Alzheimer's Quiltlet #1

I finally finished the first quiltlet for the Alzheimer fund raiser with FGM. Lots of starts and stops because of my stupid machine and I think I drew this lighthouse about 6 times before I liked it. As it is, I'm peeved at myself because my applique placement isn't what I decided on. I guess that's what I get for working on it late at night! On to the next two!

Last Fairie Flying

As many of you know, I recently won The Last Fairie Flying game with the Fairie Goddess Mothers. The theme was fantasy creatures and there is a plethora of them. Every fat quarter is beautiful and joy of joys, one of the fqs was duplicated a couple of times, so I'll have tons to work with! I'm still doing the happy dance!

:)

Two Posts in One Day? Or Here's the Sewing Area

Okay, so the request went out on Fairie Goddess Mothers for photos of our sewing areas. Mine is located at the back of our love seat, kind of part of our living room, but kind of separate and we also have the big computer back there (Roger's sitting there). It's a mess right now. Somehow, with only a little bit of space and not nearly enough storage, I end up with a regular mess. I clean it up every couple of weeks and that seems to be okay. Right now it's due for a cleaning. Just as a note -- My cats love the ironing board. The Pepsi bottle contains water for the iron so that they don't knock it all over the place--I really avoid any drinking near the sewing. :)

Art on the Walls

We're finally getting close to being done with the renovation!!! For some reason, art on the walls seems to be the final step. Between yesterday and today, Roger went into storage and got out some of our stuff for the living room. The two Nene Thomas prints and the dragons that the boys made us. I have one kind of big wall left and I think it's earmarked for a dragon head wall-hanging that I've had in mind, but didn't make because we didn't have the room (or so I thought) Mwaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Anyway, here's a couple of snapshots (please excuse the mess!)

New Table Runner Design

Here's the new table runner design. NOt a great picture because here it's still not finished. This was taken when I was matching each side to make it reversible. I'm trying to figure out how to quilt it because I want fairly invisible quilting on each side. I have a red variegated that looks really nice on the red side, which will be my "everyday" side for most seasons, but I haven't found anything for the gold side, which will be my harvest holidays side. The gold variegated that I have just looked...poopy (for lack of a better word) and I picked it out.

Any and all suggestions from my friends out there (quilting and otherwise) would be most appreciated. Although I'm putting the pattern out on my ebay site, with a variety of different fabrics, I can't really do it until I have a finished product.

:)

Flu or What the Heck happened to my nose

Just back from the doctor -- thank goodness I don't have the flu but I did get a huge case of reaction to something down at the barn (which was my own original diagnosis). I went down to the barn on Sunday, as usual, and there was my normally chestnut horse totally grey. No, his age didn't catch up with him, but he had obviously been rolling in the mud and it had all dried. Anyway, after his turnout -- crazy horse galloping all over the place, I stuck him back in his stall and took a curry to him.

For those of you with horses, you know it's a heckuva lot easier to clean them when the mud is dry rather than wet and I went at it with a vengence. I got him cleaned up (at least not mud packed) but managed to get dust all over me and in my ears, nose, mouth -- you get the picture. When I got home, I just walked inside the door and stripped off in front of the washing machine. I even had dust in my undies - bleek. (I know, TMI, but it was *that* pervasive).

Anyhow, took a shower and started dinner. All of the sudden, I'm not feeling so good. Nauseous, light-headed, exhausted--you get the picture. By the time the stew was done, Roger was eating alone and I was out for the count on the couch. Got up and was in bed by about nine and then spent most of the night up and down, sick as a dog.

After day 2 of not feeling well enough to go to work I was worried that I had the flu. I decided to go to the doctor -- no flu, just a lot of barn "stuff" still in my nose and ears and sinuses which was causing my nausea (post-nasal drip), dizziness (sinuses stuffed) and exhaustion (not processing enough air). She told me to use my Flonase, go for the Sinus DayQuil and if it gets worse, call. I feel like an idiot.

That's all for now folks.

I'm attaching a pic of the cause of all of this, nice and shiny and looking very innocent.

Tart and the Aquarium or Fun with Sardines

Or I think they were sardines -- Needless to say the Tart seems to spend a lot of time at the aquarium between Mommy and Brendan and Daddy and then me. She's knows the whole deal, down to which tank has "Nemo" and which has "Dorie" and "Gill". We had a ton of fun at story time which was Dr. Seuss' "All the Pets You Can Get". At some point they talked about old pets and she told the lady reading all about Sebastian who got old and then went away (he was put down about a month ago). Just about broke my heart!

