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!

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.

How's Your Blood Pressure?

I'll start off with a little quilty-stuff, then move on to the topic du jour.

Pieced at Tobermory retreat but not yet quilted:

 Started an embarrassingly long time ago, finally quilted, and heading to the hospice as a guild donation:

TOPIC DU JOUR

Dad died of a heart attack when he was 72.  He was a tough guy.  A contractor, specializing in drywall I think.  I was one of those teenagers who paid zero attention to the people who really had some import in my life, so I don't honestly know.  As a teenager I slept until noon, by which time he was more than half way through his day.  Dad made himself bacon and eggs, every. single. day.  In spite of his hard, physical labour, his diet may or may not have had something to do with his early demise.  I fell heir to his 7" cast iron frying pan, which has so many years of seasoning on it that NOTHING will EVER stick to it.  DH and I have a pretty significant collection of cast iron pans now, and in spite of their weight, they are the BEST things to cook with. 

Next...

Mom developed alzheimers, most likely caused by several small strokes.  She lived to 94, but her last, um, 10 years or so (?), were not good.  And the 10 or 15 years before that were filled with sticky notes on the bathroom mirror reminding her of coming events and appointments, forgetfulness, repetetive questions, and confusion.  I didn't realize what was going on with her for a long time.  She'd ask me over and over again "how much money have I got in the bank?" and I'm ashamed to say that after answering this question 10 or 15 times during my Friday visits, I would lose my shit.  For the last few years she couldn't walk, couldn't talk, couldn't hear, couldn't see, lost her teeth several times, and another stroke had left her unable to safely eat 'real food' - everything had to be pureed.  There was a day when my brother told me that he'd been to visit her.  He'd brought a box of Timbits, and she'd scarfed down every single one.  OMG.  "Bruce!!  She can't eat solid food!!  WTH!!  She'll choke!"  Well, no, that didn't kill her thankfully, since he was telling me this story after the fact. 😳  She passed quietly at the nursing home on a cold March night.

My sister Sharon, who was 10 years older than me, died at 72 of a heart attack.  She'd been suffering with several forms of cancer, along with non-alcohol-related-cirrhosis for several years prior to her death.  Everyone in our family drinks so much that the "non-alcohol" bit surprised me, but she'd also lived in China for several years and may have contracted Hep C?  I know she had a heart attack while she lived there - that was during the SARS epidemic and the Chinese government keeps all news of that sort very quiet.  I don't think she knew about SARS while it was going on.  Now, I'm unsure if the fatal heart attack was an inherited weakness, or incidental to her other health issues.

The firstborn in the family, my brother Ted, also died at 72.  He was felled by cancer.  In the mid-80's he left with his boat and his girlfriend for the islands, and basically disappeared from our lives. His life was a complete mystery to us after that, until I received a call this summer from his wife (who'd been his girlfriend at the time of his departure so long ago).  She was surprised that none of us knew that he was dead.  Um, hello???  He never contacted any of us. Ever.  How he managed to show up for dad's funeral 39 years ago remains a complete mystery to this day.

My 70-year-old brother Bruce, 1 1/2 years older than me, is still kickin' up a storm on Vancouver Island. 💕  We are the only ones left from our family of origin.

Now you've got the lay of the land.

DH does most of the cooking around here, for which I'm very grateful.  We get into some ahem disagreements over nutrition occasionally.  Based on my story above you can see that three out of four deceased family members died at the age of 72.  Three out of four deceased family members had disastrous results related to heart troubles.  I'm already on cholesterol meds, thyroid meds, and heart meds.  And I'm 68.  

If you follow me around the grocery store you'll see my cart filled with apples, bananas, lettuce, avocados, peppers, sweet potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower.  I gave up cream and sugar in my coffee a looong time ago. I mean, I'm no saint - don't get me wrong. I can empty out a bowl of cheezies faster than you can say 'Those aren't good for you, you know, and by the way I like your shoes.'  I'm really lucky in that I like healthy food.  I don't wrinkle up my nose when faced with brussel sprouts. But as a rule, I try pretty consistently to stay away from salt.  Outside of baking I don't use it when I'm cooking.  I rarely add it to food on my plate, unless we're talking about potatoes - in which case all bets are off. 

