I feel the Earth Move!

No, not more earthquakes! LOL -- It's finally, after 2+ years, having the front yard graded and new drainage and culverts and maybe even, (dare I hope?) lawn and trees....


On the red tractor is our oldest boy Jerry Jr. - who lives next door and is the father of those 5 grandchildren. The tractor is ours, the talent is his!



Nice, stinky topsoil -- oh goody!! The first load, of 3.


Ever seen anyone so excited about drainage? Well, we had 4 feet of rain in 6 months or so last year, and much of this front yard was under water. It's TIME!
Of course, no project is complete unless one of the tractors breaks something, and all the guys get to stand around talking about it.

It was a grand day, I loved it. Now -- lets see how much farther we can go? 

Don'cha hate when this happens?

This is the back of a queen sized quilt I spent 2 days doing an all-over meander on - and as I was doing the hand work on the binding I found this:


These are 4 squares of another project that I must have left on the quilting table, and they are "quite quilted"! RATZ!! The other thing I found, again while doing the hand portion of the binding, was 2 small tucks in the backing - AAArrrrggghhhh!! I haven't done that since my first time quilting! Ahhh well -- ya gotta laugh!!

All better now!

She came!!! Boy was I surprised, thrilled, thankful, shocked -- all of it. Meghan and I had a wonderful day, she insisted on sitting next to me at dinner, and we were kind of joined at the hip all day. It was fantastic. We played games, visited the horses, collected the eggs, back to the horses again, more games.....
The next best thing came when my son and DIL announced that we will have a new grandbaby in May!!! Ya Hooo!!!!

I'm telling you, this absolutely has to be the best Thanksgiving ever. My list of things to be grateful for is overflowing.

Happy, sleepy, full of pie am I, toddling off to bed. I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful too!

Thanksgiving Rant

Red for really really upset!! My youngest son has a 6 yr old daughter, and has been separated from her mother for most of those 6 years. His side of the family (me) was invited to see the baby any time we liked - as long as it was at the grandparents house! Supervised visits was meant to be, and taken as, a slap in the face. So I get to see this doll maybe 2 or 3 times a year. She was going to be allowed to come for Thanksgiving with her father, (her family does not celebrate any holidays) and tonight he tells me she has to be back at the grandparents house by 3pm. We live an hour and a half away, so we would get to see her for about 3 hours, and not even have dinner before he had to turn around and go back. I'm mad, but also hurt and I want to bawl like a kid. What in the world can they be afraid of? I treasure every minute I get to see her, and she is always loving and pleased to see me too. We have a blast, considering we really don't know each other too well. She is always shy for the first 30 minutes or so. Oh, I just want to scream.

Dear God:
I am so thankful for my large and healthy family.
I am thankful for my husband's recovery from his strokes.
I am thankful for the opportunity and the means to be a quilter.
I am thankful for the rain.
I am thankful for Your bounty every day, not just certain days.
I am thankful for the many many blessing I have in my life.
I am thankful that I am able to see the beauty all around me.

So much to be thankful for, I could never list it all.

Thanksgiving Menu:

Big turkey, roasted in the BBQ
Beautiful Dungeness crabs
DH's stuffing in the bird, and mine in a pan
my special 2 layer pumpkin pies
stuffed mushrooms
sweet potatoes
polenta with sausage/mushroom pasta sauce.
mixed fresh veggies, roasted with olive oil and garlic
fresh, crusty sour dough french bread from San Francisco
salad with everything but the sink thrown in!
Alka Seltzer

Last week quite by accident I found this wonderful fabric by Valori Wells, that exactly matches my stack of handdyed FQ's -- wow!! It looks like this picture won't do it justice, but trust me - they look like they were designed to be the same line. No idea what I'll do with them yet, but there is certainly a project brewing here.
Todays project is a Christmas wallhanging. It's on point, three - 9inch squares across. I already have the outside block done, like a frame. Now I have to decide on the inside block design. I wish I could just stay in here all day and sew, but I have to run into my office later for a bit. YUCK!!! Just having to go to town is a bummer. Oh well....... maybe I'll have my blocks all cut and ready to sew when I get home? Yipee! More on that later............