And then there were the sardines -- we're walking around near the Ray Bay (petting rays) and Tart let's me know she wants to feed them. Me, being ignorant, said that they don't let you feed the fish. At that point, Tart grabbed me by the hand and brought me to the little cooler where they sell food for some of the fish. They were out of ray food but, oh joy, you could still feed the sand sharks. I fork over a couple of dollars and get a little paper hot dog tray (for lack of a better description) with about 5 sardines. YUCK!!!!!! Not for the 3 year old though -- she had no problems picking up each one and closely examining it before sending it to the sharks. She was petting them and looking at their eyes....EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW! Anyway, we went back for more about 5 times before she was satisfied that the sharks had eaten enough.

Totally gross trip for me, but fun. Mostly trying to figure out what sounds the various fish made when underwater...People thought we were nuts, I'm sure.

Winged Hearts

Okay, I finally got the design done for the winged hearts swap and my first one done. Did you ever have a situation where you just couldn't get motivated? I mean, I had the design in my mind (although it *did* go through some changes), pieces cut, etc. and just couldn't get my rear in gear to finish it up? I mean -- I like winged hearts enough to wear one forever on my shoulder, but I just couldn't get moving to finish up this swap stuff...Oh well, the rest should be done soon. I just have to finish up cutting some kits for ebay.

See you soon with a fun description of Tart and my trip to the aquarium.

A Question of Copyright

Hi all -- I'm posting again. I've just written to see if I can get permission to use my back tattoo as the inspiration for a quilt block. It's an interesting question and I've spent the past couple of hours reading about copyright of tattoos on the web. A lot of food for thought. Here's a photo of it, as an FYI -- since unless I'm wearing a "wife-beater" t-shirt, you'll never see it! Unfortunately, the shading color kind of photographed funny -- it's not purple at all, more of a darker red. The quilt block I'm thinking of would eliminate the halo and a lot of the shading, etc., but I'd like a similar shape with the same type of "sharp" wings/feathers.

Flipping Mad

I am so flipping mad I just had to share -- I belong to an on-line group that is, for the most part, very nice. NO politics and no religion. Sounds perfect -- like I don't have to worry about the inevitable witch questions or people trying to convert me.

There was a post, though, concerning immigrants. Those of you who know me, know how I feel about it. Hot button is an understatement. I kept my mouth shut for post #1, #2 and now there is #3. I'm about ready to start the rant about this country being built on the backs of immigrants, both documented and undocumented as well as the facts that our founding fathers who landed on Plymouth Rock were certainly not invited by the natives who already lived here.

I think I'm going to explode...

Butterflies of Hope

I very rarely, if ever, name a quilt, but decided to name this one. It's still not totally finished but the top is together and I'll get it sandwiched up sometime soon. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to quilt it. I have a friend with a long-arm and may ask her to borrow it for some type of stippling. I had received a quilt when Beren died that had words incorporated into it -- some sympathetic magic and I'm thinking I'd like to do that -- things like hope and faith and love and survival, etc. I don't know, I've still got to sleep on it. Mom contacted her friend and the local cancer society is going to raffle it off as a fund raiser.

Anyway, it's now only a half of a UFO now that the top is done!

cya soon

SGWSW -- First Block Received

I just received my block from James. It's beautiful and I love the accent color. It's not a color that my eye would go to, but seeing it like this, it's going to be added. Very cool -- I'm quite excited about this quilt!

Some New Year's Blocks

Happy New Year Everybody!!!

Here are some of the blocks that I've completed for the Breast Cancer fund raiser quilt. Right now, I'm doing two of each style and still have a bunch to do. If I need to do more to get it to size, I will. Sashing will be the butterfly fabric which is actually quite pretty on its own. For some reason, the purple bits in the butterflies didn't photograph very well (in case you were wondering about the purple fabric) -- it's in there, though! Sorry for the quality of the photos, I'm not in the mood to mess with the lighting, etc... :)

The Tart is 3

Hard to believe, but the Tart is three today. It seems like yesterday that holding her in the hospital made me realize, in all my grief for Beren, that I still like babies. Having her around has been such a blessing and at times, has saved my sanity. Thank goodness momma Cat understands and cuts me slack when I feel the "need" to kidnap her for some Aunt Chuckie therapy.

She was absolutely adorable tonight in her little princess tiara. She was in 7th Heaven that she had a Jack Skelington cake and got a Jack pillow from Aunt Kristen. Roger and I were both miserable with this cold/bronchitis thingie so we left basically right after the cake.

I'm going back to work now on the quilt top I started yesterday. I think I can finish up most of the blocks today. I should probably do work, but I'm really not up for it enough -- I'm afraid that because of the cold medication I'll make some mistake that I can't fix easily. At least with the quilt there's always the seam ripper!!!!

