Triangles & Vacation

So I think I figured out the triangles. I think its just a case where I have to be EXTREMELY careful in cutting the small triangles in order for them to come out right. I also have to square-up all the blocks after the triangles are sewn.

All next week I am on VACATION from work!! Yay! I'm bound to get a bit of sewing down while on vacation. In fact, we're actually going out to my parents for a few days. Here's two pictures from the lake that they're on:





I told my mom that I would bring my sewing machine with me so that we could sew together. She's been trying to get some things made for my niece, Alannah, and I figured we could spent a few hours sewing together. Last night I was in a frenzy of cutting fabric so that I had stuff to sew while I'm there, which is how I know have all the strips cut for the blue/white four-blockers and all the white pieces cut for the 60-degree triangles and the center squares of my blocks. However, I was too tired to attempt to cut more 30-degree triangles.

Anyway - it may be a few days before I post again, so ...

Happy Quilting! ~Sarah

Stupid Triangles

So the quilt I'm attempting to make for us is the pattern Fifty-Four Forty or Fight. It has a 60-degree center triangle and two 30-degree side triangles, and four of these sets per block. I went and bought the EZ-triangles tool (similar to the companion angle tool) because it supposedly would help make these triangles correct. Well the "magic" angle that's on the tool for the 30-degree triangles is just a load of junk. There's no way to actually cut it correctly and its impossible to get everything to line up correctly when you piece the triangles together.

I've spent all evening first sewing parts of the triangles, pressing them, sewing the other part only to find out that they don't line up and my resulting squares are completely wrong. ARGH!!! Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get these things to work??

Blog Changes

So I don't know if people have noticed, but I've added a few progress bars to various parts of my blog. Right on the top there's one for the number of hours (estimated of course) I've spent sewing on my new sewing machine. I set the 500 hour mark as just a milestone, although I'm thinking maybe I should lower it to just 100. :-) Then I'll see more progress. Hahaha!

I also added two progress bars on the right side of the blog for the number of 12" blocks I need to make for Quilt #7 and the amount of hand stitching I have left on Quilt #6. Last night, in only 20 minutes I was able to sew about 16" of binding.

I didn't get much else done last night in terms of quilting. It was my sister-in-law's and her husband's anniversary (the couple that just had the baby), so Rich and I went up to visit them for a little while. It ended up being about an hour that we were up there, but it was good visiting with them.

When I did come back home, I finished cutting the blue and white strips that I sewed the night before so that I can sew them again into four-blockers. I do have to press them first though. Tonight I'm hoping to get some more hand stitching done and then start sewing my triangles while I'm awake. :-)

Happy Quilting! Sarah

Quilting Progress

I was able to find some time tonight to not only hand sew part of the binding on baby quilt #6, but I was also able to zig-zag stitch around some fat quarters (so they won't unravel during washing) and I sewed 13 strips of blue and white fabric together. The blue and white strips were 2.5" wide and will eventually make checkered blue and white blocks that are 4.5 x 4.5 (unfinished).

Sometimes I'm amazed at how much I can get done in only two hours in the evening. After coming home from working 9 hours, somehow I find the energy to trim our flowers, help Rich (DH) build concrete test specimens for a materials camp we volunteer for, make dinner, clean up after dinner AND get sewing done. No wonder I'm always tired. :-) The sewing is definitely worth it and unfortunately, everything will catch up to me and I won't sew for a few days or I'll do cross-stitch instead of machine sewing.

I think what I like best about doing the hand sewing of the binding is that its pretty much brainless. You just sit there and stitch away and there's no pattern to follow, no set rules, and you don't really have to pay that much attention to what you're doing. Its a nice break sometimes from trying to keep that 1/4" seam and trying to follow the gazillion characters that make up a cross-stitch pattern.

Anyway - hope everyone had a good evening and...

Happy Quilting!
Sarah

Here she is.... My Niece!

And another post without any quilting...but this is much better! :-)

Here's Alannah Josephine, my niece:


Alannah and her mom


Alannah and Dad


Rich and I with Alannah


Me hogging the baby ;-)

New Addition

Yesterday evening, my husband and I were able to meet our new niece. She was born on 6/16 at about 6:45 in the evening. She's a healthy 7 lbs 13 oz and is completely adorable! Her name is Alannah Josephine. My sister-in-law's husband took a few photos of me holding her, so once I have those I may share. ;-)

On the quilting front, I finally finished setting up my machine in my new sewing cabinet. I don't have the custom insert yet, so the sewing machine has to sit a little higher than I would like for the time being in order to fit the table extender that the machine came with. The cabinet has already proven itself to be handier than the table I was using before. I sewed the binding onto the quilt last night and the cabinet did a great job in supporting the weight of the quilt so that I wasn't constantly fighting with it. I'm not sure if I completely like where I have it placed right now as its really difficult to see the TV (although I should be watching what I'm doing versus watching the TV).

