Craftsy Class Review: Travel Photography: The Essential Guide with Jad Davenport

Gee, have you heard? I'm about to take a trip. A *Big* Trip. Therefore, I've been brushing up on my photography skills, and Jad Davenport's Travel Photography: The Essential Guide seemed just the ticket. 

His main theme of the class is to take your time. Get to know the area. Get to know the lighting. Think through themes you want to convey in your photos of the trip. He states at the outset: You're not just taking photos, you're making pictures. 

As I was watching these lessons, I realized that, for the most part, I have been working on everything in this class for many years. Not only do I enjoy photography myself, but as I do most of the marketing and all of the resources for my organization, I'm also consistently trying to improve my photography so we can use my photos rather than having to pay for stock--as well as the fact that when I take photos at an event to use in publicity for future events, I know exactly what photos I want to have. I did pick up a couple of tips and the conversation with the teacher available on the Craftsy platform is quite helpful. 

Boy behind wire fence at refugee camp in Thailand

I've always known that I want to take pictures that "tell a story." Jad's discussions of making pictures with intention (lesson 2) are exactly that. Think through what story you want to tell--what theme you want to explore with your photos. He discusses the theme "edges" that he often uses--where are the edges between things? As I was listening to him talk about that I immediately recalled one of my favorite photos I took during my 2008 trip to Thailand, of a man carrying a basket on his back walking down the side of a road with a motorcycle going by (included in this post). I took it because it represented to me the strange blend of ancient and modern I saw all around me in Thailand. I also have several photos of people standing behind the fences on the edge of the refugee camp, representing their lack of freedom. Apparently I also explore the theme "edges" without realizing it!

Juxtaposition of ancient and modern in Thailand

That being said, with apologies to Jad and his emphasis on taking your time to find the best photos, usually when I'm traveling I'm not able to just wander about at will, going back to places at different times of day, waiting in one location for half an hour to get the perfect shot, asking people to pose for a series of 25 shots to make sure I get one good one. Few of us have the luxury of time; rather, we generally have to grab photos on the fly. This means training our eyes to know immediately what will likely make a good photo; being willing to get into a different position to capture just a particular angle; knowing ahead of time what story we want to tell. And, of course, taking thousands of pictures so we'll get a handful of good ones. Thank you, digital technology.

This class will help you train your eye. Jad discusses issues of composition, getting unique perspectives, using available light, and the importance of "moments." For someone new to photography or someone who is trying to improve upon the shots she normally takes, I would recommend this class. For me, while I enjoyed Jad as a teacher and loved seeing his photos as examples (beautiful stuff!), I didn't learn as much from this class as I'd have liked; but then, I've been working on these concepts already. Sometimes I just don't give myself enough credit for what I already know. However, it did put some ideas back in the forefront of my mind for when I'm traveling. And I picked up a great tip for a portable tripod-hack that he learned from the Navy Seals. I have to get myself to Home Depot this week to pick up the parts to make it for myself! 

"Joy"--of girls playing on the beach in Oregon when we finally let them out of meetings.

The Basics

• 7 lessons, ranging from 17 to 32 minutes in length.
• Lesson 1 includes the usual teacher introduction (and he's got some serious street cred), but also addresses planning ahead, travel gear, and basic camera techniques to set yourself up for success.
• Lesson 2 lays the foundation, including how to assess the location for possibilities, four elements of a good photo, and "building" a photograph.
• Lessons 3-6 then each explicate one of those four elements of a good photo in more detail. There are some great tips here in things to be paying attention to as you line up for a shot. Even if you don't have a lot of time or if you have a point-and-shoot with no manual controls, you can still usually take just a minute or two to think through where to stand, where to aim, how close to be, how to compose the best possible photograph.
• Lesson 7 talks about putting together an "artful presentation," rather than just showing people pictures willy-nilly. How do you put your photos together to tell a story or create a mood?

For me, I gave Jad Davenport's Travel Photography: The Essential Guide one thumb up. (Although that might go to two thumbs if this tripod hack thing works for me!) For anyone who is newer or less confident in their photography, it's two-thumbs up. Great guidance, helpful tips, and it's almost worth it just to see his photos!

Craftsy Class Review: Continuous Line Quilting with Ann Petersen

This class has been in my queue for some time now, but I moved it up to the top of the pack this month because I have several UFOs all in the same stage: They need to be quilted. I've been working my way through all my free-motion quilting (FMQ) classes most, to be honest, to get inspiration for designs. I feel like at this stage I know how to do FMQ--it's just a matter of a lot more practice and better thoughts about design patterns. 

And this class immediately paid off.

And so, my review of Continuous Line Quilting with Ann Petersen. 

I'd already taken another of her Craftsy classes--check out my review of Beyond Basic Machine Quilting. I liked her then, and I still like her now. I won't take time here to talk about her teaching style and such as I've already covered that in my previous review.

Just for a quick definition, if this is an unfamiliar term for you: "Continuous line quilting" is doing a quilt design in a single pass, without cutting thread and restarting somewhere else. It's the best way to make FMQ fast and simpler, rather than having to keep stopping at the end of one line, locking the stitch in some way, breaking thread, moving to another section, and starting all over again. 

practicing

This class is very helpful (1) if you're looking for more quilt design ideas (most in this class were not ones I've already found in other classes, or she brings a new twist to the design); or (2) if you've been trying to figure out how to use some of the standard (traditional) quilt designs in a continuous-line way. For me, with all the studying-up I've been doing on FMQ for the last couple of years, I found that aspect of the class (especially lesson 8) the most useful for what I needed; that's where she walks you through the process of how to take a standard traditional quilt design--often those developed with hand-quilting in mind--and make it work better for FMQ by figuring out where the continuous lines could be. Now-a-days, more and more designs made with FMQ in mind are being published and produced as stencils. However, there are still a lot of great quilt designs out there that need some slight adjustments to make them easier to do FMQ-style, and this class is really helpful in teaching you how to look at designs differently, break them into component parts, and think through your quilting plan.

Signature as seen from the front

I chose not to do the class project and, rather, look at how I might use any of the designs on current projects I need to finish. As it turned out, it was the very last few moments of the very last lesson in the class that inspired me. I'd just finished the baby quilt for my great-niece earlier this week but was realizing, over my morning coffee today, that I hadn't put a label on it. Since it is for her first birthday, a very momentous occasion in any person's life, I felt badly that I hadn't put something on there marking that.

And then I watched the last class while I was eating breakfast. And there, at the very end, Ann FMQ'd her name onto the corner of the quilt as her label. Well, of course! I've done words on quilts once or twice before but it rarely comes to mind as a first option. I was pleased to be reminded. 

Signature from the back

From the pictures on this blog you can see the results. I practiced with a sharpie on paper first because, face it, it's been awhile since I've written in cursive--or, at least, a cursive that would work in FMQ. Then I practiced on a quilt sandwich to make sure I had the tension right--it took a few passes. But then I was ready to do it on the quilt.

It's a secret message, to be sure--I intentionally chose thread that would blend on both sides. It says, "To [name] for her first birthday" in one border, then "Love Great Aunt Sandy"; no comma because it wouldn't have been visible anyway, but it has the nice grammatical effect of commanding her to love her great-aunt so I'm okay with that. Then the other two borders include words that come from the meaning of her name, almost as sort of a blessing. I was very pleased with the way it turned out. So, thanks for the idea, Ann!

The Basics

• 8 Lessons, ranging from 36 1/2 minutes to 8 minutes, although the 8 minute one is an outlier--they're mostly 20-30 minutes long, so you really get your bang for your buck in this class.
• The introduction talks about fabrics and tools, tracing the stitch path, transferring the design, and some basics about FMQ and troubleshooting.
• Lessons 2 and 3 present several motifs and variations on them
• Lessons 4 and 5 address ways to travel from one part of the design to another, some of which help make simple designs appear even more complex
• Lesson 7 walks through the process of breaking a design down into component parts to make it easier to quilt in a continuous line
• Lesson 8, as mentioned above, addressed converting a non-continuous line design into continuous line. As always, she gives several options here for you to consider.

When I'm back in the saddle after the holidays, I plan on practicing some of the designs from her class a little bit to get myself back in the habit of FMQ after a bit of an absence from my sewing machine. But mostly I'm looking over my UFOs to see if any of the motifs or suggestions from her class will inspire me to finish one or two of them!

Once again, that's Continuous Line Quilting with Ann Petersen. Two thumbs up!

(Usual transparency statement: Using Craftsy links or banners on this post help supports this podcast and blog. Thanks!)

A (Belated) Postcard Reveal

Once again, I participated in a postcard swap hosted by Sandi of Quilt Cabana Corner podcast. This time our theme was "fall," and the deadline was Halloween, if I recall. I don't remember for sure because (ahem) I actually had mine done a few weeks early. Cookin' with gas.

My partner this time was Glenna, aka @gfcsailor (and here's her website).  I love the postcard she sent me! 

She says it started life as a pumpkin, so I call it "Funky Punkin'." It's hanging in my postcard gallery, one of the favorite spots in my office. I really love the abstract and jazzy nature of it. Very fun.

And here's the one I sent her. I don't really have a name for it. "Leaves" seems a bit prosaic. 

I have a package of die-cut leaves of various shapes I inherited out of Mom's stash. I've been using a leaf here, a leaf there, and still have a lot left. I decided to play a little with the dimensionality thing again, so I used two leaves wrong sides together with a lightweight stabilizer in between, then FMQd the veins on and did a loose satin-stitch around the outside with one of the variegated threads I've picked up from Superior along the way. I then tacked the leaves onto the background (already fused to the heavyweight Pellon I use in postcards), hiding the tacking stitches in the veins. I fused the backing on last to cover all the tacking stitches. It's possible I ended up using two layers of fabric on the back because the tacking stitches were in black thread; I don't really remember now, but that's sort of ringing a bell. Then I fused on a binding to cover up all those raw edges. The mitered edges were just trimmed before fusing to look mitered. Shhh. Don't tell Glenna. 

I couldn't mail it by itself because it was all hanging off all over the place, so I used an envelope. 

If I do the die-cut/satin-stitch combination again, I may try hitting the edge with some Fray-Check first. I was gritting my teeth over the fuzz that was going on.  

