December 2022

 Last post of the year! We had a wonderful, if late, Christmas celebration. DH and I were both ill with that dreadful head/chest cold and felt it better to postpone until Dec 30. It was a wise decision. It was great to see the kids and grands and exchange gifts.

I've been using my old, faithful serger. I used it so much it had to go into the shop not only for a tuneup but repair on the upper looper post. I found an addition use for a child's car seat. It is great to transport my serger.

Do you save your empty spools? I don't know why I do, but it is satisfying to look at how many are used up. I can now throw them away.

And another Project Linus blanket is ready to go. We have a bit of snow and it was difficult to get a good picture of it. But here you go.

February 2022

 Yikes! So I had the second surgery. To remove more of the margin of the melanoma, doc had to totally remove the healed portion from the last surgery. To say that it hurts like h**l is an understatement. I'm taking it easy for a week or two until the bandages come off and then it's "watch out world"!

I was able to make a tshirt quilt from some hot rod shirts. These shirts are from a collection of one of the members of the Road Knights car club. I used 20 shirts, stabilized with Pellon911FF. Because I was fitting it to a 60" wide backing fleece. the quilt has no sashing or borders. I quilted it with an allover freemotion jagged zigzag. It turned out pretty nice, if I can pat myself on the back. I gave it to one of the organizers of the car club's annual event for a door prize and she was blown away.

New Landscaping

 

This space used to have two trees: an ornamental Bradford Pear that was dying and an Austrian Pine that was so close to the house that in the last snow storm some of the branches were so weighted down with snow that they were on our chimney (not safe). Both trees had to be removed. 

And then the weeds came in. Last year was so smokey and hot and with the repaving of our road, we decided not to do anything with it. This year was the  year to do it!

It is really a simple plan with just the Colorado pink rock and the grass. A sprinkler system was installed so it will be easily watered. I've never had a sprinkler system before and it is really nice!

Next spring a new tree will be planted that will be place better than the other two.

July and August 2021

July was hot but nice for about 2 weeks. Then the smoke arrived from all the forest fires from the western states. The western slope of Colorado also contributed. Combine that to another infestation of grasshoppers and I just stayed inside. 

I put a new zipper in a pair of leather pants for a friend. That was an interesting job. I was able to use my treadle sewing machine to sew one side of the zipper but the other side I had to stitch by hand since it couldn't go through to the outside of the pants. My biker customer was very happy with the result.

August is also hot and smokey so I have been, again, staying inside. Other that an occasional trip outside to the garden to pick vegies, I only go to the grocery store. And I go fully masked. Because.

My DIL had two older chairs that were really rough but had good bones. She bought all the supplies and I recovered them for her. It was interesting because the seat cushion and the back cushion were essentially feather pillows. These chairs are really comfortable. I don't know if I'll recover anything else, though. What a process!

 

I've started cleaning out years of accumulation. Here's one thing:

This is a formal muumuu that my daddy gave to me in the 1960s. The front has princess seams and inside are ties at the waist to tie at the lower back. That cinches up the waistline and the back of the muumuu forms a slight train. I love the fabric and I think that is why I've kept this for so long. I went back into the closet.

This time of year brings out the cook in me. So far this week I've made krautburgers/Runzas/cabbageburgers (they are know by different names), cinnamon rolls and a wilted cucumber salad.

No picture of the cinnamon rolls as they disappeared!

April & May 2021

It has been raining almost every 3rd day for two months. The weeds around this place are prize winners! I wish I could say that there has been gardening done, but I can't. The soil is just too wet to work. 

On the other hand, a lot of other things have been accomplished.

In April of 2020, I had planned to go to Iowa to award my brother a Quilt of Valor. That didn't happen because of COVID. I had saved all my naval fabrics to make this quilt for him and award it to him. We had it planned that his buddies would come and I'd do the presentation and then we had to cancel.

Well, last month I drove from Colorado to Iowa and awarded it. We couldn't believe that everyone kept it a secret for a whole year! It was just family at the ceremony but there wasn't a dry eye in the house. He is now calling us all sneaky. Once home, I registered it at the Quilt of Valor Foundation site.

There is now a wall of grandkid photos at my house. It is, of course, in a 9-patch grid pattern. LOL.

The old Sleep Number bed it hitting the trash. I bought a new mattress and box springs. That Sleep Number bed is horrible for my arthritic hip and The Husband's back. Anything is better than that old thing.

