Mom's Garden

Mom's Garden

Imperial vs Metric System - a simple conversion card -

Well, I'm not going to apologize for my blogging absence, moving and exams been crazy but that wasn't the reason I've not been blogging... I've been doing stuff and I have many projects in mind but again... I'm a perfectionist freak so I'll have to wait till I have perfect photos and stuff.

Recently, or let's say a month ago I entered the world of quilting, I don't know why I've not done it before, it looks so great. I already ordered a book on Amazon and I can't wait till it arrives.

Anyways, I noticed that in the Quilting zone everything is in inches, sigh, inches are not really that hard... what puzzles me are those fractions! So I made myself a conversion card, probably there are many around the web, I haven't checked because I was too excited in making my own.

So while I was looking up information, I found this site in Spanish, Como convertir medidas de pulgadas a centimetros y milimetros. That was my base to make my card and then I just used a calculator and ConvertWorld, I also added the conversion for yards to centimeters.

Here it is:

Polka Dot pattern is from a user in DeviantArt.
I still have to print it out to see if everything is fine, the card measures about 8x11 cm (about 3x4 inches :p)

So while doing this I couldn't help but to remember this graphic I saw a while ago about the Imperial (<- lol click if you wanna smile, cute geese!) system versus the metric system:

see more Funny Graphs

The imperial system doesn't make any sense to me but that might be just because I've used metric all my life and I also know it'd be reaaaally hard for a whole society to just change the system they have been using for decades, so that obvious thing being said I'll have to just get used to this new system with the help of my card and a calculator.
It's also a matter of use, for instance, 40, 60 and 80 inches are a meter, a meter and a half and 2 meters, easy to remember! The trick is when on patterns and books it says: 1 3/4 yard or 12 1/4'' and I have to rush to get my calculator to know what the heck it means  :/, I'm sure it wont be for long though, as I said, matter of practice.

Edit 16/03: So I woke up today and thought about inches again, I figured out by making this conversion card I'm translating, and I always tell people who are learning a new language to think in the new language and try NOT to translate all the time (kind of ironic on my side since I'm a translator -to be-).

It's hard to think in inches since I've never used that side of my measure tape before but if quilting requires it, and everybody uses it as a reference, I'll have to learn and practice and think in Imperial.

Banana Muffins

 Saw a recipe of a banana-coconut-dulce de leche cake on a tv show and I knew I had to make it.
It's very simple to make and the result is a very moist delicious thing.
I chose to make muffins (or cupcakes, I wonder what the difference is, maybe French-American?) because I wanted to use this cute cupcake liners I bought, I also made a pudding, cake, fruit-cake-with-no-fruit? (how do you say budin inglés?!) version
The recipe is in Spanish, but the ingredients are as simple as: sugar, butter, eggs, bananas, vanilla and self rising flour.
 The interesting thing about this is the crusty crust on top, it's a mix of coconut, sugar and an egg and everything has to have a layer of aluminium foil on top so that coat doesn't burn in the oven.

 Of course I had to had my touch to this, other than making the recipe in different shapes, I figured I could add a filling, in this case little dots of dulce de leche ,like those store-bought muffins, with a disposable pastry bag and this funny tip.