High Road Quilter

Denim Rug Almost Finished!

2012-01-27T10:06:00.001-05:00

Denim Rug Almost Finished

I have finished weaving the denim rug! I actually had enough extra thread that I also made a smaller rug. I just have to wash it and hem the binding, and I will be finished! Somehow everything worked just right last night. I had cut a bunch of strips, and didn't want to cut too many, so I took the remaining pant leg, uncut just in case. It turned out that I did need to cut the pant leg, but it means that I used up all of the jeans. I also ran out of the thread I was adding with the denim strips, and the binding thread, so I didn't have anything extra of anything. Then, when I paid the teacher for the thread I used ($10), it turned out that between my sister and I, we both had just enough dollars to pay in cash.

Rabies Shot

It was time to renew the dog license, and the renewal of the dog license requires that the rabies vaccination is up to date. I called my vet to make an appointment. I asked the receptionist what other vaccines he needed, and she said it was just that one. I knew that the city offers a clinic for cheap ($5) vaccines, so I cancelled the vet appointment, and went to the clinic instead. The city offers the cheap vaccines a few times a year (4?) at different places around town. The one in January was farther away than other clinics, but I couldn't wait for that one since that is in the fall.

I wasn't sure of the best time to go - whether it was better to come earlier than the appointed time to wait in line, etc. - but the instructions were simple and clear. I drove there after our walk, and went around the building. There was a line of people with their dogs, so I just waited behind them. The line went down one end of the building, but it was moving pretty quickly. Someone came out to see the size of the line, and told us that there was only one vet in the morning, but there would be two vets in the afternoon, which seems strange, considering that the clinic was only for a total of four hours. Some of the dogs were nervous, so Zeus was also nervous. He was shaking, but otherwise was well mannered. It was cold waiting outside, but I had dressed for the weather so I was fine.

We finally got into the building, and it seems that the line inside was as long as it was outside, but it was still moving pretty fast. They checked the current tags, and gave him new ones. Another table took the $5. As we were walking by what looked like a window to the kitchen area, there was a worker who was holding her hand. I wondered if she had been bit.

I walked up to the table where the they gave the vaccine, and they told us to come behind the table, where they were. I told Zeus to sit down, but then there were no further directions, so I got up to see what happened to the vet. Zeus walked under the table. He wasn't pulling on the leash. The vet said "get control of your dog!" I thought that was strange because the dog wasn't doing anything bad, and neither of us had any direction on what he really needed to be doing. I asked Zeus to come and sit again. At that time, the vet got angry again that we were now in his way, because he wanted to take something to the kitchen. He said "Fine, I'll go around," and went the other way. The other worker stayed and she told me what side effects to look for, and she was nice. So we waited a few minutes for him to come back, and when he came back he said "Your dog is nervous." I stayed calm and said "Yes he is." Of course the dog is nervous. The other worker told me to talk to the dog, but not touch him. I knelt and talked to him. The vet was kneeling down but then he stood up. I said, "Are you done?" He said yes.

I am hoping that the vet's attitude and irritation had to do with the fact that one of the workers had gotten bit, and not a regular part of his demeanor. I am just glad that my vet doesn't treat me and my dog like that.

The booth for the city auditor was also there, so it was convenient to renew the dog license while we were there.

It only took an hour from start to finish at the clinic, to get the shot and the license. I think it was worth it regardless of the treatment from the vet.

Block of the Month

I have finished sewing most of the blocks for my Thangles blocks of the month. I had difficulty with the last blocks, which use quarter square triangles, because I didn't open the piece of paper. It is so funny, they copy the instructions on a sheet of paper. They told it in half, and then again to fit into the packet with the fabric. I apparently hadn't been unfolding the paper all the way, so didn't even notice the instructions on the right side. I probably did open it the first month, and the right side just said how to use Thangles, so I generally just used the instructions on the left side. Anyway, by the last month, I had forgotten there was more on the right side.

I just need to redo the quarter square triangles - the centers. I have also lost one of my blocks. I am making stars around the blocks, and hopefully by the time I have made the stars, I will have found the missing block. If not, I will make them with fabric I have at home.

Snow!

2012-01-14T14:23:00.000-05:00

I know it is January, and by now I should be sick and tired of snow, but we had our first significant snow fall of the season. I don't like driving in snow, so I am happy it waited this long.

It was just a few inches, but it does cover up the ground quite nicely.

Zeus and I even got a chance to make our own footprints, although he doesn't stay on the path.

We met these two on the way back. One of them even posed for me.

2011 Quilting Recap and 2012 Quilting goals

2011-12-29T20:53:00.000-05:00

It is the end of the year, and it is now time to reflect on the old year and think about resolutions for the new year.

2011 Quilting Review

This has not been a very quilty year for me. I have spent a great deal of time working at work, working on genealogy, and writing articles for HubPages and elsewhere. Weaving has also taken a great deal of my time this year. Besides the finished projects I am showing on this blog, I have also made progress on several other projects, but not to completion. I worked on the Thangles BOM, made a DJ block, and quilted my Moldy Crackers quilt. If I continue to make that type of progress this year, there will be some completed quilts to show for it.

Here are the quilts I finished this year. There is lots of variety.

This was a little quilt for Kate's Another Little quilt Swap that I finished early in the year.

The Simply Squares quilt was finished in May, even though I forgot the quilt reveal until October. It was one of the rare projects that I worked on start to finish without letting it marinate.

Celebrate was my happiest achievement this year, because this quilt did languish for a long time while I decided what to do with it. I promised a better picture, but I'm not sure I delivered since part of it is cut off.

And don't forget the postcards I made in my last post!

2012 Quilting Goals

I don't think 2012 will be a year for quilting for me either in terms of getting a large number of quilts finished. I am not giving up quilting by any means. I will definitely continue to work on quilting as much as possible, and try to get more done, and hopefully get a chance to get started on some of the ones that are waiting in line. I think there should be at least three or four quilts finished this year. I want to focus on quality, and make progress on the quilts that have applique and lots of little pieces and take longer to make. They have already been started and I just need to keep making progress even though it feels very slow.

It will be a few weeks until the denim rug is finished, and I want to get a large portfolio of articles written on HubPages, and focus on my job.

Avatar Fabric Postcards

2011-12-26T15:01:00.002-05:00

I hope all of you had a Merry Christmas.

I had a lovely time making these avatar fabric postcards. I have written up directions on how to make them and posted them on HubPages: How to Make a Fabric Avatar Postcard.

She looks like she is curtsying. "Pleased to make your acquaintance." I know I need to be working on my BOMs, but they are so serious, and I just wanted to play.

I think they turned out pretty good. Do you have any ideas for their names?

Still Weaving

2011-12-24T22:02:00.002-05:00

I am so excited that I am finally weaving with denim! It is a great feeling to finally be working on the denim part of the denim rug. In quilting, you think you are done when you have made a top, but there is a lot of work still left to do to finish up a quilt. In weaving, there is a lot more front end work, so that when you actually get to weaving, there isn't much left to do except finish off the ends.

Those raw edges sticking out are where the strip ended, and I turned it to make a continuous strip. I think it adds character.

Quilt Related Post

2011-12-10T16:11:00.000-05:00

Are you sitting down? I don't want you to go into shock that I have written a second post so close in time to my first one. Or that I might actually have content that relates to my header and blog name.

All right, I have to admit that I didn't actually do any quilting. I really wanted to save you from the trauma. See how nice I am. I simply went to the store to pick up the last of my block of the months. And their BOM marketing ploy worked, since I did wind up buying some fabric as well while I was there. I am going to use a star setting, and use the fabric shown to make some of the stars around the BOMs. Who knows, maybe next time, I will have some completed blocks to show you.

Finally Weaving!

2011-12-09T13:04:00.001-05:00

I have been going to a weaving class for many weeks now, and diligently measuring threads, and putting them on the loom. Once you put the threads on the heddles, you have to put them through the thing that looks like a comb. I made several mistakes at the end that required some rework, and some more rework. Yesterday - do you hear the music? - I was able to finish the last of the corrections and actually start to weave! It is such a relief to actually get to the part that I thought weaving was all about!

Of course, this means I had better get to cutting those denim strips so I don't run out and can actually weave when I go class.

Another big accomplishment for me this week is that I received the Hub of the Day accolade on HubPages for my How to Make a Quilt Label. I don't think it was my best work, but I will take any accolade I am given.

And the biggest news is that I have finished the 100 Hubs in 30 Days Challenge I was doing over at HubPages. I am not going to be doing anything like that anytime soon. For now, I am going to go back and edit some hubs to incorporate the new things I have done, and see what I can do about making each hub the best it can be.

I also now have time to have a life, which means I can get back to reading blogs and hubs and commenting. So sorry I haven't had the time to come visit you as often as I would like. I have missed all of you.

Stripping with Denim

2011-12-04T14:31:00.000-05:00

Denim strips

I am sorry it has been so long since I wrote in here. I entered a challenge on HubPages to write 100 articles in 30 days, and that has been very challenging. It has taken me a lot longer than I thought it would have. You can see my articles on Millionaire Tips,Hubpages.com you are interested.

I continue to go to the weaving class, we skipped another one because my sister was going to chaperone at a camp, and I didn't want to get too ahead of her. I have been cutting my old jeans into denim strips to weave. Unfortunately, I made several errors in the threading process, so this week I had to re-do a bunch of it. I still have to redo some more things when I go next week. Having a loom is supposed to make things easier, but I am not sure it wouldn't have been faster to weave manually. I am sure once I stop making the mistakes, it will go faster.

I have to cut up a lot more jeans too. We had Thanksgiving off, and I felt I would have a lot of time to cut strips in those two weeks, but somehow time got away from me and I didn't cut any!

Time Change

2011-11-09T07:58:00.000-05:00

When we went to London, we had to deal with a five hour time change. London is five hours ahead of Columbus. Then, while we were there, daylight savings time ended, and we switched our clocks back an hour. Actually, just the watch - I bought a cheap watch for the trip since the cell phone wouldn't work.

Then we went to the airport. It caused some confusion when we landed in the states, because the US had not changed their time, and the difference was no longer five hours.

No matter, I was able to handle all of these changes just fine, even though both my mother and sister did have jet lag when they returned.

Then daylight savings time ended here, and we had to switch our clocks an hour again. I am having the hardest time with this switch. I think part of the reason is that my dog doesn't understand the time change thing. The other part has to be my own indecision.

He wakes me at what he thinks is the usual time to wake up, which is really an hour earlier than what time I need to be getting up. But I remember Ben Franklin's adage, "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." I want to be healthy wealthy and wise, so I might as well get up an hour earlier.

So am I refusing to adjust to change, or have I smarted the system? I don't know yet. I guess I will find out the next time I have an appointment and see if I show up on time!

So what have I been doing with all my time? I have been writing more Millionaire Tips articles on Hugpages. I joined the 30 hubs in 30 days challenge, and completed that successfully. Can you believe it? I've already written 30 hubs. I mostly focus on quilting, genealogy, and finance, although a few other topics are thrown in now and then.

Now I have accepted the 100 hubs in 30 days challenge. This is obviously much more challenging, especially since I am trying to continue providing quality with the quantity, and am still learning about hub writing. You will be seeing my hubs change frequently on the sidebar. I will be doing many quilting hubs, since they won't take me as much research. In my quilting hubs, I particularly like How to Gift a Quilt.

This week, I will also be cutting more denim strips since I will be probably be weaving this week. I also remembered that I need to pick up the November blocks of the month. I am behind in sewing the BOMs so hopefully I can make progress on those as well.

Threading the Loom

2011-11-04T20:11:00.001-04:00

My sister, mother and I went to London England for a week. It was a last minute decision to see the relatives. Two of my mother's sisters and her brother live there, and we managed to see all of them. We also took my daughter out for a day of sightseeing, and deliver some sweaters to her so she can keep warm this winter.It was incredible hearing her voice, my heart felt so much lighter and all felt right in the world. The return trip was difficult, going more than three thousand miles away from her.

Our sessions of the weaving class is finished, but the teacher said we could keep coming until we are finished with our first projects. All the threads have been loaded onto the drum on the loom for my denim rug. I am in the process of threading all the heddles. Luckily, the eye of these heddles is much bigger than a sewing needle. This week, I will be madly cutting denim strips to make the rug, because I believe that I will be able to actually start weaving.

Weaving Update

2011-10-24T14:46:00.000-04:00

The first step in weaving, after choosing your colors, is to measure the yarn / cord/ thread. Instead of cutting 30 threads the same length, and tying them on, it is easier to use a mill. This keeps them all in the correct sequence and keeps them from getting tangled. I have finished this step. The photo is not my project. I used a stationary mill, this one twirls around, making it easier to handle longer threads.

The second step is to chain the threads together, and take them to the loom. This is my project, and I just finished this step.

The threads are then divided in the rattle. This preserves the spacing of the quilt, so it will be as wide as you want your project to be. I had some difficulty, and got my threads tangled up, but I think it has been worked out. The next step is to roll the threads onto the roller thingie. I haven't finished this part yet, but I will try to get the name of this for next time.

Then the threads will have to be threaded into these thingies. After that, we will finally be finished with setting up the loom. The actual weaving part goes much faster. It is setting up the loom that is very slow.

It is a lot of fun, and we are still enjoying the progress.

List of Quilting Magazines

2011-10-18T18:35:00.002-04:00

As I said in an earlier post, I have been madly writing articles. Since most of the articles are ghost written, I can't share them with you, I have also created a space where I can write articles on my own. I thought you might be interested in the most recent one I wrote - it is a listing of quilting magazines. I will be writing additional quilting articles in the future. Most of them will start with the basics - like the ones I recently posted on this blog. I think that my readers are experienced quilters, though, and hub pages will be a better home for them. I will let you know when I write others that might interest you. But in the meantime, you might want to keep an eye on the listing of recent hub pages I have written in the sidebar. You may be interested in the other topics I write about as well.

What is an African Quilt?

2011-10-15T09:00:00.003-04:00

This blog post has been moved to What is an African Quilt

What is a Liberated Quilt?

2011-10-14T09:59:00.004-04:00

This blog post has been moved to What is a Liberated Quilt?

What is a Modern Quilt?

2011-10-10T10:29:00.002-04:00

This blog post has been moved to What is a Modern Quilt?

Writing

2011-10-08T17:04:00.000-04:00

Columbus, Ohio

I promised myself that I would write more frequent posts on this blog, and I broke that promise almost as soon as I made it. Oh well, you will have to put up with sporadic posts as usual. At least, it will save you from boring posts!

I have been writing articles that will be written under someone else's pen name. I think most of them are filler articles that will be published online, to keep people on their website, with hyperlinks to those things that will bring them money. They tell us the topics, and the approximate size of the article. The people who completed the optional review have been happy with the articles I have written. I have always dreamed about being a published author, and now that dream is coming true, even if someone else is getting credit for it. It is a great start, and is giving me some confidence and practice in writing. I am learning what topics are popular, and since some articles require research, I am learning quite a bit. Hopefully, I can venture forth and eventually become published in my own (pen) name.

All that writing makes it hard to stay on the computer to write blog posts.

There were many people who were ready to start setting up their looms for weaving this week, so I watched as they set up, and helped my sister do some of her set up. Some of it is really difficult for one person to do by herself. We were talking about how wonderful it is to simply look at the room. All the beautiful threads lined up on the shelf, the wonderful finished projects displayed on the walls and from the ceilings, and the many works in process on the many looms provide a great deal of eye candy. It is crowded and cluttered but that just adds to the atmosphere.

I have decided to keep my denim rug simple, and use light and dark blue threads for the warp. The warp is the lengthwise threads that hold the tension. I have started measuring it and preparing it for the loom by using on the mill. This is apparently an important first step in the process. The weft, that will be going under and over the warp will be the denim strips, which I have been cutting at home. I promise to show you as I go along.

My brother-in-law and nephew joined us this week while we walked along the river. It is a pleasant walk, a great place to ride a bike, and we even walked by the Mayor. I think they need to have places to eat along the walk though. There is one restaurant, but it is expensive, and we were hoping for something quicker and more appropriate for our walking attire.

Simply Squares

2011-10-02T10:54:00.005-04:00

Why are you seeing photos of a quilt that you thought was finished way back in May? Well, it is a long story. When I finished the Celebrate quilt, I updated my spreadsheet to mark the finish date, but I also tried to add a column to figure out the average amount of time each quilt takes. It didn't work out - since there are estimates of dates and ranges in there. Then, I tried to sort the spreadsheet, but used the wrong range, so the sort was all wrong. I didn't save the spreadsheet and just quit. I didn't remember that I hadn't saved the updates.

Anyway, yesterday, I was looking at the spreadsheet to see how I was doing, what I wanted to work on, and I noticed that the Celebrate and Simply Squares quilt did not have finish dates on them. I looked on the blog for the finish date for Simply Squares, and all I found was a note that I was working on the binding in May. No quilt reveal! I know the weather was bad and I wasn't able to get a good picture, but we've had good weather days since then!

I decided to remedy the situation by providing a belated quilt reveal. I took the quilt along for our daily walk.

