Pieces of Time

More Fun and Adventure

2009-02-08T21:22:00.000-08:00

As Friday rolls around, I get more and more antsy, can't wait to jump in my car and drive 93 miles to see what kind of fun is on tap for the weekend. This past Friday was no exception , and I was happy and singing at work; had iTunes on the computer and my boss Chris and I had long talks and a lot of kidding around and teasing. When I returned from lunch, she was gone and left a note on my computer - "It's 5 o'clock somewhere! Close up shop and beat it - have a good time, DON'T SPEED!" What promised to be a rainy weekend ended up being glorious - so Mr. M. and I took a couple of dogs out to the coast and went clamming. It was t-shirt weather all day - beautiful! With permission now, here's Mr. M in his clamming gear, waterproof waders up to his chest.

I have to tell you - he was the smart one. I wore plain old jeans and sneakers, and I was SOAKED and muddy, but happy with my limit of clams. I spent most of my time playing with the dogs on a nearly deserted stretch of beach in a little cove. We took a mother/daughter pair - mother Dottie on the right, and 4 month old Tule on the left. Tule hasn't started her bird-dog training yet so this was a first for her. First time in the water, first time being asked to retrieve. She was terrific!

She had a good teacher in her Mom tho -- Dottie was the dog who retrieved my first goose a few weeks ago -
These two went into the ocean at least a hundred times, and boy is my arm sore today from throwing that plastic duck! I ran all over the beach with those girls and at one point tripped over Tule and fell and was immediately on the bottom of a wet dog pile - LOL!

These two got that duck and swam it back and brought it to me in tandem like this time after time after time. After nearly 5 hours of fun and digging on the beach, I was a bedraggled, happy mess. Mr. M on the other hand had dry clothes to change into and just had to wash up a bit to be presentable. I think I better get some of those waders..........
We went into the little restaurant for the best clam chowder anywhere and the waitress jokingly said - "well, we know who did the digging and who sat in the truck!" LOL! Pretty much the opposite - he did most of the digging - I played with dogs!
Sunday - foggy, drizzly, overcast - threatening rain: Must be a super day to go shooting, right? LOL - well, yes, it was. I have a lot to learn about shotguns, so we took a few out and had lessons. Mr. M hung balloons from a clothesline on short strings - they really bobbed around in the slight breeze! I did pretty well - good hand-eye coordination - until one of my shots apparently ricocheted and took out the window of an old boat parked at the bottom of the property - I was horrified! OMIGOSH I just shot out a window! Mr. M laughed, said he's been wondering what to do with that old thing and he fired three more shots into the other windows - laughing the whole time. Can you say CHIVALROUS? Tha boat has a new name now - BULLSEYE.
Next weekend I'm leaving to spend a week with my Mom, who is still waging war on her cancer and slowly losing. I'm taking my daughter and granddaughter along with me, fo a trip that will be bittersweet, and one to remember for a long time.
Until then - Thanks for coming along on this strange new journey with me!

SO it's not all quilting.....

2009-02-04T15:22:00.000-08:00

I've been hesitant to blog about what's speeding my recovery, lest it seem so hasty and definitely not quilty related. But - if I don't, I may as well shut down my blog because there's sure no quilting going on in this place! Many years ago, when the new EX and I were first engaged, he brought me to meet his brother and sister-in-law, and she and I have been close friends ever since. Way back then she thought to herself that I would be better matched to a fella she knew and had briefly dated than to the man I ultimately married. Too bad she never spoke up, but oh well, huh? So fast forward to this past fall, and she periodically still talks to this fella, although they haven't seen each other in person in 18 years. She asked him if he's seeing anyone and he says no. She says - "You have to call this lady" and gave him my number. Then she called me and said "I gave your number to a really nice guy" "OH NO YOU DIDN'T!!!"
"Just talk to him, you don't have to go out with him if you don't want to, but you'll like him" "GROOAAANN"
Sure enough, he called about an hour later, and we talked on the phone off and on for a few weeks until one day he asked if he could come take me to dinner. By then I was pretty sure he wasn't an axe murderer so I agreed, sight unseen. A blind date! AND - he drove 100 miles to do it! By the time that doorbell rang I was
praying my Dad would miraculously return from Heaven long enough to have a talk with this young man! Talk about nerves! But I opened that door and about forgot to breath - he is handsome, rugged, strong and not too silent. A MANS man, as they say. Since I don't have permission to introduce you properly, you'll have to settle for unidentifiable pictures: I'm pleased to have you meet Mr. M:

Who is about to be in a world of hurt in this picture. Yes, he's a cowboy - an outdoorsman, hunter, logger, breeder/trainer of Labrador retrievers. Many years ago, I was a tomboy never to be found in the house unless I was grounded or really really sick. Horses, dirt, motorcycles, guns, anything kind of tough and rough housy was exactly my cuppa, as they say. Age has mellowed me and I enjoy being a woman, but I still love to play outside. We so thoroughly hit it off on our first date that we were nearly 2 hours at the table before we remembered to order dinner! The poor waitress must have made 8 trips over to our table to gently remind and we'd say Oh yea then keep jabbering. LOL! We were 5 hours in all at that restaurant, and ended closing it down. We had our share of uncomfortable moments tho - like as the waitress was taking us to our table thru the bar and who should I run into but my brother-in-law, husband of my matchmaker! I introduced them, and he started making jokes with Mr. M about how much fun I am - wink wink. (Oh dear!!) As if that wasn't bad enough, the EX came in alone and was seated not 8 feet from me, facing me. You could have heard a Saint cuss! After the first stomach churning moments I managed to forget he was there (no, really!) and didn't even see him leave. A very memorable first date, indeed. After that, what else could happen, right? And we both still wanted to see each other again.....so we did. Our second date was...... (wait for it, wait for it..........
HUNTING! Yes, hunting geese with shotguns and a happy, bouncing dog. Tramping in mud for about a mile and a half in the dark of pre-dawn. Climbing a steep levee and hiding in the bushes halfway down the other side, waiting for "shoot-time" Crouching in tall wet grass, wearing camouflage britches, jacket and hat. I LOVED it! At one point Mr. M said "You're going to take a shot at the next flight" and I said Oh no thank you, not really wanting to tell him that I would fall right down the hill if I tried. See, the geese were coming from the uphill side of the bank we were standing on, and you shoot practically straight up. I can't look straight up because my neck is held together by a plate and screws and bone grafts and it just doesn't do that, and I have to arch my back to look up. So, standing uphill, arched back looking up then add a shotgun punch to the shoulder -- it all adds up to rolling right down that hill like Jack and Jill. No, that's not going to happen - and he braced me. I sighted, squeezed the trigger and on the second shot a goose spiraled down and I was so shocked!!! And that good dog shot off and came back a few minutes later with my goose - WOW!! VERY exciting day! Later that day we drove out to Bodega Bay (where Alfred Hitchcock's movie "The Birds" was filmed) and had a wonderful lunch at The Sandpiper. So named because of the constant hoard of sandpipers that live right next to the parking lot.

Mr. M walked down to try to stir up the flock so I could get a shot of all of them taking off at once, but they were too calm for that.
So do you want to hear about more of our adventures? The next couple of dates were fun too -- Let me share a quick pic of ONE room of Mr. M's house - he has hundreds of mounted trophies through out his house, this is just one wall.

Why yes, that IS a real bear!! My head just about fits perfectly between those paws.........

I realize that hunting isn't for everyone, and I do not mean to offend anyone, EVER. It happens that it is a huge part of life for someone who is getting to be important to me and I am OK with it, so I'm sharing it as a part of my life. I don't expect everyone to be accepting and that's OK - we all get to be ourselves.
Thanks for visiting and hope you'll come back to see what happens next!

Where's Waldo?

2009-01-14T17:14:00.000-08:00

Or - Where's SuBee? Well, I'm here and there. Recovery is going so well it's hard to believe how distraught I was for so long. I've been busy, and been roaming around too. My favorite places are all water, so that's where I naturally go when I need healing the most, and here's a few of the best spots:

Ft. Bragg, California - Too beautiful for words! Pull up a rock and sit awhile. The sounds, the smells, the power of those waves -- all of that serves as a reminder of how small we are, how TIME marches on and you might as well go with it.

Cache Creek, Lake County CA - Up a creek without a paddle! Well, the boat had a good motor so a paddle was unnecessary, thank goodness! There was a million water birds of every description up the creek - but my all time favorites are the Great Blue Herons. We saw a LOT of them, and I was fortunate enough to catch this guy in about 30 fast frames as he took off and flew almost across the bow of the boat. Once we pulled out of the creek, we opened up out onto Clearlake, which is the largest natural lake in California.

We were on that lake for nearly 4 hours, and didn't cover 1/2 of it!! Of course, we spent some time with the engine cut off just drifting out in the middle of the lake, where I nearly fell asleep in the very warm sun, being gently rocked by wavelets. Sheer heaven! Being on water (even near it, but ON it is best!) always calms me immediately - like a fast acting drug. I've been craving water for months.

This is the Navarro River, near Hendy Woods State Park on New Years Day. Surprising that there were so many leaves still on the trees and they reflected nicely on the water, posing for my camera. Awful obliging of them, wasn't it? We had a nice long hike through a virgin redwood grove containing trees thousands of years old, and in the 200 - 250 foot tall range. Imagine a tree laying down that is as long as a football field, and wide enough to drive your car thru. Some of them have hollowed out caverns from ancient fires, leaving a cave-like opening at the base of the tree large enough for several people to stand in. The forest is hushed, damp, cool, and dark. The smell is earthy and rich. Another magical place to do some spirit healing.
What I have NOT been able to muster is sewing, and I can't imagine why not. I certainly have more than ample opportunity and a beautiful, fully stocked studio - what the heck? Talking to a friend of mine whose marriage also collapsed abruptly, I was surprised to hear that she couldn't sew for a year afterwards. A year, huh? Yikes. Well - I need to have a sew day at my house pretty soon and get it back into gear! That's part of who I am, and I need to get all my PARTS back together - lol - so I can really figure out who I'm going to be now. Sound strange? Yea, it does to me too, but here I go!

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-22T18:14:00.000-08:00

I had my Christmas early with my kids and Grands this past weekend, and of course it was fab-o! Meet the next Tom Cruise getting all Risky Business on us:

Oh man -- those two little boys are more fun than puppies. I got them matching HUGE Tonka trucks, and without a word they both immediately crawled in and sat down.

And of course, you have to have the obligatory kid-in-a-sack - it's just not Christmas without one!

My present to my boss and her husband is this quilt - a UFO from last year that never really had a future. Now tho - it's perfectly suits both their style and their colors, and I'm going to be thrilled to give it to them. Those two have been real friends and huge blessings to me - they've been supportive and encouraging thru out my bad dream of the past few months.

In better news -- MUCH better news --- I had a date this past Sunday! Oh gosh - to suddenly be 16 again - how funny! No doubt you, like me, have forgotten what a "first date" is like -- all nerves and worrying about what to wear! LOL! It's been a long long time, but nothing changed! So good for my battered psyche, I tell you. We had a wonderful, easy time - walked in the rain for probably an hour. I'm starting to believe that there's an end to this darkness, and 2009 will be terrific for me.
I hope your Holiday is everything you want it to be - Thanks for visiting!

Progress at Last!

2008-12-15T13:18:00.000-08:00

I finally got disgusted and bored enough that I tackled the sewing room instead of shutting the door. Remember this?

Ohhh man -- painful. There was a LOT more in that picture that you can't see - because I couldn't get to the other side of the room for a back shot! So Sunday I spent 6 solid hours - with only a couple short breaks - putting up shelves and lighting and unpacking.....and it's finally done to a state of usefulness.

The last bit to do will be to put up the design wall, but I was just too bushed to tackle it after everything else.

The window over the cutting table looks out onto the far back side of a schoolyard playground - very park like. Unpacking was a real treasure hunt! The idea behind my sudden move was speed, not finesse, so the boxes were interesting! My 3 quilty friends packed with love, and I wonder if they didn't have some giggles too, anticipating my un-packing? At any rate, it was actually fun - and there's still some stuff I can't find - but I know there's a couple more boxes buried in the garage. **sigh**

Setting up my original room happened over time, in bits and pieces so I never realized how much STUFF I have, or how much work to put together. I can't wait to get busy....
In other news - I continue my recovery, trying to stay occupied. I sure wish it wasn't Christmas, it would be a lot easier. I'm missing him and missing my home and missing all the wonderful Christmas traditions and missing all my extended family (in-laws) but I'll be seeing them soon. I skipped out on my guilds' Christmas party because it makes me too sad - I can deal pretty well if I stay out of stores and away from reminders and carols. I've tiptoed into church a few times to light candles and remember that even though He's not giving me what I want, He has MORE THAN given me what I need. I have a lot to be thankful for. My best bud Cuervo continues to improve but still has a couple more weeks in his cage - it will be SO NICE to have him to snuggle again!
I hope everyone has a warm happy holiday, and thanks for visiting!

Thanks - I needed that!

2008-11-30T17:57:00.001-08:00

What a wonderful Thanksgiving I had! Wednesday after work I packed up my broken kitty and headed down south to stay with my daughter for a few days. It was the BEST medicine I could have asked for! Three days of grandkids:

Helping my granddaughter make her very first pumpkin pies - and she was so excited! At 5, she can break eggs into a bowl and not leave a single piece of shell. We had a wonderful, special time in the kitchen.

Thanksgiving day, we all piled into my sons' house, where we enjoyed a day of bedlam. Four kids, 2 of them toddlers; a yellow lab, a tiny new puppy TOO DARN cute!! Video games on one TV and football on another - too many cooks in the kitchen and all of them giggling.

Can you stand it - her name is Bailey and she has the same birthday as my granddaughter and I. We even had a hamster-in-a-ball - ROFL! This guy was hysterical - he ran that ball all over the house and I think I hurt myself laughing. Too bad poor Cuervo is confined to a crate - he would have LOVED chasing this guy!

Sunday morning I woke up alone in my new place and suddenly it all came back. I haven't really had a chance to unpack or find everything yet so I worked on that awhile, then decided I'm going to do some painting! There was a wall in the dining area covered with panelling from the 70's and it was dark, dank and depressing so I painted it a mild, mellow antique china color -- maybe it could be called margarine colored! The kitchen cabinets are also a dismal, 70's dark green masonite and they're going to get the same treatment. The painted wall sure perked things up! I even put up a few Christmas decorations.
I tackled a big thing to today too -- I hooked up my dryers' gas line all by myself! Whoo-hoo! Man - what a sense of achievement, I'm so proud of me. And the house hasn't even blown up -- LOL! Now I'm in business -- if I could just find my pots and pans..........
Baby bok choys for dinner, and maybe some pesto. Mark that down in the PLUS column - I don't have to cook if I don't feel like it. And pretty soon - I', taking on that sewing room - I really really want to sew something! I'm getting jealous reading about everyones' wonderful projects. In fact - maybe I'll go do that now!
Toodles!

Starting from Ashes

2008-11-26T07:52:00.000-08:00

Thank you all for the good wishes; I could never have imagined how much it matters. Thinking about all of you makes that "Lone Ranger" feeling back off for awhile. And I have such good news about Cuervo!! He finally got to come home yesterday, after an entire week in the hospital.

He has to be confined to the crate for a month - poor baby. I can take him out for short periods but only if he's going to be immobile on my lap. You can see how much of his beautiful coat was shaved. What you can't see is the huge ugly suture line under his arm. He seems comfortable though, he even puts some weight on that leg. And he is sure happy to be back with me. I wonder if he's a bit confused about where he is NOW?? He came home to a different home than he left, but his little nose has been busy checking things out. He is right smack in the middle of the dining room table, in the center of all the action. Later today I'll be packing him up again, and we're going to travel down to my daughters' for Thanksgiving with all my kids and grands. ***VBG***
When I get back, I have to face the daunting task waiting in the sewing room:

Oh dear. I keep peeking in there, then kind of feel faint and gently close the door. I have to figure out where to start! I still can't find the remote for the bedroom TV, but finally turned up my hair dryer. Getting settled is going to be an adventure for awhile...........
Have a wonderful, blessed Thanksgiving - I know I will.

Just BREATHE

2008-11-25T07:22:00.000-08:00

I've gotten a number of really lovely e-mails making sure I'm OK. Well, yes and no. I am physically fine but heartbroken and a bit of an emotional mess. As events played out, I discovered the real reason for my husbands sudden request for divorce is the girlfriend he's been with for many many months. Put a whole new dimension on HURT. This past Sunday, 14 friends and family descended on my house shortly after he left for the day, and within 4 hours we had completely emptied 4 rooms and moved me into my own place. Those wonderful people who love me are my heros! I can't thank them enough. So now I begin the business of learning to be alone and healing. That same soon-to-be-ex is also responsible for my nearly losing my dear old friend Cuervo. He kicked my beloved cat so hard that he dislocated his shoulder, shattered both bones in his upper arm/leg and tore up the tendons. When the vet told me the extent of the damage and the cost of surgery to repair it, I had a complete meltdown - I don't have the money, having had to retain a lawyer and rent a house, I'm tapped out. The thought of losing not only my husband, but my home and then my nearly 18 year old cat was just more than I could take. I asked the vet for some time to think about it. Several hours later, the vet called me back and told me he would do the surgery, recovery, and care for free. No charge. You know those huge gasping happy sobs you just can't hold back? "I haz dem." I will not forget his kindness, and once back on my feet I'm already thinking up ways to thank him, and hopefully raise funds so that he can be able to help someone else in the future.
Meantime, LIFE goes on, and this Thanksgiving I am giving greater thanks than ever for my family.

16 month old Jayden, my flirty grandson. Is he all boy, or what? This doll can actually recognize and read several words! His Daddy has been working with him with flashcards and shocked the daylights out of me! Before the move, I was working on a quilt for my oldest granddaughter, the horse-crazy Devin. It started with Fons and Porters boot pattern:

From there I did up some silhouettes and featured them in the center:

And that's as far as it got before the design wall came down and I have no idea where that project may be now. My sewing room was packed with love by 3 quilty friends and they worked so hard! The goal of moving day was speed, not finesse, so I have a HUGE mess of boxes, bags, suitcases, trash cans, etc holding my entire stash and supplies. It will take me a long time to sort thru and get a room put back together but that's OK. I can do it, and even if her quilt is late getting to her she will love it.
Thanks to everyone for your good thoughts. I'll be slowly finding a new "normal" and you can bet that YOU will be a big part of it!

Punkin' Tutorial

2008-10-22T18:51:00.000-07:00

We made these cute, easy punkins' at retreat this past weekend and I wanted to share with you. Our wonderful Retreat Mum, Kerrie, brought the instructions for these, but I don't know where she got it. You'll need fabric, at least 7 x 14, and twigs, twine and leaves. I used real leaves here, but silk would probably last longer. You can use raffia, twine or decorative cording - they all look great! You also need a glue gun or some kind of tough glue.

Cut your fabric 7 x 14. Any dimension that is rectangular will work, and different proportions will make different shaped punkins. This measurement makes a punkin' about the size of a grapefruit. Fold it over right sides together and sew up the short side:
Press the seam out - any old which way. Then you need to do a bit of handwork. With a doubled thread, fold over one edge just once about 1/4 inch and make a long running stitch all the way around.
Gather it up as tight as it will go, but DO NOT cut off the thread. You'll have a puckery little belly button:
Turn it inside out and stitch the puckers closed, as sloppy as you want! NOW you can knot it and clip it off.
Do the same gathering stitch to the other side, again DO NOT cut your thread. Stuff your punkin' as firm or soft as you like. BTW - if you've stuffed things before and not liked the "lumpy" look, tear off that stuffing in wispy little bits instead of grabbing a handful. When it's as firm as you like, pull up that thread into another pucker, knot it off and clip the thread.
I think it takes something less than a yard of cording, and here's where you wrap it around the punkin' in equal divisions. Put the first strand directly on the seam (for camouflage) and wrap it around, tying it in the center. Do the same for 2 or 3 more divisions, whatever look you like. When you've done all the wrapping and tying, you have this:
Finally the fun part!! Pick a good stem and glue it down into the opening. If you want, you can twist pipe cleaners or florists wire around something skinny like a paintbrush and glue those in next to the stem.
Overlap the leaves, gluing each one as you go. Suddenly, VIOLA!
You have a punkin! Check my previous post for a group shot - all the different fabrics looked great! And a big basket of these will decorate clear thru Thanksgiving - and make great gifts. Have fun!

Retreat Time!!

2008-10-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

Retreat is always the high point of my year - 4 days of self-indulgent quilty behavior and chocolate! What else could you want? I always have a blast, make new friends and spend too much at my favorite quilt store. Plus I get to enjoy cool, foggy coastal weather and get away from the heat of our little inland valley -- bliss!!
So for a quick report before I scurry back to the real world office that awaits me, here's what we all did as a Take'nMake project:

Thes pumpkins were so adorable!! I'll try to get it together and do a tute on them - too easy, too fun and waaaay too cute!! I didn't work on any one big project this time, I worked on a bunch of little ones. Remember the FSQS? I made a cute flowery applique quilt for my partner in Oz, and have wanted to make another one for myself ever since. So - here was my chance! I had a ball playing with the placement:

I even scrounged bright scraps from other retreaters so I have scraps of memories in there too! I have more to show, but I have to hustle off to the Outside world now -- and my bags aren't even unpacked yet! ***sigh***
Thanks for stopping by!

