Were Back!

What an amazing time we had, there are quite a few pictures taken and each from a total different perspective!

This is one of my favorites! We stopped at this shop Fat Quarter's and it was just eye candy overload!

I did purchase a couple things but I will save those for another time, need to get the camera back in order and get shots of what I found. We also made it to Rosie's Calico Cupboard and I was amazed at how much the shop has expanded, it has been at least 10 years since being there but still! It was rather over whelming and since I didn't have anything in particular material wise I did find 2 rulers in sizes that I needed.

Down a few door's from Rosie's was yet another overwhelming shop! The Quilted Rose, my Sis-in-Law purchased a Gammil Longarm from them so had to pop in and see what else they had and I was just blown away by all the thread and pantos that they had! Again I was very frugal in my purchasing, I really wanted a leaf panto and found 2 different kinds with the aid from Dh and the Kids.

It felt great to not splurge shop as it would have been so easy to do in all these shops! These stops were made prior to the cruise and once we were back we decided to stop at another shop that Fat Quarters heartily recommended, it was The Country Loft and again it was eye candy overload! What was so unique about the two mentioned is they are solely primitive/civil war types of fabrics, so I had to chuckle when my Dad asked if they had any Orientals or Batiks!!

I failed to have the camera ready to get any pictures though, in fact I don't think the camera was in my possession at the time anyway. We did stop back by Fat Quarters as there was one little thing that captured my heart and Dh was very kind to get it for me as a late anniversary present! He is such a great sport and that just made the week all that more special for me!

Vacation Time~

Well, now that I have done an overload of updates, that really has only scratched the surface but we are about all packed up and ready to head out the door at four in the morning!

We haven't taken a family vacation in quite awhile and although this ding-dong won't be able to go because of his work schedule it will be comforting to know the house will be guarded and the animals tended too!

I even think that he may have chosen to stay behind to watch after his little girl Mookie the Chinchilla. These two are too funny to watch together, Levia gifted him with her when he graduated from the academy six months ago and have they ever bonded!

This is Kaa, Donnie's Ball Python. He is Mookie's close neighbor, he is actually quite a bit bigger now than this photo, he is shedding right now so didn't want to disturb him while he does his thing so will just use an older shot of him! We have aged him to how long we have had him which is about 3 years now.

And he has found ways to escape every now and then and since Mookie moved in we all tend to check around her cage to make sure she isn't getting a nice neighborly squeeze from him.

About two weeks ago he got out and we couldn't find him anywhere, started getting a little nervous when two days went by, then around midnight I hear Scottie holler out to Donnie, not by his nickname either, it was the full blown including middle and Jr! Kaa, was cuddled in his dirty laundry and startled him, too funny! But he was able to sleep comfortably knowing that he was back in lock down.

And this represents a favorite birthday meal! The chops cook on low all day in the sauerkraut then we make a ton of potato dumplings to enjoy along with.

This is the pot loaded up and I wish I had a scale to measure it on, the pot itself weighs at least ten pounds, then there was ten pounds of kraut, and those two huge packages of chops, I kept a close eye on the oven rack just knowing it was going to cave!

The celebration was for Blake, who 12 on November 16th, he is such a sweet boy! He is the one in this posting with his nose in the pumpkin pie, not really, he was just joshing around!

We will have the meal again mid January as we have a slew of birthdays coming up and we will do a one big celebration when we can schedule everyone together. It will cover five birthdays, Scottie is the end of December, the Donnie, Levia and Chad are in January with DH coming up February 3rd.

Which leads to our trip, it is going to cover Christmas and all the birthdays, except for Scottie, he wants a satellite radio system for his unit that we are going to get him. We are heading to Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada via the Love Boat! It is something we have planned since the beginning of the year and everyone is beyond excited, the boys are looking forward to the all you can eat and we will enjoy watching them put it away!

The cameras are charged and I have two projects to work on. I am also very excited to be visiting the Fat Quarter Quilt Shop that is in the area and maybe even possibly Rosie's, oh yeah!!

Until next weekend!

Snowmen~

This was probably the most challenging thing I have ever done! The top was gifted to Merry at Fiddlestick's and she asked me to do it up! So the rest of the post is going to be a mini show!

