Celebrating Another Birthday

 Someone did math.  Apparently I've been around for this number of days.

The Beach Girls came for Winterruption, which (ahem, cough cough) just happened to include my BIG 70.  They took me to the Royal Botanical Gardens to see the Bloomland In OZ exhibit.  Fabulous. Her tiara is bigger, but I think I wore mine with more enthusiasm!  I mean really - she's looking quite sullen, dontcha think?

The creativity and imagination of the crew that puts these exhibits together is amazing.

Lots of great spots for photos.

Then it was on to Waterdown for high tea.

They stayed from Thursday until Sunday, with our next get-together scheduled for April.  Love these girls. 💕

Moving on to the quilting front...

Super Bowl Sunday came and went.  I made my traditional top on Sunday, stitching during the game.  Then taking my foot off the go-pedal, watching the commercials and half-time show.

I added the borders on Monday, quilted it on Tuesday, then completed the binding and label on Wednesday in time to take it to guild for Show 'n Share.  This goes in my donation box, as always, and will likely end up at the women's shelter.

At my other guild, we had a schoolhouse session.  I demo'd inserting a zipper, with the assistance of 1/4" fusible web to temporarily fuse the zipper in place.  I've been sewing zippers since I was 10 years old, so I'm not afraid of them.  But I'll tell you - this is a slick technique!

I'll also tell you - following a Youtube video, with no English, to make a bag like this, is a really stupid idea.  If you scorn my caution, you might want to block off the whole day.

As far as using a sewing machine is concerned, these days I mostly quilt.  But back in an earlier life I made most of my own clothes.  I got to thinking, now that I've practiced on zippers, maybe I should go back to clothing.  I found these really inspiring...

Ha ha ha - if you don't know me, that's a joke.  WTAF are those women wearing???  For more fashion & sewing humour I've discovered peachesanddiesel104.  That's her instagram name, but she's on facebook too.

Someone else I love on Instagram is the Tiny Pricks Project.  I'll leave you with this as my end-post humour.  😆 Have a great day!

In the Dark (or how to entertain five longarm quilters when the hydro goes out)

 Retreat is half about socializing and half about productivity.  I was plugging away and got the braid border finished for a Round Robin.

I finished the Block of the Month for the Binbrook guild (two blocks, really).

I also finished a sample block to see if my instructions were workable, for the house block swap group:

We were enjoying ourselves in the afternoon sunshine:

When all of a sudden - POOF!  NO HYDRO!

We looked at this for a while:

Then, we decided that since my laptop was charged up I could show them my pics from Birmingham Quilt Festival.  EXCEPT...(there's always a "but", right???) the laptop wasn't charged up - it was down to 25% because I'd left it turned on.😖  However, fearless leader Diane had brought a power pack with a zillion cords, so we plugged the laptop into the power pack and were back in business.  That lasted for quite a while, until the laptop swore and walked out, like a bad loser.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.  By now it was dark and we had to entertain ourselves like the little 12-year-olds we are at heart. 

We could have given up and gone to bed early, but... WAIT!  THERE'S MORE!

There are a few Jays fans in the group and there was a game on, that couldn't be watched.  But also couldn't be missed.  More technology brilliance - hotspotting from a phone to a tablet got the girls a watchable screen until the bitter end.

Supper never happened because the hydro was out until 2 am.  We had sandwiches from Monday's leftover salmon using the rye bread that was intended for the ruben sandwiches that were supposed to be supper.  We finished it off with cheesecake, which has the magic ability to shut up anyone who was thinking about complaining. 

Is It October Already?

 I have temporarily exchanged my horizon, from this:

to this:

so I could spend time like this:

and like this:

I'm planning to get the borders on this:

I've also convinced four friends to join me in a monthly House Block swap, to copy the Terry Rowland quilt.  So stinkin' cute with all those little critters in the window(s):

Blocks will be 4 1/2" unfinished:

sample made by Janice:

Good lord, it looks like a bomb went off in there. 😳  We were cutting kits for donation quilts, to be made up by members of the Binbrook guild.

Stay tuned.  There could be more goings-on to share this week...

Am I A Fraud? (also, how I cook snow peas)

 I might be a fraud because this is the ONLY thing I've quilted in June.  And I didn't make it.  This is a top that was gifted to the Binbrook Guild by Paul Leger for our donation program.

It was quilted the first week of June and it's been sitting patiently waiting for someone (ahem) to get the binding on.

I might be a fraud because I went to Quilt Canada and bought absolutely NO fabric.  Although I did buy a book.  But you can't quilt with a book.

I might be a fraud because I promised myself to give up my constant irritation with Donald Trump.  And yet:

Donny is mad at the mean Canadians because we want some tax money from what multi-billion dollar companies earn off of us.  Seriously. Everybody else who earns money has to pay tax.  Such a big baby!

Here's an explanation of the tax.  Which only kicks in after $20 million in revenue.

Does anyone SERIOUSLY think this is a harmful tax???