Sewing Again

2008-10-08T22:55:00.000-07:00

You have to love quilt shows - there's definitely something magic that just gets the mojo turnin'. Sure enough, I finally, finally got something moving in the sewing room! This will be a re-make of a Fons and Porter design that I made several years ago and promptly lost to my daughter. (Oh thanks Mom! I love it!) Huh? Wait....oh dear. I've promised myself over and over that I'd make another one for me but of course then couldn't find the pattern again. This afternoon I made a concerted effort, went thru 4 towers of magazines and finally found it. Why don't we ever look in the last place first? How come it's ALWAYS in the last place? LOL -- so without further to-do, let me introduce the new-born witch sisters Hetta and Gracie, and two of their playmates; nameless spirits at this point:

Geeeesh.......never thought 2 blocks would make me feel so accomplished.
I promised you more of Judy Mathieson, and here ya go. I love this quilt, the lowly 9-patch with applique. I know there's one in me somewhere, I drool over every one I see. This one is beautiful. I snapped the first picture from 20 or 25 feet away, (so the flash wouldn't wipe it out), then checked it out in the camera. I enlarged it and when I did I noticed something odd.

Peculiar. Weird, even. So I ran up to look closer..... (you can click on it)

It's all dogs!!!

None of those flowers are flowers, they're all fussy cut dogs, every last one! It's brilliant! While I stared in amazement I could hear Judy giggling - she says "I love watching people find that!" Oh man, I bet! I had to hang around and watch a few folks find it too -- what fun! Just proves again what I've always thought. The woman is a genius.
It's off to bed for me - cross your fingers that this go-sew swing hangs on for awhile. Maybe long enough to clean up my mess?? LOL!
Thanks for stopping by!

Eating Crow

2008-10-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

Well -- by now you're familiar with the whole sorry tale of the Civil War battle that raged in Northern CA a few weeks back and resulted in a quilt known as The Rebel. This past weekend was the annual Falling Leaves Quilt Show in Lakeport, CA. and The Rebel comes home a decorated war veteran. Third place!!!

I was shocked - you should have seen the rest of the entries in that category! They were awesome! So, Humble Crow Pie it is, and I guess I have to be nicer to my rebel vet now. ROFLOL!!
The featured quilter this weekend was Judy Mathieson, a wonderful sweet and mad talented lady from not too far away. Her quilts are jaw dropping!

Oh my gosh -- scary beautiful.

It really does glow....

***sigh***
Oh my. What eye candy. She had another one hanging that you would never have guess was hers - I'll show you that one later. Two days hanging around all this eye candy was enough to even get me off my lost-mojo fanny, and I started cleaning up my sewing room. See, I haven't sewn a thing since finishing The Rebel but I have dumped stuff in there. Erk. Now I have a little more than a week to get it together and get ready for retreat, so I better get on it.
No change on the home front. It's getting sad, lonely and scary being here with him down the hall. Thank you SO MUCH for keeping us in your prayers and good thoughts. I'm hanging tough and keeping faith and trying to remember that Life has to keep on moving...... if I could just channel that into the sewing room!
Thanks for stopping by!

One Day at a Time

2008-09-29T09:01:00.001-07:00

There's that word again -- TIME TIME TIME......... I have this sneaking suspicion that TIME is not my friend: but on we go. No change on the home front. I've picked myself up off the floor and planted my feet so we have what's called in these parts - a "Mexican-Standoff". No un P/C intention there, it just an old description of two unmovable forces. SO -- he says "I want" and I say NO.

Meantime, I had a long-planned yard sale this past weekend, to unload piles of stuff that has been clogging up closets/storage sheds/cupboards. Amazingly, I did really well! What little was left fit into the trunk of my car and will go to Goodwill today, and I am $450 richer! Whoo-hoo! My daughter came up Saturday to hang out and help out with the sale and we had a wonderful visit. I only had to restrain her from beating up Hubby 3 times, I thought it would be more.........**jeeeesh**

In other good news, the annual Quilt Retreat on the coast is coming up and boy am I looking forward to THAT! My friend that usually goes with me cancelled out because she's pretty upset with me still for leaving the dialysis clinic. (See, we were a team there) so I'll miss having her there, but another friend of mine stepped in and bought her place so I wouldn't be there alone - how nice!!! She told me I need a friend with me at all times, and so she's going and I love her to bits.

I leave you with these funnies - thoughts to live by:

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative
on the same night.
2. Don't worry about what people think, they don't do it very often.
3. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than standing
in a garage makes you a car.
4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
5. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never
tried before.
6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
8. A person, who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice
person. (This is very important. Pay attention!
It never fails.)
9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government
program.
10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the
trip.
11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
12. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so
good.
13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
15. No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the
waist change places.
18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.
19. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks
before you need it.
20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.

It's all Bad

2008-09-12T08:22:00.000-07:00

I feel like an emotional roller coaster - normally my personality is upbeat and happy, but the past few years Life has thrown some doozies at me and I fight to keep my head up. Now I have another really BIG one. My husband, overwhelmed by his grief and depression, has formed the opinion in his mind that I am responsible for Tims death and he wants a divorce - immediately. To say I'm shocked is the understatement of the century - all the air has been knocked out of me. This blog will probably be going dark for quite some time while I figure out what to do and how to do it and how to survive this. Keep up your wonderful blogs - I love reading them and I can't get my day going without seeing what everyones' up to.

Guilds are a GOOD THING, Martha!

2008-09-08T12:56:00.001-07:00

How do you like my NEW LOOK? There's some things I want to add and the banner's not right, but I'm workin' on it!

Saturday was our monthly guild meeting, our last one in the tiny hall that we've outgrown. Our speaker was Don Linn also known as Mr. Quilt. He brought his Quilt 'O' Matic to demo and it was hilarious! What a show! And what quilting - this guy is fantastic. We even got to pass his quilts around and take a close CLOSE look, and there's no fault to be found. It was a terrific lighthearted day! Maybe the best part was when he picked on my dear friend Rosie to come up and "make a quilt" using the energy ball. Her first one wasn't so great, so he held her hand to "add his energy" to hers -- ROFLOL!! She was a great sport and played along and we all howled with laughter -- it was campy and ridiculous and just what the doctor ordered!

I took this with my i-Phone and for a cell phone picture it's not bad. I haven't even edited it yet! I think this definately has to be in the newsletter, don't you?
Thanks for visiting my newly re-vamped blog -- one of these days I'll figure out how to get all my fun thingys back.....

As the World Turns

2008-09-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

Sometimes Life just sucks - that's all there is to it. And oftentimes - quite often in fact, bad things happen to good people and everyone is left to deal with the mess the best they know how. About a month ago, the 19 yr old son of a friend of mine took his life because of a failed romance. I wish these kids could see just how the destruction they leave behind ruins the lives of everyone they love. In their pain they assume no one will care and of course not only are they so wrong, but they can't imagine how far the ripples of their selfish act will spread. His death ripped open unhealed wounds in our house of Tim's death 4 years ago; also at age 19, also by his own hand. DH had a complete meltdown, becoming in turns nasty and surly, or weepy/inconsolable or just silent. To make matters worse, Tim's birthday is approaching and of course it's always a hard time. I'm clinging to my newly-found good mental health and trying to figure out the best way to help my husband and deal with my own sadness and thoughts of Tim and there just hasn't been a lot of room in there for much else. Relentlessly, Life goes on............
Last Sunday, I pecked a bit in my sewing room and DH pecked a bit in his shop, and midway thru the day our pastor pulled up to the house, hopped out and handed Hunny a package saying "I was thinking of you two today" and drove off, all in a minutes time. Hunny brought it in to me - a HOT loaf of fresh bread, right out of the oven! The first thing I did was take a picture.........

OK OK -- so that was the second thing I did. Now as amazing as that is - here's the rest of the story. Pastor and his wife live about 15 miles from us! This bread was HOT - it melted the butter! That simple act felt like a huge blessing - like rain breaking a heatwave or a warm quilt on a cold night, or hugs from Grandma. It felt like someone was telling us - "I care" and of course, Someone was. It had quite a profound effect on me. And Life goes on.........
Remember the cute little carved wooden seam ripper I found on my vacation a couple of months ago? Well, I showed my friend Rosie, who ran home and told her Honey, who owns a lathe and started making some! Today at Guild she gave me one for my upcoming birthday!

Is that gorgeous, or WHAT?? It's made from madrone, an extremely dense hardwood native to California and very beautiful. The handle as you can see is large, fits perfectly in my big mitt - and I can't hardly put it down! It's soft and smooth and feels like a worry stone in my hand - I think I held it most of the way thru the guild meeting. Oh shoot -- I have another early birthday present to show you but forgot to take a picture. Gee -- you'll have to stay tuned! Life goes on..............
I took the Rebel to guild for Show'n'Tell and got a good response, and even tho we're more than a month past the quilt show deadline they were a few quilts short so the Rebel will stand again. Guess I better finish clipping all the threads. If it wins so much as an honorable mention I guess I'll have to forget all about the PAIN it caused me!!! ROFL -

There's probably someone in your life struggling to deal with the fact that Life does go on. If you're so inclined remember them in your prayers, or take them a loaf of bread. What looks healed on the surface after some time has passed could still be raw underneath and you might just light up their day.

Still around - sorta

2008-08-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

We're having major LIFE happening around our house lately so I've been really quiet. Don't know yet if everything will be OK - it's a day-by-day process. Not too much happening in the quilting either - except the binding is done on The Rebel and now I really like the quilt! I'm still rolling through everyones' blogs and I'll be back when the dust settles.

Have a good one, whatever it is!

A GRAND mail day!

2008-08-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

It was Bren!! Bren was my swap partner for 4SQS/summer, and looky what she made for me!!

To say I'm excited is a little understated -- I love this! And BREN made it! LOL - it's fantastic, and check out the hand stitching, it's so fine! AND to make it even sweeter - 2 magazines that I really like and never buy for myself -

THANK YOU Bren! It's so cool to have a Secret Sister and have it turn out to be someone you "know" - I'm so tickled! In the same mail day was my new exercise bike - quiet, comfortable and easy to ride:

(Looky, Mama! I got it!) My Mom has one of these and I rode hers a bit in Utah and gee, you can't ask for nicer. I need to exercise more - who doesn't? - and DH hates my treadmill with a passion, it's too noisy. I like to watch TV when I exercise, and do it early in the morning, so that pretty well killed THAT. So the bike is silent, nary a whisper from it, and as comfortable as my easy chair. Our local stores don't carry it so it came from a CyberStore, arriving yesterday with my beeeyootiful 4SQS. Happy me!

Today I'm cleaning like a crazy woman - I host Bunko this Wednesday night and it's always a huge production. This group always goes all out, and every party is a Martha Stewart production, complete with full dinner for 12, dessert/coffee/great prizes/etc. So the carpet in my family room, under the bike above, was kind of grungy and it got shampooed this morning. HUGE job - all the family room furniture is outside in the carport. I need to come up with a menu, shop, get all the gifts together and wrapped, make up fancy score cards, shop some more and on Wednesday thank goodness I get off work early. HOWEVER - I don't have tomorrow to do anything because tomorrow I have to make that dreaded 150 mile round trip for DGS' first birthday party and that will effectively wipe out an entire day of preparation. PLUS I haven't finished the tablecloths. Am I in trouble or what? Guess I better get a move on....Thanks for stopping by!

Civil War Skirmish Won by North

2008-08-05T07:26:00.000-07:00

I don't get it - I really don't. Last night I sat down with the Rebel again, after changing a 3rd new needle and re-threading for the 32nd time. And it was like BUTTA!!! I got the whole top quilted in about 2 hours without a single broken thread!

Why? What was different from Sunday when I stomped out in a rage? I didn't do anything that I hadn't already done over and over and over....... I just don't get it. I'm beginning to convince myself that this quilt is possessed by the spirit of a prankster Rebel solider, harassing me because I live in NORTHERN California. No? OK, so that's pretty far out there, but do you have an explanation? Did I earn some good quilting juju somewhere? LOL - who knows? But isn't it fun?
On the new job front, it's like Heaven! Tuesdays are our busy days when she sees patients in the office and I do an anemia clinic, meaning I give injections to patients with nephrogenic anemia. Between us there can be 10 or 20 patients in a day and we're hoppin' so no chance of boredom there, but on Fridays I could give myself a complete manicure and pedicure and not disrupt anything. Can't have that! I'm one that needs to earn that salary and stay occupied.
Not quite as occupied as the last job tho - oh no no. I still talk to folks over there on a daily basis, and my heart bleeds for them but at the same time I take a deep breath and SMILE. Not this sista - I'm all better now!
Now how's YOUR day?

A Rant and a Rave

2008-08-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

WARNING - seriously disturbed quilter about to GO OFF!
I've been wrestling ALL DAY trying to quilt The Rebel, and I have 3 squares done to show for it. Three. The entire rest of the time I've been fighting my sewing machine trying to figure out WHY the thread breaks every 4 minutes!!! (see previous problem with the Bunco dice appliques....) What gives? I got out the book and did everything it says to do, and I did everything I could think of. New needle. Re-thread (no lie, did that about 30 times!!!) different thread. Adjust tension/foot pressure/speed. I'm so ready to throw something! I could just scream, I'm so frustrated. WHAT could possibly be going on that suddenly I can't quilt? This is free-motion straight line quilting I'm doing on this, more or less kind of following the lines of the block but no, it's not in the ditch or 1/4 inch. There's one 4 inch line of stitching on one block that I've picked out SIX times because the thread broke in the middle every stinkin' time. Not even over a cross seam, just right in the middle of a perfectly flat piece of fabric. Now that I've decided that obviously my Janome is sick and needs to see a doctor that makes me even madder because the Janome is only a few months old and the Janome Doc is 75 miles away!! Have I mentioned I hate hate hate making that drive and it's time consuming and expensive? I need to scream and throw something REAL BAD. I know, "temper temper.........." and yes, I'm in one for sure! Maybe the underlying reason for the tantrum is that I didn't go to the quilt show after all. DDIL's mom and aunt are both sick, and 80% of my reason for wanting to go was to spend time with them. DDIL isn't too into quilting so I didn't drag her along, and I'll get to see them both next weekend at DGS's first birthday party. Geez, another 1 year old grandson! Since I was home I made myself a bright summery new purse:

The stripes are pieced and I put in my first purse zipper! Whoo-hoo for me! I'm so tickled with that. It has problems, to be sure, but it zips and everything! LOL - it's also loaded with pockets, inside and out. The outside has 3 pockets on each side, of varying sizes. Sunglasses, cell phone, pens - see the pens sticking out of their pocket above? I design my purses to be the way I want them, and I want pockets.

And wonder of wonders, I even got the strips to match along the zipper - that was amazing, can't believe I did that. And the stupid sewing machine didn't give me any grief on that!! I really think it's The Rebel - it hates me.
Ahhh, flowers. I still don't have much of a yard or garden, but I do have some bloomers and these are amazing - they're plain old 4 o'clocks, only they're not plain, for sure:

There's every conceivable combination of pink, yellow and white all mixed up in the same flower. They look like clowns! Or like a 3 year old painted them. No two are the same even on the same branch - it's so fun to see so many odd looking flowers all together.

Well, I'm still pretty hot so I guess I had better go eat some ice cream and try to calm down. It might take 2 bowls of ice cream in this heat!
I hope you're having a better sew day than I am -- Happy Sunday!

it's FAIR time!

2008-08-01T17:53:00.000-07:00

Summer is fair time all over the place and last night I went to the "big" fair 75 miles away with my daughter and DGD. Actually - my daughter dragged me, coerced, begged, threatened, whined, cajoled......get the picture? All because of a band that was playing there - 3 Dog Night. A zillion years ago, (1973) I was pregnant with my second child and I loved that band, so decided to name the child after one of the singers, Cory Wells. Nice neutral name, uncommon at the time and I liked the ring to it. So when the child was a girl I fretted about the name being too androgynous and I wanted to make sure she would never be called by the draft board thinking they had a guy - so her middle name is Elizabeth. "Make no mistake, Draft Board Guys - this is a GIRL so don't draft her!!!" Children being what they are, she grew up and joined the Air Force and went to war in Bosnia. Oh well -- what are ya gonna do? So this has been a favored family story since then and one my daughter loves, and loves to tell. When she heard that THIS GUY was going to be in her town, at a free show at the fair no less, there was no question but that we would go see him.

On a 'school night' no less, I left work and drove 75 miles to her house, we jumped in her truck and beat it to the fair. The concert was a blast - we were surrounded by my contemporaries and we all sang and danced through the entire show. DGD loved it, she didn't know any of the songs but she loved being there and dancing and had her Ga-ma and Mama and everything was perfect. If you remember one of their big hits was a party anthem, "Mama told me not to go" about some poor guy ending up at a drug-soaked party he didn't really want to be at. They launched into that, and about half way through stopped and told a long story about music, changing times, yada yada yada that culminated in a RAP version of the same song! ROFL - it was really funny, but they about got booed off the stage. I don't know if it was tongue in cheek or not, but it was hilarious.
After the show we hit a few of the fair 'must-sees', including the crafts buildings where this magnificent 6 foot tall model of San Francisco was displayed:

Made entirely from toothpicks!! Intertwined all throughout is a slide that the guy rolls balls thru, they go all over the place. Amazing. Of course I had to go see the quilts, but only a fast trot thru there because DGD was starting to whine. This was my favorite --

Finally we dragged ourselves back to DD's place and I crashed there for the night. This morning I got up way early, showered and cleaned up and in the kitchen was met by the cutest coffee-maker in the world! She climbs up there and gets coffee beans down, measures out the right amount and grinds them correctly, fills the pot with the right amount of water and pours it carefully into the coffeemaker and makes a FINE cup 'o joe. Did I mention she's 4 years old?

Armed with that sweet cup of coffee I high-tailed it 75 miles back up the road and skidded into my office with ONE minute to spare. Whew! Glad I don't do that every day! Except that, first thing tomorrow morning I jump in my car again and go BACK DOWN to meet up with my DDIL and 1 yr old grandson, then we'll go another 30 miles south and meet up with her mom and aunt, and the 5 of us will take in a quilt show and a bit of fabric indulgence. Whew! No wonder I'm pooped!! Quilt show pics coming soon! Have a great weekend and thanks for visiting!

Shhhh --

2008-07-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

No pictures today - Sorry! I really am working on quilty things, at least I'm trying to! You know those days when you're all revved up, in the groove and ready to sew and create all day then the whole WORLD decides that's the day they need you more than anything? Well, that was my weekend! LOL - That phone started smoking by noon, scaring all the folks who dropped by. I love love love having friends and family in my home - I waited a long time to be able to have that and it's a blessing - but sewing? Heh - not so much. Suddenly it's deadline time for quilt-show entry forms and I don't have anything ready! ARK! The peephole of time I had without company or phone calls I had to use to paint one of the decks, oh goody. Is there anything on earth more fun than painting a deck in 90 degree heat? Maybe changing sheets on built-in bunk beds? How about this - a phone call in the dark of pre-dawn that opens with "This is Officer Smith from California Highway Patrol. We have a report of horses in the road in your area - will you check yours please?" Oh crap. That wakes you up real fast! Ours did in fact get out last week - and gave us a heck of a fight to get them back. Paco is a sheer genius at un-latching gates and finding loose boards, so getting a call like this isn't totally out of the blue. In fact, CHP has our phone number because of an escape a couple of years ago! So Hunny and I went flying outside to check, he to the east side and me to the west. I went scampering around a corner and almost ran smack into Paco who was really surprised and reared up! That startled me as I was skidding to a stop and I slipped and fell smack on my fanny, not far enough from where his sharp little hooves came down. On my lower leg. Oowwww! Remember it's not quite light yet and everything is surreal and I was hoping none of this was happening and I'm sure Paco was thinking "How cool! You came out to play!" and now Hunny is calling to me - "I can't find them, we better get the truck!" so I hollered back - "yea, get the truck and give me a ride back to bed, OK?" Geeesh..... all that then we have to go clean up and face a Monday morning at work. (giggle) I'm still having fun! I like this new brain I found somewhere; nothing fazes it! A nap would be nice tho - 0500 is kinda early to be in high gear. Yaawwnn...

Ahhhh - the weekend!

2008-07-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

Gee, it seems like Saturdays are more fun these days since I'm all calm and not trying to recover from a terrible week. Now Saturdays are back to being a day to actually practice relaxing and having fun!! This Saturday started off with a SEW DAY at my house with Leslie, Rosie and Chari - my own Ms. No-Blog. Somehow I managed to not get any pictures of the SewDay (!) but I did get snaps of two little guests who were too shy to stay very long:

We've been watching these two cuties for a few weeks now and boy do they grow fast!! The first time we saw them they looked like house cats with long legs. They're probably thigh-high now, still in spots and so so cute! I'm glad we're on their daily circuit.
So for my Sew Day project I didn't work on a quilt, I worked on my Bunco table cloths. Each of them is a modified 9-patch that is custom fit to the table top, and each has the black center so you can see the rolled dice better. The side borders will be fitted at the corners to make a box-shaped topper that won't slide all over the place as we play. They will also each have the 3 appliqued dice on the sides although each tablecloth will have different colored sides, this one is red. The second one I think will be aqua, and the third maybe dark gold - I'm still debating.

