Between the Sheets!

Miss Ginger spends a lot of time between the sheets... and she's not ashamed to admit it! Unfortunately, she spends most of that time sleeping, and the rest snuggling with Princess Shelby, so get your minds out of the gutter!!

Momma Ginger was a fanatic about sheets,so Miss Ginger learned a lot about them from her. Momma G once told her "Ginger dear, you probably won't grow up to be much of a looker, so you'd better learn to keep a spotless house if you ever want a man!"  Well, jokes on her-  'cause I'm a knockout, I don't WANT a man, and my house is immaculate! 

Momma G was a white sheet gal- only white sheets, always washed in bleach.  5 boys at different stages of puberty... bleachability was a high priority for her! Miss Ginger, not so much! But she and Shelby appreciate the sanctity of "clean sheet night", and look forward to it every week!

One of the best things Momma G taught Miss Ginger is how to fold a fitted sheet. Can you do it?  Let's see if you are doing it right!  (Sidenote: do you know how hard it is to fold a sheet and take pictures of yourself doing it?!) Anyho, you start with a mess like this, fresh out of the dryer ("Don't let them sit in the dryer", says Momma G. "If you do, you'll never get those wrinkles out!"

Now, here's the fun part:  locate one corner, and hang the sheet over your left fist by that corner, like this:

Now, follow the edge of the sheet down from your fist to the next corner.  Put your right fist on the outside of that corner, and turn it inside-out as you bring your hands together. Once it is inside out, nest it inside the first corner.  Do this 2 more times, and if you do it right, it will look like this:

Now I'm going to lay it out on the dining room table so I can take pictures.  You may be able to do this part without laying it out, but really, it's so much easier to lay it on the bed or a table at this point....

Now, take the edge closest to you, and fold it up, lining up the straight edge on the right side (and concealing the messy left side within the fold!) Now, grab the far side and flip it over, placing the folded edge away from you. This brings this squarest side to the bottom.

Smooth everything out as best you can (no need to be OCD at this point) and fold it toward the middle, in thirds.

Fold the right third over the other two, making a nice, neat package.

Fold it one more time away from you, and you're done!  Nice and neat, ready to stack in your linen closet!

I've got lots more "sheet shit" coming your way, so stay tuned!

The Rule.

Momma G had a rule. Actually, with 5 boys she found it necessary to have lots of them, but today, Boy G invoked this particular rule on Queen Ginger, and she was none too happy.


Momma's rule was simple: before you could have something new, you had to prove you could take care of it by making sure everything you already had was well-cared-for.  That was the way she worded it- as if to say, if you show responsibility, all sorts of good things can come your way.  In reality, it was a bribe. You want a new toy? Clean your room. As I said: simple. Children with messy rooms did not get nice things.


When ExBF first moved into the house, we used "the rule" to resolve the shoe issue- that being, 2 queens who work in retail can manage to collect an obscene amount of shoes!  So the rule was simple:  if you buy a new pair of shoes, you have to get rid of an old pair. That seemed reasonable enough, until all the shitty shoes were culled out of both wardrobes, and there were still new shoes to be had. Eventually we added onto the house which worked for a while. Then Miss Ginger came along, and things got touchy again. Unfortunately for Boy G, the relationship didn't work out, but lucky for Miss G she now had possession of one half of an enormous walk-in closet with room for all her "necessities".


Hence todays invocation of the rule.  Queen Ginger wanted a new toy for her craft area, which was a wreck.  Boy G, in his benevolent way, wanted to purchase said toy for the Queen as a congratulatory token of her recently ended reign. But, he told her she could not unbox it until her craft area was clean!

She started with her fabrics, which were all over the house!  Some were still in the living room on a cart from her recently finished costume.  Some were in bins on Shelby's window seat in the master closet. Some were in bins under the guest bed.  And more and more bolts, bundles, and wads revealed themselves as the day went on!  By the time she found, folded, and sorted it all, the dining room looked like Mood had exploded in it!

After it was all organized and labeled by fiber and weave, most of it fit back into bins under the guest bed, with a few pieces that will be needed soon going into baskets on shelves in the craft area. Once the fabric was in order, Queen G went through all the notions, tools, threads, and crap that were all over the place and got them corralled back into their drawers and bins.  Of course, she couldn't get all of this done by herself, so she was glad to have Princess Shelby there to help with it all!

