About that email....

DON"T SIGN UP!!!!

I hit the wrong button and now everybody I know is getting spamed. *sigh*.

I am so sorry.

I am not a fan of social networking sites such as this. I got suckered. I have already gone into the site and canceled my account, but I fear it may be too little, too late.

Once again, I apologize for not paying attention.

Paula

Photo Story

The lovely Michele (With Heart and Hands: A Quilting Journey) has tagged me to play along on a photo game. This game is to visit the fourth picture folder on your hard drive and upload the fourth photo from that folder and share the photo's story. Working on three different computers with a total of 4 hard drives gives me a slight edge on what to show. But I will play along and show the fourth folder's fourth photo from each hard drive.

Photo #1: This photo is from the computer at work and it is of a bronze sculpture entitled: "The Good Book" by Mark Lundeen. A Grandmother is reading to her grandchildren "The Good Book". Inside the book is a relief of Noah's Ark with the animals coming two by two. It is a life-sized bronze edition of 36.

Photo #2: My Simpson's Avatar. This photo is from the My Pictures folder on the desktop at home. It kinda looks like me. *giggle*

Photo #3: This photo is from my laptop. It is a closeup of a wonderful monochromatic Double Irish Chain quilt taken at an outdoor quilt show a year ago.

Photo #4: This photo is from my external hard drive. I have lots and lots of photos here. This is a bit of my artwork. I was working on a theme of Blue Skies. This was idea #4.

Brillante Weblog Premio-2008

Sweet P at Coffee Time Quilt Studio nominated me for this award because, and I quote, "She makes adorable small quilts". Well, gosh, thank you! I try.

So here are the rules: the awarded peep puts the logo on his/her blog and needs to link back to the person who gave the award. Then the awardee nominates at least 7 other blogs, putting links of those blogs in the post. Leave a message on the blogs you nominate.

Erm, let's see. I read so many blogs; 268 at last count and I just finished paring them down. Thank goodness everybody doesn't post at the same time! But I digress. Who should I pick? O this is so hard. I don't want to leave anyone out but I only get 7.

Libby, A Simple Girl, because we are like quilt sibs. Libby is a sweet and gentle woman who makes the bestest primitive (and not so primitive) quilts. Kim of Stillmeadow Quilting a new friend with whom I love to chat. Doesn't the name 'Stillmeadow Quilting' evoke peace? And who couldn't love a person owned by cats named Simon and Schuster? Such joie de vivre! Toni, The Quilting Pirate, who has an unabashed enthusiasm for pirates that even extends to her quilting! Elaine at Eleaine Adair Pieces because we think so much alike when it comes to quilting that it is scary. Have you noticed that, Elaine? Mrs. Goodneedle From the Strawberry Patch, is such a good story teller and writer and she just keeps you entertained and when you come to the end of a post you are sad. You just have to wait for the next post. Finn at Pieces from my Scrapbag. She has an old-fashioned sense of home and family that just fits with my sensibilities. Her trips down memory lane trigger my own memories of family. Michele (with one ell) of With Heart and Hands, A Quilting Journey has such a caring and giving spirit and posts such informative, carefully researched articles. Pop over and introduce yourself.

I could keep going but I really need to stop at seven. It is like the seven sisters quilt block now isn't it?

Here's Mine: Flickr Toys

1. querida Paula, 2. 14th August 2007 / Day 226, 3. Sunset over Loveland Pass, 4. Just hanging around, 5. Harrison Ford as Indy, 6. coffee & the city, 7. wham:a different corner, 8. Sweet Cherry Pie, 9. Oldwoman, 10. { Peace ,,, 11. an amiable split, 12. FourSeasonsQuiltSwap-Winter


Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

How to Play:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

Be amused. Share the results ;-)

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name

You Make My Day

I have been tagged with this award by two different people and have been remiss in mentioning it. Vicki over at Knitting Dragonflies and Connie over at Simply Quilted have both recently awarded me this button. I'm not quite sure what I've done to deserve this, I've just been myself.

Thank you ladies!

I should award this to ten other people but being the zodiacal sign that I am, I cannot make up my mind, so if you are reading this you can consider yourself tagged.

7 Things Times Three

I have been tagged by The Calico Quilter for the 7 things meme. I went searching in my archives and dug this meme up not once, not twice but three other times. And so, for your reading pleasure I give you 7 more facts and 21 previous facts. *g*. OK, let's see...