The dice are printed on fabric adhered to paper-backed fusible and cut apart. The plan was to do a quick machine zig-zag around the sides of the dice to secure them. Easy project to do while visiting and giggling, right? Well, my machine started right off skipping stitches. I fooled with the tension and that didn't help. I got a new needle and that didn't help - still skipping stitches. I un-threaded and re-threaded top and bobbin and that didn't help. I changed bobbins. I changed thread. I changed MACHINES and still skipped stitches! I changed stitches - maybe straight stitch instead of zig-zag. Nope - still skipped but the straight stitch looked much better. I changed needles again, to a larger size 12, and switched to a heavier thread - no dice. (ug - bad pun!) I switched back to thinner thread in the larger needle - still skipping stitches so I pulled the whole thing out of the machine, wadded it up and threw it behind the couch. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!! I had 3 honest to goodness ladies in my house so I didn't say what came to mind, but I'm sure they heard anyway - LOL!! It was still a wonderful, terrific, relaxing day with good friends and good food and that sure made the aggravation bearable, even funny. Thank you my dears!
After my friends left, I got a quick nap then we packed up the 2 oldest GS's age 16 and 14 and went to the boat races. At a paved racetrack! ROFL - it was hysterical! Here's the premise - you get your old beat-up jalopy and old unwanted boat and paint them up with gaudy designs and personal slogans. You hook the boat to the car with rope and don't bother with a trailer, just drag the boat on the road behind you. Then put 20 of these outfits on a racetrack that's been raced on by real cars for a few hours so it's good and slick. Oh yea - get the biggest water truck you can find and water down that oily track real good - spray the crowd too while you're at it! OK - the last car still running with boat still attached is the winner, so you want to wipe out your opponents as fast as possible.

We laughed so hard our faces hurt! There was debris everywhere, a few times wild boats went screaming past us skidding along ON THE FENCE and the noise was incredible! Any boat was a target - another driver would take aim, accelerate and smash into it as fast as he could! Every couple of laps they'd stop the race and remove drivers, but the wrecked cars and boats stayed right where they died!! So if there was a big boat that ended up right across the track that's where it stayed and got turned into trash by the next car to come by. There was no holding back - these guys were putting on a show and all 6,000 people loved it. You can see we're very close to the track which adds to the thrill since those wrecks happen less than 15 feet away!

It was certainly the highlight of the nights racing, and this time NO ONE left early! I've never seen the racetrack so crammed, and parking was a nightmare but I'm sure glad we went, it was quite a spectacle. The boys were beside themselves and all the way home talked about fixing up an old car and racing. Well, Grandpa raced, Dad raced, Uncle raced; heck I even raced motorcycles many years ago so it's about time for these guys. Grandpa and I told the boys we'd buy them a car but they have to foot the bill for everything else, then we dropped them off at their house and scurried into our house locking the door behind us so Mom couldn't get us!! LOL!!
Back to my derailed table cloths. I still love the idea and I'm not ready to give it up so back to the drawing board. I sure wish I knew why all of a sudden I can't get a decent stitch with that fusible; it's always worked fine before! Plan B will be to print on plain fabric backed with freezer paper and just pinned onto the background. I know that method works! How's your weekend?

Lazy Weekends

2008-07-13T15:50:00.000-07:00

I love the slow lazy days of summer with nothing pressing, nothing demanding attention and nothing getting in the way of doing, well, NOTHING! LOL! For all of the nothingness, I've really gottne a lot done. For starters, I finally got the sleeve done on the Siggie Quilt and hung it in the living room:

Fun, bright and colorful for summer, isn't it? Most of yesterday was given over to "chores" like laundry and picking up around the house, but for a few hours last night I went camping; LOL, yes, I said a few hours! DD and DGD are camping with friends at the lake a few miles from here, and they were anxious to have me come visit for dinner and Smores. Madeline is normally a fastadious little fashion plate, and prefers to be clean, just like her Mama, but camping means you're going to be dirty. That's just the way it is, and face it - a dirty kid is kind of charming!

The white smear across her nose is self-applied sunscreen, there's some dinner around her mouth, grubby little fists and plain old honest dirt smudges all over and she's pretty pleased with it all! A short time later tho, it turned to upset when her marshmallow flamed:

She huffed and puffed and it still wouldn't go out and OH the pain! It was tragic, I tell you! ROFL!! Ooops, excuse me. I really do try hard not to laugh at Small-Girl-Trauma, but c'mon! It's so cute! Ok, I confess, I didn't laugh out loud and I did help put out the fire and comfort my little chef. Then she toasted another totally perfect one and all was well again.
Back home today I tackled a BIG UGLY job that I've been putting off for a couple of years. I painted the exterior trim of the french doors in our bedroom - UGH!!! I really hoped Hunny would cave in to the whining, but alas he never did so I finally dove in. Actually it wasn't too bad; we got a good quality paint and top notch brush and those both made for a smooth easy job. I only did one coat because as it creeps up over the 90 degree mark outside, I hole up in the cool house! Still it looks a world better and I feel like I DID something. In the cool of the house I got my Summer FSQS ready to go to it's new home, to my swap partner ????????? who lives in ???????? (is it you?)

Now, after such a slow lazy weekend I'm going to pop a top and go see what the rest of you have been up to!
Thanks for visiting!

Time's Flyin' Again

2008-07-11T17:26:00.000-07:00

It's easy to tell from my blog's title that I have time issues. Ahem.
Really I keep telling myself to stick to quilty content, since this IS a quilt blog and sometimes I'm not too quiltily active if you get my drift. The past two weeks I've been coasting on a cloud of peace straight from Heaven over my new job. But first - Quilty News! I got a squishy package of goodness the other day from Pam at My Creative Mind - LOOKY!!

These are exquisite! The piecing is so fine and the colors so pretty - I love this pretty set to bits. It's already working, too - I've had needles stuck in a piece of felt loose in my sewing bag and always wanted a needle-keeper. (too lazy to make one?) THANK YOU Pam!! (e-mail me, Pam - I can't get thru to yours somehow)

While our temps have been in the 110 range I just don't sleep all night - it's impossible. So in the wee smoky hours one day this past week, I cut some little diamonds and made another doll quilt - this is a bit larger then a fat quarter - about 20 by 25 or so.

I loved the fabrics that came together in a FQ bundle a few months ago, but not too pleased with how it came out - too pale for me. I like the contrast to be jacked up a bit! It will give me something to do on my long lunch hours tho; I'm hand quilting this one. Meantime, I did quilt some more on The Rebel, and after about 45 minutes my machine started making funny noises so I took it all apart and cleaned it out - look what was in/around/under the bobbin case:

Eeeewwww!!! And I clean mine out every 2 bobbins or so! I never get this much fuzz - oh wait. I was using a different thread. I usually use Masterpiece, and I have Essentials in there now for quilting. Essentials thread is a bit thicker and shows quilting stitches better, I think. (not too great for piecing) It is, however, linty! Guess I'd better clean every bobbin change now! There's another project in the works now too --

Yep - those are dice. I host my Bunko group every August, and this year I want tablecloths that are black in the centers to better see the dice, and each side will have 3 dice set on top a different color border around the black. I have a fair picture in my head how I want them to look and I'll be working on making 3 of them in the next couple of weeks or so.

In other sewing related "JSYK" - I heard somewhere that dust/cat hair/ etc. can build up inside your foot control and make it kind of sticky - made sense to me! There was a message on the Yahoo site suggesting that you can open up the foot and clean this stuff out. Well, my older Janome has been sitting on a shag rug with Cuervo the Hairball for 4 or 5 years, so I flipped it over and unscrewed the screws.

DON'T DO THIS!

I ruined the controller. There's a metal lever thing inside that popped off and I can't get it back on and Hunny can't get it back on and we can't even get the whole cover off anyway. I did shoot some canned air in there and only the slightest tiny bit of faint dust came out so it wasn't worth it - now I need to buy another foot. Grrrr...... I have to learn things the HARD way!

If you're still with me........have I mentioned that I LOVE LOVE LOVE my new job?? Oh man -- to be able to actually get everything done and leave a clean desk at the end of a day -- to be able to sleep at night instead of laying awake wondering what happened to that huge drug order -- to have a long, relaxing lunch HOUR instead of wolfing down something in 10 minutes and racing back into the next crises -- 3 e-mails in a day instead of 35 -- not a single whiny staffer in my office with some impossible request -- and no one EVER bleeds all over the floor! HEAVEN I tell you! After so long struggling to make the decision to leave, then so long actually getting out of there, and so much drama surrounding the whole thing - I'm so relaxed and peaceful now I almost don't know myself; it's so wonderful, a Gift.

***sigh***

Thanks for stopping by and sharing my happy little space!

Back to Work

2008-07-02T18:47:00.000-07:00

That might have been the shortest retirement in the history of the world! Monday I started my new position and couldn't be happier with it. I fit in easily, have a wonderful rapport with the doctor and her husband, who has been running the office up to now. I have to assume they're comfortable with me too since they left me entirely alone to my own devices today, no patients and no doctor, just me all alone all day! There's a bug in every picnic however, and mine is the computer system. It's a Mac. Until Monday I had never even seen a real Mac up close, let alone worked with it. The applications they have for the office are spectacular, incredibly efficient and well designed. Now, all I have to do is learn to drive the darn thing! LOL!
I have no quilty content to show pictures of - although the Siggie quilt is finished and bound - so you'll have to put up with cute grandson pictures.

Spend a fortune on presents and they'll play with the box, or bag in this case. Fortunately I'm wise enough now to NOT spend a fortune on toys that will last a week, and know to be ready with the camera when Jayden played in the bag. Handy thing, bags. When it's time to go Daddy can just haul it away!

In excellent fire news, we finally got air water tankers on the fires yesterday and HUGE progress has been made. We have blue skies today for the first time in weeks! YAAA! The blog coming from the closest fire residents is now thanking people for help and support and planning ways to be more prepared next time. It's not over till it's over, but there's certainly an end in sight. I've been in a few restaurants when firefighters came in to eat, and was proud that all the other diners applauded and someone always bought their meals for them. "Thanks" just isn't enough.

Weekend Notes

2008-06-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

While doing some idle blog hopping this morning, I happened on Paula's Coffeetime Quilt Studio and she showed her Siggie Swap quilt made from the blocks we swapped last year. Not just last year, but EARLY last year - February to be exact - and mine were still in a baggie somewhere in the nether regions of my UFO closet. I was ashamed. Abashed and chagrined. Gee - it's been that long? REALLY? So even tho I'm usually a lurker at Coffeetime, I left a comment - "I'm doing mine today!" and Paula e-mailed me back - "I'll be watching!" So I went gold-mining through all those totes of forgotten projects - ("wow! why didn't I ever finish that? It's cool!") and finally came up with the blocks. Spent some time playing around with a layout, and even made a couple more blocks to even out my chosen design, and voila!

At the end of the day I have a half quilted Siggie Swap! That was such a fun swap, and it was fun to look back at all the names. I wonder if anyone's interested in doing that again?
The big news here is still our fires, as it will be for the next few weeks. The smoke is choking - you see UPS drivers and such all wearing masks. The roads are mostly empty - this was highway 101 (our main artery) yesterday at about 10 am -

It's a strange, surreal time. Headlights and kitchen lights on in the middle of the day, and it's so quiet, so still. I couldn't figure out why it was so quiet until late this afternoon; the birds are gone! Where? Who knows - it's smoky everywhere you go. Maybe they found someplace LESS smoky to hide out.

Land of the Midnight Sun - that's what it feels like. It's tough to stay inside and keep all the windows and doors closed 24/7 - I hate that part! - but I bravely hid out in my sewing room with Rhapsody.com and chocolate and sewed and read blogs all day. I even found a brand new blog written by someone in the thick of our closest fire! It's been the best source of information about evacuations and what we can do to help. They mentioned needing simple things like first aid supplies for cuts, scrapes and poison oak so I ran down town and scooped up a bag full, brought it home and gave it to the next truck that went down our road on their way up to the fire. I wish I could do more to help, but probably the best anyone can do is keep praying. Those kids on the firelines need it and California as a whole needs it and our little county needs it.

Un-nerved

2008-06-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

We have over a hundred fires currently burning in our county, with sixty of them un-manned because there's just not enough firefighters to be on all of them. The smoke is pretty bad and we're under a health alert to stay inside. So with that order, fans and AC on and a fan venting to the outside, I was settling in for a relaxing day of sewing. Then I heard trucks outside, a LOT of trucks. At first I just stood there with my mouth open, gawking. Then I grabbed a camera......

I missed the fire trucks - but got a FEW of the crew and support trucks.....

Sorry for the out-of-focus pics....these guys were moving pretty quick!

It was a pretty long parade.......

The bulldozers were in the first half along with the fire trucks I missed..... altogether an impressive caravan of maybe 20 vehicles. I called Hunny right away -- "Where are these guys going???" Well, the closest fire is about 10 miles away in the hills behind us, and there's a back road at the end of our road that goes there. Obviously this is a better way to get there than the road in town that we've been hearing about. Now, am I nervous because they're so close, or happy that they're so close? Maybe I'll casually gather up some important stuff.......

LATE UPDATE - we found out tonight that the fire is just 5 1/2 miles away, and our road is now designated as a "FIRE ROAD". Now I'm really fidgety and nervous.......

Home at Last

2008-06-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

I think I'll just stay home for awhile......I'm pooped! Our Oregon trip was wonderful as always - and full of surprises!

Look! An empty storefront that literally has my name on it! LOL! There's no way to tell what this might have been, but methinks it's an OMEN that I should open a quilt store, what d'ya think? This was in Brookings, OR and if I can figure out how to do it, it has to be the header on my blog. Of course! On the way up there was a chance I would get to meet up with Pam from My Creative Mind but it didn't work out this time. Next trip! (Hey Pam - next time you're in Forget-me-Knots, look under the counter :-)

We arrived home to find our county covered in a thick blanket of smoke. There was a dry electrical storm right after we left that started over a hundred fires around us. Scary stuff! A storm like that is unusual here, and we won't have rain until probably late October so that's even worse.

My favorite place on the Oregon coast has to be Gold Beach, and we arrived at low tide, the first time I've seen it so low. made for some great pictures of the brilliant green algae that lives under the water most of the time.

Un-retouched photos, I swear! There is an old ship, The Mary Hume that is scuttled there right where she was built in 1880. It's a favorite of mine, I jokingly call her MY boat, and I probably have 100 pictures of her. This was the first time I got to see her high and dry so I have a whole new set of shots!

Neat shot - Well, I have the day to myself and a bunch of un-packing and laundry and cleaning up to do so I'd better get to sewing - LOL!! Finally, a chance to sew!

Pit Stop

2008-06-19T09:12:00.000-07:00

Home again after a wonderful visit at Mom's - my best vacation EVER! Three things came together to make it an incredible time - I'm recovering nicely from the former job; I was travelling alone so no one to keep me occupied, and the longest stretch Mom and I have had together alone (mostly) since my brother was born in 1956! I really felt like a candle in the sun - the stress melted away. Ahhhh -- reborn! Even a last minute glitch didn't wind me up - I had it so firmly fixed in my head that the return was on Tuesday that I never rechecked the ticket till Tuesday morning, only to find that my itinerary had been cancelled. HUH??? WTH???? After a few phone calls and careful re-reading turns out my flight was MONDAY night, not Tuesday. Oops. Oh bother. The airline put me on the Tuesday night flight no problem and I'll chock another one up to senility. The drive from Nowhere, Utah to Las Vegas takes around 4 hours give or take depending on how many stops. And it's 4 hours of NOTHING; miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. There's some spectacular scenery along the way in places - the Virgin River Gorge is utterly fantastic, like driving down into a mini version of the Grand Canyon. DAMN hard to keep eyes on the winding road tho!!! I was worried about driving into downtown Las Vegas during rush hour and finding the car rental return place but it was easy-peasy, the place has it's own freeway signs and really good signage to direct you. So now, all relaxed and with feet up, I'll show you a few more highlights. On one of our wanderings, Mom and I stopped by this wagon on the side of the road and bought fresh homemade bread from two young girls, situated just north of Bryce Canyon:

They live quite a long ways away through the desert and back into a "lost" canyon, and as I figured it they must leave home about 4 am to get to their trailer (behind the wagon) to make their bread in time to open for business at 10 am. Whew - I really wanted to support that, what a way to earn your keep.
There's deserted log cabins everywhere you look in south central Utah and they're one of my favorite things - I have LOTS of pictures of empty decaying pioneer cabins. I love to imagine the families that lived there and I do a mental recreation of what the cabin looked like when it was a home. Every old homestead is surrounded by cottonwood trees planted by the original owners - it's the first thing they did. Here's a typical abandoned cabin; think you can envision the family that lived there? Papa in the fields, Mama hanging laundry and Sonny-boy out, ummm........... robbing trains?

LOL - yes, that's the true story of this cabin. This is the boyhood home of none other than Butch Cassidy!
The hundreds of miles surrounding this area was all old Butchs' playground and very easy to see how he could disappear into the wild and escape capture. Terrific stuff!
OK, I have quilty stuff too, never fear. One of the vendors at the Quilt Walk was selling these great seam rippers that he makes himself:

They were so beautiful, and feel SO good in the hand! He uses all sorts of woods in any finish you can think of, and has dozens of designs for the handles. I'm so sorry I'm such a loser I didn't take a picture of his display - it was awesome. He also has stilettos and pens and such - fantastic. His card says "Woodworking inspired by Quilters" Great stuff! Oh yea - those beautiful carved handles have a small flattened area on one side so they won't roll away. That must be the part inspired by a quilter!
While I was gone my daughter suffered her first big heartbreak - she's one to always have her guard up and not put her heart out there for fear of getting stomped on. Well, she was seeing a fella last year that she thought was moving too fast and she broke it of - breaking his heart and putting him into a tailspin. He quit his job here and moved back down to the southern part of the state to recover. So he's been visiting friends here again and she and he met up again and had a few dates and she realized that he really is what she wants and she had been acting like a stupid kid so she told him. And he said forget it. Not that you can blame the guy but still - MY baby is unhappy and what do ya do with an unhappy kid? You make her a quilt! She pulled this pile of fabrics from my closet many months ago -

Funny really because I bought that petroglyph fabric about 5 years ago with her in mind! I'm not sure about that lime green - that might need some fiddling - but I need to get busy and come up with a design. First however, I have this little matter of doing the laundry and re-packing. Hunny and I are leaving tomorrow to drive up the coast of Oregon to deliver a slot machine. Our favorite mini-vacation, with a "few" quilt shops to visit along the way, LOL! Then I get a week more to lay around then it's BACK TO WORK!

Cool Quilts!

2008-06-15T14:28:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh.....I could sure get used to the retired life! My adventure in travelling alone with a wrecked wrist is going just fine. My mom is doing great -

This is Mom with a friend of hers..... her life is vastly different from mine and it's fun to see her friends, her stomping grounds and her pastimes. She was patient enough to accompany me when I caught word of a "Quilt Walk" in the next nearest town, 40 miles south. In Panguitch one hard winter over a hundred years ago, the pioneer families were running low on supplies and were in danger of starvation. Six men set out with an oxcart to find food for their famlies. Finding the deep snow too difficult (maybe impossible?) they discovered that they could make good headway by spreading their quilts on the snow and walking over them. In this manner they travelled a lot of miles for supplies. To honor this, the tiny town of Panguitch holds an annual Quilt Walk Days, and it's a doozy! The entire tiny town decorates with quilts!

The Social Hall, smack middle of Main St. Across the street is a tiny park-like area, decorated with what else, quilts.
The local guild put on a show complete with vendors, and I did my duty towards stimulating the economy! The show was not judged and many of the quilts probably wouldn't be considered in judging, but they were wonderful nonetheless. Thick puffy batts are preferred, and there was a lot more hand quilting done than we'd see around my area. One of the vendors had fat quarters for ONE dollar!! My poor Mom's eyes bugged out as she held my bag and I shoveled -- lol! I have more treasures to show you, but it'll have to wait till I get home. I head back to Vegas on Tuesday, and fly home in the middle of the night. (!) There was a story in the paper about some party causing a bit of trouble in Vegas....someone with a Red Geranium in her lapel............

BUSTED!

2008-06-07T12:37:00.000-07:00

No, not that way - see how you think? I've spent the last 2 days working furiously in my yard getting drip irrigation all set because, on Monday night I'm getting on a plane all by myself and flying to Las Vegas where I will stay the night all by myself. The next morning I hop in my rental car and drive 4 hours all by myself to spend a week visiting with my Mom in Utah -- YAA!! The key phrase is "all by myself" which was going to be an adventure until I broke my wrist yesterday. Now it's going to be an ordeal. Somehow in all that manual labor, I sustained a navicular fracture of a tiny bone between the thumb and wrist bone. It's also known as a "snuff fracture" because there's a blood supply there that does a weird turnabout and this fracture often causes havoc with the blood supply to the wrist and thus - SNUFFS it. Nice. What the heck did I do? No clue -- I didn't fall on it or anything - it just started hurting so I ignored it. This morning when I woke up I couldn't move it and it hurt like blazes, so off to the ER we go, instead of going to the quilt show which was my first choice of how to spend a beautiful Saturday. Grumble grumble growl. Totally useless left hand - the splint includes the thumb - good thing I'm a righty. So today I'm home with ice and a bad attitude and can't sew and can only type with one finger and there's still plants to be planted before I go. AND I'm missing the quilt show and a day with the grandboys -- doggone it anyway. Well, I can read anyway, so I'm off to see what kind of quilty goodness you're all up to.

