Quilting Storm...

Its amazing how a little motivation (even if its a bad motivation) can make you get a lot of work done. I have surgery scheduled on Monday for my foot to remove an excess bone, re-attach a tendon and to relieve some tension on another tendon. I will be in a cast for about 6-8 weeks afterwards and, of course, the cast is on my right foot which I use to operate the foot pedal of my sewing machine. I could probably learn to use my left foot in the interim, but I've been sewing like mad to finish up as much machine sewing as possible on my quilts.

My husband's co-worker is having twins sometime between February and March (she's due in March, but twins are usually delivered early), so I have not one, but two quilts that I need to finish up ASAP. This past weekend I think I was sewing just about continuously. On Saturday I was able to completely finish up sewing the quilt top to one of the quilts. I had previously sewed all the rows together, but I had to add a small 1" border (solid color) around the inner pattern, and then I had to add the border, which was two rows of alternating 2" squares. Amazingly though, I was able to finish it completely in about 3 hours.

On Sunday, I was able to piece together all the squares for the second quilt into rows and press them. I know it doesn't sound like much, but I didn't really get out of bed until 10am and then had to do the usual Sunday chores (grocery shopping, cleaning, and laundry). Then last night after work, I put all the rows together in about an hour and a half of pinning and sewing and more pinning and more sewing. I'll have to press it all tonight and start on the borders. Hopefully I'll be able to make a run to the fabric store sometime this week after work so that I can get the batting and the backing for the quilts. Once I pin the layers together I can sew the binding onto it and the machine sewing will be done. Whew!

Anyway, I know I've said that I'm going to put more pictures on here, but I just haven't gotten around to getting the pictures off the digital camera. I think I will need to convince my husband to get everything hooked up again so that I can download the pictures (that should be a nice "easy" project for him - haha).

ROUSs

I think one of my all-time favorite movies is "The Princess Bride". The jokes are hysterical and the more times you watch it, the more certain things get ingrained in your head...

"Hey Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?"
"If there are, we all be dead."
"Stop that rhyming now I mean it!"
"Anybody want a peanut?"

One of the cheesiest parts is when Westley and Princess Buttercup are in the dreaded Fire Swamp. No only do they deal with explosions of flaming gas, and "lightning sand", but there are also the fearsome ROUSs, or Rodents of Unusual Size.

All of it is completely made up for the movie...with the potential exception of the ROUSs. Today on CNN there was an article about a "super rat" that was the size of a small car! Now that ROUSs are known to exist at some point...maybe there are pockets of flaming gas in swamps. :-)

My cat... the world traveler

Since my husband and I moved into our house two years ago, my cat, Ellie, has absolutely loved it. She has lots of "channels" to watch during the day while we're at work, which keeps her from getting bored and chewing wires. We've figured out there are four different channels that she likes to watch. There are:

• The Foyer channel where she can see all sorts of activity directly in front of our house.
• The Library channel where she sits on the windowsill (usually in the sun) in the front room of our house and can really see lots of activity up and down the street.
• The Kitchen channel where she can check out our backyard and the neighbors' house. She's actually a very, nosy kitty and likes to stare at the neighbors.
• The Upstairs channel, which we think is her favorite, lets our cat sit in the sun for 90% of the day and she can view all cars coming into the neighborhood. She is also eye-level with a bunch of trees so she can bird watch all day.

Aside from watching TV, Ellie is a world-class traveler. She has visited more places than I have even and she doesn't even need a passport. On a daily basis, she can visit the "Antarctic", the "rainforest", the "Sahara", and "Florida". Once in a while she visits the "Salt Flats". These need a little explanation, so here goes:

• "Antartic" - my husband loves to keep our house cool, so just about any room besides our bedroom and the bedroom upstairs (which has full sun all day) is freezing cold. Ellie spends as little time as possible in the "Antartic".
• "rainforest" - this is essentially our bathroom in the morning. The fan doesn't do a great job exhausting so we have plenty of humid atmosphere in the bathroom when we shower in the morning.
• "Salt Flats" - this is our basement. The few times Ellie goes down there, she no longer is a black cat. She becomes a gray cat from all the concrete dust.
• "Sahara" - this is her litter box...enough said.
• "Florida" - Ellie loves the warmth and in our bedroom we have one heat register that dumps out a lot of warm air and during the cooler winter months, we can always find Ellie snuggled up next to the heat register soaking up all the warm air. I think this is her favorite place to visit.

