) I would use the Woks of Life recipe. They have a veggie recipe and a chicken one too, I think on the website. Here’s the baked pork bun recipe though, to get you started. https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-bbq-pork-buns-cha-siu-bao/
I made traditional steamed pork buns as well. Some of our friends have an exchange student currently and he made my little Scandi heart just burst because he looked so excited about all the food and just ate everything. He’s very fun to cook for! I also found out that he knows the krumkaker recipe and since a friend from work gave me a set to make them, I’m totally stealing him one day to help me learn to make them. (So excited!)
Here’s a picture of our mantel decorations. It’s really fun to try to make them cool without repeating too much. I think I’m going to have to get some more décor soon. My paper lanterns are looking a bit shabby and we can’t have that! It’s bad luck! The little hanging lanterns in the picture are thick felt actually, with little gold paper scrolls in the middle. I had ordered a felt dragon too, but I didn’t get it until the day after, so we will have something fun and new next year. We forgot to get singles from the bank for the red pockets, so we used $1.50 in quarters (because 6 is a lucky number) instead. I’m sure my younger brother appreciated it at least. That’s at least part of a laundry load!
Here’s a picture of some of my plants! We had the Lego piece up near by, but I forgot to grab a picture. The white plant stake in the cactus is a serotonin molecule. 🙂 Everyone needs a little extra some time. The winter themed table runner is one I made and I love how it turned out. It just needs two little snowflake buttons. K brought me the little plant in the pink pot for Valentine’s Day and it is still alive!
So on to Valentine’s Day! We typically don’t do much, although this year, we did get each other presents. The Husband gave me a really cool canvas garden tote this year with tools that were so fancy I had to look them up to see what they were. Of course, I was super excited about them, but paused, looked at him and said suspiciously “This is so I stop leaving my tools over in the garden overnight, isn’t it?”
“It was part of the reason,” he said, but mostly it was so I would have proper tools to work in the garden. We have hand me down tools from a relative which work great, but I don’t have that many and we definitely needed duplicates of a few. I gave him a book of weird maps. There’s a bunch about video gaming and how far it’s spread, another about the internet, and all sorts of other ones. It’s very fun to look at!
Since Valentine’s Day was on a Monday this year, we both worked a full day, and both of us completely forgot what we had planned for dinner. We had canned soup and biscuits because we were both forgetful. I did try to get the cheese biscuits to have hearts on them at least!
The next day, I made our Valentine’s day steak dinner with butter herb noodles and stir fried bok choy, carrots, and mushrooms with Asian seasonings. It was really good!
We had heart shaped lava cakes for dessert! They came with raspberry sauce, but I would have liked a little more of the sauce. Excuse the terrible picture. We were probably playing our game at the times.
Well, I hope these pictures made you smile! Have a great day!
“The thing about mental health was, you couldn’t take a course of antibiotics and be magically healed. Some people’s brains just thought too much or felt too much or hurt too much, and you had to stay on top of that.” ― Talia Hibbert, Take a Hint, Dani Brown
“Do not be silent. Raise your voice. Be a light in the dark.” ― Kalynn Bayron, Cinderella Is Dead
“I’m not a monster because I live in a world that gives me impossible choices.”― Bethany C. Morrow, A Song Below Water
“Reason without emotion is often a mask for cruelty; emotion without reason can allow people to excuse all sorts of excesses.” ― Nalini Singh, Archangel’s Kiss
“The family you create is sometimes just as important as the one you’re born into.” ― Rebekah Weatherspoon, Xeni
