Hearts Delight Quilt pattern excavated from a wall. Storm coming, too..

This is not going to be a wordless Wednesday. There's just too much to say!

I really did excavate this pattern from a whole "idea" pile pinned to a wall in the SR.  I bought it 13 years ago.  So bad, so sad.  After completing the baby quilt, I will be making the wall quilt version (God willing and the crik don't rise) which was destined to festoon the wall over the small piano.  Alas, that little instrument was donated a few years ago. (Sorry ,..inappropriate antecedent here.. "it" means  the quilt pattern, not the piano!)  I put it the pattern on it's own pin, just above the strip quilt Kit that I excavated from somewhere last week.  It's like Christmas in February!  I should never write late at night!

And a storm finally made it and left us some rain, Hallelujah!

When we saw the clouds drifting aimlessly after a morning full of dark foreboding, we thought this storm, described as a "humdinger" would slip away to the East without so much as spitting over it's shoulder.

A friend in Texas said it was supposed to rain there tomorrow, so we just knew that meant dusty old Cali was not going to stiffed again.  But it was raining by about 9:30 tonight, and just now quit.  So, watch out Arizonans, you might get more snow.  It was 40 degrees on the shade patio before the dark, so this is one cold storm.  I think, if the local mountains got any snow, the kiddies will all have a "snow day" in San Diego.

Sweet dreams!  It's raining again.  Happy Dance!

Saturday Komeekz

Ok, I threw this together yesterday just before discovering some bad news in a box.  It was while my mind was still racing around with lots of Fun Stuff inside.   I may tell you more about it later; some of you already know.  But it took awhile to do a search and destroy mission on some stubborn little lines of code and give them a Wedgie!  They so deserved it. Tawanda's DH has skills, I tell you!  God I love that man!

The first ever cartoon, and it needs lots more skills for polish but I hope the humor rings someone's bell.  It was hastily drawn on a piece of scrap paper. I'm just scared of stealing other people's work, even though it's So GOOD for laughing, which we all need much more of.

Knitting:

I got one row of both fronts done on the Noro sweater yesterday, my sister, DH and I had a wonderful chin wag, and I just can't do two things at one time.  These two swatches for the Pink today, while DH slaved away on the bugs inside the Machinetta.   The Manly Beastly, the blue sock and the second mitt rested and stayed out of my way.  They can tell when Mama's not in a good mood.

The swatch on the left is the right color.  The sun had moved for the second one.  But, the one on the right, knitted on size 6's came out the right size.  The left one is on 4's, as it's normal for me to drop down one size from the suggested needles.  The one on the right looks a little like drunken knitting, but I assure you, it's not.  I basically was trying to keep my breathing even while waiting patiently to carry dead bodies out of the house and burn them with my tiny torch.  I hate computer bugs.  To me, no matter where they come from, they are real, and they are all deserve cremation.  They are the only bugs I will knowingly hurt.

Quilting stuff:

I got all of Jazzie's and Wolfie's bandana's together in a basket, and from here they will go into a quilt when I find one a like, or when I make one up.  It will have a dog theme, of course!

And... a flower.  This one will bear fruit!

All the Opuntia are fruiting this year, well, the two really big ones.  I can't get close enough to take a picture of the backyard ones as I'm not allowed on the hill.  Boohoohoo!  Can I have a Pink Cadillac Margarita now?

Greener Shades Acid Dye Kit, Baby Tort, Quilting, Birds, Eppies,etc

I probably linked this before but to the actual manufacturer.  I'd bet you can get kits at Dharma Trading Co, too.  

Greener Shades Acid Dye Kit from KnitPicks.com

I'm looking forward to using the above (of course, first I must order them) this Summer or maybe in Fall.  I'm very excited to be exploring KoolAid dyeing first, and some more Wilton cake dyes, having stock piled the latter over Winter and Spring.  Every little 40% coupon helps!  Sometimes, don't you feel a little like a Field Marshall, planning a (shopping) campaign to maximize gains of your  gasoline allocation?

Today is a busy but happy day.  Lots of good stuff to look forward to, especially getting one fourth of the plants under the shade patio cleaned up and fed.  If done in quarters, it will get done.   It will take more than ten minutes, but won't make me into a pretzel!

