Classic, buttery, whole wheat shortbread cookies. They're fragrant with rosewater, flecked with toasted nuts, and dried rose petals.

Continue reading Rose Shortbread Cookies on 101 Cookbooks

Everything I know about making grissini. These beloved, pencil-thin Italian breadsticks are made with just five ingredients. No mixer is needed and you don’t need to proof your yeast.

Continue reading Grissini (Italian Breadsticks) on 101 Cookbooks

1. Wie die Öffentlich-Rechtlichen aus der Krise kommen sollen (taz.de, Ann-Kathrin Leclère) Ann-Kathrin Leclère hat die wichtigsten Fragen und Antworten zur Rundfunkreform zusammengestellt, beispielsweise: Warum braucht es Reformen? Wer kümmert sich darum? Was wurde beschlossen? Wer hat Angst vor welchen Änderungen? Und was ist mit dem Rundfunkbeitrag? 2. Wie das insolvente Kreml-Medium Ruptly unter neuem […]

1. RSF verurteilt israelische Nachrichtenblockade (reporter-ohne-grenzen.de) Die Organisation Reporter ohne Grenzen (RSF) verurteilt den Umgang der israelischen Armee mit Medienschaffenden. “Aus dem Norden des Gazastreifens dringen immer weniger Informationen heraus, und gerade deshalb wird Journalismus immer wichtiger”, so RSF-Geschäftsführerin Anja Osterhaus: “Die israelischen Streitkräfte verhindern zunehmend Bilder und Stimmen von der Realität des Krieges und […]

Getting hit with one hurricane is bad enough, but new research from Princeton Engineering shows that back-to-back versions may become common for many areas in coming decades.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $52.66 million grant to fund a major infrastructure upgrade to the Simons Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile. Upgrades are expected to take about five years; the resulting facility will be known as the Advanced Simons Observatory (ASO).

Princeton's 'extremely supportive' environment for new ideas laid the foundation for an aha moment about a toggle switch in the fruit fly brain. Do humans have one, too? 

In the Class of 2028, 71.5% of students qualify for financial aid and 21.7% of the class are lower-income students eligible for federal Pell grants.

Princeton engineers and industry leaders have squelched a threat that had lurked for years in the internet’s encryption system.

The conference has been scheduled for Oct. 9-11, 2025. All Princeton alumni are invited back to campus for the gathering. 

The Martin A. Dale '53 Fellowship provides grants for Princeton seniors to spend the year after graduation on "an independent project of extraordinary merit." Juliette Carbonnier and Collin Riggins are the latest recipients.

I was one of the outside readers1 for a volume in Cambridge University Press’s enormous “Elements” series, The New Witches of the West, by Ethan Doyle White. (Link is to Amazon US) To find that title, go to the main … Continue reading →

This is the first solo exhibition of my work! I am very pleased and honored that the La Conner Quilt & Textile Museum offered me a show in their new Local Artist Exhibit Program's first-floor Landmarks Gallery.

Every Child Should Have Her Own Tree, hand-dyed, beaded, embroidered fabric collage

I hope some of you will be able to come see my work, as well as the work of the other two featured quilt artists in the upper floor galleries.
A couple of readers have contacted me asking if the above work, or any of the other pieces will be for sale...  Nope, afraid not... exhibition only, although the museum's excellent gift shop does carry my books.

Bringing my beadwork to the Museum

Demonstration prior to the Opening on April 1st.

Exhibition closed - beadwork back home again

Rosie, The Uncaged Hen

La Conner Quilt & Textile Museum

It sure was a lovely surprise one day last fall when a representative from the Bead&Button Show called to ask if I would be interested in sending my beaded quilts for exhibition at the 2015 show in Milwaukee, WI.

Would I be interested? Of course I would!!! But since I'm more of a beader and don't have that many beaded quilts, I suggested they also contact my brother, Thom Atkins, who has made a mind-boggling number of beaded quilts in the last 10 years or so.