Other Doings~

I did this one for a friend and boy oh boy did it give me trials!

The lesson I learned from it though was to stop and breath first, then start with the simplest solutions and work your way up, not the hardest backwards. I was getting eyelashes on the backside so I took apart and cleaned, wound different bobbins, now I will have to use up those extra four of a nice turquoise color on something!

Then I went onto changing out the bobbin case, keep an extra on hand! Nope, still fussing, then I went to bed and went ahead on to the bee and worked on the binding of the blues and got paperwork done for the new position I will be holding in the Guild! Yikes on that one!!

In the end, the great ott lite bulb went off and I changed the needle, and all was right again. A very happy moment indeed!

These are just a couple shots of the booth we had at the Cancer Fair, it was a fun experience and although a variety sold the best was the baby quilts that folks bought for their dogs! One even had her dog that was in her purse sniff the quilt to see if he liked it, if he did then she would by it because he is very finicky! He liked it! And I was happy as well.

The Bomb went off here!

I had started folding things back up when I decided to share the explosion that had taken place, really since August there has been NO organization what so ever, just one project to the next.

The farmers table is my main cutting station and at the time which was last week I cleared enough space to trim the blue boxes, but then started the folding so now there is no room to trim Lillian's.

This is the secondary cutting/ironing table. Not an inch to spare and I tell you the kids are loving it because daily there is at least one reward session going on because I can't find anything!!

It has gone beyond horrid...............

And did anyone catch on that there isn't a single quilt on the walls? We had the second craft fair in November and sold 8 quilts, it was a blue moment but in the end it came at a time when the funds were needed the most so I will enjoy getting them replaced.

I was also asked if I would be interested in putting quilts up at the Lodge here in the and also at a little coffee house downtown! Very honoring indeed!

Lillians~

This is Nate! He is just the sweetest thing and it is too fun to watch everyone interact with him. The boys are the worst though, he isn't allowed a grunt and they are wanting to know why that is being allowed to go on?! They do seem to disappear though when it comes time to taking care of the loaded nappy!

These photo's are long over due, Lillian needed this quilted in time for a class she was taking, the final was to be on binding techniques. Thankfully I had two weeks in which to get it done

but decided at the last minute to do a different design that was a little more intricate, I failed to guesstimate correctly on the amount left on the spool of thread and ended up running out about one row of completion!! Not very smart but thankfully the thread co took care of me and it was done and ready for her!

Then the below I did yesterday for her, DH will drop it off when we get back from our trip out of town this next week which will give her time to bind it and wrap it up as it is a Christmas gift!

It hasn't been trimmed yet, will do that here in a little bit,

I'll show why next post!

On the move again!

Wow! It is amazing that it is December already! We have had our hands full, we started babysitting a this little guy who's tootsers' are on display below and I tell ya, even though he is only 2.5 months old and sleeps most of the day away I am afraid to say that he does most of it on my chest!

I mean, how can you not just wrap yourself in the scent of a newborn?

I did finally have to get him on a solid routine, and that meant I could get back to the backed up work that had accumulated for way too long!

This is a sweet victory! Boxy Blues is complete and now residing on it's owners bed! I do believe it will be loved for many years!

Before being quilted and washed it measured out to 120x108 and once washed it shrunk to 113X101, it is huge!!

I did fail to get pictures of the other quilt that was to be for the Mom's bed, it was a charm cotton top tumbler with denim for the backing, she is into the Americana style of colors so that is what it was done in with a nice coffee/tea bath to give it a softer mellower look!

Then came the nasty flu/cold/sinus bug, that little sucker didn't want to leave! Albeit there were plenty to bounce around to!

Quiltathon!

Figured since it was Quiltathon Weekend I would go full force and get this monster top done! Imagine my surprise when I started laying it out and found I was short a row and a half! Now I can be math challenged sometimes but this really got me!

Because I surely didn't want to cut more strips to get the other slew that would be needed out of this pile that I had left over. I had thought I cut way over and was hoping to have some left over to throw into a little scrappy throw.

Then under this pile I found................................