Which photo do you like the best? I added a poll in the sidebar for fun. Please leave a comment to let me know what appealed to you about the photo(s). This will help me take better photos of other quilts.

Weaving

2011-10-01T07:22:00.032-04:00

At our weaving class, I continued to work on the abandoned piece. A previous student had abandoned it, so I could just play without guilt. I added some gold because I thought the gold would make the red and black look Christmasy, but it made it look African, so I went with the African theme and added random amounts of other colors.(The color is off in the picture - that is red, not orange). I started making random patterns, but since this was supposed to be my training piece, I forced myself to get practice on following patterns. Instead of winding bobbins, I tried to use up bobbins other students had left, although I did add other colors as it pleased me. I really like this piece, it was fun to play with it. I might add some other colors and use it as a table runner or wall hanging.

But it is time to start my official piece. When we went this time, she had a denim rug on display, and I have decided to use denim instead of my original chosen material. I have lots of jeans which I acquired when I made a jeans quilt, and this will reduce some of the stash in my house as well.

After our class, we walked around some more in downtown Columbus. Both my sister and I used to work downtown, and we both really miss the walking we did there. And they have added more walking paths, with fountains, benches, planters, piped in jazz music, with the new Scioto Mile, so it is very pleasant to walk and hang out downtown. We saw many people jogging, many with their dogs.

Quilt Wall

2011-09-30T12:21:00.000-04:00

Ever since I saw my first picture of a wall covered with small quilts, I have wanted a quilt wall. I don't have big walls in my house - since I have small rooms and a lot of windows, but I designated a wall in the dining room as my quilt wall. I made and exchanged lots of small quilts, that I have plenty for a wall. I bought some sticky product by 3M to attach the quilts to the wall, as recommended by another blogger. I must have bought the wrong kind, because my quilts kept falling off the wall, even little ones like ATCs.

I then went out and bought applique pins, because another blogger uses them for her design wall, but that seemed too hard for me too. I don't have the strength to push them in the wall, and using a hammer would require coordination to hold the pin and the quilt.

Then when I went to Michaels to buy the scrapbooking paper for a gift, they had this big bulletin board on sale. I wanted to have the board up for the gathering, so I quickly added some fabric to it. It needs some help tucking the fabric in the frame, but now I have a quilt wall! At some point I will paint the frame. I made the three big quilts on the right side, the rest are exchanges.

I am really happy with it. I like that I can quickly change the stuff on the wall, and add notes, etc.

Next Project

2011-09-29T09:08:00.001-04:00

Now that I have finished the Celebrate quilt, I am free to work on another one. I am trying very hard not to start a new project, and stay focused on completing some old ones. I have many projects in the works, and several kits that are ready to start. There are several quiltalongs and other available projects that are distracting me, but I think I will be able to finish some current projects without starting anything new.

I don't have a leader and ender project ready, and there are a couple of projects that sound interesting to me - the warm/cool quilt, and the leggo quilt. Both would work great, but it does feel like I would be starting a new project. I have fabric that would work wonderfully for the cool part of the warm/cool quilt, but they are designated for another quilt. I'll have to think about whether I want to repurpose them, since that would also involve finding some warm fabrics as well. I might just go with the leggo quilt to start, since I can use up the leftover scraps.

I think for now, I will work on quilts that don't require the sewing machine. I am handquilting the moldy crackers quilt. (yes this is an old picture, there has been more progress made during the year). This way I can have projects move forward, and after a while, I will start cutting the strips for the leggo quilt.

The other issue I have is to take my time and not rush through the current quilts so I can get on to new ones.It is so much fun to start a new project!

Downtown

2011-09-26T12:28:00.001-04:00

When we went to the weaving class, we spent some time walking around Columbus and taking pictures. There were many great shots, but I decided to try to narrow down one to share. Because of the river and the green space, many of the shots look like they were taken at a park instead of the middle of a city. I really like this photo because it shows the beauty of the city, and the construction shows that it is still growing and thriving.

Rivals

2011-09-25T11:57:00.000-04:00

We went to the airport yesterday, but unfortunately, we weren't there to see any Rivals. The world traveling daughter has gone overseas to study for her masters degree. In another country. In another continent. Which means she will not be back to do her laundry and she doesn't plan to come back for her vacations. She will be at Exeter University in the UK. I am really proud of her, and glad she is able to take advantage of opportunities that were almost unheard of in my day. But the house seems empty and she will be missed.

Weaving

2011-09-23T13:25:00.002-04:00

My sister invited me to learn weaving with her at the Cultural Arts Center. We could choose our own projects. I decided to practice on a piece someone else had abandoned before starting my own. I am having fun just putting random designs and random colors on it.

The teacher has to divide her attention amongst all the students (the five in our class, and the others continuing students who show up whenever they want), so we learn by watching her help others. Here the teacher on left, is helping a student front load the threads on the loom. The room is full of looms - maybe 40+ all packed together. I'll have to get a photo of all of them sometime.

Picasion try two

2011-09-19T08:19:00.001-04:00

The Picasion slideshow I added yesterday seems to be going too fast. It seems like the normal setting might be one per second. I changed it to three seconds; hopefully that isn't too long. but I I also didn't like the border that was created when I had a landscape, so I selected photos that were all going the same way.

Picasion

2011-09-18T10:20:00.000-04:00

I noticed on Oops-Lah that she was showing her finished quilt as a slideshow. The link pointed to a website called Picasion.com. I just had to try it so I would remember to do this in the future.

Celebrate 9/11

2011-09-16T19:33:00.002-04:00

I quilted flowers around the Celebrate quilt as I showed you in a previous post, both in the body of the quilt and the border. Then the only thing that was left was the top. I attempted to stitch in the ditch around the letters using the free motion foot, which turned out probably as well as it would have with the walking foot. Then I stippled around the background to make the letters stand out. I did one letter at a time - stitch in the ditch, background, onto the next letter.

That left an inner border between the body of the quilt and the words. I wanted to quilt a quote on it, like I did the flag quilt. I found three quotes I liked:

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
Oprah Winfrey
While we are living in the present, we must celebrate life every day, knowing that we are becoming history with every word, every action, every deed.
Mattie Spepanek
We're all here at the same time and we should celebrate that.
George Weinberg

I actually liked quote #2 the best, since it fits the genealogist in me, but it was way too long. I liked both the other two for different reasons, but decided to go with quote #3, because I thought it was more fitting for a family gathering quilt. Also the first one seemed to be more like advice - something you should do, and the third one seemed more like being happy just as you are. I think it was the word "you" in the first quote, which somehow overrode the "should" in the third quote. Anyway, I went with #3 and quilted that one. I really worked on getting the spacing right. I typed the words and used a large font and taped the words underneath the inner border, so I could follow the spacing, but the paper got in the way and kept me from making the spacing as far apart as I would have liked. It looks like I didn't try. It's all right though and I am not redoing it.

The wonky letters aren't as wonky as a casual quilt would indicate, and the setting is very formal, but I did try to keep this a casual quilt with the raw edge applique and the casual free hand quilting, and the quote.

I have also decided to ask my family members to sign this quilt. I have been reading a book about heritage quilts - I will be posting a review soon on my reader blog, and have been wanting to make a heritage quilt for a while. When I was at the quilt show, I saw a quilt that had been signed, but it didn't use the signature quilt format - with signature blocks. This quilt does have blocks that could be signed, but they are dark, so the signatures will be on the sashing of the blocks instead of the squares.

I tried to finish the quilt on 9/10/11, because I thought that would be a fun date, but with my carpel tunnel I cannot bind the quilt all at once. I took breaks, but some of them must have been too long, and when it was past my bedtime and I wasn't even halfway finished, I decided to call it a day. So the quilt was finished on 9/11/11. While it is somewhat strange to have a quilt called Celebrate to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it is fitting because that day reminded many of us to celebrate being with our loved ones.

This quilt was made as part of a challenge. The dot background fabric was part of the challenge, and we were to represent a poem, as well as use applique. I can't remember if the wonky letters were a requirement or not. I missed the deadline (by more than a year!), but I did finish on a holiday, sort of, so it kinda counts.It is a wall quilt. The pattern was published in a book, but I changed it by including a center, and the applique were not part of the original pattern, nor was the wonky word border. This quilt stayed a UFO as I tried to decide on the applique - I was trying to make it fit all celebrations, and I couldn't make it go that way when thinking Christmas, graduation, birthdays throughout the year, etc. But with my quote, I think I managed to do so without even trying. We're all here at the same time and we should celebrate that.

I hope to have a photo taken after the signatures are on it, hopefully in better lighting for the end of the year recap!

9/10/11

2011-09-10T11:53:00.000-04:00

Remember when I said I wanted to finish a quilt on a special date? Today is 9/10/11 and that sounds like a special date to put on a quilt finish! The celebrate quilt just needs the binding sewn down and a label. I think I can do it! Just need to stay off the computer until then!

My Memories

2011-09-08T13:06:00.000-04:00

When I go to a blog post, and see a giveaway, I generally enter. It shows support to the blogger, and gives me a potential to win something. I haven't won anything in a while, but that doesn't dissuade me from trying. Recently, I went to Michelle's blog, and saw that she was giving away some scrapbooking software. So I entered.

And then I received an email and a blog post to say that I have won it! Not only does the prize include My Memories software with its standard templates, there is also another $10 to get additional templates.

I downloaded the base software and am already loving it! I thought I should wait until I tried it before downloading the additional templates. For my trial, I grabbed some animal shots from the wilds. They could probably using some brightening up of the colors and maybe some enlarging or cropping, but I wasn't taking my time to do much of that. The software does let you crop and change sizes, and tilt the pictures.

I chose this template that has all these little boxes - it comes in four seasons, and I chose fall. This is a great template because you can leave the boxes, or put in photos in its place. You can also add embellishments - buttons, dots, etc., but I didn't do that on these pages. I did play with it a bit though. I had a hard time getting the layers right. I added a swirl, and some dots on top, then I wanted to change a picture, and I had to move the swirl and dots, and then the dots weren't in the right place on the swirl. I haven't worked with layers much, and I guess you should make sure your base is how you want it before you add the next layer, but sometimes how the layer looks makes you want to change the base. I did manage to work it out though.

The standard software comes with a pretty good amount of stuff - page templates, colors, shapes, fonts, embellishments. Of course you will want new templates and new do dads as soon as you get the software, and it comes with several free sets, and you can of course buy more!

When you are done, you can add music and create a slideshow, or print them out into a book, or create a DVD, etc.

Thanks Michelle, for the chance to win, and the win!

Shopping

2011-09-08T08:31:00.001-04:00

I've been avoiding stores. Partly because I need to catch up with my finances from my vacations. Partly because I have been reading hoarding books and frankly, I don't need anything. I even managed to not buy any back to school supplies, even the free ones. That took a lot of will power.

But now it is birthday time, and I would like to get some gifts. I thought about buying online - even knew intuitively that it would be better to buy online while I only had birthday gifts in the cart. But I really miss the entertainment value of going to a store. So yesterday I ventured out to Michaels. Yes, I know, a dangerous place to go, but the gift recipient wanted scrapbook paper, and I had found the one I wanted online, KandCompany Que Sera Sera Designer 12-Inch by 12-Inch Paper Pad and it was available there. Isn't it so pretty, and it is two sided, which I thought would be really good so she could choose the side she likes, and since I'm not sure what she wants it for, she can make 3-D stuff with it.

Yes, I was tempted. Since I used a coupon, I figured I could use the savings for stuff for me. I got some party supplies, which were on clearance and fit perfectly with my celebrate theme, and some beads for embellishment. I also overspent by buying a large framed cork board, also on clearance.

The total was less than what I would usually spend, and it really felt good to get something for myself. Now I can close the purse strings back up and tie them up tight.

Quilting Celebrate

2011-09-04T18:24:00.001-04:00

How should I quilt the wonky letters?

Quilting to secure the fusible applique.

I added a few birds and butterflies for interest.

Quilting on the open spaces. I had some difficulty getting the free motion quilting set up, until I realized that one of my free motion / darning foot works and the other one didn't. I wonder if this has been the problem all along. I'm so glad I figured it out though!

P.S. I am adding this to the 15 minute challenge,because I do work in 15 minute increments. A lot of times 15 minutes is all I do, but sometimes I surprise myself and add another session or two.

Progress - Celebrate!

2011-08-28T11:48:00.001-04:00

There is an upcoming birthday party that is going to be held in my home. The cleaning and organizing is continuing, but as I said before, the WIPs/UFOs are haunting me. I have one quilt that is especially made for celebrations, so I decided to try to finish it in time for the party. It has been languishing long enough. The top was made, and it languished because of some problems I had in executing the center. Then I had a hard time figuring out what applique I wanted to add to it. I just knew that I wanted applique for the wide border.

I was hoping for applique that would work year around - for all the birthday celebrations and graduations and holidays, etc. whenever they occurred. I thought balloons would be nice, but they require pretty specific shapes, and I wasn't sure they would look like balloons when I was done with them. And balloons might be boring.

I finally realized that the flower theme that was in my mind the first time I saw the quilt was the theme I really wanted. No matter how much I tried to think of something else, this quilt needed flowers. So what if it feels more like summer than the rest of the year. I had already cut out the flower and leaf shapes so it was just a matter of pressing them down, and then moving on to quilting. The photo was taken before pressing - some of the shapes have been rearranged.

After all, if I bring out this same quilt for every celebration, some of my family members would never see another quilt besides this one, and this one wouldn't seem so special to them.

And those flowers on the quilt go really well with my garden this year. This is the first year I have really bought annuals, and I think I need to invest in them in future years as well.

Focus

2011-08-26T16:13:00.001-04:00

I have run out of vacation topics, but I have tried my best to keep up the tourist pace. I have been working on several things.

First of all, I have caught up with the blocks of the month I have been working on. I was several months behind. The quilt shop put these blocks in a star setting, which I liked, but I chose not to buy the fabric on a monthly basis. I added a star around one block, and it reminds me of the Shakespeare in the Park block. I think I am going to continue with the straight setting, but the SITP is awfully tempting.

Next, the weather has been cooling, and my nesting instinct has kicked in. I have been cleaning and organizing various neglected parts of my house, especially my sewing storage / bedroom. It is very difficult to not to get distracted by the WIPs / UFOs. I am going to try very hard to stay the course and finish the cleanup first. Then I can get to those WIPs and UFOs. I recently looked at my 2010 finishes, which seemed rather meager at the time and it looks like I am going to really have to finish some things for my 2011 finishes to at least match the 2010 finishes.

Then, I bought the newest version of Family Tree Maker. I have been using one that is at least a decade old. It comes with a 30 day trial of ancestry.com. I have been trying to gather as much information as I can get during my trial. This time, I want to stay focused on the direct ancestors of the people I am searching, instead of getting sidetracked by other interesting family members. I decided to keep adding the information to my old FTM file, because I want to take full advantage of my 30 days, and I can learn the completely revamped system another time.

The Wilds

2011-08-22T15:14:00.001-04:00

We took our Japanese guest to one other place besides Amish country, and that is the Wilds in southeast Ohio. When I tried to explain to her that she would see animals from a bus, she asked if it was like a safari. Well yes, it is exactly like a safari, and I'm not sure why I didn't think to use that word in the first place. I told her you could open the windows and take pictures. She said that there is a safari close to her home in Tokyo. They put meat on the bus, so the animals get really close to the bus. She wouldn't dare open the window.

The Wilds

It turns out that we didn't get a choice on opening or closing the windows, because our vehicle did not have windows! There are different kinds of trips you can take - you could take a bus, but we chose this one. We went with the extended family, which made it even more fun. There was a shade above us and the breeze while we were driving kept us cool. It is unfortunate that it was really hot the whole time Takako was visiting with us, but this day was a little bit cooler than the rest and was much more comfortable. When she left, she took the heat with her. Hopefully, she dropped some of it off along the ocean instead of taking it all home.

We managed to get really up close and personal with some of the animals. We all got lots of beautiful pictures of a large variety of animals.

It had been a while since we had gone, and this was really nice. We chose to save the zip line and the horse back riding for another trip.

Zeus on Quilts

2011-08-21T11:31:00.002-04:00

My dog is still new enough to me that we still follow the "no pet on quilts" rule, but when I saw the Pets on Quilts show, I didn't want him to feel left out. Mostly I didn't want to feel left out. So I put him on some quilts, and he posed nicely for me, and got off the quilt as soon as he was done posing.

But after this photo shoot, I think I need to do two things.

Teach him some new poses.

And think about changing his name to Vanna.

We're too late to actually enter the contest, but I did it for the pictures and not for the prizes anyway.

Amish Country

2011-08-20T09:44:00.002-04:00

Berlin, Ohio

Takako, the tour guide we were hosting for the student exchange program, had been to Amish country during one of her previous visits, but she had not had a chance to do much there. I suggested we go again, and this time, go on one of the tours so we could learn a bit about the area. The tours are expensive, but they drive around the area, and stop at two artisans along the way, and we thought we would get a lot out of it.

