24 August

Alas, the Olympics are ending. It has been such fun to watch all these amazing athletes from around the world! We are in Yellowstone as I write this, so you are sure to get some photos in the next week or two after we get home.

Amazing adventures.
M.

Sunny Wednesday

Oh good heavens, look at the date. It feels like it has been simply ages since I posted here. I guess it has been more than a week and I do try, at least once a week, to get back here. We are so loving the Olympics, aren't you? And we are lucky that we have Canadian television on our cable system, so we get their coverage, as well as ours. (dare I say, I think most of the time, it is much better. At least their commentators don't believe they have to fill every second of air time with talk - but sometimes you can just watch and listen to what is going on.) All these eager young people - and a few of we oldsters - out there just doing their darndest. I think it is so great! But enough of that.

This has been a week of patience, which is NOT one of my strongest skills. I started the little quilt for the youngest grandaughter. I was doing very simple outlining of the squares with the pictures on them. But try as I might the backing kept scrunching up on me. I repinned multiple times. I must have taken all the stiching out 6 times and nothing I could do would seem to improve it. In the end, with the advice of some other quilters we decided the problem was the batting. It was a perfectly reputable brand, but somehow it just didn't like what I was doing. I must have re-threaded the machine 15+ times, I cleaned it, brushed it, blew it out, changed needles, changed thread and still had to have my top tension about '8' and it still pulled to the back and the backing all scrunched up. So what can you do? Take it all out and replace the batting and voila - it is just terrific and what I wanted.











So now just to bind it and we're all set. That then leads to the resurrection of older granddaughter's quilt which I started and then put nicely into a bin and haven't worked on for several months. You've seen this, but here it is again - about to have a new lease on life:






That then leaves one more "grand" to attend to - and I came across this wonderful panel for him. I won't do anything more than put it on a frame to hang in his room. He is moving away from Thomas the Tank Engine to airplanes, so this is the perfect decor item:







I finally got around to getting a lamp shade for the marvelous brass lamp I found at the church rummage sale (a year ago!): [It is so cute with its spools of thread]







A fabulous new (to me) book, by Maaike Bakker. I really just love it and want to make several of the things she has included in here. Turns out I have another of her books called Cups and Saucers.






With hopes that the seam-ripper can be put away for a while, I remain yours truly.

What have I done incorrectly?

I looked at my blog from yesterday and noted that none of the names indicated a link. I used the little "green" symbol at the top and when I rechecked the blog posting using HTML it shows the http addresses. Is it just that it doesn't show up on my end?

Feeling a bit technologically challenged, I remain
Nana Marne

Thanks are in order

Edda sent this to me. Thank you Edda, it is very nice of you to include me. Now I must send this along to 5 others. I don't know if any of you have received this before, but these are certainly blogs that I read regularly and try to keep up with:
Caroline
Jacqueline
Simone
Iris
Stephanie

Other news from the homefront:
Camping with the grandkids, last week-end was quite a hoot. As always it was great. This year, however, we had to go to a different park due to scheduling difficulties. Kitsap Memorial Park is a very nice park but with camping sites that are WAAAAAY too small. We were right on top of our neighbors on both sides and sleeping at night was difficult with folks talking right outside your "bedroom". Nonetheless, the grandmas and mom came home really tired (as were the kids) but we had a swell time.

















































Since returning home, I have done a few things involving fabric. I went to my favorite second-hand store and found some In The Beginning fabric. Four yards for $4.99. I love that price. I hope that people continue to clean out their fabric store and give it to the Goodwill. I promise to make good use of it.








Don't think I have ever shown you this vest I made about a year ago. I have to sew one of the elephant buttons back on, but I was quite pleased with how it turned out.








My quilting buddy Ronda and I visited a marvelous local quilt store and they had kits to make Halloween pillowcases. Well, thought I, I have fabric (as did Ronda) so we combined our left-overs and I'm making pillowcases for the Grands for Halloween. Cute, huh? And the middle border (with the pumpkins and black cats, outlined in white) glows in the dark! Woo Hoo - scary!