I read online somewhere about reviving wilted carrots. The hint was to remove the tops of the carrots and place them in a baggie with ice cold water, seal the bag, and pop it into the fridge overnight. Guess what? It works GREAT!
It's Fall, time to pull out all of my veggie garden that isn't being over-wintered. Some of the items left were carrots, and silly me forgot to put them in the fridge right after cleaning and they got limp. I followed the advice and I now have crunchy carrots once again.
My garden is a lot of work, but I just can't beat tomatoes fresh off the vine, fresh lettuce, beans, peas, etc... Fresh is always best, and since I grow most of my own, I know what's been put on/in the plants and get the best results from canning. Now that I know how to revive carrots, I'm going to need to learn how to can them too.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
One Size Does NOT Fit All
I'm going to be teaching a couple of friends how to sew. Just very basic, beginning stuff, all straight lines. Aprons! I thought they'd be easy - which they are when you're talking about construction, not so much for sizing.
I freely admit that I'm B-I-G. Tall with plenty of excess cushioning so to speak. So I'm used to having to adjust patterns of all types to fit me. Usually my issue is with the length of sleeves and legs, rarely do I ever have an issue finding something to fit my "girth". Until I started looking at my apron patterns. The biggest size I could find in my stash is XL, and online I'm only finding S-M-L for women and practically nothing for men.
Now this wouldn't be such an issue if it wasn't for the fact that I was going to sew along with my friends and make myself a good canning apron with pockets and long ties that I can wrap around to my front with a duplicate to go to my BFF who happens to be male and love food as much as I do. Problem is, none of the patterns that wrap around to the sides of the models wrap around for me. And with curves and angles on the pattern I like, a simple add to the fold line won't work quite right.
So I'm on a misson. I'm going to learn to make patterns of my own, for those of us who don't "quite" fit the norms of some designers. I might even add some ruffles (even though I'm not a ruffle girl) just to test out my cool ruffler foot on my vintage White machine.
When all is said and done, I hope to have a pattern that works, is quirkily (new word!) fun to wear and can be adapted to multiple sizes. Check my etsy site in a few weeks, I have a goal to have a Christmas themed apron up for sale before November. And if I can figure out how to make pattern pieces that will fit on an 8"x11.5" piece of printer paper, I might even sell a PDF version of the pattern(s).
I freely admit that I'm B-I-G. Tall with plenty of excess cushioning so to speak. So I'm used to having to adjust patterns of all types to fit me. Usually my issue is with the length of sleeves and legs, rarely do I ever have an issue finding something to fit my "girth". Until I started looking at my apron patterns. The biggest size I could find in my stash is XL, and online I'm only finding S-M-L for women and practically nothing for men.
Now this wouldn't be such an issue if it wasn't for the fact that I was going to sew along with my friends and make myself a good canning apron with pockets and long ties that I can wrap around to my front with a duplicate to go to my BFF who happens to be male and love food as much as I do. Problem is, none of the patterns that wrap around to the sides of the models wrap around for me. And with curves and angles on the pattern I like, a simple add to the fold line won't work quite right.
So I'm on a misson. I'm going to learn to make patterns of my own, for those of us who don't "quite" fit the norms of some designers. I might even add some ruffles (even though I'm not a ruffle girl) just to test out my cool ruffler foot on my vintage White machine.
When all is said and done, I hope to have a pattern that works, is quirkily (new word!) fun to wear and can be adapted to multiple sizes. Check my etsy site in a few weeks, I have a goal to have a Christmas themed apron up for sale before November. And if I can figure out how to make pattern pieces that will fit on an 8"x11.5" piece of printer paper, I might even sell a PDF version of the pattern(s).
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