Once I get the hand sewing done, I'll post some pictures of the finished quilt.

Not much sewing...

Sadly I haven't been able to do much sewing lately. Late last week, my new sewing cabinet arrived! Yay! It took my husband and I two nights after work to put the thing together. The one bad part about the assembly process was that the manufacturer didn't tell you that when you attach the wood base for the sewing machine to sit on, it has to clear the lifting mechanism. We didn't find that out until the last part of the instructions and there were many four letter words uttered and created.

Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful weekend. Saturday we spent Father's day at my sister-in-law's (who is up the road from us) and had a nice little get together with my husband's family. Sunday we worked on the garden a bit in the morning and by noon had gotten flowers trimmed, everything fertilized, plants planted, gutters cleaned and the lawn mowed. The afternoon we decided to drive up to my in-laws who live on lake and we were able to relax and do some swimming. It took a little while to get used to the water, but once you were in it felt good.

Time for me to do some work and nurse my sunburn from yesterday morning!

Amazing Two Weeks!

In two weeks, this is what our garden has done.... Its literally exploded!

Garden

So here's some pictures of our garden taken on June 1st. The James Galway (pink flowers) are really going strong and the others are just starting to really take hold.

Closeup of James Galway:


And here's our rose garden:


And the streambed in the backyard:

More Quilting

Between Friday and Sunday evenings, I was able to finish all the quilting on baby quilt #6. It does look pretty neat with the quilting, even though the quilting is just straight lines. I've figured out how much binding I need and I just need to cut the strips and press them. (Once again one of the things I don't like doing.)

It was a pretty busy weekend as DH and I went to visit my parents. My mom has been meaning to plant some flowers that she got on Mother's Day and just hasn't had the time to do it because she and my dad have been helping one of my brothers put a new roof on his house. So while I was up visiting this weekend, we planted all her flowers, so now she can start enjoying her garden. It was wonderful spending some time with her getting in the dirt and planting the flowers. She really likes the flowers and even though she doesn't plan what flowers she wants and where she'll put them, they always end up looking nice because she has this montage of flowers everywhere. :-)

Snakes!

Last night, after getting home from our anniversary dinner, my husband and I took a few minutes to look at our flowers. I noticed that there was something strange sticking out between a few of the rocks in the wall. When I looked closer, it was a snake skin!

Typically I don't mind the little snakes, but seeing a snake skin reminds me that the reason I see the skin is because the snake got bigger.

Also, over the past few weeks I've been filling in some small holes in the garden because I thought the neighborhood cats were digging in it. Now I find out that those holes were actually the snake holes.

I told my husband that if I'm outside and he hears a blood curdling scream, he'll know that I found the snake. :-)

Little Bit of Quilting

Sadly, Wednesday evening is the last time I quilted on Quilt #6. We went out to dinner with some friends to celebrate a birthday and I was able to still get some quilting done that night (in between watching hockey of course). I finished up all the quilting on the main pattern of the quilt (the spiral in the middle). I still have to do the quilting for the borders, but at least the main pattern is done, which is the hardest to try and fit everything underneath the arm of my machine. I would love to have a long-arm quilting machine, but I don't have the space nor the money to get one.

Not much went on last night as my husband and I celebrated our 4th anniversary. We went to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant in downtown Schenectady. We've been there before and its a little "Mom & Pop" restaurant that has excellent Italian food. When we got home we oogled over the flowers for a while and then just became lazy and didn't want to do anything. :-) No sewing, no TV, but we did play a computer game for a while.

Anyway - more quilting will get done tonight as my husband is going indoor rock climbing with some friends (I'm WAY jealous!). I won't be going as I am still on the DL from foot surgery. Even though its been 4 months, I'm not allowed to "run, jump, or twist" on my foot until at least the end of August. Oh well - lots of quilting can get done. ;-)

Progress on the Quilting Front

I finally got around to getting the backing cut for Quilt #6. I even got all the layers pinned together last night and practiced using some monofilament thread on some scrap pieces of fabric and batting. It took a little bit to get used to the monofilament and I had to put the spool on my secondard spool holder as the normal one caused it to just snag and get wrapped around itself and not sew.