 Finally, there was room on the workspace for the Queen's new plaything: the Janome Memory Craft 300E! Don't say it: I know what you're thinking!  "Queen G- you already have 2 sewing machines and a serger: why the hell do you need another sewing machine?" To which I say, Dear Snaps, don't judge a book by it's cover- this is not a sewing machine at all- as a matter of fact, it can't even make a seam!

The "E" stands for embroidery, which is all this machine can do.  Yes, they make machines that do both, but mine isn't one of those. And, the beauty of having a separate machine is that the embroidery machine runs independently, so it can do it's thing while the sewing machine does it's thing.  The embroidery machine runs automatically, calling for you with a beep when it needs for you to change its thread color. You can work on part of a garment while the machine embroiders a design on another!

What kind of designs can it embroider?  Just about anything you can imagine!  In addition to 100 built in designs and 3 lettering fonts, the 300E has a slot for a compact flash card, so you can download design files from the internet and load them into the machine.  Can't find a design you want?  Digitizing software lets you take a photo, drawing, or other graphic file and convert it into an embroidering program that the machine can read.  It's pretty much like a computer printer, except it "prints" with thread on fabric instead of ink on paper!

Queen Ginger has all kinds of wild ideas for projects she wants to make, and she can't wait to show you some of the things she has up her (flawlessly embellished) sleeve!

Thinking about.....

... starting a craft blog. Would anyone read?

That's Radiculus!

Lot's been going on in GingerLand, folks, so the Queen's gonna catch you up!  

Great progress was being made on the gown for the Royal Return, with plenteous help from the Queen's able bodied assistant!  It's like that girl's claws are scissors, I'll tell you! As you can see, she loves to sew!


Things were going swimmingly there for a while, with satin and fur falling together beautifully!  (Not Shelby's fur... the fur that goes on the bottom of the gown!)


Anyho,  about Wednesday a week ago,  the Queen woke up "down in the back", as she often does.  


Only this time it was much different. Worse. much worse.  And shooting. It often shoots, but this time, it was like someone try to steal her leg by prying it off at the hip with a screw driver!  




Dr. Ken has only been able to relieve it slightly, and for a short term.  It was so bad the the Queen resorted to narcotics at night in order to sleep, but vicodin makes her too sleepy to take it during the day, so she'd down a few advils and suffer through it. After a few visits with no results, Dr. Ken said those words our Royal has been dreading:  "it's time for an MRI".


Let me tell you, those things are no walk in the park!  Your back is already killing you, and they put you on this hard table and slide you into this tiny hole barely big enough for your leg!  You know these things must be designed and built in Asia because a normal-sized American barely fits inside!

I had visions of my favorite Bunny Sister having to bring one of his hotties  Christopher Robin to pull me out!


Anyway, once they get you wedged in there, the work crews get busy, jackhammering and drilling and banging out the image. From the noise the thing makes, your would think they are hammering out a picture of your insides on stone tablets!




It will take about a week for the dust to settle and the images to be ready.  Dr. Ken predicts he will find degeneration or prolapse between L4 and L5, which is causing "Lumbar Radiculitis", more commonly know as "sciatica".  


Meanwhile,  sewing had come to a complete halt- until today.  At the worst, it was impossible to find a comfortable position- sitting, standing, or lying down, hence the vicodin.  As some of the therapy has taken effect, the pain is not as intense, and the Queen has been able to return to the sewing machine and computer, hence this update.


Thank goodness Boy G is on vacation from work next week, so he can help the Queen get all this sewing finished before the big deadline of February 11th!  

When Is a Blender not a Blender?

When it is a SOUPMAKER!  When Queen Ginger first saw the Cuisinart® Blend and Cook® Soup Maker, she knew it was perfect for a Consumer Product Review®!  At $200, would a blender with heating elements REALLY be worth the money?  Inquiring GingerSnaps want to know, and so does Queen G, so she bought it and headed home to test it out!


You may ask "Queen Ginger, why not just open a can of soup and pop it in the microwave?"  Well, dear 'Snaps, I suppose you could, but have you read the nutrition label on most canned soups?  They are mostly salt, with some fat stirred in, and enough little cubes of ingredients to give the soup a name.  They are delicious, but terrible for you!  And the so called "healthy" soups just taste, well, healthy.  Homemade soups are relatively easy to make at home, but can be a bit of a mess by the time you use a blender, and perhaps a food processor, and a pot on the stove- that pretty much leaves you cleaning the whole kitchen!  Wouldn't it be nice if you could do it all in one unit that can just pop into the dishwasher?