I really enjoyed doing these postcard swaps this year--it was a great way to play around with different techniques. I'm glad all my swap partners were game to get my experiments! I've heard rumor that Sandi will be doing swaps again in 2015 but may change the format--mug rugs, perhaps, or something else small and fun. Make sure you're watching her blog or following her on Twitter to find out what she decides to do! 

A Finish!

And finally I'm able to officially present the completed Rapid Fire Hunter's Star project, which I have named after its recipient so I can't share the actual name here. In any case, for those of you who may have just arrived at the party...

Let's get into our Wayback machines to the day I won the Deb Tucker Rapid Fire Hunter's Star (Petite) ruler from AJ of The Quilting Pot podcast. "Woohoo," I thought. "That's the one I wanted to win!" She had a couple of things it was possible to win and I actually got the one I was hoping for--I rarely win in the first place, and to win the one I wanted, well...gravy! 

I was so jazzed that I set right to putting a top together, using scraps from the baby quilt I'd made for this same recipient. I have to say, the ruler is a beaut. It really was fast. It really was pretty straightforward. It really was pretty dang accurate. I'd have been pleased had I spent money on it. But to get it for free and still be that happy for it? Join me in a jig, will you?

It only took me a weekend to get the top together, as I recall--and that was with a whole lotta breaks to do other things. But then it sat, and sat, and sat. The recipient chose it for herself when it was hanging on my design wall (she was a wee little baby at the time and its colors attracted her--I've told the story on my podcast a couple of times, I think, so I won't go into it again here). 

Finally, a few weeks ago the date for the recipient's first birthday party was chosen and I had a deadline. I always work better to a deadline. I used Angela Walter's "Dot to Dot Quilting" class on Craftsy for quilt design inspiration, and you can read that story here. It took me awhile to have enough energy to finish getting the binding on, but it was done and through the wash earlier this week. With a whole week plus to spare before the deadline. Aren't I good?

I'm glad it's done, and I hope the recipient is still as into the colors now that she's a Big Girl One-Year-Old as she did back before she knew how to crawl. 

October Craftsy Class Update

Time for my October update!

I recently realized that I've got one less month to hit my 2014 quilty resolution goal of getting my to-be-completed-classes down to a single digit count, as I'll be out of the country for most of December. Unlike other recent trips, I won't have access to WiFi to watch classes while I'm gone, either. So my overall goal has been adjusted some. I'd like to get at least two more classes done in November--which means I'll miss the single-digit goal by a couple of classes. But I'll still have made fantastic progress! (The upside to this is that once I get back from said overseas trip, I'm unlikely to feel up to much else besides sitting and watching Craftsy lesson videos for several days, so I may make great progress on classes then!)

New Completions

(+3)

Dot-to-Dot Quilting results

• Pictures to Pixel Quilts with Carol Sheridan--see my full review here.
• Roasting Techniques Every Cook Should Know with Molly Stevens--see my full review here. 
• Dot-to-Dot Quilting with Angela Walters--see my full review here. (See below under "Classes added this month" for more on this.) 

Classes in Progress

(3)

• Continuous Line Quilting with Ann Petersen
• A Modern Take on the Mother Sauces with James Peterson (Apparently it's Petersen/son month in my house...)
• Travel Photography with Jad Davenport (see next section below) 

Classes added this month

(+3)

• Machine Quilting: Small Changes, Big Variety with Angela Walters: This was on sale mid-month and I thought it would make yet another good addition to my collection of machine quilting classes and, perhaps, even my collection of Angela Walters classes. I may not get to focusing on these until the new year (I'm running out of 2014!) but I'm looking forward to some really intentional work time on my machine quilting skills. 
• Dot-to-Dot Quilting with Angela Walters: Okay, may as well make the collection complete. I bought this one because one of my UFOs seems like it will lend itself perfectly to this technique. I've been stumped as to quilting designs for it, so I finally went ahead and bought this class that I've been looking at for awhile. But I also finished it right off the bat! (See the full story in my review.)
• Travel Photography with Jad Davenport: I got to the end of the month with no plans to purchase any more Craftsy classes this year when I got an email from Craftsy that told me I'd bought so many classes at this point I'm now considered a "top student" and they were gifting me a free class. That's one of those "good news/bad news" moments: Bad news that I've earned top ranking with Craftsy on the number of classes I've bought (sigh) but good news that yay! I've now got a free class! I perused for awhile and decided that this photography class would be the best purchase as I'm about to, you know, travel...and take pictures...and such. I watched the first couple of lessons right off, so I'm already on the way to finishing this one quickly. I picked up an excellent tip about travel tripods in the very first lesson so it's already been a worthwhile investment!

Classes To Be Completed

Current count:  16 (-1 from last month)

• A Modern Take on the Mother Sauces with James Peterson
• Art Quilt Backgrounds: Beyond Log Cabin with Judith Trager
• Continuous Line Quilting with Ann Petersen
• Fabric Patterning with Wax Resist with Malka Dubrawsky
• Free Motion Fillers Vol 1 with Leah Day
• Free Motion Fillers Vol 2 with Leah Day
• Free Motion Quilting a Sampler with Leah Day
• Free Motion Machine Embroidery with Terry White
• Free-Motion Quilting with Feathers with Angela Walters
• Machine Quilting: Small Changes, Big Variety with Angela Walters
• Machine Quilting Negative Space with Angela Walters
• Machine Quilting the Home Sweet Home Quilt with Frieda Anderson
• Painted Pictorial Quilts with Annette Kennedy
• Pictorial Quilting Techniques with Wendy Butler Berns
• Strip Your Stash with Nancy Smith
• Travel Photography with Jad Davenport

Completed Classes (all topics)

Current count: 39  (+3)

• 20 Essential Cooking Techniques with Brendan McDermott
• Art Quilting 101 with Wendy Butler Berns
• (The) Art of Cloth Dyeing with Jane Dunnewold
• Artisan Bread Making with Peter Reinhart
• Basics of Digital Photography with Rick Allred
• Beyond Basic Machine Quilting with Ann Petersen
• Building Flavorful Soups with Peter Berley
• Chain of Stars Mystery Quilt with Kimberly Einmo
• Color Play for Quilters with Joen Wolfrom
• Complete Knife Skills with Brendan McDermott
• Craftsy Block of the Month 2013 with Laura Nownes
• Creative Photography: Capture Life Differently with George Lange
• Creative Quilt Backs with Elizabeth Hartman
• Creative Ways with Whole Grains with Anna Bullett
• Cooking Essentials: All About Chicken with Marge Perry
• Designing Modern Quilts with Weeks Ringle
• Design It, Quilt It: Freeform Quilting Techniques with Cindy Needham
• Dot-to-Dot Quilting with Angela Walters
• Finishing School: Edges and Bindings with Mimi Dietrich
• Fire up the Fish with David Bonom
• Hand-Stitched Collage Quilts with Laura Wasilowski
• Homemade Italian Pasta with Guiliano Hazan
• Homestyle Pan Sauces with Martha Holmberg
• Know Your Wool with Deborah Robson
• Machine Quilting with Wendy Butler Berns
• Magical Jelly Roll Quilts with Kimberly Einmo
• Pattern Free Quilt-making with Joe Cunningham
• Pictures to Pixel Quilts with Carol Sheridan
• Piece, Patch, Quilt: Basic Quiltmaking Skills with Gail Kessler
• Perfect Pizza at Home with Peter Reinhart
• Roasting Techniques Every Cook Should Know with Molly Stevens
• QuiltCon Lecture Series 2013
• Scrap Quilting with Pepper Cory
• Secrets of Slow Cooking: Mastering the Braise with Molly Stephens
• Shoot It! A Product Photography Primer with Carol Sheridan
• Spindling from Fluff to Stuff with Drucilla Pettibone
• Stitch & Slash with Carol Ann Waugh
• Stupendous Stitching with Carol Ann Waugh
• Thread Art with Lola Jenkins

(Usual transparency statement: This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. Thanks for supporting this podcast and blog!)

Craftsy Class Review: Roasting Techniques Every Cook Should Know with Molly Stevens

It's the time of year when we go from grilling on the back patio to roasting in our kitchen oven. Cool nights are just made for a nice, comforting roast-of-whatever, so it was time for me to finish up a Craftsy class I'd started awhile back, Roasting Techniques Every Cook Should Know with Molly Stevens.

I really like Molly Stevens as a teacher. I took one of her other Craftsy classes, Secrets of Slow Cooking: Mastering the Braise last winter (see my review here)--I'm thinking I may watch a couple of the episodes for refreshers now that we're back into slow-cooker weather as well. In any case, I knew I liked her style from the braise class so I figured the roasting class was a safe bet.

And sure enough, I still like her style. She's very no-nonsense but very friendly. She explains things clearly, and gives a couple of science lessons in the middle of certain parts so you can better understand what's actually happening when your meat or your produce is in the oven at different temperatures. The class materials are extensive and, in addition to 13 recipes (by my count), include very helpful temperature charts, information about dry brine and wet brine techniques (plus ingredient lists), and at-a-glance instructions for which cuts of meat work best in each technique.

I haven't yet worked my way through all the various roasting techniques. Indeed, at this point I've only been home one night in which I had enough time to roast anything, so I did a high-heat roast on a roast beef. The roast was done perfectly using her techniques, although next time I'll probably use a different technique for that particular cut of beef, or a different cut of beef for that particular technique. It was just a titch (a very little titch, really) on the dry side, but it was incredibly tender and exactly the right amount of pink that my husband and I prefer. 

Tomorrow night (Friday), I'll have a little more time I think, so I'm planning to use her technique for roasting a whole chicken. I really like the usual way I do chicken so we'll see if her technique beats it. 

That being said, there are several other techniques and recipes she demonstrates in the class that sound mighty tasty to me, so I'll be heading back to these class materials a few more times in the weeks to come, I'm sure. Those sear-roasted steaks and the Maple-Glazed Rack of Pork are just calling to me. Really, just about every lesson had my mouth watering as I watched it. Yum.

And for the non-carnivores out there, she does have a segment on roasting vegetables--potatoes, a vegetable medley, and green vegetables. I've done some vegetables in the past but haven't had consistent results so I'm looking forward to trying out her techniques for that as well. (That being said, the bulk of the class is about meat so vegetarians may want to check out other Craftsy classes, such as Love Your Vegetables with Anna Bullet or Big Bowls: Hearty Vegetarian Meals with Martha Rose Shulman. I'll probably pick those up next spring when my vegetarian daughter moves back home from college.)