Since I signed up for my guild's day retreat this month and wanted something easy to sew, I've been cutting quilt kits for myself. There are now five Quick Strippie Quilts cut from kid-friendly fabric to take for mindless sewing. I also realized that there was enough Laurel Burch fabrics in the stash for four (count 'em) quilts. Hmmm... I have 3 nieces and one grand-daughter. I think I just came up with some Christmas gifts. Now to do something for the 2 boys.

Sure I hope I can keep up this blog a little better. Talk to you soon.

It's March!

Hello friends.

Wow did we have an exciting month! We hardly get any snow and then kablamo! it all comes in one storm. 

We got 29.6" of snow in one weekend! It isn't the first time something like this has happened, but it has been a long time. Last one was in 2013.

I finished several 3 yard baby/child quilts this month. Want to see?

I just noticed that the first 2 photos were taken before the quilts were quilted. I'll have to update them since I still have the quilts. The 3rd quilt with the whales has already been gifted and mom-to-be was happy.

My latest quilt is hanging on the display wall in my living room. This was a kit and the pattern is call Mykonos Marble. It does remind one of a tile floor in Greece, doesn't it?

 

 

This is the quilting diagram I drew up for the center of the quilt. Then I quilted a series of borders. I broke the outer border into 3 smaller ones so there are 6 borders in total.

And now I'm in quarantine until I can get a COVID-19 test. I was exposed on Saturday, March 27 and it is recommended to wait 7 days to get tested. Even though I've gotten both vaccines I want to know that I'm clear. I'll keep you in the know.

Stay safe, my friends.

So It's The End of February

For all it's a short month, it will be an expensive one. Last summer we found that our AC unit was rusting from the inside. We were told it had about 5 more seasons so we figured we could replace it at our leisure. Well, last week we realized that our 2 stage furnace wasn't kicking into the second stage. Out comes the repairman who gives us a new thermostat thinking that was the problem. It wasn't. He comes out again and says that the repair/replace of the bad board will be $1100. The furnace is 20 years old. The Husband and I decided to replace the furnace and AC. Can we say $9000? Yep. That hurts. I asked if they can throw in an installed whole hose humidifier too. We got the whole thing installed a day before the sub-zero weather hit us. It was excellent timing!

I've been making more donation quilts. I use up pieces and bits of batting for these. When I use a whole batting in a quilt I save the plastic bag. Then when I trim the quilt, I put the trimmed pieces in the bag. When there are enough there I make frankenbatts. For the most part I use an 80/20 batting but I will occasionally use 100% cotton or wool. That is why I save the bag: I can tell at a glance what batting the pieces are from. This batch of quilts has a frankenbatt, two polyester battings (ugh, not a fan) and one has two layers of washed flannel sheets.

For hand work I've been knitting a border onto the blanket made from leftover sock yarn. It's tedious because the black yarn and my eyesight are not a good combo. I have been staying quite warm under this as I knit. It is lightweight because of the sock yarn, but it is also warm because the sock yarn has a lot of wool in it. When the furnace was down, this was the perfect thing to work on.

Quiet Christmas and New Year's Eve 2020

 

It's been quiet around here. The Husband and I are still hunkered down and only going to the grocery store, the library and doing the occasional curbside restaurant pickup. I don't know about you but I'm running out of innovative things to cook that The Husband will eat. I've started baking bread again because it gives me something to do.

You would think a quilter would have a lot to do and, yes, I have. I have made and finished four Project Linus quilts and six Quilts of Valor quilts since March. There are two more smallish quilts to quilt and a third ready to baste. I think I'm bored and I want to go outside. But outside is cold, slick and windy. Not a place for me right now.

I now have five more quilts to quilt. Five! I've been pulling fabrics from the shelves and making simple quilts to use for quilting practice. Except for the Delectable Mountains quilt; that one is a king sized quilt of many seams. It will be heavy. I finally figured out what I'm going to quilt on it.It's a very large meander with squiggles on each side of the line.  Since I have a sit down quilting machine a king size quilt is do-able but the quilting needs to be fairly simple since I have to push the mass of the quilt around. 

I will wish you all a quiet and healthy New Year.

Hi there!

It's been a while hasn't it?

Other than bunion surgery, nothing has been happening here. The surgery is the culprit. Since my sewing room is in the basement, I couldn't negotiate the stairs with the air cast on my foot. And let's talk about using the foot pedal to the sewing machine. Not! It is my right foot, so I can't drive either. Can we say that I have been effectively curtailed?

I did get a lot of experimental knitting done, but nothing to show for it since I frogged it all.

In my defense, I am very well rested now.

Soon (I hope) the cast will be just a memory and I can go back to my daily life again.

