Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

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  • Welcome to my blog!

    Hi! I'm Traci. I'm a Registered Nurse who loves quilting, knitting, cross stitch, and the great outdoors. In my pre-scrubs life, I owned Real Photography, and you can still see my old wedding and portrait photography site here .

    I've created a map that shows links to our camping/hiking/general family fun review posts that you can find here. It's pretty much the coolest thing on this site. Thanks, Google!

    I great big puffy heart *love* comments, so please let me know you visited! I try to always reply!

Baa-ble Hat Knitting Pattern Review

The free baa-ble hat pattern was released for Shetland Wool Week in 2015, and it has been on my To Do list ever since.  After finishing my Mind the Gap socks I got to celebrate by casting on a new project (never mind the others already in work) and I knew I wanted to take on the Baa-ble!

This hat came together quickly in a week, and I love the yarn I used.  My sister helped me pick the colors from my stash and I love the low contrast gray she gunned for as the sky!  I used plucky traveller aran for everything except the cream for the sheep–that was a fluffy eco duo yarn  that adds just the right amount of fuzzy to the sheep.

I got so excited about finishing the hat that I forgot to add the pompom!  I haven’t yet decided whether it needs one, so I may be back with updates!  In my past experience with plucky traveller, it grew with blocking, so I have been scared to block this one but trust that the tension issues will disappear once I do!

The pattern was easy to follow and this was a mostly quick knit with the exception of the sheep section with involved very long carries and several rows with all three colors.  I was grateful for my experience with my Christmas hat in managing the long carries and inevitable tangled chaos of managing three balls of yarn at one time, but at the same time I was asking myself how I got into such a mess so soon after swearing off ever doing colorwork that didn’t abide by fair isle rules!  It couldn’t have been too terrible, though, since I immediately cast on a second baa-ble hat after finishing this one!

Girl Friday Calendar Review + Installation Tips

I searched for a modern calendar for our mud room for over a year before finding the Girl Friday acrylic calendars that were EXACTLY what I was looking for!  I spent another month angsting over the cost before doing a commercial photography shoot and getting the calendar as a present for myself.

When it arrived, my husband took one look at me and the wall anchors and told me that I was welcome to hang up the calendar…whenever I was ready to do it by myself.  Luckily for me, I was on Day 2 of a steroid prescription and I was Ready To Do All the Things.  Even The Things that involved drills and wall anchors and potential permanent damage to our home!

So.  If you, too, find yourself with the most beautiful calendar in the whole wide world but no husband willing to take the lead on the project, here’s how I did it!

Step 1:  Create a template for the calendar out of 8.5×11 paper.  Basically I laid sheets of computer paper on top of the calendar and then taped them all together.  I then used a pencil to press out holes where the hardware would go.

Step 2:  Measure your wall and then tape the template where you think you want the calendar.  Check your placement with a level and remeasure out your borders about 8 thousand times.  We are breaking out the drill bits here, people, you better KNOW those holes are level.

Step 3:  Watch some YouTube videos on installing wall anchors.  Use a stud finder to make sure you aren’t drilling into any studs or electrical wires.  I started with a significantly smaller drill bit than I would use for the final holes because the real drill bit seemed terrifyingly large.  At this point, as I started tearing up the wall, Nic came over to investigate.  He told me he liked my “advanced drilling method.”  I looked at him blankly.  “You have the drill set to reverse, which some people do to prevent yourself from getting tugged into the wall.”  “Oh yeah,” I said.  “I totally saw that on YouTube and completely know exactly how to change that setting on this drill.”  (It actually made a big difference for me over my initial drilling attempts a few months ago in the garage.  I recommend my accidentally advanced drilling techniques.)

Step 4:  Just know that when you hammer in the wall anchors it’s gonna seem like either the wall anchors are too big or your hole is too small.  Keep the faith.  It’s like birthing a child.  It doesn’t seem like that thing is gonna fit, but push harder and it will pop through.

Step 5:  Look at all your wall anchors and pray to God they are going to fit the holes in the calendar.

Step 6:  Screw in the stand-out hardware.

Step 7: At this point you need a buddy to help you put up the calendar and make sure you don’t scratch the back as you place it on the stand-outs.  (It’s kind of annoying to get the project this far and not be able to take it over the finish line all by yourself, but that’s just how life is sometimes.)  We left the protective sheet on the front until the very end.

Step 8:  Peel off the protective sheet and bask in your DIY awesomeness.

The installation took about 2 hours from start to finish, including making the template and obsessing about the measuring and being very careful and timid about the whole thing.

