Friday, May 5, 2017

It was a lively Guild meeting last night. I’ve mentioned before that the local Senior Citizen’s Association is having some internal political struggles and the Guild got caught in it last night. We knew that their executive wanted to talk to our executive; that meeting took place over the past month and we were faced with some expensive options. The Senior’s Association were going to start charging us $65 for a meeting (we have two a month) plus an extra charge for our Tuesday bees. The end result is that our membership in the Guild would jump from $35 to $125 to cover the extra charges. The Senior’s also expected us to pay a $20 cleaning fee if they didn’t think we had cleaned up after ourselves (in spite of the fact that before we can start to sew on Tuesdays we have to wash down all the tables due to someone else’s mess) and we had to take out our own garbage. In the end our Executive found a new location for us and we will be out of the Senior Centre at the end of the month. It became clear with all of the rules they were imposing that the Senior Citizens’ Executive didn’t want us. There is some talk that when the Senior Citizens membership hears of this they will be outraged but we’ve made our decision and, in the end, were quite happy to end our association with them.

I spent the entire morning baking. I have three dozen tarts, three dozen cookies and a dozen Rice Krispie Squares ready for the show tonight, along with the baking I did yesterday. We will have a few tickets to sell at the door tonight but we are within a dozen seats of another sell out. From all the standing this morning my back wasn’t very happy but I spent some time this afternoon in my cross stitching chair; my back still hurts but I feel much more relaxed. Surprising how doing something you really like just makes the day better.

Thursday, May 4, 2017

I started baking again today; I’m loving my new mixer. I made a lemon bundt cake (a new recipe) and I was worried when it didn’t come out of the pan easily. I managed to get it out and only lost a tiny bit off of what will be the top. If I were icing it you’d never know but since I want to be able to serve everything on napkins there will be no icing.

Next up were the cookies. I made Mum’s Chocolate Cookies. I made them once before for a Song Circle and we thought they were a little bland. Of course I didn’t remember that until after I had them mixed. The recipe called for walnuts (which we don’t like) but I had some pecans so I added them in. Hopefully the nuts will add a bit more flavour.

While I was waiting on things to bake I looked over the other recipes I wanted to make. When I did my shopping list I thought I had enough corn syrup but today I realized I was making a double batch and I wouldn’t have enough. I debated about using some agave syrup; I checked the equivalency and you would use about 1/4 as much but you’d have to add up to 1/3 of the liquid. That math was just too much so I decided to get some.

I had some packages to get into the mail so when they were wrapped I headed out. Pat wanted me to pick up a prescription at Safeway and, since it didn’t matter where I bought the syrup, I said I’d get it for him. The Post Office visit went fine and then I stopped at Canadian Tire for my clothes pins (and a package of napkins for the Hall). From there is was a quick trip to Safeway and home.

I fully intended to bake another batch of cookies this afternoon but a nap sounded like a better idea! My allergies were acting up this morning and although the pills I took say non-drowsy I’m going to blame the pills and not laziness. I was only down for about ten minutes when I realized I had forgotten to buy the corn syrup. I’ll head out to the Guild meeting a bit early tonight and pick it up on the way.

So what do ideas have to do with this post? I was wondering this morning why on earth I volunteered to do another concession at the end of the month. After the Board meetings when everyone is coming up with ideas of things we could/should do, I feel like I have nothing to contribute. I think if they come up with the ideas the least I can do is some of the work!

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

After I got my reports ready for the Cranberry Hall Board meeting I should have started baking for our Friday night concert. Instead, I worked on my project. I thought it best to get as far ahead as possible while the instructions from yesterday were still fresh in my mind. Everything worked well today; I’ve made some changes to the notes on my pattern and I’m hopeful, should I want to do the project again, I’ll be able to.

I’ll stop at the grocery store after the meeting tonight to pick up the things I need for my baking. This week’s menu includes a Lemon Bundt Cake, Butter Tarts, Rice Krispie Squares and a couple of kinds of cookies. Although the cookie mixes are cheap and easy I found that the cookies dried out very quickly; I’ll go back to Mum’s recipes for my cookies. Since my left-overs this week will be taken to the Song Circle on Sunday I want things to be as fresh as possible.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

I took my sewing problems to the bee today and I’m back on track. Back on track but not before having to take apart pretty much everything I had sewn together in the past couple of days. I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine for the rest of the project; I took lots of notes and photos to go with them.

Although I had lots of ripping out to do before I worried about stitching, the time came to fire up my machine and resew a zipper. Much to my dismay I hadn’t put any thread into my many bags. When I move and put the cover on my SUV I have to take off the thread and lower the thread spools. I had bobbin thread in the machine but none to thread the needle with. Somewhere in my dreams I had taken along a hand stitching project that I thought I might have time for; fortunately there was a suitable colour of thread in that package. I got the zipper restitched and moved on to the next step.

The next step was also one that I had totally missed up when sewing on my own. But I had good instructions now and I knew how things were supposed to go together. It was almost lunchtime when I finished that step, only to realize that my bobbin thread had run out about one inch into the seam! Again, without any of my normal thread with me I used the hand stitching colour to fill a bobbin. That got me through the remainder of the day.

So although there isn’t anything to show for the day, I feel like I’m back on track and can complete this project on my own. Fingers crossed anyway.