First, a little about the machine itself.  It looks for all the world like a regular blender, although when you compare it to a regular blender, it's a bit taller, and the bottom of the jar is somewhat wider than most. There is a knob to control the blend functions, buttons to control the cooking temperature, and a timer that must be set in order for the elements to heat.  The blending and cooking functions cannot be operated at the same time, but there is a "stir" function that will turn the blades at a slow speed while cooking to mix the ingredients.  The jar and lid can go into the dishwasher, and the blade unit with the heating plate is easy enough to rinse clean in the sink. Used without the heating elements, it can be used just like a regular blender to make margaritas. Or margaritas. You could even make a pitcher of margaritas!  Aside from that, Queen Ginger has found most blenders to be relatively useless... until now!


Queen Ginger had not sent a waif to the grocery store in ages, but she managed to find a recipe right there in the book to make with ingredients she had on hand!  She had an onion, some dried lentils, and a couple of carrots that were just beginning to get a bit flabby, but hey, that's another great thing about making soup: you can use vegetables that are a bit too ripe to serve raw or whole, but no quite putrid enough for the compost heap!  Queen G just loves a chance to be green!

The process for most soups starts, like all things delicious, with a bit of fat and some onions.  Here you can see the butter cholesterol-free margarine sizzling in the bottom of the jar as it melts, which only takes a couple of minutes.  

Once the margarine melts, the onions go in.  Cut them into 1/2" pieces, and drop them in.  A few pulses of the "stir" button breaks them up a bit more and distributes the butter.

The lentils are added, with some of the Queens delicious and healthful homemade stock that she put away last spring, and seasonings over which Queen G has complete control! She used Tony Cachere's Lite:  Nothing unhealthy in this bowl!  


After about 30 minutes cooking and a few "stirs", the soup was just the way the Queen likes it: rich, with a bit of spice, and recognizable lentils.  The stirring process broke them up enough to make the soup creamy, but no so much that the soup was smooth.  If one prefers smooth soup, a few whirls in the "blend" mode and that's what they'd have!


The soup turned out delicious!  It made about 4 cups of soup, and since that was the main part of Queen G's meal, she had 2 cups for dinner, and saved 2 cups for lunch the next day. It was just as good the next day, and the machine makes it so easy, she could see herself making several batches of different soups on Sunday to have a week's worth of lunches at the ready! Next on her list of recipes to try:  Asparagus and Leek Soup, and Cream of Broccolli.  Don't think it only makes cream soups, however!  There are recipes for Pasta e Fagioli, and Chicken Noodle, too;  the texture of the soup is all according to the order in which you add the ingredients and when you blend the "base".


Queen Ginger is going to give the Cuisinart® Blend and Cook® Soupmaker 4 lipsticks!  While it certainly is an appliance once could survive without, it does make it easy to take control over your own nutritional destiny.  It's easy to use, easy to clean, and does what the package says it will do!

Someone's in the Kitchen with Ginger!!!

And as usual, that someone is Momma G!!  Check out this great recipe and the stories that go with it on The Low Salt Cajun Queen!

Drag Queen Martha Stewart?

As many of you faithful GingerSnaps know,  Queen Ginger fancies herself a bit of a drag queen Martha Stewart. Not only is the resemblance uncanny, but the Queen modestly boasts that she can meet Martha glitter for glitter, spatula for spatula, and garden for garden when it comes to practical domesticity.  You all KNOW Queen Ginger can serve some major HOUSEWIFE REALNESS, OKAYYYYYYYY?

Queen Ginger has blogged many times about her domestic prowess, and has recently started a satellite blog that further reveals her amazing kitchen wizardry! And each times she creates a post that basks in her manoristic glory, she tags it "drag queen martha stewart" just KNOWING that the bitch googles herself regularly, and would certainly want to meet someone even more beautiful and talented than she!

Do you know that damn google doesn't even FIND Queen Ginger's posts?!  I mean, really, that motherf&*#r must be defective, because it finds all of her other posts! Google "drag queen ginger grant"... her blog is first on the list!  Google "drag queen philanthropy".... guess who's first!  Google "Miss Mint Julep"... there I am!

But google "drag queen martha stewart"?  Crickets.  

Miss Ginger MUST meet Martha!  It's in her DNA to be one with this domestic goddess!  Since Momma G passed away,  Martha is all I have for advice on stuffing, sewing, and all things glitter and sparkly!  

It's an obsession... but not a scary, stalkerish kind!

HOW can Queen Ginger meet Martha? Anyone got any ideas?