I really enjoyed this class and I think I'll keep learning from it as time goes on. I'm really looking forward to some wonderful weekend meals!

The Basics

• 7 lessons, ranging from nearly 10 minutes to almost 30 minutes.
• Lesson 1 goes into the science of roasting, which actually really does help to know.
• Lessons 2-5 cover different types of roasting: high-heat, combination-heat, sear roasting, slow-and-steady roasting. In these lessons she also offers bonus information such as a pan sauce, pre-salting, carving, a compound butter recipe, flavor boosters and glaze. 
• Lesson 6 is roasting vegetables, already mentioned above. She has good tips here that will make your vegetable roasting efforts successful.
• Lesson 7 is about stuffed roasts--pork loin and beef tenderloin. 

Again, that's Roasting Techniques Every Cook Should Know with Molly Stevens. Two big thumbs up--especially if it's a cold, rainy or wintery day!

(Usual transparency statement: Using Craftsy links provided in this post helps support this podcast and blog. Thank you!)

Craftsy Class Review: Dot-to-Dot Quilting with Angela Walters

So this one had been in my wish list for a few days, and I had no intention of purchasing it until I'd knocked a few other quilting classes out of my queue. And then I realized I had a UFO I really needed to finish before the end of November. And then I realized it was quite possible that this class would have the perfect solution to my "How to quilt this thing" dilemma. And then it went on sale. So I bit.

Here is my review of Dot-to-Dot Quilting with Angela Walters.

 I'll start by saying Angela Walters is an excellent teacher and very easy to watch. Her classes are much like her books (which I have reviewed before)--step-by-step, clear instructions, with good diagrams as well as her demonstrations. 

Using Golden Threads quilting paper to test out my design plan.

Here's one caveat: If you've never machine quilted before, you should consult other resources or classes first. This is a class about quilt designs: She doesn't talk about making your quilt sandwich, basting, or stabilizing the quilt. She assumes you are already at least that far in your experience. Indeed, I was wondering for several lessons whether she did any stabilizing (stitch-in-the-ditch) at all and finally found reference to it in the discussion threads on the side. As I watched the next lesson, I could finally see some evidence of stabilizing stitching.

Closer view of my quilt design sketch, marking what points I'd be using as my "dots". I then free-handed the actual quilting.

That being said, once you know how to prep your quilt for quilting and are ready to start doing some designs, this would be a good starting point. These designs are very simple, but have lots of possibilities for making them more complex. They're good no-mark designs, but if you're more comfortable marking, there are some very fast and easy ways to do that. On the other hand, most of the designs she shows in this class involve straight lines, which can be remarkably difficult to do with a free motion foot. (Although you can use a walking foot if you want, that requires a lot of twisting and turning of the quilt so it's far simpler to become competent at doing straight lines free-motion.) 

I was able to immediately put the class techniques to use on a wallhanging/baby quilt I'm trying to finish for my great-niece's first birthday at the end of the month. I made it a long time ago and it's languished from inattention but then, I always work better to a deadline. I'd been waffling on how to quilt it but found the dot-to-dot technique the perfect solution. 

Quilted--you can see the chalk lines and stitching on the black but the thread blends on the white and red.

The pictures embedded in this post show my testing process as I tried to figure out what design would work well on this top--I sketched it out on Golden Threads quilting paper first (the most sheer paper I had in my cabinet), but I didn't use the paper when I did my quilting. I just wanted to see how my design thoughts would help those black and white background squares feel like a single block. For the first few blocks, I did sketch out in chalk on the black fabric where my lines should be and based on that, was able to then keep track through the whole block of where I was headed. By the end of it, I no longer had to sketch anything out; I'd gotten into a rhythm of knowing where to aim next. (The last picture is quilted--you can see the chalk lines on that block, but you can't really see the thread in the white or red.)

My need to continue practicing free-motioning straight lines aside, this was a great way to figure out a nice quilting design quickly, and execute it almost as quickly. I'm glad I bought this class!

The Basics

• 9 lessons, ranging from 3 minutes (the intro lesson) to 10 1/2 minutes. Although the lessons are quite short, she gives good information in a very concise manner. I still felt like I'd gotten my money's worth from this class.
• The lessons include quilting starbursts, starburst variations, diamonds, diamond variations, lattices, lattice variations, and borders. The final lesson is a gallery that shows all of the designs used in a variety of ways. 
• The class materials include the pattern for a quilt if you'd like to use that to do the class project; it then includes diagrams of all the designs she shows in class, and three examples of how the designs could be used in the class project quilt.

Again, I do recommend Dot-to-Dot Quilting with Angela Walters. It really helped me in figuring out possible quilt designs more easily. And now I've got a UFO nearly complete!

(Using Craftsy links in this post help support this podcast and blog. Thank you!)

Thinkin' About It Thursday and Halloween Project

This week, I'm thinking...

• How I'm unexpectedly filling in this weekend for a guest speaker who came down with a virulent flu this week and so today had to cancel her presence at the engagement.
• That if it doesn't rain it'll be a nice drive tomorrow downstate to where the speaking engagement is being held, a drive through all sorts of fall color.
• How I am looking forward to being with the group and I do always enjoy doing these kinds of engagements.
• That I'm now doubly-glad I got a little sewing done yesterday during my comp day off after being gone for work last weekend too.
• That I'm feeling good about using my Alexander Henry Ghastlies collection finally, even if I'm not using it the way I'd originally intended.
• That my daughter will get a kick out of having Halloween pillowcases in her dorm room.
• That I'm pretty sure my daughter doesn't read my blog. And if she does, well, oops--happy surprise Halloween gifty, baby girl.
• That tonight I'm going to celebrate my son's birthday by dinner out with him, my husband, my son's roommate, my nephew, and my mother-in-law.
• That it'll be a nice time even if at this point I'm pretty much heartily sick of restaurant meals.
• How I'm going to make something homemade for dinner on Sunday to detox.
• That after some last minute panic-fixes today to my visa application for my trip to Burma, I'm hoping that's now been settled too.
• That I won't really relax about that until my passport and visa are back in my hands again.
• That there's nothing I like better than the smell of leaves on the ground as I kick through them while walking the doggies, so I'm reminding myself to "just breathe."

By the way, just a brief mention that Craftsy is having a Halloween Flash Sale from Wed, 9/22 at 7p MT to Friday, Oct 24 at 11:59p MT. Fabric, yarn, and kits are on sale for up to 70% off. Use this link or click on the banner in this blog on the right to get to Craftsy to check it out. Using these links helps support this blog and podcast--thanks!

Craftsy Class Review: Pictures to Pixel Quilts with Caro Sheridan

And yes, that's not a typo--her name is Caro, not Carol.

Pictures to Pixel Quilts with Caro Sheridan is a free class that I picked up a long time ago. At the time, I was fascinated by pixel quilts and really thought I would do one. Since then, I've come to the conclusion that I'm unlikely to do one any time soon. I still enjoy them when I see them done by other people, but at the moment it's not my vibe. At any moment, however, that could change, so I decided my best move at this stage would be to watch all the lessons in this class so I'd know what was involved and have it available as a concept in my mental filing cabinet. Or my mental pot-o-bubbling-ideas-brewing-on-the-back-burner. Whichever is a more apt description. 

Watching Craftsy on my iPad while out of town

And then I was out of town for a week with a room to myself, which almost NEVER happens when I'm out of town for work (not for a whole week, anyway). So I took advantage of the alone time and watched the lessons when I got back to my room at night. I even had decent hotel WiFi--which also almost never happens.  

A "pixel quilt" is definitely a child of the digital age. If you're unfamiliar with the lingo, a pixel is a single unit of information in a digital photo; pixels are the dots which, when combined, make up the image on your screen. Photos are often referred to by their pixel size. The more pixels, the more image information. When a photo goes too low resolution (low pixel count) to be recognizable as it's original image, it's said to be "pixellated." That's when you see all those squares show up instead of the picture. This background information is important when you get to choosing what image you want to do in this style of class.

But first, let's start by saying that Caro Sheridan is a very personable teacher, although pretty low-key, low-energy. She's definitely got more of a dry wit presentation than bubbly bestie or kindergarten teacher or maternal figure like other teacher personalities can be. I'd taken another class from her on Craftsy, Shoot It: A Product Photography Primer, and you can find my review of that class here. Interestingly, as I recall, I also watched that one mostly while on vacation. Caro seems to travel quite a bit with me. In any case, I still enjoyed her this time around.

For a free class, this one is certainly meaty! Carol describes her whole process for making pixel quilts in great detail. She gives good examples of what kinds of photos work best for pixellating--which is where that information about what pixels are and how they work becomes useful. You need to choose an image that, when pixellated to whatever degree you want to pixellate it, will still be at least recognizeable as what it's an image of--unless you want to go abstract, which is always an option. But Carol sticks to using images that you can still tell what the image is, even when pixellated. 

Caro also talked about how to go about pixellating an image, walking you through the process step-by-step using one photo-editing software but giving enough general information that you should be able to figure out how to do it in whatever software you choose to use.  

And then she gets into spreadsheets. Oh, this woman is a spreadsheet maven! She teaches how to set up the spreadsheet, how to use formulas to help you color the spreadsheet as per your pixellated image, how to use that spreadsheet to then figure out the number of squares you need of each color, and so forth. I found myself taking notes on the spreadsheet part to apply to spreadsheets I use in my job--no pixellated images involved!  (She demonstrates the spreadsheet portions using Google Docs spreadsheets, which is free for anyone to use. So you don't have to own any particular spreadsheet software to use this process.)

But for you old-schoolers, she does also show how to do it using a graph paper and pencil. In fact, even her spreadsheet method still involves a certain amount of pencil work, so Luddites will be happy.  

Finally, she walks through calculations needed, organizational tips, and sewing units together. She doesn't get into quilting designs or finishing--you're on your own there. But for a free class, one can forgive this especially due to the amount of information provided for creating the quilt itself.

If you're into the idea of making a pixel quilt, I highly recommend watching this class all the way through before you start. I think knowing what's coming next will really help you make better decisions at the outset. It's a straightforward process, but not an altogether simple one. But you do get very cool results.