Last week I was cleaning up after another good meal cooked by DH when I noticed the salt shaker on the cooktop.  

me, pretending to ask an innocent question:  "Honey, why is the salt shaker on the cooktop?"

DH:  "I salted the pasta water."

me, fanning away the steam that was spurting out of my ears:  "YOU PUT SALT IN THE WATER???!!  WHAT??!!?"

DH, wondering when my hormones came back:  "Um, ...yes?  It was only a little?"

me, carrying on:  "Blah blah blah (about my health issues), blah blah blah (about high blood pressure), blah blah blah (about how he's trying to kill me), etc..."

DH trying very hard to be cooperative:  "Um, ok. I won't do it any more?"

Last Friday I bought two lovely cabbages at a farm stall.  Half of one was made into coleslaw.  For the second half I suggested a recipe that I cut out of the newspaper several years ago, but have never tried.  The cooking fell to DH because I ended up having a quilting buddy come by to talk about her book.  When she and I were through and she left for home, I wandered into the kitchen to check on hubby's progress.  The casserole was heading into the oven at this point.

DH:  "Did you see the first ingredient on the recipe?"

me, looking at the recipe:  "Uh, cabbage."

DH:  "Nope."

me, looking at the recipe again:  "Yeah, cabbage!"

DH:  "Nope."

me, getting a little annoyed:  "Yes it is!"

DH, wandering over and pointing at the first word - salt.  Sigh.

Don't ya just hate it when someone does that to you?

CABBAGE AND POTATO GRATIN

This was very good.  DH added some cooked & sliced Italian sausages to the mix.

Meet NINA ...or What Was I Thinking?

 Coco the rescue from Niagara Dog Rescue in the back.  Nina the rescue from Hamilton-Burlington SPCA in the front.  Two dogs who don't exactly like to wear Santa hats, lol. 😂

DH and I haven't had a puppy in probably 20 years.  Clearly I forgot how much work they are.  Most mornings Nina's been yipping & barking to go out between 5 and 5:30 am.  Did I mention that the dog crates are in the master bedroom?  She has been very good about going back to bed after one of us takes her out, but only for another hour and then she's up.  

We've had her for one month and she's definitely settled in - she and Coco are happily playing with each other.  By that I mean that Nina (being a puppy with only one brain cell) hops at, barks at, nips at, and barrels full speed at Coco, and Coco is more than willing to play along.  

The resemblance here cracks me up.  I guess we should've named her CHEWIE.

In between outdoor bathroom visits (no, not for me!) I HAVE been able to get some quilting done.  These have gone to Martha House, a women's shelter in Hamilton.  The quilt on the far right has been on my UFO list for y.e.a.r.s.  I started it back in the 90's - I didn't like my fabric choices (I was a know-nothing newbie at the time, AND this was a mystery quilt) and didn't like my quilting (again, a know-nothing newbie back then).  When I pulled it out two weeks ago I realized that although the fabric selection is not great, it's not as bad as I thought.  ** I ripped out most of the quilting and requilted it with a nice, generic, geometric design, and it looked ok in the end.  Should I have been surprised that after 25 years I still had enough of the fabric on my shelves to do the binding?

Three of those panels were free - I picked them up at the guild from the TAKE-IT table.  And I got another one at the December meeting!  Uh, obviously I'm not the only one who has fabric they really don't need.

A quilting buddy also dropped off a batch of kids quilts that she's made over the years, so I had quite a stack to deliver.

We had our Christmas dinner last night with 1-800-LUKE and his lovely wife.  Now we can stay in our jammies (probably taking turns having a nap) until Wednesday when friends are coming over to meet Nina.  Technically they're coming for dinner, but the puppy is the real attraction around here right now, certainly a bigger attraction than my cooking.

As I have for the last several years, I'll spend New Years Day stitching with a friend.  This year I think we'll both be working on the mystery quilt hosted by the CQA.  The mystery quilt is open to everyone, whether you're a member or not, so join in! These are my fabric pics.

