Quilts & Dogs & Ticks

Poor Sadie. I'm calling her 'Tick Doggie' these days. She's now on antibiotics and has a new tick collar, which she can't wear until her neck heals.


Here is a before & after of a dog-damaged quilt. As always, click on the pic for a large view. The poor woman had a dog like our last one (Harvey - remember him?). He's good, good, good, good, BAD. She was visiting her cousin with her dog, the girls went out shopping for a couple of hours. Fido got pissed off and chewed up Granny McCracken's quilt.

Family visit

After Floyd's repair I wanted to make SURE he was fixed so I quilted up one of my UFO's. Yaaay.... one more off the list. This was quilted with Baptist Fans using the Circle Lord template. And yup - Floyd is great.
My BIL came for a weekend visit. He owns a garage outside of Leamington. What does he do as soon as he gets here? Opens the hood of his car to see what that little noise is.

My poor dog has had TWO huge ticks - the size of a bean. The last one we pulled off seems to have left a very tender lump on her neck so she's going to see Dr. Vinny this morning. In my new (used) car. Happy, happy happy.

Sunbonnet Sue & Machine Repair

Poor Floyd. I was working on Sue's Sunbonnet Sue, getting more and more skipped stitches. DH would retime Floyd and he'd work fine for a while. Then more skipped stitches. More timing, more skipped stitches. I finally called in the 'professional' - Ricardo. It looks like they were teaching Floyd yoga - Downward Facing Dog. After the bushings were tightened up he seems to be running pretty well. Time will tell. Cost: $85 cash and one beer.

SBS turned out (eventually) really pretty. But with the Floyd problem, and the huge hole I tore in my shirt while working on her, I've named the quilt Dominatrix Sue.








This is a President's Quilt - all the blocks were made for Sue by members of the Binbrook Guild. I just love this one with the beating stick... I mean the gavel.

more wedding pics

DH and I managed to clean ourselves up for the wedding.







Check out the earring on the best man. Holy crap. Ouch ouch ouch. Yes, that is a huge big hole that the ring is inserted into. That makes the tiny little nose ring inconsequential.




The bride and her maid of honour. Pretty, aren't they?









My niece from Singapore, home for a few weeks. Hamming it up for Aunt Helen.

Here comes the bride....

Here we are: all nice & married. No, not me. Well, yes, I am, but this is not a picture of me. It's our nephew and his wife. As you can see, I am STILL a bad photographer. The rain quit for most of the wedding - we were dancing in the rain for a little while but it was just a drizzle.

Lincoln (in the tux) and Brooklyn (with the pretty necklace) came too. One of them barked in the affirmative when Luke said "I do". They probably thought he was slurring (after all, there WAS lots of champagne) and really said "Hey, NO, bad dog!!!"

I had a hangover the size of Texas on Sunday. I spent most of the day on the patio reading a book, getting a sunburn. Now I'm in self imposed rehab, giving my liver a few days off. I was very well behaved at the wedding. But there is always ONE person who is not, so there was lots of puke that needed to be cleaned up. Oddly enough, no one ended up in the pond? I had a bet going with Betty - she was certain there would be a dunk before midnight while I thought it would be after twelve. We were both wrong.

My new little possession for the next two years. From the Binbrook guild. Hah!! I get to be the boss.

Wedding Today & Drunkard's Path Quilt

My nephew is getting married today. Outside. In the rain. Yup. I made them a honeymoon journal with some of their leftover wedding fabric.

The groom's sister organized a week long honeymoon in New York City and asked the wedding guests to purchase 'pieces' of the honeymoon. Kinda cool, eh?

I also made the bride a small handbag which the journal just happens to fit inside of.











I've finished the Paducah Challenge Drunkard's Path quilt too. Finally. I'm really pleased with the way the quilting turned out. I made paper cutouts of the heart shape and pinned them to the quilt. That kept the shapes consistent, 'cause my freehand hearts are ALL different.

Anatomy of a Thought

Here is my current WIP: Sue's Sunbonnet Sue. Do not attempt to say that with too many martinis under your belt.




Home Movies In Your Head
Preface:
Last week I had dinner with Jean, Jane & Teresa. We've been doing this several times a year for (OMG) 15 years or so??? We are usually celebrating a birthday or two and usually have silly small gifts for each other. On this occasion Jean got each of us a Burt's Bees Hair Care Kit. Jane, normally pretty circumspect (I mean, she was wearing two strands of pearls, for goodness sake!), put the shower cap on in the restaurant to demonstrate it's use to Teresa.
Story:
This morning I opened up the hair care package and was reading about the conditioner. You must shampoo it out with a natural shampoo containing NO sodium laurel sulphate. So I thought about my Orvus Paste which is down in the basement, which I use for washing quilts. Too far to go so early in the morning, so I've put off using the conditioner for another day. Anyways... this brought to mind organics and recycling. This brought to mind Jean (who had gifted us with the BB conditioner stuff) and our old days together in the Bank. And the video she made about recycling. This was some kind of a corporate competition, if I recall, where companies could make a video to promote recycling. Jean thought this was a DANDY idea, so she and Ron Brandow, with me as the useless assistant, made this funky video showing people how they could Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. One part of the video was scripted to be Jean in her car in the parking lot, noticing trash flying across the pavement. She is supposed to stop the car, get out and pick up the garbage. The actual video showed Jean pulling into the lot, seeing the flying papers and parking her car. She gets out to pick up the garbage. Unfortunately, her car was not exactly in PARK and started rolling away. She had to go running after the car, while not dropping the garbage. I was upstairs in the bathroom this morning laughing at the memory. See? Home Movies in Your Head.