1. When CarGuy and I go on a road trip, I'm the driver. It has always been this way. For some reason, I do especially well in city traffic. *shrug* And since I'm the driver, I sometimes have this longing to be a passenger.
   
2. My mother, my mother's mother, my mother's mother's mother, my mother's sisters, my mother's mother's sisters, my father's mother and my father's mother's sister all plied their needles with extraordinary beauty. Some were quilters, some were embroiderers, some were knitters and some were crocheters, but all were excellent needleworkers.
3. I broke my ankle in high school schussing down a ski trail. I hit an icy patch and BAM! down I went. My binding did not release. After the ankle healed I couldn't ski downhill again -- I had/have a major phobia about it. But, conversely, I can ski down a hill on cross country skis. It's all in my mind. I know this. Now I am a member of the Broken Bones Club and have the patch for my jacket to prove it.
   
4. About pierced ears: I have 3 holes in one ear and 2 in the other. That 5th hole was supposed to be for the single earrings that remained after losing one of a pair. But you know what? I don't lose earrings so I don't have a single earring from a lost pair. That's not to say I don't have single earrings, I do. Plantwoman and I sometimes split the price of a pair of earrings and each take one of the pair. But I don't wear the singles like that. I've been known to wear 5 distinctly different earrings at the same time with not a one matching.
   
5. I used to wait table. And I was damned good at it too! I could carry 6 breakfast platters in my arms sans tray. I had calluses all up and down my arms and hands from carrying those hot plates. My brother, WoodWorker, still thinks that I purposely gave him the chocolate syrup instead of ketchup for his hamburger. You know those red squeeze bottles for ketchup? At the cafe we kept the chocolate syrup in one of those bottles with the lettering removed. I didn't do it intentionally, I promise! We had a new girl who put the chocolate away with the ketchup the night before, not knowing about that one teeny tiny little fact.
   
6. I retired from the high-tech industry after 28.5 years and stayed retired for 3 months. I went out and got the job I currently hold: girl Friday to a bronze sculptor.
7. I almost have a BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) with an emphasis in Office Management; I almost have a BA (Bachelor of Arts) with an emphasis in English. What I do have is an AA (Associate of Arts) with an emphasis in Graphic Design. I just couldn't make up my mind what to study. And every time I changed schools, I changed my major. Will-'o-the-wisp that's me.
   

Here are the one's from the archives:

1. Really, I do not like TV. There, I've said it. I think it is such a brain drain.
2. I can pretty much understand Spanish but I cannot speak it.
3. I have never lived by myself. I've always had someone around.
4. My current favorite genre of books is Mystery.
5. I love trivia. I like to play Trivial Pursuit and am quite good at it.
6. I am learning how to throw things away.
   
7. I can't have tattoos because of my allergy to food and drug dyes. But I can have piercings. I've keep the piercings to my ears.
8. I have a motorcycle license. No motorcycle, just the license. It's a hold over from when we did have a motorcycle. It was a 1976 Harley Davidson FLH Dresser - Police Parade Special.
9. In that same vein, I can drive a 4x4 up the side of a mountain and heel and toe with the best of them. What is heel and toe you ask? Well, aside from being a dance move in square dancing, it's when your left foot is on the clutch and your right toe is on the brake and your right heel is on the accelerator.
10. I used to smoke cigarettes. I quit on my birthday in 1999. Now I'm a smoker's worst nightmare. It's true, what they say -- "An ex-smoker is worse than a non-smoker".
11. I have a highly developed olfactory sense. I should have worked in a perfume company. For years, I dulled that sense (see #10). But now it's back. I can smell things that elude a normal person's smell. Skunks are my nemesis, but that's a story that I might tell another day.
    
12. I also have hearing like a dog's. I can't hear the bass notes very well so I'm always turning it up. And those high notes! Ack! they hurt my ears. I've been tested and I have a normal range but it is shifted to the high end. When silent burglar alarms came out in the 1960's I couldn't get near them because the frequency hurt! I can 'hear' things that normal hearing misses. It drives me nuts.
13. And another physical trait of mine is static electricity. Lots. I'm like a generator for static electricity. Whenever I get close to electronics or even something like a vacuum cleaner I need to discharge. I usually touch something metal like a file cabinet before I sit down at the computer so I don't zap the electronics. I make sure to wear shoes with soles when I vacuum other wise I get shocked in the soles of my feet. I have killed more inanimate 'stuff' because of this. If I were a super-hero I'd be Electric Girl!
    