New in the kitchen

This was my Christmas present! Hubby and I decided to do this in lieu of other gifts. We had to get an electrician in to pull a 120 line since there was only 210. Then we had to get the tile guy in to drill a hole in the tile for the gas line. Then we had to have a gas line pulled. After all of that, this got delivered and I am in seventh heaven. I don't think the old electric ceramic top range would have made it too many more days.

Merry Christmas

I usually pick from last year's photos of our Christmas celebration to make a greeting card for the current Christmas celebration. I wish you and yours a very, merry Christmas, Hanukkah, and/or Kwanzaa.

Once I Saw A Little Bird

Once I saw a little bird
Come hop, hop, hop;
So I cried, "Little bird,
Will you stop, stop, stop?"
And was going to the window
To say, "How do you do?
But he shook his little tail,
And far way he flew

--Mother Goose

 

Turn back the clocks on Saturday night

A Quilter's Garage Sale

Several weeks ago the local quilt shop had it's second annual "Junk from the Trunk" sale.This was open to sewists and quilters to open up the trunk of their car and sell their 'junk'. This is the first year that I participated and I did all right. Next year I know what to do and what not to do.

Of course, there was some purchasing happening on my end. My HandiQuilter Sweet 16 loves MaxiLoc thread. I got all of these for $20!

Merry Christmas!

December 16, 2015 Blizzard

My garage is a separate building with these chairs against the wall. The snow drifts up against the door to the garage and forms a snow snake. You can see how it drifts up against the blue pots and then it curves back to the building, follows along the building a bit and then curves to the left out of the photo. When the fence in back was installed, the whole wind pattern changed and the drifts are different. It is now much harder to get into the garage. Ugh. Click on the photo to make it bigger and you can see the snow blowing sideways right there at the downspout.

My new BFF

When you have a horrible cold, reach for the good stuff.

Tea for Two or maybe Eight

I am having my kitchen remodeled. Oy. What a process! I am slowly emptying the cabinets and packing up the contents. In the process, I am finding long forgotten items like these teacups and saucers.

These have been handed down in my family for generations. Old hand painted porcelain cups and saucers, so thin they are almost transparent.

There is one cup that has no matching saucer. I think the saucer was shattered beyond repair and the cup was broken and later fixed. The repair in the cup is visible because the glue that was used has yellowed. How cute would it be to plant a succulent in that teacup?

Hi There

My heart hasn't been into blogging for a while; have I lost my muse? But I thought I really should try to write a decent post.

I am currently on a hiatus from knitting so I can let the arthritic fingers get back to 'normal'. Here are the last things I knitted this year. Just in time for warm weather. :) They are with the rest of the woolens, awaiting cooler weather.

I have been sewing however. I cut kits for myself and some have been in the sewing room for a while. A long while. I have been steadily stitching them together. I now have eleven tops on the hangers in the guestroom closet and another on the design wall is just about ready to hang out here with it's siblings.

Spring has arrived here in my part of the world and I have already gone out and removed last year's dead growth from several of the flower beds. The asparagus is producing wonderfully and has been appearing on the dinner plates regularly for over a week. The rhubarb started to bolt so I cut the flowers off and gave it lots of water, in hopes of making it a bit stronger. It is only the first year for it, but I hope to get enough from it this year for a least one rhubarb crisp. I need to go into the furthest garden bed to see if the horseradish is starting to pop up. How is your garden growing?

The whole yarden is being redesigned so there will be a lot of hardscaping going on around here: removing stuff, spreading stuff, adding concrete. Whew, I'm tired just reading that and I'm the one who is going to do some of the work (and work it will be).

Sick Computer

 The desktop computer at home REFUSES to turn on. What is with that? After surfing through various online forums (via my iPad) I have diagnosed a possible power supply problem. That is more than I want to deal with, so after opening it up and cleaning out the dust I dropped it off at the computer repair doc.

I have been trying to get a little more time out of this tired ole Vista-running computer, but it might be time to upgrade. Depends on what doc finds. I am hoping that I can cannibalize the old one for pieces and parts for the new one (if I have to buy a new one). That way I can get just a basic tower and add the enhancements from the old one.

And so, I wait.

UPDATE 3/10/15: Just as I suspected, it is the power supply. But because this is one of the slimline models, the computer doctor doesn't keep this model in stock and has to order it. I'll have the desktop back next week. At least now I know time with this desktop is more limited than I thought and I'll have to get crackin' on figuring out what software I have will need to be upgraded so it can run on a different platform.