I'm hoping tonight that I'll be able to start doing the quilting on the quilt. I'm still debating how I want to start it though. The last machine quilting I did, I used a hand needle to pull the bobbin thread to the top, but I'm not sure if I want to do that this time. I probably should as I know it works, but a lot of people say that you can just start sewing and the bobbin thread will lock itself in. We'll have to see....

Multiple Quilts

I've gotten into the habit lately of checking up on other quilter's progress through their blogs (see the list of them on the side of my blog) and I'm always surprised by the number of quilts they have in progress. I think on average most of them have 4 or 5 quilts going at one time in different stages. They also are able to do a complete quilt top in a weekend.

Either they are incredibly fast sewers or they aren't doing anything else besides sewing! Not matter how much progress I wish I could make on a weekend, there always seems to be something coming up that prevents me from making the progress I would like to make.

I also read that a lot of them have UFO's (unfinished objects). Part of me thinks that this is because they have so many quilts going on a one time that there is a single one that they may not particularly like so they keep putting off that project. I've been trying to keep only one or two quilts going at one time simply so that I force myself to finish the current project before I start the next one.

Since I'm almost finished with the last baby quilt (at least the last one that we know of right now) I'm hoping I can at least get started on our quilt. I think if I can start cutting some of the fabric before I finish the last baby quilt, then I'll be able to continue sewing as soon as I have the baby quilt finished. We'll see how that goes though as I haven't done machine quilting in a while, so it could take some getting used to again.

Quilt #6

Here's a picture of the finished quilt-top for quilt #6 that I'm working on. The borders didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, but they're not horrible - at least I don't think so. :-)

Other Crafts

Before I started quilting, the first craft I picked up and kept was cross-stitching. I think I mainly started it because my older sister was doing it and as the typical younger sister, I wanted to be like my big sister. I've been cross-stitching for about 14 years now, which is a long time considering I'm only 28. While I've made a lot of different pieces, the pictures below are my most recent ones.

The first picture of the white rose was actually a free pattern I downloaded from www.MysticStitch.com. I wanted to try making something bigger, but didn't want to pay $15 for the pattern. The end result is completely stitched, including the black background. The finished size is about 12" x 19". It took me about a year to do this one.


This next one is the next large pattern I wanted to do with lots of colors. It took me about 3 years to finish it because of getting interrupted with buying a house, moving, going back to school to get a Masters degree and changing jobs. I finally finished it and got it framed and its most impressive in real life.



This last one is the pattern I'm currently working on. I won't post the name of the pattern yet, to see if anyone can recognize it. I almost have the first full page done, and there's only 24 more to go! ;-) Maybe I'll have a little surprise for anyone who can figure out what pattern it is.

Quilting Frustrations

Last night, I finally did the hated ironing and ironed ALL of the pieces that needed to be ironed. After ironing, I started to layout the sashings along my flying geese units, and wouldn't you know, I cut them too short. Argh! I had measured and re-measured before cutting, but somehow they ended up short. Something else looked a little funny but I couldn't figure it out.

I finally figured it out this morning at about 5:45am when it woke me up from a good dream. Somehow while cutting I thought I needed strips at 2.5" rough cut (so 2" finished width), but I really need only 1.5" rough so that I have a 1" finished strip. Grr! I can salvage most of the strips that I've already cut and just have a 1" strip left for something else in the future, but its just somewhat irritating because I really wanted to sew last night and it wasn't going to happen with the strips cut wrong.

Oh well - I guess more cutting tonight before some sewing.

Not Much Sewing Progress

Sadly, I haven't made much progress on the sewing front lately. I did get all the flying geese units sewn for Baby Quilt #6, but I'm essentially stuck at the point where I have to press all the seams. Yuck! I think this is one of the parts that I really don't like. Whenever I have pressing to do, I always procrastinate. I even have all the sashings cut, so I just have to press and then I can sew and the quilt-top will be finished. But I can't seem to force myself to do the pressing that has to be done.