The South Rises Again

2008-06-03T18:14:00.001-07:00

The Civil War isn't over everywhere, you know. There's still parts of this country where hot spots flare up every once in awhile.
Like my sewing room.
I didn't have this much trouble with my very first quilt! Or any other one I've ever made for that matter! These blocks ended up being such a biasy mess that I nearly wanted to burn the whole thing. There's at least 2 reasons for the mess - first is that the construction method I used left 12 little bias edged HST's on the outer edges of every single block. Those suckers only live to stretch. The second reason could be that I pieced them on 2 different machines - that could have been enough to throw everything haywire. The sashing strips were cut to the measurements of the first 10 or so blocks that were consistant in size, in this case 9 3/4 inches. And the first few rows were fine! As time went on tho, we had DEVELOPMENTS:
This is unsewn, just pinned to show the big difference. Some were a lot worse! I took each row and sprayed and steamed and pressed the mamajammer out of them, doing my level best to shrink 'em. For the most part it worked pretty well ----
Now at least they were in the same neighborhood, and I muddled through getting all the rows joined up. Some of the bigger blocks that are now surrounded by smaller sashing on 4 sides are really really bubbly!! After something like 4 days of intermittent frustration and a few choice %$#*!! at last I had the block body together. And the inside measurement thru the middle was about one and 1/4 inch shorter than those damn bias edges!!! Here's how I deal with inside borders that need to be "persuaded"
Lay it out carefully on the floor and use t-pins into the carpet to hold the border strip and top.
Then I kind of scooch my fingers around underneath to ease the fullness and pin the middle and pin and pin and pin and pin. So that went on SORT OF ok, but the border fabric I picked out was 2 inches too short and of course I didn't have any more. So I pieced it - what the heck, how much worse can it get? And eventually I had 2 borders on and laid it out to see how bad the bubbly blocks were:
YIKES!!! Really Really bad!! Oh wait -- Cuervo's under there playing Quilt Cop......Cuervo with the tequila gold colored eyes. Good thing I like him or those eyes would creep me out. So the next step was to prepare a backing. I'm trying to use stash, and I had a giant piece of incredibly ugly CW that I picked up for about a buck at some big sale --- good enough. I've already decided that this puppy won't ever leave my house and my name sure won't be on it so ugly CW will do just fine. After that I had to stop and smell the roses...........these came from my patio.

After that brief intermission, plus a quick lunch date with Hunny, I layered the thing up and spray basted it and spent a long long time patting and smoothing and finally had a flat, square sammich ready to quilt:

So now the 'Rebel Quilt' (gotta be, doncha think?) is under the needle and durned if it's still not done attacking. Now the thread is breaking every foot or so. And my free-hand straight lines are anything but, and my usually good stitches look like crap. Tonight I pick out the quilting on 2 blocks, and tomorrow it gets all quilted, even if it just ends up being nothing more than an all over design. Or maybe a Confererate flag in every block? LOL!!

Weekend Fun

2008-05-31T20:53:00.000-07:00

I still think of it as "the weekend" even tho it makes no never-mind to me now! LOL!
I've been keeping occupied, if not real busy, with some of the long put off chores on my list. One entire day went to emptying the pantry, scrubbing it down and painting the floor then restocking it after careful editing. MICE had moved in, and they promptly got moved out as soon as we knew about it, but they left a few things behind. A few stinky things. 'Nuff said. Here's a Pretty to make you quit thinking of mice in the pantry:

Say -- "oooo, aaahhhhh.."

This spectacular flower is called the Passion Flower after the Passion of Christ, because the stamens look like crucifixes. My big vine is about to explode with them and I can just sit and be awed by them for long stretches. Most of my week has been spent outside, installing drip irrigation all over my yard and planting and weeding and all the rest. On of my former patients told me about planting tomatoes upside down in hanging buckets so I thought I'd try it - if nothing else it sure gets conversation going!

Oldest DGS age 16 -- "Hey gramma - how come your tomatoes are upside down?"
"To see if they'll grow all the way to the ground" (they're about 6 feet up)
"Then why not just plant them in the ground to start with?"
Boys are too logical.
My 4 year old granddaughter came home from a camping trip with a tic behind her ear, and her Mama bravely twisted it out but the head stayed put, as these things will. So off to the doctor with the offending bug in a baggie, and everything is fine. Madeline carried her bug-baggie around for the rest of the day, and late in the evening her Mama heard her talking to it - taunting it really -- "You thought you were gonna drink all my blood but my Mama tore your head off and now you're kinda dead, ARENT' CHA?" My daughter relates that she nearly had her first bathroom accident in 34 years over that one, and so did I. Oh man, that kid is hysterical!
Not too much sewing going yet -- trying valiantly to get the sashing rows of the Civil War fabric, but unhappily the bias edges of all those little triangles have done what bias edges do and grooown some. Some of those blocks are a good 1/2 inch bigger than they should be and forcing them to fit the sashing is frustrating. Oh well -- it's only for me and "it will quilt out", right?

In other sewing, I have a mountain of cotton scrubs that I won't be wearing anymore but no way can I chuck them so I picked out a few to re-work. Cut off the sleeves, gather up the shoulders and take in the sides and suddenly I have a bunch of cool summer shirts. With pockets! The best thing about scrub tops is the pockets - mine always had strange things in them - paperclips, blood tubes, syringes, pens; lots of pens - notes, vials of meds -- who knows? Another top is on the block now possibly to become an apron. I'll show you that one if it comes out OK. Right now however, there's some cookies about to come out of the oven and suddenly a bunch of guys hanging around the family room. Think there's any connection?

Day 2

2008-05-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Day 2 of my new freedom, Monday being a holiday and all. No one to whine at me, no phone calls......OK, 3 phone calls from the clinic -- but I didn't HAVE to answer them! OK, so I did...... quit picking on me, lol! I had a blast on my first full day -- went shopping, pulled weeds, shoveled and hauled 10 big wheelbarrow loads of, ahem......by-product out of the horses yard and into an area that will be a garden. I did some cleaning up and some planting and some sitting -- I even watched TV in the middle of the day! Total waste of time, but my back needed a little break. Hunny took me out to dinner -- because he's worried about my cooking -- and afterwards I got 2 UFOs done:

Two little donation quilt tops that have been sitting around for heaven knows how long. All they needed was quilting and binding. Wanna hear a strange little factoid about me? I LOVE bindings -- that's right, I do. Someone has to! And now I have 2 hand projects to do while I sit in my taxi-cab yellow chair and sip limeade! Staying in the spirit of finishes, I pulled the fans out -- time for them to be a quilt.

They will require a trip to town for the finishing touches, but I'm tough - I can take it. That 40% off coupon will help......

This morning I actually cooked breakfast for myself - yes Kim, I finally did some grocery shopping. They made me show ID but I made it, LOL! I made myself waffles from scratch, and they were great! Strawberry jam and cool-whip and fresh home-made coffee........ahhhh! I could get used to this. I've started a pot roast for Hunny, another first, and have a girlfriends recipe for buttermilk biscuits. Oh man - this is the LIFE!

My weekend of parties was as fun as I thought it would be, except I missed the bluegrass due to back whining. The rest went off without a hitch and were great. Saturday was my new boss's party, and while we're still on the QT, I can show you 'cos you don't know her!! This is Dr. Chris - Wild and Crazy Physician. Hmmm....maybe her cards need to say that? We had a giggle making little double entendre jokes here and there that no one else could possibly get, referring to my future - I love that kind of thing and clearly she does too - kindred spirits I guess.

Now that Day 3 is off to a crawling start, wonder what I'll get into today? Who knows?

Remember

2008-05-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

Never Forget.

GONE!

2008-05-24T08:59:00.000-07:00

A Fiery Horse with the speed of Light,
A cloud of Dust
And a mighty HI YO Silver!

Or, as Montegomery Gentry sings it -

"This ain't no temporary tearful goodbye, uh uh uh
This is GONE, Gone, GONE, GOOOONNNNE!!

Any way you look at it -- I'm Done. Fini -- over it. OK - so it was an emotional day, lots of laughing, tears, scared people, teasing, panic.......oh yea, and LONG. Got to work about 6:30am and got home at 9:30 - pm. They gave me a great send off:

Beautiful huge basket of plants

Balloons.........

Chocolate roses.......and chocolate covered strawberries

Ice cream sundaes and banana splits.....

Pitchers of margaritas.....

What? Oh - you can't see the ice cream or margaritas? Hmmm.... I wonder why that is?
On my first day of long vacation (remember this is 6 weeks or so) I slept till 6 am! I staggered into the kitchen and fumbled for some eggs and coffee, but couldn't find eggs or coffee so had to settle for cold cereal and diet Pepsi - (note to self; if you're gonna eat at home you should stock some groceries. Just a thought)
Next up -- feed the cat, checking e-mails, showing you what's left of my loot, and get some hand work ready for tomorrows bluegrass day. Or since it's all cloudy and drizzly and sleepy looking outside maybe I'll just go back to bed. LOL -- because I can!!!
Strangely I still have a few clinic related problems swimming in my head but hopefull they'll drown and nothing else will make it's way in. I'd like to be a bubble head for awhile.
Now I can read every blog in the ring and even leave comments!!

10, 9, 8, 7, 6........

2008-05-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

It's nearly time for blast-off from the world of high stress, panic and chaos - a move I've been praying for and anticipating and planning for over a year. Then all my hard hearted determination fell apart yesterday when I broke the news to a little lady in a wheelchair and she took my hand in both of hers, crying her eyes out - "Oh no Sweetheart! What will I do without you?" Several of the patients cried, much to my shock, and one grizzled old guy has been inconsolable all week.
I am officially scum of the Earth and shrunken from 5'10" down to a full 2 inches tall.
In a meeting last week, my duties were split between the woman hired to replace me, and 8 other staffers. NINE people. What the heck??? How come I couldn't get so much as ONE assistant but now it's going to take nine??? Oh well.........

In September 2006 I met a docent in a museum 6 or 7 hours away from here. We hit it off immediately and gabbed like old friends for 30 minutes or so, then Hunny and I continued on our trip. Now it's a year and a half later, I get a call out of the blue from her - in the course of our conversation I had mentioned, (among a million other things!) that I was watching out for a Singer treadle sewing machine, in good usable condition. She not only kept my phone number all that time, but when someone showed up with one for sale she remembered me!! AND my phone number! Hastily written, as I remember, on the back of a business card. Amazing, just blew me away. Quilters are the most amazing people on earth. Will I get it? Not sure yet - that's several hundred bucks worth of gas in our truck for something that's not a sure thing, and suddenly that's a pretty expensive machine. Still --- it may be worth it to go see that gal and give her a big ol' HUG! Amazing....
We have a party packed weekend ahead, holy cow! Friday night is my going away party from co-workers, Saturday a party at my new employers house, Sunday a private day-long bluegrass music festival for 250 close friends, Monday a big party at DS and DDIL, and somewhere in there I have to go find my youngest son and birthday him all up. Retired for 2 days and flopped from exhaustion. The bluegrass fest is a fantastic relaxing day. I take some hand quilting and sit in a comfy chair under an oak tree next to the creek and listen to music all day. I always have lots of visitors who want to see the quilting and sit and chat - it's just a wonderful day, I can't wait. Yesterday I got a recognition award at a company luncheon in Old Sacramento, but the funnest part was that we made a bunch of wrong turns and got a stoplight tour of the capitol. The conversation went something like this:
"Where do I turn -- here?"
"Yes -- turn right"
"now?"
"YES!! Get over!"
"Wait -- "
"NO -- get over now!!"
"missed it. We'll just go up a block"
"You can't, it's all one way"
"No it's not, we can turn right here"
"Uh-huh, right into a parking lot!"
"Is this ninth st?"
"There's the Capitol building, so no it's not 9th"
"Look at all the cops! This has to be 9th"
"No, it's L street"
"Do you think Arnold is home?"
"Wait, that says P street"
"Q! It's Q street! -- you have to go left from here"
"Look - there's more cops"
"Please Lord, keep my hands off her neck"
"Hey - how'd we get back here?"
And so we drove all the way around downtown Sacramento. Twice.
It was a blast. Arnold, for non-Californians, is Arnold Schwarzenegger, also known to us as "The Governator" after his Terminator movies. We never did find out if he was around, but the presence of 284 cops might have been a clue.
I promise pictures this weekend - none today because my life is boring.....LOL!

Old Men

2008-05-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

The old man had lived on his farm for 50 years, and early on had built a swimming hole and picnic area for his family down at the creek. With his wife passed on and children all grown and gone, the old man hadn't been to the picnic area in many years. One day he decided to take a walk down there and he took a bucket with him, remembering the delicious plum trees along the creek bank. As he got closer he heard giggling and shrieking glee and parting the bushes saw a dozen young ladies skinny dipping in his pond! He made his presence known before emerging, causing the young women to huddle in the deeper water. One called out to him - "We're not coming out till you leave!"

The old man replied "I'm not trying to make you get out naked or sneak a peek - I'm just here to feed the alligator"

Moral - Old men may move slowly but they can still think fast!

And the winner is......

2008-05-10T21:40:00.000-07:00

This is amazing, incredible beyond reason. And this really, truly happened this way, as far fetched as it seems. I printed out all the comments and cut them up then dropped them into the bottom of this big vase. I had DGD Madeline stick her hand waaaay down there and stir them up for a long time, no fair peeking.
"Why can't I peek?"
"Because that's the rules"
"Who made the rules?"
"Umm...everyone agrees and it becomes a rule"
"Can you peek?"
"No, Baby, not me either"
"Then how did you put them in there?"

So she did a fine job of mixing and pulling out a name without looking. Here's where the odd part comes in.

The winner is my own darling friend ROSY from Fabricfarie!!!!

All your wonderful comments from all over the globe, and I pull my friend!

Honestly, this is exactly how it happened. Rosy Honey -- I'll be hand delivering this and we'll do lunch!

Thank you everyone for playing along. This is a great way to lure out you lurkers so we get to "meet" you - I've found some really fun blogs and fantastically creative ladies and been so surprised by who stopped by - it was a blast. Hmmmmmm.......what can I cleebrate with a drawing next?

Today was Mother's Day for my girls - 3 of them, anyway. I wanted to take the mommies of my grands out to thank them and acknowledge a job well done. We had a blast, and I got lots of smoochie time with the kids. Here's the girls with their respective kids:

The middle guy Jayden will be 11 months old in a couple of weeks and the kid is WALKING all over the place! Holy cow - I was shocked. Do they really walk that early now? I brought the two on the right home with me, so I'm signing off to go play -- Have a wonderful Mothers Day!

4 Season Swap

2008-05-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

My little swap quilt arrived, and it's so cute! Heidi from My Happy Turtle made it and it just looks like a new garden to me. Love those fabrics!
(Shhhh -- be vewy vewy quiet - the baby is sleeping with her new quilt in her new crib)

She also so generously sent along this awesome zippered bag she made:

How cool is that? Love the handle and clasp - I put it in my purse right away and put all my loose change in there. Wallets just don't have change pockets anymore, have you noticed? My purses get full of loose change I can never get to when I need it. Anyhow, THANK YOU Heidi! Go check out her Happy Turtle blog - she has some fantastic bags ----
The crib came from a girlfriend who found it at a garage sale for a dollar. ONE dollar! I've been stalking e-bay trying to find a wooden doll crib like this but I didn't want to pay the huge prices they're bringing, plus 30 or 40 bucks shipping. ONE dollar! What you can't see in the pic is the cute flower decals on the headboard and footboard. The varnish is all crazed and it's pretty dirty but so perfect. We figure it's from maybe the 40's, and looks like a kit some nice Daddy put together. So cool.
Now that the Commish is gone I've rebounded by making more civil war blocks, I can't stop! The blocks finish at a very odd 8 and 3/4 inches, but who cares, they're all the same odd size........

I'm having so much fun playing with the combinations of fabrics. To me, civil war repos tend to look muddy so I'm trying to punch them up by color and value combinations and some careful cutting.

Besides the 30 blocks up on the wall now, there's 12 more on the sewing table that will be done soon. I won't get it pieced together this weekend tho, 'cos it's a Mothers' Day extravaganza! Saturday I'm heading south to take all my grandbabies Mamas out for lunch. Just to thank them for providing me with all those cute kidlets! Saturday evening my kids are planning some kind of fete, but last night we got word that my DDIL's grandfather has died, at age 90. She and my son will be heading to the Bay Area to be with her family. My DD and DGD will be following me home and spending the night and Sunday we'll see what kind of mischief we can get into.
I finally have a few flowers blooming in my yard (now that I planted some, lol) and these are all newcomers this year:

The snowball bush is actually 3 years old now, and this is the first time it's bloomed. Love those big pom-poms, and they last for weeks! The tulips put on a heck of a show, these changed colors from a pale yellow to the bright red-orange, in stages like paint has been dripped down their petals. And the shy lupines are suddenly 4 feet tall and screamin! Ahh, Springtime.

There's still time to get in on the drawing for the shelf sitters - I'll have my DGD draw a name Saturday night and post on Sunday. Just leave a comment on the previous post and tell a friend! I've met some way cool bloggers new to me this way, what a bonus for doing a giveaway.

Have a wonderful MD weekend!

On her way Home (and a SURPRISE!)

2008-04-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

4 Season Swap - (Spring) is all done and on her way to her new home......and there's another one being born even as I write. I couldn't let her go, you know? I just had to make another one to keep. I had a blast with the quilting on this - in lots of colors and lots of glitter.

And lot's of headaches!!! What is it about working on something for someone else, specifically (not in the abstract) that makes me crazy? I had a ton of problems on this - constant thread breakage then a horrible stretch of needle breakage!

I broke 4 needles in about 30 minutes! Gaack!! I finally took the needle plate off and could see where the needle was hitting it. When I put it back on I scooched it as far forward as the screws would allow and that seemed to fix it. What a pain! - But, I'm tickled with how it turned out.

At long last The Commish was delivered and the check nestled into my bank account and now I can forget about it, right? WRONG!!!!! I sent it with DH to work because The Guy works with Hunny and I didn't particularly need to see him. I folded it carefully and safety pinned a note to the outside explaining quilt care and hanging and washing instructions. I also wrote a little note to The Guy saying that I had folded the quilt in an exact way so there wouldn't be any fold lines going thru any of the picture transfers. So this evening over the Greek/Italian chopped salad with olives, goat cheese and creamy balsamic dressing I asked DH if The Guy had ever said anything about liking the quilt or not? Anything? Nope - get this - HE NEVER EVEN LOOKED AT IT!!!!! huh??? really?? are you kiddin me??!!! The Guy simply put it into a box and wrapped it up!!! As I was choking on my macadamian nut crusted halibut with lemongrass sauce, Hunny said "He was afraid he wouldn't be able to fold it back the right way" Holy cow - can you imagine??? I nearly dropped my sauteed baby bok choys into the grilled polenta. I had to take a huge swig of my mango-lime martini before I could breathe again. Oh well.......to each his own I guess. At least I enjoyed my dinner!!!!
On the job front, word has gotten around. Some of the newer, younger staff were told that I am retiring and it's no big deal to them. Our Medical Director was very sad - I worked with him in his private practice years and years ago so we've been together almost 20 years. Last week we had our new Regional Director and new Vice President visiting and neither of them said a single word, but the next day I was adjusting something in one of the staffs' timesheets and I happened to notice that I magically got a big fat raise. Hmmmm...... and without a word - how ODD, ya think? This morning I received an invitation to a luncheon in my honor to be held in Old Sacramento 2 days before I'm done. Old Sac is only about 4 hours from here!!!! I have to laugh, why not? Heck, I told my work buddy she has to come too, and we'll hit some quilt shops in the Big City while we're wasting a day. Kim? Any ideas? What's in Old Sac?
Also today I got a call from the director of a rival dialysis corporation 50 miles south of us, a lady I knew way back when, when I was in the private practice and she was in my position at the local dialysis clinic. She visited a bit then asked if I would be interested in coming to work for them -- LOL!!! I thanked her politely and said what a compliment, blah blah blah, and inside my head was screaming - "O hell no!!!!" Nice to be asked tho, huh?
And so my final duty to wrap up now is gather up all the Guild membership stuff and hand that over this weekend then I'm almost a free agent. I feel 10 years younger already. At this rate, by this time next month I should be about, oh, 25!!! ROFL!

PS - I almost forgot!!! I hit post number 200! You know what that means, right? A giveaway! Yaaa!!! Leave a comment on this post and I'll draw a name on May 10th, for these cuties:

Good Luck!

Happy Weekend!

2008-04-25T20:57:00.000-07:00

One week down, 4 more to go as a short-timer. **titter**
Remember this little bitty that I thought might be a Spring Swap quiltlet? It measured out at 24 1/2" by 20 1/2 and the original idea was that I'd put some kind of fanciful flowers on the larger rectangular patches.

Once again, a 3 am playdate struck and it might have been something I ate, because I came up with a very "un-like me" idea. You might call it a wild hair - or psychedelic flashback maybe. (I saw a show on the Biography channel about the Monkees - that could explain it!) At any rate, when I came to later that day, look what I found!

ROLF - and I love it! This picture looks darker than it really is, those colors are POPPIN I tell you! And it was a ball to do! Now to quilt it with a bunch of fun crazy threads - metallics and glitters and shiny things. **giggle** it makes me laugh just to look at it. Will my swap partner like it?
I got some quilts loaded into the china cabinet and it does look great - maybe a bit of re-arranging and some more quilts. Neat display case - I love the look.