It’s the first thing you see as you walk through the garage door and I absolutely LOVE IT, and my youngest loves seeing what it happening in our lives and what is coming up next on her dinner plate.  Here’s a cell phone action shot of her adding “pizza” and “cereal” to all the meals of the week that gives you a feel for the awesome scale of this 23″x30″ version:

Pie Iron Recipes – Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, and Desserts

My favorite part of car camping is experimenting with new pie iron recipes.  Over the last several years we’ve had the opportunity to test out and invent a lot of recipes!  Some of these are popular recipes you have likely seen elsewhere, but some should be totally new!  A lot of these recipes used canned ingredients, but you could certainly use homemade or fresh versions.  I hope they will inspire you in your own experiments to find a new family camping favorite!

General Pie Iron Tips

  • Initial Investment:  We use these pie irons from Amazon.  They are $14 each, which makes them an investment when you’re looking at buying one for each person, so to start we just bought two and made food in shifts.  Once we realized how much we enjoyed them, we bought another two.
  • Seasoning: Like any cast iron pan, these are great nonstick baking surfaces once well seasoned or a sticky nightmare if not.  We spray them heavily with cooking spray before each use (spraying well away from the tent).  Pam makes a high heat grill spray that works particularly well.
  • Transportation:  Since we season them heavily for each item cooked, they are covered in messy oil and will mark up anything they brush against. For transport in the car, we spent years wrapping up the cast iron section in foil until we found these $5 adorable carrying bags for them at REI this weekend!
  • Eggs: Many of the recipes we use call for eggs.  We have brought eggs in their carton, brought eggs in plastic camping egg containers, but my favorite method is to bring the liquid eggs that they sell at the grocery store.  No dealing with shells, no having to beat the eggs into an even consistency, and best of all no worries about the transport!
  • Preheat:  We discovered that preheating the pie irons over the fire while we work on ingredient prep dramatically reduces the cooking time.  We take the two pieces apart and let each half of the pie iron sit on top of the fire grill for maximum preheating!
  • Pie irons require a campfire:  Obvious, I know, but something to consider when you decide on your menu plan for the trip.  Lunch pie iron recipes aren’t usually very realistic given the amount of time it takes for a campfire to become a good cooking campfire.  The cost of firewood should also be factored into your meal.  Since it’s not uncommon to see campgrounds with $7 small bundles of firewood, don’t forget to factor in the cost of your cooking fire in your meal planning.
  • Salt and pepper:  I bought an inexpensive salt and pepper set to stick in our camping box after thinking how much better a dish would have been with salt and pepper one too many times.  They are too easy to forget to not just tuck some dedicated salt and pepper into your camping supplies!

Breakfast Pie Iron Recipes

Loaded Hashbrowns:  These with an omelet were our go-to breakfast this summer because they are yummy, filling, and work really well to use up leftovers from the dinner pie iron recipes.  Even better, before you use them they can be an additional icepack in your cooler!  Use packaged frozen hashbrowns and add whatever extras you have on hand or would like to bring.  Some of our favorite things to add:  tomatoes, onion, shredded cheese, green chiles, bacon bits, chopped up lunch meat (honey turkey breast is really good in these), etc.  TIP:  The hashbrowns badly want to stick to the cast iron, so season the pie irons especially carefully before each one you make!

Omelets:  These follow the same recipe as the loaded hashbrowns, but you swap out liquid egg (or actual beaten eggs) for the frozen hashbrowns.  Some of our favorite things to add: chopped baby spinach, onions, tomatoes, shredded cheese, green chiles, bacon bits, lunch meat, ground beef (leftover taco seasoned ground beef from burritos or walking tacos is surprisingly good in these).  TIP:  Don’t fill the pie iron too full with liquid egg.  Not only will it spill as you try to carefully hold it perfectly level from your prepping area to the fire, but the egg will expand in the pie iron as it cooks and try to leak out all over the place.  I find that filling the bottom pie iron pie half full of liquid egg and then adding toppings is just about the perfect amount. 

The hashbrown/omelet combo:  Instead of making the loaded hashbrowns and omelets separately, you add the egg, hashbrown, and toppings in one pie iron.  The downside is that since it’s a small space, you can’t fit very much in.

Eggs, Bacon, Texas Toast:  This requires that you bring actual eggs, but they are so good that it’s worth a try.  These little sandwiches required a lot of tweaking as I tried to invent them, but eventually I figured out a formula that works.  You lay bacon slightly overlapping on the pie iron to make a perfect bacon bowl and then crack an egg so that it lays on top of the bacon layer.  Season the egg with salt and pepper.  Lay a piece of bread on top, then the second piece of the pie iron and seal it up.  The bacon crisps enough to act as the second piece of bread in this breakfast sandwich, and its grease drips down onto your actual bread until it is like texas toast.

Egg McMuffin:  Repeat the above but with an English muffin instead of bread.  Less fun but less messy, you can cook liquid egg in a pie iron, warm English muffins in another pie iron or on the grill, and cook the bacon in another pie iron and assemble on the place.

