Aah, WINTERRUPTION

Another February Winterruption with the Beach Girls has come and gone.  And I just want to point out - in this pic there is not a cocktail glass in sight.

The girls arrived Thursday, late afternoon.

• unpack
• cocktails
• supper (which included Happy Birthday To Me 🙉🎵)
• movie

Friday:

• breakfast
• field trip to Ottawa Street, Hamilton .  We went to the toy store, an import store, an antique store, a couple fabric shops, and a consignment furniture shop.
• late lunch/early supper at the Black Forest Inn
• stop in at Vintage Soul Geek 
• walk across King St. to Denningers (damn, I wish they'd had some bacon-wrapped tenderloin in the freezer.  Best. Appetizers. Ever.)
• stop at the drug store and check twelve thousand of DH's lottery tickets from the past year.  OK, twelve thousand is a bit of an exaggeration, but there WERE lots of tickets.  What is wrong with the man, he buys tickets but never checks them???  I took his $46.00 in winnings AND all the free tickets.
• return home, put purchases away, change into jammies & yoga pants.
• settle in front of the tv for two more movies.
• supper was potato chips and assorted junk food.  Healthy, no?

Saturday:

• breakfast
• sewing day
• lunch
• sewing
• bar opens at 3:00 🍷 for appetizers and afternoon cocktails
• supper
• settle in the living room for two MORE movies
• now that we've seen FIVE movies, a little pop-quiz to see who could remember the title of Thursday night's movie.  ❓❓❓ Nope.  I had to look it up.  At least we're all forgetful together. 

Sunday:

• Stupid, stupid, stupid (!) weather forecast for today. 
• breakfast
• the girls were all gone by 9:15 this morning.  I wasn't even out of my jammies yet.

On our "sewing" day I finished the binding on these two little panel quilts that I'll be donating somewhere.

I sorted out the progress I've made on my Nine In The Middle  Leaders & Enders quilt from Bonnie Hunter's book.

From this point on, I will be adding the brown cornerstones as seen above.  Once those are all done I will add the completed sashing strips to the sides of the 9-patch blocks to create these:

Our next get-together will be the semi-annual SOLO meeting in April.  Until then...it will be Messenger chats.

I Love Polka Dots and I Hate Winter

Oooh, get a load of those bright grunge polka dots.

Quilted with a "modern" pantograph, oddly enough called Mid Century.  The backing was pieced, using preprinted Stack 'n Whack fabric and more of the grunge polka dots.

THE STORY OF I HATE WINTER

Last week I showed you a pic of my kitchen door covered in ice.  This is the same door, THIS week.  Fresh ice. This was Tuesday morning.

Here's the back yard Tuesday night.

Here's the front yard Wednesday morning.  Now we've got snow on TOP of the ice.  Guild meeting tonight is cancelled.  This makes three in a row - one for each guild I belong to.

Next, it warmed up overnight and melted much of the snow. Then it froze again.
Thursday morning.  Yeah.  Happy Valentines to you too Mother Nature.  Geez.  Poor Sadie is risking life and limb every time she needs to go for a pee.

Thurday morning front yard.  Can you see my driveway over there?  That is a massive sheet of ice.

It is Sunday morning now and the driveway is still a sheet of ice.  There's a crust of ice on top of the snow, so even going over the LAWN to get to the road is slipperier'n hell.

DH and I did manage to get out and run a couple of errands.  I hit the sale rack in the produce section and bought a bag of half price apples.  I cut up the whole bag for Apple Betty and used a 9 x 13 pan.  Yes - sugar is the only thing keeping me sane these days.  At least I leave the skin on the apples.

My Red Hat group got into a discussion once about buying produce off the sale rack (I think this was during the $7.00 cauliflower period), and whether we did or didn't.  Until then I'd never even thought about looking there, but if I'm baking or canning or cooking veggies for soup...why not?

This is as close as I can get to a giggle.

Blue Stars and Typical February Weather (with a little entertainment)

Mmm, pretty stars set into a white background.

S.I.D. around the stars and along the outer border.  Then motifs went inside the stars and into the setting squares.  The background around the stars was filled with some straight line quilting.

You can see the details more easily on the back.

Around these parts, February is known for it's particularly sh*tty weather.
Here's our kitchen door, Wednesday morning, 9 am.  The three customers I had booked all postponed until Thursday.

Here's Wednesday again, at 5 pm.  Lovely rain (?*#@!!?) and temps hovering just below freezing.

By Thursday morning the temperature had plummetted and the ice was hard as a rock.  Those customers have all postponed again.  You're taking your life in your hands out there with all the ice.  This shot was Thursday at 1 pm when the fog started to roll in.  We also got a severe wind warning with gusts up to a zillion km/hr.

For a little entertainment, I decided that we should clip Sadie ourselves.  She's 12 years old and is so stressed out every time she goes to the beauty parlour it just breaks my heart.  She also has developed a lot of weird skin conditions, AND she's still recovering from her knee surgery.  I thought it would be easier on all of us to just let her stay home for a clip.  Ha ha... this is post haircut.  Pitiful job.  I hope our skills improve.

Drunkard's Path (or, I Am Not To Be Trusted!)

Part I

I used to teach an 8-week quilting class twice a year, and I always wrote my own patterns.  I have an Accuquilt die cutter (see JAWS tab above), so I designed a Drunkard's Path quilt.  I asked a friend to test my pattern instructions, and she made this quilt  That was, I think, in 2009.  When I was visiting her last fall the quilt was STILL flopped over her design wall.  Every time she's mentioned this quilt she would get an unhappy tone in her voice, which always made me think she was having a hate/hate relationship with it.  So when I was visiting in September I stole it. I figured I would quilt it, get it off her 'annoying' list and she'd be super happy with the nice surprise. I packed it in my suitcase and snuck it out the door.

Part II of the story... 

We have a UFO challenge every year.  Geez Louise - doesn't she decide that THIS QUILT is going to be her first project.  During our weekly phone call she tells me that she spent A WHOLE DAY looking for this top and couldn't find it anywhere. OMG.  I didn't know if I should fess up...then she mentions that she also couldn't find the preview papers with her quilting ideas.  I never saw them and didn't take them - I only pilfered the quilt. Knowing that she had no plan any more I decided to keep my mouth shut and get the darned thing quilted.  

I finished it, wrote a stupid poem to pack in the box with the quilt and shipped it back to her in the hope that she loved me enough to forgive the skulduggery.

Part III - delivery 

As she was leaving for her knitting group she saw a parcel thrown in front of her garage.  First, she thought it was for the neighbours, then realized that no - it was addressed to her, from me.  She threw it in the car and continued on to knitting.  When she got home a few hours later and opened the parcel, what she saw was the light blue backing. She didn't recognize the fabric, so that made her think I had mistakenly mailed a customer's quilt to HER.  Then she noticed the piece of paper and the poem.  She laughed and laughed.  I have been forgiven and have a new reputation of being very sneaky and able to keep a secret.  She loves the way it turned out and is quite happy to knock this off her UFO list.

I did s.i.d. around all the piecing, to outline the colour bands and the floral centers.

The straight line quilting nicely contrasts with the "Nemeshing".

There's also a lovely border design which doesn't show on the top stripe, but looks really pretty on the back.

Later today...

Well, yes, I'm cheating a little bit.  This is LAST year's photo, but I'll be doing the same thing with different fabrics.  Gotta watch the Super Bowl commercials!