Unfortunately, she had been invited to a party that she wanted to attend, so we were going to have to limit our trip so she could go to the party in the evening. We woke up early, much to my daughter's dismay, and left for a two hour trip to Berlin, Ohio. Most of Ohio is flat, so a lot of the journey was just fine. Then we got to the hilly side, and it was quite interesting to drive on. The speed limit is 55 on the hilly roads, which is a little scary especially going around curves and up and down hills where you can't see where you are going, and then all of a sudden, there is a curve that you are supposed to slow down to 25 to navigate. And there is the danger of coming up to a buggy and having to slow down suddenly for that. I got an even better appreciation for the bus drivers in Italy after that trip.

The tour starts at the flea market. We had a chance to look around the flea market before the tour. We wound up being the only people on the tour. We told her we wanted to see what the inside of an Amish house looks like. She said she had several trips, and one would take us to a quilt shop that requires you to go through the Amish house. The lady had hand sewn and hand quilted all of the quilts t. And they were quite reasonable prices for all that hand work. I didn't buy anything though. The tour was interesting - she told us a lot about what the Amish are like, and we were able to get our questions answered. In case you were wondering, no, the Amish in Ohio do not deliberately put mistakes in their quilts, but she thinks that Amish in other states might. The other "artisan" stop was a grocery store that was frequented by the Amish. We bought lots of spices, which were much cheaper there than at home.

After the tour, we spent more time looking at the booths at the flea market. We were going to go to a restaurant, but we were hungry, and decided that eating at the food place at the flea market would be just fine. There was live music, so it was an enjoyable time.

Then we went to another shop that also had lots of booths of hand made and other unique things. There were some purses made out of jeans - but Takako and my daughter were saying that the stylish jeans made purses that were too small, and the bigger purses had mom jeans. I thought to myself that I could make a purse like that pretty easily, but when I got home, I realized I would have the same problem. Stylish jeans are too small, and the bigger jeans are mom jeans. I bought a couple of wooden plaques.

It would have been nice to have been able to spend some more time there, but we had to get going. Of course, it started thunderstorming and pouring down rain. Going around those curves when you couldn't even see the street is even more interesting than when you can. I could only hope that the car in front of me knew the road, which they did seem to. We took a different way home than the way there, and once it stopped raining, it was nice to be able to see different parts of Ohio.

And just like in Italy, we left enough things unseen that we want to go back again another time.

Welcome Home

2011-08-18T15:08:00.001-04:00

On my last post, we had returned from our trip to Italy. The way our schedule worked out, the very next day, we would have to return to the airport to pick up our Japanese guest who was going to be staying with us for three weeks. Since this was expected, I had been cleaning and generally getting things ready for her visit. Since I am allergic to dust, I was starting to get severe allergies from cleaning behind cabinets, under the bed, and going to places in my house I don't normally visit, and moving things around. I did not want to have allergy problems on the plane, and worry all the other passengers about some awful airborne disease, not to mention being more uncomfortable than normal on a plane. My ears already hurt on planes.

My decision was to clean up as much of the clutter and arrange things as I wanted, and clean and wipe counters, sinks, etc., but to avoid the dusty things, like sweeping and dusting and lawn mowing until we came back. This meant that I would have to get over any jet lag quickly. I had a little over 24 hours to do this, so I was not worried.

My family was worried, however, so during my absence, they all converged to my house and took care of those things which I had not. It was very sweet, and a little demeaning that they thought I would welcome a guest in the dusty house. And you know they were talking about me while they were cleaning. I'm sure it was all good.

I have already provided a summary about our experience with our Japanese guest. We went to two places that I want to talk about in separate posts, and then I will be back to providing current events stuff.

Italy - Sorrento and home

2011-08-12T14:33:00.000-04:00

Sorrento Marina

I have been telling you about our week long adventures in Italy, which are nearing the end. We have one last full day, and have to leave early in the morning for the plane.

I didn't create an itinerary for this day. I had saved the day to do whatever we felt we missed, or found out about after the fact. We could have gone to see the other small towns that were destroyed by the volcano. We could have tried the Phlegraean Fields again. We could have gone south to visit Paestum (more ruins) and the resort town of Positano. But the ~~laziness~~ serenity of Amalfi was still in our system, and we opted to have a slow day in Sorrento. We were planning to do souvenir shopping, but a lot of that had been done in Amalfi, and since we walked by the souvenir shops everyday, we pretty much knew what we wanted anyway, so the shopping was done relatively quickly. We went back to the hotel to nap, and then went out to dinner. It was a nice relaxing day.

Sorrento cloister

Nightlife in Sorrento consists of dressing up and walking up and down the main street, to see and be seen. We were generally dressed in our rumpled tourist clothes, walking back to the hotel.

Sorrento "statues"

These pictures were taken on various days.

Sorrento gelatto shop

The next morning we headed to the airport. There is a shuttle that can take us to the airport, but it leaves at 6:30 which is cutting it close for our 8:50 o'clock departure, if we try to get to the airport two hours before, and it takes an hour to get there. And I would think it would take longer to load than unload, since tickets would have to be bought, etc. No one is willing to tell us if the airport requires us to get there two hours early for international flights. We hired a private shuttle to take us. It had been cheaper to stay an extra night than the leave the day before, but the shuttle ate all the savings. But it was good that we had one full day with which to do as we pleased.

Sale!

So we left at 6:00 with the shuttle, but he drove very fast, and we wound up at the airport very early. We had coffee and pastries at a lounge in the airport, then the steps of going home was pretty much the same as the process of getting here, except that it was reversed, and took a little bit longer.

Ciao Italy!

Italy - Amalfi Coast

2011-08-11T17:43:00.000-04:00

Amalfi coast

With the days quickly slipping away, we wanted to go down the beautiful Amalfi coast and spend time at the beach, and recover from all our sightseeing. We were planning to go to Rome on the following day. So this day was all about rest and relaxation. We slept in, and took the bus south along the coastline.

curvy roads - Amalfi coast

There was a man sitting in the front seat who was telling everyone how to stamp their ticket, and telling them to go to the back, etc. He had a musty smelling sweater even though it was really hot. He was irritated when the bus driver told him to let me sit beside him, but he did eventually move his legs so I could get through. I guess I can thank him for saving me a front seat view. I thought he might be the Italian equivalent of a Walmart greeter, but when he got off the bus, I decided he was just a crotchety old man. My daughter wound up somewhere in the back. I'm glad we had discussed where we were getting off before we got on the bus. We skipped Positano and went to Amalfi.

Road - Amalfi coastline

There were cliffs and a steep hill down to the water that the bus had to navigate. Lots of times he had to drive blind, because there was no way to tell if someone was coming from the other side. I think I figured out his code, honk once to say "anyone coming?", honk twice to say "Watch out, I'm coming through!" There was only one place that had a light to make sure traffic only came from one direction at a time. It must be manually operated, because there was a man standing there with his walkie-talkie beside it.The traffic light was on the ground, and someone passing the bus missed seeing it. They somehow managed to work it out by the time the light turned green for us.

narrow lanes with parked cars

The lanes were very narrow, and yet people parked there to take photos of the view, etc. A lot of the drivers are tourists and don't know where the narrow spots are, and the locals are pushing the tourists to drive faster. Sometimes the bus driver had to drive backwards to let cars through, yes even around curves, but our driver drove carefully and only had to go backwards a short distance once.

I was gearing myself to go down this road, but we didn't go there. We got to the beach which has volcano rock instead of sand. We got some lounge chairs and umbrella, got out our books and read. I thought it was sweet when my daughter told me I should move my chair since the shade had moved, but she really wanted the sun since she was trying to get a tan. We did get into the water which was very cold. I finally convinced her to go up to the shopping area. An Italian souvenir grocery store had colorful beautifully shaped pasta, Italian spice mixes, candy, limoncello alcohol, and we wound up buying a lot of our little gifts for our family members here.

We could have gone to Positano as well, but my daughter told me that people generally go on vacations to simply relax and do nothing, and going to another town felt like doing something. And since we had seen it on our way there, and we would see it on the way back, it didn't feel like we missed anything.

Italy - Herculaneum

2011-08-10T19:17:00.003-04:00

Herculaneum

Everything that went wrong during our trip, went wrong on this day, but it all turned out to be in good ways. The plan was to go to see the Herculaneum in the morning, hop on a tour bus to see the Phlegraean Fields in the afternoon, and take the ferry back to Sorrento in time to see the sunset.

We stopped having buffet breakfasts and opted to go to a "bar" for breakfast. Finally, a filling breakfast. One thing about staying at a resort - everything is so expensive - a tiny cup of coffee is three euros, which is about $4.50.

Herculaneum floor

We got to the train fine, and the train got us to Herculaneum fine as well. There were people standing at the train station asking us if we wanted a ride to Ercolano, which was momentarily confusing, because I thought it was the name of the town, but it is also what the Italians call Herculaneum. Why we don't also call it Ercolano, I don't know. It is a great site - it is much smaller than Pompeii, partly because it was a smaller town, and partly because less is excavated because a lot of it is underneath the current city. There is more shade, since some of the second floors survived the volcano. It isn't as crowded. You can rent headphones here as well, but we opted to use our book. And best of all, I had finally solved my foot problems. I think the trouble was that my feet were getting sweaty in the athletic shoes. Even though I switched to flat shoes with little cushioning, and cheap flip flops for the remainder of our vacation, my feet were much more comfortable from then on.

Pozzouli

The first problem happened when we tried to buy train tickets to go to our next site. The ticket booth was closed. When we had told the ticket booth lady in Sorrento our plans, she had told us to buy our next ticket at Ercolano. We asked people what to do, and they just shrugged their shoulders and said closed. We didn't want to wait until 6 o'clock, when it reopens, to get a ticket. We went back to the shuttle driver to see what we could do, and somehow my daughter understood from "its ok" that we could get on the train without a ticket. I guess it makes sense if the cost of the transport for a few people is less than the cost of the hiring a ticket taker, then you might as well let the people go free, but it was still scary anyway. We were happy to save a little bit of money on the train.

We sat at the platform to wait for the train, and there were two tourists who had visited the site, so we talked to them. They were really winging their vacation, and were thinking of staying in Sorrento next, and were asking about hotel information. The train came, and it was very crowded. Unfortunately, the two men managed to wind up at different doors of the train, and they were confused about how to get the doors to open. (You have to push the green button.), and making sure that both of them got on. By the time they figured it out, the doors closed, and my daughter and I were left outside.

The problem was solved very quickly, because the next train came just a few minutes later, and it was empty, so we had plenty of seats. We got to Naples, and already knew how to get to Pozzouli where the guidebook said the tours started. We got there fine, and got off the train. The book said the tours start at a particular piazza - municipio I think, but didn't give us directions for that piazza. The book also told us they were open that day. We walked around a bit, and saw some ruins pictured above. The tourist office was closed. We found the ferry ticket office, and asked them about the tour bus. They said the tour bus was closed today. The guidebook had said it was open on Sundays. Then we asked about a ferry to Sorrento, and they said there wasn't a ferry to Sorrento, but they could take us to Naples. Since we were early, we decided to walk back and take the train back to Naples. I'm still not sure why we made that decision instead of taking the ferry to Naples, except that it was our original plan, and we were too early to see a sunset.

We got back to Naples just fine, and proceeded to walk to the ferry, and walk and walk. It's a good thing my feet weren't giving me trouble. It was longer than we anticipated, and there were several marinas, one for cruises, etc, so we were lost. We went to one that looked like the wrong one, but we didn't know which way we needed to go to find the right one. A police car pulled up, so we asked them. They were very nice, and didn't know anything about ferries to Sorrento, but they told us the ferries were that way. We were ready to walk that way, when they asked if we wanted a ride. The nice policemen gave us a ride to the correct marina. One of them was born in the states, so he enjoyed telling his story. The ticket booth for Sorrento was closed, of course, considering our problems of the day. We checked all of the ticket booths to be sure there wasn't another one going to Sorrento, but no. No ferries to Sorrento on Sundays, even though the guidebook said there were.

We decided to take a taxi to the train station instead of walking. You know those roped lines, well there is one of those for the taxi. You wind around and around the ropes, and when you get to the front, you catch the next taxi that pulls up. People cheer when more than two people get on a taxi, and boo when only one person gets on. Okay, only a couple of people did that, but it was funny to see. We were probably the only ones without luggage. The line took a long time, and we probably could have walked it in that time

We wait for the train to Sorrento. There are several trains on this line, so we have to make sure we go on the one going to Sorrento. The announcer mentions something about Sorrento, but people stay sitting. A train pulls up, and we ask a lady who doesn't speak English if this is the train to Sorrento. She says no, and told me in sign language for another train. The next train comes, and I hear a lady asking the conductor about Sorrento. She gets on the train, so we follow suit. We sat down, and there is an Italian who starts talking to us about Italy. He says that the pizza is the best in Naples - which is true, because they use real cheese. He tells us that the people in southern Italy are poor because the northerners have stolen all the riches. He states that most employers require you to work under the table so they don't have to pay taxes, and that good jobs are hard to find. He tells us to be careful of pickpockets. Some people who tell you to be careful are actually crooks trying to win your trust, so I hold my bag tighter. And finally, after we tell him we are staying in Sorrento, he tells us that we are on the wrong train. He says to stay on this train for eight stops after he gets off, and transfer to another train. We speak to the conductor, and apparently, the train is going on the same route as Sorrento, but eventually makes a turn. I'm not sure why we have to wait until the eighth stop, but we stand by the conductor for directions.

Graffiti on train to Naples

The lady who had asked the initial question talked to the conductor, and we ask her what she was told. She also speaks English, and she told us we could get off with her, that the eighth stop isn't in a good area, that the seventh was better. We got off with her and her son. She told us that someone had set fire to a train, which was the reason for the delay of our train. She is from Rome, and she tells us that the southerners are selfish, and can't or aren't willing to do things for the common good. We get on the next train and head on our way.

The trip to Sorrento was fine, but just as we were about to get off the train, about a million people crowd to get on the train. Most of them are young adults. We almost didn't get off the train in time - we had to push and shove our way out. But we managed just fine, we were happy that we were able to talk to locals and get a real flavor of what living in Italy is like.

Quilting and Eating

2011-08-06T10:11:00.000-04:00

As I have been telling you about our Italy trip, I feel like I should limit blog worthy things I am doing, since I can't keep up with telling you about current events and our trip. I thought I would give a break to those of you who are tired of hearing about our vacation, to give you a quilting update.

I started a new quilt, or technically two. It is so much easier to start a new quilt than to finish one. What you see are two backgrounds for an applique quilt I am making. They will be small, about 12 inches square. A friend of mine asked me to make a lily quilt for her when she saw the pictures from the quilt show, just as I was working overtime, getting ready for the Italy trip and our Japanese guest, etc. I decided making two would be just as easy as one, and I wouldn't feel bad about giving one away if I still had one. Plus, she might want two, who knows?

I have been catching up on my Buck a Block quilt blocks. Apparently I am very behind on them. No pictures yet - I need to relearn how to sew, so that each HST and the final blocks come out to be the expected size.

Our Japanese guest came and went. This seemed like a very short program, although I think it was the same length as the previous years. We hosted the tour guide instead of a student this year, and she had rented a car. Usually the tour guide stays in a hotel, but since we had more host families this year than students, she and the teacher were able to stay with host families. She doesn't know how to cook, and gets tired of eating out, so she was looking forward to staying with a family. She had a lot of work to do - filling out paperwork, helping students, taking the teacher to a Major League baseball game in Cleveland, filling out paperwork, so we didn't get to spend as much time with her as we do with students. We did take a couple of trips which I will tell you about when I get done with telling you about Italy.

I was very good about cooking everyday - on different days, I made spaghetti with real Italian spices (it was very peppery hot), french onion soup, chicken nuggets made out of Chex (honey nut), chicken stir fry, roast beef, chicken thighs with Indian spices with fragrant rice, beef chilli with cheese sandwiches. I didn't get tired of cooking until a couple of days before she left when we had spaghetti again. She said I was a good cook - she even told someone else that, so it must be true! She wanted to learn to cook, so we made the Indian dish together. She is going to France next.

I finished all the candy I got from Italy - it was so good, it was hard to make it last. They had this wonderful limoncello candy - it is a hard candy with a soft filling of limoncello liqueur. Also you know the chocolate covered almonds that sometimes get served at weddings? They had those in so many different varieties - lemon, licorice, orange, cocoa, etc. If I had known they were that good, I would have gotten a lot more!

Italy - Naples

2011-08-04T14:53:00.000-04:00

Quilt Idea

We had heard lots of things about Napoli. That there was a lot of crime there - especially pickpockets. On the plane from Venice to Naples, I met an Italian student who went to school in Naples, and returning from his visit with his parents who lived in Venice. He said to be careful. The guidebooks say don't stay in Naples, and hold on to your belongings very carefully. The other tourists in Sorrento said, "What, you're going to Naples?" like we were out of our minds. Poor people live in Naples.

We live in a city, and people may even say things like that about our neighborhood, so we were not afraid. We took the proper precautions - limit how much money we were carrying, and left the purse in the hotel. I was worried about having to stand on the train for an hour, but the train wasn't too crowded, and we were able to sit. We were able to give some pointers to some tourists who were going to Pompeii, and received some advice about going to Amalfi.