That black fabric is a one yard piece that I purchased in November at Dollarama.  It was $4.00.  For one yard.  Four dollars.  Who knew that Dollarama sold quilting cotton???  It's in the aisle with wool and stuff and the selection changes...from store to store?  I don't really know.  I was in downtown Hamilton (when I dropped off the quilts) and went to the Dollarama in the mall there - they were selling Star Wars fabric, both the white fabric and the black fabric.  Even though I have so much fabric that I will never use it all, hunting for more is always on my list of favorite things to do.

I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, hoping that you and your loved ones have a joyful season.

** If you want to be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad at it first.  Quote from, I think, Richard Bach's book ILLUSIONS.  Excellent book.

Working on Recovery

 Yes, I mean recovery from Covid.  (I have not entered a 12-step program to disengage from my sewing machine.)  It's October, which means a week in Tobermory with the Beach Girls, and that seemed to me like a perfect place to recover!

I figured a Limoncello Spritz would be a very healthy cocktail, right?  Served with short rib crostinis for our afternoon cocktail hour.  Sadly (or not??) the spritzes weren't a huge hit, so Deb and I had to drink two each.  

We've done some practice with our Zentangle skills...

There's still one more wedge space to fill. 

We've had nice cheesy lunches.  Cheese and yogurt seems to be the thing that we still bring too much of after 15 years.

Honestly.  There are probably six more packages of cheese in the fridge.

Three of us have gone for walkies every day.  Yesterday was maybe not the best day to notice that it was thundering after we'd already left the house.

Diane was still at the cottage.  When she realized it was POURING and that we were likely getting soaked, do you supposed she giggled a bit before she called us to find out which direction we'd turned when we left the driveway?  Whatever.  She came and got us. ❤❤❤

Monday was my cooking day, so not much stitching happened for me.  However I have managed to finish up some little things that I need for the guild meeting next Monday.

And for my other guild I've got the borders on these two donation quilts.  These have been hanging over my head since June.

Now I can start working on my own projects.  Or take another nap? 😁

Asparagus & The Cost of Groceries, and the Current Quilt

 FOOD

I'm currently at the beginning of a couple months where I will pick asparagus every day.

This week I've made:

GREEN CURRY CHICKEN WITH ASPARAGUS  DH and I don't find it hot, but if you're not used to cooking with a curry paste you may have a different experience.

ASPARAGUS & CHEDDAR QUICHE (this freezes quite nicely, and I use a homemade pie crust).

I have to admit to being SHOCKED when I saw this...

Holy Mackerel!  $7.99???  I had to employ my mental coping technique of adding an imaginary question mark.  

Apparently this will "mentally" put you back in control, at which point you can say "um, nope" and walk away without causing any embarrassment to yourself.

QUILTING

If you follow me on either Instagram or Facebook you may have seen my last few posts about working on this quilt.  The top was pieced by my program partner in the Binbrook Quilters' Guild.  She used this as the sample while she ran the Block of the Month program for the guild, so there will be several of these quilts completed by the members over the next little while (quilt pattern by Phoebe Moon Designs, with permission granted to us to run as a b.o.m.).  LINK.  

The guild is paying for all the materials, I'm donating the quilting, then the guild will donate the completed quilt to Glanbrook Community Services who will use it as part of their ongoing fundraising campaign. 

The last several days have found me working on computer designs to do the remaining quilting - the s.i.d. is pretty much complete, although I may do a bit more as I progress.  This is design version number...4?  It has taken an inordinate amount of time to figure out something here that made me happy.  There is a LOT of negative space on this quilt which will show off some beautiful designs, but I need to control that so it doesn't get too crazy/busy.  

I don't want it "quilted to death"  because that makes quilts pretty stiff.  This design should give me lots of quilting, but still leave the quilt with a nice drape. That inner white star that appears in the background is such a weird shape that it's been giving me fits. 

