Fun Times

The rains have finally come! It is amazing watching things change when they do, this is a creek that runs in front of our house, it sounded like the rapids and we even endured the soaked hammocks to enjoy the soothing sounds!

This is a shot of where our road runs, this is where the chick truck comes in handy! Oh Yeah! But since we have an alternate safer route we generally take it instead.

Really haven't been able to do much piecing or quilting, that is about the one thing that drives me nuts, being in the mountains we get horrid power surges and outages, we have blown a few modems due to sudden lighting strikes. That is where the hand cranks and treadles come in, I do have designated projects that I work on in just these situations.

This isn't one of them though, its what was being worked on before all got shut down, it is another denim and flannel, the walking foot makes it easier to put together and I haven't been able to find a suitable one for any of the vintage machines, now if I wasn't using the Davis that has the built in walking foot cabinet for my vanity in my room that would take care of that problem, ~smile~.

And here is the best for last!! I am heading to Flagstaff tomorrow, a day early to be able to tink around but I am signed up for a Hand Quilting Class with Joe Cunningham, I am going with my great friend J, we have been planning for months but of course who would wait until the day before she left to get the home work of basting done? Yeah, generally things like that would drive me crazy if they weren't done as soon as I knew about it but somehow I kept having problems deciding on what to baste for the class, so I chose a tea dyed muslin for the traditional part of the class then I dug through the top ladder and measured everything, some would have needed additional borders to make the 40' square that was required and other stuff was just to big, but then I spotted this recent finish, OK not so recent but enough in the vicinity to call it that, it measured out at 45 so did a happy dance and basted her up! She is going to be getting the Big Stitch treatment.

It has been years since dinging around with hand quilting so it was quite the challenge to get them basted, thankfully Donnie hung out with me and we talked about fishing and making plans to do so in the near future, that and he kept my coffee cup full so I would be able to keep working and not just pop them on the longarm and use it to baste them! Would have been so much easier but in the end it was nice to spend the time with each to get the feel of the fabric and imagine how they are going to look once done, a very nice bonding time indeed!

Then another awesome bit of news is that one of my absolute favorite bloggers is going to be in the same class! Libby from ~A Simple Girl~ , How cool is that, I promised not to stalk her but I tell ya it will be great to meet her and sure hope to get a picture with her. She is such an inspiration with every project she works on!

And I haven't even mentioned the total make over that my studio is going through, I visited another long armer's studio last week and it was just awesome! So before we even left my mind was already kicked into gear at what all I wanted to do, then came convincing DH what a great idea it would really be, in the end I bribed the kids, whoever helped willingly and wasn't asked twice to help was treated to their favorite place to eat, chinese! It looks great and there is only a few things left to get put into place but it ended up falling perfect with the power outages and surges we have been having, and it feels great having purged a bunch of stuff, another bonus was a lot of things are going to a gal who posted a request on freecycle for cross stitch items, that was my passion before quilting so once it is gone I will have even more room!

Ok, this is way long, haven't even gotten to Levia and her little brush with a tree while out on a quad ride, sigh, kids..............thankfully all fingers work but boy she bruised it but good!