Sigh.

Not much to tell you about, and nothing to show you.  I'm hand quilting the big green quilt, and the lighthouse table runner.  Sandra asked me if my fingers were hamburger yet - no, not quite, but my neck and shoulders sure are aching.  Somehow, hand quilting all day makes me feel like I've done NOTHING, although my body says otherwise!

Do you get Jenny's magazine?  If you don't, and you love to stitch, you're missing out.  She's offering her first issue for free, click here and check it out!  I stole borrowed a pic of a project from her latest issue, this is one I really want to make.

Isn't that darling???  This is the kitchen issue.  Every magazine is chock full of patterns and her lovely writing, and is only $4!  I find Jenny's designs seriously addictive, and they always turn out brilliantly.  Once I get this hand-quilting done, I'm starting on her new free BOM, Promises and Borders, I'm so in love with it!

Today is primary day here in Michigan, have you voted yet?  I'm still sitting here in my jammies - just visited a bunch of blogs, been missing you guys, and boy were they stacked up in my reader.  I haven't had the tv on much recently, I'm so sick of all the political commercials, and it's just going to get worse heading up to November.  Thank goodness for dvd's - I need something to watch while I quilt.

I saw an article linked on my homeschool board that I wanted to share with you.  Walmart will be selling Monsanto GMO corn this summer - it's a short article and well worth the read.  Needless to say, I'll be buying local from farmers I trust.  You can read the article, just click here.  Yet another reason not to buy anything from Walmart.

Have a great week everyone, I'm going to try to work in some sketching time in between my hand-quilting bouts  - I have some ideas in my head that really want out!  And I really need the break....see you soon!

The Forecast Was Rain

Hm.  What a shock when I opened the curtains this morning.  I had seen John off to work, it was dark and dry...a couple of hours later and this is what greeted me.  I don't know why the image is so bright...almost looks like a negative, doesn't it?  I think I should read my camera book.  This is more what it really looked like...



We haven't had a lot of snow this year, hardly any, matter of fact.  So it was quite the novelty.

Since my son had my car today and I didn't want to go out anyway, I decided to get the green quilt basted.



All done, now to decide on the quilting!

It's already past my bedtime, so instead of opening my Google Reader, I'm going to bed and I'll browse blogs in the morning.  I'm afraid to look at it, it's so full it might explode.  The rain has finally moved in, good sleeping weather....don't you just love sleeping with rain falling on the roof?  Makes you feel even cozier.  Hope you have a good night/day depending on where you are on the planet!

A little something cute for you.

A Word About Spam

Don't you just hate it?  Me too.  I don't mean the kind you eat - I mean the kind that shows up on your blog.

I don't know how many of you know that blogger has a spam filter.  It WORKS.  Go to your Comments, and you'll see it.  I check mine daily, and that way they never make it into my email inbox.  Blogger will send them to your email if they sit for awhile.  The spam that makes it onto blogger never shows up on my blog, it stays in that folder until I delete it.

Because blogger has that wonderful feature, I've turned off word verification.  I've seen all the complaints around blogland about blogger's new 2-word verification, and I agree wholeheartedly with them.  It takes much longer to leave a comment now.  So you know, if you see a comment from me and you have that feature enabled, I must really love you.  Really, REALLY love you.

If you ever need help to turn off word verification, I will jump through flaming hoops to help you.  Just email me or leave a comment.  My pleasure, truly.

Off to the races - mum's taxi service is getting a workout today - be well, be happy, and sew something for me!

I'm Not Ignoring You, Promise

I've just been sooooo busy.  I'm sure you can relate...I've been reading your blogs, but time keeps getting away from me lately.  And I don't stay up half the night anymore, which used to be my favorite time to cruise blogland.

Yesterday, I finally got this quilt top together.



My friend Stacy embroidered the blocks, and sent it with the fabric.  It looks so much prettier in person, you can hardly see the light green in the photo.  This will be a raffle quilt for our homeschool board's annual raffle.  Now, I just have to quilt it.  The binding will be the dark green, not sure if you can see the outer border of white with the pinwheels in the corners.



 I'm pretty proud of those pinwheels, my very first ones, AND my first time putting a square in the corner of a border!  Yay me.  *G*

Today, hubby helped me hang a 4x8ft piece of foam board, after I covered it with flannel, to use as a design wall.   You can barely see it behind the quilt.