Stuffed French Toast:  Stuffed French toast goes down as the most dangerous thing we have cooked in the pie irons.  The egg and sugar made for a combination that exploded  when Nic went to peak on them to see if they were done.  Luckily the filling exploded onto his pants and not his face, however since that was the camping trip where we were closest to a bear ‘lucky’ is maybe not the best word.  So, if you want to take a chance on this delicious but deadly breakfast, don’t stuff the French toast too full and be very careful when you open the pie irons.  For the French toast: place liquid egg, milk (taking a tiny lunch sized bottle or carton of milk works well) and sugar in a ziplock bag [I know people like measurements, but that’s not how I roll–just do what feels right] and then one at a time place a piece of bread in the bag and shake it around so that it soaks up the mixture.  Place one piece of bread on top of one side of the pie iron and then spread the filling on top.  Place another piece of soaked bread on top of the filling and then close it up in the pie iron.  For the filling:  Combine cream cheese, sugar, and sliced strawberries.  Mixing this up before you leave home is a nice treat to your future self.

 Cinnamon Rolls:  Pie irons cook up those Pillsbury in-a-roll cinnamon rolls beautifully!  I like to put two in each pie iron and then put the frosting on cooking.  (I tried sandwiching the filling between two uncooked cinnamon rolls but it didn’t work.)

Lunch and Dinner Pie Iron Recipes

Pizzas:  This is the most common pie iron recipe, but deserves to be mentioned anyway.  Make sandwiches out of bread, pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella, and the toppings of your choice (we usually do a pepperoni/green chili/black olive set and then a canned pineapple and Canadian bacon set) and stick them in the pie irons.  You can mix that up by using premade pizza dough in a can instead of bread, but I actually prefer the pizza bread sandwiches to the pizza dough sandwiches and as an added bonus they are easier to assemble with bread than dough.  Tip:  Walmart sells a bunch of cool and easily transportable pizza toppings and sauces in sizes perfect for pie iron pizzas.  I usually can’t find the mini Canadian bacon slices at my regular grocery store.)

Artichoke Dip on Rye:  I invented this as a fancy pie iron appetizer but it quickly became dinner since it is rich and filling.  It is two pieces of rye with homemade artichoke dip in the middle that you cook in the pie irons until the cheese melts and the rye bread gets toasty.  I make my artichoke dip at home ahead of time with my usual no-measurement style, mix it together and then pop it in a ziplock bag and into the freezer [so it can pull double duty as ingredient/ice pack).  Cream cheese, mayonnaise (roughly 2/3 cream cheese, 1/3 mayo), the better part of a package of shredded parmesan cheese, a clove or two of garlic minced or chopped depending on your level of garlic snootiness, a pinch of red pepper, 1-2 cans of artichoke hearts chopped and maybe a can of green chiles if you feel like it that day and remembered to get them at the store.

Burritos:  Use a whole wheat tortilla and assemble burritos roughly the size of the pie irons.  The tortillas toast really nicely in the pie irons and the fillings tie in well with the omelet and hashbrowns. Suggesting fillings:  refried beans, black beans, cheese, avocado, olives, shredded chicken, ground beef seasoned with taco seasoning, tomatoes.  Suggested toppings:  lettuce, sour cream, salsa.

Chicken Pot Pie:  In this one you use canned dough to create a pocket around a homestyle chunky chicken and veggies canned soup.  You’ll need a bowl and a spoon for this one!

Tuna Melts:  Tuna sandwiches with cheese warmed in the pie irons.

Dessert Pie Iron Recipes

Monkey Bread:  Couldn’t be easier or messier or more popular with the kiddos.  Bring a can of crescent roll dough and a gallon sized ziplock bag with about 1cup of cinnamon sugar.  You’ll rip up the dough and form small balls, then toss them in the cinnamon sugar bag to coat them.  Don’t overcrowd them in the pie irons unless you like your monkey bread doughy.  Tip:  Season the pie irons very well or your monkey bread will get stuck!

Fruit Pie:  Crescent roll dough forms the shell around canned pie filling.  Apple and cherry work really well.

Lemon Meringue Pie:  A slight twist on the fruit pie–use lemon pie filling with 1-2 regular marshmallows or several mini marshmallows.

Stuffed pound cake:  Use thin slices of pound cake as the shell around sliced strawberries, pie filling, or chocolate.

Nursing School Recap

Today marks my one year anniversary as a working Registered Nurse, and I still haven’t gotten around to writing a final semester wrap-up post from nursing school.  To be honest, I was waiting until I could write about nursing school without sounding negative, but 13 months later I’m just not sure I’ll ever get there.