This is going to be a busy weekend - I have 3 yards of cocoa mulch waiting to spread in my flowerbeds, (smells heavenly!) and final stitches on the Commish, which is STILL hanging over my head. When I am un-employed I will finish all these UFO and make some more. Right? RIGHT??? And sleep till noon and paint the deck and clean out the storage sheds and and and.........

3 Weeks???

2008-04-20T20:04:00.000-07:00

Really? BAD, BAD blogger - gee, what a slacker! Actually, it's been a hairy 3 weeks, and like Mama always said - "If you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all" So I haven't.
Fortunately the cranky has lifted and I'm human again.
I took on an outdoor project last weekend that seemed like an quick easy fun day. It was not.

Love me some adirondack chairs, huh? Sooo comfortable, and big arms to set drinks and pincushions on - they're great. But mine, as you can see, are looking a bit tatty and aged. So in the best tradition of adirondacks I decided to paint them with high gloss enamel in a nice bright color. Like Tijuana Taxi yellow! LOL! Great idea, huh? Don't be fooled, not for a minute. My former standard for comparison for rotten jobs was to say, "I'd rather change the sheets on built-in bunk beds" But now if it's a crummy job and I don't want to do it, I'll say "I'd rather put 6 coats of paint on an adirondack chair" AArrrgghhhh!!!! What a PITA!!!! One coat of primer and 5, count 'em, FIVE coats of paint 'cos that yellow high gloss paint doesn't cover worth a damn! And do you have any idea how many odd angles and nooks and crannies these babies have? I'll tell you --- 8,426.

Good thing it came out looking good because that's the only thing that will get the other one painted. That and the new paint sprayer that I intend to buy before tackling the second one.
In more fun news, WAAAY more fun, check out this picture of my 10 month old grandson Jayden flying high:

How cute is that? I got several great pictures of him in mid-air squealing like crazy - what a blast. Having these guys around makes everything OK, no matter how awful things get. I officially gave my notice at work so now I'm a short timer. My last day there will be May 23rd which is 31 days away. Then I am a free woman till July 1st!!! Can you believe it? Five weeks of not working - wow! All I have to do is survive those last 31 days, and it's going to be rough. Oh well -- I can do it. After that, I won't have any obligations at all because (get this!) I got fired from my position of Membership Chair at guild! LOL!! Too funny - because of my job! Our Prez thinks it would be better served by someone who doesn't have job responsibilities that could interfere with guild duties. Besides, someone else wanted it. Oh well. Worser things have happened and the world still wags and now I don't have to be at guild early to set up and don't have to juggle all those membership forms and stuff. I'm really going to be a freebird!! In the meantime, the Commish is on the quilting table. From this picture what you don't see is the HAPPY BIRTHDAY 2008 in the center square, but otherwise I'm calling this one DONE and you won't see any more of it. And neither will I. I expect it to be in the arms of it's new owner by Weds and good riddance.

As soon as that's gone I can get busy on fun stuff! I have so many huge plans for what I want to do while I'm off work that I really need about 5 months to do it all. Quilt quilt quilt till I drop, for starters! And work out in the yard, and lounge around reading, and lay in bed while DH gets ready for work, whining "Can you turn off that light? I'm trying to sleep in!" ROFL!! I want to clean out all the cuboards and closets and have a yard sale. I want to paint the entire back deck, all 2 acres of it. (no, not Tijuana Taxi yellow!) My former SIL gave me a pool, one of those soft sided things that's 15 feet across and 5 feet deep so I intend to spend an inordinate amount of time submerged. And I plan to go have lunch with friends!!! I've not been able to do that because my lunch "hours" are actually 30 minutes, and that's not enough time to actually leave the building. Now I can! Also, my two granddaughters are already scheming to come spend a few days here so we can make cupcakes and eat them for breakfast. (?!?) I want to make a pond or some kind or water feature near the French doors in our bedroom so we can listen to it at night. I just saw on TV a pond pump that runs on solar power and heaven knows we have a lot of solar in these parts. ***sigh*** This is the Life!

The Commish

2008-03-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

The Commish. That's my new working name for "Where the Weird Things Are" because since I convinced him to rein it back in a bit, I'm not hating it so much. It sure is pink ----

In fact, it's ok. If SOMEONE were to give me a quilt with all my family on it, I might even love it. You can barely see musical notes (instead of the Beatles) in the lower left, and a bouquet of flowers in the upper right. (instead of Hello Kitty) The other corners will have a speedboat and palm trees, respectively, instead of Jeeps. Gram and Gramps are the top trio of pics, from the 1940's and their 50th anniversary. Daughter and son on the sides as babies and now, and on the bottom is Commish guy and his honey, as babies and currently. The center square will say Happy Birthday 2008 in pink, what else? I didn't use that printable fabric because it felt so nasty and it's really expensive! These are done on t-shirt iron-ons, and I'm really really pleased with the way that worked. The pictures came out so much better too! And it's washable, etc..... It really is kind of a cool concept I have to say -- but executed the way he originally wanted it would have been a crime.
You know how when you've eaten too much candy you have to have some bread or meat or something, to cut all the sweet? So all that pink candy made me want some meat --- Bonnie just finished this one and it's one I've wanted to do for quite awhile, with a twist. I've always envisioned it with a more defined 9 patch in the center, so that's the way I'm going with it. Somehow, I doubt I can do mine as fast as Bonnie did!!

Awhile back I told you about the antique china cabinet I scored at the auction. It's from the turn of the 19th century, and still has the original glass! It has a gentle double bow in front, and curved glass on the sides. It's great old glass -- has that slight wavy look to it. I'm going to fill it with quilts and my teacup collection as soon as I cover those wood shelves to protect the quilts.

I'm so tickled with it -- the shelves are even reversable! One side has plate rails and the other side has kind of a carved edge.
So - what do you know about tulips?

What the heck?????? They're miniatures, to say the least! I bought the tallest ones I could find, they're planted in enriched soil and they all got a bit of bonemeal at planting time. I'd be mad if it wasn't so ridiculous -- a whole bed of teeny tiny tulips to tip toe thru!
This post is number 199 -- you know what that means? YEA - next one is #200!!

Oh Noooo!!!!

2008-03-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

Anyone need another distraction? Not enough things in your life to get in the way of sewing? Well, here's the cure for sure: Patchwork Puzzle game.
My apologies in advance for addicting you.
I made it to level 33 - how far will you go?

Happy Easter!

2008-03-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

Comfy? This is a long one -----
I hope everyone is having a wonderful Blessed Easter - I know we are. We were out early this morning to breakfast at church, then a lovely service, then home to slippers and jeans, whoo-hoo! Later today we'll venture all the way across the street where our neighbors put on a HUGE egg hunt complete with giant bunny mascot. Six of our grands will be there and untold dozens of other kids, and it's always so much fun!

I have a favorite Easter gospel song that gives me shivers and makes me cry everytime I hear it. It's called "He's Alive" by Dolly Parton, please check it out. Huge powerful song.
Last time I wrote, Cuervo had been to the vet with a couple of bad teeth. Well, it got worse, way worse. The vet called me early Tuesday morning with very bad news from the blood tests; kidney failure, my worst fear for human or animal. He suggested a short term treatment in case this was an acute process, meaning not permanent. I was to inject 100cc of fluid under the skin 4 times a day, get him on Pepcid and keep him quiet. Well, obviously none of that was going to happen while I was in the midst of moving the clinic, so I had to leave him at the vets till Friday afternoon. He was MUCH better by then, but he's still getting extra fluid.

He's so much better that he's even started to bite me again, in play. He's very good about holding still for his needles and doesn't cuss too much. He's NOT too good about eating, tho - we need to work on that. He's down 3/4 of a pound in a week - very bad. Over all he's SO much better, and I am so thankful. Yesterday I spent most of the day sewing. (After sleeping in till 8 am!! DH thought I wasn't breathing - scared the bejabbers out of him, he really thought I wasn't going to wake up. Yikes!) I worked on the "Where the Weird Things Are" quilt, then had to take a break from all that pink weirdness and made this -

It's clickable for a better look - Cool, huh? I love love love orange, and there's not too many cool ways to use a lot of orange. (Orange cat?) This was in a new mag I got 2 weeks ago and just now had time to look thru -

There's a LOT of fun projects in this one! Usually a magazine has maybe one project I think about; this one has about 6 - check it out!
I have some strange tulip pictures coming up also - I'll post those later. What do you know about growing tulips? Meantime, I better get busy - I want to sew today, and go to the egg hunt party, AND get the house picked up for the house cleaners tomorrow, AND get my laundry done, AND paint my nails. What are my odds?

Bad Karma

2008-03-18T06:42:00.000-07:00

What kinds of things give you bad karma? Well, that's an interesting thought. There's -
Being mean to animals.
Stealing anything.
Telling fables.
Throwing away baby clothes or furniture (!)
HITTING A HIGHWAY PATROL CAR HEAD-ON!!!
Ooops - yea, that could do it.
I had to cut short my thrilling day at work yesterday to take Cuervo to the vet; he was so sick over the weekend that DH started preparing me to lose yet another old friend. Thankfully, the problem turned out to be 2 badly abcessed teeth which the vet said was not uncommon for an 84 year old cat. (84? Seriously??) On the way home I relaxed, took the back roads and did a little mind wandering. Now, back roads in our neck 'o the woods are really back roads. Little traffic, few houses, not much going on. At one point I turned left from a little road onto an even littler road, and at the apex of my turn ran right into a highway patrol car that was whipping out of a really tiny dirt driveway. (What's he doing there?) We both slammed on the brakes so hard we thought we had collided. We both got out, and if we did bump it was indetectable, but it was that close. No damage except to my last raggedy nerve. He knew it was totally his fault, I had the right of way and he was in my lane and he was chagrined. I called no foul but he's obligated to report it just in case I decide later that I'm permanently injured. Besides, they have to account for every minute of their day, and he spent 10 or so talking to me. Probably to make sure I didn't keel over from a heart attack although I have to think his pulse was a tad elevated also!
Maybe that was all part of a bigger plan to prepare me for today - I'm off to the hospital then to the clinic and face the inspection by the state examiner - aka Dragon Lady. If she objects to the WAY we sign off on something, she can ding us for it. "You need to write out your whole name, not just first initial and last name" stuff like that. Here goes nuthin'!

Must be Springtime

2008-03-15T20:29:00.000-07:00

If there are teenaged boys in my yard, it has to be spring! DGS's # 1 and 2 are earning money for a church trip to Mexico in a couple of months, and they're very anxious to do anything that pays. For the next few weeks my yard will look great!

That's 16 yr old Zach on the left and 14 y/o Colton on the right. Those 2 worked most of the day and did all the weeding and cutting and raking there was to do - it looks fantastic!
I've been awfully quiet lately because I'm so exhausted I can hardly move. Work continues to spiral out of control, and now the State has thrown us a curve ball and we're having to deal with that on top of everything else. The mental and physical toll is very wearing. Usually I can pull out of these slumps pretty quickly, but not this time - I'm a whipped pup. I've also been sick - a doozy of a cold which of course takes advantage of tiredness....... I'll be SO thankful when this is all over! In honor of National Quilting day today, I laid around and read quilting magazines, does that count? Last weekend I did manage to get my Spring Swap quilt finished but no pic yet - my camera batteries were dead when I went to take it tonight. Tomorrow, I promise!
DH has been a busy boy in his shop, so I thought I'd share his latest project with you - it's a 1936 Lion Front slot machine, originally made by Mills out of Chicago. Hunny finds old wrecked hulks and restores them to this glory:

Gorgeous, huh? He restores every part of them, from the mechanism to the paint and oak cabinets. When they're done they're a work of art.
Now if only I could get a project finished......I have to shake this off and DO something! I have a huge new pile of Civil War FQ repos I want to play with, and that ghastly comission quilt to get out of my hair. Maybe I'll just plow in and get that thing over with..........Yea, that's what I'll do. Clean up tonight and start cutting tomorrow. Check back and keep me honest!

Show me your -----

2008-02-26T06:39:00.000-08:00

Libby has challenged us all to show our ironing boards. Now just think about this a minute...........In what other society, anywhere on EARTH do people show off their commonest, meanest household items? LOL -- we are a strange breed alright. And not only do we show them off, but we LOVE our ironing boards!! Humble, royal, pristine or grungy, we leave them up all the time and can't get through a day without them. Speaking of grungy.......... don't tell Sharon -- I'm just sayin! So in the spirit of wretched camaraderie, (or soulful sisterhood?) I present my humble ironing table, and it's CURRENT hot occupant:

I made this topper myself, to go over the cabinet that DH made. It's a 2x4 sheet of white laminated shelving with one layer of cotton batt over it, and topped with this heavy cotton duck I got on the clearance table for a couple of bucks. It's been on there for close to 3 years now, and I've taken it off to wash once. Looks like it's about due again, I guess. It's a nice hard surface and seems impervious to abuse. Good thing, considering it's lot in life, eh? And what's that piled up on the left side? Well, there is ALWAYS a stack of fabric there, I don't know how it gets there. This time it's pieces left over from a 2 a.m. play date this morning, looking a lot like a SPRING SWAP wannabe:

The idea is that it will have some sort of appliques in the biggest blocks. Meeybe yes, meeybe no. I see now that the lower right has a serious bigtime problem that's going to prevent it from ever seeing the light of day, but that's how the creative cookie crumbles. Playing with my new toy I finally finished the quilting on the Spools quilt, and the borders look so cool!

That's a King Tut variegated thread and I just love how it pops - something tells me there's a lot of that thread going to show up in my mailbox soon.

I'm off to a comatose day at work - LOL!!! I have to sit all alone in the abandoned clinic waiting for deliveries. Awww, darn it anyway. No phones - they're forwarded to the other place. No fax - it's gone. No visitors - front is all locked up and dark. No patients, no whiny staff, no crazy families. Jes' lil old me and my celly, and what will I do with all that time????

New Toy

2008-02-23T18:02:00.000-08:00

Aren't new toys good for what ails you? You can be so down in the dumps that you can wipe your nose on
your socks without bending over, but get a new toy and suddenly everything is fine!
This is my old toy:

And this is my new toy:

Ahhhh -- you noticed they are remarkably similar, and you're right, they're brothers. (Sisters?) The ruler is there because it looked like the 6600 had less room under the arm, in which case it might have been flying back to the store. It's one heck of an optical illusion, I tell you! I bought the 6500 at PIQF a couple of years ago, and have been very happy with it. Then a vendor at a show told me that the feed dogs on the 6600 actually have one more set of teeth, and it doesn't "eat" so much fabric, i.e. - drag it down the black hole. I have always had problems with that on my 65 but assumed it was me - but it's not!! I couldn't possibly do anything that dumb. Anyway, I started researching and bugging 6600 owners, and finally decided I need to get the 66. What a difference! Lot's more bells and whistles, to be sure, but mostly I love that it's so solid, sounds so smooth like a low purr from a kitty, and is perfectly tuned. I originally picked it because of the BIG space under the arm - I can cram a king quilt under there to quilt - but also because of the overall heavy, solid feel of it. The thing weighs 40 lbs!!! The base is all metal, oh and speaking of that!! The wonderful guy who owns the shop and gave me a little lesson also gave me a fantastic tip. He advises car wax for the deck and surrounding area so when you're quilting, the whole thing will slide like magic. Car wax!!! makes perfect sense - I'm going to try it tomorrow.

After fiddling with it most of the afternoon, here's the first block out of the gate:

It's a liddle-biddle, 6 inches, and I just might make some more. FUN!!! Well, duuhh, it's all fun, that's why we do it! Think I'll go do some more!

Happy Dance!!!

2008-02-22T16:49:00.000-08:00

WHOO-HOOO!!! I'm OUTA there!

I spent 2 hours with my future employer this morning, and we had a great time. She and her DH are just like me, and this is going to be a real good gig. Better hours, better $$, better office, 1/8th the workload and next to nuthin' for stress. Her quote - "This is going to be a cakewalk for you and a godsend for me" She has actually seen me in action over the last 6 months or so and she knows what I can do. It took us a long time to work out the timing, and it looks like it will be sometime in May, and I'm actually going to get about 3 weeks off in between. Three weeks in a ROW! Can you imagine? I never even get 2.... So I still have to face the resignation scene in about a month - aarrghh.... meantime, things look so good. **VVBG**

Last night the guy who wants a 'special' quilt for his girlfriend came over with ideas and holy cow this is going to be AWFUL!

It's not Strawberry Shortcake, it's Hello Kitty.

And Jeeps.

And the Beatles.

And pictures of them together; her baby pics and his baby pics and her mother's pic.

And some kind of Hawaiian colors thrown in to commemorate their vacation.

With a snowy white background.

And lots of pink.

60 x 60 wallhanging to hang over her bed.

Gag a maggot! This guy was all over the place with bizarre color combinations and subject matter -- Jeeps and Hello Kitty? And I tried as tactfully as I could to explain composition and continuity and balance, but he wants what he wants. Oh man -- sometimes I'm dumber than a box of rocks and I'll never do this again. Eeeewwwww....... this is gonna stink.

Tonight my sweetie is taking me out for champagne and tomorrow I get my new Janome - it's gonna be a good weekend! I hope yours is everything you need it to be!

Going for it!

2008-02-20T21:38:00.000-08:00

Right off the bat, let me say a huge THANK YOU for all your support - it's overwhelming to say the least. Reading all those encouraging comments has really made me feel stronger and braver, and so I called the potentials and made an appointment to talk particulars. (meaning $$$$ and benefits, lol!) So Friday morning keep your fingers crossed that we can see eye to eye, because if we do, I will have my resignation letter in my pocket and deliver it that afternoon. To make things worse, my clinical administrator who will be receiving that letter, was talking at lunch today about all the problems we're having. She mentioned one staffer in particular who is having marital difficulties and has missed a lot of work because of being so upset, (!!!) and told me she's just waiting for that person to quit - "That's all we need. I'll just shoot myself" Oh great. Of course that's a figure of speech, but all the same; wait till she hears this. See why the guilt? BUT -- nonetheless, it feels like Springtime and new starts:

And I'm looking for inspiration so pulled these out to put together:

Not springy, but certainly a bright spot, eh? Then I got a call from a guy my DH works with, and he wants to commision a quilt!! My first comission! Yeee-Haawww! He'll be here tomorrow night to brainstorm ideas, but right now he's leaning towards a pink Strawberry Shortcake for his girlfriend.
His 55 year old girlfriend.
Yikes - I thought maybe a granddaughter, and almost choked trying to stifle a laugh when he told me she just LOVES Strawberry Shortcake. ROFLOL! Whatever! He says my DH told him the going rate for a made-to-order handmade quilt is around $500.00 and that didn't faze him in the slightest - even funnier!!! My good ol' Hunny; always watching out for me! Can you imagine??? Hey - at least I didn't have to be in that awkward position of trying to come up with a price.
Ahhh........I'm so hoping for an entirely different life a month from now, one that will allow a LOT more time and energy to do things I enjoy.
Friday morning, cross your fingers!

HELP!!!!

2008-02-18T19:54:00.000-08:00

WARNING - this post has absolutely zero quilt related content!
I'm in a pickle, and I'd like some opinions; it's a complicated scenario. I hold a key position in this dialysis clinic, which is currently in an advanced state of choas because of the need to relocate and make repairs to our own clinic, as well as several resignations which left us understaffed. Within a few weeks that work will be complete and we'll be able to move back, which is will be another 2 weeks of insanity, extremely long hours and very very high stress. Meantime, I have been approached with another job offer, one that I really really want. (better money, fewer hours and about 1/32nd the stress) My personal standards tell me it's not OK to run out while there's so much trouble in the clinic, knowing my absence will be a big blow on top of all the other problems. My potential employers understand and are willing to wait but not indefinately. Add into this mix my wish that I could have 2 or 3 weeks off before starting another job, and suddenly I'm feeling squished. I can see both sides so clearly that I'm paralyzed. My friends and family all say RUN, don't walk, and get out of there fast; and my conscience says "How could you???"
This has been simmering for a couple of months now, and today I got a gentle little nudge from the potentials. I'm so torn -- what the heck should I do???

weekend fun

2008-02-17T19:31:00.000-08:00

There is nothing nothing nothing better than being a Grandma! NOTHING! I thought that about being a Mom, but I really have to give the edge to Gramma-hood. LOL - I am not responsible for vaccinations or diapers or fights at school and I am always treated like royalty -- what could be better? Take this little prince; Nicholas. He's six months old and hasn't seen me since he was 4 months old - one third of his life, right?