I even finished washing all the fabric for Quilt #7. Let me tell you, trying to untangle 3 yards of one type of blue, 3 yards of another blue, 5 yards of red and 7 yards of green is not fun! I had to put the red and the green back in the dryer as they had gotten twisted and weren't dry in the middle. Now its sitting all folded and just waiting to be pressed.... yet again the holding point. ;-)

Hopefully I'll get moving on the baby quilt so that I can finish it up and start working on Quilt #7. I'm really trying not to start the next quilt until I finish the last one. Hopefully I can prevent any UFOs (un-finished objects) from piling up.

More Sewing Toys

For the past 8 months, I've been working on a project at work that involved completely re-doing the design rules for lifting our components (big, intricate, stationary parts of a steam turbine). A previous engineer, which everyone always refers to as the uber-engineer, worked on it for 3 years and couldn't manage to get all parties to agree to the changes. Now this uber-engineer tried to make everything "ideal" without actually taking into account that in reality you can only do certain things.

When I took the project over, I broke out all the issues into mini-chunks and presented those chunks to the interested parties and got their agreement on each part. I was then able to completely re-vamp our design rules and publish the rules, which no one had been able to do for 4 years. Because of the hard work that I put in on the project, my manager gave me a nice award - $500! It isn't cash, but I can redeem it for gift cards at various stores like Lowes, Barnes & Nobles, or Amazon.

If you remember, earlier this spring I was able to get a new sewing toy of my new sewing machine. I love my Bernina 440 and it sews like a dream. However, my nice, new sewing machine has been sitting on my husband's grandmother's old rickety sewing table for the past two months. I've been toying over buying a new sewing table, but just had trouble getting past the idea that if I wanted a decent table I was going to have to spend at least $350. Well, now that I have this extra money from work, I'm getting a new sewing table! :-)

I saw a really nice one on Amazon by Homespun. It has a large work surface, an air lift system to put the machine at any height you want, lots of storage space, and an extra leaf extension that adds an extra 5 sq. ft. of table space on the back of the table - perfect for supporting nice heavy quilts.

The one odd thing about it is that for an oak colored cabinet the price is $620, but for a cherry cabinet its $820! Its not even real wood! Its just stained veneers! Why is there a $200 difference? Obviously I'll be getting the oak colored cabinet, and yes its more than the $500 award, but I have some birthday money hanging around that will cover the rest of it and then some.

Now I just have to wait 2-3 weeks for it to ship to me. ;-)

Early April Garden

Below are some pictures of our garden from the middle of April. To be exact, the pictures were taken on April 14th. As you can see, there's not much to the roses yet, but they are there and have started growing a tiny bit.



Next are some pictures of one of our front planting beds. You can just barely see one of our tall phlox plants (on the left) and the James Galway plants coming up. In this photo they are only about 2-3" tall. Now, nearly a month later, all the plants are up. The phlox is now about a foot tall and the James Galway are about 2 feet tall. The James Galway have tons of flower buds and they will probably start to bloom this weekend. YAY!


Notice the wonderful stone wall?? My husband built that himself with flat rock we got from a local garden center (we had to have a whole pallet delivered). He did an awesome job. In the rear of the picture you can see another planting bed. This year we plant to enclose that one with the same rock... once the garden center actually gets the rock in stock.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures!

So FINALLY here are the pictures I promised of our garden in April when we had to protect all our plants from the freeze. One week it was 80F, the next it was 30F! Our yard sure looked funny. ;-)



Garbage cans and plastic bags... the true tools of a gardener. ;-)




For once, my husband was glad I saved all those plastic pots and cement containers!

Looking Forward....

I can't wait for tomorrow to be here. I am taking Friday off as vacation so that I have an extra long weekend (Monday is a holiday here at work so I don't have to come in), so tomorrow is really my Friday. :-)

This weekend is probably going to be pretty busy. We're having the furnace guy coming on Friday morning to check the A/C and furnace for the summer. We don't have any plans for Friday, but considering that the weather is supposed to be nice, we probably will find SOMETHING to do. We may go see IronMan at the movie theater as it shouldn't be as crowded on a Friday. On Saturday, my husband's family is having a "gathering" at his sister's house which is just up the road from us, so we'll spend most of Saturday with his family. I wanted to go visit my parents on Sunday, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen.

My parents are very big about spending time with the extended family. While its important to see them, if my Aunt is planning a party for Sunday, I don't want to drive out to Utica, NY to see the entire family when I really just want to go visit with my mom. Plus, one of my older brothers is finally starting work on his house that he's had for about 5 years now. He's putting a new roof on this week, and it looks like they may still be doing it on Sunday.