There is an information booth in the train station at Naples. The lady was very unfriendly. She expected us to have a map (but she didn't sell any), before she could provide information. She did not even have her own map to show the way. We went and got a map, and went back to the info booth. Luckily, there was another person at the counter the second time, and he was able to give us good directions. We took a local train to the museum. A nice train rider showed us the way out of the train station and to the museum.

The museum was very nice, it had a lot of marble statues, an Egyptian exhibition, Italian paintings, and of course, treasures from Pompeii and the other towns devastated by the volcano. I'm afraid I wasn't a very good companion to my daughter, because my feet were still itching and hurting. The shoes and athletic socks I had brought were very comfortable, but were not breathable. Also, I had forgotten to recharge my camera battery so I couldn't take any pictures. I wound up looking at the exhibits from the benches most of the time.

I even convinced my daughter to go through the Secret Room, just so she could say that she had seen it.

After taking our time looking at all of the exhibits, we had Napoli pizza in Naples. It was very good, and at better prices than the ones in Sorrento. Unfortunately, going through a museum doesn't make you very hungry, so each of us only ate half of our individual pizzas, and the chef was disappointed. And since we were not done sight seeing, we couldn't take it with us.

We then went to see Naples Underground. While we were waiting, I took off my socks, which helped a little bit with my feet. The city is built upwards. Instead of tearing down the ruins and starting over, most people just built a new layer on top of the old one. The archeologists discovered remains of the old buildings underneath the current ones. We went underneath several buildings to see streets, a theater, and an aquaduct. It was nice and cool underground, and the tour guide was very personable.

We walked to the train station, stopping at some shops and street vendors along the way. The train ride was fine, and we walked from the train to the hotel, stopping at the little streets in Sorrento along the main walk for a restaurant.

Italy - Mount Vesuvius

2011-08-03T11:03:00.000-04:00

walking up the mountain

After walking around Pompeii, we ate at the only restaurant there. The reviews talked down the food, but we didn't think it was bad, but the staff was brusque. There were several different stands of different types of foods to eat, and it was already awkward to figure out where to order the food and where to pay, etc. The cashier wanted to limit the amount of change to return. I'm used to credit cards, and when I use cash, I use bills, and keep the change for parking meters and emergencies. I had a teacher who used all his change for a vacation fund. The more change the better. I'm not used having to deal with one dollar (euro) coins, and having to withdraw money from a money belt, and having to keep track of limiting the amount of change I receive.

don't wear black shoes

I thought we had more sights to see, but we were done with Pompeii, so we headed out to see Mount Vesuvius. There is a bus that takes us to the mountain, then we transfer to another bus to take us up the mountain. The cliffside view down the mountain from the bus is incredible. I am in awe of Italian bus drivers and their ability to maneuver the huge bus around the narrow steep blind curves. We are to walk to the top. There, we will find a souvenir shop, and a guide who will take us to the crater and tell us about what we are seeing. It was organized very well.


view from the top of the mountain

It is only a 30 minute walk to the top. The young people sprinted up with no problems. It wasn't a clear day, but the view was still spectacular. There are beautiful yellow flowers growing on the mountain, and below that, you can see the cities and the water and beyond that the resort towns. Except that there is high altitude, and and dust, and we had to walk up hill on slippery volcano rock. My feet were itching and hurting. My lungs weren't getting enough air. My heart was racing. I found the best way for me to go was to go a few steps, take a rest, go a few more steps, etc. People kept passing us. My only consolation was that there were some other people who were also having difficulty. I asked someone on their way down how much farther, and they said we were about halfway up. Yikes! After a while, I told my daughter to just go without me. I would wait for her. There was already a beautiful view from where I was, and I didn't think it would get better higher. So she left. I didn't have anything to do from where I was, so I decided to keep going up slowly. I took my time and took lots of breaks, figuring I would meet my daughter and the group on their way down. I didn't want to tell you that I wimped out. I wanted to say I made it to the top or at least made the effort.

Mount Vesuvius crater

All of a sudden, I was the souvenir stand. I had managed to make it all the way up. We had been more than halfway up. When I got up there, the tour guide asked me if there was anyone else in the group. Apparently, he had waited for me to start the tour! My daughter didn't know he was waiting, so she hadn't told him to start without me. This is the most dangerous volcano in the world, because it is still active and so many people live around it, and it would be impossible for all of them to evacuate in time. We went to the crater, and he said people could climb up some more if they wanted but to come back down because we would be picked up where we were dropped off. The way down was much easier, and the bus was very comfortable. The bus took us down the mountain, and another bus took us back to Pompeii. From there we caught the train back. On the way back, we were able to sit down on the train. From the train station, most of the entire shopping and restaurant area is on the way to the hotel, so we have our choice. We ate dinner in Sorrento.

Day 4 of Italy Trip - Pompeii

2011-08-02T14:47:00.004-04:00

On Friday, we went to Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius. Since this was the main attraction of the trip, we wanted to spend 4 or 5 hours in Pompeii, and then if we had time, we would take the bus up the mountain where it would be cooler in the hot afternoon sun. We had a continental breakfast, and walked down the main street to the train station (10-20 minutes). We were able to catch a train right away, but it must have been late, and / or it was also carrying commuters going to work, because it was crowded, and we had to stand the whole way (20-30 minutes). Ah, this is why the hotel did not recommend the train as a way to get to Sorrento.

It is a very big place, with very little shade and it was a hot day. We decided to get a guide book, and follow that instead of listening to a tape or using a live guide. We wanted to be able to go at our own pace. There is an option of the 2 hour tour, a 4 hour and a 6 hour tour. We chose the 4 hour, so we could see more than the basic sights. My daughter did a great job of navigating us through the sights, but the signage is based on research, and many of the individual buildings are not labeled, so there was a lot of "well this must be the...". It was helpful to see other tourists go into a building, because then we knew it was one of the more important ones. One of the first things to see is the little museum - the one that showed the forms of the bodies, and we couldn't find it. We wandered around the general area, and wound up exiting the ruins! I swear there was no exit sign. We were heading to the town. When we tried to come back, the security guide wanted to know what we were doing. We told him we had just started, and he told us that the museum was closed for restoration. It is good that we saw him though, because he told us that some of the bodies had been temporarily moved to other places, and he told us where.

We were able to find and go through most of the other sights pretty easily. The streets were not comfortable to walk on, and my feet were uncomfortable, even though I had purchased good shoes and given them lots of practice. It was a hot day and there is very little shade or greenery in Pompeii. But it does have running water, and we were able to refill our water bottles at this and another fountain.

I enjoyed seeing the storage areas where they held more treasures they had uncovered. It is amazing that these things have survived from so long ago, and to imagine the way people lived so very long ago. I couldn't help but think about the last moments for all of these people that lived here.

There was another building we were unable to find. We asked someone who looked like a researcher, and he told us it was closed for restoration. We decided to sit down to look at our guidebook for the next location, when he asked us if we wanted to see it. So the two of us got our own private tour. We had to pay him for his efforts, but it was worth seeing the building. I think these are enough pictures for one post, so I will put the rest of the day in another post.

Italy Day 3 - Capri

2011-08-01T09:05:00.000-04:00

Capri

For our first whole day in Italy, we decided to take a boat to the island of Capri. The hotel suggested a package that included land transportation from the hotel to the dock, the water transportation to Capri, and the boat would circle around the whole island and include a tour guide who would explain what you were seeing. The price was just a little more than doing it on our own, and transportation from the hotel sounded really good. It was well worth it. After our continental breakfast at the hotel, we set off for Capri.

Blue Grotto

The boat took us to the place where the blue grotto was. This is where we could buy a 5-10 minute boat excursion to the blue grotto. I had heard good things about the place when I researched it, but the small library book I had chosen to bring to Italy said that the adults would not be impressed (probably because they had to duck down to get in). The people we shared the land transportation with also had heard it was not worth it. Plus, the boat tour included the green grotto and the white grotto. In addition, we had to wait for the boats for the grotto, and the whole boat had to wait for the people going to the grotto. So we opted out and waited. At first it seemed like nobody wanted to go, but it turned out that almost everyone went.

We got to Capri, and decided to have some lunch. We sat beside some American tourists who were on a cruise. They were tired of going to historic tours and had decided to take a relaxing day off.

The plan was to take the chair lift to the top of the mountain and see the fabulous view. But since we had a leisurely lunch, and my daughter was worried about being finished in time for the pickup, we decided to wander through the narrow streets and go to the shops instead. We also wandered a little bit in the residential area to see the patio gardens.

We circled the other side of the island on the way back. This is lover's rock, and if you kiss your lover while going through here, you will have a long relationship.

Italy Day 1 and Day 2

2011-07-30T11:09:00.002-04:00

Follow me

As I mentioned in my last post, I decided we were going to plan our own trip. The preplanning process involved reading lots of reviews and ideas on the internet. I don't know how we managed to survive without the internet. I thought at first that Naples would be the best place to stay for our Pompeii trip, but all of the reviews of the Naples hotels said it was a seedy area, and recommended one of the resorts - Sorrento kept coming up a lot. Most of the resorts are on cliffsides, and many tourists complained about having to walk up the hills (or taking a bus) to get to their hotels. I was happy to find a hotel in Sorrento that was on the main level (no hill) that had a price that was comparable to staying in the Naples hotel. I reserved it as soon as I found it, because I wanted to get it while there were still rooms available. I emailed them to ask them how to get to the hotel, and they said that a shuttle bus was the best option.

common flower at cloister in Sorrento

We left in the afternoon on Day 1 (Tuesday, July 5), spent the night on a plane (where they played movies all night), and arrived in Venice the next morning. The picture shows the car with a sign "follow me" that leads the plane to its destination. We have to take a shuttle bus from where the plane lands to where we are supposed to be going. We saw the "Transfers sign" so we went there. There is a line for people transferring planes. It is strange, because they find your name on a list they are holding. The wimpy man finds the names of all of the people in the line, and only then does he let everyone through. But there is someone yelling at him, because they don't want to go through this process, so he has to deal with that. Then he lets us through the door, but doesn't tell us where to go. We have to go through the "Passport" queue to get our passports stamped. Then it is back to the bus that takes you to the plane. It is a short plane trip from Venice to Naples, and we arrive in the afternoon on Day 2. We quickly get our luggage and found the bus that would take us to the hotel. It was running late, so it was still there, we were able to catch it right away, instead of having to wait an hour for the next one. You could see from the shuttle several things - dirty, graffiti filled buildings, winding streets, beautiful sea views, and a pink / purple flower that seemed to be on many buildings. The flower looks like it doesn't take up much yard space, but then has very big beautiful showy blooms (see picture above). They say it takes an hour to get to Sorrento (but we didn't time it). The shuttle made several stops, without announcements, so we weren't sure where we were supposed to get off, but luckily I asked early enough to get off at the Sorrento stop.

Sorrento view

The itinerary for Day 2 was to get to the Ulisse hotel, rest, recover from jet lag (which we did not have), and look around Sorrento. The shuttle stop is on the main square in Sorrento. The hotel said it was a short walk (maybe 10 minutes). The shuttle driver said it was maybe 20 minutes. We had packed light, knowing we would be using public transportation. The hotel had not provided directions (one of the reviews said there were signs). The shuttle driver pointed in the general direction, and said go straight and turn right, so we headed off, walking. It was hot, we were rolling luggage on narrow uneven sidewalks crowded with people and tourists. My daughter was cranky, and wanted to get there right away. I was walking too slow for her. We got lost (we turned right way too early), and asked for directions at a different hotel. It was a nice hotel, and they gave us a map, and told us how to get back to the main street. The map was very nice - it had a train schedule on the back. We got to the main street fine (Corso Italia), and asked someone else. They told us to keep going, and go down the steps after the hospital. We went down the wrong set of steps. There was a man at the bottom of the steps, and it seemed like he said he would help, but then he wasn't doing anything, and he looked scary, so we went back up the steps (with luggage), and found another set of steps and tried them. They were the right steps. We had to walk downhill down the small street. We were about to walk up to the parking lot where a sign with the hotel name was, but they waved us down the hill. The hotel was below the parking lot. Note to self, next time you book a hotel, make sure you figure out how to pronounce the name before you go asking everyone for directions!

statue in park in Sorrento

It is a good hotel - clean and spacious. There is a view of the hospital and the cliffside behind it. The hotel doesn't have good sea side views, and does not have a swimming pool. These things were not important to me, because I thought we should spend time outside of the hotel instead of in it. We had booked two twin beds, but they gave us a twin and a double bed. We took a nap, and then looked around Sorrento. We went back to the hotel to go to the restaurant the hotel recommended for dinner. It was on the outskirts of town. A driver would take us there and back. So we went to Tarvernetta. We were the only customers, which was very strange, but the food was good. I knew that Italians eat in courses, but that seemed like way too much food, so I ordered the second course (roasted chicken) with a side salad. The food was good, and we relaxed and ate on the patio (no view, but it was nicely set up with flowers.) We went back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Italian Vacation

2011-07-20T16:21:00.000-04:00

When my daughter graduated from college a couple of months ago, I told her I would take her on a trip of her choice. She asked me about the fine print and limits, exclusions, etc. I told her it would depend on if I wanted to go to the same place she wanted to go. She gave me a hint - volcano. Specifically she wanted to go to Pompeii, yes, the one in Italy. And since it was something I wanted to do as well, I could not veto the suggestion!

I decided that it would be better to plan our own itinerary instead of choosing a package tour - in order to give ourselves as much time as we wanted to see Pompeii. I also decided to stay in one place and really get to know it instead of trying to do a whirlwind tour through Europe, or Italy even, and spend more time travelling than actually seeing the sights. This plan worked out very well for us.

I was very busy at work, and in the evenings, I planned the trip. It did not seem real that I was actually planning a trip to Italy. We don't vacation much - mostly day trips here and there, so this is a very big deal for us.

It was hard to time the trip well - I didn't want to go when it was too hot, but needed to wait for her to graduate, and my peak work time to be finished, try to be back before our Japanese guest arrived, and choose economical travel times, etc.

So we went. To Italy! Just me and my daughter. As you can see, it is a gorgeous place. We took lots of pictures and had a great time. I'll share some more pictures in a future post.

We are the Quilters

2011-07-14T06:45:00.000-04:00

This would have been a great quilt to post for National Quilting Day, but since I missed it, how about we make it a monthly event? It's been a month since National Quilting Day. You probably want to commemorate it again anyway, right?

This quilt got me singing the song, and it added a great visual to it. All the quilters are tiny little dolls, if I remember correctly.

Go Buckeyes

2011-07-10T05:58:00.000-04:00

Circle Quilts

2011-07-06T09:10:00.001-04:00

More quilts from the National Quilting Association quilt show in June 2011.

Time to Quilt

2011-07-05T09:43:00.000-04:00

I took this picture at the NQA quilt show in June 2011. I like all the detail and dimension on it.

Happy Independence Day

2011-07-04T08:44:00.001-04:00

Photos of quilts taken at the National Quilting Association convention / quilt show June 2011.

Log Cabin

2011-07-03T09:50:00.001-04:00

Another picture from the NQA quilt show held this June. I especially liked this one for all the detail and texture that is put in this little quilt. It looks so cozy there.

Kaleidoscope

2011-07-02T09:07:00.003-04:00

This is another quilt from the NQA quilt show. Did you notice that it has the circle kaleidoscope that I had been planning to make last year or maybe even earlier?

Detail shot. I think a quilt like this is way above my skill level, but I would like to try to make it to see how far I can stretch.

Another detail shot. It is turned the wrong way. I asked several vendors if they had a wedge ruler to make such a thing, and they said no. I will have to look for one online.

I have been horrible about posting regularly lately, and am working on scheduling some posts to keep the postings more regular. And to share the so many pictures I took during the show. I figure I can always add words to the pictures on days that I do get around to posting.

Quilt Show

2011-06-23T07:11:00.000-04:00

I was busy working and keeping up with the housework and yard work when I noticed on my calendar that the NQA is having their annual quilt show this weekend. I debated going. After all, I haven't done anything quilting related in more than a month. I have have flipped through a book or a magazine or a blog post here and there, but for the most part, I've been too busy for quilting. Besides, I have plenty of ideas and fabric at home to keep me going for my entire lifetime and then some.

sorry sideways - click on it to see quilted names and dates

Then I decided that I've been busy working, at work, and at home, that I need a break. Maybe it would recharge my energy for work, and maybe even quilting. So, I put my comfortable shoes on, and I went.

There were a lot of people looking at quilts, so I decided to go to the vendor area first. I noticed that there were more than the usual number of shops that sold crazy quilting embellishments. Or maybe I just am drawn to them. I noticed that wool is super expensive. I am going to have to scour some thrift stores when I am ready for that commitment.

Diamond anniversary - I talked with the recipient of this quilt.

I had lunch. Sitting down felt really good. I have been walking everyday, so while the rest of my body was completely fine with the walking, my feet were telling me there was a problem. The cement floor is awful for walking. There were a couple of places in the vendor area that were selling comfort - back rests and massaging pillows. I thought that was very clever, since people are probably uncomfortable with so much walking.