Yet, when his Mama came to hand him to me, he put out his arms and dove into me - and immediately grabbed 2 little fistfuls of my skin and hair and tried his best to eat my face, squealing the whole time. Now that's a welcome!! And a wet one too, I might add. He was equally excited to see his cousin Madeline -

but she wasn't having any of the hair pulling so she held his hands, LOL! Smart girl! Too much fun, I tell you.
My other fun was buying a new sewing machine, WHOO-HOO!! I have the Janome 6500 that I bought just a couple of months before the 6600 came out, and that was fine, until I learned some things about the 6600 that made me decide to step up. So I wandered into the dealer and said "I want that" and they sputtered, "don't you want a demo?" "Nope - wrap it up please" Well, it doesn't work that way. They have to bring it in from the warehouse, and do a "test & tune" on it so I won't get it till next weekend, which means another trip South. Oh well........ Madeline was with me and when the shop owner asked her if she knows how to sew, she patiently explained, "Well, not exactly. You see, I'm only 4 years old" Really? Because she speaks like she's 40!!!! We went to Starbucks where ordering a cup of coffee is an exercise in adjectives, and Lil Miss can order her own "grande milk froth with an ad shot of vanilla", followed by her mothers huge 24 word order that I won't even try to repeat. Finally I asked for a plain, medium, mild, no-frills, straight cup of regular black coffee. After a long pause, the girl said "huh?" Geeeeesh..... and that's why I'm not a big Starbucks fan.
My least fun of the weekend was a horrible fingernail accident - while trying to buckle Madeline's carseat into my truck, something slipped, jammed my hand and bent my nail all the way back, and tore it off just slightly north of the end of the nailbed. Tore. It. Off. Remember I told you I'm clumsy? So tonight I'm nursing a throbbing finger and need to go cuddle up to an ice pack. It will be better by Saturday, right?

Sleepless nights and other weird things

2008-02-15T17:24:00.000-08:00

So what do we do when we can't sleep? We play, same as we did when we were 4 and not taking a nap when we were supposed to be. Right? So in my sleeplessness the other night, I played with EQ and made a dozen quilts. So far, this one is my favorite, and might actually get made, since I still have that blue wedding quilt to produce.

This was inspired by Judys' Quilt for an Hour project from Oct '06 - I still want to make that one! I love how you can't exactly tell where the block is.... My idea is that this would have 86 different blues, and be called "Moody Blue". Not too original, but what do you want for 3 am?

One of the things Hunny and I like to do is haunt antique stores and estate sales and auctions. He collects old slot machines, and I pick up ancient sewing stuff, of course. A couple of years ago, this little gem was in a box lot I scored at an auction -

They must be 45 years old, do you think?? And guess what? They really do cut everything, and cut GOOD! They've been forgotten in a box until I unearthed them during the Great Stash Purge, and I used them the other day - what fun! They even have the original users manual, complete with a Lifetime Warranty. Can you imagine if I sent them back? Wonder if the company still even exists?

Mar, at Pincushion Diaries, tagged me for the 7 weird things challenge. I think everyone has already been tagged, so I'll let the tagging peter out, but I had to think long and hard about my 7 things. Not to come up with that many, but to eliminate 93 and ONLY share 7!! LOL - I am 100% weird! So here goes the "safest" of my weirdness:

1) I am the clumsiest person on Earth. I cannot cross a room without knocking something over or breaking a nail. This is a familial trait shared with my youngest brother. We have both been offered personalized parking at Emergency Rooms all over California.

2) I am also the un-luckiest person around, meaning in games or contests. I do not gamble unless I have a set amount I care to give away. I have never won a drawing or coin toss or drawn the long straw. My SIL on the other hand, can win a thousand bucks just by walking in a casino door. You know the type.

3)I haven't seen a movie in a theater since Titanic, and the one before that was Saturday Night Fever. I don't sit still well enough and there's that short attention span problem.

4) I have Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. So does my Mom, and my youngest son. I twitch when I have to sit still. Some part of my anatomy is ALWAYS moving.

5) This is a hard one to admit. I don't really love chocolate. It's OK, but I prefer fruit flavors or licorice. Now, don't write me off!! Look at it this way - there's more for you!

6) I have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

7) My eyes are very light brown, and when I was younger they were gold. OK they were actually orange but gold sounds a little less like I am a space alien.

I think that's all the weirdness you can handle for now. Tomorrow I get to travel down to visit my kids and grands that I haven't seen since Christmas. My daughter never tells her 4 year old daughter that I'm coming, because she gets a little too wound up, so she hears about it when I'm in their parking lot. She and I have one of those special close bonds, and she "knows" things. Last night they were watching TV and suddenly Madeline said, out of nowhere, "I wonder if my Gramma is missing me?" Yep, Baby - I am missing you.

Have a great weekend!

It takes all Hearts

2008-02-14T18:09:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentines Day! This is my only heart quilt, made last year and I still like it - I have a big potato baking in the oven and a filet marinating in a bag for my Sweethearts dinner, along with a renewed sense of thankfulness for him.

Yesterday we had a patient go into full cardiac arrest and die in our clinic, a very rare event. In my many years in dialysis clinics, this is only the second time I've seen it - usually if they develop symptoms we have a chance to get them to the hospital emergency room. Not this time. And as we shocked her and the EMTs did CPR, her husband stood a couple of feet away, frozen. No expression. After she had been taken away, the husband came to talk to me - about MY husband! Seems they had known each other for many years back, when they were both young deputies in the Sheriffs Department. He chatted sociably for long minutes, while inside my head I was yelling at him - "DUDE!!! Your wife just DIED!!!" Finally he turned to go, picking up her bag and purse. He looked at me again and shook his head - "I guess I should have given her her Valentines present early, I got her a string of pearls, she loves pearls." And he left. And we all cried. And I came home and gave my Hunny his present, early. I hope you and everyone you love celebrate each day you have together, and realize it only takes a couple of swift seconds to make us say "I wish I had......."

Swap Surprise!!

2008-02-11T19:47:00.000-08:00

Whoo-hooo -- I'm doing the Happy Dance tonight! My Winter swap quilt came, and I love it! My swap partner Darlene from Quilting Daze made it and I'm so tickled with it, I can't even tell you. I can never remember what this pattern is called, but it's always captivated me -

I love the graphicness of it - (is that a word?) and the illusion, the color play. And the snow men are too adorable, and the bright colors are right up my alley. Now here's the funny part. I'm a regular lurker over on the Surface of the Sun without doing too much commenting. (blush) A week or so ago, she showed this darling set of shelf sitters that had just arrived in her mail from Collections, Etc and I fell madly in love, just HAD to have 'em. I clicked on her link and ordered them immediately.

Are you ready for this? They arrived in todays mail, along with Darlene's little quilt! I just think that's so COSMIC!!! ROFL - I had no idea she was making me a quilt! Darlene -- THANK YOU!!!! You've made my day!

A little bit O spring

2008-02-10T18:17:00.000-08:00

We've had a most SPLENDID weekend! The weather hung around in the low 70's, with a teeny whisper of breeze, and it felt like a warm spring day. I played outside most of the day and have a bit of a rosy glow about me, and these gorgeous shots:

The first daffys of the year -- whoo-hooo! I have a hundred more that are little yellow buds, and another hundred that are just a few inches up, so I'll have daffys for quite awhile **VBG**
Today was the first day that I've been human for awhile - I fought with that ear infection for a week or so, and just as that was cleared up I got a case of labrynthitis -- dizziness. Almost certainly related to the ear, and certainly enough to knock down a horse! So that feeling human jazz was terrific - I couldn't sit still! I finagled Hunny into helping me (read that - DOING IT HIMSELF- LOL!!) finally install the dryer vent hose to the outside. Our washer/dryer set up is very very strange, the former owners had them outside on the back porch and until I decide where I want them to be, they're OK there. We never did get around to hooking up the vent hose tho, so that porch got really hot and really linty, but NO MORE! Hunny sure growls a lot when I get good ideas. Hmmm... I don't understand. I found a nest of chickens eggs behind the dryer - how redneck is that???? My chickens have the run of the yard for now, and I guess we had a bit too much rain for them. ROFL! Not as bad as the time DH left the outside door to his office open and they laid an egg on his filthy desk! And he discovered it when the Captain of the squad stopped by and they went into the office! Oh man, I laughed myself sick, and the captain is still telling that story.

I did play inside a bit today - and mostly I hunted around online for an iron. Yes, my saga of the irons continues. You'll recall that the $130.00 "professional model" that DH bought for me without any begging on my part (no, really!!) turns out to be SO HOT that I can set it on the fabric and go read a few blogs. So Leslie brought by this oldie but goodie, and that sucker will scorch if I so much as draw breath while I'm using it. Now that's what I'm talkin' about!!! She found this at a yard sale for $5 - and she and her DH cleaned it all up and it's good. I've been using it for a few weeks now and it's so hot, I just giggle. I know, simple things for simple minds. Anyhow - my only complaint is that it doesn't have the shot of steam, nor does the spray work, and those are both tools that I use a lot so I want to find something similar. To date, I have purchased 3 brand new irons and they've all gone back to the store. e-bay is a disappointment so far, but the search will go on!
I spent a fair amount of time today sitting in the sun in my adirondack chair, working on dollys and clothes; you realize I have the attention span of a 2 year old? Maybe not that good........hey, I bet that's why all the grands like me! Oh no, wait, maybe it's the chocolate chip cookies. But I digress.

Here are 3 of the femme fatales that are currently hanging around my room. There's a few more in various stages, including a couple of slightly disturbing scenes. The gal on the left is wearing a FQ so she won't be caught 'nekkid', and the one in the middle is an original, made by Nicole Ellison. On the right is my dirty-faced girl, LOL! my first attempt at coffee staining. Oh man, they have to come out better than that!!! Now for the slightly disturbing shots:

ROFL!! Really only one leg had fallen just about there, but I couldn't resist.

This dismembered, bald sweetie is laying right where I set her down, waiting patiently to be given arms and legs and hair and all that good stuff. Gee, I hope my attention span doesn't flit off somewhere else before that happens! She could be lying there staring at me for months!

So now on to the mundane Sunday night tasks: close the time clock, paint the nails, prepare for the cleaning ladies tomorrow - my favorite day of the week!! I hope your weekend was a good one - I better go see what you're up to, just in case.

It was a dark and stormy night.....

2008-02-05T20:53:00.000-08:00

Picture it -- February 5th, 1972. And it really was a dark and stormy night . My mother drove me and my husband to the hospital, and as we pulled into the parking lot I changed my mind. "Nope, I don't want to. It's going to hurt, there's no other way to get this kid out, right?" My Mom shrugged and said, OK - and she turned around. We made a few laps around the hospital while Hubby about wet his pants and came unglued. Finally I relented, and they took me in. This was the Bad Old Days of childbirth - no epidurals, and of course no one in the delivery room. Certain husbands were allowed in if they had completed six months of that new Lamaze thing, AND had a note from the doctor!! Honest! Well, my 17 yr. old husband certainly was no candidate for any delivery room, and Grandmas didn't count so I was on my own. There was a lot they didn't explain back then - like EVERYTHING. Eventually they did give me what was called a "saddle-block" that made everything numb from the waist down - then they yelled at me to push. Push what? I thought they were crazy, and they finally had to clamp on forcepts and yank him out - all 9lbs, 6 oz, 23 inches of him, but while I was aghast at how tiny he was, they all flipped out at how big. Perspective is a funny thing, huh? We both survived this adventure, not much worse for wear. He had bruises on his head for a week, and I had twice daily dressing changes - unbeknownst to anyone including me, I had been scratching my right thigh the whole time, and it was a shredded, bloody mess. Oh yea - my wrists were restrained, strapped to the bed or something, and my thigh was the only thing I could touch but couldn't feel. Thank God and medicine that those bad old days are history.

That young man and I grew up together and to my delight he finally had a child of his own this year. I sent him a dozen text messages throughout the day today, giving him bits of family trivia about the magic age of 36. Like how when I was his age, he was in college. How his Grandma was 36 when he was born. When I was 36, I adopted my current cat, Cuervo. LOL -- that was when he called me back - "WHAT???" yes, the same cat Cuervo. "You've had that cat since you were MY age???" LOL!! True! Suddenly stunned silence..........then my baby boys voice - "Does this mean I'm old?"
Yes Dear.
"So if I'm middle aged, that makes you............"
DON'T EVEN GO THERE!!!!
It's an amazing, wonderful gift, these kids. Even though I had no business having a baby at that age, I never considered any alternative. He's been my joy & delight, my rock, my teacher and my student and now we're very close friends. As time goes on, what short little age gap there once was is all evened out, and now we're about the same, I think. God knew what He was doing, as always, to entrust me with an angel. The snot-nosed teenager disappeared overnight and I blossomed into Steve's Mom, and it was the BEST thing to ever happen to me!! Happy Birthday, Booper!

New Project!

2008-01-30T06:22:00.000-08:00

Ain't she cuuute???

I bought a pattern from Nicole over at Raggedy Old Annies, and spent 2 evenings after work putting her together. OK - two evenings till way after bedtime, but hey -- it was too hard to stop! Suddenly there's another order in over there -- uh-oh, this could be habit forming!! All for the economy you know, every little bit helps. Now, Rosie, Leslie and Louise -- you three forget you ever saw her! She's coming to guild on Saturday!

Saving American Economy

2008-01-26T15:17:00.000-08:00

Kim over at Kim's Big Quilting Adventure pointed out that since the Fabric Diet has hit, our national economy is really suffering. Now this may just be coincidence, but we shouldn't take chances. If we can save the American dollar, it is our civil duty to help in every way we can. I pledged my support, and kicked off my campaign today. Here's my humble contribution for this weekend:

Start easy now, especially if you've been dieting long. A few fat quarters is a good first step. These are for a fun new project I'm going to tackle.

Uh-oh - this might give away my fun new project! I bet you can guess!!

Our local fabric shack had a huge table of mostly odd bolts, but everything was $1 or $2 - that's kind of like a government rebate!! These blues will be backings - and maybe more because they're 9 yards each.

Some other oddments from the markdown table - there seems to be more lime green making it's way into my little room lately. I wonder if somethings up? The froggies go to my stash of froggy fabric -- you do realize that I am in fact, a frog, right?

OK - I didn't buy these today but they were delivered today. Essentials thread from Connecting Threads. I like it for quilting because it's got a lot more heft to it than the Masterpiece I use for piecing. And you can't beat the price for BIG spools!

The store was clearing out Porcion fabric dyes too -- for just $2 a jar, so I did my duty.

Finally, I didn't buy this today, but I have to give it a big plug. I bought it with Christmas gift certificates, almost as a toy gimmicky thing. It's fantastic! This winds bobbins a good bit tighter than my sewing machine does, so lots more thread goes on, and it's faster too. And cute, don't forget cute.

Tonight we're off to a retirement dinner for one of the officers in Hunnys old squad - remember what I told you about cops parties? My mission is to get Lieutenant Wayne a little, um, lit up. They always roast the poor retiree, and everyone tells the most raucous stories about him. Hunny has one about him having to use force on a suspect, and actually putting a huge bend in one of those big MagLight flashlights. You know the 4 lb. kind, 2 feet long? Yea -- well, while the suspect took a nap on the side of the road, our honoree tried his best to unbend the flashlight to no avail. It ended up in an evidence locker where it languished for the next 13 years until Hunny liberated it and will present it along with his story tonight. I promise you, it will get the biggest laugh of the night!

Snowflakes

2008-01-21T20:52:00.000-08:00

That terrific snowflake pattern is in the Nov/Dec '03 issue of Quiltmaker - that I found quite by accident under my bed. Ahem.....along with about 30 others......and NO they haven't been there since '03!

Here's the whole quilt -

Yea, knock your socks off! I only made the one block, and it's pretty good size. As shown the quilt finishes at 65 x 75, and the magazine rates it as "Easy" which it is if you can pay attention and know how to paper piece. Me - not so much. I have the attention span of a 2 year old, but I'm going to take another whack at it.

I promised you links to some great shopping, and really I can give them all to you in one click: Check This Out. This was new to me and I might be the last one on earth to find it, but hey - it's a great resource! 590 online shops, and they give a thumbnail review of each one. HOURS of shopping enjoyment, and no $$ for gas, LOL!
We were promised snow and I'm waiting at the window, but nothing yet here. Over where I work it snowed and rained most of the day without sticking, so I still have hopes for tonight. It's a big novelty here, and I'm sorry that so many are having such troubles with it. Too bad we couldn't have a more equatable distribution of weather! Anyway - I have to get back to my window now - watch me fall asleep and freeze to the glass -- hee hee.....

Snow on my table???

2008-01-20T19:53:00.000-08:00

Going around BlogWorld, I'm seeing a lot of work spaces, which is so cool! I love seeing how and where creative minds function. The idea is to name 15 things on your table - well, gee......I don't think I have 15 things that everyone else doesn't have. My space is cleaner sometimes than others; this picture was Friday:

Today it's all cleaned off, sparkling and ready for action, but sometimes I'm lucky if I can find 6 inches of cutting mat space! I had friends over for a sew-day yesterday, and it had to be presentable as well as accessible for anyone to use. We had a wonderful, easy, healing day, and even if not a whole lot got accomplished, we all came away happy. We do pot lucks, and this time we had a variety of soups and salads and cookies! Yummo -- great minds think alike! I worked like a maniac on my new Winter Quilt Swap, because I fell out of love with the 9-patch I made earlier. Somehow that one seemed too plain after I've seen some of the other ones - what a bunch of talent out there!! So, feeling a bit under-accomplished, I found a paper-pieced snowflake, in a few different versions:

I tried it 2 ways, and decided on one.

Since I only got 4 of the triangle units done on Saturday, I had to hustle today, because I was sure it had to be in the mail and I was late! Aaarrggg!!! But today is my "busy" day of the weekend - all the laundry and house/yard projects, in addition to my weekly "in touch" phone calls with friends and family - Sunday's a busy day. But, nose to the grindstone, and I just barely got it done as NY finished whuppin' Green Bay -
and it's a mess:

Most of the paper pattern wasn't supposed to match up, that was intentional. But where it was FOR SURE supposed to meet neatly, it didn't! ***sigh*** so much for haste. Everything that can go wrong did - broke a needle, sewed things backwards and out of order, 100 interruptions, the iron left dark marks on the white pieces, corner pieced stretched -- you get the picture. At least I like the quilting. Then I logon to read blogs and try to relax a bit, and find out that it doesn't have to be in the mail till the 30th!!! YaHooo!!! I have plenty of time to rebuild it!!! Ahhh...... now I can go to bed and relax............. smiling............

More fabric goodies....

2008-01-17T19:33:00.000-08:00

Ooooo--- love these blues! This box of yummies came from Thousand of Bolts: blues blues blues!

We have some friends getting married after a 35 year courtship - really! They painted their bedroom 4 shades of blue so I took the hint and dreamed up a blue quilt for them. These together with some darks I already have should do the trick. Meantime, I'm still trying to get this little quilt quilted, and suffering the slings and arrows of broken threads, again and again and again. Grrr.......

This morning my commute took 40 minutes instead of 30 because I shared the single lane in my direction with only 4 other vehicles, all the way. HOWEVER - each of those 4 wanted to go 45 mph!!! I'd get past one, and pretty soon come up on another. It's a beautiful ride in the morning, a 2-lane road past lakes and hills and rock formations - so nice. The fact that the commute traffic is all going the other direction is nice too! In 35 miles I might only share my lane with 4 or maybe 5 others. Very Nice...... except when they're crawling!! The drive is hard on my back though, and it's gaining on me. (the drive to my own clinic takes 10 minutes) When I got to work I mentioned that I may not make it all day, and just then someone came in and told me the air quality guys needed me at our own clinic, 38 miles back the way I just came. Groan..... OK, I for sure am not coming back - So, without even a cup of coffee I turn around and go all the way back. By the time I get to the clinic I've been sitting driving for over an hour, and just about frozen into a bent shape, like a 95 year old lady. The guy looked around, took a couple of pictures, didn't like what he saw and told me he'd have to come back, that it wasn't ready to test. AAArrrrggghhhh!!!! 5 minutes, all done. Hey Buddy, wanna see my fabric stash?

ROFLOL - - just kidding! My friend Leslie was here the other day, and 2 other friends popped by later, and all three of them tried hard not to stare, and didn't say a word. Hee hee -- actually, that and my beautiful Colt .45 in the wooden case next to it are in here because we have a "questionable" nephew that we see infrequently, like every 3 or 4 years, and when he comes over we hide anything valuable or sellable. Sad, but true. I've just been too lazy to put them back.
My nights of web shopping has led me to some "new" sites with great prices. I'll put together a list and post them to share. There's quite a few places with fabric selling for $5 and less, even 2 and 3. I still have a couple of boxes out there someplace to be delivered, and I'm not quite sure I remember what's in them! That makes it kind of a surprise present, doesn't it? Whoo-hoo!!
Saturday I get a sew day, I can hardly wait! A few friends will all come over here and we'll set up big tables and you know the rest. It will be so fun! I'll get my winter 4 season swap quilt done, then into the mail on Monday. Now, I'm going to catch up on bloggin -- see you in the funny papers!

Lazy Sundays

2008-01-13T15:37:00.000-08:00

It feels like a lazy day but I'm sure not gettin' any of that! We have a very nice sunny mellow day, and even with lots to do it just feels like a slow moving day. I've been trying to straighten a house that hasn't been straightened for a month - LOL! Laundry, etc -- all that jazz. Pot of homemade minestrone on the stove and I've got the little spools quilt in my machine getting quilted. Only the thread keeps breaking sooooo --- time out for temper control. In the meantime, I promised to show you my bounty from my midnight
web-raids. Only three boxes have arrived so far, and there's more on the way. FUN!! First up - a Collection:

I'm not usually a collector of collections, I'm way too casual and I like to make up my own rainbows, but this one really spoke to me. The colors are so gentle and sweet and maybe I just needed some of that. At any rate, it's called "Spoonfuls" for Heavens sake; WHY "Spoonfuls"???? What do these lovely soft colors have to do with anything remotely connected to spoons? LOL -- maybe they ran out of names?
This next stack came from Tennessee Quilts and more accurately reflects how I usually choose fabrics:

Little bit of this and a little of that -- By now you know I'm not on any fabric diet whatsoever! I'm an unabashed and unapologetic consumer of beautiful fabrics now when the money is there, because I can see that someday maybe it won't be so easy to feed the quilting bug. Never knew bugs could eat so much, eh?
So having told you I don't do collections, here's another one! Not just a collection, but a MODA collection which is something else I don't do!