The Basics

• It's free!
• 6 lessons. Lesson 1 is just Craftsy's little sales pitch of less than one minute. Lessons 2-6 are the class itself.
• Lesson 2 is 4 minutes long and introduces Caro and the concept of pixellated quilts.
• Lessons 3-6 describe the process in detail: lessons range from 19 1/2 minutes to nearly 40 minutes long.
• Lesson 3 gives fantastic help for what kind of photo will work well, and how to create your pattern from the photo. Lessons 4 and 5 are all about the spreadsheet and calculations. Lesson 6 is about fabric selection, organization, and assembly.
• She talks at the beginning (maybe in lesson 2, but I can't remember for sure now) about her recommended number of colors to use and so forth, as well as in lesson 6, so fabric selection is touched on a couple of times. She's a big fan of Kona solids, but you can use whatever fabrics you choose. This type of quilt, though, is most effective when using solids. Even "read as solids" may be a hair too distracting to allow the pixellated image to read true.

I enjoyed watching Pictures to Pixel Quilts with Caro Sheridan, even if watching it mostly convinced me this isn't something I'm going to choose to do at the moment.

Craftsy Class Review: Designing Modern Quilts with Weeks Ringle

I feel like I'm a little behind in my Craftsy class reporting--I know I missed doing my update at the end of September. I'll catch up with that this week. 

Meanwhile, in the midst of all the cooking classes I've been having a ball with, I have done another quilt class. This one was a theory class rather than a project class, so I mostly watched the lessons and took notes. But more about that below.

Here's my review of Designing Modern Quilts with Weeks Ringle. 

The main thing to understand with this class is that although the phrase "modern quilts" is in the title, the information in the lessons applies across the board, regardless of the type of quilting you're doing. Weeks does give some definitions of modern quilts and modern design in lesson 2, and there are some design ideas towards the end that are related to modern quilt sensibilities more than traditional. Of course, all the quilts she uses as examples are modern quilts as well. Still n' all, even if you have no interest whatsoever in modern quilting, you'd learn quite a bit from this class and be able to apply it to your traditional or art quilts easily. (Lesson 9 is probably the most "modern-quilt specific" as it deals with deconstructed traditional blocks and moving beyond blocks altogether, which are definitely modern quilt material.)

Exploration on color inspiration from "Old Masters" paintings

There's no class project but she does include "explorations" in the material--exercises meant to help you practice the ideas from the lesson. Although I chose not to do most of the explorations myself because they were things I was already quite comfortable with or was already practicing in other ways, I enjoyed the fact that she incorporated a review of the explorations in the classes themselves, using other student samples from past classes. It's a helpful way for you to do your own practice and then compare it with what she describes from others' work, to get a feel for what you did well and where you may still need expanding.

I enjoyed Weeks Ringle's presence. I've been familiar with her and her husband Bill's work for years, and I have a slight recollection of having seen a lecture by the two of them some time ago at one of the Houston festivals I attended, but I definitely enjoyed the opportunity to experience her as a teacher. I'd love to be in an in-person class with her--I suspect she'd challenge you gently, if you will. In other words, she'd make you want to reach further than you're comfortable, but you'd feel like she was doing it with kid gloves. 

I can't say I had any earth-shattering insights from this class but I've been studying design pretty intensely for the last couple of years so Weeks was going over familiar ground for me. It does always help to see different types of examples of the same principles, though, just to broaden my vision of how things can play out. It's always worth getting the same information in a variety of ways to  help you understand it more deeply, so although all of this was known territory for me, I still think it was worth my time to go through her lessons to get a different perspective.

As stated above, this isn't a project class and there's really not much in the way of specific class projects even in the explorations. The explorations are meant to be done as tests, not completed quilts. The class materials include one pattern for a quilt if you're looking for something like that.

I'd definitely recommend this class if you're new to studying design principles. It's one of the few true design classes on Craftsy, so take advantage of it! I'd also recommend it even if you've done some studying of design and want to look at it from a different angle. 

And, if nothing else, there's tons of eye candy with her quilts!

The Basics

• 10 lessons, ranging from 11 to nearly 40 minutes in length.
• The introduction is a serious introduction. Weeks spends a little time telling you about herself, of course, but most of it is about the importance of studying design and how to lay your groundwork for the rest of the class. It's a 33 minute lesson, so you jump into the learning fast!
• Lesson 2 is where she talks about what makes modern modern, and what is available to us today that wasn't available in generations past.
• Lessons 3 and 4 address color theory, and although she covers the basics here (color wheel, color schemes and so forth), she does also talk about the messages that color sends, which is a nice touch.
• Lesson 5 addresses using prints, which gives good information about benefits and challenges; lesson 6, on the flip side, is all about using solids.
• Lessons 7 and 8 talk about composition and execution. I enjoyed the lesson on composition (over 40 minutes!) because, again, she talks about some basic information you've likely seen in other places but takes it in slightly different directions; lesson 8 also has a very helpful section on avoiding design pitfalls.
• Lesson 9, as stated above, is one of the few that's probably more closely related to modern quilting than other lesson topics, because it's all about messing with tradition or going in completely new directions. 
• Lesson 10 talks about quilting and finishing, but to be clear, you'll get a lot more information about quilting from classes devoted to that part of the process. That being said, in many of her examples throughout the whole class she also talks about the quilting motifs and why certain ones were chosen, so you get a lot of inspiration here.

And so, my final review of Designing Modern Quilts with Weeks Ringle: I'd give this class two thumbs up!

(Usual transparency statement: Using the Craftsy links in this post helps support this podcast and blog. Thanks!)

Craftsy Class Review: Cooking Essentials: All About Chicken, with Marge Perry

Two reviews in one week! Bonus! Actually, I completed both of these classes some time ago and just haven't had the time to post reviews of them until now.

Here's another basic technique class, but this time it's all focused on one particular meat that I use a lot in my house: chicken. I actually like chicken quite a bit and don't get bored with it the way a lot of folks do, but even so, it's always worth picking up a few new recipes and tricks to keep things interesting.

Earlier this summer I picked up Marge Perry's Cooking Essentials: All About Chicken when it was on sale. I watched all the lessons during a period of time when I actually didn't have much time to cook (or quilt, or anything else for that matter). The lessons were a good length to watch on my iPad while I was eating breakfast or lunch, making mental note of things I wanted to try out later once my schedule eased up a bit. 

Roast chicken using Perry's methods--and a variation on her recipe with a mix of lemons, garlic, and fresh rosemary under the skin with salt and pepper on top. Some of the lemons snuck out from under the skin and charred just a bit on the top, but everything else was perfect--the skin was crispy and the chicken moist. Yum.

Finally, I had a Saturday free--and it was a cooler day so I was ready to turn my oven on. Roast chicken seemed just the ticket, so I took advantage of the opportunity to put one of Perry's lessons from the class to work.

I've been roasting chicken for pretty much my entire cooking career, since both my husband and I really like it. (He's also an old hand at roasting chicken and will often make one for himself if I'm out of town.) If I recall, one of the very first dinners we made after we got back from our honeymoon was a roast chicken. In more recent years I've been playing around with different seasoning rubs, stuffing various things under the skin, and so forth. I didn't think Marge Perry would have much to teach me about a roast chicken. But oh, I was wrong. One simple change made a world of difference. Thanks, Marge! I'll be doing it like that from now on!

Each lesson focuses on a particular part of the chicken or taking the chicken as a whole. Each lesson also has a recipe it uses for that part and she walks you through many of the steps for that recipe. If you're looking for techniques and recipes, this is a great class. For myself, I would've liked a little more information on what other types of preparations work well for that particular part of the chicken; for example, qualities of that part that make it work better with certain types of preparations than others, or certain flavor profiles than others, that kind of thing. I am at a stage of cooking in which I far prefer to build my own recipes and want more information that will help me do that, rather than how to follow someone else's recipes.

Still, I did pick up a few good tricks on cooking with chicken in general from this class and, now that we've officially entered fall and cooler weather and more kitchen-based-cooking, I'm looking forward to testing out more of her techniques in the weeks to come.

After all, I just can't resist doing something named "spatchcocking." Don't know what that is? There's a whole lesson on it in the class!

Because this is a technique class, they've created it so you can dive in for one lesson and get everything you need to know for that technique without having had to watch any of the others. That means that there's some foundational information that gets repeated every time. After watching two or three of the lessons, I was quoting along with her how to measure the temperature of the chicken for doneness. But, still, that's not a bad thing to have drilled into my head.

On a scale of 1-10, I think I'd rate this class around a 7, maybe a 7 1/2 for me. But that's just because I want more cooking freedom, as it were. From the perspective of someone who's just starting out, or hasn't done much with chicken, or enjoys learning new recipes, this would probably be more like an 8 1/2 or a 9. She is a very good teacher, very polished but accessible, and the recipes do all sound quite tasty to me, even if I'm unlikely to use them as-is myself.

The Basics

• 9 lessons. The first lesson is about a minute and a half of introduction. Lessons 2 through 9 range from 4 minutes to about 12 1/2 minutes.
• The lessons cover boneless breasts, bone-in breasts, wings, thighs, drumsticks, spatchcocking, the whole bird, and how to cut up a bird--and that last lesson ends with best practices for hand-washing.
• Each lesson is built around a particular recipe for that part, so there's a lemon butter sauce, a stuffing recipe, a sauce for wings, and so forth. 
• The class materials include 7 recipes--all of which are covered in the class, if I recall, though there may be a throw-in that's not in a lesson. 

Cooking Essentials: All about Chicken with Marge Perry: again, somewhere between a 7-8 for me, but likely an 8-9 for others who are looking for more specific direction. In either case, definitely worth checking out!

(Using Craftsy links in this post helps support this blog and podcast--thank you!)

Craftsy Class Review: 20 Essential Cooking Techniques with Brendan McDermott

As I'd mentioned in a blog post awhile back, I had submitted a request to Craftsy some time ago to do some basic cooking technique classes aimed at new cooks--thinking especially of my kids and nieces and nephews who all are a lot more interested in food and cooking than I was at their age. Some of them have done in-person cooking classes with me but because of random work schedules, college, and little bitty babies in their respective lives, they don't always have time to haul themselves to a cooking school. Video lessons are the perfect answer. I was thrilled to get an email from Craftsy saying that my request had now been answered. Enter Brendan McDermott--one of my fave Craftsy teachers to date--and 20 Essential Cooking Techniques with Brendan McDermott. Since I'd helped make it happen, I figured I had to buy it myself.

And I'm glad I did!

Hardboiled eggs done perfectly--not over or under done. These turned into egg salad.