Brother-sister exhibition... how fun is that! You can see all 22 quilts in the Artisan Area of the Exhibition Hall if you're attending the show, May 27 - June 8. For those who can't make it, here are my quilts, the ones in the show. When you click on the first picture, you can see a slide show with full-size pictures.

It's really special how,in recent years, quilters are interested in beads, and beaders are playing with quilting, both finding ways to expand their creativity! And it's super fun to show with my bro!

Oh dear, busy me, four months since I've posted here. Lots of quilting, a little beading, some travels, and recently several sets of house guests have made "retirement" a bit of a joke. For now, since the La Conner Quilt Festival is just around the corner (October 2-4), my subject is one small exhibition on the first floor at the Museum, which is currently up, and will remain through the Festival.

Last year at the Festival (and again this year!) Sue Spargo taught workshops on her wool applique embroidery methods. Those of us who were lucky enough to get in were invited by the Museum to exhibit our finished pieces. These marvelous creations are the subject of this post. Uneven lighting makes it difficult to get good photos, so please forgive poor color or tone on some of these photos.

In case you are unfamiliar with Sue's work, below is an example of her work. Students in her class could choose to make chicks, circles, or flowers. Most chose the chicks. Eight of her students are showing their work in the current exhibit.

My vote for the most awesome-creative piece goes to Bunny Starbuck for She Has Flown the Coop! Here it is:

Having put my chicks all in neat rows similar to Sue's example, I find it amazing that Bunny's mind took the idea and made a whole different story of it... a coop full of chicks, with two in line on the roof ready to follow the one already in the air. Don't you just love the way the lines divide the space?!




Note Bunny's use of whispy yarn to suggest little chick feathers, her use of snaps for eyes, the one chick turned full front, the one with a bead-tassled braid and glasses, and the one with beaded loop fringe and a gathered yellow ribbon (?) yo-yo. I love them! I'm in awe, Bunny!

Below is Chicks on Parade by Dorie Benson. It's so fun the way they are so close together, with two of them going in a different direction, just as you might see in a little cluster of chicks. If you click the photo to enlarge it, you can see some of Dorie's excellent stitching and hand quilting!

The next one is Chicks by Glenys Baker, who not only did all 36 chicks but also made a second quilt featuring circles (shown further down). Awesome work, Glenys!

And next is Birds of a Feather Can Dance Together by Lorraine Jones. The fun of the title is matched by the fun of Lorraine's embellishments, including her border treatment. (You'll have to see this one in person, because the light from a table lamp, made the lower corner of the photo look terrible.)

I guess most of us like to "swim the other way," as you can see in the next piece, Chickadees, by Carrie Unick. I thought many of Corrie's embellishments were especially fun and creative, so I've also included a couple of detail photos.



Last of the chicks is my piece, simply named Chicks. It was so much fun, that I made another small piece (also in the exhibition), shown at the top of this post. Both are displayed in shadow-box type frames to protect them from dust and moth damage.
Glenys Baker, in one year, made not only a 36-chicks quilt (shown above), but also a 48-circles quilt, Circles. How she keeps thinking of new embellishment variations I can't imagine. Yet each of her circles is completely unique! Her choice of border fabrics is perfect for the quilt, complimenting the flow of color among the circles.


I love the fun color combinations and the way the beads enhance her embroidery on Nancy Anders' Bodacious Blooms, a joyful wall quilt if ever there was one! (Again, I couldn't quite get the color right in the photo, so you'll just have to go to the Museum to see it in person.)


The name of Roberta Roberts' flower quilt, Memories, invites us to look closely at the flower with three ladybugs. I don't know the story, but I can tell there is one here... and I love that. Her embellishments are varied and fun as well.



There you have it... 10 quilts by 8 students who learned some methods of wool applique and embroidery from Sue Spargo, last year at the La Conner Quilt Festival. I'm so grateful to be one of them!