It will be interesting to see how the weekend plays out, but at least its a weekend and I'm not at work! :-)

Poor Blogging

I've been a "piss-poor" blogger lately. I haven't even posted anything since last Friday. I was supposed to put the pictures of our covered garden on here, but just never got around to it. Unfortunately, its been one of those weeks where everything is needing to be done (or wanting to be done) and I can't seem to find the energy to do it all.

I was able to get the entire top to my quilt finished up last night. I still have to add the flying geese borders, but the main pattern is complete. It looks amazing. Every time I finish a portion of a quilt, I'm still surprised at how good it looks. It just doesn't seem right that I made it and that it looks that good. Hopefully (and that's a BIG hopefully) I'll be able to get some pictures taken of the main pattern this weekend and post them on here. But NO promises! :-)

I still have a bit more sewing to do though before the quilt is done. I have to cut the fabric for the borders and sew all the borders together, which will probably take just as long as the main pattern for the quilt.

Sisters

It has always seemed odd to me that when we are very little all we want to do is be like our big sisters. Then you go through the phase where your big sister doesn't seem as cool anymore and you just want to be like your friends and fit in. Finally, you get old enough that you realize that your best friend will always be your sister (or sisters if you have multiple like I do).

Sisters are always there for you and no matter how different you seem to be, you can still relate to one another because of going through the same things growing up. They are family and you always stick together regardless of whatever is happening. Sisters are a friend to talk to; a shoulder to cry on; and someone to laugh with and share memories.

I'm just glad to have my sisters and to be able to help them when I can. I feel lucky to have them and to know that I can share anything with them and not be judged.

Love ya, Laura and Moe!

Yard Decorations in Late Spring for Upstate NY

So the weather in upstate NY has been gorgeous for the past week or so. We had sunny warm weather for about two weeks. The temperatures were up around 75 to 80 degrees, which is pretty unusual for this early in the year. Because of all the nice warm weather, all the plants and flowers have been growing like crazy. Our garden plants have literally doubled in size in just a few days.

However, now the weather has decided its not done yet with winter. Yesterday, it was actually snowing! Last night, the temperatures dropped down to 30 degrees, which is never a good thing for plants that are trying to grow and aren't ready for a good freeze. So when we got home last night, Rich and I desperately tried to find everything that we could use to cover the delicate plants. I think about half our yard was covered by upside-down garbage cans, pails, and pots and the other half was covered with sheets and plastic bags to try and keep everything alive.

Only time will tell at this point whether the plants will survive the hard frost we had. When we took the covers off this morning, the plants' leaves were very brittle and a few of them cracked. I don't think we've actually lost any plants, but they may have to start over with their growing which probably means that we won't have many flowers this year. I'll be posting our photos later today showing our nice yard decorations. ;-)

Baby Quilt #6

While I haven't finished ironing and cutting all the fabric yet (I've been lazy lately), here's the patterns of what the next baby quilt will look like. The two duck fabrics will make flying geese on the border while the light fabric with the bottle in the middle (it has other baby stuff on the fabric) will be borders between the flying geese and the main pattern of the quilt. The pink fabric with the letters on it is actually the backing. I could only get photos of three of the four main colors in the quilt. The fourth is actually the bunnies again, but with a blue background.

This is what the overall pattern in the middle of the quilt will look like. The actual colors of the fabrics are almost identical to what was on the website. Wahoo! :-)

Another Quilt Down....

I finished another baby quilt last night. This one I had finished putting together a while ago and had even machine sewed the binding on, but I hadn't finished (or even started) hand sewing the binding. I finally finished it last night. I'll post a picture of the quilt on here eventually, but in its unfinished state you can see it under Ellie when she was "quilt testing". So I now have no started-but-not-finished quilting projects.

I have fabric for the next baby quilt that I'm making for a due date of September, so I have some time before I really have to start working on that one. I just need to iron and cut the fabrics and I can start sewing. At this point, I'm trying to determine the type of quilting I want to do on it. I've been hand tying the past few baby quilts, but I think I want to machine quilt this one. The question is... what pattern and how much quilting? I haven't tried quilting on the new machine yet, so I'm a little afraid to do it on a quilt that I'm going to be giving away.

Other quilters say that its the best to try stuff on other people's quilts because if you don't like it you don't have to look at it. But the way I see it is that its a piece of myself that I'm giving to someone else and it should be good. It shouldn't just be the "throw-away" part that I don't want or like.