14. I can draw a straight line. I started this post with a line drawing of my house. (You will have to dig back in the archives for the foto.) I did this in the early 1980's for a college drawing class. I took my chair out to the front yard and sketched the house. As I drew it up inside at the kitchen table, I would dash outside, squat down and look at the perspective again. The house has changed quite a bit since this drawing. It was lucky that I scanned this in when my scanner was still working. Had to do it in halves and then stitch it together, that's why the two sides are a bit different in value.
15. I have a motorcycle license. No motorcycle but I am legal to drive one. It's a hold over from when we did have a motorcycle. (2 mentions of this. I'm repeating myself)
    
16. I can hear the mosquito ring tones the kids like to use. It actually hurts my ears. Conversely, I have a hard time hearing bass tones (like CarGuy's voice). And loud noises are not great either.
    
17. I didn't have a best friend until I was a newlywed. If she didn't live in Wyoming, PlantWoman and I would be inseparable.
18. I have lived in South Carolina and Florida but have never even visited the northeast US states. How sad is that? I would love to see New England in the fall. We don't get that kind of color out here in the west.
19. And speaking of the west, I am a fourth generation Colorado pioneer descendant. TheKid is the fifth generation. We should get an award or something since we are still in Colorado and haven't moved.
20. I love organization. In fact, upon my first retirement, I contemplated starting my own organization business. I am ruthless about this type of thing. It comes from my background, I suppose. As a child, we moved a lot. There were weight limits, so you chose what to take and what to leave behind.
21. I am bored with cooking. I wish I had a personal chef or maybe eat out all the time. CarGuy hates change so I cook the same things over and over. Bah. I want to experiment and try new recipes.

THE RULES:

Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.
Post THE RULES on your blog.
Post 7 weird or random facts about yourself on your blog.
Tag 7 people and link to them.
Comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.

Once again, consider yourself tagged. Play if you want.

I'm It -- I've been Tagged

Knitting Dragonflies has tagged me for the 7 strange/wierd facts meme. I don't know if these are all that strange. OK so what have I said or not said? hmmmm...

1. Really, I do not like TV. There, I've said it. I think it is such a brain drain.
2. I can pretty much understand Spanish but I cannot speak it.
3. I have never lived by myself. I've always had someone around.
4. My current favorite genre of books is Mystery.
5. I love trivia. I like to play Trivia Pursuit and am quite good at it.
6. I am learning how to throw things away.
   
7. I can't have tatoos because of my allergy to food and drug dyes. But I can have piercings. I've keep the piercings to my ears.
   

Now for the rules:
1. Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Post 7 random or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
4. Tag 7 people and link to them.
5. Comment on their blog, website or store to let them know they have been tagged.

Tag your it....

Do the meme if you want, I don't tag people.

Just some misc. stuff

ConnieW over at Simply Quilted tagged me for the Seven Truths meme. I've been saving up memes so you'll get 2 in this post. Since, normally, I don't do these memes, I think I'll refrain from tagging a specific person. So here's a little bit about me:

1. I have a motorcycle license. No motorcycle, just the license. It's a hold over from when we did have a motorcycle. It was a 1976 Harley Davidson FLH Dresser - Police Parade Special.
2. In that same vein, I can drive a 4x4 up the side of a mountain and heel and toe with the best of them. What is heel and toe you ask? Well, aside from being a dance move in square dancing, it's when your left foot is on the clutch and your right toe is on the brake and your right heel is on the accelerator.
3. I used to smoke cigarettes. Ten years ago I quit. Now I'm a smoker's worst nightmare. It's true, what they say -- "An ex-smoker is worse than a non-smoker".
4. I have a highly developed olfactory sense. I should have worked in a perfume company. For years, I dulled that sense (see #3). But now it's back. I can smell things that elude a normal person's smell. Skunks are my nemesis, but that's a story that I might tell another day.
   
5. I also have hearing like a dog's. I can't hear the bass notes very well so I'm always turning it up. And those high notes! Ack! they hurt my ears. I've been tested and I have a normal range but it is shifted to the high end. When silent burglar alarms came out in the 1960's I couldn't get near them because the frequency hurt! I can 'hear' things that normal hearing misses. It drives me nuts.
6. And another physical trait of mine is static electricity. Lots. I'm like a generator for static electricity. Whenever I get close to electronics or even something like a vacuum cleaner I need to discharge. I usually touch something metal like a file cabinet that is not plugged into an outlet when I sit down at the computer so I don't zap the electronics. I make sure to wear shoes with soles when I vacuum other wise I get shocked in the soles of my feet. I have killed more inanimate 'stuff' because of this. If I were a super-hero I'd be Electric Girl!
   
