I took my Carpenter’s Square quilt to my long arm friend yesterday and got a nice tour of her lovely, very clean sewing rooms (yes, she has two!). Sigh. My sewing room is a mess. I decided to at least sort a bunch of stuff before I start on my next project, and I did get a good start. However I also got distracted with sorting scraps. I decided to make some more rice bags for my hands since I had a piece of cute fabric just big enough. I have arthritis in my thumb and forefinger joints near my palm, and they get sore and achy on a regular basis. I had some other rice bags, but they somehow disappeared. I made two of them, one with a 3×5 finished size and the other 4×6 finished. I think I prefer the larger one. They are just two rectangles sewn together with some elastic on one side to keep them on my hand. I fill them with dried rice, then heat them in the microwave 20-30 seconds or so. The rice heats up and provides nice relief to my sore hands.
If you decide to make rice bags, be sure to use 100% cotton fabric, not something like polyester fleece. You also don’t want to heat the bags too long or they could burn since they use elastic. In fact, even 100% cotton and very dry rice can burn if left too long in the microwave so be careful.
After leaving my friend’s house I headed to a class on my Bernina V8 Embroidery Software. The dealer I use is 45 miles away from my house – a good hour drive. They are very knowledgeable though. I have been using this software for 12 or more years, and I really just need to learn the new features. It is still beneficial to go to a class for beginners since I pick up little tricks I hadn’t caught before. Last night was about variations on automatically digitizing a graphic, meaning converting a graphic into embroidery stitches. Wow, the software has improved significantly in this area since the previous version! The class doesn’t get out until 9:00 so it means a late night drive home. We won’t meet again until after we get back from our Yosemite trip. That reminds me that the NPS announced yesterday they enough road repair done to open up the road we need to take you Monday. Yeah! No change in travel plans needs to be made.
As for my continual experiments with Instant Pot meals, we had boneless country pork ribs two nights ago. I cooked them in high pressure for 40 minutes, and I should have added another 5 minutes. We live above 4000′ elevation, and I am still learning how to adjust the standard recipes for the altitude. I had added about 10% additional time, but I could have used 20%. They were still good. I can’t say the same for the “boiled” eggs I tried! I loved making hard boiled eggs in my old pressure cooker, but the Instant Pot is a slightly lower pressure system. My first two tries resulted in very soft eggs, but I finally discovered that 14 minutes at low pressure makes a nice hard egg like I enjoy for breakfast. I finished the last one I made for lunch, so I need some more.