The quilting community is awesomely generous!!!  Thanks to all who have sent me scraps for making hexie flowers:


I really understand and appreciate that it takes time to sort through your scraps, selecting some that you feel might work for me, packing them to send, getting them to the post office. In some cases, you even took time to cut them into 2" squares for me... WOW! Bless your hearts!

The most interesting thing is that all the fabrics I've received so far are ones I might have picked myself, yet so far there are no duplicates. As of Oct. 19th, I have cut petal sets for about 650 flowers (from my own scraps and fat quarter stash, as well as scraps I've received from other quilters), all of them unique! That's about 90% of what I need to make the quilt, and certainly enough to keep me busy for a looooooong time. It will probably take me a year or so to baste and stitch all of the flowers, although I admit to going at it with a lot of gusto.

My brother, Thom Atkins, is a very talented quilt and bead artist!

He's written a popular book about how to make beaded quilts.


Recently he sent me a wonderful birthday present - a box of his scraps to use for making hexie flowers for my in-progress, hand-pieced, hexie quilt. Forty-nine different fabrics makes quite a stack of flowers.


Here they are again, this time arranged on a flat surface (click photo to enlarge for details). It's way fun to play with the flowers, re-arranging them in different ways, re-stacking them, and then spreading them out again.


All the while I was cutting, basting, and stitching these flowers I was thinking about Thom, about our history and our mutual love of stitching. I recognized most of the fabrics. One was in a quilt we made 19 years ago for our mom's 80th birthday. Some were from blouses, dresses, shirts he made for himself and his wife. Some were from pillows and other home decor he made for their home. Some were from his early quilts. Most of them brought up a ton of memories for me!

I always like (and sometimes love) things that Thom makes, and yet I've also noticed when we are in a fabric store together, we do not gravitate toward the same fabrics. I wouldn't have guessed that I would use almost every one of the fabric scraps he sent. There were a few that were too glitzy, had a stronger metallic look than I like. But 90% or more could have come from my own stash. That's how much I like them.... leaving me to conclude that we are more alike than I thought.


Here we are as kids... book ends.  Me 16 months older than him.

What's it like when brother and sister, close in age, are both quilters and beaders, both of us entering our quilts in shows, both of us teaching workshops and writing books?

Are we competitive?

A little, but not very much in my opinion. I admit to being a little "nervous" when he took up bead embroidery a few years after I make it the focus of both my art and my career. In artistic matters, he has a quicker learning curve than I do, rapidly achieving excellence in any medium he tries.

The fact that he likes bling and representational, while I like matte and symbolic, makes our work look different, which helps. We're also very different in our approach to quilt designing. While I am heavily influenced by traditional quilts, his quilts are all "art quilts." Most of his are heavily beaded, while mine are mostly not. Right from the start, he usually has a complete "picture" in his mind of what his quilt will look like when finished; whereas I rarely have a clue what mine will be like until I'm nearly finished with it.

Nor have we had issues with our teaching. I mostly teach beaders, emphasizing bead embroidery techniques rather than projects. He mostly teaches quilters, concentrating on methods for sewing beads onto quilts. There are enough teaching opportunities for both of us to accept as many gigs as we can handle.

What's the best thing about our mutual passions for beading and quilting?

Well, we talk on the phone for hours at a time about our current projects. Our conversations would bore everybody else in our families to death, but for us it's exciting to share our ideas, challenges, and victories. We do it often! It seems each of us has always respected the artistic sensibility and skills of the other. It's great to have somebody you can count on to say, "That's really wonderful," when you show them your latest work.

We also share information about photography, opportunities for showing our quilts, inspirations, promotion of our books, and countless other related things. We help each other to solve problems and to grow artistically.

It seems pretty ideal; was it always like that?

