Civil War Skirmish Won by North

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

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!

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 --

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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!

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

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!!