Broken Stuff

Where, oh where have I been all week?

Here is how I marked the wavy border on my Paducah Challenge quilt. Mark it first, then quilt it, then trim it to the wave shape.

More digging in the garden. The chives are finally all out. But never fear!! I still have lots and lots around the yard and in the farmer's field. Timmy Toad was helping.


We had the yummy 5 can soup with a loaf of bread. Unfortunately the bread maker quit part way through it's job. I had to knead this stuff the old fashioned way... by hand. Imagine!


What else has broken this week? Hmmm...

1. my car
2. two weed whackers
3. the effluent pump in the basement
4. Floyd had to be retimed because he would not pick up any stitches
5. my garden fork which I use to dig everything. DH has now welded it three times.
   

Drunkards Path and Thistles

What a beautiful day on Saturday!!! DH went to a ball game in Toronto so I had the whole day to myself. I spent the morning working on quilting designs for the Drunkards Path.

Afternoon and evening was spent in the cutting garden.

The cutting garden clean-up is coming along slowly. Dig-up is more like it, since that's what I'm doing. It's just so darned BIG.

And it's in front of the veggie garden, so every weed in that garden moves in with the flowers... just one big happy family. I filled two large garden carts with chives and that's only half of them. They're so thick there's no dirt left between them.

I'm at the mid-way point. Past it, really.

But the worst is coming up - LOOK at those thistles. Pulling them doesn't help - they have long runner roots that go underneath as many plants as possible. So yup, everything is getting dug out to at least one foot down.




My brother gave me this funny contraption years ago. It's called a Grasshopper. He likes to call it a Polish Go-Cart. I find myself using it more and more - definitely a good gift for any gardener. The seat lifts up and you can keep your tools or an emergency martini in there.
And here's my useless assistant. We call her blabber-mouth. That is her frisbee folded in half. I don't think she knows just how silly she looks. If someone sees her like this we tell them she's retarded. Or that we're just fostering her until a permanent home comes available. It is really a CHEWBER and it's guaranteed for life. It's at two years and still perfect, so maybe???

Spending hours and hours alone in the garden, listening to the birds, gives your mind a chance to really wander. To very weird places. Yesterday I was pondering worms, which I love. In the garden. The next time you see a thief digging up your lawn to steal your worms, don't necessarily think it's a fisherman. I was thinking about death. You know, if I died today was my yesterday a good last day? (yes, it was) I was thinking about a gal I used to work with and haven't seen in 25 years. Wondering what happened to her and thinking maybe I should 'google' her. I was watching the birds enjoy the birdbath and thinking that I should put a birdbath somewhere back here in the garden. I was cursing the snails and trying to kill them really fast so I didn't inflict undue terror on them. (huh??? Yeah, seriously.) And I was singing a Beatles tune in my head for a long time. Now I can't remember what the song was. I was thinking about my niece, who should be coming home from Singapore soon, for her brother's wedding. I miss knowing she's close, even though I only saw her for family events. Well, now that I've given you THAT little slice of my brain... have a great Sunday!

Soup recipe

Today, instead of showing you eye candy I'm going to give you a nutritious recipe. We had this at the Kawartha Retreat at Margaret's in April. This is a super easy soup, kinda like mom always made. It starts with.... a can of soup. :-)

Use a large pot.
1 can Minestrone Soup
1 small can diced tomatoes
1 can mixed veggies of your choice
1 can of either black or kidney beans
1 can niblets corn
optional: add any cooked meat you have hanging around in the fridge (sausage, turkey, leftover hamburgers, whatever)
Heat & serve with a dusting of Parmesan Cheese in each bowl.

We had this with Parmesan Toast. Very tricky - one piece buttered toast (we used leftover french loaf), dust with parmesan cheese, heat in toaster oven.

Pattern for the Sarah Christianne quilt

The pattern is available from:

Quilts & Calico

15 John E, Exeter, Ontario

N0M 1S4

p: 519-235-4856

Can it be??? Three UFO's complete???

Heh, heh, heh. The UFO's are getting knocked off one, two, three. See my list in the sidebar? Can you hear the wicked witch of the west screaming "I'm shrinking, auugghhhhh!!!!"

Dirty Dozen, finished. Including the 70-some yo-yo's. What was I thinking????












Bluework boys, finished. Well, almost. This just needs binding, and on the bindall it should be quick.

The Quilt From Hell, finished. I almost wore out my Janet Lee's Favorite on this. (sorry - lingo - that's a longarm ruler)

Binding in progress, then a label. This is actually called Sarah Christianne and it's a pattern by my friend Mary Anne Charlton.

It is a replica of a quilt made by her mom and has been very popular in the Strathroy/London area.

This morning I took mom downstairs at 'the home' to see the foot guy. He cuts her nails & files down corns and all that FUN foot stuff. (And it's true - he really does teach ballroom dancing on the side.) But that was not the point of this story. My car turned 190,000 km on my way home and I actually SAW the odometer turn over. Usually I see milestones like this about 3 km later. Then I say "DARN, I MISSED IT!!!" But this time I actually saw it. Cool, eh? Yes I know, small things amuse small minds.