A Little Progress Made

Friday morning dawned like any other...I got hubby off to work, (he wasn't happy to be awake) the kids didn't want to go to school...especially my youngest who is 13.   He doesn't ever want to go to bed at night and the "I have a stomach ache" excuse is used at least twice throughout the week.  Well, Thursday night he came into my room after lights out claiming he was nauseous...he was pretty convincing!  Clammy skin & goose-bumped, I administered the Pepto and sent him back to bed with a bowl, just in case.  He didn't say much in the morning, so I figured things had passed, to school we went, I dropped him off and told him to call me if he got pukey again, with the "hey, it's an early release day and a long weekend" pep talk, I drove home and finished my pre-work ritual.  I had no more than rounded the corner out of the neighborhood, when the school called me to come pick him up (big sigh).  I called my Sgt. to let her know I wouldn't be in and started planning my day at home. Here is what I came up with

I made 9 blocks with red before wondering if a less traditional color would be more to my liking...upon asking my husband which color he liked best, he wisely pondered the blocks on the wall before answering, "How many do you have done in red?"
Ohhhh, he is funny, funny boy!!! "That is NOT what I asked", said I.  "Okay, I like the green". I have to say that I agree with him! Heck, what would a quilt of mine be if I didn't have a moment of indecision I ask you??  On a slower note...I all but have the first row hand sewed together on my Grandmother's Flower Garden!! That makes me pretty excited to say the least.  Not much indecision there, I gotta say that I am pretty pleased with the color combinations on this one...and  with that, I will leave you.

Saturday Stress Relief

My internal clock must have gotten tweaked somehow.  I have NEVER been a morning person, I can't emphasize that enough...I really mean NEVER, not when I was a kid, not even when I had babies. I used to work graveyard in a potato processing plant as a QA tech while I was pregnant with both of my boys and like me, they are both nightowls. These days, I am a Monday-Friday 9-5 kinda girl. My DH, however, has been working 6am-4pm Thursday-Sunday for the last month or so (his days off vary from month to month) which means that when the alarm goes off around 4:45am... I hear it, he doesn't.  Several smacks to the snooze button  later, he finally decides that he really has to go to work, but alas, I am wide awake by then. This doesn't make a girl like me, who enjoys sleeping in until 10am on a Saturday very happy...but there it is just the same.  My body wants to cuddle up with my pillow and a dog or two and forget that an obnoxious noise ever disturbed my slumber, but my brain is on fire and sleep is but a fantasy!  So to take advantage of the opportunity,

I have been going into work for a little overtime these last past few Saturdays. I was all set to do the same...but not today...no today, I contemplated the paperwork that needed processing and just couldn't do it, nope! Instead, I remembered that I have a young man that we call B around the house who has been waiting 2 years (cringe) for this to be quilted...

and so it was laid out on the livingroom floor, layered, taped and pinned and then it hit the sewing machine...it was then that I quickly realized that my machine quilting skills are pretty rusty!!!

Having completed about a third of the quilt this afternoon, the thought of picking out all those stitches have kept me from deciding to fix the walking foot onto my machine to do some straight line quilting.  I am very happy with the back though, while searching my stash for the backing flannel (which happily had already been pieced to the needed 84x74) I located some leftover blocks that were quickly stiched into a medallion of sorts to add interest. With any luck, I'll have B's quilt nap-worthy by Monday...(keeping my fingers crossed that I don't run out of thread before payday)

Weekend Excursions and Swaps in Progress

I am proud to announce, that my no sew block swap squares are cut out, packaged and ready to mail.  "Louisiana" was the square that I finally chose and despite the fact that flying geese are not one of my favorites, I'd say that this endevour wasn't all that bad and am quite pleased at how it turned out...

Next on the agenda is the modern siggy swap...I've completed a third of the required 101 squares, but will definitely be working on the rest this long holiday weekend and will hopefully have them ready to mail along with the first swap!   Progress on these projects were only slightly interrupted by a little excursion with one of my best friends and her husband (Kathy was the maid of honor at my wedding almost 19 years ago) to the quaint little Bavarian village of Leavenworth. Honestly, the place looks like a postcard!

 This weekend was the Ice Festival, though we really chose to go because of the long holiday weekend. Saturday afternoon was absolutely beautiful once the fog wore off, we wandered amongst the shops, snapped photos of the architecture and the scenery of the park along the Wenatchee River and slogged through the snow enjoying the brisk 35+ degree weather. Though I have spent many summers camping in the mountains along the Icicle creek just outside of town, I have never made a visit during the winter months and now know what I have been missing!   The boys could only take so much of the retail experience so it was decided that a field trip was in order. Kathy, John, my husband and I piled in the car for a drive along the Chumstick highway which winds its way through the mountains and farmland, finally descending on the tiny town of Plain (which is fairly close to Fish Lake and Lake Wenatchee)

As my DH drove, we enjoyed the scenery and even convinced my DH on occasion to stop (on only a couple of blind curves) so that Kathy and I could quickly jump out of the car to snap pictures of the awesome views...he is very indulgent of my impromptu photo opportunities! This was not always the case earlier in our marriage... We awoke to 3" of new snow Sunday morning, which made all the kids happy...the local sledding hill hadn't seen anything fresh in awhile, so the heavy wet accumulation was more than welcome for snow sculptures and more importantly for padding their landings!  