Yea yea - it's Holly Jolly, and I know I'm running behind the curve. Oh well, I still like it. The other prints are on their way, because I rounded them up from multiple sites. Most of them are on clearance too!

Our oldest DS (Daddy to the herd of grands next door) will be here shortly to discuss bathroom renovations. He owns a wildly successful contracting business, and finally has a bit of time to squeeze us in. LOL -- he thinks all I want is a new shower, boy is he in for a surprise! The whole thing needs to be gutted and put back together right. All new. PLUS I want about 3 solar tubes for the kitchen and bedroom, and a bigger kitchen window, and new countertops, and reface the fireplace........ if you see a tall good looking blonde man running down your street, kick him back, OK?

Survival of the Fittest!!

2008-01-12T15:27:00.000-08:00

I made it. We got the clinic all moved, the patients "kind of" settled in, and the worst of the storm is over. It required a long string of 7am - 8pm (or worse!) with not much in the way of breaks. And life in a clinic like ours moves at break-neck speed; meaning frantic. Things have to happen RIGHT NOW and when 12 of those thingts hit at once it's tough. When you have 4 of those things every 10 minutes for hours on end - it's worse than tough. One day I wolfed my lunch while standing in the hall listening to another litany of problems, like - "we don't have any 1.5cc syringes" and "can you get us better chux than these?" and "I'm missing 6 hours on my timecard" When one young guy asked me if I would go over his job review with him, (which was a month ago!!) I barked at him. I apologised later, but jeeez -- I hope I never live thru that again. I did get a new project started and to the flimsy stage, and I'd like to quilt it tomorrow. Just a fun scrappy one that looks like it should hang in my sewing room:

And at 3 am a couple of days ago, I made a set of coasters for a friend who likes raspberries and bananas with cream -- I'm going to give them to her tonight.

I have high hopes for tomorrow -- and my promise to myself is if I get that top quilted I can start another one. I'll also come back tomorow and show you what happens when I can't sleep and I'm worried and upset -- I indulge in on-line fabric therapy! TONS of it -- LOL -- the boxes have been coming for 3 days now, and there's still a few more out there. Wait till you see!!
Finally, here's my "Awwwww" for the day. This is my DGD#1 and her baby brother DGS#1 - and they adore each other!

There's nothing quite like a big wet slobbery kiss from a 6 month old!

Saturday Blues

2008-01-05T08:42:00.000-08:00

It's Saturday morning, and here I sit at my desk. At work. Due to a corporate oversite, all my careful planning and timing to facilitate our clinic's big move was shot to bits this past week, forcing me to work the weekend in order to have everything ready by Tuesday, moving day. I'm waiting here for word that "someone" has done what needs to be done, and I can jump in and begin a long tedious task of data entry and order entry for 72 patients, at about 40 minutes per patient. And while I'm sitting here with a bad attitude, my guild is hosting Joe the Quilter!!! Joe Cunningham will be doing a trunk show and musical bit this morning, and I AM NOT THERE. I'm so ticked that here's how I parked this morning:

OK, not really. I saw this at a dealership and laughed like crazy! You have to know every teen aged boy in the universe would give his eyeteeth to do that!
There's not much to do here while I wait for the phone to ring. My whole office is packed up and in my car, including the centerpiece, "My Kingdom for a Frog"

The patients love this quilt, and I'm going to hang it prominently in the new clinic to help them feel at home. I also printed new 4x6 pictures of everyone and bought 7 yards of fabric (with my corporate credit card, how fun was that????) which I'll cover a wall with, then tack everyone's picture up so the first time they come in, they'll see themselves. So now all I can do is wait. **sigh**
We were hit with a vicious storm yesterday that caused all kinds of chaos and dumped about 4 1/2 inches of rain on us. My horses pasture is behind our backyard and slightly higher because we are at the bottom of a hill. Drainage is problematic here anyway and the horses built a dam of, ummm, horsie byproduct across a swale that's supposed to divert runoff. Well, the runoff was diverted away from the diversion and right into my yard, where it pooled up, became a river and ran thru our carport and garage/shop. The water was about 8 inches deep when I left for work yesterday morning, and it rained all day so now it's a real mess. We fared very well tho, compared to the incredible damage I've been watching on the news! We went to friends last night and drove by our dry lake/reservoir; even tho it was dark, I could see enough of a reflection to see that there's finally some water in the lake, hurrah! We've been on mandatory water rationing for a couple of months because that lake was down to 25% of capacity and in danger of dropping below the level of our water company's intake. So - glad to see the water, but did it have to all come in 24 hours?
Speaking of the night out - we played pinochle with our usual card buddies, and to soothe my final ragged nerve from the past crummy weeks, I let loose and downed an entire bottle of champagne all by myself, oh yes I did!! DH was my designated driver, and our friends who have never seen me have so much as one glass of wine were highly entertained, and didn't mind that I played with abandon and beat them handily. LOL - I had a great time! A little less than great when the alarm went off at 5 this morning, but showered and dressed and well into a pot of coffee in my office and I'm all good. ***VBG***
Well, a bored supervisor is supposed to be a menace so while I'm waiting I guess I'll go wander around and make sure that everyone has done what they're supposed to do to prepare for moving day. Cross your fingers I get that call soon, or I'll be here all night too!

It's a New Year

2008-01-01T21:22:00.000-08:00

Long time no see! I hope your holidays were the best; it looks like it, judging from the blogs I've been slowly catching up on. We had our entire family here for Christmas, 14 adults and 10 grands. Of the grands, 6 are DH's and 4 are mine, but we are each the only Gramma/Grampa that they have all known - does that make sense? I managed to get a pic of my 4, which are the youngest of the tribe. The others are too slippery and can run away so I didn't get my giant group picture I was hoping for. These festive little elves are (left to right) 6 month old Jayden and his big sister Meghan age 7; 4 yr old Madeline and the newest squirt 4 month old Nicholas. What a blast to have a baby Christmas!

There was enough babies to go around, even tho I was a bit of a baby hog. These two are delighted with each other, it was hilarious. All my kids and spouses lined up with cameras to get pictures of Gramma with 2 babies, and suddenly I knew how Britney feels - man! That was a lot of flashes going off in my face!

DS#2 was so totally blown away and so happy with his quilt that I felt a bit bad that I hadn't made him one before now and the one I did make was really really simple. However, common sense overtook me again and the reasons haven't changed. If he needs something to pad the side of his 4-wheeler in the back of his truck and the quilt is handy, he won't hesitate to wad it up and use it to protect his muddy ATV. Really!

As wonderful as Christmas was, the rest of the year went sour for me personally and the New Year hasn't kicked off any better. In addition to my clinic's Big Move (which is next week) I had something horrible happen that sent me straight to the depths of rottenness, and for the past week I've been holed up in my room licking my wounds. And eating cookies for dinner. My good buddy Leslie gently goaded me out of the house today for a sew-day and that has really helped. I have another new project underway and of course that always helps. So today looks a bit brighter, and for the next 8 days I'll be spinning at Mach 4 with my hair on fire and that will help also. Catching up on all your blogs is also a great help! Thank you for your wonderful entries and peeks into lives so similar and so different. I can't tell you how good it feels to know you're out there, my invisible friends, lol! Happy New Year!

2007-12-25T11:11:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas

Wishing you the best of everything this Day has to offer - Rejoice that He is born, and hold all your family close.

Cranberry Hootycreeks

2007-12-19T06:08:00.000-08:00

I tried these for the first time about 5 years ago, and now my kids refuse to come for Christmas unless I have several batches ready. Insanely good!!!
(and the litle kids giggle when they say the name)

Cranberry Hootycreeks
makes 32 cookies

INGREDIENTS:
1 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup chopped pecans
DIRECTIONS:1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a cookie sheet or line with parchment paper. 2. In a medium bowl, beat together 1/2 cup softened butter, 1 egg and 1 teaspoon of vanilla until fluffy. Add the ingredients, and mix together by hand until well blended. Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets. 3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until edges start to brown. Cool on baking sheets, or remove to cool on wire racks.

The Un-Christmas Quilt

2007-12-16T11:24:00.000-08:00

Have you ever made a quilt you dislike for someone you DO like? Well, here's my current one:

I've been calling it the Anti-Christmas quilt - look a bit closer:

Not your typical Christamas fabric, eh?
My DS#2, (who lives a lifestyle I can't understand) asked me last week - "I don't supposed you're giving me a quilt for Christmas? You haven't made me a quilt since I was 2"
Dang.
Guess I better give the gift card to someone else and get my fanny in gear!!
So I pulled out this dreadful tattoo fabric I found last year and whipped up the magic 9-patch. Call it a combination of no time, and knowing what kind of trials lay ahead for this quilt, it had to be quick and easy. But not look like it. I only had 2 yards of the tattoo stuff, and ran short on the borders, can you tell?? LOL That's how funny creative ideas are born. I pieced out the borders and made the body kind of cross into the border and viola! All I have left is 1 strip 2 x 42 and four trims of 1x6. GONE!!!! Whoo-oo! Now, I have to whip this puppy back into the machine and quilt the daylights out of it and wrap it.
Later on I'll find my recipe for the Best Cookie in the free world, and post that for you - "Cranberry Hootycreeks"

4 Season Doll Quilt Swap

2007-12-14T09:18:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about my 4 Season swap quilt for awhile, trying to trust that an idea would come up and hit me upside the head. And so it did yesterday - right in the middle of a strategy meeting with our medical director! So last night, quick like a bunny, I roughed out my plan.

I want to put appliques of winter things in the setting squares, like the skates or snowmen or big snowflakes, something like that. These fabrics sure say 'WINTER' to me - can you see the sleet in the lighter fabric? Pretty - very icy.

Now I have another idea floating around -- I might just knock that one out today because I am home sick. That's right, Christmas, work trauma, deadlines, etc etc so probably being sick will make it all better??? Aaarrgghhh!!!!

Peter Fonda selling his chopper?

2007-12-12T15:41:00.000-08:00

You must see this!!!! SOOO funny!

Aging boomers Unite!

Tea Parties and Surprises!

2007-12-12T06:57:00.000-08:00

Our mini group has an annual Christmas Tea Party, featuring delicate little sandwiches and finger-nibblers and of course tea! Hats are required, as are lifted pinkies, and there's always a great Show and Tell. Last night was The Night and as usual was a delightful evening.

Chari and Evette at table, the most willing to have their pictures taken. Actually I did take more pictures but I'm still on the lower end of my new toys learning curve, and I'm very unhappy so far with my results.

Judy is making this beauty for the daughter of a friend; pictures on every block of stages of her life thru high school graduation. Very striking! The she showed us her latest in her adventures in machine quilting, awesome! You should be able to click and see these amazing feathered hearts she did FREEHAND - no marking beyond just the heart outline.

Finally, I'm quite sure these are the first daffodils in the Western Hemisphere - can you believe this??? They're 2 inches tall now - amazing. Poor confused little things!

Finally, on the work front, in the midst of our moving nightmare, 2 of the patient care techs have quit. While I won't be sad to see this particular pair go, it makes it incredibly difficult for the rest of us, and will upset the patients even more. Pretty lousy behavior. I took our social worker and dietitian over to our new clinic yesterday, and it takes all of 35 minutes to drive; they were happily surprised, being prepared to drive an hour, so their outlook on the move has brightened considerably which sure helps mine! It's nice to have folks on board when there's something yucky but unavoidable to do. Just make the best and GET ON WITH IT!!!

Let the Christmas Crazies Begin!

2007-12-09T20:57:00.000-08:00

Well, 2 of the Seasons' parties are behind me now, **big sigh**. The one I have always looked forward to and always had the most fun at was last night, my DH's old squad party. If you ever get an invite to a cops party, GO. If you don't get an invite, find a cop and BEG. I'm tellin' ya, they party the hardest and have the most fun. The gift exchange begins with gag/white elephant or "good stuff", nothing expensive. Each gift can be stolen by someone else 2 times, then it's dead, and that leads to the most raucous time you can imagine. Some of the gifts are a little, ummmm, questionable, and that makes for even more hilarity. My face always hurts for a week from laughing, and we're both hoarse. (And just a little bit hungover, but it's deserved) My lip is a bit draggy today tho, because my handmade gift of placemats and coasters was tossed aside by the newest guy, a kid that looks way too young to be a cop. I hope he re-gifts it to someone who will like it. Oh, pictures? Ummmmm...sorry, didn't take any. Of the placemat/coaster set, nor of the party - cameras are not allowed at the parties. Can you say EVIDENCE? LOL -- there'll be none of that. I have been playing with my new toy tho. This is my first "overlay" image - layering one image on top of another:

Fun, but as my DS pointed out, this one is just a little creepy. He suggests that the younger kids might be a bit freaked out by Santa staring out from the depths of the tree, especially this Santa which is a bit odd anyway. LOL -- hey, it's a new trick! OK, I've also taken 99 pictures of Cuervo, who put up with 2 of them then curled up and went into active "IGNORE" mode. He's not asleep -- by a long shot.

He's telling me - "Not one more, Sista - you got enough. Yaaawwwnnn -- I can't hear you, can't see you and I can't open my eyes, See? I'm sleeping - GO AWAY!" Can you tell he's squeezing his eyes shut like a little kid faking sleep? LMAO!!!

Moving Day at work is now just 3 weeks away, and the stress is building. I'm in for some 7-day weeks, and lots of 15 hour days. Our patients are scared, angry and upset and no one can blame them; all we can do is be supportive and positive. I arranged to have a barbershop quartet come in to sing for the patients, and yesterday got a call from the manager of the group telling me there would be no charge! NONE. Can you say, "Spirit of Christmas?" **VVBS**

Early Christmas!

2007-12-05T21:45:00.000-08:00

Omigoshomigoshomigosh!!!
Hunny and I went out to dinner tonight and he presented me with my Christmas present! I protested, he insisted, so I opened it up. Omigoshomigoshomigosh!!!

See, once upon a time in a land far far away, I was a "real" photographer, meaning I made money with it. I had my own darkroom and slew of cameras and lenses and lights that I packed around in a huge impressive aluminum case and even had an assistant. My favorite camera was a 2-ton Nikon professional model with NOTHING automatic. In the intervening years, the photography fell by the wayside, the wonderful old Nikon suffered an grievous accident and I never had it repaired. For the last few years I've had a little "PhD" digital camera that takes adequate snapshots but allows for zero control or interesting effects or any of the other neat tricks photobugs love. (For those who don't know, PhD stands for "Push here, Dummy", or a very simple to use camera) So as these things inevitably will, the lust for creative control came creeping back and I've been drooling over friends cameras, researching online and picking the brains of people who know things. Hunny is a lifelong cop, investigative by nature and training, and nothing gets past him so he's been asking me some leading questions. Hey, I raised 3 kids and not much gets past me either! I suspected he was going somewhere with his line of questioning!! Sure enough, he did it. And he did it right. Have I mentioned I'm crazy about that guy? We make each other nutz and we're polar opposites, but he's my guy and knows all the soft spots and he loves to tickle me. Oh yea - he says he thought about getting me an HQ16 Handiquilter, but won't do it because he believes the only way to go is the high road, and that means a Gammill with a Statler Stitcher. Honest -- he said that. But realistically that's not a perfect plan for me now. Maybe later, hee hee. Meantime, I have a manual to read and some serious FUN to be had!! I only have 20 days to master this before our 5 kids, 3 kids-in-law, 2 significant others and 10 grands come all at once to party at Gram and Gramps house and get their portraits done by Grams!!! Yeaaa!!!

Fairie names

2007-11-26T17:14:00.001-08:00

Your fairy is called Feather Saturnfilter (Ummm-hmmmm.....)

She is a trouble maker. (whatever!!! who makes this stuff up???)

She lives in high places where the clouds meet the earth. (naturally!)

She is only seen on midsummer's eve. (or so some folks WISH!)

She wears pale blue like the sky. She has delicate pale pink wings like a cicada. (I'm a BUG???)

Oh yea, and the picture looks just like me!!!! ROFLMBO!!!

Always Different

2007-11-23T08:14:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had as wonderful, fun Thanksgiving as we did! My DD and DGD came Weds. night so I got to wake up with a little one - all warm and rumply and cuddly. Then tripping all over her words to tell me everything that's happened in her world since we last saw each other, how fun! Later on while watching cartoons, Cuervo hopped up to one of his lookouts on the back of the couch, so Madeline climbed up to see what there was to see --

Too cute! I so glad I had my camera; usually these shots get away. Later more kids and grands came and went, and the groaning table was loaded and unloaded, and then came the highlight of the day! My DS went for a walk and came back in, casually asking me why there's a horse tied to the back of our truck. HUH? "Yea, a horse, you know; hayburners? Tied up to your truck" So we all trooped out.

Lo and behold, a miniture horse was in fact tied to the back of our truck. What the...?????? Seems Dan while on his walk, found this little guy wandering loose and brought him back since we have facilities and horse chow. How cute????? This is Jayden sitting on the horse, my DD Cory holding him, and DGD Megan. DS had an unfortunate photo accident and lost his head........
Speaking of photos, DD found this government issue portrait of herself taken just before she left for Bosnia what, 14 years ago? Am I proud of this or what?

She needs a tattoo that says "Do NOT mess with me"

Here's the funny thing about Cory and the Air Force. When she was born Vietnam was still underway, and I was at that time, very anti-military. (I plead the ignorance of the very young) Since 'Cory' is an androgenous first name, I gave her the middle name of Elizabeth specifically so the draft board would know she was a girl and not draft her.
What-ever!!! I keep telling my kids this story as an object lesson in "DO NOT try to plan your kids opinions!!!"
Now off to the shed and dig out the Christmas decs!!!

A Very Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-21T17:58:00.001-08:00

The pies are in the oven, the stuffing's all been mixed. The extra tables are out and the flowers picked. There's a 23 lb. bird on the back porch just chillin', and a mess in the closet where I looked for linen. Dan won't eat taters and Cory hates pumkin, but everyone loves cabernet, now isn't that somthin'? Why do we do it, why all the fuss? To give thanks and praise for the Blessings He's given us.

Heaven knows I'm no poet (obviously) but this little ditty expresses my feelings perfectly tonight. My family starts arriving any minute and for the next 24 hours I will be as happy as any woman can be, and I hope you are too!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nippy-Bee

2007-11-17T18:39:00.000-08:00

My beloved old dog Nippy died today. She has been my buddy/shadow for 14 years, since she was about 3 years old. Some dogs are one person dogs and Miss Nip was one of those - devoted to me. There were some times that it felt like she was my only friend, too; times she stood by me thru sadness, despair, heartache, fear.....all that.
Our human friends marveled at her insistence at being at my ankle at all times - being a Heeler that was her place of course, but Nippy took it to a whole 'nother level! If I so much as stood to adjust my clothes she'd be up and right behind my foot, ready for whatever. The funny thing is, as my daughter pointed out, all my life I didn't like dogs; I'm a cat person. But something in her spoke to me, and we were best buds from day 1.
This picture will always make me smile. I don't have too many pictures of her because she always hustled to get behind me! I practically had to yell at her to SIT and she was whimpering and shaking the whole time.
Nippys big passion in life was chasing horses - she would take out into the pasture at mach 4 and run to nip the heels of the horses, then spin in place in a circle so fast and so tight you couldn't tell she was a dog, it was hilarious, then she'd trot back to me smiling and so proud of herself! We had to lock her in the house every time we had the horses out because it did get to be dangerous but she never stopped. Kicked in the head, one time she was knocked out cold and another time went into seizures on the spot. It was pouring rain and dark and she was in deep mud and I lost a boot in the mud trying to get to her and get her out. When we lived waaay out in the country she was a free roaming girl, but wouldn't leave our property. When she heard my car coming she'd meet me at the gate and race me to the house, and that dog could run FAST!! Her big thick tail never stopped even when she was running; we used to say if you tried to hold onto that tail her whole body would wag!
This last year was a rapid decline. She could barely walk, couldn't hear, became incontinent and would fall over. When we noticed that she never wagged her tail, not even a little bit, we knew it was Time. I had two friends from my mini quilt group over today, bless Lynn and Leslie for helping me thru this day. Bless my DH who took Nippy to the vet for me because I was too weak to do it.
I sure miss that dog.

Whoo-hooo!

2007-11-15T20:10:00.000-08:00

After a dreadful day at work I come dragging my sorry behind home, feeling sorry for myself, and find a wonderful prezzie in my mailbox!! Mar, over at Pincushion Diaries, was my chocolate swap buddy and today there was a wonderful package waiting for me. That will always put you in a good mood, and when I opened it, look what I found!!

What a cool, cool purse! I love those colors, they fit perfectly in my family room - gorgeous! Oh, guess what else? Look what was in the purse!Oh yea, Babe - it's CHOCOLATE!!!! (((happy dance))) Talk about therapy --- I've been soooo good about passing on candy and sticking to a healthy eating plan, and today with my lip dragging in the dirt I came home to this and, well, let's just say there's no reason to feel deprived, now is there? Thank you, Mar!!!