Time will tell what I want to do with the quilt. At least I have time to figure it out.

Baby Quilt #6

Last week I ordered fabric online (a first for me) for a baby quilt that I will be making for some friends that have a baby due in September. The website (www.equilter.com) had pictures of the flannel fabrics and they were pretty cute (many based on kids' nursery rhymes). I was a little hesitant to buy fabric online as I couldn't actually see the fabric or feel it. However, I figured with a baby quilt if it turned out to be a bust, at least it was only a little bit of fabric. :-)

So the fabric arrived on Friday afternoon and as soon as it arrived, I opened it up to find the cutest fabrics I've ever seen. They were good quality and looked exactly as the website had portrayed. I'll have to take some pictures of them to post on here.

To put it in words though, the fabric for the main design of the quilt was four different colors. Two fabrics had little white bunnies on them with a blue background on one and a yellow background on another. The other two were blue and pink backgrounds with the cow jumping over the moon on it. (I couldn't resist!) The fabric I got for the backing actually has the alphabet on it and for each letter it shows a different item (T - teddy; A - airplane, etc) . They even had X and Z on there. I was impressed. ;-)

No More Boot!

I received excellent news from the doctor yesterday that I don't need to drag around my heavy boot anymore. I have to wear a stiff ankle brace for the next two weeks to help stabilize my ankle, but its a heck of a lot better than a heavy boot. Plus, I can start driving now. They said I can't run, jump or twist on it yet, but I'm happy to be just getting closer to normal and I probably won't need physical therapy.

On the quilting front, I haven't really been able to do much quilting lately. I'm working on sewing (by hand) the binding onto my sister-in-law's baby quilt, but I haven't had a lot of motivation to sew lately. I think I get into these ruts every once in a while. I am expecting to get new fabric in the mail on Friday (YAY!), so I'll be able to start the next baby quilt. I've also been sewing the loose ends of the fabric I have for our bedroom quilt. I read on another quilting blog that its handy to sew the raw edges of the fabric before washing so that it doesn't unravel as much. We'll see how it works out. Since I haven't posted these before, below are snapshots of the fabric for our bedroom quilt.

Here's all the fabrics laid out together with the colors that will actually be touching each other in the quilt positioned next to each other.

The four main colors below (green, white, red, and blue) are making up the main pattern in the quilt. The green is just a border around 12" blocks, and the 12" blocks have a a combination of white and blue squares and white and red triangles.

Finally, the border on the quilt will look somewhat like a curling ribbon with a white background, and the two shades of blue being the ribbon. The green is once again a border. Its difficult to see in the pictures, but the darker blue fabric has a lighter blue pattern that has a little bit of irridescence to it. The light blue fabric is completely irridencent, so they work really well together.


All said and done, I think between the different colors I have somewhere around 15-20 yards of fabric! Rich advised me to increase the amount of excess material by 25% to make sure that I have plenty to work with. However, I think if I only increased it by 1/4 yard I would have been fine. So I'll have lots of extra that I can use for other quilts or table runners, or something. It will be fun to think of the "or somethings". :-)

Think SPRING!

While this time of year is usually seen as good, sometimes I think that spring just isn't getting here fast enough. Only a few of my flowers are starting to poke through the ground and the grass hasn't even really started turning green yet. So... to help others who find this time of year frustrating, here's some pictures of flowers from my garden from last summer.


Some pretty coneflowers.


My nice yellow gaillardia (which I probably spelled wrong).


A larger picture of the left front corner of the planting bed. By the way, Rich (my hubby) built that stone wall himself. At the tallest part, its about 18" tall. The shortest end is only about 6".


This is one of my gorgeous roses. I'm hoping the plant survived the winter as I really love the flowers. They are so pretty and as they age, they fade to white and pink versus yellow and pink. They also have a wonderful smell that isn't too flowery and has just the right amount of citrusy smell to them.


This is the same rose bush as the last picture. This one you can see a bee trying to get some nectar along with an older bloom right next to a brand new one.

Official Quilt Tester

Now that I have the camera hooked up to the computer, I was also able to download some pictures of my cat, Ellie, helping me with my quilting. She is the official tester to make sure my quilts feel good.

Caught in mid-lick. ;-)

Time for a BIG stretch!

Giving me the evil look because I disturbed her sleep.

The last one is, of course, the aftermath of her testing.

New Quilt Pics

I finally got the camera connected to the computer again and here's some pictures of the quilts I made for the twin girls.