Anyway, Happy New Year to all. Hopefully I'll have some pics to post tomorrow.

Skulls, skulls and quilting...

I finished my first set of blocks for the new swap. The theme was skulls...Although I know which one I like best, it's hard to figure out what someone else would like... Oh well, they're all off in the mail tomorrow.

Thanksgiving Update

We finally got finished cleaning up from Thanksgiving today. I think everyone had a good time, hopefully, at least. Mom and I went out to the outlets today and I bought a very nice set of snowflake cookie cutters at Williams Sonoma. They were $5.00 for the set and they're a really nice size.

Then Mom taught me how to match plaids. We pinned and cut the Tart's "Festivus" dress and after Mom left for home, I put it together. I haven't sewn a garment in such a long time, it was a real learning experience again... It still needs to be hemmed, but the Tart is sick. Hopefully tomorrow...

I put a binding on the Teddy quilt, but I'm in no mood to hand sew. Of all things, my *right* shoulder is hurting (it's the left I broke) Right now I'm putting together another crib quilt -- one of the ladies on QC is helping me to figure out the triangles -- we all know I stink at math.

Anyway, here's the pic of the Tart's dress...

Little bit of an Update

Okay, it was quite rightfully brought to my attention that I haven't updated my blog in quite awhile. Life has just been so crazy lately that I don't feel like I've had time to breathe.

Let's see, so much has happened since my last post--I got a promotion at work and am now doing basically two jobs. It's taking a bit of time to get my feet under me, but it will happen. I have to get back into the habit of supervising someone and I haven't had to do that in quite awhile.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of work at home and trying to pull together the quilt business. We're doing a Christmas fair next weekend and I'm trying to get some stuff together. As soon as I have finished products, I'll post them up. Probably tomorrow -- everything is just waiting for that final finishing. It's the part I actually hate the most.

Halloween was a lot of fun when Lindsay finally came over to do trick or treat, but it was kind of a crappy day overall. An odd thing that happened is that a catalog came in that we've never gotten before and it had what I think is a perfect permanent urn for Beren. Roger is still thinking about it, but I love it. Odd that the day to honor the beloved dead and finally I found an urn. It's been tough because the ashes are only about 1/2 a cup. Right now, there in a sealed box with a beautiful pentacle on it, but that was always only supposed to be temporary...

Anyway, I'll get back soon to the blog habit. :)

Finally Back and Princess Pics

I'm finally back! At least to typing. I still have to take it easy because I have such limited motion in my shoulder. Next doctor's appointment is 8/14. I'm actually not supposed to be typing or driving, but I just can't live that way any more! Hopefully by next week, I'll have enough strength to be able to cut some quilt kits for ebay.

Speaking of quilts, here's some pics of the infamous "Princess Quilt". I pieced it and Mom quilted it. Jules loved it, so it was worth all the work. Unfortunately, we didn't have a good space to photograph the whole thing, but the first two rows are repeated for 7 rows. We were a little worried about giving a 4 year old a basically white quilt, however, according to my sister-in-law, Jules is very careful of it.

I'm so happy I finally got the hang of the saw tooth stars!

Kitty Pics

I haven't written in awhile, but plan on some tonight to bring everybody up to date. In the meantime I promised some kitty pics. These three are kittens who were born of a wild mother that we adopted. ONe was sent to another family, but two still live with us.
Grady likes to help iron
Hunter is usually really active (she plays fetch), but also a typical cat!
Hunter
Hunter, Grady and Ossie
Hunter and Ossie

Post Memorial Day

It's been awhile since I last had time or energy to write. We also had a ton of family over on Memorial Day. I missed Tom and Kim and Julia and Jen & Frank couldn't make it, but it was fun. The Tart was absolutely a laugh riot! The inch worms are all over the place and she kept bringing us "friends" to play with -- Yuck, but amusing to see this dainty little girl playing with worms.

She slept over on Sunday night and again -- a laugh riot! Especially when she decided she was going to try to wake up Uncle Roger at the crack of dawn. He's a heavy sleeper and her little squeeky "get up sleepy head" didn't work. She was *very* disappointed.

I'm also reconsidering my participation in the angel quilt project. It's just chock full of fundie Xtians and I'm having a hard time swallowing it. When I spoke to one of the list leaders to vent, it was suggested that I go no mail rather than have them explain to the fundies that they were being offensive. Why would I want to belong to a group where I have to go no mail or have my blood pressure somewhere in the stratosphere? I know the babies are the most important, but so is my peace of mind. I guess I'm too used to living in a metro area where just about anything goes.

Anyway, I'm working on another preemie quilt and will deliver it, but after this, who knows?