These!! Now I didn't dwell long on how they got there, I was just thrilled to find them and get them matched up, but it turned out I was still a little shy so ended up getting another 36 blocks from that pile to make up what I needed.

Now in the other post I talked about how I wasn't thrilled with it being all blue, I like blue, especially when they are made with these fabrics!! Now I could whip those kinds of patterns out all day long! ~smile~

So here we are now at 9pm, I started them out by two'sies then to four'sies, then don't know why I changed mid stream to rows but it is working out great, all the rows are ready for the final seam then I will go ahead and probably do a thin strip of dark blue to set it with an additional wider border to finish to size.

Right now it sits at 108X96 and since I will use cotton batting and wash it before giving to its new owner I know there will be some shrinkage to compensate for the extra, plus the gal said the closer to the floor the better because the daughter doesn't use a bed skirt. Know how I know? I called to ask if I could make it a little more towards laying at the top of the bed skirt, trying to save her some funds along with some time for myself! But alas, I was doomed to major huge!

Now I know this design has gotten to be pretty popular lately but before the popularity of it Mary had put together a little something of her own and she shared it, since then I have wanted to make one but in a more scrappy version. I need to take a picture of the quilt that inspired my customer, it was in all 2.5 inches strips of nothing but plaids but it was like the fourth quilt I ever made and it was one of Mary Ellen Hopkins designs and although very easy it used a lot of strips for one block! And there was no way I was going to recreate THAT in a 112X100!!

So I did a quick sketch of Mary's Boxed Squares and she loved it! In every shade of blue I could use! Now I was very pleased with being able to pull 80% of the fabric from my shelves, I went on an online clearance of blues hunt and bought one tower of 30 different fat quarters for $26!! I made that work with the rest of what I had then went to a sale at Fiddlestick's and she had some blues on for $3 a yard so grabbed a couple there but the mother load of a deal was a bolt of 24 yards of the ugliest blue that was absolutely perfect for the backing and probably the border as well as the binding if I cut right! It actually wasn't that ugly at all once she started unrolling it to take measurement, then it caught peoples eye, but it was all mine!!! Envision the evil laugh here!

Now I need to finish ironing the beast's rows to prepare for final assembly, am thinking I will finish it tomorrow though as my eyeballs are starting to go a little wonky!

Friday~

There was a gun exhibition going on in Wikiup at a gun range in the area, which is about 45 miles from us. There were to be guns going back to the civil war era up to current day weapons and I thought it would be fun for the boys to see. So we loaded up into the truck and headed out.

Now what I didn't know about was the 10 miles of primitive kept roads that lead to the range........the two photos are just a little bit of what we drove through to get there.

The total disappointment came when we pulled up and gal said get out of the vehicle and fill out some paperwork, umm, ok, we start filling out then she informs us it is $25 per person to be a spectator! There were 6 of us present so you can imagine what we did!

Went home and baked some white pumpkin pies! Now I don't really think Blakes' nose got pushed into them but there were some pickers when they came out of the oven, sticking the knife in to see if it was done wasn't good enough, needed to spoon a little out to make sure!

It should actually be called nutmeg pie with a hint of pumpkin, ever have one of those moments that you cant remember for the life of you what the rule was for fresh ground spices?

That is about all I use when I cook or bake, fresh ground pepper, cinnamon, cumin, nutmeg etc so when the stupid moment hit of "is it more fresh to dry or more dry to fresh?" I chose the more fresh must be it and twisted away!

Now when Donnie did the checking he casually said out loud ~ wow, it sure tastes like nutmeg!~ That was when the bulb went off! They still tasted really really good though!!

Trying to be inspired!

I am in the process of making an all blue quilt in the following design, I chose it from one of Mary's over at Making Scrap Quilts from Stash's site MaryQuilts.com. The gal who I am making it for liked this size of blocks, the bummer is that she wants it 112x100!

Not the best of pictures but the idea is there of what I have been up to besides some quilting on the side. It will be a Christmas gift for her daughter, and wanted nothing but blues, sigh.......

On a fun note I am excited for the pumpkins arrival! We have made soup and pumpkin butter so far but now have to get more for pies, then freeze a good bunch for more soup days!