Even a woman who's been scrambling eggs for [ahem] years can learn a few new tricks.

My recent dental issues meant I was having to restrict myself for days on end to soft, mushy foods. I had plenty of opportunities to use skills I'd learned from the class on homemade pasta I'd taken a few weeks ago, but I needed to keep protein in my diet so I started eating a lot more eggs than usual. This class has two entire lessons on eggs and walks through hard-boiled, poached, fried, scrambled, and omelettes. 've done most of those things...a lot...for a lot of years. The only two I hadn't done successfully were poached and omelettes--my poached ended up stringy and my omelettes ended up scrambled. But I always liked my scrambled eggs.

Poached eggs--yums.

Still, boredom with soft foods made me willing to try new techniques just to do something different. And this old dog learned a few new tricks! Following his methods, my hard-boiled egg was perfectly done, my poached egg was beautiful, my scrambled eggs were extra fluffy, and my omelette stayed omelette-y!  

Brendan McDermott is fun to listen to, although his humor isn't quite as evident in this class as it was in his free knife skills class. (See my review of that one here.) His teaching style is relaxed, and he explains the whys behind the hows. I feel like I understand why certain techniques work better now than I did before, even where they were techniques I was already using.

​The lessons are each meant to be stand-alone--in other words, their working assumption in the class is that someone should be able to dip in, watch one lesson, and get all the information they need for that one technique without having missed anything from a previous lesson. This means that if, instead, you watch all or many of the lessons in a row, you will hear certain foundational information over and over. I can pretty much quote Brendan's instructions about heating oil verbatim now. But it's good information, so it's not bad to have it drilled into my head. 

Steak and shredded cheddar omelette, with the steak diced very, very small as I was testing whether I could handle chewables yet.

I've watched most of the lessons at this point and plan on using his techniques for making clarified butter (something I've never done), and I'll be making fish for dinner tonight based on his lesson on working with fish and shellfish. 

Can you tell that I really enjoy Craftsy's cooking classes--perhaps even more than the quilting ones? I know, that's nearly blasphemy to admit on a quilting blog. But there you go. 

This is not a recipe-oriented class like other technique classes are. He does give some very simple, quick instructions for pan sauces and the like as he's talking through the techniques. The class materials, however, do include 6 recipes, only a few of which I remember him mentioning in the class itself. This truly is a technique class. I didn't miss the recipes at all, though I will be using one of the quick pan sauces he does with my fish tonight--it's a way to make something just a little more special and flavorful without taking any more time or dirtying any other dishes. FTW.

I recommend this class particularly for newbie or less confident cooks, of course. But I also recommend it for anyone who is interested in tweaking their techniques after a lot of years of cooking. There's a lot of good information packed into each lesson. And, again, Brendan McDermott is a really good teacher--easy to listen to, explains everything well, and with a deadpan humor that I enjoy.

The Basics

• 9 lessons; the first lesson is just an introductory piece about a minute long. The other 8 lessons range from 9 1/2 minutes to nearly 40 minutes.
• Lesson 2 lays the foundation with "Enhancing Flavors," explaining how to toast various spices and nuts, clarifying butter, and making infused butters. Lessons 3 and 4 are about eggs--hard-boiling, poaching, frying (sunny-side up and over-easy), scrambling, and omelette, plus tips on how to tell if an egg is fresh and so forth. Lesson 5 covers blanching and shocking vegetables, lesson 6 is working with chicken, lesson 7 is making stock, lesson 8 is fish and shellfish, and lesson 9 is pork tenderloin.

So, my final verdict on 20 Essential Cooking Techniques with Brendan McDermott: Two thumbs up!

(Note: Using the Craftsy and Amazon links on this post help support this podcast and blog. Thanks so much!)

Banned Books Week--My Challenge Project

Home again, home again, jiggity jig--so now it's time to talk about my own Banned Books Week project. Admittedly, it's a bit weird as quilt projects go, and it's not going to be numbered among my favorites, but I had a lot of fun putting it together and got to play with some new stuff. So it's all good.

This year, instead of doing a book I'd already read, a few months ago I looked over the lists of banned and challenged lists to choose one that I'd not read before. I landed on the book The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. I chose this book for two reasons: The subject matter of the book is one close to my heart, addressing issues of women's freedoms, education, and oppression; and it also has a fantastic story of the attempted ban of this book in a school district and how the ban was fought by students themselves.

The Complete Persepolis is an autobiography in two volumes done as a graphic novel. Satrapi describes her life in Tehran during and after the revolution in 1979, an event which occurred when Satrapi was nine. Satrapi was the only child of two avant-garde parents who were very committed to the liberal education of their daughter. Prior to the revolution, Satrapi attended a French-Persian bilingual coed school. After the revolution the children were put into gender-exclusive schools with a curriculum subject to the revolutionaries' educational mandates. Satrapi describes the oppression, violence, and fear that she and her friends experienced daily. She's very honest about the impact that kind of setting also had on her and her friends, how they began to pick up on the violence themselves, and how it affected their relationships. The second volume of the book describes her high school years when her parents sent her to Vienna with relatives in fear for her safety, and her return to Tehran for college.

This book was removed by a district directive from all Chicago public schools in 2013 due to concerns about graphic illustrations, language, and student readiness for the subject matter. As word spread about the directive, the students themselves created a multi-media campaign including social media, writing articles for student newspapers, staging protests, checking out all the copies of the book from the school libraries, contacting the author, and appearing on local radio and TV programs. Eventually the directive was reversed and the book remained on reading lists and on the shelves in the school system.

I was taken strongly by the irony that a book about freedom would be banned. And I was taken strongly by the fact that the students who got it reinstated would so excellently show freedom in action. Students of Chicago rock! I'm proud of you!

And so...with all that background...let me now introduce you to...

"Subversion" 

The image that inspired my project is from the second volume that describes Satrapi's experience as a young adult art student in Tehran.

"We confronted the regime as best we could," she says. "In 1990, the era of grand revolutionary ideas and demonstrations was over. Between 1980 and 1983, the government had imprisoned and executed so many high-school and college students that we no longer dared talk politics. Our struggle was more discreet. It hinged on the little details. To our leaders, the smallest thing could be a subject of subversion. Showing your wrist. A loud laugh. Having a Walkman. In short...everything was a pretext to arrest us. I even remember spending an entire day at the committee because of a pair of red socks. The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself: 'Are my trousers long enough? Can my make-up be seen? Is my veil in place? Are they going to whip me?' No longer asks herself: 'Where is my freedom of thought? Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable? What's going on in political prisons?'....Showing your hair or putting on makeup logically became acts of rebellion."

I was really struck by the image of red socks as a symbol of protest and subversion.

The socks are composed of a variety of fabrics to represent the freedom of diversity of human expression.

I wanted her feet to be in motion, symbolizing Satrapi's travels, as well as her ability to move forward through life despite obstacles.

I also created "stones" that both depict a street in a realistic way at the same time that they represent obstacles that those under oppression face, stumble over, and need to overcome to survive.

I'd had the image of the socks in my head for several months before I had time to actually sit down and create this project. As images in our heads tend to do, it kept getting more and more complex over time. At first, I was going to just do a basic fused applique of red socks under a fused applique black garment. Then I wanted to add stones. Then I wanted to do a dimensional garment using stiffened fabric. Then I wanted to make the socks out of scraps. Then I wanted all of the pieces to be dimensional. Yep--every one of those pieces is a 3D piece with batting, each its own little unit.That's why I took the pictures outside, so you could see the shadows the pieces cast. (All the fabrics except what's in the socks are my own hand-dyes, although that doesn't symbolize anything except they worked best for the parts I used them on.)

Each step created it's own issues I had to solve--not the least of which was how to attach everything to the quilt! I'll talk about that a little more in my podcast episode (hopefully tonight) because it's probably something better explained verbally than having an even longer blog post than this already is. 

I neglected to spread the word locally about Banned Books Week this year (it was a busy summer, but I feel terrible!) so mine is the only project being displayed in my local public library. I handed it over to my guild-friend-librarian and said, "Have fun figuring out how to hang this thing up." She solved the problem by mounting it on foam board. Brilliant woman!

Don't forget to check out everyone else's Banned Books Week quilts in the Flickr group! You've got through Saturday to enter yours. I'll be doing my drawing on Sunday; Tanesha will be doing hers on Sunday as well--she's got some great stuff in her giveaway too so be sure to check it out!. 

By the way--missed it this year? You can start thinking now about Banned Books Week in September 2015--this seems to have become an annual thing for us!

So I have gotten a couple of things done...

(Quick note: Craftsy is having a sale from Sept 9-15 with some of it's best-selling classes discounted up to 50% off. Here's the link: Save up to 50% off on Sewing, Quilting & Knitting classes. You might want to check it out! From, The Enabler. Using this link helps support this blog and podcast--thank you!)

The big news is...

I'm done making purple scarves! 

Woot woot woot!

75. Count 'em. 75 purple scarves.

I actually probably only need something like 65 to cover this event, but the number tends to keep waffling a bit so I needed a little cushion. And whatever is left over will come to good use for other purposes in our organization.

Meanwhile, I'm not dyeing anything purple again for awhile. Mostly because I ran out of Grape 801 (Prochem). The last few scarves were, ahem, a bit less saturated a purple, shall we say. But hey, that all just adds to the uniqueness of a handmade-with-love item, right?

The other thing I got done was a gift for my friend. My nickname for her is "Crunchy Dirty Gurrl" (long story having mostly to do with the dye class we took together in Lancaster last spring), so I used resist to write her nickname at the top of an apron and ice-dyed it. But when I went to post the picture in this post, I realized--for the very first time as I looked at the picture--I'd misspelled a word. And not the one I'd MEANT to misspell. No, that one I misspelled perfectly correctly, thank you very much. Oi. As I said to her in my apology email, just goes to show the kind of summer I had. 

Dang it. 

ice-dyed apron

I think we'll try to pull out a bleach pen. Or I'll make her version 2. I wasn't keen on the results of the resist anyway, so maybe this isn't such a bad thing.

Here's a bad picture of the bottom of it, offending misspellings cut off. You actually can't see the colors that well as it was taken at night in another friend's living room so it's darker and more yellow than it is in real life. I used fuschia, turquoise, and lemon yellow dye powders so it's a very pretty blend. But still, it proves I did actually finish something, even if I finished it all wrong.

