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!

WHY OH WHY DO I SET ANNUAL TARGETS???

 Sigh.  Every January for the past several years I've set some targets for the year ahead of me.  If you don't know where you're going, you will never get there, right?

• Lose 5 lbs.  ha ha ha ha ha...  To my credit, I DID lose 1.5 lbs.  However I have since located those pounds. 😒
• Reduce stash by 80 meters.  ha ha ha ha ha...  I would have been down 20 m., but a quilting buddy passed away and left me two totes that contained about 20 m. 😢
• Finish three UFOs.  ha ha ha ha ha...  Although, I did clean up some sh*t.  Does that count?

HOUSE BLOCK SWAP

I make five blocks every month, with something 'cute' in the window, and give four of them to the other gals in the group.  We have a target date of the 15th each month to have them pieced so they can (theoretically) be delivered by the end of the month.

My January blocks turned out kind of cute.  Dark & gloomy, but cute. I put the goofy faces in the windows because we are all going STIR CRAZY with this awful weather.

I told DH to put on 'real pants' one Sunday a few weeks ago, that we were going for a drive to get the heck out of the house!  As far as guild meetings go, I've had one hellish drive home in the dark from an evening meeting - when I got home I swore I was not doing that again.  In the future, questionable weather will mean I'm staying at home.  Then my daytime guild was postponed for a week because of a blizzard.  We'll see what February brings.

But...back to my blocks:  Since I've been inside, I figured I'd make the February blocks early.  Oh, very bad words.  I remade all the blocks - they were THAT BAD.

Bad blocks on the left, better blocks on the right.

And since my last post, my cooking has not gotten any better!  This was planned as our Christmas Morning Breakfast.  Yes, I'm aware that Christmas is now a distant memory but there hasn't been a lot going on - I'm trying very hard to keep you amused.  A lovely pan of cinnamon rolls.  I prepped them on the 24th - this is what they looked like after they rose.  At this point I put them in the fridge, with plans to bake in the morning.

6 am Christmas morning I took them out of the fridge:  Whoooaaa Nellie!!  WTF??  I was pretty sure that some alien from Planet Zyborg stole my cinnamon rolls and left these in trade.

I'd never heard of 'over-proofing'.  Apparently (?) that's what happens when dough rises too much, and then collapses on itself.  Hoping to spare you from experiencing my angst,  if you're refrigerating dough for baking the next day, DO NOT allow the second rise to happen - it will do that itself in the fridge.

I'm very grateful that DH has low expectations when it comes to my baking.  It has been a long-standing joke that when the smoke alarm goes off then supper is ready.  If you read my last post about my Red Hat lunch you'll agree that this 'joke' is sad, but true!

This, unbelievably, is what they looked like after baking.  And he ate them.  That, ladies, is true love.

I have since redeemed myself with a lovely ham quiche (recipe from Dairy Goodness - you know, the Milk Calendar).  The recipe is actually for Asparagus quiche.  You may have noticed that I've got no qualms about editing recipes to suit myself and my supplies.  😬

Then there's my favorite tuna casserole, with my normal changes/additions (recipe from the Looneyspoons cookbook.  Truly, in my opinion the Best.Cookbook.Ever.)

And I'm two steps closer to heaven after quilting a couple of Binbrook Guild donation quilts.

To end on a humourous (sp?) note:

Janice came by for tea yesterday afternoon.  I guess I was backlit by the sun - she started laughing.  Then told me, between giggles, that I had an inch long hair growing sideways out of my neck. I gave her a pair of scissors and she thankfully cleaned me up.

 

September...what??

 What happened to the past few months!  Well:

This was the last group project that I organized.  It was for the Binbrook guild and I had "planned" to do a demo on back-basting at the June meeting, to end the season.  All the background squares were either white, cream, grey, or black, with text of some kind.  All the center circle pieces were somewhere between yellow and red.

However, it was scheduled for the day I got home from Quilt Canada in Edmonton.

As you can guess, I did not make it to the guild meeting.  I also managed to pass the virus along to hubby, so we were both sick for a while.  Thankfully one of the other guild members came over and picked up all the supplies and filled in to do the demo on my behalf.  You've gotta love such willing partners.  And in truth, she knows the technique much better than I do anyways.

