It's almost October! Yikes!

Well, life has been busy after my marvelous days with Caro. I have been doing some catching up and finishing up and trying to make some sense of my sewing room. Oh my goodness! It's so easy to just plop things down instead of helping them find their home and then all of a sudden CHAOS!

I have been sewing but cannot show you everything because I know that a couple of folks do see my blog from time to time. Our crazy exchange group has the usual exchanges going on - I have one in progress. They are also doing an autumn exchange. I finally managed to finish up my little project. It proved to be a bit more demanding than I had expected. The particularly fun challenge was to find some other little goodies to include in the parcel - but with a total expenditure of only $5.00. You should try it sometime - it was so much fun to find things that were on the close-out table, marked waaaaaay down, Goodwill, even found some freebies which I could include and still stay within that limit. Tomorrow I shall wend my way to the post office and ship some things out.

I have had a hankering to do some handwork, so have made one applique piece - not sure how I will finish it and have started some needlework, which may turn into a Christmas gift. It probably is time (or past time) to get myself busy with thinking about what I might want to complete before the holidays.

Here are some photos. I will point out - should you miss the significance - of the partially cleared off sewing table. I sometimes don't see that tabletop for months at a time. The little pastel/white pieces are something I'm playing with, with scraps from Stone Soup quilts. Game pieces for a children's game, with a quilter's hand involved (part of an exchange) and my tidy bins.

Such an amazing few days

My friend Caroline has been here visiting me from the Netherlands. We have been having a simply wonderful time, doing so many things: quilt stores, sightseeing, eating, visiting friends - oh so much to do and the days just go by so quickly. And tomorrow she will return to the Netherlands and home.

We visited my Dutch teacher for coffee and conversation:

[hopefully my Dutch has improved a bit]. With luck, I will be able to visit the Netherlands again and Caroline and our friend Jacqueline will be able to come back here in a year or so.



While Caroline has been here we have been "required" to visit so many quilt shops and "sample" a few of their wares. So my stash has only been increased in a modest way (that's what Caro said!) I will have a few things to show you over the next few months. I did get the border put on oldest grandaughter's quilt:
Stone Soup Quilts is starting again, along with CTA and the sewing classes for the African women. Life is getting busy again with the arrival of autumn. I'll keep you posted on this good life.

Seattle adventures continue

Caroline and I are continuing to have daily adventures. Follow along, with words and pictures at her blog - see below for address. This is such fun!

Look at Caro's blog

Be sure to look at Caro's blog. She is here visiting with us from the Hague, Netherlands. We are having a wonderful visit of sightseeing and quilting. She has posted pictures each day of what we are doing, so you will see my life, as well, on her photos.

Tomorrow we are off to Stone Soup Quilting in the morning and visiting some quilt shops in the afternoon. It's a hard job, but someone must do it. :-> Aren't we so lucky!

Back in the Groove

Hello, hello - it has been a while and I'm working my way back into the usual. Our trip to Yellowstone National Park was amazing - I'm sure any of you who have been will agree. I am putting together a slideshow of the trip to put on the sidebar. So soon, with that.
Crazy mom quilts project (from some months ago):








Alayne has finished with the longarm-ing and I am finished with attaching the binding. As this was a scrappy quilt, I used strips of the various fabrics for my binding. I think it's pretty darn cute. This will be a gift for a wedding at the end of September.

Also ready to tie knots and sew the binding for the "challenging" quilt for youngest granddaughter.








Driving home from Yellowstone, we stopped at a wheat co-op in Montana. Bought some white wheat flour and some "imperfect" bread - for 50 cents per loaf. [what is imperfect bread? the crust got too brown!] So, thought I, why not haul out the bread machine and try my hand, again, at some bread making? I remember how and found a recipe that sounded good. This door stop was pretty awful! (it's too big for a hockey puck). I used only the wheat flour and it was just waaaaaay too heavy. I could barely cut it into pieces for the birds. So I had to try again with the proper flour and happily it turned out as it should. Very tasty toast for breakfast.

BEFORE:

















AFTER: [This is the recipe for a small size loaf.]








Caroline arrives from the Netherlands this afternoon. We have a jam-packed 12 days of "all-things" quilty. Won't that be fun? Will try for lots of photos to commemorate this - her first trip to the U.S. Isn't life good?

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.