Winterset Camping

We went to Winterset and camp in the City Park. It is a nice campground that has full hook ups. It is not super large area but nice to visit the attractions in Winterset. 

We went during the quilt in the bridges and to support the guild that had a table at the local quilt show. Camping was with Kandi and Mark and it was a fun weekend going to the different quilt displays thru out the town and it would be a fun thing to do another year. 

On day two we went to the John Wayne Museum that has grown by a lot since the last time we were there. They have a beautiful facility with a lot of different things to see at the museum along with the home that John Wayne started out in. I don't think he grew up there his entire life, but I could be wrong as I am writing this several months later from when we went and visited. 

We went to the John Wayne museum in Winterset 

 

A project for someone else on my long arm

 

This beautiful cross Quilt was brought to me by a friend who needed it quilted. So, with a little learning curve, I put it on the short way running the long light on the rollers.

This beautiful cross quilt was brought to me by a friend who needed it quilted. So, with a little learning curve I put it on the short way running the long light on the rollers.

That meant I was spending a lot of time rolling it back-and-forth to finish the long stretches of quilting. So, I ended up taking it off the frame and putting it back on running it, so the long sides were attached to the rails that worked so much better. I was able to complete it last night and sent it home with its owner this morning.

Focaccia

I started yesterday with a bunch of Sourdough that I had feed and needed to use. So did a search online and found a recipe for Simple Sourdough Focaccia from alexandracooks.com 

I had 500 g of sourdough, so I multiplied this recipe x 5 to make it 

100 g of active sourdough starter

10 g or 2.5 t kosher salt

440 g of water or 1.75 cups room temperature water I did not plan ahead so used filtered water from the refrigerator and warmed it a bit. 

512 g or 4 cups of bread flour

3 T extra virgin olive oil 

Flaky sea salt 

I added about a Tablespoon of garlic granulate and 1/4 c of dry onion flakes. 

cut a bunch of Basil leaves up and added to the dough. 

Place starter salt and water in a large bowl, stir with spatula and slowly add flour mix again until flour is completely incorporated.

After about 30 min to 1 hour, I did a fold of the dough and did this with each turn of the bowl (I used that's a bowl from Tupperware to raise the dough in after it was completely mixed. 

I let it sit on the counter all morning and until around 10 pm and then shaped into pans using 3 squares 8 in pans and 2 9x 13 pans. I left the 3 8 in pans out on the counter covered and the 9x13 I put in the refrigerator covered and pulled out in the morning and let warm up.  Sprinkled the tops with 

When I got up, I started out with a slower oven but ended up switching the temp up to 450 in my convection oven and baked the 8 in square pans.  I left the temp up and put in the 9x13 pans but to get the top browned the bottoms got rather dark. Waiting for them to cool now. 

New Adventure

 I got a call from a friend, and she has decided to sell her Nolting Long Arm quilting machine. The next question was I interested in buying it. Well, I first had to talk to Fred. Then after we discussed it and I found out what she was asking for it. We decided that it was a go. So about two weeks ago I purchased the longarm and moved it into my upstairs sewing space. 

It was quite the challenge making it fit as the table is one of the longest ones at 14 feet, after some planning and we updated the room with a new floor it was put in place.  So today I put a quilt in the frame and will be starting my first attempt of quilting a whole quilt. I have done several table runners but now it is on to a much bigger challenge. 

Wild Rice and Craisin Bread

 Well, my experiment worked

So here is the recipe for the bread sort of  I just kind of add things together starting with a recipe and then going from there. 

2 loaves

2 cups of warm water

2 Tablespoon of honey

1 Tablespoon of yeast

mix in a mixing bowl

Add 2 teaspoon of salt

4 Tab of butter

1/3 cup of wild rice that was left cooked in about 2 cup of water until the rice is soft about 45 min. 

along with about 2 cups of left-over wild rice and white rice mix.  You don't need to do the white rice but it was a mix we had the leftover of, so I just added it in. 

I would guess about 1/2 to 2/3 of wild rice cooked until done would be best for the recipe. 

Now for Craisin after cooking the rice I added about two handfuls of craisin into the hot water of the rice and let it set to cool.  I added it to the water, honey and yeast in a mixing bowl. make sure that the rice water is not too hot.  I think there was about a cup of water in the cooked rice after that I added the salt and butter and blended in the bread flour slowly 

I put in about 6 cups of flour 2 cup of wheat, and the rest is white bread flour or until it made a dough that pulled away from the side of the mixing bowl as you mixed it. 

This was set aside to raise once it doubles in size, I dived the dough in half and added to the bread pans and let it raise on the countertop until it filled the bread pans. 

Little Dutchess

 Well, I have had a hard time dealing with letting go of the little girl as I sometimes called her she did take a lot of our time going for walks three times a day. It was good to get out and now I don't think I have been out of the house since Christmas. hard to believe 

Here are a bunch of photos to overload the page of a little dog that was dearly loved by all her people. 

Now once the world has unfrozen, she will be buried with her previous owner as she was just on loan to us for the last two years.  They have been waiting for her and so then as time goes on, I hope to add a new little doggy to the family as I miss having her around and another will not replace her but will add some extra in the house. 

Moving forward on City Square

 I started this quilt in July and it is now the end of December and I am on the 2nd to last border. only have some flying geese blocks to go and maybe an additional fabric border that is to be decided maybe it will be a solid black border and that will get a fun quilting design in it. The pictures below show it at its point now of progress.  I had an interruption in November we lost our little Yorky Dutchess she was rehomed to us after her previous Mama passed away. That made the middle of November a hard month. to finish off.   So not much progress happened on this quilt for a while. Plus there were a few Christmas projects that got in the way of this quilt top too.