In many ways nursing school was a big success.  I graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0, took the NCLEX two weeks later with no real preparation (beyond nursing school itself and occasionally doing NCLEX Mastery app questions on my phone while I was on the toilet) passed in the minimum 75 questions in 45 minutes, and two weeks after that started as an RN in a Birth Center of a hospital, which had been my dream all along.  (My original goal had been to be a Labor and Delivery nurse, but after working as a CNA on the Mom Baby Unit my dream job shifted slightly to Mom/Baby nurse as I couldn’t imagine leaving the place that felt like home!)

In many ways nursing school did not feel like a success–I left feeling defeated and bitter and confused as to what our program had even been trying to accomplish.  I was so disgruntled that I actually did not attend the pinning ceremony–I just couldn’t stomach it.  I did not feel as if the school were trying to turn us into the best nurses we could be, but rather that they were acting as self-ordained gatekeepers to the profession, unmercifully weeding out any they deemed unworthy.  Having been through United States military officer training I understand the value of an intense training program.  The old adage is that people are broken down and rebuilt stronger.  Nursing school felt like a program that was very skilled in the first half of that philosophy and just enjoyed that part too much to ever get around to the second half.  “They spend all day yelling at us that we are incompetent worthless idiots,” I whispered to a friend one afternoon close to graduation, “and then are completely baffled when we don’t show more initiative and confidence.”  Nursing school hazed me far harder than the United States Air Force ever did.  And only one of those programs is looking to make professional killers.

When I talk to people about nursing school I am torn between warning them away from what will probably be the worst two years of their life, and encouraging them because nursing is an incredible profession and they CAN make it through.  So if you are reading this as you consider nursing school, know that it will be hard in all the ways you don’t expect, know that you will regret all the times you were distracted or depressed or just-so-very-emotionally-exhausted with your kids, know that they will try to break you, and know that at the end of it all, as you drag yourself to the finish line broken and empty, you still have Your First Months as a Nurse to tackle, which is a whole new level of failure and overwhelm and isolated and distracted and depressed.  But if you want to do it, if you go in with your eyes wide open, it is worth it.  Like motherhood, the hours and days are long, but the years are short, and pinning will be there before you know it.

Speattle - I knew nursing school was hard. I can’t believe it has been almost 40 years to the day that I graduated from the UW nursing school. The professional part of the program was 3 years (and I took 2 years of per-requisites prior).

It was one of the most difficult and demanding times of my life, but even with that I have to say that I felt our faculty was actually very encouraging and supportive. Not soft on us by any means, but you could tell they want wanted to see us succeed and appreciate the journey along the way. I really didn’t feel there were any mind games or that we were subjected to being “broken down” before building up.

I’m really rather shocked and disappointed that the faculty at your school seemed to take a different tone with you and your classmates. I’m glad you were able to see yourself through the bull***t to which you were subjected, and are finding your niche in this important and needed profession.

Congratulations!

Boho Baby Romper Pattern Review

I sewed something last month!  Around here I’m all banjo and ukulele practice all the time now, so pulling myself away for other hobbies is hard!  When I saw this cute Boho Baby Romper pattern by See Kate Sew on pinterest a couple of months ago, though, I knew my adorable niece needed it for this summer, so I made this version for my sister’s birthday!  (Nic doesn’t feel that clothing for your baby makes a good birthday present, but I think that’s just because he doesn’t understand how much moms like cute baby clothes.)  I made this in the 12-18 month size, so hopefully it will be a perfect fit!

Pattern thoughts:  This was a great pattern that was mostly easy to follow.  I’m still not 100% certain on what was supposed to happen with the various seams and where they meet and match at the bodice-meets-back section, but it looks okay so I’m not going to worry about it!  This was my first foray into snaps, which are CRAZY HARD TO LINE UP.  You can see a little bubble where my snaps didn’t complete align, but I was worried it would be worse and luckily no one stares too hard at that section anyway!  My seams are finished with a serger, but this would be an easy project to complete with just a regular sewing machine, too.

Fabric: This is an old Heather Ross print that I’ve been hoarding that was sold exclusively at Hancock Fabrics in 2012 (I just looked that up–I can’t believe it was that long ago!) and was launched at the same time as her Crafty Chloe book.  The fabric is thin, but it’s really soft and so while it would make a terrible quilt fabric, it’s perfect for a drapey breezy summer romper or nightgown!  Looks like it’s kicking around some ebay shops at the time of this blog post, but at $10-$30 for a FAT QUARTER you’d be hard pressed to get yardage (dang–feel free to offer me that kind of money for my yardage of this line, People of the Internet)!

 

Updated with action shots and sizing notes in a new post here!

Speattle - I love this! Hope you get to put up a picture of your niece wearing it.

Don’t sweat the bubble at the snap area. Once it is filled out with diaper and baby parts, it won’t even be noticeable. Plus babies at that stage are incredibly mobile, so she won’t be still enough for anyone to notice. With her moving about and the fabric moving with her, it won’t even exist.