I went back into the convention hall to look at the quilts. By this time the crowd was in the vendor area, so I had plenty of space to take pictures for the most part. I had bought a tiny lamp with a lamp shade (the store sample had a beautiful crazy quilted cover on the lamp shade), and I had to carry the bag outside my back pack to avoid crushing it, so it was hanging off my wrist, so I had to wait for the bag to keep swinging so I could take the picture, but it worked out all right.

What did I notice about the quilts? There were very few bed quilts, and lots of small quilts - the 12 x 12 variety. I know there was a display for the Alliance quilts, which require that size, but other areas also had smaller quilts. There were several quilts which had circles quilted on them. Embellished quilts aren't as popular as they were in previous years, especially beaded ones. There were some three dimensional quilts though. I also noticed several quilts that combined quilting with genealogy. There was one with family photographs. One which quilted family names and dates. One for a diamond anniversary also had names embroidered on the front, with more names on the back. There were also a couple of series where a group got together to make quilts that go together - following a road or a river, etc.

The quilts on the is post are all somehow related to providing genealogy information. (Well the first one just has a first name, but maybe there is more info on the back). I will post more pictures later.

Fortunately

2011-06-11T09:49:00.002-04:00

Sorry I hadn't realized how long it had been since I posted. You were stuck looking at pictures of empty black flats. Not a very attractive sight. I decided to show you a prettier picture of the flowers I planted.

My daughter is back home from school and has settled in nicely. She helped me clean the house for the Japanese school's visit. The coordinator told us that there are fewer students this year - 25 students and 30 prospective families, which means some families will not have a guest this year. They will make their decision after they have visited all the families.

Work is going along. Since my vacation schedule will keep me from being available for all of the work I need to do, my manager has decided that I cannot do it at all. Fortunately, he moved me to another project so I can still work. I will still be able to work on my old project next year.

rainbow

It's been thundering and lightening quite a bit lately. There were some trees down at the local park where I walk Zeus everyday. He is very afraid of storms. Yesterday, Zeus tried to hide under my bed during a storm and got stuck. Fortunately, my daughter was home and went looking for him after she heard a loud clap, so she was able to get him out.

Flats on Sale

2011-05-30T11:44:00.002-04:00

I was on my way home on Saturday and decided to stop by at the grocery store to get some milk. Being out of milk is bad enough, but when you have company, it is doubly bad. My daughter's college roommate was visiting so they could go to a wedding together. I had to work because our project didn't finish on Friday like it was supposed to. It's the first time I wasn't able to finish a project on time, but it did finish early on Saturday so all is well that ends well. There is another project after this, but I am taking the rest of the weekend off.

Anyway, since I had stopped straight at the grocery store from work, I was trying to think of what was written on the grocery list on the refrigerator. There by the front door, partially blocking the entrance are these flats with beautiful annual flowers. I had to look at them on my way in the door anyway, right? My big overtime project is finished, and I might have some time to plant something. Even if I did miss the big planting season, I think it would still be safe to get plants in the ground by the end of the month. I didn't see any prices, so I asked someone else who was looking at them. She said they were $1.50 for the flat. She showed me the price on the outside of the flat, and I had to stare at it to make sure that it said for the flat.

That is six plants in one of containers, and 8 containers in a flat. That is 48 plants for $1.50. Even with my lack of gardening skills, I could plant these guilt free. Some of the plants are sorry looking, and the most of them have roots that have outgrown their space, but that means I can blame the plants if they don't grow. I bought two flats. They are $1.50 each!

I got them home, to try to figure out where I was going to put my brightly colored beauties. And that is when I realized, I have to plant all 48 of these beauties. Times two.

Have a good Memorial Day!

P.S.
Good news! There are 36 plants in each flat.
Bad news! Air Quality Alert

Update

2011-05-29T11:41:00.002-04:00

Michele asked for an update about Zeus, and I am happy to oblige. Especially now that she is famous. I have been working long hours and he has been under the care of my daughter. Since they don't have much of a history (she was away at school), she has no trouble with opening the door to let him out in our fenced yard and leaving him out there for short periods of time. I didn't tell her what I perceive to be his fears, because I wanted her to evaluate him for herself.

He is more comfortable in the backyard by himself. Even though he does still sit on the porch and stare at the door most of the time he is outside, he does spend some time in the yard when he is by himself. Here he is playing catch.

I took him to the vet shortly before my big work stint. He had fallen off our porch and gotten a scrape. He had gained 10 pounds since we got him. He was underweight when we got him, but 10 pounds seems pretty significant on small animal. I wondered but didn't ask if he was now a healthy weight. Apparently he was wondering too, because since I have been working, he hasn't been eating as much. He will either skip his morning meal or eat it later in the day, which makes it hard to decide how much to give him for dinner. The vet wasn't worried. He acts healthy and has energy, and he does eat, so I guess I will let him decide what is best for him.

Our Big Adventure

I take him out for a walk in the park in the mornings before work. If no one is around (and there usually isn't) I take him off the leash and let him run around. I call him to me from time to time to keep him from going too far, and to give him practice of coming to me. It is a rectangular patch of grass with a pathway all around. There is a fence, but there are some spaces where the fence has been broken. I walk around the pathway, while he explores the grass.

A couple of days ago, he was running around, and he took off the middle of the rectangular patch all the way to the other side. He did not come to me when I called him. Because the grass was high and wet with dew, I didn't see where exactly he went. I wasn't going to follow him through the grass. I followed the path as fast as I could, but he had gone through a space in a fence and did not come when called. There are several spaces in the fence, and I didn't know which one he had gone through. I kept calling and calling and he either did not hear me, or did not heed. I didn't want to be late for work, but I didn't want to leave him here either. I had to hold out hope that someone would see his dog tags and call. I waited a little while, and a young man came through the fence on a bicycle. I asked him if he had seen a dog. He said no. I resumed my search of calling him. Finally after several minutes he came running to me.

I couldn't punish him, since he did come to me, but I decided that he had lost his freedom privileges for the day. I tried to put the leash on him, but his collar was missing! I wondered if the young man had tried to steal him and take off his collar, or maybe he got his collar stuck on something and managed to slide it off his head. If someone had found him, they might have thought he was homeless. We walked to the car with me calling him close to me if he even tried to wander off the path. When we got home, I saw his collar on the couch. My daughter had taken it off when she was brushing his fur.

It's Official

2011-05-21T08:11:00.002-04:00

I am the mother of a college graduate. She wants to go on to graduate school, so eventually I will become the mother of a doctor. It feels so strange and so wonderful at the same time. I took some blurry pictures, which I will say was specifically for the blog. Luckily the other ones turned out well, and there are other photographers in the family.

The project at work is in full swing, which means going into the office, commute time, and lots of overtime. I've been more relaxed this year about work than in previous years. The managers expectations are more realistic this year, and that has made a big difference in my stress level.

We got a fence for the backyard, and are trying to get Zeus to get used to it. He is is easily distracted - a plane or train going by, a neighbor cooking something, children laughing, a school bus going by, etc. Basically, if we let him outside, he will stare at the door until we let him back in. He wants company and protection. Eventually I am sure he will get used to all the neighborhood noises, but until then, I don't feel like I am getting my money's worth from the fence.

I have been adding book reviews to my other blog High Road Reader, You can feel free to check them out at your leisure.

Boxes

2011-05-07T09:35:00.000-04:00

We just received a large photocopying order at work as we gear up for new projects. A coworker was about to carry out the empty box to the storage room for recycling, and I asked him to let me take it home instead. I wanted to use it for additional spring cleaning. He gave me two. Two other coworkers overheard this conversation, and they each gave me two boxes. It's a shorter walk to my desk than the storage room. That's a lot of boxes.

So now I have six boxes and everyone thinks I must be a serious hoarder to need six boxes just for cleaning! I figure I can use them for recycling, charity and trash. And these are nice size boxes, so I can probably use them for storage as well. And whatever I don't use, I can take them to the recycling box, since I am going there anyway. But my goal is to try to fill them all up for recycling and charity.

Working From Home

2011-04-24T10:35:00.000-04:00

I've been working from home. Sure there are lots of benefits:

no commute time
wear whatever you want
eat at your desk
take a break whenever you want

But there are drawbacks. The last benefit mentioned above being one of the biggest drawbacks. The job I have now pays by the piece. That means I don't get paid for any paid breaks. I'm blame the dog and the house, simply because otherwise I have to take the blame myself, or admit some personal flaw. Zeus likes to go exploring outside, and since I don't know if the go out whine means he has bodily functions that need to be taken care of, or if he just wants to explore, we wind up outside more often than I should during work time. Then, he goes to sleep. Do you know how hard it is to work when someone in the house is sleeping? There may have been a nap or two snuck in sometimes.

Then the house starts calling. There is always something that could be cleaned or washed. What I have been doing is to start working early, about 7:30 while I am eating breakfast. Eventually there are breaks, some short, some long. What this means though is that I'm not done working at a time I would have stopped if I had been in the office. Sometimes I can get 8 hours in by 6:30, other times not until 8 or 9. And it feels like I have been working all day, even though I wind up working hours or less.

I am not whining about this, just stating facts. I know I can stop some of the breaks, but they are one of the perks of working from home, so it is a matter of finding the right balance. I really do enjoy working from home though, and do so as much as possible, even though I can go into the office if I wish.

***
I have been coughing all month. It turns out to be a side effect of a medicine I have been taking. So I switched medications, but unfortunately the cough is lingering. I would love to stop coughing. And yes, I am whining about that.

***
The lilacs started blooming yesterday and smell lovely. It has been raining a lot lately, but the resulting flowers and springtime freshness have been worth it.

***
My daughter and I were talking about Pompeii the other day. It's the city in Italy that was destroyed by a volcano a long time ago. I went there before she was born, and the conversation sparked an interest in me to learn more about it. I looked up some information online, and while they have excavated a lot more of the city since I went there, they are still not finished. I've reserved many books from the library. My sister has developed an interest about Nikola Tesla (inventor, mechanical and electrical engineer) and Edgar Cayce (American psychic), and we spend our time telling each other what we have learned about our current topics of interest.

Civil War

2011-04-12T08:30:00.002-04:00

It's the anniversary of the start of the Civil War, and it's been on my mind. I have been watching Ken Burns' documentary on PBS.

I have also been reading Union Quilters by Jennifer Chiaverini. Yes, I liked the book, though it is hard to read the book and watch the show at the same exact time! I've also been reading another historical fiction book for a book review.

Speaking of book reviews, I have decided to start another blog for the book reviews. Most of the books I review are not ones I love and want my readers to read. They are selected from a list. I don't want to clutter up this blog with book reviews of random books. Besides, eventually I want to print my blog posts, and I will have to weed out the ones that are just taking up space, and the book reviews do that. You can visit me at High Road Reader.

Both Footnote.com and Ancestry.com have their Civil War Collections available for free this week, so I have been trying to figure out which of the people on my family tree I need to research now. It is hard to take the advice to research only one branch at a time when these kinds of collections open up.

In quilting news, I have been collecting fabric. Both my mother and my sister have gifted me fabric lately for no occasion. Most of this new fabric isn't cotton, but it is pretty and it will take me a while to figure out what to do with it. I did pick up my April BOM, and an extra yard of the background fabric for the setting. I haven't made this month's block yet. I have been working on sewing down the binding on the Simply Squares quilt.

Genealogy Wishes

2011-04-03T13:54:00.001-04:00

I attended a couple of classes on African American genealogy yesterday. One of the students was proudly showing his membership into one of the societies. I'm not sure which one, but there are societies for being a descendant of a pioneer family of a particular town, or a Mayflower traveler or someone who served in the Revolutionary or Civil War. It is helpful to join the society, because you have to prove your lineage, which is helpful in making sure you are properly documenting your work. Then you share your information with one another, so you wind up getting a lot of information about others related to your ancestor. You also get connected to people who share your passion not just for genealogy in general, but for the particular ancestor.

Since we were discussing how difficult it is to study slave ancestors, it seems to me that there ought to be a society for people who have figured out the owner of their slave ancestors. It is a big deal to find the owner - a lot of time and effort and money goes into finding each tidbit. Plus, the benefits of joining the society as mentioned above are probably even more relevant in this case. Like a detective, you have to put together clues and come up with theories, and prepare proofs that your theory is right. You can't be sure that your Henry is the same Henry as the one on that bill of sale, so you have to research several Henry's to say why those Henry's don't work. Having a peer review your proofs, and maybe provide some insight or other theories, would be helpful. Plus it would be a big accomplishment, certainly worthy of a certificate and a dinner. And sharing with each other, and combining our tidbits of knowledge and our logic (and our funds for getting more records), we might be able to prepare a more solid case for each slave ancestor.

Another thing that I think would be helpful for the slave ancestors is a better sharing of the information. On Ancestry, there is a way to make a comment on the index for a person if you think their name is spelled wrong, or if you know the married name. If, on Ancestry or FamilySearch, we could do the same on the slave schedules, and list the name that the slave chose after becoming free, then I think that will help us identify everyone. If I know that someone already has proved one Henry as theirs (and with a different name of course), then maybe I should start researching the other possible Henry's first. While it is possible that that person making the claim is wrong, it might save me some time following the wrong Henry in the more likely case that the researcher is right.

Ohio Genealogy Society Conference

2011-04-03T09:23:00.000-04:00

I attended the 2011 Ohio Genealogy Society Conference this weekend. It was my first time attending any genealogy conference, generally because I would rather save my money for actual records and fabric. I was convinced to attend by the many blogs that say how wonderful it is to go to a conference. And I thought it would make me feel more like a "real" genealogist if I actually attended a conference and mingle with the big wigs in genealogy.

The conference was held in a hotel, and since this was their milestone year (40 years?), the attendance was bigger than they anticipated. They had a lot of classes. Each session ran for an hour, and there were several sessions to choose from each hour. I didn't have any difficulty choosing one for each hour. We got a printed book that gave a syllabus for every class, so even if you missed the class, you could look at the notes. And most of the classes were recorded, so you could get them on CD.

As you would expect, some of the classes were very basic, while others were more advanced and had a lot of information. All of the speakers were good public speakers who seemed to be knowledgeable on their subject matter.

The classrooms were long so I'm not sure I would recognize the speakers if I saw them up close. While I did talk to people, we didn't exchange names much, so I'm not sure if I met any of the big wigs. But it was interesting to find out how different people conducted genealogy differently, mostly due to their comfort level with computers.

There was a vendor mall area. There were booths by publishers who sold new genealogy books, and a booth that sold older books, postcards, etc. There were county genealogy societies who sold their publications where they had transcribed cemeteries, etc. There were a couple of smaller software companies, who sold specialized genealogy software. You can get software that keeps track of your family in different census years, and a book company where you can publish your information (mostly like photo books).

There was a place that sold family tree products. Even though I had vowed not to buy anything there, (and I want to make quilts from kits I already have) I got this fabric panel from Fun Stuff For Genealogists. It also came in kit form. I think it is a good way to showcase the family or genealogy research. You put the names in the ovals, and you can either put the ovals on the tree, or you can put photos in the border and use the ovals on the picture. There are 21 ovals, so now I have to decide which family members to include. I think this would be a great gift.

Crankiness

2011-03-30T10:11:00.000-04:00

In my last post, I asked my readers to read a variety of books in order to get perspective and form your own reasoned opinion. This book is one I would recommend to get a different perspective .A World Without Islam by Graham Fuller shows the history of the religions, and shows how some of the things that are attributed to Islam may not necessarily be accurate. It shows how the current war against terrorism really should not be a war against Islam. I haven't read very much of this book yet, because I am not a fan of politics or religious debate, and need some time to recover from the last book. I got it from the library, so I don't need to review it.

*****************************

All right, enough religion and politics. In quilting news, I have sewn on the binding to my simply squares quilt, and need to hand stitch it down. I have also made a list of the next few Jane blocks I want to make. When I first started, I worked on a few at a time, assembly style, making sure they all used a different fabric. By doing them assembly style, each of the steps in the process - the cutting, sewing, pressing, logging onto spreadsheet, scanning - was much more efficient, and it made it easier to do several blocks at a time in one "project" instead of making each block its own project.

I haven't focused a lot on quilting. Taking care of the dog, dealing with books that need to be reviewed, and doing general cleaning (shedding!) inside and outside is taking up my non-working time.

I bought some lawn furniture online, on sale and with a coupon, and the next day it was substantially cheaper at the same store. I called the company which purports to have a price guarantee, and a no hassle return guarantee. They said that since my new coupon is only for this week, they could not simply give me the price difference. I would have to return the first order and rebuy the product. I thought they could do that without them actually physically having to ship me a whole new package, but they (the representative and his supervisor) said they could not. They would have to ship me a whole new package. Shipping is free, so they have to pay for additional shipping, and I have to return a 60 pound box to the store. This is a lose-lose proposition. I explained to him that I am unwilling to carry 60 pounds, depending on whether it comes in one box or several, so I may have to open the box, and return the parts and pieces separately. He was fine with that. Since the price difference is substantial, I decided to go ahead and process the order as they recommended. When the UPS man came, he brought one big box. I asked him to put it directly in my car, but it doesn't fit.