 

SO nice to have somewhere to hang this quilt, while I ponder quilting options.  All 2 of them.  I'm a straight line quilter, no surprises here...I'm just not sure how to do this, so any ideas would be welcome.  But don't tell me "feathers" or "vines"...those are so far above my skills!

Here's a quilt my friend Cathy and I made - I cut the squares out of the remnants of my 30's reproduction stash, sewed them into rows, and handed it over.  She finished putting it together, and will quilt it.



I had started that quite awhile ago, and finally decided it wasn't going to happen at my house!  She loves 30's even more than I do, so I thought it would be in good hands.

I'm going to try to get back on track this week, with blog reading that is.  I miss you all terribly.  I think after Tuesday life will slow down enough.  I had no success finding work last week, but I won't get discouraged, just keep plugging away.  I hope you all have a wonderful week, I'll be seeing you on your blogs soon!

I'll leave you with a small pic of the first quilt I ever made, still being used daily...

Hope You're Sitting Down

Cuz....*drum roll*...I have a finish!  First one of the year, isn't that sad.  But I do like it.



Haven't named it yet, haven't drawn a pattern yet, but I'm glad it's done.  I love it.

See those clouds?  I tried and tried to find a mostly white with black fabric that I liked for the background for the poppy, and couldn't.  So I made my own.  I drew them on and embroidered them with one strand of black floss.  Love the effect, but it would have been faster to find fabric I liked.  *G*  And the binding fabric wasn't that dark - I got it all put on, decided it blended into the border too much, so colored it with a black fabric marker.  All because I'm lazy, and didn't want to do a new binding!  Necessity really is the mother of invention.

I'd love to make it with Japanese prints, too, and I also want to make a bigger one with more blocks and some liberated, asymmetrical borders.  We'll see.

Now I'm relaxing with Lucy, and reading blogs.  Feels SO GOOD to have a finish!

You may notice a new linky follower on my sidebar, apparently Google has decided if it ain't broke, they have to fix it and will be canceling Google Friend Connect.  At the end of the month!  A few folks have started using Linky Follower so I thought I would try it too.  Any blogs I follow using google, I'll be looking to see if they have this, so I can follow using linky follower as well - don't want to lose anyone during the transition!  Darn google anyway.

My oldest son, John, got into a car accident yesterday, he's ok but his car is not.  It's still drive-able, but he'll probably use my car tomorrow.  First he hit a deer, and now this.  That poor car of his used to be so pretty!  I'm just so thankful he's ok.

Billie from BillieBee's Blog gave me the Versatile Blogger award, thank you so much Billie, but since I already did that post I'm not going to do it again - she's a great blogger and a great friend, go say hi!

Nothing else new here, I may be a bit quiet this week, I'm going to make a supreme effort to find a job.  If anyone has any leads, let me know!  I hope you all have a wonderful week!

An Award And A Give-Away

A bright and beautiful good morning, everyone!  There's a gorgeous sun coming up over my trees, I hope the sun is shining in your part of the world too.  I have a couple of things to tell you about today.

First, my darling friend Midge is having a give-away.

She did the cutest post with her darling pup Freya, they went to a Donkey Sanctuary and brought home this sweet little donkey to give away.  I love Midge's blog, she lives in a 17th century cottage in England...BLISS...

And the award.  Jocelyn, at Happy Cottage Quilter gave me the Versatile Blogger Award!

Wasn't that sweet of her!!  Here are the rules....[copied and pasted from Jocelyn's blog, yes I'm lazy..]

Thank the blogger who gave you the award
Add the Award badge to your blog
Create a list of seven things about yourself
Pass the Award on to 15 other bloggers and let them know by commenting on their blog

Thank you Jocelyn!!!  Let's see if I can come up with seven things, yikes.  Seven?  About ME?  *yawn*

1.  I was named after a character on Peyton Place [a very old soap opera, the character was played by Mia Farrow].

2.  The first stick shift I ever drove was a semi.

3.  I hate Valentine's Day [is that sacrilege?]

4.  I would love to live in the country, but would probably die of starvation if I had to grow my own food.

5.  I've almost drowned eight times, still don't know how to swim.

6.  Before I started quilting, I read a book a day.

7.  The beach is my favorite place in the world.

Ok, that wasn't too bad....but now I have to pick 15 bloggers to give the award to!  This is the hard part.  Only 15?????