Someone's in the Kitchen with Ginger!!!

It's been a while since Miss Ginger shared one of her favorite childhood recipes from Momma G's repertoire, so she's going to show you how Momma G made stuffed artichokes!  These were a favorite of Baby Ginger, and he didn't get them very often for a couple of reasons.  First, Momma G would only make them when artichokes were in season. Even though you can find them year round, they often have been sitting and drying out for a long time, and Momma G said she wasn't going to go to the trouble to make them if they weren't going to be good!  There's the second reason we didn't get them very often- it takes a long time time to stuff all of that stuffing into each artichoke leaf!  Really, it's not a complicated process, but since Momma G was usually cooking for a least 5 hungry boys, plus a hungry husband and often some hungry old ladies,  stuffing a whole bunch of these could become quite an ordeal.  Momma had an old enamelware roaster that she used only for cooking artichokes, her "artichoke pot".  There wasn't anything special about it except that it was too shallow to cook a turkey, but it was big and flat and could hold a lot of artichokes.  You don't need a special pot, and if you're not cooking for an army, they aren't hard to make!

To find nice, fresh 'chokes at your grocer or farmer's market, look at the flesh inside the outer leaves, near the stem.  It should be bright green, and tender enough to yield to pressure from your fingernail.  If the insides of the leaves don't seem "meaty", skip them and wait for a fresher crop!  If the artichokes are too dry, you might as well make stuffed pine cones!

Once you get them home, slice off the stems near the base, creating a flat surface on which the 'choke will balance.  Next, lay each artichoke on it's side, and slice off the top third. Rub the cut areas with half a lemon to prevent browning, and trim the tips of the remaining leaves if they are sharp.

To prepare the stuffing, use fresh white bread crumbs- Momma G usually used leftover hamburger or hot dog buns, which have a perfect "brown" to "white" ratio.  You can use dried bread crumbs from the store, but your stuffing will be dryer.  Create enough mixture of half bread crumbs and half grated parmesan to fill the amount of artichokes you're making, and season the crumb mixture with italian herb seasoning and garlic- lots of garlic!! Use fresh garlic, garlic powder, or garlic juice, depending on you taste and comfort level.  Momma G loved her some garlic powder (she said it didn't leave an aftertaste), but Miss G uses fresh garlic, and LOTS of it!


To stuff the artichokes, place it in a large bowl and work from the outside in, pulling out each leaf and stuffing in the garlicky goodness with your fingers.  It's kind of like glittering: you spill as much as you use, so using a big bowl allows you to keep "recycling" until the chokes are all stuffed! Stuff them as full as you can get them!!

Once they are stuffed, you can cook them however you like!  As I said, Momma G used a big roaster pan, but any pot with a tight fitting lid will do.  Miss Ginger likes to use a pressure cooker when she does just a few.  Place the artichokes, bottom down, in about an inch of water, cover, and steam for about 45 minutes.  Toward the end, check for doneness by tugging an outer leaf... if it comes loose, it's ready!


You can cook them on top of the stove or in the oven, as long as they are in a constant steam bath for the 45 minute cooking time. Miss G sets her pressure cooker for 30 minutes, and uses a natural release which gives about 45 minutes total.  


They are also good cold, and you can reheat them in the microwave, so make plenty!  You can serve them as a heavy appetizer, or just eat one as a light meal!!

Miss Ginger's Product Reviews!

A new feature for the new year! Miss Ginger, being the avid consumer, will offer you product reviews, shopping tips, and general advice designed to encourage your consumption and stimulate the economy! It's just Miss G's little way of "paying it forward"!
Her reviews will be honest, unrewarded, and completely and totally unbiased by anything except her own great taste and her real life evaluations!
Miss Ginger will review all kinds of products and services, and will note her recommendations thusly:

ONE LIPSTICK:

Leave it at the store! This product is not worth the tissue you'd blot on!

TWO LIPSTICKS:

This product has little merit for Miss Ginger, but some might find it interesting, useful, or worthwhile.

THREE LIPSTICKS:
It's a good product, and worth the space it takes up a Chez Ginger!

FOUR LIPSTICKS:

Highly endorsed by Miss Ginger. You probably need this product!

the coveted FIVE LIPSTICKS!:
What the hell are you doing reading blogs when you don't have this FABULOUS product in your house! Stop now and GO GET IT!!

Now that you all know the rules, let's play the game, okay?!

