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First, let's talk about quilts, shall we? Because I've been up to my armpits in quilts lately. It all started nearly a year ago, and you can see how it transpired here in the comments of my blog. I'm guessing my granny never formed a quilting bee via the internet. I haven't gone completely Steinbeckian, not yet. The abbreviated version: Allison had recently found my blog because I'd mentioned her snazzy quilted potholders. She Googled, she found, she read, she emailed. And in the face of tragedy, she taught me to quilt. I love the internet! See? That's a totally non-Steinbeckian attitude.

So, Allison taught me how to make simple patchwork quilts, held together with tied string/yarn/ribbon, which are actually my favorite kinds of quilts. My enthusiasm lasted exactly 23 days. How do I know this? Because I blogged it all. See? I'm still modern and relevent. Why did my enthusiasm wane?

Let me show you what I use for "sewing":

Now, I adore just about anything that came from the years 1930-1963, but this is ridiculous.

This sewing machine first belonged to my mom. Then my grandma. And then I think it went back to my mom, probably with a verbal exchange that went:

"You take it."

"I don't want it. You take it."

"It's yours. You should have it. Please, rent a forklift and take this 374-pound atrocity that doesn't maintain thread tension and haul it back to your barn."

"No! Hey, wait - I have an idea! Let's give it to Robin. Surely this will get her over the misguided notion that she should spend time sewing. That awful home ec teacher who nearly flunked her freshman year hasn't deterred her, but maybe this will."

It hasn't.

After several autumn days of happily sewing strips of donated fabric into my very first quilt, I finally got sick of fighting with the sewing machine's tension problems and gave up. Which is ironic, seeing as I have my own tension problems and you'd think I'd be more understanding with my tension-impaired elder, but I wasn't.

Two weeks ago, Allison came over with the 263 quilt tops she has finished since last September so we could start tying them. I showed her my 11/12ths-of-the-way-finished quilt top with much shame. Enough shame for me to spend the whalloping 20 minutes required to finish it.

And here it is!

Lovely, no? I spent a lot of time thinking about the Katrina evacuee who might be given this quilt, and how maybe the images of palm trees and fishies might soothe some of the pangs for home. Or maybe they'd make them worse, I don't know. But I thought about it a lot.

But now, nearly a year later, we all know that everything's all better on the gulf coast. Right? Right? Oh, wait ... I guess not. I emailed the woman who organized the quilt drive that got Allison and me quilting in the first place, but never heard back. So, we're going to keep our efforts a little closer to home. I'm a fan of Haven of Grace, and I'd like them to benefit from my 11 months of grueling hard work angsty teeth-gnashing over my non-perfect quilting skills.

Either way, I've got to release this quilt into the world, where it'll find someone who truly needs it, because I'm convinced that terrible mojo has been visited upon me for keeping these donated fabrics crumpled in my closet for the past 11 months.

Let's all hope it doesn't take me another 11 months to conquer my fear of learning how to bind the quilt's edges.

Allison and I collaborated on another quilt. Here's what she did:

And here's the part I did:

I can tie like a vandal, yo.

But every little bit of help should be acknowledged and praised, right? In that spirit, I offer acknowledgement and praise to my special little Murphy, who helped with my first quilt:

She helped by sticking her head under the quilt and remaining lost and tangled for over three hours, offering me ample distraction and laughter while I finished all those ties.

Now that I think about it, I think Allison's responsible for my march toward Depression-era spinsterhood. We met up at the farmer's market on Saturday, where all the Depression-era spinsters hang out and look for kicks. In exchange for two jars of jam, she gave me yet another metric ton of her home-grown basil, which I have since converted into frozen pesto:

When I was making this on Saturday, I can promise you that, despite the presence of two smelly dogs, a stinky cat, and a potty-training toddler, my house definitely smelled better than yours. Basil abounded, and we were all heady with its aroma.

So plentiful was the basil, I decided to completely lose my Amish mind and make some basil jelly.

Oh, shut up. I don't see you slaving over a hot-water canner. When you start making some damn jelly, then you can have a say over what the damn jelly's made from.

It's lovely, no?

Don't be fooled, though. It's an enhanced loveliness, doctored with a smidge of food coloring, as natural-colored basil jelly is an unappetizing shade of gray. And believe me, when basil jelly's concerned, you want to pull out all the stops to make it as appetizing as possible.

(Actually, I kid. The basil jelly's yummy. I don't care that B.'s first reaction upon tasting it was, "Hm. That's ...weird." What the hell does he know? He's from a part of the country that has four legal food seasonings: salt, pepper, ketchup and canned chicken gravy. When he starts slaving over a hot-water canner, then he can have a say over what the jelly's made from.)

I also bought four pounds of grapes from a guy at the market who hauled a truckload of dubiously-named "Arkansas table grapes" to St. Louis from, you guessed it Smartypants, Arkansas. They need a better name, like "sumptuous little bursts of sour-sweet joy grapes". And what did I do with the grapes? Why, I made a much more orthodox and socially-acceptable form of jelly:

Oh, but don't be fooled by its purple-flavored beauty. All is not well inside those half-pints. Not well at all.

You see, my jelly isn't very jelly-y. It's more like slightly rubbery juice.

Upon looking at the recipe (and oh, how I love that the recipe is listed as a "side dish". "I'll have the pork tenderloin, a spinach salad, and a side of slightly rubbery grape juice, please."), I realized I made what must be a fatal mistake: I accidentally used powdered pectin instead of liquid pectin.

I went in search of information on what this might mean for my rubbery grape juice. "Powdered pectin and liquid pectin aren't the same! Don't interchange them! The sky will fall if you do!" was all I could find. Surprisingly, jelly-making experts are few and far between on the internet. And the ones who are online are surprisingly fatalistic. Nevermind that I found several recipes identical to what I made, with the exception that the recipe-writer had swapped liquid for powdered and last I checked, the sky was still firmly in place, probably glued to the top of the world with rubbery grape juice.

But still, my rubbery juice remained and in a full-blown tizz, I called my granny, the woman who could probably make tasty jelly from, I don't know, pencil shavings and dog hair. She's also the gal in that b&w picture above.

"Grandma," I said when she picked up the phone. "I'm having a jelly emergency!"

Those are words I never, ever thought I'd moan to my sweet, sweet grandma. She's led a rough life. That's the last thing she needed to hear.

She assured me that my jelly would be fine, but I'd probably have to completely do it all over again.

*sigh*

Being Amish is hard work.

Want some bouncyjuice? Or an unbound quilt? Perhaps some herby jelly? 'Cause I've got a glut of it all. Take that 3,492-pound sewing machine with you, too.