7. I can draw a straight line. I started this post with a line drawing of my house. I did this in the early 1980's for a college drawing class. I took my chair out to the front yard and sketched the house. As I drew it up inside at the kitchen table, I would dash outside, squat down and look at the perspective again. The house has changed quite a bit since this drawing. It was lucky that I scanned this in when my scanner was still working. Had to do it in halves and then stitch it together, that's why the two sides are a bit different in value.

Belém at De ponto em nó has tagged me with this sweet Halloween pic.

Tag you're it.

U Make Me Smile!

Michele over at With Heart and Hands, a Quilting Journey has nominated me for this "You Make Me Smile" award and it's accompanying meme. Thank you Michele!

I've spent a lot of time in the sewing room this weekend working on several different projects and contemplating the meme. It involves using the letters of your name to share something about yourself and and then tagging 6 other blog friends to play along. OK then. Here's what I came up with:
P --> particular
A --> astute
U --> unique
L --> loving
A --> artistic

And since I've seen this particular award and meme around for awhile, I am not going to name any one person but you can play along with me if you want.

Nice Matters

Libby at A Simple Girl nominated me for this award. Thank you, Libby. Libby, by the way has a gorgeous new banner on her blog. Check it out.

I, too, have found quilt bloggers to be some of the kindest people around. I still belong to a couple of mini quilting groups and one large guild, but I am think I am going to give up the mid-sized (12 people) group after December maybe earlier. I don't seem to have enough in common with that batch of women. But here, online, I have found friendly like-minded quilters who allow me to share my quilting and needlework and a bit of my day. I believe that you treat others the way you want to be treated.

And so to share this award I am passing it on to
Kim at Kim's Big Quilting Adventures
Shelina at Shelina's Creations
Granny Fran at Toad Haven Annex
Amy at The Calico Cat
Kim at A Peach In Stitches
There are others I would like to nominate, but they have already received this award

Last Saturday, when I came home from the Sculpture Show all hot and tired, I found a package in my mail box from Michele at With Heart and Hands, a Quilting Journey. Looky! Two patterns from an Oregon designer for bags! O how my outlook changed. Now I want to make some so badly, but I am still out of time. Maybe I can get one or two made up to put purchases into when I'm at the Quilt-a-Fair in September. It was so timely too. I have a cheap straw bag that hangs from a nail in the ladies room at work and I noticed the other day that it needed replacing. I thought about replacing it with the bag that I carry everyday and then making a new one for my daily tote. So see how timely that was? And thank you so very much, Michele!

Speaking of the Sculpture Show, I loved the dress this woman was wearing. She kindly posed for me. I have 2 other photos that show the piecing on the garment. The fabric was a rayon challis, you could tell by the drape. The front was a scoop neck with slight princess seaming but the features on the back were what made the dress! The straps over the shoulder were cut a bit wider where they attached to the back of the dress. And notice the shirring? What a great way to add ease to a garment.

O. BTW, I edited the post from the Sculpture Show to add a photo.

Potpourri # eleventytwo

Because a post without a photo is blah here's a photo taken from in front of the studio. We have these wonderful planters up and down main street and this one has a great mixture of spring color. Notice the blush of pink in that one tulip? Speaking of pink, I woke up early this morning and ended up in the sewing room sorting and folding more fabric. There was this one 3-yard piece of solid dusty pink - a hold over from the 1980's. So I'm looking at that thinking I'm never going to use this, I wonder what it would look like over dyed? Which in turn made me think about what color fabric was 'under' this color, you know, like black fabrics. So I snipped a piece of it off and poured some bleach on it. Guess what color it was? Pink! but a pure pink not that ugly stuff from 2 decades ago. I'll be playing with this over the weekend, I bet.

I've been following along with Nancy as she cleans her sewing room so this sudden spurt of cleaning in my sewing room is all her fault! Simplesparrow has been cleaning and organizing too. I tried to take pictures this morning but none of them was really interesting. I do recommend this type of fabric fondling, especially if you are in the Stashbusters Ring. This has renewed my resolve to use the stash. I have actually pulled several things and set them aside for quilts. How about two different quilts using ethnic fabrics? One African and one Australian aboriginal. What was I thinking????