Sadly, that gets me all caught up in finishes. A picture and a half to represent over 6 weeks of productivity. I toss the gauntlet. Beat that, slackers. 

Craftsy Class Review: Homemade Italian Pasta with Giuliano Hazan

So you may recall my recent birthday celebration held at the New York Wine and Culinary Institute in the Finger Lakes of New York State. 

And how I learned how to make pasta.

And how I fell in love with making pasta.

And how my husband bought me a pasta machine, and I've been off and running. (Amazingly, even with all this homemade pasta in the house, I've still managed to lose weight the last couple of weeks. Must be all the calories I'm burning cranking the rollers on the machine.)

Well, finally--as promised awhile back--here's my review of the very tasty and very helpful Craftsy class: Homemade Italian Pasta with Giuliano Hazan. 

My first pasta made at home.

I. Loved. This. Class.

Giuliano Hazan is the son of the woman who has been credited for bringing Italian food into American (and British) home kitchens, Marcella Hazan. I'm not familiar with Marcella's work as I don't own any of her cookbooks. But I can say that Giuliano is a wonderful teacher in his own right. I found his lessons very easy to follow. In fact, the first couple of times I went through the process of making pasta with my new pasta machine, I did it side by side with him, having the videos running while I was doing the steps. Remarkably easy to follow, in fact, as I didn't have to keep jabbing at my iPad screen with pasta-covered fingertips to go forward or back. Smooth sailing.

The very first time you use a new pasta machine you have to make a batch of "waste dough," so to speak, because sending the dough through the rollers cleans any manufacturing or shipping dirt off the rollers and prepares it for service. This gave me the perfect opportunity to make my first batch of dough using his techniques because I had nothing to lose.

First taste--noodles with butter and poppyseeds--the way Mom made then when I was little.

Admittedly, though, I didn't see much stuff coming off on the pasta as I rolled it through, so I tossed the earlier bits more likely to have invisible gook and still cooked up the later bits so I could see how everything was going. Since I'm still with us to write this blog post, I must not have ingested anything too suspect. 

I've been playing with different flours, which I will say comes more from the Artisan Pasta cookbook I bought than it does from Giuliano's class. He does talk about flours at the beginning and helped me understand why there were so many different ways to approach making pasta (in short: it's a regional thing) as well as a little more about the different types of flours you might use, but Artisan Pasta goes a bit more in-depth on the subject. I've been going back and forth between using an unbleached white flour and a pasta flour (which has semolina and durum in it). I also bought a whole wheat flour but haven't had a chance to test that one yet--that's next week's batch, I think. Giuliano also talks about making "green pasta" (with spinach mixed into the dough) and explains how to adapt it to "red pasta," (with tomato mixed in), but I haven't tried either of those yet either. Artisan Pasta also has a ton of recipes for flavored pasta doughs that I haven't gotten to yet.

So much pasta, so little time.

Ah, but back to the class. 

My most recent batch of pasta.

Giuliano is very easy to listen to, tells little stories here and there through the class so you get a real sense of how pasta and Italian food is such a part of who he is, and does a great job at filling in "dead air time" (while he's kneading or rolling or whatever) with extra information, substitutions, and great tips and tricks. He took all the concern out of trying to use a pasta machine myself, without a partner, by explaining some extremely easy fixes. Doh. Of course. 

He also explains how pasta is rolled out without machines, and gives information for using electric machines such as the type that attaches to a KitchenAid mixer. Because the electric ones are noisier, though, he mostly uses a hand-crank machine in the videos so as not to interfere with the sound.

Again, I really, thoroughly enjoyed taking this class. I'm looking forward to mixing his techniques with recipes from Artisan Pasta, as well as learning how to adapt the techniques to different ingredients. It's a matter of getting a feel for the proportions needed of liquid to flour depending on the density of the flour you're using, as well as how thick a pasta you need for the shape you're making. So far, I've been keeping it simple, but oh, I can see the possibilities.

Noodles in soup

Since I'm also one-tooth-short-of-a-full-mouth these days (and no, that's not a euphemism), I've been finding that pasta is a very easy-to-gum meal. So last night I combined a Parmesan broth recipe from Peter Berley's Building Flavorful Soup class (see my review of that one here), with homemade noodles from this class, threw in some diced tomatoes, crumbled chicken sausage (Wegmans Fire Roasted Tomato & Basil--my all time fave), and some fresh basil from my garden, and yum yum. I almost didn't mind having a sore tooth for a few minutes, there.

I highly, highly recommend this class. Everyone should be making their own pasta, in my opinion.

The Basics

• 7 lessons ranging from 10 to 25 minutes
• The class begins with a brief introduction to Giuliano but dives almost immediately into making the dough. The first lesson includes the instructions for making spinach pasta with a mention of how to adapt those instructions for making tomato pasta, and concludes with information about how to use and store the dough.
• The next lesson covers how to roll out and make basic cut pastas. The rolling technique in this class is where he varied most from what I learned from the chef in the culinary center on my birthday--I've been using Giuliano's technique and it works great, so I'm sticking with it. 
• Lessons 3 through 6 are how to make a variety of shaped and filled pastas, and each includes a recipe for that particular pasta. I liked that he talks about what kinds of dishes each pasta works best in, and sometimes how they're used traditionally in Italy as well as more modern uses. 
• The final lesson talks about how to cook and sauce pasta. It may seem straightforward, but I found that lesson gave me, if you'll pardon the pun, food for thought. 

Even if you don't plan on learning to make your own pasta (but why wouldn't you?) I think you could still get something out of this class, just in knowing what the shapes of pasta are and how to use them most effectively, plus a lot of great recipes.

I do have to also mention that Hazan has two other Craftsy classes. I don't own either of these yet but I imagine I can see them ending up in my shopping basket in the not-too-distant future:

Classic Italian Pasta Sauces: Meat & Tomato with Giuliano Hazan

Classic Italian Pasta Sauces: Seafood and Vegetable with Giuliano Hazan

Review complete. Two thumbs up!

(Transparency statement: Using the Craftsy and Amazon links in this post help support this blog and podcast. Thank you!)

August Craftsy Class Update (oops--just realized it's September!)

Summer's nearly over, and my fall's pretty busy so I'm hoping I can continue to make at least some progress on Craftsy classes. My goal is to whittle my "still to be completed" list to a single digit by Dec 31. Since I'm at the 3/4 mark for the year, I went back to my original post on this last year in December to see where I stood. At that point, I had 24 uncompleted classes. I now have 20. That wouldn't seem like I'd made a lot of progress, except...last December, I had completed 14 classes. This month, I have 33 completed classes. So I've definitely been completing far more than I've been adding. Yippee!

New Completions

(+ 4)

• Fire up the Fish with David Bonom. Click here for my full review (and my Mango Peach Salsa recipe).
• Thread Art with Lola Jenkins. Finally! Click here for my full review and class project pictures.
• Building Flavorful Soups with Peter Berley. Click here for my full review.
• Homemade Italian Pasta with Guiliano Hazan (See below: Review will be coming this week)

Classes in Progress

(2)

• Cooking Essentials: All About Chicken with Marge Perry (see "Classes added this month"--and, actually, this one's just about done too. Will probably have it done this coming week.)
• Designing Modern Quilts with Weeks Ringle. Confessional: I'd actually watched all the lessons in this one a long time ago, when I first bought this class. However, I was sewing at the same time and don't feel I paid close enough attention. So now I'm re-watching the lessons again. Not sure if I'll do any projects based on it, but Il will stay focused and take video notes and such to be sure I've actually learned from the class and haven't just had it on as background entertainment. 

Classes added this month

(+5) (Ahem.)

This one has been in my wishlist for a long time. I picked it up on sale earlier this month:

• Continuous Line Quilting with Ann Petersen. I got so much out of her last class, how could I resist?

During a weekend away with my husband, we were once again talking about our mutual desire to be healthier and how we could help one another towards those goals. The fact of the matter is, most of the cooking now falls to me only because of our schedules. My husband enjoys cooking and cooks quite well, but as I work from home that means that during the average week it's just easier for me to do it. The other reality is, we eat a whole lot of chicken. We both like chicken and we like all our usual ways of doing it, but there's always room for improvement and new ideas. Therefore, during a huge Craftsy sale mid-month, I picked up these two additional classes:

• Cooking Essentials: All About Chicken with Marge Perry
• Roasting Techniques Every Cook Should Know with Molly Stevens. I enjoyed the last class I took with her, Secrets of Slow Cooking: Mastering the Braise with Molly Stephens, so I figure this one will be equally good!

And you've hopefully already read my blog post about this one:

• 20 Essential Cooking Techniques with Brendan McDermott

And, finally, for my birthday (see my blog post about this too):

• Homemade Italian Pasta with Guiliano Hazan

Classes To Be Completed

Current count:  20 (+3 from last month...oops; lost a little ground, there.)