If you've read my first book, One Bead at a Time, available here as a free download, you know that Thom grew up favored to be the artist in the family, showing his talents at a very early age. My bend was more academic, although I had no clear pathway. After majoring in art in college, Thom rapidly became established as an artist. After majoring in English and psychology, I muddled around in a couple of careers for many years. I didn't discover my passion for beading or start to think of myself as an artist until I was 46 years old. Until then I always admired Thom's art, but didn't relate directly to him about it. I'm glad it is different now; glad we are both talented and creative... together!

During the past 28 years of stitching beads on cloth, I've veered away from making necklaces, bracelets, and bags or purses, mostly producing wall art pieces. Thus, I've had lots of opportunities to experiment with various methods of finishing and framing my work, making it suitable for display.


I always leave ample fabric margins surrounding the actual beaded area, giving me lots of options for finishing or framing.  One simple finishing method is to wrap the extra fabric around the sides of a manufactured painting-canvas (over stretcher-bars), and lace the fabric snugly across the back, as in the photo below.


But the problem with this method, of course, is that the surface of the beading is exposed to dust and air-borne grime, which over the years may spoil the fresh look of the beading, aging the piece prematurely. So we look to frames and glass to protect our work.

Among the various methods for covering (and protecting) beadwork with glass, the following is the one I use most frequently, and like the best.  It's not very expensive, or particularly difficult, although it does take a bit of time. Even if you already know about frames, please take a look at the section called Preparing Your Bead Embroidery for Framing in the Tutorial below.

Tutorial: How to Frame bead Embroidery

Choosing a Frame

The Princeton microbiologist has also created a non-infectious version of the COVID-19 virus that researchers can study safely.

Hale Freeman Trotter, an emeritus professor of mathematics, died at 91 at his home in Princeton, New Jersey.

Join the Study Abroad team at Princeton to learn about undergraduate summer study abroad opportunities!

The Chapel Choir presents a concert for the season of Advent, featuring J. S. Bach’s cantata “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland” and the world premiere of The Princeton Motets (And I Saw), a collaboration between poet Euan Tait and composer Shawn Kirchner, written especially for the Chapel Choir. With Nicole Aldrich, Director of Chapel Music, and Eric Plutz, University Organist.

“Chigumadzi argues that within the liberal international order, it is “reasonable” and “workable” to struggle to end apartheid and racial segregation, while it is “unreasonable” and “unworkable” to struggle to end settler colonialism and indigenous land dispossession. In arguing that apartheid is overrepresented in the International Left’s racial discourse and historiography, Chigumadzi draws from generations of Black South African political activists, philosophers, and historians—most notably from the Pan Africanist-Black Consciousness Tradition. These traditions critique apartheid’s relatively short 54 years of institutionalized racial segregation as the paradigmatic historical framework for analyzing South Africa’s three centuries of settler colonialism and land dispossession. Drawing from this black radical critique, Chigumadzi rejects the liberal notion that apartheid’s end is the object of liberation struggle, and, instead asserts the centrality of the struggle for the return of indigenous lands.” Dr. Panashe Chigumadzi is an award-winning writer and Assistant Professor of African History at Brandeis University. Chigumadzi holds a doctorate from Harvard University’s Department of African and African American Studies, and a masters in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

This workshop provides a hands-on introduction to more advanced topics in LaTeX, including using beamer and BibLaTeX. Beamer provides an elegant way to create presentations and posters while taking advantage of the potential of LaTeX. BibLaTeX is a powerful, integrated citation system that is easy to use with LaTeX. Peer consultations and troubleshooting also offered throughout the semester. Visit https://libcal.princeton.edu/appointments/jfz to book an appointment.

Philosophers have historically played a foundational role in musicology, from theorizing the origins of music to its potential for political liberation. In this reading group, we aim to closely read the central philosophical texts on music to understand their arguments and why they have remained prominent among musicologists and cultural theories.

Selected students from fall creative writing courses read from their work in fiction, poetry, screenwriting and literary translation as part of the Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series, presented by the Program in Creative Writing. Open to public.