Besides those places, around Christmas Ellie is able to visit the "Canadian forests" by hanging out under our Christmas Tree.

Weird Things

Last night, my husband and I decided to go out to dinner at the local Macaroni Grill (thanks, Laura & Larry) because neither of us really felt like cooking and we wanted to go to the bookstore afterwards to return/exchange a few books. While we were sitting eating our appetizer, I happen to notice that there were a lot of same-sex couples coming into the restaurant. I mentioned it to my husband and he asked how I knew that they were couples and not just friends, and I replied that "friends" do not make out at the reservation desk.

This led to a funny little story that my husband's co-worker had told him earlier in the day. My husband's co-worker and his wife are expecting twins this spring and had their first Birthing class earlier this week. Sitting around the room were lots of pregnant women and their spouses, sisters, mothers...basically their "support" people. One couple came in and everyone assumed the two were sisters because they both looked exactly the same and were "incredibly hot" according to my husband's co-worker. At one point, everyone had to give a little speach about who was with them, what they did, etc. of which everyone basically slept through other people's speaches. When it came to the two women's turns, the pregnant one stood up and said her name and then said that she and her partner were really excited to have be having the baby. As soon as she said "partner" everyone's undivided attention was on these two women. At the end of it, my husband's co-worker said to his wife, "Its unfair. Why do all the hot ones have to be lesbians?"

Ramblings

Last week, my minor cold ended up being a royal pain in the butt and turned into a significant cold. I ended up going into work for half a day last Thursday and took the afternoon and Friday off because I was sick as can be. I'm still not up to par, but at least I don't have to take cold medicine 24/7 (I just have to take once a day to keep my symptoms at bay).

I did get around to finally starting to cut the fabric I need for one of the baby quilts I am making for my husband's co-worker. His co-worker is actually having twin girls, so I have to make two quilts. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to post yet. I have lots of pictures taken, but the camera isn't currently hooked up to the computer so I have to figure out how to get the pictures off the camera.

Just before Christmas, my husband and I got a GPS (we ended up with a TomTom) which is the best thing to have. We used it extensively on our trip to Florida and we didn't get lost at all. So instead of the digital camera being hooked up to the computer, the GPS is now hooked up which is why I don't have any pictures. I'm hoping to try and get the pictures off the camera tonight, but it may take a little convincing to get my husband to crawl under the desk and hook up the correct cables.

Back from Vacation

Now that the craziness of Christmas is over, I actually have some time to breathe. My husband and I got back from vacation earlier this week after spending 5 days in warm, sunny Florida. The entire time we were there, the temperatures were between 80 and 85. It was awesome! We also got to see the Philadelphia Flyers play against the Tampa Bay Lightning. It was a pretty good good with a good fist fight only a few minutes into the game. :-)

Unfortunately, I did end up getting sick the day we left Florida. I'm glad that I'm sick now versus being sick while in Florida, but I would much rather not be sick at all.

Before going to Florida, I did get a chance to get some fabric for the quilt top for our bed. The fabrics are absolutely gorgeous, and when I get a chance I will post a picture of the fabrics on here. I also got most of the bindings sewn onto my sister-in-law's baby quilts, so those are almost done. Now I just have to wash more fabric and cut it so I can start the next baby quilts.

Time Flies...

Its very hard to believe that its Christmas time already. Today is my last day at work for the rest of the year, and it seems like the last few months have completely flown by. Its been such a push the last few weeks to get everything done at work and at home. The company I now work for requires that EVERYONE in the company writes their performance appraisals and have them submitted by December 31st. It seems somewhat silly to me that they should be due right at the busiest time of year. Everyone is trying to get designs and drawings completed early because its the end of the year and people are on vacation. The company also wants to close out all their financial books by December 31st, so all travel charges and lots of other little things have to be done. It just makes a crazy time of year even crazier.

Unfortunately, I don't have my Christmas shopping done yet. Its about 90% complete, but I still have to get something else for my dad, something for one of my sisters and one of my brothers and I have to get something for my brother-in-law. Plus, my husband and I are traveling to Florida from the 26th to the 31st, so we have had to get the travel arrangements squared away. Oh - I have to get a Christmas gift for my husband. Ugh! I received a $300 award from work earlier this month, and spent it getting a GPS system for my husband and I. Its a Christmas present to both of us, but I still need to get something for him. The hardest thing is that he doesn't really want anything, so I have to figure out what he would like but won't say he wants.