Earthquakes

My friends in other parts of the world will cringe at this, but we had an earthquake last night, and it was of the "fun" sort. It registered a 4.0 on the Richter Scale, which is kind of a moderate/mild one, and was centered just about 8 miles from us. This was the sort that will wake you up, with a very sharp jerk and tremendous boom, louder than any thunder. The noise is always the part that gets to me, not the rockin' and rollin' To think that such an enormous sound comes right up from the very earth beneath me is a bit frightening. What in the world could cause such a sound? Think about it.......
The fun comes in when everyone has to ask each other, "Well, did you feel that one?" And laugh at the folks who might be fairly new to California and maybe it's their first; or be amazed at the ones that can sleep thru it. A 4.0, if you're in bed, feels vaguely like someone drove their car into your bed. The shaking goes on for a long minute or so. I've been in 2 really big, very serious quakes, and one smaller one - that one was really funny. I was in the bathtub and the tub cracked right under me! Water sloshed onto the floor, and my Mom yelled from the hall - "Susan! Don't get water all over the floor!" Like I could stop it! I was in a big quake in southern California in February of 1971, driving for the first time on a freeway. I was newly licensed, had Mom riding shotgun, a trailer full of motorcycles hitched on, and my brothers and boyfriend in the back of the van. When the quake hit, I thought I had a flat tire, or maybe the trailer did, and I slowed waaaay down. About then, an overpass less than 1/4 mile in front of us just fell straight down. It landed on a pickup truck, flattened all but the last 3 feet or so of the truck bed. Very traumatizing - to this day I am afraid of overpasses and bridges. In 1989, we had another very big quake that dropped part of the elevated Embarcadero freeway near San Francisco, and broke sections of the Bay Bridge which runs across the bay from Oakland to San Francisco, (more or less). During that one, I looked out my kitchen window at the fields behind the house, and watched them roll - the way a quilt rolls when you shake it from one end. In waves. Totally amazing. The earth looked fluid, I'll never forget it. My oldest son rode it out sitting on top of his first car and he described it as somewhere between a Disneyland "E" ticket ride, and rollercoaster with a broken track. We pretty much take these in stride, at least most of the long-time residents. When my daughter was in the Air Force and stationed in Texas, she experienced a tornado. That scared the bejabbers out of her, and when someone teased her about coming from earthquake-land, she shot back, "Hey! When the earthquake is over, at least you're still in the same zip code!!" Funny stuff! If you've never felt an earthquake, hopefully you'll get to at some point, really! It is an awe inspiring display of Earths might. It's an object lesson in how frail we are, and how much we are NOT in control of as much as we think. In some odd way, Californians are proud of our earthquakes, and get some little bit of pride from the fact that folks in Ohio wouldn't dream of coming to California, lest they fall victim to an earthquake. LOL! To those people I say, "Hey! At least we stay in the same zip code!" Cheers ---

No Sew, No Go --

Gee -- I didn't realise it had been so long since I posted.....Time flies when you're old! LOL!
My DH has started a new job, about a year after retiring from law enforcement. He had 2 small strokes in June of '05, and it affected his right hand enough that he was not reliable with a gun. If you can't shoot, you can't be a cop, and he had done it for 30 years so no big deal. However - he found himself getting bored, and heard about a job opening up as a Lead Investigator for the state Gaming Commission, which oversees our local casinos and makes sure all the laws are being followed. Perfect for him, because it's investigation which he loves, and slot machines which he also loves. It's a 4-day a week, 10 hr a day position, and we are just not used to that! He has always set his own hours and his office has been in the house, and this being gone all day is tough! He can't do all our running around, errands, etc; and he can't fix dinner! O-mi-Gosh!! THAT's a tragedy! Now it's up to me, and I'm real spoiled. He's done the cooking for 15 years! And the funniest part of this is the bathroom crunch in the mornings - only one of our bathrooms has a shower, so we have to figure out some sort of schedule. The only sewing I've been doing is hemming al the new slacks he bought, no uniforms for this job, it's slacks, shirt and tie. Big changes.....at a time when we thought we were past all that. It's exciting and fun and challenging and, ummm, strange. It's fun to see him so excited, tho; it's been awhile since he's been this animated. I love that!
Hopefully I can get some sewing done soon, and be rid of all this pant hemming -- ug.