Beth Ferrier’s Blog

Christmas means family here at Applewood Farm. One of my earliest memories is of Christmas Eve at my Grandma Vorich’s house. A large and lovely Croatian family, the rooms were filled with food and laughter. Each grandchild received a gift from their godparent to open during the party. My godmother always treated me to a special frilly dress, a decadent, impractical dress that I completely adored. It’s been a life goal to have my house filled with family, food and fun during the holidays.

 The studio was pressed into service as a dining room. The china came in part from my late mother-in-law. Her sixteen place settings grew to enough for thirty-five with the help of ebay!

I used those pinwheel cookies for place decorations.

Mother Nature cooperated by providing a fresh snowfall.

 Our first party included our four sons, one daughter-in-law, two girlfriends, grandson Alex, Kent’s father Ray and his wife Anna Mae, Kent’s sister Cindy and her two daughters. Kent’s other sister, Kristen couldn’t get here, she was snowed in!

 The dining room table, laden with appetizers and desserts.

 Six days later we hosted another party with my family. That’s my mom to the left, brother-in-law Daryl, husband of sister Pam sit next to her. Sister Lori is in front on the right, sister Stephanie and her sons follow down the line. Pam’s son, Daryn sits at the head of the table and that’s my youngest, David, yucking it up behind my mom. We made room for the thirty relatives, only missing my Dad, who was home sick with a bad cold and Lori’s hubby, at home in Southern California. We missed you guys!!

 We laughed so hard as we opened gifts. What a delight that six daughters, their husbands, children (and children’s significant others) and parents all get along so well. Such a blessing!

A banner day for our second born son, Jacob! He graduated from Saginaw Valley State University with a bachelor of arts, his major in creative writing.

It hasn’t always been easy for Jake. He’s had challenges that most kids don’t have to face. But here he is, a college grad, happy, healthy and looking forward to the next chapter in his life. He’s a brilliant writer (and I’m not the least bit biased!) 

 David (19), Jake, the grad (23) and Caleb (20)

our oldest son, Nate, couldn’t attend, darn it!

 Me, Elaine (Caleb’s significant other), Caleb, David, Rachel (Jake’s girlfriend) and Jacob, the grad!

Congratulations, Jakie baby, I always knew you could.

I haven’t done much sewing, instead I’ve been busy in the kitchen. For years I gave my in-laws a party platter of cookies as their Christmas gift. The custom fell away when I started traveling so much for my job. This year I decided to forget work for a few weeks and bake to my heart’s content.

Of course, we have our traditional favorites: ginger snaps, Russian tea cakes, sugar cookies, peanut butter bons bons, just to name a few. This year I decided to try a couple of new recipes.

I found the recipe on the Food Network site. Lately the Food Network has been the screen saver on my tv. I thought the cookies were too cute and rather quilty to boot. I was really worried while mixing up the dough. Where’s the sugar? But I forged ahead.

When a quilter is told to cut three inch squares what else would she do?

 The next step is to cut the bias, slather with egg wash and then sprinkle with sugar.

 The parchment paper keeps the stray sugar from burning and sticking. Great trick, huh? I forgot to buy the M&M’s for the center so I used white dragees instead. If I was going totally Martha I would have painted them yellow first, but it was already 10pm, almost past my bedtime, and done is better than perfect. I think they’re kind of cute this way, anyway.

I learned the hard way to leave the center of the square free of sugar. The recipe calls for a teaspoon of sugar on each square. That seemed like entirely too much. The first few I used just a half teaspoon. When the cookie puffs in the oven the sugar ended up looking rather sparse, and with no sugar in the dough, a little bland.

So for the next lot I piled it on. The result: frankencookies! The arms of the pinwheels popped open and the dragees wandered all over the cookie. Yikes! To the good, these little misshappened cookies provided excellent sampling opportunities. David and Kent both pronounced them tasty.

My last job for the evening was to wrap the cookies up for giving. The recipe called these cookies “poinsettias”. I couldn’t resist using green ribbon (for leaves), to tie the celophane bags shut. Wouldn’t the cookies be cute, without the stick, in lots of pretty quilty colors?

Every year Bernina hosts a group of national teachers for a two day retreat. It is a fabulous forty-eight hours of learning, sharing and networking. Being a geek, I love learning about their machines’ capabilities, I sure wish the other manufacturers would offer the same opportunity for hands-on training on their machines!

 It was for this retreat that all those zillions of kits needed to be prepared. This was my first time teaching for the group, and my, oh, my, did I want to make a good impression. We had a little bit of a challenge getting my camera set up to work with their digital projectors, but in the end it all worked out just fine.

 Okay, I’ll admit it, for the first few minutes I was so nervous I thought I was going to pass out. My hands were shaking! But very quickly the teacher in me took over, and I did my job. We had a great class, lots of fun and giggles. I finished up to high-fives from my teacher friends. Back to my seat to enjoy the next session, taught by another teacher from the group.

This retreat was held at Bernina’s American headquarters in Chicago. The staff is one of the hardest working groups I have ever witnessed, and far and away the happiest. It’s a joy to watch them work together. They clearly value and celebrate each person’s skills. While they take their work very seriously, it’s clear that they do not take themselves too seriously. It is a sincere pleasure to spend time with people who so obviously love their jobs and their coworkers.