Because of all this other stuff, I really haven't been doing any quilting. I did get two quilts tied, but I haven't been able to find the time (or the energy) to determine how wide my binding needs to be. Once I do that, then I can cut the fabric for the binding and at least use the machine to sew it on the front side (the back side needs to be hand sewn). I still have at least two other baby quilts to make by March. I have fabric for one of them, but I haven't done anything with it (I haven't even washed it yet). Hopefully the next few days before the Christmas craziness and traveling starts I'll be able to get started on some of the work. But knowing me, I'll just want to be lazy and watch TV for a while. At least my needlepoint has been making progress as I've been watching TV.

In case I don't post anything until next year.... Happy Holidays!

Christmas Party

This past weekend my husband and I had an awesome Christmas party for our friends at our house. Its the first time we've had people over in a while because it was just too much while I was in school. We had a great time and it was nice to get everyone together again for an evening. It was one of those evenings when everyone eats a lot of food and sits around and talks and then all of a sudden you look at the clock and its midnight already.

We decided afterwards that we definitely need to get a bigger dining room table as we could barely fit 10 people around our current dining room table and our kitchen table combined. We even had to borrow a chair from my husband's sister (who lives up the road from us) because we didn't have enough chairs in the house. We're definitely going to have a party again, but it will be a while before we do it.

We were both up around 7am on Saturday morning to start cleaning the house and then we spent all afternoon cooking and preparing food for the evening. Sunday morning, of course, we ended up doing cleanup from the night before. We ended up running our dishwasher three times to clear all the dishes and we spent about an hour cleaning the pots and platters that couldn't go in the dishwasher.

"Tea Runs"

So this past weekend, a friend and I finally made our necessary fall tea run. We had put it off for a few months due to my being in school and her having oral surgery, but we finally made it on Saturday.

Our absolute favorite store is located in Millerton, NY and its called Harney & Sons (http://www.harney.com/). They have truly awesome tea and have a great tasting room. In their tasting room, you can taste just about any of the teas before you actually buy it. I'm told they used to do unlimited tasting, but now they try to limit you to two different teas which I don't really blame them as I could spend all day tasting teas. Although, with the amount of refills my friend and I had, they probably would have let us taste tea all day.

Anyway we had an awesome day of tea tasting, and buying of course. I ended up with three or four new teas (I must say the 1st Flush Darjeeling is excellent) and a new teapot. :-)

DONE!

Finally! I am done with all of my graduate classes and I will never have to go to school again. Its been a long two years since I started taking classes for my Masters degree. For once I am actually doing a first for my family. With 5 siblings, its hard to be the first one to do something, especially when you are number 5 out of 6 children. But I am the first one to get an advanced degree. Wa-hoo!!

When I got home from my last final last night, my husband surprised me with two bags of Lindt dark chocolate (YUM!) and two dozen roses (one for each month of being in school). He also wrote me an extremely nice note about how proud he is of me for actually finishing it. When he finished his Masters degree, his company was forcing him to do it, so he completely understands and is incredibly proud that I made the choice myself to go back to school and I stuck with it to the end.

Throughout the past two years, he has stuck with me through thick and thin. He's supported me and encouraged me to keep going even when I wanted to quit. I can't thank him enough for giving me the courage to stick with it.

Most of all....

I'M DONE!!

Special Times

No matter what is going on in my life, this time of year always makes me happy. There is just something about getting together with your family and seeing siblings that you haven't seen in several months. When we were kids, we couldn't wait to grow up, get out of the house, and be away from "the fam". But now that we don't see each other that often, its really nice to go back home and enjoy the good times. There's no sibling fighting anymore. There's just everyone enjoying each others company and laughing at the odd little things that happen.

Somehow in my family, we've gotten into the habit of putting puzzles together late into the wee hours of the morning. I think its a case that while we put the puzzle together, we're all chatting and telling stories and laughing about things that happened while we were kids or things that happened recently. We used to spend the time watching TV and movies, but now we actually spend the time talking while we put together a puzzle. Now the puzzles I'm talking about aren't your easy 500 piece puzzles. We're typically around the 1000+ range and if any one person tried to do it, they probably wouldn't finish it. But as a group we're able to tackle it and get it all done. Of course, my husband would say that was because we're a "cast of thousands" (I have 2 sisters, 3 brothers, 1 brother-in-law, and 1 girlfriend-almost-sister-in-law).