• 20 Essential Cooking Techniques with Brendan McDermott
• A Modern Take on the Mother Sauces with James Peterson
• Art Quilt Backgrounds: Beyond Log Cabin with Judith Trager
• Continuous Line Quilting with Ann Petersen
• Cooking Essentials: All About Chicken with Marge Perry
• Designing Modern Quilts with Weeks Ringle
• Fabric Patterning with Wax Resist with Malka Dubrawsky
• Free Motion Fillers Vol 1 with Leah Day
• Free Motion Fillers Vol 2 with Leah Day
• Free Motion Quilting a Sampler with Leah Day
• Free Motion Machine Embroidery with Terry White
• Free-Motion Quilting with Feathers with Angela Walters
• Machine Quilting Negative Space with Angela Walters
• Machine Quilting the Home Sweet Home Quilt with Frieda Anderson
• Painted Pictorial Quilts with Annette Kennedy
• Pictorial Quilting Techniques with Wendy Butler Berns
• Pictures to Pixel Quilts with Carol Sheridan
• Roasting Techniques Every Cook Should Know with Molly Stevens
• Strip Your Stash with Nancy Smith

Completed Classes (all topics)

Current count: 33 (+4)

• Art Quilting 101 with Wendy Butler Berns
• (The) Art of Cloth Dyeing with Jane Dunnewold
• Artisan Bread Making with Peter Reinhart
• Basics of Digital Photography with Rick Allred
• Beyond Basic Machine Quilting with Ann Petersen
• Building Flavorful Soups with Peter Berley
• Chain of Stars Mystery Quilt with Kimberly Einmo
• Color Play for Quilters with Joen Wolfrom
• Complete Knife Skills with Brendan McDermott
• Craftsy Block of the Month 2013 with Laura Nownes
• Creative Photography: Capture Life Differently with George Lange
• Creative Quilt Backs with Elizabeth Hartman
• Creative Ways with Whole Grains with Anna Bullett

• Design It, Quilt It: Freeform Quilting Techniques with Cindy Needham

• Finishing School: Edges and Bindings with Mimi Dietrich
• Fire up the Fish with David Bonom
• Hand-Stitched Collage Quilts with Laura Wasilowski
• Homemade Italian Pasta with Guiliano Hazan
• Homestyle Pan Sauces with Martha Holmberg
• Know Your Wool with Deborah Robson
• Machine Quilting with Wendy Butler Berns
• Magical Jelly Roll Quilts with Kimberly Einmo
• Pattern Free Quilt-making with Joe Cunningham
• Piece, Patch, Quilt: Basic Quiltmaking Skills with Gail Kessler
• Perfect Pizza at Home with Peter Reinhart
• QuiltCon Lecture Series 2013
• Scrap Quilting with Pepper Cory
• Secrets of Slow Cooking: Mastering the Braise with Molly Stephens
• Shoot It! A Product Photography Primer with Carol Sheridan
• Spindling from Fluff to Stuff with Drucilla Pettibone
• Stitch & Slash with Carol Ann Waugh
• Stupendous Stitching with Carol Ann Waugh
• Thread Art with Lola Jenkins

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Craftsy Class Review: Building Flavorful Soups with Peter Berley

And now, it's time for my review of Building Flavorful Soups with Peter Berley.

As summer winds its way down towards fall, I start thinking of chilly nights with the smells of something tasty cooking on the stove. I've been wanting to focus some energies around learning how to build my own soups for awhile. The fact of the matter is, I only have one soup I make regularly that I use a recipe for (Pumpkin Bisque with Smoked Gouda--amazing); the rest I make up on my own anyway. But I wanted a few more ideas, better techniques, things that could send me off and running in any number of directions. 

Parmesan broth with toast, a poached egg, shredded Gruyere, and chives. 

And so, I bought this class. Peter Berley provides techniques and recipes for several types of broth that can be used as the base for a variety of soups. He starts out pretty simple, with a very basic tomato broth and a Parmesan broth, both of which I was immediately ready to try out myself. It uses Parmesan rinds and since I've gotten in the habit in recent years of buying good Parmesan and grinding it in my food processor, now I know what to do with all those rinds I slice off first!

I made the Parmesan broth and dressed it up exactly the way he suggested in the class--not too bad. I'd never poached an egg before without using my egg cooker--it didn't turn out pretty, but it worked.* And I was surprised that I actually enjoyed a poached egg floating around in a soup! Still n' all, I'll want to do some more doctoring to that one. I can imagine using the Parmesan broth with tortellini, diced tomatoes, and fresh basil, for example, or as a cooking liquid for any sort of pasta or rice. Yum.

I've bought a bunch of tomatoes to try out his method of making tomato broth, but our family plans changed on Sunday so I haven't had a chance to make it yet. I'm hoping to get to that sometime later this week, and turn the broth into tomato rice soup, a family fave.

I'm also looking forward to following his instructions for making chicken broth. It's similar to what I've seen before but has some differences to it, so I'm anxious to try it out. However, that will probably wait until a rainy weekend as it has more kitchen prep time involved.

Peter Berley has a very relaxed delivery. Indeed, sometimes I felt it was a little too relaxed. I've grown accustomed to food instructors who use cooking time as a chance to give more information, some chemistry background to what's happening on the stove or in the oven, suggest substitutions, and so forth. With Peter Berley, there is occasionally "dead air," and it feels a hair awkward at times. Still, he's easy to listen to when he is talking, and I did learn a fair amount more about making broths as bases for soups.

That being said, I do wish there had been something along the lines of the chart that Molly Stevens provides in her Secrets to Slow Cooking: Mastering the Braise class (see my review here), to give me more ideas about how to combine different ingredients within flavor profiles. He mentions variations in passing, but having an actual chart in the class materials would've been very helpful so I wouldn't have to keep running back to the different lessons to remind myself of the possibilities.

However, one soup helps keep away vampires and ghosts. So that's a win.

While this wasn't my favorite of the Craftsy cooking classes, I did still learn a lot from it and will be continuing to play around with his recipes and suggestions. The printed materials will stay in my kitchen recipe binder for reference. If you're a fan of soups, I do think this one is worth adding to your queue.

The Basics:

• 6 lessons, ranging from about 24 minutes to about 37 minutes (absent the first lesson which is his three minute introduction)
• Lessons cover vegetable and herb broths and soups, Japanese Dashi variations and Asian soups, using shellfish, meat, and poultry in broths, soups, and stews, and pureed soups.
• Many of the broths he covers are either vegetarian-friendly or could be easily made so. I was specifically watching for this as my daughter's a vegetarian. 
• He briefly touches on refrigerating or freezing the broths, although he doesn't spend a long time on that. 

So, for Building Flavorful Soups with Peter Berley, I think I'd give this class one thumbs-up, one thumb in the middle. Again, not my most favoritist of the cooking classes I've taken on Craftsy, but I definitely learned quite a bit and have some good ideas for moving forward. My second thumb would be fully up if there'd been a chart as I'd suggested above, or if Peter Berley had filled some of the dead air with more information about flavor profiles and other ingredients that play well together in soups with certain bases, that kind of thing.

*For instructions on poaching eggs, I did a quick refresh-my-memory check and used Alton Brown's method. Peter Berley doesn't cover that in the class.

(Transparency: Clicking on Craftsy links in this post helps support this podcast and blog. Thanks!)

A Finish and a Craftsy Class Review: Thread Art with Lola Jenkins

Let me just start by saying, I had a ball with this!

The Craftsy class at hand is Thread Art with Lola Jenkins. My project ended up varying greatly from what she did in the class--so what you see here is inspired by, but not an exact replica of, the techniques she teaches in the class.

I'm hoping you'll see what fun I had with this and want to hightail it right over to Craftsy to sign up for her class!

Hawaiian flower, my own photo taken in 2010

The foundation of the class project is using a copyright-free image to base your artwork upon. She gives a lot of ideas about where to get your copyright-free images, and provides one in the class materials (The Girl with the Pearl Earring); it was one I do really like and debated doing myself. But I generally don't want to do what I know a bunch of other people are doing, and it wasn't a portrait I had ever wanted hanging in my house. I went back to one of my own photos (taken in Hawaii in 2010)--one I've always intended to translate into fiber in some way or another.

Photoshopped outline of flower

I'm not particularly good at drawing realistic things freehand, so I used PhotoShop to get an outlined version--more or less. There was at least enough outline for me to follow and trace the main parts. 

I stuck to the outline of the flower and each petal, plus the center stamen. I knew I'd be doing later quilting to give it more dimension.

I chose to do it on a white background so that the oranges and yellows of the flower would really show up well. I used one of my PFD fabrics as I had nothing else white in my stash that didn't have any print to it.

Windowpane light box

Then I used my trusty built-in lightbox (!) to do the tracing. Someday I'll have neighbors in that currently-empty-lot and and they'll wonder why the crazy lady next door keeps taping things in the window. I should come up with  messages to write on the back of the images I'm tracing. "Call the Mothership." "The Bear Flies at Midnight." "Send brownies." Messing with the neighbors' minds: always a good time.

Lola Jenkins makes several suggestions in the class (for which you're going to need to buy the class to find out!) about other things to do to your design, but none of them were speaking to me for this particular image. I finally landed on what I think was probably my most brilliant idea of the whole process. I pulled out my Hawaiian quilt block book, chose a block design that had a great outside edge to it, and used only that part of the block to create a frame for the project from one of my hand-dyes. Love it. May have to do that more often! I also free-hand drew leaves around the outside of the flower to help balance the entire thing. I drew the leaf I'm most comfortable free-handing. @Nonnie_p pointed out that it looked suspiciously philodendron-esque. Hey, when you find what works, stick with it. 

I knew I'd be able to shade the leaves fairly well--I've done that before. The flower was a bit intimidating, though, with all the ruffley bits. I kept going back over and over again with slightly different colors or adding in a line here or there, and I'm fairly pleased with the way it turned out. 

Dimension in the petals

I debated for awhile what color thread to use in the petals to make the dimension even more obvious. Black would be too heavy. But invisible thread may not be interesting enough. I had finally settled on red thread until I actually sat down to do the stitching...the red wasn't jazzing me as I pooled it on the petals to test it out. Then I realized--wait! I had all those Superior "Try Me" special variegated threads I'd been picking up lately. Bingo! One in orange, yellow, and red variegation. FTW.

I had a lot more fun stitching the petals than I thought I would--I was a bit nervous about this part, as I knew it could go from helpful-dimension to way-wrong-angles in the blink of an eye. But, again, I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. And that thread really is pretty. I also did some thread painting in the black center, and you can nearly see a corner of the stamen. I'd used a yellow thread to do circles in the stamen area, but the circles are so dinky and I could see what I was doing so poorly that it ended up being more of a scribbly-fill. But it worked, so I moved on.

I stuck to the theme of Hawaiian quilting and echo-quilted both the flower and the border, and I went with a simple fused binding with one of my black hand-dyes--nothing fancy.

And so, my finished class project!

And the back looks pretty spiffy too! (Used another of my hand-dyes)

And so, for my review of the class itself:

1. I had a ball doing this. It was a fun combination of quilting with my old fave hobby, coloring. (Coloring in geometric design coloring books was my main form of stress relief in college, in my pre-quilting days.)

2. I learned a new technique that can be applied in many ways in future art quilts.

3. I got more comfortable with free-form thread sketching, contouring, and so forth.

4. I realized I'm actually not too bad at shading and drawing. Still no Van Gogh, but hey, good enough for horseshoes!

5. Lola Jenkins is a very artistic person and I enjoyed hearing her tips and suggestions for tools, techniques, and different ways to achieve results. Please note that the description of my approach above is inspired by her class but doesn't follow it exactly. You really should check out her class to see how she does things. I have a few take-away ideas that I can easily see myself putting into practice in other projects even if I didn't use them here.