I was very well behaved in Edmonton and bought basically nothing.  A couple of thimbles and almost no fabric: only one fat quarter and one charm pak.  Lectures every day kept me busy, zipping from the show floor to the conference rooms and back.  Somewhere in there I managed to, ahem, drop my phone in the toilet.  Thankfully it was a CLEAN toilet.  Unused.  Putting your phone in your back pocket is not smart!  I heard the "clink" "sploosh" and thought What the hell? Hoo boy.

I took it apart and gave everything a shakeoff and wipedown, put it back together, then made a call to see if it worked.  That was the point when it occurred to me: I had a toilet-washed phone up at my face.  Eeeuw, gross.  Shudder.  After it dried out it has been working fine ever since.

Anyhow, continuing with the CQA, I've finished the mystery quilt they ran this past year.  I modified the size a bit and altered the border a bit.  Quilting still needs to be done but I'm glad the top is complete.  It certainly is RED.

I've also completed a little quilt using the sample blocks from a 60༠ ruler demo. Sooo often I cut all this stuff out, piece a bunch of blocks, present the demo, then throw everything into a box somewhere.  I've been pretty good this year about NOT leaving more UFO's than what I started with back in January.  I still have some stuff laying around from demos, but not as much as usual. 

Nina got some love from me and the clippers.  Dog grooming is certainly not a strength of mine.  Four and a half hours later...

The little quilt I pieced on SuperBowl Sunday was next up on my list.  All finished now.  I've got TWO charm paks to choose from for the 2025 event.  This size quilt uses 80 squares, so I buy one charm pak and then cut an additional 40 squares from my stash.

Aren't these the prettiest little glasses of flowers?  Cosmos.  So happy.  I needed two little centerpieces for our big social event of the summer.

We had DH's family here in August for a BBQ lunch.  There were 11 of us all together; long distances make these visits difficult to arrange.  I think we had at least three different dates on the calendar, changing from one to another then back again, before choosing another one.  Somehow the pandemic changed our habits and we don't have company the way we used to in the before times. Poor Nina has never seen that many humans!  After person number six showed up you could see her little brain saying "what the hell???".  This visit was especially great because DH's brother recently got married - it was so nice to spend some time with his bride and get to know her a bit.

This is my most recent finish.  I got involved in a challenge with some gals on a longarm forum I belong to.  This is a Potato Chip quilt, so named because you can't make just one.

There are a multitude of block layouts and colourations to work with.  I really like this dark/light version.  There's enough 'colour' in the dark blocks to keep it cheerful while still maintaining the DARK feel.  I'll get the binding on it in the next day or two.

This is a very s.c.a.t.t.e.r.e.d. post - I clearly have not been doing any writing for the past while.  The final update I'll give you today, which I know you are DESPERATE to hear about, is the zucchini. Well, I had three plants.  One of them died pretty early in the summer, leaving me with two plants.  I made an attempt to grow them up a trellis, which was not very successful, but it did keep them off the ground.  I have not been overrun with fruits, the plants have been very well behaved, producing a zuke every day or two.  I'll probably get some zucchini loaves made and put away for the winter but there shouldn't be much produce for shredding and freezing.  

The butternut squash, on the other hand, are big enough to kill someone.  Holy sh*t.

 

2024 In Pictures...

The apron I made for my egg-providing neighbour.  I know she appreciates these...I popped over there one day for a visit and she was wearing a tattered apron that I'd made her a couple years earlier.  Ever since then I make her a new one every couple years.

I'm lucky enough to have friends who I meet at Mapleview Mall for an irregular dinner date, maybe a half dozen times a year?  We met through our work at Royal Bank ...so many years ago I don't even want to think about it.  Somehow these new shoes managed to come home with me last night.

Today's completed wall hanging, not quite in time for Valentines - the hand stitching won't be finished, but I CAN take it to the guild tomorrow for Show 'n Share.  In the fall of 2021 when things were starting to open back up after the pandemic, our guild meetings were being held in the church gymnasium.

