Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)
Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)
My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Wendie George!!!
Wendie George (#6918) has received a certificate of achievement in Stitching & Crafting for earning a Beginner Level UFOs Merit Badge!
“This is a great badge to earn. It’s a real feel-gooder. It feels great to finish a project that has been nagging at you.
The first part was a bit intimidating. Organizing and putting all my UFOs each into their own container or bag was a bit of work. It has started the whole process of cleaning and reorganizing my entire craft room. This is also a good thing. I purchased a bunch of clear plastic totes and placed one project into a tote/box. I then made the list of any supplies still needed to finish it and put the list inside the box on top of the supplies. I had a bunch of chalkboard stickers, so I put one on the front of each box and labeled the box with the project inside. While cleaning, I also made a box labeled “donation” for projects I no longer had interest in doing.
The second part was to finish one of the UFOs. I chose to finish a baby quilt for a coworker that I started about a month ago. The quilt top was pieced together, but that’s as far as I had gotten.
I feel I have succeeded in bagging and tagging all my UFOs. I also made a quick list of them all so I could start to cross it off. I am not going to admit the total number of UFOs on the list. I will just steadily work at finishing them while not creating more. Today I mailed the box of donation items to my Aunt. She is heavily involved with the church and many other quilters and aspiring quilters. I will let her spread out the projects to others who are willing to complete them (most were never started).
I started to finish the quilt by sandwiching the top to the cotton batting with a teal minky backing. I chose a quick method of quilting the layers together, “stitch in the ditch.” I used my machine for this. I added the pieced binding onto the front by machine, and hand-quilted it to the back. The final step to complete the quilt was to embroider a tag for the back. I have a Viking machine that kindly embroiders the words for me. I then hand-sewed the tag onto the back. One UFO down, a “few” to go!”
If you’re passionate about pollinators, then you probably know that butterflies love milkweed.
Photo by Barnes Dr Thomas G, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, via Wikimedia Commons
But here’s a trickier bit of trivia:
Why are butterflies called butter flies?
(As a Butters, I simply had to know.)
Butterflies, it is said, earned their name back when they would flutter around the milk pails and butter churns on farms.
milkmaid, G. Morland via Wikimedia Commons
Makes sense, but also makes you wonder why these aren’t called milklappers (buckettippers?) …
Photo by David Maitland via Wikimedia Commons
Anymoooo …
Here’s a cute 1935 classic called “Molly Moo-Cow and the Butterflies,” just for fun:
Food.
You know what you like.
Mmmm …
But do you know why, exactly, you’re drawn to certain dishes?
This sounds like a silly question, but there is a sort of science behind the appeal of a meal.
A harvest of interesting trivia, gathered by Amish furniture company Plain & Simple, explains how plating design, contrasting colors, and even the shapes of plates can make one’s dining experience more pleasurable.
For instance, are you more attracted to this dish …
Or this one?
The food components are pretty similar, but the first is somehow more appealing to me.
“The more presentable and visually-appealing [food] is, the better it tastes,” says the Plain & Simple post. “People favor bright-colored food that features lots of contrast. But too much color can be overwhelming—most people prefer three colors on their plate, distributed through three to four food components. Believe it or not, even the degree to which your plate is rotated affects how much you enjoy your food.”
How about this plate? Do the pale hues whet your appetite?
Photo by D Breen via Pixabay
According to Plain & Simple’s survey, “If you like your cheese salty, eat if off a knife—people rate cheese as tasting saltier when eaten off a knife rather than a toothpick, spoon, or fork.”
Of course, then there’s food art …
some of which is cuter (and more appetizing) …
Photo by Global Panorama via Flickr
than others …
Photo by Mukesh Patil via PDPics.com
Find out more fun “food appeal” facts at Better Dining Through Science.
Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)
Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)
My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Connie Bergstrom!!!
Connie Bergstrom (#6861) has received a certificate of achievement in Garden Gate for earning a Beginner Level Backyard Farmer Merit Badge!
“My first chicken was Burt, a Rhode Island Red rooster. I have had him for about 5 years. He has several lady friends, as we own around 50 hens and 3 roosters, including him and his son, Willie. We also have a Barred Rock rooster named Farmer who has a flock of his own Barred Rock and Cuckoo Maran hens.
We also have Orpingtons, Black Australorps, Buff Brahmas, RIR, Americanas, and New Hampshire Reds, and currently are raising up some Banties, Favorelles, Sexlink, RIR, and Orpington pullets. We feed organic cracked corn and hen scratch, occasionally free range, and they love scraps from the garden and the kitchen.
I absolutely love it. I sell our eggs; we get approximately 5-15 eggs a day when they are not on strike because of the Texas heat.”
Buy props used in MaryJane’s books and magazine!
5% of profits will benefit www.firstbook.org, a non-profit that provides new books to children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Here’s how:
MaryJane will post a photo and a description of a prop and its cost along with a few details as to its condition here: https://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/MaryJanesCurations. It’s a playful way to be the new owner of a little bit of farm herstory.