The Basics:

• 11 lessons, ranging from about 6 minutes to 35 minutes
• She addresses choosing materials, supplies and resources, how to set up your sewing machine, etc, and then has one full lesson on finding copyright-free art with some very helpful ideas.
• The next lessons are about turning a photo or image into something you can trace on fabric, adding other elements to the design, transferring the designs onto fabric, creating your quilt sandwich, stitching it out, coloring (over two lessons, with specific tips about eyes, lips, and shading), and final steps to set the color. The last lesson is a gallery of her own work which gives plenty of inspiration!

I really enjoyed this class. Two thumbs up! 

One more time, that's Thread Art with Lola Jenkins. Get out your colored pencils and get ready to have fun!

(Transparency statement: Clicking on Craftsy links in this post helps support this blog and podcast. Thanks!)

Craftsy Class Review: Fire up the Fish with David Bonom (and a recipe!)

I'm ready to review my next class! Welcome to Fire up the Fish with David Bonom.

I'm trying to overcome a lifetime aversion to seafood. I grew up eating fresh perch (and sunnies and croppies) out of Lake Ontario, filleted and fried in cornmeal. Other than that, I've really not been a fan of anything coming out of the water. Over the last 10 years I've been trying a lot more varieties of fish, and have begun to nearly like some of them. I'm still not a fan of shellfish of any kind--and believe me, I've tried most of them. Shrimp--well, that's just nasty. (And yes, I've tasted a few preparations. Couldn't get through any of them.) My husband's family is big into clambakes. Can't do it. The only way I'll eat a clam is if it's heavily battered and fried--basically once it's a vehicle for the batter, I can live with it. My theory is that I have a sister who's deathly allergic to shellfish so my DNA has a genetic aversion. That's my story and sticking to it.

So determined to try one of Bonom's recipes, I thumbed my nose at the rain and grilled anyway.

David Bonom, however, made me want to start throwing all sorts of fish on the grill. He still couldn't make shrimp look good to me but to those of you who like shrimp already, you'd probably be into what he does with those. The same goes for his lesson on lobster tails--not my thing, but for those of you who already like lobster, your mouths would probably be watering.

Mind you, this is a technique class, not so much a recipe class. He does give the recipes for every preparation he uses, but he only briefly talks about possible variations or how to create your own recipes, which I'd hoped would be more prevalent. But I got so much inspiration it ultimately doesn't matter.

The class was tremendously inspirational for me. We hadn't ever tried to grill a fish at our house but after watching the lessons all the way through, I was chomping at the bit.

Swordfish on the grill, just starting out.

And, most notably, I was ready to try a fish I'd never been brave enough to order in a restaurant before: swordfish. He made it look so good in the class, I had to give it a go!

Armed with what he'd said to look for in a good, fresh, piece of swordfish, I took a quick jaunt out to my grocery store and found two smaller swordfish fillets that had all the qualities he said to look for and none of the ones he said to avoid.

I also got all fancy on its butt. Although I stuck to his recipe for the dry rub, I decided it called for a little fruit salsa, so I was making up a recipe as I wandered through the produce section. I'll post my recipe at the end--it turned out very tasty.

The fish was really quite simple. I've done enough grilling, and enough dry rubs, to be confident on both counts. I had picked up some useful tips from his classes, though, and had absolutely no problem with my swordfish steaks sticking at all.

I even followed his suggestions for how to get the best grill marks. Mighty pretty, if I do say so myself.

This being my first time out of the gate with (1) grilling fish and (2) working with swordfish, I overcooked it just a hair. I should've pulled it off the grill maybe just one or two minutes sooner. It tasted fine, but it was a little on the dry side. Not too much of a problem, though, since I had my fruit salsa nicely freshening things up. And the end result is that I really, really liked it. I'll definitely be doing this one again.

Pretty grill marks! Or, grill hashtags, for you #twilters out there.

Back to the class. David Bonom was very easy to watch. It is important to remember, as I said before, that it's primarily a technique class. Although he does give plenty of recipes and talks a little here and there about possible variations and substitutions, he spends most of his time talking about the actual grilling--starting with a little discussion of the difference between charcoal and gas grills and setting up for the right temperature, he moves into how to prep the fish, how to prep the grill, what to watch for in terms of doneness, different tools and equipment (baskets, foil, etc.), how to check for temperature, and troubleshooting. The class goes from different types of fillets to whole fish to shellfish, and also includes fish cakes.

Not only do I feel a lot more confident about grilling fish, I feel a lot more confident about cooking fish in general and will more easily be able to tackle it in my kitchen when grill season is over.

The Basics:

• 10 lessons. Absent the first that's just a brief intro of about 1 minute, the rest range from about 3 1/2 minutes to 12 1/2 minutes. Short as they are, though, they're packed with good information.
• Lessons include: Setting up the Grill; Fish Steaks & Firm Fillets; Tender Fillets; Whole Sides; Whole Fish; Shellfish without the Shell; Shellfish in the Shell; Fish Cakes; Troubleshooting.
• Included in those lessons are discussions of dry rubs; marinades; stuffing; using baskets, skewers, and foil packets; how to test for doneness; and what to do if your fish cake falls apart on the grill. (!)

I enjoyed this class a whole lot more than I thought I would. Although I'm posting this review after only doing one type of fish, I already have plans for a couple more from the class. I'm ready!

Again, that's Fire up the Fish with David Bonom. Two thumbs way up!

Finished product--grilled swordfish with mango peach salsa (and roasted baby potatoes)

Addendum:

Sandy's Mango Peach Salsa

(Amounts for two or three people)

Ingredients:

• 1 T butter
• Half a Mayan sweet onion (or any sweeter onion), diced
• 1 clove garlic
• Half a mango, peeled and diced
• One peach, peeled and diced
• a few tablespoons of balsamic vinegar--tropical flavor if possible*
• Dash of salt

Directions: Saute the onion in butter until starting to caramelize. Add garlic and saute for about 30 seconds (don't burn the garlic). Add in the mango and peach and saute with other ingredients just to incorporate. Add balsamic vinegar, stir through, then turn heat to low and reduce the vinegar by about half or to taste, stirring occasionally. Add a little salt to taste. Serve over fish. Leftovers could be chilled and used for other things--like maybe over vanilla ice cream for dessert...nummy.

*I used one named Sunny Pineapple Balsamic Vinegar that was quite tasty. If you don't have a flavored vinegar, use a good balsamic--preferably white balsamic so the fruit doesn't look dirty--and then consider squeezing fresh lime or fresh lemon juice into the mix.

Need help knowing how to deal with a mango? Check this video out.

Craftsy Class Review: Creative Photography with George Lange

Welcome to Creative Photography: Capture Life Differently, with George Lange.

This one was a quick finish for me--I allowed myself to simply watch all the lessons to absorb what tips and tricks I could before heading out to my summer work events this weekend--events at which I tend to end up being the de facto "official photographer."

I had to think through how I was going to review this class. For me, I didn't actually get a whole lot of new information out of it. Most of it turned out to be things I already knew--which I suppose makes me feel better about what I apparently already do pretty well. I've been working on my composition and ability to tell a story through photos for a long time, and taking this class really just confirmed for me that I've learned a lot over the years!

But for someone who is just getting into photography or who would like to step it up in terms of composition and telling stories with photos, this would be an excellent class.

One of my all-time fave pics I took of DD when she was about 8. This photo exemplifies things Lange talks about in the class.

First off: This is a composition class, not a settings class. In other words, the techniques you learn are related to how to set up a shot, how to use ambient (natural) lighting, how to create a scene, how to capture a moment/mood/feeling, and so forth. It's not about which f-stop or shutter speed to use. In fact, he really only loosely references settings in a backhand way once in awhile. (For that kind of information, check out my review of Basics of Digital Photography with Rick Allred.) The point of this class is all about capturing the subject matter most effectively, and conveying a mood.

The good news is, that means you can get a lot out of this class even if you're taking pictures on your cell phone. The principles are the same regardless of how you're capturing your shot. (He even starts right out in the first lesson saying that!)

The second thing I appreciated about this class is that he discusses in one lesson issues around sharing photos on social media. He makes some very good points that I think it would behoove all of us to pay attention to. I've not seen that covered in other photography classes yet, and I liked the fact that he addressed it.

He does also have good examples of lighting and action shots, and talks about "between moments" (in other words, take lots of pictures without worrying yet about which one is the "hero shot," as he calls it). I'll probably be using my "sports" setting a lot more at my events next week, which makes my camera take several quick photos in succession when I click the shutter. What you think might be the best shot when you're taking them may change when you see all your pictures later.

DS when he was 3.  Another photo that exemplifies things Lange discusses in the Craftsy class. (Can you see the Easter egg?)

I think what I found lacking in terms of my needs and what I was hoping to get out of this class was that most of his examples seemed to be based on things he could control: He set up shots, he put people in positions where the lighting would be best, he asked them to get into certain poses or do certain kinds of actions, and so forth. For me, I'm shooting completely candid shots in the middle of events where lighting is often quite iffy (I hate hotel conference centers!), I have no control over where people are sitting or standing, and I'm trying to be as unobtrusive (invisible) as possible. I was hoping he might address how to work in those situations a little more. Still, I have some new ideas about angles I might use or situations I might take better advantage of, and certainly many of his set-up shots are meant to mimic candids so I had some take-aways from that as well.

Again, I clearly walked into this class with a pretty solid foundation on composition, so there were only moments of newness for me. But for someone who hasn't spent as much time working on her photography as I have, there may well be a lot of new and useful information here.

Lange clearly loves his work and finds creative ways to make his points--certain phrases will definitely stick in my head. And I did love seeing his photos--great stuff. If you would like to see your photos more creatively composed, I do recommend this class.

The Basics:

• 7 lessons, ranging from six minutes (intro lesson) to 25 minutes. Most are in the 10-15 minute range.
• Lessons include "Do the Unexpected," "Create a Stage," "Be in the Moment," "Beyond Good Enough," "Capture All of Life," and "Social Sensitivity."
• You do not need any particularly kind of camera to take this class. Again, it's all about composition, not settings or lenses or anything technical.
• He spends a fair amount of time on photos of children, so those of you with kids, take heed!

Again, that's Creative Photography: Capture Life Differently with George Lange. (As of this posting, it's still 50% off!)

(Usual transparency statement: clicking on Craftsy links in this post helps support this blog and podcast. Thanks!)