Some strange, vicious virus has overtaken me, causing a side effect suspiciously like spring houscleaning. First the stash, then yesterday I rearranged the family room. One of the things I did was to finally hang an antique rifle that Hunny purchased from a historic saloon in Reno last year. It was pretty thrashed, and he restored it beautifully. The plan was always to hang it in the family room which is somewhat Western/cowboy themed but we never did. Till yesterday. I found a neat place for it and got it all mounted on the wall. Late last night, all was still and quiet and I was kind of drowsing in front of the TV when suddenly there was a mighty CRASH and that heavy rifle pulled out of the wall and landed on a credenza, knocking a display of antique horse tack down with it. Scared the snot out of me, I tell you!! Today the virus struck again after I got home and had that lovely attitude adjustment. After a virtuous dinner of vegetables and chicken (and chocolate) I stripped the china cabinet, washed everything and put it back together. I know - it's a strange thing, this disease! Now, I'm not going to tell you how long it's been since I cleaned this thing, but take a look at a whiskey bottle from way in the back:

And now look a bit closer at the tax stamp on the cap, still sealed:

LOL! OK, so it hasn't been that long. I was only 12 in 1967 so this wasn't likely to have been my bottle. It pretty well illustrates however, that cleaning out the china cabinet doesn't happen too often.

Now, after all that lovely chocolate and whiskey, I'm a bit ((yaaawwwnnn)) sleepy. I wonder what the next side effect will be?

99 & 44/100% done

2007-11-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

Behold, before and after.

There's even a lot more fabric in there than before since I flushed out piles from all over the place. A lot of the stacks are two deep because I folded into squares instead of rectangles; and those rotten lost corners are good for putting stuff I don't use often - holiday prints, flannels, donation and baby quilts fabrics, along with a couple pieces of upholstery and a trashbag full of scraps. What I have left to do is fold a zillion FQs and a zillion more that have a small piece cut out of them but are still FQ size. In time, Grasshopper, in time. Saturday I had to go get a kidlet fix, haven't seen them for 6 weeks or so!

5 month old Jayden and 7 yr. old Meghan. Megs had a NEW game to show me, called "Marbles" Seems the object is to put all the marbles in a circle and use one to try to knock more out of the circle than your opponent. LOL - well, it was new to her! When's the last time you played marbles? Well, I played about 5 games and it was a blast. Then we snuck off for a bit of 1 on 1 time and ate ice cream, special treat. Once I dropped Megs off I went over to my other son's place to visit with Nicholas, 3 months -

Is that a face or what?? He put on all his best charm and cuteness for me and talked and crooned and giggled for about an hour. Nothing better, nothing!
I fooled around with the long arm frame, spent about 5 hours figuring out how to load the layers and finally put my machine on the trolley. Guess what?? It doesn't work! The trolley has a handle with a power button that is plugged into your machine where the foot control would go and that little electronic bit doesn't work. Rats! That probably wasn't going to be the frame for me anyway because it was so low that working on it is a back killer. Oh well...... I'm still torn about plunging in for something like a HQ16 setup, one minute "go for it" the next, "naaahh I don't need that." I guess I'll think about it while I fold and fold some more!

And the beat goes on.......

2007-11-09T04:13:00.000-08:00

Whew! The stash cleanup continues, a way bigger job than I'd anticipated. This has been going on all week, in 1 hour chunks a.m. and 3 - 4 hour chunks at night. No decision yet on whether it's better or worse, maybe when I can walk across the floor I'll know better!

Lot's of surprises, like a little pile of vintage 30's feedsack fabrics I'd long given up as lost in a move, and 4 pairs of brand new, labels on, mens dress slacks! LOL - I think I was supposed to hem them a long time ago, but Hunny took to wearing jeans and dress shirts to work so it wasn't hard to forget about the pants. I've also turned up an embarrassing number of orphan blocks and UFOs, and -- count 'em -- 14 tops that need quilting! That was a shocker - I knew I had about 6, so now I had a total of 20 and a few of those also need borders. Geeeesh! So much for feeling smug! Also found were the very first blocks I made, when I was just learning, what a hoot! Horrible fabric and gigantic blocks. A few are even quilted like potholders, no bindings on. I razzed Michele about her huge scrap bags so I can't show what kinds of scraps I've turned up - but all the piles on the sewing machine table are FQ's, and you can see one trashbag full of scraps on the floor.

All this would really be a lot more fun if I didn't have devastating news at work. We have to close up our clinic and move the whole thing lock, stock, staff and patients to another clinic 45 miles away, and we have less than 2 weeks to do it. Moving a dialysis clinic isn't like moving anything else, for starters it has to be a state certified facility with an immense water purification system via RO (reverse osmosis). Our patients must come in 3 days a week, and some already drive an hour to get here, now we're going to make them go another 45 minutes so it's going to be a huge hardship on them and their families and transportation providers. The first staff to come in the morning arrive by 3:15 am to start set-up and the first patients arrive by 5:15 am. Then all the logistics of a move like this, which falls on me. Hopefully I'll have tons of corporate back-up but it's going to be a tough month. If you don't hear from me I'l be under my desk whimpering.......

Progress Report

2007-11-06T07:22:00.000-08:00

I'm doin' it! I'm really doing it!! And it's fun - and a PITA!! LOl - Boy is my back sore. So far just the cooler colors, blues/greens/purples and some character prints and a few backing pieces. Amazing what a bit of neat folding will do - it takes up SO much less space, and looks all yummy and tantalizing. I'm enjoying discovering long forgotten pieces, and digging some up that need to be quickly re-buried. Most seem to be 2 yard cuts - yea for me - and anything over 4 goes into the "backing" pile. Those piles are so cool!
I brought in a folding table cos I know I'm going to need more room - here's neat piles so far:
(yes, that table is jacked up to about 40 inches - I'm tall)

And the closet has a hole like a six year olds smile.

The problem with the closets in this house are that the STUPID builder (I have issues) built 9 foot wide closets but 6 ft wide doors. Ah ha - I can see that you understand. So the stuff way back behind the walls is nearly inaccessible and there's a TON of stuff back in there! What a waste of space - ((steam coming out my ears))
We all talk to our fabrics, right? No really, you can admit it here, I won't tell. Doncha hate it when the fabric talks back? Real sassy like?
me - "Hmmmm.....are you a blue or a teal?"
fabric - "That's for me to know and you to find out"

"Ooo, you're pretty - so what could I do with you?"
" Do whatever you want - I'm sure it doesn't matter to me"

"Gee, you don't quite fit into a category, what am I going to call you?"
"What are you, the FBI?"

"Lets see, not quite a yard and more than a fat quarter; scrap box or pile?"
"NO no no no! Please not the scrap box! I'll be good, I promise!!"

Heh heh - the power .... isn't it great?
Finally, for your drooling enjoyment, I can now show you my fun project from last week - I was part of Red Geranium Cottages chocolate swap, and my swap partner has received her box of fantastically nummy yummies. The rules were that the box had to be decorated and I'm not too good at that. I got the idea to wrap it in a FQ, then add folded fabric flowers. HOW FUN IS THIS??? I had a ball making these, and they're so easy! I predict more flowers in the future, but what to do with them? Too fun.

Phooey - fun's over now I have to get to work. **sigh**

New Toy!

2007-11-04T17:24:00.000-08:00

There's a big, honkin' quilting frame in my family room!

My friend Judy was cleaning house today, and decided she didn't need this old thing laying around any more. So she called me and asked, Are you interested? OH HECK YEA! So she piled it into her truck and came over and we (Laverne and Shirley!) put it together. Much giggling, a bit of cussin, and some grunting and we got it all done. Judy had to run back to her chores, as did I, so nothing else has happened yet. I need to get my machine set in and figure out how to load a quilt, then quit my job so I can play. LOL! Whoo-hoo! In the meantime, progress is happening on the Paintbox - only 3 more block to make and I need to cut some more pieces for those. I took advantage of that old saying about creative license, and changed the plan a bit:

I still like the green background a lot, but wasn't going to have enough for the whole thing, (sound familiar?) so the center blocks have a white background. I'm at the point of figuring out the borders - YAAA!!! Might this be the near-mythical "finished project"? Could it be? I'm thinking about the quilting design, that's a good sign. And looking at pieces of fabric for a backing, and THAT'S a good sign. Boy - I'm thinkin' this could really be on the bed before too long! And suddenly there's 20 different shades of blue fabric sitting on my cutting table. HUH? Where'd that come from? Honestly Officer, I wasn't even here and I don't know how all that stuff jumped out of the closet and onto the table!

Well, it could be that it jumped out in an attempt to escape. This is scary. To keep me honest I'm showing the worst, messiest part of my stash so I'll maybe feel guilty enough to clean it out. Those shelves go 18 inches left and right beyond the opening, and the whole thing is stuffed and I can't find anything. (see? I couldn't possibly have pulled out all that blue fabric!) So it's time - I have to clean. ***sigh***

What's on YOUR bed?

2007-11-02T07:05:00.000-07:00

Nicole, over at Sister's Choice, asks the question - "What's on your bed?" Interesting question. Once I tossed off the cat, dragged out the old man and shoved the magazines to the floor I could see the quilt!

This is my Red Radio Flyer I just love. Someday the room will be decorated to match; maybe. Usually it's not on top 'cos my DARLIN Hunny plops down in the middle of the day with dirty boots on and he claims he's too old to learn new tricks like taking his boots off.
So throwing down the gauntlet now that it's the season for quilts on the bed, - What's on your bed?

Jingle WHAT???

2007-11-01T22:57:00.000-07:00

"MERRY CHR....." -- what's that? Oh, it's too early? I know, but as the Queen of all Procrastination, I need all the encourgement I can get. If I knew how to make lists in my sidebar I would, but since I don't, and since I hang around here a bit, this should keep me focused.
Maybe.
Besides, it's only 53 days left!!

How boring......

2007-10-31T18:31:00.000-07:00

First off, Uncle John and his home and avacados are OK - the fire looks to be contained around them, although it is only a few miles away. Too too scary.

Second, not much sewing this weekend: a friend came over and helped me plant about 500 flower bulbs for spring color. Two of us spent 3 hours, going at a rapid clip! Then, of course, we needed an hour of lounging in the shade with a nice bottle 'o vino......... OK maybe it was 2 hours.

FINE - not a minute over 4 hours and 2 bottles, and that's my story and I'm stickin to it!

This very bad pic is my granddaughter Meghan, who was Baby Queen at this years Portugese Festa. Her Grandpa is President of the local chapter, and it's usually the daughters and grands of the council who get to be queens and princesses. Meg got to walk in a parade with her 2 attending princesses holding her royal train. She's always wanted to be a Princess and now she is! Guess what her Halloween costume is tonight? Minus the big train, of course.

The reason you get a picture of my DGD is 'cos I can't show you my quilt related picture. It's a surprise for a swap partner and has to stay that way. BUT IT'S REALLY COOL!!! I also don't want to bore you with a picture of the 18 Mary's Triangles I made for the Paintbox quilt, them trimmmed WAAAY too small. If we had audio blogging I might could let you listen in at what I said when I discovered that, but then your sewing room would have blue air too -- just like mine! Think I'll go make some quickie pillowcase baby quilts to donate and see if I can do that without messing it up.....

Happy November!

California Fires

2007-10-23T10:52:00.001-07:00

If you've seen any newscast in the past 2 days you know Southern California is on fire. You can't imagine the scope and enormity of these (currently) 17 seperate fires is you've never been there. It's a huge huge area. Much of what is burning is rugged chapparal covered hills, and the infamous Santa Ana winds roar straight thru them at hurricane force. The "Santanas" as we called them are really hot dry winds, strange to feel. Coupled with the dryness of that area - averaging 6 - 10 inches of rain a year - there's really nothing to stop fire until it reaches the Pacific Ocean, so nearly half a million people are being evacuated - imagine, half a million!
My brother and his family were evacuated yesterday, as were my uncle and aunt in northern San Diego county. My brother has been allowed back in, but the smoke is so thick inside their house that the windows are sooty and the smoke alarms had to be disconnected. He is packing and taking his family somewhere else, he's not even sure where that might be. My uncle and aunt live in a somewhat remote canyon in an avacado orchard. Avacado trees are very oily and go up like torches. They live near the San Diego Wild Animal Park, (not the main Zoo) and this morning are making their horse trailer available to evacuate animals that are in immediate danger. They can't get back up to their home, so they don't know what's happening there. Neither of these are unusual stories, there are thousands of families going thru the same hell right now. Please send up extra special prayers for the safety of everyone in Southern California. Prayer might be their only hope.

An ironing Question

2007-10-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

(this post edited to remove the reference to burning)
At retreat there are typically 2 or three irons going all day for 25 or so quilters. There's varying degrees of
quality in these irons, but none are what you'd consider "top end" because their life expectancy isn't great. When I first picked up one of the irons at retreat this time, I was shocked at how much hotter and what a better job it did than mine. I mentioned to someone that this little light "cheapie" iron worked far better than my big heavy expensive iron, and was met with a chorus of complaints about the BMW of irons. I hadn't realized that A.) mine isn't performing like I would expect, and B.) that so many others had had the same experience with them, and then C.) how dumb I feel that I believed the hype.

Here's my question - what has your history with irons been? These are really important tools for us, right up there with the Sewing Machine, and we need to know the facts before we spend great gooey gobs of fabric bucks on non-fabric items. (next question is how does this stupid underline pop up and why, and how to make it go away?)
So - what do you iron with and why?

What a Swell Time!

2007-10-18T16:35:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh.....there's not too many things closer to a quilters heart than a few straight days of sewing with friends and not having to cook/clean/step&fetch. Call it immersion quilting - sewing saturation - quality time with a warm machine. LOL - whatever, it's my far and away my favorite escape. I took a large box of pre-cut pieces and made 11 more 16 inch blocks for what I'm now calling Paintbox. That green sure did something to it, just not quite sure what:

Sorta hurts the eyes, doesn't it? This is scrap wranglin' at it's finest; I don't pay attention to what goes with what. My darling friend Mavis who is utterly coordinated to the MAX kept trying to re-arrange pieces, saying "you have 2 greens here" or "Do you really want that many blues?" I love her to bits. By the last morning she was taking pictures and swearing she wanted to make one just like it.
I also took this opportunity to try my hand at teeny minis - paper pieced of course, and 3 inch finished.

The angel who arranges these trips and does all the work is Kerrie Hershey, owner of Kerries Quilting in Lakeport, CA. She gave me the best best best paper piecing tip I've ever learned. That thread cutting feature on my machine (that I thought was worthless) is the BOMB for paper piecing!! No 1000 miles of threads all over the place. She also pulled my name to win the neatest new cutter:

How cool is that? The picture doesn't show it as cool as it really is. Olfa is testing the water with these, and have only made 2 colors so far apparently, purple and orange. Ironically, the morning before the drawing I had relieved the LQS of 5 or 6 yards of assorted oranges. Spooky, huh? Like I have POWERS? (snicker snicker)
The scraps I trimmed off the Paintbox blocks made a little Broken Dishes quiltlet, NOT pp.

Those HSTs finished at an inch and a quarter. WAY small for me. I seem to be getting sucked into a leeetle bitty vortex - is there treatment for this???
For the 5th time I won the award for Most $$ dropped at the LQS. Sigh. Where's the competition???? Somebody put up a struggle! I'll show you the loot later, right now I have to go catch up on what's happening in blogland. Toodles!

RETREAT!!!

2007-10-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, at last the time has come to pack up my car and head to the beach for 4 days of sewing, yakking, chocolate, laughing, games, catered food, walks on the beach, and singing oldies.
Bummer.
LOL -- I wish you could come too! I'll be a new woman when I get back, and hopefully I'll have a couple of new tops to quilt. Pretty sure I'll have some more fabric and more projects; you know how it is.
Toodles!!

Post Quilt Show

2007-10-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

The show was excellent - every year it gets better! I think there were over 300 quilts this year, and for a small guild in a small county, that's fantastic. No detail is left undone either; our quilt show committee is nothing short of amazing. There will be a month or 2 break, then the planning for next year begins!
The only problem was, I forgot my camera. I was already 20 miles from home when I realized that, and there's no going back at that point. I had to be at my post at 10 am, and I was just barely going to make it as it was. So I kept driving & cussing a blue streak at my stupidity. I hate that! I used to have a really good memory, now I'm lucky if I remember what's-his-names' name.
Anyhow - whenever you get home from a show you're all juiced up, right? Well, I am anyway - so instead of working on one of the 6 UFO's stacked up next to the sewing table, I started a whole new one last night!

The newest issue of American Patchwork and Quilting was on my nightstand, and I flipped thru while resting my back - saw this, and had to do it. Wouldn't it be fun to do a study on just what the heck makes our little pea brains do this stuff? All those tops with no borders, or waiting to be layered up, and this one is all set to quilt already!! Granted it's fusible applique, but still -- I just don't understand me sometimes. While I was working on this, 2 of the grands from next door came in to check what's on the wall, and they both gave it the thumbs up. Colton suggests that it would make a good present for a 12 year old boy. Hmmmmm -- wonder who he has in mind??? ROFL! Jake the Younger, 7 y/o, wanted the long strips of selvedges from the trash and he was happy. Fun to have boys in the sewing room!
Sunday night chores are calling. I sure have a nice weekend to think about while I do all the scutwork. I hope your weekend was just as nice!

I wanna be a ROCK star!

2007-10-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

OK, not a rock star. I just want to design and build my own quilts. Apparently this is a progression that many quilters go thru - happy to make someone else's designs and eventually wanting to do their own. I've had EQ5 for a few years now and played a lot on it, but now I'm wanting to really come up with something striking that I have a snowballs chance of making. Hence:
FQFreakout and FQF2. I have more fat quarters than common sense, and theoretically I collected them to use, so these would be the quilts to do it.
I like them both and will make at least one of them, but can't decide which. Or maybe I'll come up with something else, who knows? OK, I admit to having Quilters ADD, so it's likely that I'll come up with something else, but still: I want to make at least one. Here's the rub: I would have to spend days cutting, and that might be my least favorite part. No, it absolutely IS my least favorite part. So my plan is to cut and cut and cut, and have a box full of parts so when I just want no-thinkum sewing I have it at hand. I need to have friends over for a cutting day, huh?
Tomorrow is our guilds big show and I can hardly wait! I'm working the first shift 10 - 12, then play for awhile and see where else I can help out. I love roaming the halls of quilts and feeling completely absorbed and inspired. When I get home my sewing room might burst into flames!
Pictures on Sunday. (not of flames, silly! the show!)

How????

2007-10-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

How do you put those nifty signatures in a post? I've diddled around for hours and can't find word one about them - but they're so cool!

Awww.....

2007-09-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

Gee Whillikers, Michele over at Heart and Hands has passed me the nicest compliment!
It's a GOOD THING to make people smile; everyone should do it every day. Multiple times! There comes a stipulation tho, (isn't there always?) that we do a meme using the letters of our name to describe ourselves. HEH!! Two letters (Su) don't come close to what I'm about, so I'm using the Bee part, too.
S- simple
U- understanding
B- Bi-pedal
E- ephemeral
E- eloquent

Too bad I don't have more of a name....
Now I need to name 5 others who make me smile:
Gypsy
Ms. Jan
Arrrgh matey, it be the Pirate!
New Kid on the block, Michael
And of course, Bren

Dang - 5 isn't very many! I have a lot more on my blogroll that I can't miss! Consider yourself tagged, and go forth and multiply - LOL!

**************************************************************************

Poor Paco is so bored and lonely without his bud that he's getting into trouble. I told you I found him on the deck outside my bedroom, right? Well, this morning he was on the kitchen deck. And the gate was still chained, but he lifted the whole thing off it's hinges!! And once he figured out he could do that, the battle was on. He liberated himself 4 times before I finally set a sprinkler to keep him away from the gate. (Donkeys hate to be wet) I tried setting a ladder across the gate thinking he couldn't get close enough, but he got his head stuck in it and we had a moments panic before he shook it off. Picture a donkey with his face stuck in a 6 ft ladder - it was hysterical after the fact, scary during. Hunny finally came home and fixed the hinges so the gate can't be lifted up anymore so I wonder what tricks are coming next?

This is Paco on my yard's side of the gate, I am in his yard - doesn't he look innocent? There he is being all friendly, chatting with chickens like he comes to tea every day. He's really a love - he'd come in and sit on the couch if I'd let him, or take a nap on my bed!
Cuervo summed up a lazy Sunday:

Do cats have it right or what? If you look closely you'll see little rainbow reflections on the carpet and wall. Those are from a large crystal hanging in the window behind him. When I want to make him crazy I'll spin it a bit, and he tries so hard to catch the little things! DD calls it cat torture, but he falls for it every time, so he must like that game. I hope.
The Cocoa Cuddle is about 3/4 quilted. I stared at that for 2 days and not a single quilting idea came to mind! Usually the pattern will kind of tell you how to quilt it, but this one just whispered, "wouldn't you like to have a Snickers?" so in the end I did a meander all over it. My friend Leslie will gasp, but it doesn't look like a mattress, really!!! ROFL --
We're supposed to get a nice rain tonight and I'm SO ready. Our last significant rain was April or so, and that's a long stretch. It's soup and stew and chili and punkin pie time!! Yeaaa!!! Happy October everyone!