In no particular order, here we go.....if you don't accept tags or awards, please forgive me, I'm scanning your blogs to see but might miss it!  I'm also going to try to not do the same blogs as Jocelyn, lol!

Jenny of Elefantz

Caroll at Attic Window Quilt Shop

Cheryl at Polka Dots & Rick Rack

Karen at Log Cabin Quilter

Martha at Q Is For Quilter

Midge at Soggibottom

Wendy at Sugarlane Quilts

Cathy at Big Lake Quilter

Wendy at The Crafter's Apprentice

Debbie at WoolenSails

Michelle at The Raspberry Rabbits

Melody at The House On The Side Of The Hill

Dolores at True Blue Canadian

Terry at Terry's Treasures

Paulette at Sweet P Quilting and Creations

I must tell you, that was difficult.  I love every single one of you and if left up to me, every blog I read would go on that list.  There's a reason you're all in my reader!

Now I'd better get up from here and go sew something - hope you all have a wonderful day!!

Spread The Word, Share The Love

My dear friend Midge did a post on her blog that I simply have to share.  Her friend Judith, who lives in Crete, found two pups sitting by the side of the road, patiently waiting for their owners to return - they never did.  The dogs were abandoned.  Judith and her hubby took them home.    And then Judith found out the pups were about to become parents....

Judith has the most adorable pics on her blog.  Judith and her hubby already have a dog, Lucky, who they also rescued [what beautiful hearts they have] and are looking for forever homes for these pups.  Can you help?  One has already been adopted and will be going to Holland.  Spread the word and let's help these babies find someone to love them!  These pics are from Judith's blog, please help if you can.

UPDATE:  The puppies have all been adopted - now they're looking for forever homes for the mum and dad.  Let's get busy and see if we can find these darlings a good home!!

Settling In

Well, I think I've managed to settle down.  I'm back to work on a few projects, but not much to show today.  I did find an old project that I had promised would be a free download here, and forgotten about....



I had started hand-quilting it, with RAYON embroidery thread, what a mess that was.  And it was extremely difficult to see unless I was quilting in direct sunlight.  The thread tangled something awful.  I picked it up, decided to heck with it, and tore out the hand-quilting.  Then yesterday, I tried to quilt it by machine, which was also a disaster, so I tore THAT out, and started hand-quilting again.  This time, with cotton hand quilting thread.  That is going nicely, so as soon as I'm done, it will be a free download!  It's a very large table runner, but you can put the appliques closer if you like to make it smaller.  I just hope I can remember all I did with it to make the pattern.

Last night, we ordered new glasses from Zenni Optical.  Glasses start at $6.95!  The one thing you want your optometrist to do when you get an eye exam is to measure the pupil distance, as it can be difficult to do on your own.  They have a neat feature - you can upload a pic of yourself and try on glasses!  This is the pic I took of Sam for that purpose, I thought it turned out pretty nice - the one pic I have of him not making a face.



Just wish I had that nice hair.  *G*

A Give-Away!

One of my favorite designers,  Val Laird, is hosting a give-away for reaching 500 followers - if you aren't a follower yet, you'll want to be!  She's got the loveliest BOM going, and is just so talented and sweet....a truly lovely lady!

Just Settle Down!

Did you ever tell your kids that?  My boys were 2 years apart, and that was heard with great frequency around here.  Now I'm saying it to myself!

I'm having a lot of trouble settling down to a project lately.  I threw away two projects this morning!  Don't worry, I didn't waste a lot - they were small, but very deserving of their fate.  I worked on them both this morning, and ruined them!  ARGH!

This is another project I'm trying to work on, it's fighting me tooth and nail.  Just a sneak peek for now.



I cleaned my sewing room the other day, in the hopes I could get organized and find something to settle down with.  Boy, did I find things.  I have so many stitcheries started!  Trouble is, I put them away to work on something else, and forget I have them.  And with all the gorgeous BOM's out there right now, I want to start more!

Remember my friend Shirley's pillow she made?  She made two more little wallhangings of the same design.



She's putting me to shame.  I love those things.  January is gone, and I have not one finish!  Here's another pillow she made, a number of years ago.



See why she inspires me?

I think I'll go plug in Lucy, and pick up one of those stitchery projects I found before they take my quilting license away!

By the way - I'm still rising at 5am, still loving it, now if the rest of the family would just get up so I can turn on my sewing machine that early!