Cross Stitch

Mama taught my sister, Toni, and me to embroider, to help us pass the long, long hours of travel in the back of our vehicle "du jour", from Montana to Central America every year.

Once you get the hang of one needle art form, it is not difficult to learn new ones. I went from embroidery to needlepoint, to crewel, to cross stitch in about 10 years. I do not have the very first embroidery project I ever did, but I remember it well. I do have the second embroidery project I ever did. I also do have my first crewel work I ever did, as I made it for my grandma and she gave it back to me when she felt I should have it back. My advise to my granddaughter, when she began doing needlework was: Always keep your first piece of handiwork! You will be able to look back at your handiwork and see how far you have come!

Fifteen years ago, my husband spent a great deal of time in and out of hospitals, and months of recovering at home. During that time, I spent literally hundreds of hours cross stitching Baby Samplers for my grandchildren. Now great-grandchildren are eminent, and I have begun to cross stitch smaller-sized Baby Samplers for hypothetical babies! This is the latest piece I finished this summer. All it needs is a name and a frame!

Beanbag Owls

My daughter, Mishel, works with preschool aged children. She loves to engage them in unconventional ways. She says that little people are very fascinated with soft textiles that have different textures. Last year, she found a photo of little owl-shaped bean bags and asked if I thought it possible to make her a few for her classroom. This is what I came up with...

I had some lovely pieces of vintage chenille in my fabric stash. I drew the cute little owl shape on a plain piece of paper, cut it out (once I was happy with the proportions) and then used the cutout as a pattern on the chenille, cutting two of each color. Then, from my felt stash, I cut different sized black and white circles for eyes and a little yellow beak for each of these guys, and glued them on one side of each soon-to-be owl, to make a sweet little face. I embroidered around each eye as well as the beak, just to give them some definition.

After that, (inside -out) I machine-stitched the front to the back of each owl, leaving about 3 inches open at the bottom. I turned them inside-right and ironed them flat (on the back side). I filled each owl with about 1- 1/2 cups of long grain rice and hand-sewed the opening shut. Voila`! Three sweet little beanbag owls!

Aunt Pat's Salted Caramel Sauce

In the wintertime, we long for warm summer days when we sit out on the porch in the

sunshine with a bowl of creamy vanilla ice-cream smothered in chocolate and caramel sauce. But you can make your own warm caramel sauce. It is wonderful on baked apples and bread pudding and... ice-cream! Here is how you do it:

Gather all your ingredients together, as this process happens fast and requires you to stir constantly:

1/3 Cup butter

1 Cup brown sugar

1/2 cup maple syrup

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup heavy cream

In a large, deep pan, melt the butter, syrup and sugar. Cooking at medium heat, bring this to a boil, add the salt.

Keep stirring until it begins to thicken (about 5 minutes). The sauce will begin to pull away from the pan a bit as you stir and you will know that this is thick enough.

Remove from the heat.

It won't take but a few seconds, after you remove the sauce from the heat, for it to stop boiling. Slowly add the cream with one hand and stir with the other. You do not want to add the cream to the boiling sugar, as it will curdle!

If you want caramel sauce for ice cream, set this aside to cool and put into a glass jar--very yummy! Refrigerate what you do not use immediately, once it has cooled. It will get thick in the refrigerator, but all you have to do is stick it into the microwave for 15 seconds, and it will be soft again.