Anyway, this year is a little more special to me because in about 4 hours from now, I will have completed the last final exam I will ever have to take. YAY! In 4 hours, I will never have to take another class and I will soon get that nice little piece of paper with my name on it saying that I have a Masters degree. It will be incredibly nice to never have to go to school again and to be able to come home from work and not pick up a text book (unless I need to throw it at someone!).

Doctors & Marketing

After spending an hour getting fitted for $20 arch supports, I've come to the conclusion that doctors really shouldn't own their own businesses. The "doctor" I went to today tried to convince me that I needed a new pair of $200 sneakers for walking around outside, $200 of "Forrest Gump" shoes that look bigger than my safety shoes, and $200 sandles for walking around the house. My orthopedist wanted me to get $20 arch supports to see if it helps alleviate some of the pain I'm having in my arch. I told this other doctor this about 4 times, obviously without making much of an impact.

At the outset of the appointment, the doctor asked me if my insurance covered orthotics. Thankfully I had called my insurance company yesterday and determined that in my case they do because its related to me breaking my foot. Unfortunately, I told the doctor today that in my case all of it would be covered 100%. After that point, he put me through every analysis, tried to get me to buy $600 of shoes that I don't need and tried to sell me on a custom made orthotic. Doctors should stick to being doctors and actually listen to their patients instead of trying to sell them things they don't need just because the insurance company would pay for it.

Today's "experience" doesn't instill me with any more confidence about doctors, but I guess they are just like every other big business even though they aren't big. If you can make a buck and screw the little guy, they'll try and do it.

Frustrations....

Earlier this summer, I ended up breaking a bone in my right foot. I broke the same bone about 10 years ago. Similar to 10 years ago, I twisted my ankle pretty badly (this time while hiking) and while I hoped that I had just twisted it, two weeks later when it still hurt I found out that the bone was broken. I was put into a cast for 4 weeks and then into a walking boot for another 4 weeks. After the cast was taken off, my foot swelled like crazy and I had to go for physical therapy for 3.5 weeks to get rid of the swelling and pain.

It had been feeling pretty good for a few weeks and during that time I had slowly transitioned from wearing sneakers to shoes and things seemed fine. However, after two weeks my foot started feelign sore again and causing me to limp. I finally got the nerve to call the doctor and steup an appointment. After waiting 35 minutes in the exam room, the doctor flew in, spent about 5 minutes with me, tole me to get some arch supports and left. In the 5 minutes, he said that if the arch supports don't work then there are two paths we can take. One is to try immobilizing my foot again with a cast or surgery to remove the bone.

On one hand, I'm glad he's trying the non-invasive route first, but at this point I just wish I had done the srugery 4 months ago. I looked online (http://www.eorthopod.com/public/patient_education/6477/accessory_navicular_problems.html) and found my exact problem and how it can be fixed. Recovery ranges from 6 weeks to 3 months, so if it had just been done I would be completely healed by now. At this point after being in pain for 4.5 months, I'm ready to do just about anything. Hopefully things will go quickly and it will finally be fixed soon.

On a good note, I have finished my second to last final exam that I will ever have to take. I have one final left next week before I am completely done with my Masters degree. I'm not so much excited to be done, but more relieved. It will be good to be done. Its been a long haul and I give kudos to everyone out there that have gotten any sort of degree while working. Congrats!!

Annoying Little Kitties

I always know when its starting to get really cold out when my cat decides that she needs to be snuggled up in bed with me at 3 in the morning. I was blissfully asleep with my husband next to me and at 3 am I get rudely woken up by a loud meow and the smell of cat food as my cat, Ellie, was demanding to be given room to sleep next to me. She spent the next ten minutes pawing at the covers to make a "nest" for herself and then plopped down with her rear right next to my face - thanks, Ellie. Needless to say with her on one side of me and my husband on the other, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep the rest of the night. Plus, since my husband took today as a vacation day from work, he didn't even have to get up this morning.