We all had L O T S  O F  R O O M  T O  S P R E A D  O U T.  

I couldn't book speakers at the time, so I did a lesson on one-patch quilts.  This is all 2.5" squares, from stash/scraps.  Any simple shape can be pixellated like this - it makes a fun, easy project.  The first one I made was a Christmas tree, but the heart has been on my to-do list for the last few years.

Did you watch the Superbowl?  My sewing machine was by the tv - I stitched during the "game", then watched the commercials and the half-time show.  I make this "Simply Squares" quilt every year during the Superbowl....it still needs two borders, then it will be ready for quilting.  I buy one charm pak, then cut up another 40 squares from my stash and use all 80 in this top.

I saw a quilt online that was made with those triangle blocks on the right.  I had to google the instructions, then I made a sample for myself.  This is another quilt in my "To-Do" file.

I unthinkingly put my hand up and volunteered to do a quilt ruler demo for my guild.  When I got home I realized that I had to MAKE something so I could do the demo.  This is a Double Four-Patch quilt and I really like the way it turned out - all scrappy, using light (all the creams), medium (all the yellow/golds) and dark (all the blacks).  Hey - did you notice that my NEW SHOES match this quilt?

I'm also doing the Mystery Quilt that is being hosted by the CQA.  Duh - the last mystery quilt took me 25 years to finish...is my head actually screwed on????  Instructions said "do not use directional prints" (whoops - my black is directional).  And "do not use large scale prints for the background" (whoops - my red has large snowflake-ey motifs in different colours).  Apparently I'm a rule breaker?

  

Knowing that I sometimes forget what my intention was when I put something in the freezer, I guess I recognized my limitations last fall, when I wrote the name & page of the cookbook.  lol...  The apples, btw, were from my same egg-neighbour. ❤

 Pretty, calm & sedate Coco.

Nina.  Hellraiser on four paws - now six months old.  My theory:  puppies only have two brain cells, and one of those doesn't work.

Lots of things to be grateful for so far this year. ❤

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? 😁

Things have to look up soon, right?? And random stuff.

 I bought a layer cake.  Well, actually I bought a lot more than a layer cake, but we'll leave it at that shall we?  At least this goes with a border print that's been in my stash for many years, AND I have a pattern that will work with all this stuff.  So it's good!  Well, except for the part where I'm not supposed to be buying fabric.  Ahem.

Even Coco thinks some of DH's t-shirts should go in the trash bag.

The last couple of weeks have been interesting. 

WEDNESDAY Aug. 23rd: I was half way through this quilt.  Then BAM the hydro went out while the quilting machine and the computer were all turned on.  No more work that day because the hydro stayed out until 8:30 pm.

THURSDAY 24th:  Quilting equipment was acting weird and kind of schizophrenic so I reached out to my support team.  They gave me a couple of suggestions which did not help.   Blecch.   Then 9:30 pm BAM the hydro goes out again.  And stayed out until 6:30 am, by which time the basement had flooded.  Because of course the generator decided to act like an asshole.

MONDAY 28th:  We had an outdoor guild meeting.  Just a nice social event to catch up and show off our summer stitching work.

TUESDAY 29th:  DH changes the start/stop switch on the quilting machine, and that seems to be the fix.  Yay!  Broken machines are very stressful.  Apparently the first hydro outage fried that little sucker.

FRIDAY Sept 1st:  I get an email from one of the guild members who was at the Monday get together.  Uh huh, she'd just tested positive for covid.

SATURDAY 2nd:  We had 1-800-LUKE and his wife here for dinner.  I spilled a whole mug of fresh HOT tea in her lap.  Oh, dear God.

SUNDAY 3rd:  The internet is out A.L.L.  D.A.Y.  Puhleeze... people can't live like that!!

Have you been reading news stories about how fast fashion is not sustainable and is really bad for the environment?  You may rest assured that that does not apply to me.

I made a lovely batch of Peach Marmalade.  One of the recipes without added pectin, where you have to watch the temperature and when the jam gets to a certain temperature it's ready to put into jars.  Uh huh...after I gave away two jars I decided to have some myself on toast.  Oy vey...that stuff is hard as a rock.