THE IMPETUS:

As you may know, Miss Ginger is a lover of all things kitteh. Especially Jackson and Shelby. Those of you who share Miss G's love for the feline species also know that they sometimes express their little feline needs and opinions "from the bladder". This is especially an issue with male cats, and older cats, both of which describe Jackson. And anyone who has been around cats knows that cat piss is one of the most vile odors on earth! Hence, the need for this product!

THE PRODUCT:

The Bissell "SpotBot®" Handsfree Compact Deep Cleaner promises you "the freedom to walk away while it does the work for you!" "While the SpotBot® gets the stain, you get back your day!" "All pets have accidents! That's why SpotBot® is trained to remove pet stains in no time!'

THE TRIAL:

Brother John left his plastic shoes on the floor, and those are Jack's favorite, so he peed on them! The cat urine got on an afghan unnoticed, and was transferred to the sofa accidentally.

Miss Ginger purchased the SpotBot at Lowes for about $119. She also purchased the special "Pet Stain and Odor" chemical for $17.84, which seems like highway robbery for a bottle of detergent.

This particular dose of cat urine had seeped down into the space between the cushions of the sofa, so Miss G immedately realized that the automatic feature of the machine was not going to work. Luckily, tha machine also comes with a manual "Tough Stain Brush" "for versatile cleaning of stairs, auto, and upholstery."


The brush attachment was easy to use on the upholstery, although there was a fair amount of "overspray" as the nozzle has a pretty wide spray pattern. Miss G will admit that this was a particularly difficult test, as the urine has saturated at the edge of the cushion near the welting, meaning it had soaked down into the seam. Now that the fabric, is dry, there is a faint smell of urine if one sticks one's nose down into the cushion, but it can't be detected from across the room as it could before cleaning.

Being the thorough reporter she is, Miss Ginger located this stain on the ottoman to test the unit's "automatic" feature for her gentle readers.

It's been there for a while and God only knows what it is, so Miss Ginger placed the unit on the stain and selected the "Set-in Stain" cycle on the unit.

The machine whirred into action, alternating periods of spraying, scrubbing, and sucking. Miss G noticed immediately that the machine released a lot of cleaning solution, which darkened the fabric and bled beyond the reach of the unit's rotating nozzles.


After about 5 minutes are so, the machine beeped to signal the end of it's cycle, and Miss G removed it to reveal this:

That big, wet, keyhole shaped spot would certainly dry with a dark edge on the napped fabric, and she suspected a big, clean circle would be left, based on the amount of crud in the collection tank.


So, Miss G employed the manual nozzle and hose to clean the entire surface of the ottoman, a process that took about 5 or 10 minutes and yielded embarrassing amounts of crud in the collection tank!


Once dry, however, the ottoman was clean, evenly colored, and spot free!


THE RECAP:
The Bissell SpotBot® is lightweight, small, and affordable. It operates effortlessly, as promised, but it will leave a perfectly round, obvious clean circle wherever it does it's work. If your carpets are even modestly soiled, it might be smarter to have the entire carpet cleaned. The collection tanks and hoses do have to be cleaned after each use to avoid having all that grossness fester in the machine, and Miss G had to mop the overspray off of the hardwood floors after using the manual attachment on upholstery. Still, the unit did leave the ottoman looking great, and greatly reduced the pet odor on the sofa.


THE JUDGEMENT:

THREE LIPSTICKS!

This is a product Miss G will pull out whenever Jackson pees on anything that's can't go in the washer.

What kind of products do YOU want Miss G to review?

Christmas Has Come and Gone...

and so have the excitement, the guests, and the mess! It was a FABULOUS holiday a Chez Ginger, but now all is quiet and that's okay with Miss G and the kitties. For the moment, at least! She's one tired gurl after all this excitement!
On Christmas Eve, Miss G spent a lovely time with her brothers, her niece, and nephews with a low-key, family style seafood feast, a Louisiana Christmas Eve tradition. Brother made fried shrimp, boiled shrimp, and grilled shrimp, and all were delish!
Saturday morning Miss G got up to attend to her meat... it was really large and she wasn't sure how long it takes. You know those really big ones always take forever!

While the meat roasted, Miss G prepared the sides, and delegated the table set to Brother John... under her watchful eye, of course! She chose a blue and silver theme. Not randomly. You will be seeing those blue balls again in early February, although not in their current form! That's all the hints I'm giving!

The sides, by the way, were delish! Miss G did Blue Mac and Cheese, which was as rich and delicious as it sounds! She followed Made in Scotland's green bean technique, and everyone raved that they were so tender without being mushy! There was cauliflower, asparagus, roasted root vegetables, and Miss G's culinary experiment of the year- Yorkshire pudding!

