small hands

This photo is a scan from Better Homes and Gardens magazine.

Thank you for the comments on my quilt.

Do I have OCD?

No, not even close. I think of my output as the product of multitasking leisure time with quilting. Plus, I am away from my children part of the time, so I have a lot more free time than a full-time parent. And I think I am an efficient piecer. I think about quilting a lot, but there are people who are way more prolific than I.

So the search for a replacement car has begun. I'm very enamored of the 2008 Toyota Highlander Hybrid, but it's very, very expensive. I have until January 7 to figure it out, so this week is going to be full of researching, documents, conversations with sales people *Have Mercy*, and decisions, decisions. I've already been asked by a sales person about the location of my husband. It's going to be a long week.

HARDEST.QUILT.EVER.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year everyone!!

Thank you for all the good wishes following my car accident. You all are the best. No, really.

Thank you for the car suggestions. I don't know yet if my car is going to be totalled and I really don't know what I will get to replace it.

Anyway, about this quilt. Around the blogosphere, folks were making this very cool doll quilt.



But I'm not a doll quilt maker, so I decided to give this quilt a whirl from scans of library book American Country Scrap Quilts by Liz Porter and Marianne Fons.



What was I thinking? I have to laugh at myself [now that it's done] about how many times I screwed up piecing the rows of blocks [7 or 8 times; no kidding]. My family joshed me about it, saying I didn't know how to quilt. My lack of spacial sense really hindered me on this one, but it's done now.









Scrap quilts are good Year-In-Review kinds of quilts, because you can use all the fabric that you used on other quilts throughout the year.

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I'm taking most of this week off. I have a mediation is San Francisco tomorrow, but otherwise I've just been enjoying time at home and with my kids.

Christmas was very low key, but nice. My kids are happy and I'm relieved it's over.

It feels a little oppressive to read all the new years editions of magazines, hectoring us all to get organized. I believe in organization; I just don't want to feel obliged to be. Life is full of enough pressure already.

* * *

I am appalled by the news that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. May she rest in peace.

I was in a car accident Thursday night, as I was returning home from work. A woman came into my path at a right angle when it was completely unsafe to do so. The traffic collision report term is failure to yeild to oncoming traffic. I couldn't stop in time or get around her.

My children weren't in the car, thank God.

The airbags deployed which was horrible--smoke everywhere, the impact of the airbag to my face made my lips puffy, my jaw sore and my nose hurt. And they explode open, so my ears are still ringing from the noise of the explosion.

I called my stepfather, who came to the scene and was so very good to me, as he always is. He was like a concierge, holding my purse, talking to tow truck guy, talking to the other driver, talking to the witnesses, taking me home, making sure I didn’t lose consciousness or anything. I couldn't sleep very well that night. The next morning he picked me up and took me to the rental car place and just, in general, talked to me a whole lot.

I went to work the next day because I have a ton of work and working is what I do. Plus, I had a business lunch, which had been hard to schedule; so I didn’t want to cancel at the last minute. The lunch was lovely–grilled salmon, roasted potatoes and broccoli rabe, tiramisu for dessert.

This weekend was about regrouping and mothering. Friday night I picked up my kids and we went home and had dinner. I took a long, hot bath and got into bed to read more Name of the Wind. Mostly it was about watching Yu Gi Oh with my little dude and letting the four hours of sleep the night before catch up with me.

Saturday morning I made a long list of things we needed to accomplish and then we went out and did them. Shoe store to get flats for the dance my daughter was attending that night, drug store for a phone recharger and sundries, grocery store for...groceries, Telegraph Avenue for a late lunch [hot dogs = high protein] to get the blood sugar up and stop the bickering, stopping at Hot Topic for Secret Santa gifts, Yogurt Park for a bit of nostalgia, walking around before remembering the groceries in the trunk that needed to get home.

Saturday evening my son and I took my daughter to the dance, her first dance. I was concerned about her safety because of the location of the dance, in a high crime area of Richmond, but it was very well organized and monitored, so she was safe and had a great time. I could see that gleam of pre-teen independence in her eyes when I picked her up at 9:30 and she said repeatedly that she had a great time. While she was at the dance, my boy and I decorated the Christmas tree.

Sunday I did yoga for the first time since the accident. It felt good, though my ribs and lower back were sore. I am deeply thankful that I was not seriously injured.