I just checked my bloglines and there are over 208 POSTS!! on the rings I normally read! Wow! Everybody must be back from the major quilt shows, huh? If you don't hear from me this weekend you'll know why.

I was tagged by Dale Anne over at My Creative Ramblings so here are my 7 little known facts:

1. I have a motorcycle license. No motorcycle but I am legal to drive one. It's a hold over from when we did have a motorcycle.
2. I can hear the mosquito ring tones the kids like to use. It actually hurts my ears. Conversely, I have a hard time hearing bass tones (like CarGuy's voice). And loud noises are not great either.
   
3. I didn't have a best friend until I was a newlywed. If she didn't live in Wyoming, PlantWoman and I would be inseparable.
4. I have lived in South Carolina and Florida but have never even visited the northeast US states. How sad is that? I would love to see New England in the fall. We don't get that kind of color out here in the west.
5. And speaking of the west, I am a fourth generation Colorado pioneer descendant. TheKid is the fifth generation. We should get an award or something since we are still in Colorado and haven't moved.
6. I love organization. In fact, upon my first retirement, I contemplated starting my own organization business. I am ruthless about this type of thing. It comes from my background, I suppose. As a child, we moved a lot. There were weight limits, so you chose what to take and what to leave behind.
7. I am bored with cooking. I wish I had a personal chef or maybe eat out all the time. CarGuy hates change so I cook the same things over and over. Bah. I want to experiment and try new recipes.
   

Thinking Blogger

I was tagged for a Thinking Blogger award. Now I don't usually post meme's or quizzes. I did when I first started blogging but I have since gone back and removed those from my archives. I think I got them all, probably missed some though. Why don't I do them? Because I was using them as filler, just as a way to get a post in when I had nothing to say. Nothing to say? You can stop laughing now. As a new blogger, I didn't really stop to consider the focus of my blog and found myself speechless at times. Now the true Paula is out. Anyway. My first thought was "What is this Thinking Blogger award?" For research, I did what any self-respecting computer literate would do: I Googled. Ilker Yoldas' blog "The Thinking Blog" came up. I followed the link and found that this was started on Feb 11, 2007. There is even an icon for it.

Now, I usually try to post about either quilting or knitting, crochet or other fiber related adventures with an occasional side trip into books. That is the focus of my blog, after all. I think I'm doing a fairly good job of staying on topic(s). Like Ilker, I don't post a blogroll in my sidebar. Why? I have over 200 blogs that I read (I have way too much time on my hands during daylight hours because it is actually 300; note to self: whittle that down) and I feel that nobody but me would scroll through an hellacious list like that, so I don't do it. What I do instead is to give you a link inside my post that you can follow (or not). If I were to include a blogroll it would be a diverse fibery thing that includes quilters (art, crazy and traditional), knitters, crocheters, fabric dyers, scrapbookers, photographers and journalers. Plus the uncategorized ones like Ilker's. Thank goodness they don't ALL post daily! There are actually a couple of blogs that I read that I have in my del.icio.us account because there just aren't any feeds to them.

So. Onward. I especially like to read posts that I can ponder and think about. And so, before I post my list of 5 that I read to make me think or laugh or cry or walk down memory lane or just to pour a cuppa & pull up a chair for a chat, I want to thank Connie of "Simply Quilted" for including me in this meme. And I mean this sincerely because this one made me stop and think. I have lucky number 13 in my 'Daily Reads'. It is going to be hard to prioritize them but here goes (and because I can't follow directions I've thrown in an extra one or two, tee hee!).

1. CrazyAuntPurl
2. A Simple Girl
3. Pieces from my scrapbag
4. Gone to the Dogs
5. Kim's Big Quilting Adventure
   
6. With Heart and Hands, A Quilting Journey
7. In A Minute Ago

From Ilker's blog:
Congratulations, you won a

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. I thought it would be appropriate to include them with the meme.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

Paula Needs

Via both QuiltPixie and Shelina here's what Paula needs:

• to be booted out.
• to do more.
• help.
• some counseling.
• you!
• to disappear for a while.

Just go to Google, type in your name and the word 'needs' and see what comes up. Apparently, Paula Abdul has done something to anger fans of American Idol. I don't watch the program but everything that came up was in relation to her.