I was in a cranky mood the next day, and thought I should work from home and stay away from people. I had two telemarketing people come to the door(one came twice), and one by phone, and a relative came to inform me that she has involved me in a fight she was having with another relative. I think I must have some magnet that radiates negative energy towards me. At least that day it was in full force.

I am fine now. I have assembled the ottomans and the table of the lawn furniture and one of the two chairs, and I am happy with the set. I think I can get someone with a larger vehicle to help me take the other box back to the store. The weather is getting better, and the house and the yard are slowly looking nicer.

Radical Islam

2011-03-28T07:59:00.000-04:00

The Fight of Our Lives: Knowing the Enemy, Speaking the Truth, and Choosing to Win the War Against Radical Islam by William J. Bennett and Seth Liebsohn talks about the bombings on 9/11 and the Fort Hood attack as examples of the way the United States has been soft and apologetic against the war on Radical Islam.

While I agree with some of the viewpoints, this book scares me, because I don't think the authors really distinguish the difference between the Muslims in general and the few radicals who are committing terrorists acts and justifying them in the name of a religion. There are lots of people of all religions who have committed terrorist acts in the name of a religion, i.e. the Ku Klux Klan.

Personally, I think that by calling this a war against a religion (or even the extremists in the religion), we are diluting what we are trying to set out to do. If a person who says he is a KKK member shoots an important person or a big group of people, we should absolutely go against that person. Also anyone who aided him/her, so maybe let's go after the gang. But if we go after that group, and all KKK groups in the state or the country, then it is going to be harder on our resources to take care of the original problem. I think we should have dealt with the original problem, and then expanded out to other problems.

And then if we go after all people in the town, state or , the U.S. or the entire world, who might have even stepped on the same sidewalk with any KKK member anywhere, then we are infringing on the rights of all those residents. Of course you have to interrogate even the ones who did not know the existence of any of the terrorists, just to be sure. Calling it a war against Radical Christianity will help you justify your cause, but somewhere along the line, it will become very easy to forget that just because they are from the same town or state or religion does not mean they are KKK members or have anything to do with that terrorist group.

I hope that we still remember the lessons we learned about the animosity against the Jews from World War II. And the way we treated our Japanese residents after the war.

I was telling my SIL about this book, and she was surprised that I was willing to have anything to do with this book. She thought that if I was opposed to a viewpoint, then I shouldn't be reading the book, and I certainly shouldn't be blogging about it and making others aware of the existence of the book.

One of the reasons this book bothers me, just like the other political books I have shown on this blog, is that it is such an extreme, biased point of view. I don't think we should be fighting extremism with extremism. Some things the government did not catch before a terrorist act is due to the fact that hindsight makes them appear more serious and more clearly terrorist. There are lots of facts in the book that I didn't know, and I am glad to know them now. In fact, a lot of other book reviewers loved the book because of the facts they didn't know. I am wondering how many of the facts were spun out of recognition, and I know for sure that the other point of view was hidden. There were lots of important facts that I knew that weren't mentioned at all.

And speculations that were listed as clear facts. It isn't clear that the attack on Fort Hood was a terrorist attack and not by a lone gunman who had psychological problems. Wikipedia says " A year after the Fort Hood shooting, however, questions still lingered as to whether the incident was caused by mental health issues, and government agencies still had not officially linked Hasan to any radical terrorist groups." But the book uses it as a clear justification of why we can't let up on our war against Radical Islam.

But on the other hand, that is exactly why I do want to read it. I want to know what people with varying viewpoints think, and hearing if from their own point of view is helpful. I want to make sure that I know all sides of the story, and that the biased thinking I am hearing is offset by the biased thinking of the other side. Yes, that leaves me more confused and not having a clear answer, but politics is never as clean as it is presented in these books.

It doesn't bother me that I am reading the book. It bothers me that others might read the book and solely form their opinion based on it. I say read the book, but only if you also read other viewpoints too so that eventually you can get a balanced view of what really happened.

I got this book for free from Thomas Nelson so I could review it.

Did You Miss It?

2011-03-20T12:11:00.002-04:00

It was Pi Day, then it was Saint Patrick's Day, then it was National Quilting Day, then it was Super Moon night. I mostly missed them all - remembering at the end of the day, and too lazy to do anything about any of them. But today is the first day of spring, and that certainly calls for a celebration, particularly since I noticed it in the morning.

I finally finished this block from the Jane Stickle quilt. It took me several days, since I did not work on it continuously. I used the leftover fabric from my Block of the Month. The center cross seemed like it would be easy, and it is, except the part about lining up the two triangles so that it actually forms a cross. This is after three tries, and I decided it was close enough. And the part about what color goes where. I made the center with a dark background accidentally. Even though it would be fine as an alternate design choice, I really liked the look of the light background better. So I started over and made another center with a light background.

I am pretty proud of the middle area. Instead of cutting those weird pencil shapes, I sewed rectangles, and trimmed them to size. That turned out to be much easier than I expected.

Unfortunately, since I was using leftover pieces, I did not have enough dark fabric to finish the border of the block. I decided an alternate design choice would be to reverse the colors - the dark was supposed to be the bigger part. Wow, I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to finish it with cornerstones because I was a quarter of an inch short of the dark fabric. See those little pieces do count, even to fractions of inches. Luckily, I found another scrap and was able to complete the block. In fact I have an extra inch of fabric for another cornerstone!

With the lighter border, I think the dark background center would have looked pretty good too. With each of the blocks in this quilt, there are so many beautiful variations of the same block.

This block has 23 pieces, so that makes my new total now 67 blocks and 1432 pieces.

Japan Relief Fund

2011-03-18T07:46:00.001-04:00

Allie has joined Jojobi in the Japan Relief Fund by auctioning off this beautiful quilt to help the Japanese victims of the earthquake and tsunami. Click on Allie's name to bid on it.

March BOM

2011-03-10T21:50:00.000-05:00

I have finished the March Thangles Block of the Month. These sweet and simple blocks are looking great. I had some new friends look at my blog and they were impressed with them - the color and the pattern. It seems strange because they are so simple that I don't think they are deserving of that type of attention. I didn't tell them that though, and they are nice in their own way. And they do each have 13 pieces each.

But I did come home and look over my Jane Stickle blocks and am making another one. I have 66 blocks done, and I have considered making other blocks from the many block programs going around blogland lately. I have been very distracted by all the different beautiful blocks and quilts out there, and making a few blocks might get it out of my system so I can get focused on finishing those things I have already started.

Review: Lies the Government Told You

2011-03-03T21:20:00.001-05:00

Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano talks about government and politics, and how things aren't as always as he thinks they should be. The book jacket says it:

reveals how America's freedom, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, has been forfeited by a government more protective of its own power than its obligations to preserve our individual liberties.

The book is broken down into 17 chapters and goes through a wide range of issues.
Lie #1 All Men are Created Equal
Lie #4 Every Vote Counts
Lie #15 We Don't Torture

It reminds us that laws are created by a group of diverse people, who find ways to negotiate, and laws and beliefs that aren't always consistent with each other. It is a very opinionated book, and I don't know enough about all the topics to know if important information is being left out or spun in a way that it doesn't reflect reality. Although I did not agree with all of it, and didn't know whether to agree with some of it, I found it to be an informative and interesting read.

I got this book for free from Thomas Nelson in exchange for this review.

Review: Blind Hope

2011-03-03T19:00:00.002-05:00

Blind Hope: An Unwanted Dog and the Woman She Rescued by Kim Meeder and Laurie Sacher is about a worker at the Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch in Oregon who adopeds a dog from a shelter who winds up having more problems than originally imagined. The dog was blind. The veterinarian recommended and Laurie decided to keep the dog. This story is about their relationship, and the Christian lessons Laurie (and presumably Kim) learned from it.

I personally had a hard time reading this short book. There is a forward by Kim Meeder, and her style of writing is completely different from the writing in the main part of the book, even though the story is told from her viewpoint. I imagine that Laurie is the one who did a lot of the editing. It just felt awkward reading someone describing themselves in the third person. Also I imagine that Laurie took writing classes, and did thorough editing to make sure the book followed all the rules that teachers tell you to do - choosing vivid words, showing detail, etc. I think the writing classes were taken overboard and I found the writing awkward to read. Here's a random excerpt:

From atop my trusted horse, Ele, I looked over at Laurie, mounted on Lightfoot, a gray Arabian gelding. Lightfoot is the most balanced combination of what I like to call "gentle fire" - he'd become one of our most beloved horses on the ranch. The ease with which Laurie sat on him divulged that they were dear friends. Laurie's dark blue helmet drew out and deepened the color of her eyes, already framed by her sweeping eyelashes. The combination was simply lovely.

I got this book for free from Multnomah Books in exchange of this review.

Reading Blogs

2011-03-03T08:37:00.000-05:00

from internet - my actual one is prettier with pictures

I use Google Reader to read my blogs, having switched over from Bloglines. Bloglines could tell me how many unread posts I had, but Google Reader can't count past 1000, so I always have 1000+ to read. I liked to be able to see the number going down, but now it just stays at 1000+, even though I read a lot of posts everyday. (Ok, I will admit I skim through a lot of them too.) Google Reader lets you choose whether your posts are read when you mark them as such, or when you have scrolled past them.

When I saw a quilt I liked on Bloglines, I would keep a copy of the image and let the post disappear (instead of marking as unread). I had thought about asking for permission to make a copy of the quilt or use it for inspiration - but let's face it, there is no way I am going to make every quilt I want. But then I don't know where I got the picture from, so if I wanted permission years from now, I wouldn't know who to ask. Now on Google Reader, I can not mark the post as read and keep it until I am done with it. Which explains the 1000+ posts!

I had Kate's Another Little Quilt swap on my reader. I had marked all the posts as read, except for the quilts that were on the list of quilts I wanted. So I had 11 posts - 10 quilt choices and one administrative message left unread on Google Reader. I noticed that the number kept going down. Strange, since I hadn't marked any as read, and I have it set up to only mark as read things I mark that way, not just things I have seen. Today I only have one message left from that blog.

I am missing out on so much inspiration! I am going to have to come up with a new plan.

******

When I look at little quilts people make, a lot of times, they use a doll bed or a doll to model their quilt. I thought I should go out and buy a model for my quilts. But now that I have cleaned the basement, I think I might use my daughter's old dolls. I've just cleaned them, and you might see them from time to time on the blog. I might have to have an audition to see which ones would make good models.

Another Little Quilt Swap

2011-02-27T09:49:00.001-05:00

Kate has been hostessing Another Little Quilt Swap for a while now. The beauty of this swap is that you are only officially entered when you have actually made your little swap quilt. If you make the quilt, and decide you can't give it away, no biggie, keep it. If you haven't made it, and don't have the time, you don't have to rush through it just to honor your commitment. The quilts are posted on the blog and we make a list of the quilts we would like to receive. Kate does her magic (and lots of hard work) to decide who gets which quilt and lets us know where to mail our quilt. Then we sit back and wait for the ones we get. Which comes pretty fast, because you don't have to wait for them to make the quilt, just mail it off.

I entered the maximum of two quilts, and have received my swap quilts. Ooh, they are both so beautiful. And they go together so well. Each quilt is beaded and has so many intricate tiny details that I could look at all day. And maybe steal a few techniques from, as well.

There is applique and piecing and fabric choice and batiks and fusing and folding and beading (and layering of beads) and buttons (and layers of buttons) and rickrack and overlapping and shiny threads and shiny beads and machine and hand quilting and combinations of different quilting designs. So many beautiful techniques combined so beautifully to make two very different but gorgeous quilts.

And they are now MINE! Thank you so much Margaret and Lisa! And Kate!

Basement

2011-02-26T12:50:00.000-05:00

from internet

I had been planning on cleaning the basement all summer. I did a few boxes here and there. Put together a couple of boxes for charity and promptly forgot about them when the charity called. Threw away a couple of boxes. But I was having a hard time making decisions about what to keep and what to throw away.

Then I had a dream. I dreamed I got married to someone I didn't know very well. One day, he came home and found me taking out the trash. He said, "what are you doing?" in a gruff way.
I thought it was pretty obvious, so I said, "It is Odor Removal day. Anything that smells - dishes, laundry, change bedsheets, clean out refrigerator, that sort of thing gets taken care of."
He said, "taking out the trash is a man's job."
My first reaction was to stand up for my rights. After all, it is my house, my trash, and I have been taking care of my own trash for all these years. But I got smart. Here was a man who, not only was offering to take out the trash, but forever after-wards. I shut up and handed him the bag.
While he was taking out the trash, I started worrying. What if he is one of those men who forgets his duty. I've read about wives who have had to put the trash where he will trip over it, so he will remember to take it out.
When he came back, we discussed it, and he said "how about we just do what we do, and at the end of the week, we can have a family meeting and see what needs to be changed."
It sounded like a good plan, so that is what we did. I showed him my chore chart, and we took turns taking care of the things on it.
Things were going well, when at one family meeting, he wanted to discuss the chore chart. I was worried that he wanted to talk about changing the plan, saying he was doing more than I was. But no, he wanted to talk about the thing on the list that hadn't gotten done during the month. That was cleaning the basement. He said he couldn't do it, because it was all my stuff, and he needed my help to make the decisions of what to keep and what to throw away. So we set up an appointment, and together, the whole family set out to spend the weekend cleaning the basement.
Then I woke up. I'm not going to waste valuable dream time watching myself clean!

But still, despite the plans and the dream, the basement still needed work. Last week, the basement decided I had wasted enough time and I needed some motivation. Water backed up in the basement, about 2 inches worth. It's an unfinished basement, so the only things on the floor were things I put there for storage. I didn't want to buy more shelves or plastic containers, because most of the stuff basically should be thrown away or given away. No need to keep what I'm not really using.

After the plumber got the main drain snaked, I took care of all the boxes on the floor. The decisions were really quick and easy. Any paper that got wet was trash, no matter how important it might have been. And non-paper items, I would have to clean and sterilize, so anything that I didn't feel like cleaning and sterilizing was trash. My mother and brother are helping me take care of things. We need to clean the entire floor, so we have to move the things I am keeping back and forth to clean one part at a time, doing a few hours a day.

We have made great progress, and it should all be done this week. I'll have a nice clean spacious basement again.

Quilting or lack thereof

2011-02-21T09:20:00.000-05:00

You know how some people have a hard time quilting or doing anything fun until they have their house clean and everything in order? I'm not generally one of them. Or at least I didn't think so. But with the dog, there is more dog hair and dirt tracked into the house. And I'd like to clean it before I do fun things. I feel guilty for doing the fun things when the cleaning is undone, so basically I sit around and watch tv and ignore the whole situation!

The other guilt thing is work. I am working from home, and even though I know I should just stick to a schedule, and let my free time be my free time, I am having a hard time with that. Especially with interruptions from the dog. "You want to go outside in the nice weather?" I guess I could stop for that. And then I lose track of how much time I have spent working and how much I need to make up. Even on the weekend, seeing the pile of work that needs to be done, which really looks bigger than the actual amount of work, just makes it hard to motivate myself to do any quilting.

All right, I guess I will work or clean or something so I can get to quilting. I am thinking of making another small quilt - before going to another UFO. I had a lot of fun making the quilt for the swap, and I think another one of those would help satisfy my craving to do something new, as well as give me something else to put on the wall.

Miscellaneous

2011-02-19T08:03:00.001-05:00

I haven't been able to think of a blog worthy post, but I thought I would stop in to say hi, and keep you up to date on the latest happenings at the High Road.

Zeus and I are getting along great. He is getting better with his separation anxiety, and is trying to learn things like playing fetch, touching my keys with his nose, and nodding his head. The playing fetch and nodding his head is just for fun, but I am hoping he will eventually help me find my keys. He has to earn his keep somehow! He is hogging my quilt in the photo.

I am getting a lot of good advice from the people at work - it is wonderful to work with so many diverse people. One of them told me that I don't need to get carpet treads for my stairs. He said that Zeus would learn how to maneuver around various surfaces, and should be all right now. Which he is. He also told me I could use a leash that I could tie to a post in the ground. I think I will eventually get a fence, but the tie-in will be nice until then. I just need to convince Zeus that being left outside to enjoy the weather is a good thing.

Now I need to learn how to clip his nails.

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I received a "save the date" postcard from my daughter's school for her graduation. I find it hard to believe that she is graduating already.

She is planning on going to graduate school. For college, she was looking at places as far away as Colorado and New England. Now, she is reaching even farther to the United Kingdom! She has also applied to some more local schools (everything else seems local in comparison).

And if those things didn't make me feel old enough, I received a letter from a hospital, that, because I was a mature woman, I could attend a class about menopause.

*************

The snow has melted, and the mud has dried. The birds are chirping, and more people are out and about. It is getting colder again though.

I have trimmed the Simply Squares quilt, and it is waiting for binding. I haven't been able to find a fabric that goes well with it, so I might have to go shopping, but I wanted to look one more time through the stash to see if if the fabric I need isn't hiding somewhere in there.