New Toy!

I FINALLY got my new toy this weekend.... a brand new sewing machine. :-) When I first got it home, I was actually afraid to use it because I didn't want to break it. I've now sewed a few practice pieces on it, and I absolutely love the machine.

I ended up getting a Bernina 440 quilting edition (for quilters who read this, they'll know what the machine is). It comes with a few standard pressure feet, but it also comes with the walking quilting foot. However, the BEST part about it, is that it comes with Bernina's Stitch Regulator foot. This foot attaches to the machine and it senses how quickly you're moving the fabric underneath it and automatically adjusts how quickly the needle moves so that your stitches are always the same length.

Once I get a little more used to the machine, it will definitely be a dream to use. I have to make a few "mini-quilts" to test things out and see how to do different stitches. I also want to try a few new techniques that I haven't tried before, so it will be good to make some practice pieces.

Happy Quilting! ;-)

Taco Loaf!

After cooking the same exact things for the past few weeks, I was tired of the recipes I have for ground chicken (which I needed to make before it went bad). So I searched the internet for a while to find a receipe that involved ground chicken and the ingredients I have in the cupboard. Usually when picking out a recipe online, you only try it if there's a lot of people that say its good.

In this case, I found a recipe for meatloaf using ground chicken and taco seasoning (and a few other random things). Reviewers said that it was good and that they would definitely make it again, so I decided to try it. Fortunately, it was still edible when it was done. But it was essentially and huge taco loaf. Its not that it tasted badly, but I definitely would not make that one again!

So not only did I get rid of a car that was once termed "The Loaf", but I've now made a Taco Loaf. The car was definitely better than the dinner!

Tuna!

Over the past few months, one of the beer manufacturers (I think BudLite) had a commercial where if you drank BudLite you could hear animals talking. There's a dog in the commercial that's constantly saying "SAUSAGE!" and you hear the person asking different questions and the dog keeps saying "SAUSAGE!" Well, we finally figured out that each time we say something to the cat, she just yells "TUNA!" instead of "SAUSAGE!" :-)

Kitty On the Mend

Last Thursday I had to take my cat, Ellie, to the vet for a checkup and for them to check one of her canine teeth. We had noticed a few months ago that the very tip of the tooth was stick out from under her lip a little, but we assumed it was just the way her lip was at the time. Two weekends ago, I noticed the tooth was sticking out even more and when I touch it (because it looked weird) it actually moved! Off to the vet!

Within 15 minutes of seeing her, the vet decided that the tooth had to come out right away. They put her into surgery right away to remove the tooth. Since they had her under anyway, we had the vet clean her teeth. The vet was actually really surprised that we had noticed the loose tooth because cats hide that sort of thing very well. Most cats have lots of cavities and they just chew around them and put up with the pain. When they cleaned her teeth, surprisingly only one other tooth really needed cleaning. All the rest were really clean. So now we have a liquid antibiotic to squeeze down her throat twice a day (it started as pills that we couldn't get down her, so we switched to liquid). Thankfully she's starting to feel better, although she is still "velcro kitty".

The oddest thing was looking at the bill...$350! The amount wasn't really weird, but the weird thing is that its cheaper to have a tooth yanked out than to actually clean them. Doesn't that send the wrong message? For someone who cares about the money more than the pet, they'd sooner leave the teeth along and then just yank them out instead of cleaning them!

Needlepoint

I finally finished my needlepoint (cross-stitch) that I've been working on for 3 years! I can't believe that I had the patience to keep at it for 3 long years. Part of me is still incredulous that I actually finished it. It does look absolutely amazing though. I don't have any pictures yet (shame on me) as the camera STILL isnt' hooked up to the computer. Things have been just way too crazy lately and neither myself nor my husband have been able to take the time to get the camera hooked up.

I've already picked out the next pattern that I'm going to be working on: Van Gogh's Starry Night. Its not quite as big as the last one, but it will still take quite a bit of time to finish it. However, I've already told myself that I can't even think about starting it until I have a few other projects finished. I have two baby quilts that are totally complete with the exception of sewing the binding onto the back by hand. One of them I start on Saturday and have one side almost finished, but the other one I haven't started yet. Thankfully, both those mothers aren't due until June and July, so I still have some time to finish them. I found out over the weekend that I have another baby quilt to make by September, too. So my order of business is going to be finishing the bindings on the current quilts, then making the September baby quilt. Eventually friends will stop having babies so that I can make a quilt for our home. ;-)

Not That I'm Counting...