Despite the little annoyances of the cat (the smelly fish breath, the waking up at 3 in the morning, the random pooping outside the litterbox when she thinks its not clean enough), she's all in all a pretty good cat. I adopted her while I was living in CT because I was tired of coming home to an empty apartment. She had been living with a woman who had two Pugs (puntable dogs) that absolutely terrorized the cat. So I took Ellie in. At first she was really bad about chewing on cords, wires, and blinds (thankfully the apartment complex didn't notice when I left so I didn't get charged for the damage). She stopped for a while when I moved into the 2-bedroom apartment in NY, but she chewed the blinds near a table so that she could see out.

After we moved into the house, we bought custom made blinds to fit the windows. We were actually worried that Ellie would chew those, and I knew if she did, she would be in a LOT of trouble. However, as there are lots of windows with big windowsills for her to sit on, she has many "channels" to watch and she doesn't feel the need to chew things anymore. I'm sure she must have done it out of pure boredom at the apartments. But now she has the upstairs channel, the kitchen channel, the foyer channel, and the front office channel, so she has lots of opportunity to look outside without having to find a way to get there.

Quilting Tip #1

Cutting: Purchasing a quality rotary cutter and self-healing mat are essential in making a good quilt. If you take the time in the beginning to make sure your squares or triangles are cut straight and are correct, then it makes pieces MUCH easier.

The first quilt I made (see the picture on First Quilt post) I wasn't very careful with cutting the squares. If you look closely, the corners don't really line up and every once in a while you can see a pucker along a seam line. When I pieced the rows together, I tried to make the seams line up as best I could by pinning, so it ended up with excess fabric in between the seams in certain places. It made the piecing and assembly the borders a bit more of a chore than it should have been.

For the baby quilt I'm working on now, I was very careful with cutting and all the pieces lined up perfectly. I still pinned the rows to at the seams to make sure the squares all lined up, but I didn't have any problems sewing it. I don't have a picture of it yet, but I will try to get one posted soon.

First Quilt

So here's my first quilt that I made for my 90-year-old Grandmother. I was able to get most of it pieced within a week or two, but school caught up with me and I had to stop for a while. All in all, it took me about 3 months to make this, including doing the quilting myself (on a machine) and attaching the binding. The binding was sewn on by machine on the front side, and then stitched by hand on the back.

Starting Out

I know it’s probably a stupid title for a blog, but I thought maybe the title would catch some other “crafters” eyes. I intend to try and document my various projects, tips, hints, and ideas for projects here. I’ve done a lot of different things over the years, and most recently I’ve gotten into making quilts. In the past I’ve done a lot of needlepoint, specifically counted cross-stitch, and I still plan on doing the cross-stitch. There’s something mind numbing about moving the needle back and forth through the fabric and seeing the design on paper come to life in front of you. It’s definitely something good to do after a long day at work and I don’t really want to think anymore. Eventually I will post some pictures of my work on here for all to see.

I’ve also tried crochet and knitting in the past. I’ve never gotten the hang of knitting, but I have made a few afghans using crochet. They’re very simple, but it’s something nice to start in the fall and then once it starts getting cool enough to need a blanket, the afghan is large enough to start keeping me warm.

As I said, my most recent escape is in the world of quilting. I started trying to do quilting two years ago. At the time I was living in an apartment with my husband and didn’t really have the room to cut fabric and use the sewing machine. Plus, the first pattern I tried to do had a bunch of triangles in it and for a beginning quilter with no one to guide me; it wasn’t the easiest thing to do. I made a few blocks that I hope to eventually put together and make into a wall hanging or something, but I eventually stopped when we bought a house (for anyone who has moved, you know how much time and effort it takes to pack everything and then unpack everything). When we bought the house, I also decided to go back to school to get a Masters degree, which of course took up a huge amount of time. During my winter break last year though, I was able to buckle down and make a lap quilt for my 90-year-old grandmother. She absolutely loved it.

So now that I have one full quilt under my belt, I have about 6 in various stages of being sewn and planning. I am currently making a baby quilt for my sister-in-law and I’m also making a play quilt for the baby. Two of my husband’s coworkers are also expecting (one is expecting twins) so I have three other baby quilts planned and I just need to buy the fabric to get started. I also have a queen sized quilt planned for our bed and a large wall hanging planned to put over our fireplace (we have no idea what else to put up there, but it needs some color). Eventually, pictures of all of these will be on here at their various stages.
Well, I hope you all enjoy my blog and I will be posting information about my projects and other happenings around the house. My husband and I are planning on getting a puppy in the spring, so that should be an exciting time. We’ll just have to see how the cat and the puppy get along. :-)