The last African Violet (that I thought was just NEVER going to bloom) looks like it's a white with a ruffled dark lavender edge.  The drama queen in me is agog, and it's been very exciting to watch the buds unfurl since this plant almost died last year.

Just starting to twirl her skirts.

 Yes, I'm crazy about these flowers.  DH is gritting his teeth.  This one and the pink ruffled one are HUGE plants, easily reaching 20 - I measured - inches across.

We saw fabulous bird activity the other day.  A tiny hummingbird female, maybe a Costa's - since she was so little - building her nest on a swaying branch of a Live Oak, at the Reserve.  It reminded us of the time the Wild Animal park cordoned off part of the epiphyllum  exhibit to protect a nesting hummingbird.

Here's what I hope to put together after doing the baby quilt this summer.

We each made 12 blocks alike, if I remember correctly.

This was a fun project that started on Sewing World.

 We each ended up with 12 of these star squares, all different, with which to make a good sized quilt.  This had to be back in the late 1990's.  We,  The Blockheads, started out together in Sewing World, and then made up a group that stayed together after that BB had it's final, fatal spin out.  Sewing World was a wonderful place, and those who were in the forums probably never will forget the experience.  It was great, and it was just brilliant FUN, too!   I hope that the family who ran it went on to bigger and even better things.

And now, a beautiful place on earth, Lost Coast, at the harbor.  We happened to be there on Farmer's Market day, and got some luscious locally grown, organic vegetables for our trip.  Make that picture big and sit back and enjoy the serenity.  Ignore the antenna. If you aren't OC like me, you probably can to this.  You can do this!

Look for beauty all around you.  It's there, giving you it's timeless message, "There is a reason you have color vision, Human Being!"

Here's the Button....

With that back rounding up I'm starting to call her a HE.
He's eating like there is no tomorrow.  Maybe he knows something about the year 2012?

 

The Gift.

Cathedral Windows quilt pieces

Years ago, when I was still making quilts, a friend gave me this huge partially finished quilt top. It's called Cathedral Windows, and some of the fabric in it is very old calico. Lots of it is from the 60's and on down the years until about 1995, when it was gifted to me.

I was cleaning things out in the SR, and came across the box it was in, and fell in love with it all over again. The problem is the same as before though. It's not all sewn with the proper threads. Huge areas of it where sewn with invisible thread - that nylon fish line sort of stuff that's just a nightmare.

So, I'm not in any mood to take it all apart to do it right. What I will do with it is make smaller things out of it. Table runners, some pot holders, covers for appliances (sometimes I hate spell checkers) in the kitchen.  Are there really Alliances in the kitchen?  Would those be between the refrigerator and the kitchen sink faucet?  Or maybe one exists between the mop and the broom?

Anyway, back to what to do with this buried treasure rediscovered.  Perhaps some throw pillows for our green loveseat will come from this, and surely some prezzies, too.  I'm thinking I'll use some of these quilt squares for making valances for the sewing room windows and use the very smallest squares to edge matching café curtains. "Sew" many possibilities have presented themselves.  Tote Bags!  How could I forget about Tote Bags???  Life is good.

Tort Report:

The tiny boy, Button, is eating again and doing very well.  His shell is starting to darken.   I call them all "he" sometimes and "she" sometimes, and this is because there is NO way to tell whether they are male or female until they are around 14 years old.  Lucky, their great big sibling, displayed his maleness (curved under shell in the back and big "tipping" horn in front) when he was that age.

Button - 43 grams

Button and his much bigger brother, Milagro, were both hatched in September of 2009.  Milagro is at least 3 times as big as Button.  He is also a champion eater!  The other brother, Dusty, is the same size as Milagro but was shunning the light the day these snaps were taken.

Milagro - 218 grams

In about two more years, after letting them stay outside more, we can let Dusty and Milagro go into semi-hibernation.  Desert Tortoises don't go into full hibernation anyway.  They just go into a sort of torpor, like hummingbirds do overnight.    One bad thing is that we didn't find Poko Ono's nest this year.  I can't imagine what we will do with a half dozen or more new babies.

Wolfie really missed his daddy when DH went to Yosemite back country with three of our daughters earlier in the month.   He is still rather clingy, and sits by the door a lot if DH goes outside.  He's willing to sit by me for hours if I'm sitting still, however.