I officially only have 9 days left in the cast at this point. It will definitely be good to get rid of the cast. I'm really hoping that the doctor will take the cast off and give me a walking boot to get around in for a while. It seems somewhat odd because earlier this summer I would have done anything to get rid of the walking boot. However, after being on crutches for the past 5 weeks, I'm tired of it and I want to walk again. I'm trying very hard to stay positive about all of it at this point, but its starting to wear on me. I've been doing well by looking forward to things that I want to be able to do, but after this past weekend its been difficult.



We went to look at a dog on Sunday. She's a 7-year old german shepherd named Sasha. She was the sweetest thing. She was very well behaved and behaved exactly like a shepherd should. When we first met her, she was slightly aloof, but as soon as her foster shook our hands and told her it was alright she came right over to us to smell our hands. She was even willing to play with us and come to us without any problems. After being with her foster for 2 weeks, she clearly saw him as her buddy and wanted to be with him. My husband took her for a short walk and she didn't pull except to try and get to her foster, but she didn't pull a huge amount. She also knows all her basic commands, which was really unexpected. My husband asked her to sit without expecting her to actually do it, and she just did it.

On the mend...

So I'm finally starting to feel like I'm on the mend. My foot is done swelling in the cast and I can usually keep my foot down near the floor for quite a while before it even starts to feel uncomfortable. Thankfully I'm sleeping a little better at night, too. I only have two weeks left before the cast comes off! I can't wait for it to be gone so that I can take a normal shower and do normal things again.

Yesterday, in fact, I was so preoccupied at work that I stood up to get something off my bookshelf and actually partially stood on my foot with the cast. I didn't even realize it until after I was sitting back down again. It didn't hurt at all to stand on it! Two weeks ago, even something brushing against my toes was painful. Now I just have to concentrate on getting better.

Long Time...

It definitely has been a while since I last posted on here. Unfortunately, its been pretty crazy the past few weeks with my surgery. I had surgery on my foot on February 4th and have been recovering since then. The first week I was essentially in a drug-induced stupor for most of the week. Unfortunately, the first pain medicine I was on (hydrocodone) made me incredibly ill despite eating a good amount of food. I ended up not taking any pain medication for about 12 - 16 hours because I couldn't keep anything down. Luckily, my husband was able to call the doctor and get a different prescription which didn't make me sick.

The surgery went well and there was nothing really too unexpected. The doctor did discover that the tendon in the arch of my foot was about 3/8" too short, but he was able to re-attach it to where it needed to be. However, because it was short he couldn't put me into a cast right away because it would have put too much stress on the tendon. So this past Monday I went back to the doctor and had stitches removed and my foot/leg had a cast put onto it. Unfortunately, I had some issues with swelling (which I had before the cast, too) that kept getting worse with the cast, so I had to have it re-casted on Thursday. When they took the first cast off, there was visible bruising all around my ankle due to the pressure inside my cast. Thankfully the new cast only has minor problems with swelling and as soon as I elevate it, the swelling subsides.

Now I just have another 3 weeks to go in my cast (which is non-weight bearing of course) and I can start doing rehab to stretch out the tendon and get the strength back in my leg. The doctor said it should only take about 4-6 weeks for a tendon to fully heal. When I have the cast taken off, it will be 6 weeks post-op so everything should be healed up just fine at that point. Hopefully it will continue to heal quickly and I'll be back doing normal things again.

However, with not working for the first two weeks post-op, I was able to get the binding sewn onto the first of the twins' quilts and the second binding is about 80% sewn onto the quilt. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it pretty soon, although after speed sewing through the first binding, I haven't really wanted to do any work on them.

Anyway, I'm actually exhausted today. My parents came up to visit and we went to the mall for a little bit (about 20 minutes actually inside the mall) so that I could get out of the house and go somewhere other than the doctor's office. I was able to get a new purse that can actually be put on your back like a backpack. As I can't really carry anything with me right now because I am on crutches, at least the backpack/purse will allow me to carry around some essentials around the office when I go back to work on Monday. We'll have to see how being back in the office works because all of the interior doors in the office are very heavy (they really want to be closed all the time) and none of them have handicap buttons to open them for you. So we'll have to see how it goes. If its too difficult to get around the office, then I will have to tell my manager that we either have to get the doors fixed or I will be working from home until I'm off the crutches.