BOM #2

2011-02-11T15:38:00.000-05:00

I picked up my January block late in the month and made it the same day. I was simply debating whether I really wanted to participate. One of the advantages of getting a late start with the January block of the month is that I could go back to the LQS and get the next block soon after.

Review: The Upside of Irrationality

2011-02-10T08:09:00.001-05:00

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
by Dan Ariely

The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely has been moved to Millionaire Tips.

New Block of the Month

2011-01-31T20:26:00.001-05:00

Our local quilt shop (LQS) is having a block of the month program again this year. I collected blocks another year as well, but then either they stopped doing it, or I did, or both. But they are doing it again this year. The label says it is Series #7 of the Thangles Block of the Month. They give you fabric to make two 6" blocks each month for $1. You have to take the finished blocks the following month to get the next set of blocks for $1. Otherwise you pay $2. I like this plan, because it will keep me current. The blocks are then put together in a straight setting. But if you want to enclose the blocks in star points, then you can buy the kit for the optional setting.

They had four different colorways to choose from, and I chose the Civil War ones. I have decided to make the blocks, and use my own fabric for the star points.

Have you heard of Thangles? I had a roll of triangle paper that I had purchased for a previous LQS project. I think it was part of a class. That paper comes in a roll, and has lines that you sew down and lines where you cut. It makes it very easy to make a whole bunch of half square triangles at a time. Thangles is a little bit different because (I think) it is designed to work with jelly rolls. You know how you would need 2 7/8 fabric to make a 2 inch hst? With Thangles, you can make 2 inch hsts out of 2 1/2 inch jelly roll, because the paper aligns the pieces so that the some of the little points are already cut off.

I don't normally make practice blocks, but since I had limited quantity of the Civil War fabric, so I did this time. I am thinking one of the practice blocks will be for Ally's Christmas challenge. The deadline is tonight for this month, which I won't be able to make, but maybe I will be early for next month.

Quilting Finished!

2011-01-29T13:03:00.000-05:00

I am finished with quilting the Simply Squares quilt. I need to trim and bind it.

You can thank Zeus for my speedy progress on this quilt. He leaves me alone to quilt, but when I am sitting on the couch watching tv, or even on the computer, he decides he wants attention. He is very pushy, putting himself under your hand so you will pet him, or even whining. He won't just sit next to you; he expects attention the whole time. Now I have to get him to leave me alone when I am on the computer. So far, I have been reading blogs, and doing other casual things, so it wasn't a big deal for me to pet him while I was on the computer. But when I work from home, I am on the computer a lot, and I would prefer to not be interrupted when I am working.

I have been also teaching him the "Go to Bed" command. I have this big pillow I got for him (the label said "dog bed" and fits perfectly in the crate which we returned). I figured that I could move the pillow to whatever room I wanted him to stay in. It would be a good command when we needed him out of the way. We had a couple of training sessions, and he didn't quite understand. He would lie down anywhere on the floor, but we were making progress.

When he was whining yesterday while I was on the computer, I said "go to bed", not really expecting him to do it, because I didn't think he understood the command. He went straight to the couch, because that is where he sleeps when I am sleeping upstairs. He apparently understands the command, just didn't understand why I was calling the pillow "bed." When I am downstairs, he generally sleeps in whatever room I am, although he will leave the room if that room isn't comfortable for him.

I know he has been trained already, but I don't know what vocabulary has been used, so I think I am confusing him by using different words for different things. Today, I asked him where his toy was, and he got it for me! He doesn't do it every time, but that might be because he didn't want to play tug of war on a hardwood floor.

I don't really want to play tug of war with him until he understands the "drop it" command. I am having a hard time teaching it to him, because when I have the treats out, he drops the toy before I can say drop it. He still doesn't understand "stand" either, because to him it probably means "come get your treat", and he doesn't understand that it has to do with a body position, even though I am reinforcing "sit" and "down" at the same time as I am teaching him "stand".

Quilting Progress

2011-01-27T15:38:00.002-05:00

Michele asked to see the family friendly quilting, and I am happy to oblige. As you can see, I quilted an S shape on the left side. Then, I turned the quilt around and finished out the figure 8 as shown on the right side. Thank you Paula for the advice. I am now finished with quilting all of the rows. I am now working on the columns. There are fewer of them, but they are longer. It is turning out quite nicely. Even though I could picture what I was doing in my mind, it is always a pleasant surprise when it comes out in real life.

The pros of this quilting design is

that it is easy. It is a nice step up from straight stitching. You can probably use a walking foot, depending on how big your block is, and not even need to free motion quilt it.
Also, as mentioned before, there are no threads to hide, except for where I ran out of bobbin thread.
it yields a family friendly design.
Looks more impressive than straight stitching, but it really isn't any more work, and isn't harder.
Don't have to draw quilting lines
can practice getting an even stitch length
don't need to sew a straight line - stitch in the ditch is harder
The seams definitely have been quilted into flat submission

The cons is that

you are sewing only in one direction, which means you have to stop and adjust the sandwich and your hands regularly. Which is a pain if you don't have needle down on your machine
The stitches are closer where I was sewing slower to end in the needle down position. Not sure if that means the intersections are sturdier (smaller stitches) or weaker (lots of holes in a small space).
not drawing quilting lines isn't as neat as drawing them on - if you wanted it neater, you could at least mark where you wanted the stitches to intersect
free motion quilting can yield uneven stitch length, depending on your expertise

Edited to add: Another con for this method is that since your sewing is directional, you will have times when the entire bulk of the quilt will have to be on the right side of where you are quilting. Of course, you don't have to leave all of it in the throat, you can move as much as you can behind the machine. Since I have a lap quilt, it isn't too bad, but I think a bed quilt would be much harder.

Oprah's High Road

2011-01-26T10:13:00.001-05:00

I turned on the television to watch the news, and managed to catch the very last part of Oprah's show. I only knew there was a secret, but not what the secret was. Later, I found out that Oprah's mother had given a baby for adoption, and had kept it a secret for all these years.

I didn't watch the show, so I don't know all the details or how she handled it, but what little bits I do know, makes me think she did an excellent job of taking the high road. I haven't had any issues lately where I have had to watch my footing on the high road, but it seems like a good time to learn some lessons from Oprah for when I do.

Last night, I dreamed I wrote a post about what taking the high road means. I wrote a list of the ways we can learn from Oprah. Uggh, now I have to figure out what was on the list!

Openness.
I like that she aired the news on her show. Trying to hide the truth doesn't really work, and by announcing the facts herself, she can avoid a lot of speculation and rumor.

Honesty
Not having watched the show, and not having researched her story, I don't know if there was complete honesty in the disclosure, but it seems like it was. And by being open, she can keep her reputation as an honest person by not lying or hiding the truth. And I think honesty is the best policy.

Sympathy
Although it does seem like she had some anger that her mother had kept this a secret, I think she does sympathize with her mother's situation at the time, and understands the adoption decision.

Gratitude
I am glad that she was willing to look at the silver lining, and was able to find it.

Focus
I'm not sure what the right word is for this, but I heard that her friends did not want her to air this secret. I am glad she kept the focus on the people that mattered. The mother and her new sister were obviously okay with the airing, since they were a part of it, and they are the ones who are a part of the story. The other, peripheral, people, are important and can certainly give advice, but their feedback should not be weighed as highly as the people who are a part of the story. The others have had their turn in their own stories, and probably will in the future.

Listening
She asked questions and listened to the answer. She didn't assume to know the answers to the questions and for her family members. In the questions I did hear her ask, she asked open ended questions, and did not seem to be leading them. I know some of this was for the show, and to facilitate the forum of the show, but hopefully, she did the same in real life.

Poise

Managing the situation with calm and dignity instead of throwing accusations and joining the argument is a big part of taking the high road, and I think Oprah has done that as well, at least in public.

What does taking the high road mean to you?

Chit-chat

2011-01-24T10:35:00.005-05:00

My daughter has a tendency to forget her credit card at school when she comes home, but somehow she never forgets the lists of the things that she wants to buy while she is here. She needed school supplies for an art class she is taking. I believe it is her only elective, since all the other classes went for her double major. It turns out that the art teacher has been to Japan, and he wants to teach them some calligraphy using Kanji words. She'll have fun with it, I'm sure. So even her art class will help advance her East Asian studies.

In one of her classes, she has to speak Japanese. Basically, she and her friend talk while the professor sits and makes sure they are speaking in Japanese. When I met him, he told me that he has learned a lot about me through these conversations. Scary! This weekend, she wanted to know how to translate "neurotic" in Japanese. I am hoping she doesn't find out, in case she wanted to use it in reference to me. Thank goodness she isn't taking that class anymore.

The newest member of our household is having trouble navigating our hardwood and tile floors. Those things are much more slippery than I imagined! I have scattered some rugs on the floors for warmth as well as traction, but I am especially worried about the steps, because they can lead to dangerous falls. I went to a home improvement store where everyone was very helpful, but the young man who was helping me with the slippery steps condition didn't quite get that I don't want indoor/outdoor sandpaper stickies on my hardwood floors inside my house. It wasn't his fault though, because the store probably didn't have a better solution. They didn't sell carpet treads.

I did find some online here, and these Carpet Stair Treads - Black and Beige Scroll Border should do the trick. Add that to the list of what it costs to own a dog. And a fence. And a new pair of tennis shoes. He thoroughly licked my shoes clean inside and out while I was out with my daughter. I think I should be able to hire him out for that service. Maybe that will help offset my credit card bills.

Shame

2011-01-22T16:31:00.000-05:00

Paula gave me the idea to quilt figure eights instead of just loops, which I thought was an excellent idea. I was thinking about not using it though, because I had already quilted several rows of the Simply Squares quilt, and I think consistency will look better than changing plans midway.

Then I was reading a blog where the blogger was tired of making more blocks, and trying to decide whether to stop and make the quilt as it was, or make more blocks to make it larger as she had intended. My advice to her was to make the blocks, unless that would stop her from finishing the quilt at all. Generally when someone looks at my quilts, they don't know the circumstances that they were made in, so they will look at the quilt as a measure of my skill level. And combining easy squares with bad quilting, is well, just lazy. Especially since I know a better way.

Yesterday, I quilted a row of S's, then turned it around, and quilted a row of S's over them to make a figure 8. It looks really good, neat enough for the modern quilters, even. This means that all of the loose threads will be at the ends, and there will be no threads to bury. I decided to continue with those instead of my original stitching. I could add them both on the seams and in the centers to create the look that I was originally going for, but I have decided for now that I will just make them on the seams. The blocks are small, and don't need that much quilting, and I want to make sure I don't run out of the brown thread. I'll decide for sure when I am done with the seams.

Yesterday, I ripped out the rows and rows of bad quilting. Since my stitch length is not even, there were some parts that were easy to rip, and some parts that are very very hard. I am hoping that the busy fabric will hide anything I missed, although I do plan to go over it one more time to see what else I can rip. Unbasting would probably help, but that is just going too far.

Back to quilting!

Progress on Simply Squares

2011-01-19T11:57:00.000-05:00

I know that most people would have made this quilt in a day, and shown you the finished product in one post - "Look what I made today." But that's not how I operate - working on a few minutes a day. In order to save you some impatience, you will be happy to know that not only has the quilt been sandwiched already, but I have even started quilting it.

The change in my horoscope sign must be good for me, because the free motion quilting is working just fine. I even forgot to cover the feed dogs and change the stitch length. Just changed the foot and started sewing. No thread throwup. Nice!

I love all the different quilting trends out there, and I love combining them. I am using basic squares from the modern quilt movement. Just let the fabric do the work. Matching corners on squares is easy. Then I am using quilting methods from the liberated quilters. No need to mark the design, just have a plan and wing it!

The safety pins I am using for basting only get in the way on blocks that will really show the quilting, which is normal for me, and I am not expecting perfection, so it is all good. If you have any complaints about my quilting, please see my setup above. The machine does not have a needle down position, has a small throat, and is held up by masking tape, which I think is a step down from electrical tape. I am making ovals, to create a four petal flower pattern. With the busy fabric, and dim lighting, and safety pins, it is hard to make sure I line the petals well , and I didn't, so now I'm not lining them up for the rest of the quilt.

Hopefully when I am finished putting in all the petals, it won't look like tails, or pictures that belong in the bathroom or online in places that aren't family friendly. I have this worry every time I free motion quilt anything, especially ovals. I don't mention it, because I don't want you to think about things, if you aren't already thinking about them. I'm sure Freud would have some things to say about it. Do you worry about things like that? I've never seen it mentioned in other blogs, so maybe I am the only one. I'm sure Freud would have something to say about that too. What do you do to prevent your ovals from turning into things that have ratings with X's in them?

Once you answer my questions, please zap yourself with that thought erasing light, because I don't want you to think those kinds of things when you see any of my quilts.

Wordle

2011-01-18T14:24:00.003-05:00

Lauren did a Wordle, so I decided to do another one for my blog. It is designed to make the more frequently used words bigger. As you can see, one particular word remained bigger than the rest. If you squint and try really hard, you will notice that quilt is are there on the left side, quilting is there somewhere in the jumble, daughter is close to the top left, and book is on the right side. And a teeny-tiny fabric at the bottom.

Apparently, this, my quilting blog, hasn't talked about quilts or quilting much this year. To be fair though, there must be a limit to the number of posts they go back, since I couldn't talk about that big word until this year.

You'll notice that I am not using that word in this post at all, (in case I want to do that Wordle thing again later). You will also notice that the topic of this post is that word itself and not what the word represents.

In quilting news, the backing for the Simply Squares quilt has been put together and pressed. The batting is ready. Time for sandwiching the quilt. The little quilt for the quilt swap is also finished, and I am about to email the photos to Kate now.

Innocent

2011-01-17T09:18:00.000-05:00

See how sweet and innocent that dog looks? And clean? Did you notice clean? We gave the dog a bath. This meant this was his first time upstairs. He was afraid of going upstairs, and then wouldn't get into the bath. He was so scared, he wouldn't eat the treats. He had to be carried into the bathtub. He handled the bath okay - he loves to be petted. Then he jumped out of the tub because we weren't quick enough with the towel. I used a medicated shampoo for dry skin, so he doesn't smell good, but he is sooo very soft. Very very soft and fluffy.

And now he thinks he can come upstairs whenever he wants. I have hardwood floors, even on the steps, and he doesn't have much traction, but he does okay. He is always startling me when I am upstairs because I am not expecting him.

And if that wasn't enough adventure, my daughter's friend came over. She has a dog, and Zeus just loved her. She lets him lick her face, something we don't do. He had a great time moving from between the three of us to get petted. Then we decided it was time to let him out. I've let him out once before without his leash, and he handled that just fine. I don't have a fence yet, but he is a well behaved dog and does come when called. We let him out again without the leash, and he bolted. I called for him, but it didn't work.

We had a panic, and I decided to I take the car to follow our regular walking path. The girls decided to look for him in the alley. I went back home, to see if the girls had found him. They hadn't.

We decided to try again, again with me driving, and them looking on foot. The girls went out. As I was about to go to my car, I heard a bark, and wasn't sure it was him, but I decided to call again. Yelling out loud in the neighborhood, bothering the neighbors and drawing attention to my predicament, isn't something I like to do, but desperate circumstances called for it. It turns out that my daughter had seen him, and was chasing him, and he ran straight to the yard, and when I called him, he went right in the house!

Yes, we learned our lesson. Always take him out on a leash. And get a fence ASAP!

In quilting news, I am piecing the backing for the Simply Squares quilt. Zeus did try to get on the fabric when I set it on the floor to see where and how much fabric I had to add, but I told him to get off, and he behaved and stayed off of the fabric.

Observations about Owning a Dog

2011-01-14T12:01:00.000-05:00

As most of you know, I got a dog early this year. If you would have told my family members that very same day if I would ever get a dog, they would have told you, no way, that would never happen. But it did happen, and Michele said I could talk about him all I want. So if you don't want to hear about the dog, go blame her!

So, how has my life changed since I got the dog?

1. I have to make space for the dog's things. I wasn't expecting that, and I still haven't found a good place to put all the stuff. The food, the toys, the treats, the medicine, the leash. All of these things take up space.

2. Cleaning has changed. I thought I would have to clean a lot more with the dog, because he would get into things and chew them if I didn't have them out of his way. He leaves things alone, so that isn't a problem. Although I am not a neat freak, I had this idea that "dogs are dirty." With his incision, I couldn't bathe him. So I vacuum more, and brush him a lot so he doesn't shed as much. And I wash my hands a lot. I am relaxing more, after a conversation with my sister-in-law, who is much more relaxed. She said, "So what if the dog has an accident / illness. Just clean it up, just like you would clean up a baby's accident/ illness." Zeus spit up all over the house when he had his kennel cough, so all my floors and carpets are no longer in "almost new" condition. And he (and I) brings mud in the house, since we go out frequently. We are cleaning the floors and mopping more. I have to clean more often (the dust bunnies are gone), but the house isn't really cleaner, especially anything higher than the dog can reach.