The "yorkies" were delish, but there was only one slight debacle that I'm sure will become part of "the jokes of Christmas Past"....

Yasee, part of the delicious decadance of Yorkshire pudding is that you use pan drippings from the meat to prep the pans and keep the puddings from sticking. You have to get the pans and fat really hot, then ladle in the batter. Miss G miscalculated the capacity of the pans ever so slightly, but that was all it took to run the fat over onto the floor of the 400 degree oven! Good heavens, did it smoke! There was nothing to do but let it burn off while the puddings cooked, and luckily the weather was pretty enough for us to open the windows and let the smoke dissapate! However it went, they were delicious!

The best part of the evening, however, was Miss G's assortment of FABULOUS guests! There was family, extended family, and friends, and we ate, drank, and laughed! It was a great holiday and I'm so fortunate to have such lovely people to spend it with!

How did your holidays go?

Checking it Twice?

Not so much! Miss Ginger isn't doing much shopping this year, and actually, all that she is going to do was done today in one fell swoop at the grocery store! She's not doing the whole "gift exchange" this year with anyone, so there's not a single gift to wrap! Her gift to the friends and family who choose to share Christmas with her will be laughter, spirits, friendship, and a lovely traditional English Roast Beef dinner, with a bit of a Cajun twist! She can't help it- her cooking just turns out a bit spicier than what anyone in England could call "traditional"! She's also going to make another traditional English side that she's not done before: Yorkshire Pudding!

To tell the truth, she has made them before, only she called them by their common American name: "popovers". There's a few differences in the way "Yorkies" and popovers are made and served, but Miss G feels confident enough with her experience and technique that she can make them for a holiday meal without any worry. I think sometimes Yorkshire Pudding is made as one big dish kind of like a souffle, but the recipe Miss G has chosen makes individual servings that will ensure each guest gets plenty of crispy crust!

I'm not sure why the Brits call them "puddings", although I do know a pudding is much more than the blob of thick Jell-o® slop that we call pudding in the US!

What are you doing for Christmas this year?

Sewing With Miss Ginger!

Those of you who have followed TFBOMGG for a while know she is quite an accomplished seamstress, and makes most of her own gowns and tents! Each year, there's one special outfit to be made for her Mardi Gras ball, and now's the season! Sewing is a skill she picked up gradually from Momma Ginger, and Miss G still gets lots of help from Momma G when she sews today!
Some of you who have lost important people may know what Miss G's talking about- they are with you always and "talk" to you all the time! Momma G talks to me most when I am cooking, sewing, or contemplating an illegal left turn! "Don't even think about it! If it were safe to turn left they wouldn't have made it illegal!"

When Miss Ginger takes on a sewing project, Momma G is with her every step of the way!

"That lame' is going to be a bugger to sew! How about a nice Ultrasuede® instead?"
"You'd better pin that! If you try to sew it freehand, you're gonna have a mess on your hands!"
"Make sure you press that flat before you go on or you're gonna have a lump you'll never get rid of!"
"Just cut and sew it and get all the seams in place. I'll put the hems and zipper in while you're at school!"

Okay, she doesn't so much say that last one anymore, but damn, I wish she would! Miss Ginger HATES putting in zippers!

So, Momma G watches over Miss G's sewing table with a mentor's eye, and pops thoughts into my head constantly as I work through project after project. She may not be here to help physically, but she helps in her own heavenly way!

And, here on Earth, I have 2 other helpers to keep me in stitches, as well!

If you've ever tried to sew from a pattern, you know that they are notoriously confusing!!!

"With RIGHT sides together, pin coat upper front along welt line, matching small dots, as shown, fig. 1a. Baste, stitch, and trim within 1/4 inch."

WTF?? Miss Ginger has NO patience with "patternspeak".
However, apparently "patternspeak" and kittehspeak" are quite similar, and Jackson picked up on it quite quickly. He absolutely LOVES patterns, and "reads" them endlessly whenever they are avaialable. He's teaching this art to his sister Shelby, as well!

It comes in quite handy, really! Jackson is great a keeping my cutting line, and he points it out and stays focused until I get all the pieces cut!

Shelby, on the other hand, has the attention span of a gnat, and really can't be bothered to carry the torch of the family art forward!

Being the nature lover that she is, she must rather while away the day making love to her "shrub"!

What was the last craft project you attempted, and how did it turn out? Pics?