[ spicing things up a little too much ]

AFTER YOU have had your fill of turkey during the holidays, a pot of chili is a great way to feed a crowd and is great comfort food on a cold winter day. Have you ever made a pot of chili and realized that it is much too spicy to eat? What do you do?

Well, this happened to me recently even though I was following my usual recipe to a T. Little did I know that the chili powder and cayenne pepper I stocked our kitchen with here in Dubai were much more potent than those I had in Canada or Ireland so quantities should have been adjusted.

Well, with my mouth on fire just from taste-testing a spoonful, I quickly researched for a way to salvage my chili without having to start again from scratch. 

Try one of these:

1 add a spoonful of sugar

2 add a tsp of baking soda

3 add a drizzle of honey

4 add a spoonful of smooth peanut butter

Any one of these should take down the heat. I had to try all 4. Finally, with the peanut butter, it was saved! I had to add a bit more salt afterwards but managed to get it back to being edible. whew!

lisa

[ laundry miracle ]

I DON'T get too excited about laundry, and maybe I'm late to the stain removing game, but this is an absolute miracle!

Does anyone in your household have white t-shirts that get those awful yellow stains from antiperspirant? Well, here's a recipe for a stain remover that actually works! I tried it yesterday and I couldn't believe my eyes!

When I stumbled upon Jillee's blog talking about it, I was skeptical since I had tried everything and nothing was working. She mentioned using blue Dawn as the dish detergent but they don't sell that in Dubai so I just used my lemon scented Fairy liquid because that's what I had on hand.

I just mixed it together in a bowl, dipped in my scrub brush and scrubbed it on, waited an hour and threw it in the wash. It worked like a charm! I can't believe I'm actually excited about laundry ~ I almost want to stain a bunch of stuff so I can use more {ok, maybe not quite!}. Happy stain removing!

lisa

[ sewing machine tension secret ]

IF YOU sew at all, chances are you've encountered a time when your stitches aren't looking all that even. I managed to get through my pouf project with only minor problems but a new day brings a new problem...

While testing for a new project, I just keep encountering this uneven stitch problem and no matter how many times I tried rethreading, changing the needle, cleaning out the lint, nothing was helping. 

I consulted my manual and all it suggested was to adjust the tension dial on my machine...

Well, I had already tried that and to be honest over the past few projects, my dial has crept from the recommended middle mark to -5 on an ongoing basis as my stitches were slowing becoming more and more uneven. I had no where left to go.

Here's the secret!

Did you know that you can adjust the tension of your bobbin? I KNOW! This is a serious revelation for me! Having sewn since childhood, I can't believe I didn't know ~ a critical bit of information that every sewing enthusiast should know about.

Apparently over time, your bobbin spring can loosen and start causing all kinds of problems like thread loops, puckering and uneven stitches. Just doing a simple test will determine if that might be the problem {I found this trick here}. Remove your bobbin with its case...

Hold it up by the thread and quickly raise your hand ~ if it unwinds slightly and only drops about an inch or so, it has proper tension. If it doesn't budge, it's too tight ~ if it falls to the floor, it's too loose. 

My machine has a built-in bobbin case so the design was a little different but the concept was the same. See in either design how there's a little screw on the bobbin case? You can adjust that with a tiny screwdriver!

If your bobbin is too tight, turn the screw slightly to the left {counterclockwise}. If your tension is too loose, turn it slightly to the right {clockwise} to tighten it...

Mine was WAY too loose so I turned the screw slightly to the right, put it back into the machine....

And tada! A thing of beauty!

My machine hasn't made a stitch this beautiful since the day I unpacked it from its box! I'm excited to know about this since I've still got my old Singer from the 80s {my first machine} that stopped having an even stitch years ago and I had given up on it. Maybe I've saved it from the trash pile!

Now my next project will be much easier to complete! First step: piping!

27 yards of piping to be exact! Can you guess what project I'm finally tackling? 

Off to sew!

lisa

[bobbin secret pics via cool cottons.biz; threads magazine]