He sleeps on our bed.  He's little, but that's where he wants to be, and if you have ever had a small, short-legged dog launch him/herself nearly three feet in the air to scramble up the last few inches to the top of a tall pillow top bed, you wouldn't deny that (s)he'd earned the right to sleep with his or her  "pack".   But last night, just as I was going to sleep at 2:20 am, Wolfie planted all four of his feet into my sore back, and pushed to get me to move over.  I was about to drop off to sleep and BAM! I was awake!

I tried to push him away with one hand behind my back, but he pushed back, so I rolled over on top of him and stayed there until he started squirming.  Then I sat up, and grabbed all his feet and dragged him down to the bottom of the bed.  Climbing back into bed, I noticed that he was inching his way back up between DH and myself, but definitely staying on DH's side of the bed. 
I fell asleep about 5 am.


To all my readers who just went through the horror of Hurricane Irene angst and actuality, I hope that you are all as well as possible,  and not too much damage was done to your property.  It wasn't as bad as expected but it certainly was bad enough!

Two new project bags ...

I liked the orange, pinks, purples and aquas bag- in the middle- so much that it was time to pass the Joi(e) d'vivre around a bit. So I got two more from the same Etsy shop for two of my DDs.

The shop owner and I are pen friends but I would think her stuff is gorgeous anyway. She sent me a little angel quilt to "watch over me", too. The web is an amazing place full of good things, like friendships.

The New Bags, next to an Old Bag.. hehe

To Sew or not to Sew, who really cares?

It was a very nice day, and then I decided to sit down and sew. Only I didn't want to use the ancient, creaking Pfaff, I wanted the machine that I'm more used to, even though I haven't used it for about a year. So, DH got out my Bernina, and I sat down to sew up a seam on some jeans of his. This was a labor of love for the kindness he has shown me in letting me litter the house with my businesses and hobbies. And so, I could NOT remember how to reset the needle position on the machine.

No problem, get out the manual. Look it up! After owning this machine for some 14 years, I was about to discover two interesting things about this manual, and the first one was that it HAD no page 14, even though that page was in the index as explaining, IN FULL, exactly HOW to use the zipper foot. You know, the all important settings for not snapping three needles in a row in half as you tried to sew with a zipper foot. I had never used the manual because I had, ONE, sewn an awful lot before, and TWO, I had taken LESSONS!

The needle position problem was harder to solve. What it says and what it shows are on two pages, the all important page being the one NOT mentioned as a source in the back of the book.

Finally, after spending an hour getting the needle position correct, so that the needle didn't swing back and forth across the zipper foot, and very firmly sew IT in place, and also taking time figuring out how to raise the feed dogs again (which had gotten put down while I was fiddling with every KNOB in the thing) I was ready to sew. I am reminded of the story about, given enough time, and a type writer, a monkey could reproduce the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica. I think that Bernina should hire some proof readers.

Tomorrow, I will race through a half dozen pillowcases, box them up and send them off to this sweet lady, who is trying for a 1,000 pillowcases to send to the troops on St. Valentine's Day.

Happy Sewing!

Placemat Purses from Dritz

I want to make some of these for small project knitting bags, as they are so cute, especially the oval one. This project page is no longer available through their website so I'm posting it here to flush out copyright police who can lay a nice trail back to wherever they came from. Na.. I'm just wanting to share it. These are easy to make, and make a pretty good sized bag, already lined. If you want to, you can make them wider by adding material in a strip between two cut pieces. Otherwise it's pretty much a fold and sew project. The picture pretty much is self explanatory.

 

I'm working on this and I could be gone awhile..

I will be gone unless an eye should fall upon some Accidental Art somewhere. Eww, that sounds painful. This is what I'm working on. You've seen it before but now it will become a reality. The block of time is allotted.

And Lucy Lockethas promised me some pictures of spiders on her blog. In general, I love spiders except for the deadly ones.

Speaking of deadly, The book, *See No Evil*, by Robert Baer will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't forget to look for hidden clues. I will say this about it. It gives you to understand that if politicians were all Tractors, 90% of them would run on Crude Oil.

Tata! Have fun and I will be reading lots of blogs if I can, and showing some progress on the WIPs and, of course, progress on the quilt.

Batik quilt fabrics and blocks

 

I've been collecting fabrics for this little quilt for some time now, and finally I think this is it. The squares are three sets of batik 5x5's of turtles, fish and butterfies. It's going to be fun.