All stitching progress was not lost because I was enjoying a road trip. I took the opportunity to work on my GFG hexies in the car and in the hotel room...even more fun was had by visiting the Craft Warehouse in Wenatchee and Quilter's Heaven in Leavenworth who were both having a sale...much to my enjoyment, I came home with some Kaffe at way less than regular price!  It was good to come home though, even better to find the house in one piece after leaving the kids to fend for themselves overnight.  They were each busy though, the Son #1 ventured out goose hunting in the VERY early am, (he and his cousin got skunked) then  ran home to catch some quick z's before he was due at school to manage a doubleheader for the varsity girl's basketball game later in the early evening. Son #2 spent his day tearing up the ski hill at Bluewood outside of  Dayton, snowboarding with a friend and his family. He called midday to report that the snow was rock hard!  He found this out when he took a hard fall and bruised his tailbone a bit, but thankfully, it was nothing that a dose of ibuprofen couldn't manage, oh to 13 again!!

With the New Year Comes Ambition....yikes!!

Has it really been almost a month since I wrote a post, with projects included?  Wow! I guess time really does fly at the blink of an eye!  Anyhoo, with the New Year came not resolutions per se, more like an itching to do something, perhaps a bit or guilt after reading about everything you all accomplished over the holidays, or maybe at the very least I wanted to make some progress on a UFO.  While I haven't exactly gotten anything finished in that time, I have made a bit of progress on my hexagons. Ahem...okay, okay, this is where I fess up and tell everyone that I lost/misplaced the pale yellow background fabric and was actually (more than) a bit distressed to think that it was gone forever. 

My adventure begins a few months ago, when I bought a yard or so of this pale yellow dotted loveliness to audition for the light outer border of my GFG and decided that I liked it, went back to JoAnn's to get the yardage I needed only to discover that another someone liked it almost as much as I did and there was only two and a half yards left on the bolt...that was October 24th.  Completely typical of me, I usually either throw my bags in the back seat of the car or bring it in the house and toss it on my sewing table or on a pile of something in my bedroom and figure that I will deal with it later. (No, there will NOT be a photo montage of my sewing table OR the pile of something in the bedroom, believe me you really don't want to go there)
While I was waiting for later to come along, my husband got the cleaning bug (yes...lol, I will freely admit how VERY lucky I am and will even more freely admit that he can clean house like nobody's business!) somewhere in the fray, he tossed the bag (without looking in it, I'n sure) in a box destined for garbage day. I can't really say what happened next, but normally he NEVER would throw away my precious fabric!  I am thanking my lucky stars that it wasn't Tuesday night! ...now 3 months later I go to find it and it's nowhere to be found, I get frantic and enlisted his help, saying more than once with total confidence, "well, we know that you wouldn't throw it away..." Anyways, I love a happy ending!!
You may have noticed that there are some new buttons on my sidebar, thus we come to the abitious portion of the New Year...I have joined 2 new swaps!! The no sew block swap with Welcome to my World and the modern siggy swap with P.S. I quilt, this is in addition to the swaps that I normally participate in on swap-bot...cringe...sigh...oh well, looks like I am going to be really busy this next month!!

Oh, and did I also mention that while I was waiting for my lost fabric to reappear, that a thunderbolt of inspiration hit me in the form of crochet? Attic24 has a wonderful tutorial on crocheted hexagons...no really, go ahead and check it out, I'll wait while you do...Isn't her blog just lovely?? I am totally loving her use of colors, in fact, I haven't been inspired to crochet in years!! She used Rowan cotton yarn while I purchased the ever-dependable redheart supersaver skeins @ $2.28 and let me tell you, those puppies are huge!  I will be crocheting my little heart out...or as long as my wrists hold out...

Winter Arrived...

In the form of snow this afternoon, the weatherman had promised it, predicting a 50% chance, which usually means not even a skiff or a flurry but Mother Nature came through this time in a pinch.  I don't know, I kind of like it, it feels more like Christmas now AND more importantly the temperature raised up to the mid 20's compared to the teens and below that we have had the last week or so!