Later, the kids and I walked to the drug store to get more Christmas lights, more Secret Santa gifts. I like walking with them and they like being environmentally conscious. My son watched a Nickelodeon special on global warming which featured Kenyans, describing how global warming makes it harder for them to get water. So now, when we do something like walking or turning off the lights, we say we’re doing it for the Kenyans.

As we walked around this weekend, we looked a various models of cars. I will probably have to replace my car. The contenders are the Volvo Cross Country wagon, Saturn VUE, BMW X3, Toyota Highlander, VW Passat wagon. My daughter is lobbying hard for the Chrysler Town and Country, but I’m not feeling it. I thought I might like a Honda Element, but I’m not so sure now. It won’t be a new, new car; I just don’t believe in paying the new car price. I am so not in the mood to buy a car at all.

Wear your seatbelt and drive carefully.

Last Sunday, my friend J. and I went to Copia for a sparkling wine tasting. I’ve never done a wine tasting of any sort, though I live and work very close to Napa and Sonoma counties. I’ve always appreciated those counties fine restaurants, but wine...eh.

This was hosted by Hugh Davies of the Schrambsburg wineries. They make wonderful sparkling wine–cuvees--and I’ve consumed many glasses of their products, though this is the first time I’ve swirled and sniffed and spit it out.

The New York Times has an interesting summary of their history:

By now, the Schramsberg story is part of Napa Valley lore: how the vineyard was started in 1862 by an itinerant barber named Jacob Schram, who employed a small army of Chinese workers to hollow cellars out of the slopes; how Robert Louis Stevenson, a guest of the Schrams in the 1880's, described them in his book ''The Silverado Squatters'' as ''dug deep in the hillside like a bandit's cave.'' The Schrams stayed until just before Prohibition, when they sold the place as a summer home.

After Prohibition was repealed, the estate passed through several hands. Wine was made there, none of it very good. Then, in 1965, Jack and Jamie Davies arrived from Los Angeles, he a Stanford and Harvard-trained businessman, she an energetic housewife interested in art.

It was the 60's and like so many others in those days, the Davies were looking for a more meaningful life. With absolutely no experience, they decided to become winemakers. What's more, they wanted to make champagne. They drove the bats from the caves and out of the old Schram house. They planted grapes, bought some battered old winemaking equipment and, depending mightily on the kindness of winemaking neighbors, began their new life. Most of the neighbors thought the idea of making sparkling wine, really top-quality sparkling wine, was insane.

During the tasting, the adjectives pineapple, citrus, green apple, hazelnut, oak, rosemary were used freely to describe the qualities of the wines. I found that I liked the four year old champagnes more than the 17 year olds.

Of course, there were also plenty of show-offy wine snobs in the audience, who had to dominate the question and answer portion of the program. Wine snobs are boring. Hugh Davies were very interesting, a cross between a chemist and a chef. At the end of the program, he opened a bottle of champagne with a sabre. Cool.

After the program we had brunch at Julia’s Kitchen. It was adequate–I had a frittata and she had a poached egg with truffles–but not life altering.

* * *

I've been watching Veronica Mars on DVD. It's entertaining and smarter than the average television show.

I'm reading The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

Because my son has decided to sleep in his own bed more consistently, REM sleep has returned and these books (and life in general) give me strange dreams.

Today is World AIDS Day.

I heard a report on the radio yesterday that the new retroviral drugs have added 3 million years more life to AIDS patients. More life. That made me happy and tearful.

I also read that AIDS infection rates are rising among people ages 15 to 19. That made me tearful too.

This interview was very interesting, especially debunking the belief that AIDS is a treatable disease like diabetes. It's not like diabetes.

* * *

Before my children get home from their dad's house, I have a chicken baking in the oven. I love this recipe, which makes the house smell wonderful. It is really cold outside. I hope we can do nothing today; I need to after the week I've had and the week I'm facing.


Roast chicken with cumin, paprika and allspice

4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

1 6- to 6 1/2-pound roasting chicken
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 large lemon, halved
preparation
Preheat oven to 375°F. Rinse chicken; pat dry. Place chicken on rack in large roasting pan. Stir oil and next 7 ingredients in small bowl to form paste. Rub spice paste all over chicken.

Roast chicken 1 hour. Squeeze juice from lemon halves over chicken; place lemon halves inside main cavity. Continue to roast until chicken is cooked through and thermometer inserted into thickest part of thigh registers 175°F, about 1 hour longer. Transfer to platter; let stand 15 minutes.

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I dig this combination of red rick rack and the unbleached cotton. It's from the December 2007 Marie Caire Idees.