Quilt update.

I now have 47 quilt blocks done... well not DONE, I still need to press and trim, to get them ready to sew together. I showed them to someone I work with and they thought they were lovely. We even laid some of them out and they still did not think it too busy, so maybe there's hope I'll like the finished project. I AM having fun with it.

Still no car.

My car is out of commission.

My car has been giving us the red flag for a week or two. It was not getting warmed inside very well. Then Monday it never did warm up at all. Now in some places it might not be such a big deal, but here it was in the negative numbers all the way to work. There was ice on the inside of my windshield as well as the outside. Have you ever tried to scrape the inside? It is shaped wrong to accommodate the scraper and do any good. Luckily there were spots of no ice enough to dodge my vision through to get to where I had to be. On Tuesday my car decided I was not getting the message and just overheated so I had to pull over. Then the Trak phone I keep only for such emergencies had no battery (probably because I keep it in the car and it is too cold for the battery) so I had to get out the charger to try to call my husband. It took three tries but I finally got him and he came to my rescue. Man, I was cold while I waited the 10 minutes it took him to get there. 10 feels like 50 when you are helpless! Well he put some antifreeze in it and it worked till the next morning when I warmed it up for work. It was losing water. So I drove the beater pick-up the remainder of the week. I dislike immensely driving that pick-up. But I'm very glad we have it for a back-up, so I did not have to miss work or make Bob drive me each way, for days.
Let me tell you the background of this beater pick-up. Bob had to have a pick-up for his new job back in 2001. So he went hunting and found a white 1984 Ford cab (pick-up without a bed) in a junkyard for $700 which we felt we could afford. He and his brother got in and started it up and it ran pretty good. We took it home and put a free blue bed on it that did not have a tailgate, shortly we found a brown tailgate to put on it. Pretty, right? Well after a little tuning up he drove it miles and miles without any problems till they had him drive a pick-up they gave him. Then we moved over here and left it parked at the old house as a gate to the garage (where we are storing some of our goods). We started it up 1-2 times a year and then decided to bring it over the mountain to here. I think they did a little work on the brakes but other than that it has not had to have much work at all. So it is a blessing, an ugly beast, but a blessing. Maybe I will have my car back by Wed.-Thurs. It has a gasket leak that takes three days to fix because they have to take it all apart to get to it. Longer because they have to order parts and get them.

I'm attempting a quilt.

I have thought about starting a quilt for a long time, but had not found one I thought I could do. I'm a little chicken and I did not want any triangles, bias pieces, or curves for my first attempt. Now this is besides the one baby quilt I tried to do for my first baby, 21+ years ago. That I never finished--I ran into troubles, ie: fabrics that were too thin, I think some were not 100 percent cotton, it was not perfect, and when I got into it I did not like the fabrics together, I also did not know how to bind it. All those excuses mounted up to a really good reason not to continue with the effort. I think I still have the bundle of materials somewhere in my tubs of projects. Anyway... my sister sent me this picture from a quilt show she went to and we decided to make one each. I realize it is soo busy, that is one of it's charms. It also has all straight edges. I am not sure it is 'fabulous', but each block is fun to make and not hard, also on my requirement list. I have made 27 blocks. I have purchased several 1/8 yard pieces of fabric to help with this effort. Unlike my sister I have not got a mega stash of fabrics and need to build up a stock to make it possible to reach the goal of completion. I figure I will need 120 blocks, (each block requiring 1- 2 1/2" x 8 1/2" black and white stripe piece and 12 to 14 - 3 1/2" x 1"to 2 1/2" pieces) soo I am a long way from that point. I did raid my mother stash and found 61 pieces. It would have been a lot higher number except they all have to be stripes. She has flowers in the hundreds, but only 61 stripes. I have been surprised to find how time consuming the cutting process is, how long it takes me to decide on the combinations and what a big difference spray starch makes in the pressing step. I will keep you posted on my progress.

New Year

(I have yet to figure out the picture process. How do you get them where you want them?)

I wanted to show the birds I found for my mother. Her Christmas tree has birds, small red apples, ice cicles, and snowflakes.

There is this cool gift shop called Treasure Alley, that I like to go into at Christmas time(since that is the only time I really shop). They have some unusual items that are not terribly expensive. I always find some great stocking stuffers ie; geods to break open yourself, dinosaur bones you have to dig out yourself from a small block, and a square 9 pieced puzzle that has four halves of critters that you rotate to create whole animals. So when I went in to find S.S. I found this green cloisinae parrot bell. My mom loves cloisinae and she has birds all over her tree. I just could not resist this. And then as I was returning
to my car I saw another shop that I had never entered before and hanging in the windows were birds. Birds on a string, 17 to be exact with beads between them, the beaks and tails are beads and tassels. I loved them instantly and hoped mom would love them as well.
I think she did. We hung it on
her white wall and they showed
up very nicely. (the picture is at my house in front of my fridge-it does not do them justice)

This final picture is Christmas Day. We took the boys sledding. They had a great time.

Have a great 2009 New Year!