3. I am learning all sorts of new things. Like how to train a dog and not misdirecting him. I am working on adding stand to his list of commands he understands, even though he hasn't completely mastered down yet. And also working on getting him to understand he has to keep doing that until released. He isn't the kind of dog that will offer different things until you get what you want. He will just stare at you if he doesn't understand or doesn't want to do what you want. He is getting past the honeymoon stage, so he pulls on the leash more when walking, and is starting to ask for what he wants now, by whining. I don't like the whining, so I have to figure out how to make him ask nicely. Especially the bathroom thing. I don't know how to tell whether he has to use the bathroom, or whether he is bored and wants attention.

4. I have to make more decisions now. In order to train Zeus, I have to figure out what I want. Some things are easy, but others are harder. Is it all right for him to climb on the couch? Can he jump on people if they are okay with it and ask him to? My daughter and nephew are giving him lessons which are inconsistent with what I am teaching, but my methods will turn him into a couch potato, and I do want him to do energetic things.

5. Schedule. I have to keep a more consistent schedule, and can't simply sleep and wake up when I please. No more midnight genealogy surfing. One of the dogs next door can jump his fence, and I try to go out when they are inside. Plus Zeus expects certain things at certain times. Yes, I am also working on not maneuvering my schedule around the dog, but making the dog fit around my schedule. I've made this mistake with boyfriends, and hopefully by practicing with Zeus I will learn to do this better.

6. I have found more uses for the internet. I can type in "coughing dog" on you tube, and figure out the dog has kennel cough by watching the video of another dog with the illness. I can search for whatever my question is, and there seems to be lots of answers, which is nice, because I can choose which ones fit my personality and way of training.

7. I am spending a lot more money. Not just on the dog, but the reason I stay away from stores is because it is too easy to pick up a few other things because they are useful and inexpensive. The trip to the store for the $12 Kong (recommended by just about everyone and shown in the picture) set me back about $112. Sure I "needed" everything I got, but ouch.

8. We have more company now. I am hoping this isn't a temporary increase, just to meet the dog, but more permanent, play with the dog, increase. We have to clean more for this too, but I am enjoying the dog and the company.

Review: Love at Last Sight

2011-01-13T10:16:00.003-05:00

Love at Last Sight: Thirty Days to Grow and Deepen Your Closest Relationships by Kerry and Chris Shook reminds us that while love at first sight is important, it is really the ongoing relationships that matter. What you do with and for your loved ones on a day to day basis is more important. In 30 chapters, this book outlines steps to take in 30 days to develop a closer relationship with the people you care about. What I loved about this book is that it isn't just about romantic relationships. You don't even have to be having a problem with the other person, you just have to want to get closer to them. You can develop a closer relationship with a parent, a child, a friend, a sibling, or anyone else that you want to get closer.

Some of the steps are common sense, but when we get frustrated in a relationship, we have a tendency to forget the tools we already have to solve some of our relationship problems. And sometimes we don't make the effort to do the things we know we should be doing. This step-by-step program makes sure we don't skip the steps we think are "too hard." And the chapters convinced me that each step was worth doing.

This is a Christian book, and there are quotes from the Bible, as well as quotes from other sources in it.

I think 30 days is fast, especially with someone you don't see everyday. Some chapters may take you more time to digest and implement, but any step you take towards getting closer to a loved one is bound to reap rewards for both you and your loved one.

I really liked this book, and would recommend it.

I received this book for free from the publisher, Waterbrook Press, in exchange for an unbiased review.

Missed It

2011-01-12T13:33:00.001-05:00

Wasn't it just yesterday when it was 10/10/10, and I was talking about finishing a quilt on that date, so I could add that to the label? Then it was 1/10/11 which is also an interesting date, and I thought it would be good to do the finishing touches on the swap quilt on that date, but then I realized that 1/11/11 was just the next day, and maybe that would be a better finish date. I am going to take the hand quilting stitches out of the heart and find some buttons or beads to put in them. Then I got lazy, and well, another interesting date went by without a finish. Sigh. Maybe I should prepare now for November 1 (11/1/11). If I finish it today, I am still going to put 1/11/11 on it, in honor of the date, since I did think about finishing it yesterday!

Isn't that such an interesting tree in the picture? Zeus is getting over his cough, and now I am trying to work with him to get over his separation anxiety. He whines whenever I am out of the house, even if my daughter is home. Luckily, it snowed yesterday, so as I kept coming in and going out for short periods of time to get him used to me doing so, I could shovel. I am sure my gas bill will show how many times I did this. He was fine as long as he had a bone to chew, but then he started whining again. Today. I took him for a walk to tire him out first, but he still jumps every time I move. I need to buy a Kong toy for him to chew, but that would involve me leaving the house!

Swap Quilt finished

2011-01-10T17:10:00.003-05:00

I am almost finished with the quilt I am making for Kate's Another Little Quilt swap. Just have to finish quilting the other two hearts. It is stitched using embroidery floss. I used jelly roll strips for the borders and the binding. I don't really know how to quilt around the stitchery, and I think adding a few stitches in the hearts will be enough on this small quilt. If not, the recipient is free to add whatever is necessary!

Edited to add: The design for the stitchery is from a free block of the month pattern called Sentimental Journey that was offered by Raspberry Rabbit. It is no longer available for free, but is available for sale. Thanks to Allie for finding the link for me.

Our new dog Zeus is doing fine. He has recovered from his fleas and whip worm, and is healing from his incision, but he has developed kennel cough. Poor guy, it is one thing after another. He is doing better now, and was very energetic on our walk this afternoon. I am learning quickly where all the many, many dogs live in the neighborhood.

I am happy that we taught him the down command and he also sits and stays now while I put the food bowl down. Since we don't know how to train (except through lots of reading), we were excited that we got our first success. He might think he has to eat his treat in the down position, but I think he is getting over that as well.

Today in the mail, I got the just released book, Civil War Sewing Circle, The: Quilts and Sewing Accessories Inspired by the Era by Kathleen Tracy. Most of the patterns are simple, and range from small and large quilts. I like how there is information about the inspiration for each quilt, instead of just patterns. I look forward to reading the history and looking at the old pictures this evening.

Zeus

2011-01-06T14:09:00.000-05:00

We got a dog! We've never had a dog before so it is very different from our normal. Since I don't have any dog experience, and am technically still afraid of most dogs, I wanted to get an older dog that was calm and behaved. He has brown eyes but the red eye fix on the photo correcting software didn't work. He is around three or four years old and has already been basically trained to sit and stay and walk calmly. He had recently been neutered, so he is getting more energetic now than he was, but not in an obnoxious way. He had fleas and worms, but a trip to the vet has brought him some relief. He had his last doses of several different medications today, but hopefully he won't need any more.

We are also getting more company now than before, as more people come to visit him.

In quilting news, I made a stitchery and have made the quilt top for Another Little Quilt Swap, just have to finish it, and send Kate a pic!

Goodbye 2010

2010-12-31T13:38:00.000-05:00

It's the last day of the year. A last chance to get the things I wanted to get done this year done. Fortunately, I can't think of anything that simply must get done this year, so I am going to rest and take it easy. Always end the year the way you want the new year to be!

My plans for next year are to keep doing what I did this year - working on progressing on my unfinished quilts as much as I can, and only start projects that I can take to completion.

It sounds like the economy is picking up, and I hope to find full time permanent employment.

More immediately though, I am going to take advantage of my time at home by getting as much of the quilting and genealogy accomplished while I can.

Also, I am hoping to get a dog. This is the first time we will have had a pet in a long time. We previously had goldfish, so this will be quite a change! I've never had a dog, even as a child. I will try not to overwhelm the blog with pictures of a new pet, but I am sure I will be needing lots of advice from time to time.

I wanted to share a bit of what I recently learned. I had been buying needle threaders that look like the ones above - only they came in packs of three. I don't know what the brand name is. I hated them, because they kept breaking - the wire wasn't securely attached to the base, so it kept coming off, even when I held the wire to the base to avoid that.

I decided that I wasn't going to buy any needle threader that had more than one in a package. I only need one at a time, although I will probably be buying more, so one is always available. I heard good things about a Clover needle threader, but the site didn't have any, even though the website now has it. I bought the DMC needle threader one shown at the top of the post. Mine is blue so it is a little less easy to lose. Cue music. It is awesome. I haven't tried the ones on the sides. It works really well, and even though I still hold the wire to the base, it is securely attached and doesn't feel like it will come off at any minute. I've been using it for three strands of embroidery floss, and it is almost magical how it goes through the needle.

It also works well as a good luck charm, because there were several occasions that I was able to thread a needle myself without even needing to try the needle threader.

I hope that 2011 goes well for you - may you be healthy, happy, productive, and surrounded by love.

2010 Recap

2010-12-30T11:38:00.003-05:00

Even though I wasn't working two jobs, like I did last year, the first half of the year kept me very busy at work, to a point where my mother was helping me with lunches and cleaning. In the summer, we hosted a Japanese student. Then things slowed down and I was able to finish some quilts. I also reviewed several books for some companies who were willing to send me complimentary copies of their books in exchange for the review. I also did a great deal of genealogy research.

This year I decided to show not just the finishes, but quilty things I have worked on. It makes the recap look better because there is more stuff on it, and it also gives you a better idea of what I have been doing in 2010. Here they are, in no particular order.

The snowflake coasters were my latest little project. I am keeping these for myself. I also turned a couple into ornaments for the tree.

I made these tissue holders as holiday gifts.

This vase was a project that was abandoned before this year, but finished in October 2010.

Four of five quilts I made for the Quilts for Kids charity. The fifth one looked like the red black and white one, with panda bears on it, and was done in 2009. This charity took a great deal of my time in 2010, but apparently I did have enough time to have other finishes as well.

This is the very first oil painting I made. I really enjoyed having the opportunity to paint with my family. I have it sitting on the book, so you can see the inspiration on the right. The color of the water was actually mostly from the turpentine that we were using to clean our brushes.

The pirate map is an unfinished project for 2010. Our Japanese guest helped with some of the motifs.

The little flag wall hanging was started and finished in 2010. It was simple to make, but I am particularly proud of it because of the quote quilted on it.

This is a sample block I made for a big idea I had. The idea will work, once I get started on it. I tried to finish this block into a project, but it didn't work well. I am hoping that like the vase, I will manage to finish it at a later date.

Since joining Kathleen Tracy's small quilt yahoo group, I have been tempted many times with these little quilts. They are really fun to make. In this one, I limited myself to one small scrap box, to give myself the challenge that people in olden days would have had. I particularly liked using scraps for this one, and remembering where each one came from.

The African Circles quilt was my first project I started and finished in 2010. It was my goal to finish everything I started this year. It hasn't completely come true, but I have made great strides. And I gave myself permission to simply play - like with the red and white kaleidoscope block and the blue and white blocks below. They were never part of a project, and a great start to an orphan block quilt.

One of these blocks started out as a beginning of Kate's round robin. I still want to do the round robin, but the block, and the additional ones I made are now part of the orphan block collection. I will probably make a small quilt out of these. I think it is amazing at how the same basic shape can look so completely different based on how it is put together.

The Cheddar Cheese and Crackers was started early in the year, and is a work in progress. It is a pattern by Lori from Humble Quilts. It is being hand quilted. The cheddar fabric isn't playing nicely and isn't laying flat, so it has me worried, but hopefully I will be able to quilt it into submission. It has taught me that I am not capable of hand quilting a big project though!

This is my last finish for 2010. I like this one the best of all the quilts I worked on this year.

The Simply Squares quilt was an impulse quilt made from newly purchased fabric. The top is made. I was going to try to finish this one for 2010 as well, but I think my quilts look quite impressive for the year, so I won't stress myself out trying to finish it this year.

Introducing

2010-12-29T11:59:00.000-05:00

My finished rail fence quilt. It is made completely from scraps. The rule of the quilt was to add everything. Ugly, bright, pretty, novelty, holiday, everything. Sew together randomly. the only order I added is that I tried to keep two pieces of the same fabric separate in each rail fence. When putting the rail fences together, it was okay to put two pieces of the same fabric next to each other. Each block finishes at three inches. I started it more than a year ago as a Leader and Ender project. As I worked on other projects, I would cut up some fabric for this one as well as the other project. , but decided to work on it more diligently this fall. I brought out some scrap boxes and added some older scraps. I added some pink for Barb and green for Tanya. I kept deciding I wanted to make it bigger, and added more and more scraps. Then it needed more patterned fabrics, and then it needed more brights. I am very happy with the finished size. 54" x 61". It is a large lap quilt.

There is diagonal quilting through the body of the quilt and scallops on the borders. I didn't use any marking lines, so they aren't perfectly straight.

Even the backing and binding is "scrap" in that the fabrics were used on other quilts. I added the leftover rail fences and other bright fabric to add interest.

It feels like a door has opened for me, since I can now make a new quilt. So many possibilities! I have decided I am going to work on Kate's Another Little Quilt Swap next. I will be making one or two little quilts to swap with others. I have lots of ideas about what to do for those. I think I should be able to get the backing pieced for the Simply Squares quilt in between making the little quilts.

Stitchers

2010-12-28T21:04:00.000-05:00

There is a new blog for people who want to share share their stitching story and passion for Leanne Beasley's magazine 'Vignette'. They are having a giveaway of the first issue of the magazine.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-25T11:23:00.000-05:00

I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season so far, and that the rest of it goes even better.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Goodwill to all mankind.

Wordless Wednesday

2010-12-22T13:48:00.000-05:00

Tutorial: Binding Fixes

2010-12-21T12:44:00.003-05:00

Way back in September, I presented a tutorial on how to fold over binding. In that post, while showing you how to make a binding by folding over the backing to the front, I made a couple of errors, and I promised that a tutorial on how to fix the errors would be forthcoming "very soon." I fixed my binding, took pictures, and eventually forgot about my promise. Since that post is one of my 10 most popular posts, I think maybe it is about time that I make good on my promise. Here's what I said:

10. Now, if you didn't follow my advice in step 4 and have any issues, you have options. You can decide you want a separate binding after all, or you can wait for the next tutorial (coming up very soon) where I will show you some intermediary steps.

I don't recommend doing this.

I am sorry that I left you wondering how I fixed this problem. When you first encounter this problem, it is important not to panic. You can keep clear headed and decide what to do. There are two ways to fix it.

One way is to give up on the fold over binding, and decide to do it the regular way with a separate binding. To do this, you can trim all of the backing even with the edge of the quilt, and attach a separate binding. But if you are making a casual quilt, one that is meant to provide love and comfort for kids, and not one you are showing to the quilt police, there really isn't any reason you can't add more love by fixing your errors. A little secret spot that got some extra attention might be just the place that the kid will gravitate to when he needs some extra attention himself.

First, trim off the error. You don't want to look at it any more than you have to. Then, find a piece of similar or matching fabric that is bigger than the error. You want to have enough fabric that you can fold over the ends, and still have it big enough to cover the problem area.

Fold down the sides and pin right sides together. With a machine sew from edge to edge, including the folded over parts. It is okay if you manage to sew through the batting seam. That part will be covered up with the binding anyway, and might add some extra security to your layers.

Fold the fabric up over the seam, and it is almost as good as new. Trim your little piece to be even with the remaining fabric. Repeat for as many errors as you made (I made two), and proceed as usual with the steps shown in the first tutorial. Because the sides aren't sewn, you will have to either hand stitch or machine stitch them when you are done. I used a machine.

Progress

2010-12-20T10:57:00.000-05:00

This is an older picture, which does not provide proof, so you will just have to take my word for it, that I am finished with the quilting on the rail fence quilt. Well, the machine part anyway. I just love the way the diamonds look, and the scallops in the border look pretty good too.

I thought about parallel zig zags, which would make sure that the quilting would be at least three inches apart, but decided to go with the diamond shape instead. This makes sure there isn't a very long unquilted part through the width of the quilt. Plus it was a lot easier to quilt it this way.

What it does mean though that there is a space where the quilting is six inches apart - in the center of each diamond. The batting calls for 10 inches so it will be okay, but I am thinking about adding ties through those centers anyway. It will give an old fashioned look to the quilt, and keep me from worrying over the quilt. This center space is where lots of seams meet, so it probably won't be a fun job, but I can go ahead and bind the quilt, and do that part at my leisure.

I've also done some more hand quilting on the Moldy Cheese quilt. I would love to add it to my finishes for 2010 year end recap, but I doubt that will happen. But progress is progress, and maybe it will be an early 2011 finish. I also want to start new things - Bonnie Hunter's new mystery quilt looks so intriguing, plus her old one - the Double Delight is also on my to do list. But keeping focused on having a nice recap for you is keeping me focused. I am allowed to start new things, but finishing what I start brings great satisfaction .

Reading

2010-12-14T13:44:00.007-05:00

I am really good at procrastinating, and when we had a snow "storm", I sat down and read a couple of books instead of following the to-do list. It felt so good, and both of these books were wonderful.

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The book review of Shaking the Family Tree by Buzzy Jackson has been moved to Millionaire Tips on Hubpages.

Acts of Faith is written by Eboo Patel book review has been moved to Millionaire Tips.