That's a terrible pic, I know, if you're trying to actually SEE what the quilting design looks like.  Sorry about that.  Anyhow... my basic plan was to stick to:

• straight lines
• feathers
• curls

Feathers are a little tricky sometimes because they're quilted in many different shapes, which can look (to me) like different shapes.  And that's what I'm trying to avoid... too many different things going on will ruin the cohesion holding the designs together.  The sashing design of pumpkin seed & line doesn't fit into my "plan", but it IS the same shape you see in the block pattern, so I'm calling that OK because it's repeating the same shape as something that's already there.  I may yet change the mid-size border design (curls & pearls) to something more... feather-ey.  I'll probably quilt other areas and leave that empty while I think on it.

BLOG POSTING

Why have I been gone since the end of December?  I dunno.  Had nothing to say?  Winter doldrums?  My brother being a stupid asshat and continuing to criticize me for no good reason, which put me in a crabby mood for months?  Sadly, yeah, I'm going with the brother theory.  He's my only remaining immediate family, and probably 50% of our conversations devolve into him giving me shit for something, or insulting either me or DH.  So once again I have had to put him on "ignore" status for the sake of my mental health.  If you have siblings who love and respect you I sure hope you appreciate how lucky you are.  Sigh.

 

I CAN'T leave this post with a tone of misery.  Here's one that makes me laugh at myself.  And that helps. 😄

Fall & Winter Projects

 I started this back in the summer, it became Part II of a wedding gift.  Cute - a modern version of Christmas trees.

The pattern is a freebee from Art Gallery Fabrics, "Tepee Adventures".  It's written as a lap quilt so I had to make more blocks and kind of re-jig things to get a queen size quilt.  Most of the fabrics came from my stash, with the exception of the backgrounds and the border, and I think a couple of fat quarters.

This was made as a gift for an animal lover.

All fabrics from my stash, although the dog panel was a recent bargain purchase that I couldn't (ahem, couldn't?) walk away from, at a quilt shop that was closing due to retirement.  Quilted with cute little paw prints, and very cozy with a flannel back.

More animal lover gifts.  These were packed up with some tea packets, chocolate balls, and a book for each.

These six quilts went to Martha House (a women's shelter in Hamilton).  I've been working on these throughout the year.  

• The cat quilt on the left was made from a panel that I picked up from the guild "take it" table.  
• The blues/yellows next to it was a guild demo for three-patch quilts, made from flying geese blocks.  
• Next the charm squares were pieced on Super Bowl Sunday, my annual project fueled by commercials, cocktails & frozen lasagne.  
• The reds/greens started as a layer cake from Missouri Star Quilt Company.  
• Next is another layer cake, which I WON at Missouri Star, pieced with a redrafted version of the Summer Slice pattern.  
• Far right is the original version of the Summer Slice pattern.  This was an example on using a border print fabric.

This Dream Big panel has been hanging on my flannel board for a few years.  Originally I put it there to give myself some Stand And Stare time.  After it had been there for about three years, though, I started to get a guilty conscience over the un-doneness of it.  

When the fearless leader of the Beach Girls announced an in-person SOLO meeting (Southern Ontario Longarm Operators) scheduled for November (the first one since the pandemic started), I was determined to bring this finished, because the program was Show & Share.

As it turned out, I barely got it off the machine the evening before the meeting.  I took it in all it's not-quite-finished ugliness, with excess backing & batting flapping in the wind.  Whatever.  It was quilted.

This whole thing was quilted by me, as in "hand guided", as in "no computer".  I don't generally work my creative brain cells this much, so I had to pull out some of my books:  Angela Walters, Renae Haddadin, Judy Madsen, as well as go through the zillion sheets of quilting doodles that I've brought home from classes over the years.

I'll give you closeups of each quadrant because Every. Single. Petal. was quilted differently:

And the back.  You can see the various thread colours I used to accentuate the petals.  The one thread I ended up not being happy with was the pale peach, it looks washed out.  The rest were all good.

Now remember:  common folklore tells you that however you start the New Year is how the year will progress.  It is crucial that you have your stitching project planned for Sunday!  I'll be doing my usual in person AND long-distance-via-email group sewing, with Chinese Food to follow.  Happy New Year. 🎇