Are you a senior interested in making a genuine contribution towards protecting the environment, promoting environmental sustainability, and building environmentally focused communities? Join us at the High Meadows Fellowship Info Session on Friday, November 15 from 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM in Louis A. Simpson A71 for a special opportunity to hear directly from current High Meadows Fellows about their experiences. Coffee and light refreshments will be provided. The High Meadows Fellowship Program is a generously funded fellowship opportunity that places graduating Princeton seniors in two-year positions with the nation’s leading environmental organizations. All undergraduate students are welcome to come learn about this opportunity— eligible seniors must apply by 11:59 PM on January 30, 2025.

REEES/Slavic Grad Film Series Bordenlens: Queer Outlines of Geography and Gender Organized by Sofia Guerra Sponsored by the Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Humanities Council, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. All Films Shown with English Subtitles

Customize a beaded keychain Keep track of your keys (or your prox!). Attach it to a bag, your water bottle, or wear it as a bracelet. All supplies will be provided. Drop-ins welcome! Come for the entire time or only part of the session. Registration is optional, but if you know you’ll be attending please register so we can anticipate the number of people to expect.

Simon A. Levin, James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University Samuel S. Wang, Professor of Neuroscience, Princeton University Discussant: Keena Lipsitz, Associate Professor of Political Science at Queens College, City University of New York

Join the Study Abroad Program to learn more about undergraduate summer study abroad at the London School of Economics. We will discuss the application process, credit transfer, and funding.

The film grossed more last weekend than the previous one, a rarity for any film so deep into its theatrical run, much less a film that is already available to rent or own on digital platforms.

An outlet for Cartoon Brew readers to share what you're feeling and how you're doing today.

In this Oscar-qualified short, a group of friends go on a roadtrip as their car – and their country – falls apart.

Artists of all levels are invited to showcase their skills and creativity.

"It’s wonderful to find somebody who can show us this positive side of ourselves," Yamada says of the idea behind her new film.

Time to cross the border to Johor Bahru for a shopping and dining experience. To start this ultimate shopping experience, head to one of the closest malls to Singapore, Paradigm Mall JB, located in Johor Bahru. Paradigm Mall Johor Bahru is also known as the largest shopping mall in Johor Bahru. There are more than ... Read more

The post Top 4 Must-Try Desserts In Paradigm Mall JB (Malaysia) appeared first on Star Two.

In 1993, terrorists detonated a car-bomb in an underground garage of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, killing six, injuring more than a thousand, and causing more than $300 million in damage. In all, ten militant Islamist conspirators were convicted of involvement in the bombing, including Yousef, who also bombed an important Shia shrine in Iran in 1994 and later planned a large-scale terrorist scheme that included killing the pope. What alleged 9-11 mastermind is Yousef's uncle?

RSS is a valuable open standard that has found a new purpose in our connected world. You might not be able to access detailed analytics, but there are lots of other good reasons to keep it.

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Now you can generate self-updating content feeds with recent pins of any Pinterest user or Pinterest board, with fresh videos of any Vimeo user or Vimeo channel, and with recent media from iTunes USA.

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After a recent release of a bunch of some new popular content sources, we are glad to announce a renovated and improved Twitter Feeds generator.

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Now you can specify a pool of hashtags, and random hashtags from your pool will be added to your posts.

The post Advanced Hashtags Feature Will Enhance Your Automated Posting appeared first on RSSground.com.

We have one “gray” and one great news. Which one to start with? The “gray” goes first. We are removing Custom Feeds feature from our Feeds Reader. The great news comes right after! From now, personal feeds will replace custom feeds functionality. All your custom feeds will be automatically converted into personal feeds and show […]

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We have updated the list of the Amazon local stores. Several more locales were added to the Location option in the Advanced settings of our Amazon Feeds. At the moment we have 20 local Amazon stores on the list: United States Canada United Kingdom Australia Mexico Brazil Germany France Italy Spain Sweden Netherlands Poland Turkey […]

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A look at the latest gear to cross our desks.
( Photos: 18, Comments: 88 )