Take a look at who was in the Peanut Gallery when Trump was inaugurated.   Do ya think there might be a little bit of hands-in-pants going on?

So...this is The Universe pooping on MY head.

Yeah.  That's my kitchen tap.  Poor DH - I should probably have said that The Universe was pooping on HIS head.  He had just fixed the toilet that had decided to stop flushing, walked into the kitchen to turn on the tap, and the handle came off in his hand.  With my delicate sensibilities 😏 , I am glad I was not here when that happened.

The good news is MOEN is honouring their lifetime warranty and sending us a new tap, saving us a couple hundred dollars.  The bad news is this happened on Wednesday, they just sent it on Friday and now we have to wait for delivery, which will probably be at least this coming Wednesday.  Because of course these things happen over a weekend AND a national holiday when the post office does not work. Sigh.  No running water in the kitchen is not exactly fun!

Anyhow, that's a small problem in life.  This is what I picked today.  I will do my last pick of asparagus on Monday, and leave the plants to recouperate until next April.  It's been a great crop again this year.  Definitely a plant that keeps on giving.

I get a couple of strawberries every day.  

We got ZERO cherries once again.  Between the  raccoons, skunks and birds, the tree was completely denuded overnight.

Back in May I planted a row of green beans.  ONE bean sprouted.  Although, I think 🐰 was the real problem. 

No photo, but I pick a lettuce plant every few days too.  This year it's all been red romaine.  I'm a very lazy gardener(*) and let the lettuce (and cilantro, and dill) go to seed.  Those seeds overwinter and sprout in the spring.

* I am actually lazy at heart BUT I have so much garden stuff to take care of that I think I deserve a pass on this.  The garden is 20' x 40'.  DH will till the garden.  He plants and harvests the potatoes, and he waters the garden.  But that's pretty much it.  He does not weed or pick the garden.

HOW I COOK SNOW PEAS

• wash 'em
• nip off the stem with my thumbnail, and drag any string off with the stem
• cut them in half
• do a quick stir-fry... maybe 5 minutes? in a bit of olive oil, or a combo of olive oil & sesame oil
• eat - yum!

Here's a little health advice for you. Ha ha ha...

Happy June! (or Good Lord I'm Sick Of Politics!)

 

After You-Know-Who's inauguration in January sh*t started happening.  Every morning I was glued to the news sites, my jaw dropped, often in shock saying "honey - did you see this???".  I kept thinking that once Trump got that (whatever executive order he'd just signed) out of his system things would quiet down and politics would go back to normal.  But no!  There was more!  Every single day!  

After four+ solid months of this I've decided to give it a rest.  The USA is not my country, and I cannot do anything to effect any kind of change down there.  I made a committment to myself back in 2016 when he was elected the first time that I would not travel there, and that still stands.  My two personal biggest issues are their free-for-all gun laws, and the steady withdrawal of women's rights.  But there are so many more drastic changes in progress that I can't even keep track any more.

I'm still planning to read the news over my coffee & breakfast in the mornings, but no more wasting my life until noon - which is what I have been doing.  Stupid, giving up my time to keep track of him and his antics.  WE'RE DONE, DONALD.  I'M DIVORCING YOU.  YOU'RE FIRED! 😆

The quilt above was a challenge for TWO guilds.  The Binbrook Guild had a President's Challenge to work with circles.  Any kind of circles.  Circle quilt, circle fabric, appliqued circles, pieced circles, quilted circles, whatever.  Maker's choice.  The Caledonia Guild let us buy a 5" strip of fabric for $2 that had to be used in any quilt with a max perimeter of 80" (I think 80"??).  80" would be too small for my intended space, so I played along anyways and simply disregarded that rule. 😯  The fabric is the mottled turquoise/green used for the appliqued leaves.  

The design was copied from a Dover copyright-free book on Art Deco designs.  I'm pretty happy with it, it looks nice hanging on the wall.  I didn't win the challenge in Caledonia, since I admittedly did NOT adhere to the rules but that's ok - I wanted to play anyways.

That was finished in February.  Next up are the March finishes:

These are the two small leader/ender quilts I've been working on for several (!) years,

Cute labels:  

Here's a Disappearing 9-Patch that took me several years to get around to finishing.  I don't like anything about this quilt except maybe the border. 🙈

The Super Bowl Sunday quilt is finished. I always like the way these turn out.

In April I made a big bag to carry a Tupperware Cake Carrier, as a birthday gift...both the Cake Carrier and the bag.

I also made a BARN QUILT.  Diane (beach girl, you know) made arrangements for us to have an early Beach Day at her place.  We took a class with KADI BARN QUILTS (check 'em out on facebook).  I still have to hang mine - I think it's going on the wall of the front porch.  Maybe this coming week.

In May I managed to get this little quilt pieced.  It's mostly from fabric donated by a customer and will end up going to the women's shelter with my other donation quilts later this year.  The pigs-on-motorcycles border fabric is from my stash. Cute.

There's also been a lot of this in May...

I'll close out this post with two of my favorite memes this year.