Finally, Some Good News Here

I am usually so discouraged by the local news that when I see something positive I like to grab onto it with both hands and dance around a little.

Two years ago, the Phoenix library system was experiencing severe budget cuts, along with everyone else, and they reduced their hours so much that you could barely find an open library.

Burton Barr Central Library, very retro-looking but built in the 90s. photo source

I felt badly for the librarians whose hours were cut and whose jobs were consolidated. In the age of instant access to information from any location, I think the role of the archivists and information experts has become even more important. Let’s not put any more librarians out of jobs, nor discourage any more students from becoming librarians!

interior, source

But it was the customers who were really hit hard by the library closures, even if it was only a matter of shorter hours. We have thousands of jobless and/or homeless people who use the library for daytime shelter from the heat, while spending their time constructively in online job searches, studying for classes, or just getting lost in a good book for a short while. We have thousands of immigrants who use the library services to learn English, contact family members, find jobs, or involve their children in reading groups. We have thousands of old-school (pun intended) students, like me, who want to pull every book on a subject, spread them out all over a table, and spend an entire day in research.

waiting for the doors to open, source

Phoenix needs its libraries!!!

Anyway, my little snippet of good news appeared last week, in a small article on an inside page of the paper. The libraries are expanding their hours again! Only a few of them, and only by six hours. Still, it’s extremely good news. The main library will open its doors earlier in the morning, while others will stay open later.

Here’s a bit of the article:

Bookworms and Internet users have residents and a faith-based organization to thank for the longer hours. Earlier this year, Valley Interfaith Project and several residents who support the libraries told the Phoenix City Council they were disappointed to see the city's budget proposal lacked additional funds to restore after-school programs and lengthen hours for swimming pools and libraries.

The city had reduced those services during the recession.

In response to the residents and advocates, city officials amended their proposed budget to spend $6 million more on public services, including $500,000 to extend hours for some of the libraries. The City Council supported the increase.

So it turns out that citizens actually can do something to improve their community! Maybe I should stop sitting in my room and whining. Maybe I should go talk to the City Council next time I have an issue.

Maybe.

Katrina

Another Green Pie

Our lime tree decided to provide ten ripe limes all of a sudden, completely out of season. After hankering after Key Lime Pie for more than a year, I grabbed those limes and presented them to the Piemaker, along with the Key Lime Praline Pie recipe I’d set aside a couple of months ago. He laughed and said that would be enough for about a tablespoon of lime juice, so I gave him a one-time dispensation to buy additional limes.

Key limes are not the mystery they once were, but for clarification, here is a size comparison.

The three large green fruit are plain old limes, known horticulturally as Persian limes, Citrus latifolia. The tree is thornless, and bears a seedless fruit. The small yellow and green fruit are our Key limes. Key lime, Mexican lime, and West Indian lime are common names for the species Citrus aurantifolia, a very thorny tree with these very small, seedy fruit.

My palate is not sophisticated enough to explain the difference in flavors, since they are both vibrantly sour and sweet. But there is a definite difference, which is why genuine Key Lime juice is so sought after and expensive, and people will actually go to the effort of squeezing hundreds of marble-sized fruit to get the juice.

So, back to the pie.

Our favorite magazine, Southern Living, was once again the source for a mouthwatering recipe.

The pie according to Southern Living

For the one cup of lime juice in the recipe, the Piemaker said he needed my 10 tiny Key limes and about 6 regular limes, so, be prepared.

We decided ahead of time that we would not need any whipped cream for this pie and we were glad of that decision later.  

Our version, sans creamy topping

All the rich, sweet-and-sour flavors came through, and the crispy caramel praline was the perfect contrast to the creamy custard filling. Certainly the regular lime juice did not detract from the flavor, so maybe that small amount of Key Lime juice was enough.

This overexposed photo shows the candy-like praline crust

This is definitely the best Key Lime Pie we’ve had.

And I should know! Long before I discovered that all I had to do to get pie was simply to wish for it, I used to make pies myself. (I know, it’s hard to believe. This was probably eight to ten years ago, and thankfully, a time nearly forgotten. ) I went on a quest to find the perfect Key Lime Pie recipe, and I collected and tried at least five of them. There were two Key Lime Cheesecakes, two custard-style pies, and one similar to Lemon Meringue Pie. They were all good, but the recipes used very basic crusts. Since good pies are magical balancing acts between filling and crust, none of the ones I tried really stood out as The Ultimate Key Lime Pie.

I think this pie definitely deserves the title. Plus, have you ever noticed that the pies baked by someone else always taste better than the ones that you yourself make?

Katrina

A Collection of Memories

I think it’s been quite some time since we’ve looked at one of my fun collections (other than the menacing hordes/hoards of fabric and patterns). This is a small collection, but each item has a special meaning for me.

This is the first piece, chronologically.

A penguin. His little button reads “another satisfied customer”

A coworker gave it to me back in 1983, as a sort of joke since I was not much of a sales person.

The little shop where we worked sold skimpy exercise wear and swimsuits, and ladies would ask us such time-honored, delicate questions as “does this [leotard/headband/spike heel/tube top/Brazilian swimsuit] make me look fat?”

From a sales perspective, the correct answer is always “no, it makes you look so svelte and sexy that you should buy five of those just so you will never be without one.”

From my perspective though, the answer was often something like, “you might actually prefer this full-coverage  [jumpsuit/hat/athletic shoe/tee shirt/maillot]. It’s so much more comfortable. Would you like to try it on?”

Let’s just say my approach did not always result in “another satisfied customer.”

Next, I have quite a few endangered animals in my house!

For a few years, various wildlife organizations were offering stuffed animals as incentives for donations or annual membership fees. (Better than tote bags.)

