Taste Testing for Better Flavor

After enjoying the opportunity of tasting some real honest to goodness farm raised eggs we've become enamored with that excellent home-grown flavor. We have decided we no longer like the bland taste of pale yellow flavorless eggs from the grocery store. We have our hearts set on finding a source for eggs with that tasty good old fashioned flavor. As yet we have not located a local source of fresh farm eggs, so we're still shopping at the big box mass market grocery store. Meanwhile we've been taste testing other brands of eggs hoping to find some that come closer to that farm-fresh flavor.

Here we are sampling Eggland's Best, Sunny Meadow Farm, and Eggland's Cage-Free eggs. We agree that of these the Cage-Free are the best so far. Once we have some farmer's markets start up this spring I'm going to ask around to try to find a local source of farm-fresh eggs that are full flavor. I cannot wait to pin down a source. We're likely to find more fresh farm flavors with veggies and fruits, too. I'm looking forward to that as well.

I found a free pattern on-line to make this Heart Pincushion from The Pattern Basket. One day last week I had some time to sew with a friend. This was my project for the day -- to sew up two of these pincushions. One for my friend and one for me. It went together fairly smoothly, but it sure is surprising how long things take to make. I had it in my mind they would only take an hour or so. What with all the chatting and visiting, these two pincushions took the whole afternoon. That's okay, though. We had a good visit while making them. In fact it turned out to be a very pleasant day. It's always fun to spend time with a friend.

My friend picked the pink color fabric. Then we selected the dark blue print with pink accents to go with it. I changed it a bit from the pattern instructions. I quilted both the top and bottom pieces instead of just the top. Then I could not find the plastic pellets for weighting the pincushion so I used glass marbles, used for flower arrangements, instead. A handful of those shiny glass marbles was plenty to weight them. I think if I make any more of these I will do them in a smaller size. It is pretty large as far as pincushions go. It could easily be made smaller for a nice, handy size pincushion.

When looking again to re-locate the source of this free pattern I ran across this site with a tutorial for a similar 1800s Heart Pincushion.