In honor of the nice chilly day, I decided to try my hand at Olive Garden's chicken gnocchi soup (our OG is ALWAYS packed and impossible to get into without an hours wait) so I try to replicate some of their menu at home...I make my version of OG's Zuppa Toscana, which we all love, but it was time to try someting new. My DH and I  drove all over town trying to find the packaged gnocchi, which was suprisingly hard to find, but was well worth the drive AND my DH liked it, a double bonus!! (the jury is still out with the kids who haven't tried it yet)

Yesterday after work, I flipped through the JoAnn's flyer and noticed that some yardage I have been eyeing was 50% off (okay, truth be told, I flipped through the flyer while at work, but just between you and me, we'll say that it was accomplished during my break...yeah, that sounds good!!) I came home with a bit more than anticipated to add to my stash, but hey...some of it was 50% off the clearance price, now who can pass that up??  I noticed that Flourishing Palms has recently returned from Australia and decided to join the Don't Look Now Joseph's Coat quilt-along with some of her friends in Iowa but wasn't real excited with her fabric choices...I mentioned to her that I have not been too keen on the contents of my stash either, nothing in it seems to inspire me anymore. That is, after being introduced to designers like Amy Butler, Kaffe Fasset and Denyse Schmidt to name just a few, so I have been buying bits and pieces here and there when on sale, something I try not to do except when starting a new project, it just seems that everything in my stash is old and outdated...I still have only admired those designers from afar, due in part to the fact that the local shops where I live are a bit behind the times...they should be popular AND affordable here in about a year or so if I am lucky!

Oh! and last but not least...I have been just looking for an excuse to make an apron (and in true form for me, it is of course not for me- though I REALLY want/need an apron) I thought it might be fitting that since my oldest son's girlfriend is enrolled in the culinary arts program at the vocational/technical school here and someday wants to open her own restaraunt that she might appreciate an apron for Christmas! I have had the pattern for some time now, but with 13 days until Christmas, I suppose that I had better get cracking!!!

What a week...

There was a bit of progress in the stitching arena this week, despite both kids and myself feeling puny for the last couple of days. I managed to get six of the nine GFG rounds ready for their last row of hexagons while listening to the tv or my iPod,.  I'm just not sure if I like the green...what do you think? The pattern is from the July/August 2008 issue of Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting, started late last summer so that I would have something portable to take with me on camping trips.  The method is English paper piecing and I have to say, I really enjoy it!  I'd like to try piecing an eight pointed star with this method also.

This is what the finished quilt  is supposed to look like...I'm getting kind of excited at the progress that has been made...it's almost in the home-stretch, can't wait to see it all put together!  I love the appliqued border...though I have some other flowers in mind...might have to improvise a bit, I think!  Well, would you look at the time?!  11:32 and well past regulation bedtime...Mr InAwe is due home tomorrow evening from Academy, everyone cross your fingers and say a quick prayer that the pass is clear of snow and that the torrential rains have not caused any major flooding along the 250 mile route home...it's been a LONG week and I've missed him!!!

Seemingly Nonproductive...

I had such hopes for Wednesday, being a holiday from work, in honor of our Veteran's and their service to our country.  I was going to sew, and then I thought perhaps, I would get some sewing done and then, if I got tired of that, well there was always some sewing to be done... But the morning dawned bringing the mother of all headaches and a painfully swollen gland in my neck, not a  problem thought I, I'll just pop some ibuprofen and so I did...nothing, I gave it some time, still nothing and so I went back to bed and napped, woke up and you guessed it, nothing! Here it is, Sunday, I've missed 2 days of work a trip to Leavenworth with my BFF and her Hubby and my SIL's 50th birthday celebration, slept enough for 3 people, taken most of a 5 day course of antibiotics and FINALLY, I feel human again, but alas, I've gotten nothing done. I did muster the strength to make it to Craft Warehouse's Open House last night, they had door prizes every 15 minutes! My Hub-meist being a wonderfully good sport, happened to be standing on #161 and much to our suprise, he won a $10 gift certificate ( which I of course put to quick use)!! I came home with a fat quarter bundle, a 60 degree triangle ruler and some masking tape (well, everything else in my hands was already marked down and you can't let a 40% coupon go to waste) not much of a haul I admit, but the important thing was that I saved over $10, that in itself was worth waiting in line for 30 minutes... So, reflecting on my time at home,

I guess all was  not a total loss, I did some stitching on my GFG hexagons and got my swap strips mailed off to my partners and in return, ended up with treasures in my mailbox. Now that I am officially on the mend, it's time to do laundry, figure out what's for dinner, get my hubby packed up for a week at the State Patrol Academy for major collision investigation training, perhaps mixing up a batch of chocolate chip cookies to slip in his bag and then I can play with my new ruler!!! Okay well, since no one is home at the moment, I shall take it upon myself to make an executive decision and put everything else on the back burner and play with the ruler!!! (yes, most excellent choice Andrea, most excellent choice!!) Oh, but before I leave you to play, as I was taking out some trash, I noticed that our recent chilly weather (27 degrees in the am...can you believe that I had to scrape windows to take LB to school twice last week...eek!) hasn't taken the last rose (literally) of summer, nor my clematis that I was sure had been pruned beyond resurrection and I of course, had to snap a picture of them for posterity...