Manatees (the little one is a Beanie baby)



Sea turtle (endangered in more ways than one; my dog wants to eat it)

Next is one of the first gifts I ever received from the Piemaker, in the mid-90s. The very first gift was a package of smoked salmon, and no, I have not kept that one.

It’s an armadillo, as near as I can tell, all dressed up in a hat and bandanna. Piemaker brought it back as a souvenir from a trip to San Antonio back when we were still traveling a lot for business.

Here is a very sentimental piece.

It is a gigantic duck, in fact we call it the Duck. I can’t even remember anymore where the Duck came from, but it was a favorite snuggly pillow for our dog Skyeler, who is no longer with us.



Skyeler loved his Duck

Skyeler was a very excellent dog. He somehow recovered from a truly hellish early life and went on to have happy times with us.

Good dog

It was just so funny that he loved to sleep on the Duck, and now we keep it around to remind us of him.

I didn’t get into the Beanie Baby craze but people gave me some as gifts. My local friends think of me as the birds-and-bees lady so I get a lot of bird-themed things:

A robin, a cockatoo(?), and a blue jay.

Finally, the most recent addition: I fell for the bunny hype­­­­­ at Urban Threads' blog Stitch Punk.

I had to get a Stitch Bunny for the sewing room.

CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP

The fanged stitch bunny is actually the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog so I can be a stitch geek and a Python geek at the same time. (Run away! Run away!)

This particular Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog actually looks like a tailless bunny with gum disease, to be honest. Not too scary.

chomp chomp?

Maybe they are more ferocious in herds. 

Possible customer service scenario

There are lots of other stuffed animals around here. They seem to be stuck in corners of closets and on the ends of bookshelves and there are probably a few hiding in unexpected places too.

Do you have some favorite stuffed animals?

Katrina

Finishing, Fitting, Fixing

I have done a bit of sewing, in case you were wondering. I pulled one item out of the UFO pile, one out of the mistake pile, and one out of the old tee shirt pile, and ended up with quite a collection of completed projects.

One of my very early sewing projects was the Burda Heidi dress.  I was influenced by Erin at A Dress A Day when she had made so many nice versions of the pattern that I just couldn’t resist it any longer.

This was early in my return to sewing last year, and my first experience with Burda, so I made a few mistakes. I cut the pattern sizes according to the stated measurements, but never thought to measure the pattern. The skirt fit fine, but the bodice was about six inches too big in every direction. The neckline was so wide and so low that without a top underneath, it framed a huge expanse of my chest, making it look wide, square, and even flatter than it already is. The “cap sleeves” slipped off my shoulders.  The width of the top bloused out and hung down over the waistline.

This, the only photo I have, is from after I took up three full inches of the shoulder seams and created a sort of gathered shoulder out of the cap sleeve. It wasn’t the worst looking dress, but since I was unhappy with it, I never wore it.

In my rescue attempt over the weekend, I first split the bodice from the skirt. Fortunately I had an extra yard of this fabulous pixilated rose print left over, plenty to cut a waistband. I cut off the side placket zipper at the top of the skirt, attached the waistband, and the skirt was ready to wear!

The little green top is recycled from an oddly tent-shaped, tunic-length tee shirt that got too small at the neck and shoulders. I cut off the entire upper portion of the tee from the sleeves up, flipped it upside-down so the hem was at the top and the cut edge was at the bottom, and sewed two short shoulder seams. (I don’t have any photos of the process since the whole thing was an experiment with no anticipation of success!) Now it’s a very comfortable cowl neck, batwing tee. Maybe not quite right for this skirt but I liked the accidental color match.

I could have just thrown away the bodice pieces from the Heidi dress, but I also had the leftover fabric and I just love the print, so I decided to try to squeeze out a blouse. I’d been wanting to try another Hot Patterns style so I settled on this one, good for drapey fabrics and also using lots of small pieces. I managed to reuse the back bodice of the Heidi dress for the upper back of the blouse, while the front bodice was large enough to use for some of the facings. I cut everything else out of the remaining yardage, although I did not have enough for sleeves. I cut short bias strips to finish the armholes.

beautiful fabric, impossible to see garment detail!

I did quite a few fit adjustments on this pattern. First of all, if you ever use Hot Patterns, remember that their sizing is not the same as the Big 4. I cut the size 10, grading to 12 at the hips (normally a 14-16 in Big 4). I then had to adjust down a size at the waist, so I’ve essentially got three sizes in this version of the blouse. I think the fit will be different with different fabrics since there are so many seams, gathers, and other variables.

The colors look great with my green basketweave trousers. I’ve decided I LOVE this blouse and will make a few more.

This green eyelet dress is another long story so I’m going to try to make it short.

I ordered some ivory cotton eyelet, imagining that I could dance through a flower-filled meadow in a soft, floaty summer dress. When it arrived it was actually cotton poly, and not at all soft or floaty, but very stiff. And shiny. Perfect for a wedding dress, but not much else. I thought that dying it a dusky sage green would tone it down (30 minutes in Rit Dark Green). It turns out that sage green, when it’s very shiny, looks nearly silver. Oh well, now it’s perfect for the matron of honor.

Averted from my meadow-dancing dress plans, I determined to make as much use of the pretty scalloped edges of the fabric as possible, so I put them on the skirt and sleeve hems, and arranged the bodice neckline so that each side of the “V” and the little cross panel would each be cut with scallops. I am happy to say the scallops all came out quite nicely. In fact, I think the entire dress is one of my finest successes. I just have to encourage someone to get married, so I have an occasion to wear it.

I have one more dress makeover and two more ufos in the hopper, and then the coast is finally clear for new stuff.

Is anyone else sewing?

Katrina