Two More "Same But Different", Movie, Book, Dog

 Here are two more quilts of the same pattern, but different colour choices.

The pink quilt got a fun back too - made with a floral panel.

Whenever I go to a quilt show I hang around the aisles where they've hung all the quilts that were made at a workshop, so you can see the "same but different" quilts.  I've learned a lot about colour by paying close attention to how other people make use of their fabrics.

MOVIE:

I watched West Side Story and did not enjoy it.  It was depressing.

BOOK:

I finished reading The Diamond Eye.  It was good.  Except for the people who died, everyone lived happily ever after.  ha ha ha

DOG:

OMG, Coco loves doggy daycare.  When I took her last week she was whining in the back seat all the way there.  I thought maybe she needed to poop and I almost stopped at the side of the road.  I didn't (see:  proof right there that I'm a bad dog mom).  When I got her out of the car at the trainers' she was CRAZY to go see the handler, wagging her non-existent tail, rolling over for belly rubs, and jumping up in excitement.  After my little burst of joy at her happiness, I felt a bit like chopped liver.  Sigh.  Taking here here (The Canine Bond) was definitely the right thing to do to help her get out of her anxiety after the traumatic move from Mexico.

Coco's the little one on the right, with one of her new friends. 

SOCIAL OUTING:

Yes.  I went OUT.  The Beach Girls met in St. Jacobs for a celebratory birthday lunch.  Afterwards we hit the outlet mall, and then drove three minutes over to the Market.  I've never been to the market that I can remember.  We got a bonus deal on blueberries so the next time you see me I might have a slight purple tinge. 

And speaking of food, I made a batch of DELICIOUS Maple Buttertart Bars.  If you're like me you might scratch your head a bit over the cranberries, but trust me - these are delicious.

What I should be eating:

A Black & White Christmas

Modern quilt, from a Drunkard's Path base.

Love the pillow ticking fabric.

Modern Dresden Fan.

The turquoise really pumps up the black & white prints.

Labyrinth quilt.  So graphic!

You don't dare mix up your piecing with this quilt.

I knocked off work at 2:30 pm on the 24th.  Went directly upstairs and cracked open the Baileys. 😁
DH and I had very specific plans for Christmas Movies this year.

• Dec 23rd - Diehard
• Dec 24th - The Sound of Music
• Dec 25th - The Grinch with Jim Carrey

I had never really thought of Diehard as a Christmas movie before.  But in fact, it takes place at a Christmas office party,  so I guess that qualifies it.  I was giggling at the 80's hair.  And startled to see people SMOKING IN THE AIRPORT. Wow, the good old days, eh?

DH has never (!) seen The Sound of Music.  He gave me a bit of stinkeye when he realized it was three hours long, ha ha ha.  But he was a trooper and sat through it. 💓

Today I started The Winter Project.  All three bedrooms need painting, so this afternoon I did the cutting in part on the first two, which are the same colour.  Tomorrow will be 'roller' day.  Room number three is the master bedroom, and it can't be started until a large hunk of drywall is replaced.  Bad windows were leaking for, like, 30 years.  That problem is finally fixed.  DH has torn out the bad drywall, but he had enough brains to stay away from the home improvement store today.  Also, it was pouring rain.  That is NOT a good day to bring home drywall in the back of a pickup truck.

When I'm working on a Project I am grateful for leftover turkey in the fridge.  We don't have to worry about cooking for DAYS.  When repeated turkey dinners get nauseating we can switch it up with either turkey pot pie, or shit-on-a-shingle (translation:  hot turkey sandwich).

Bear Paw Quilt and the First Cold of the Season

Isn't this a beautiful Bears Paw quilt?  I love the addition of trees in the border.

Stitch-in-the-ditch: the borders, the trees, setting triangles, sashing, perimeter of the bear paw block, and green ribbons.

Half inch straight lines in the background.  Motifs in all the pieced units.

With the colour variation between the brown border and the brown setting triangles, I treated them separately instead of quilting as all one unit.

Evergreens were added to the tree border, along with windy/cloud background fill.  In between the pieced trees there is a bit of grass quilted in to fill the spaces.

Beautiful back.

It is pretty traditional at all guilds (I think) to celebrate Christmas at the last meeting of the calendar year with some kind of food event .  Binbrook meets on the last Monday of the month, so our Christmas pot luck supper was on Monday, Nov. 28th.
Picture a line of banquet tables laden with food.  Platters, casseroles, crock pots, salad bowls, each with their own serving utensil.  Now... picture 20 or 30 ladies all lined up, filling their plates.

Are you with me so far?  Many women.  Each one touching every single serving utensil.  Is it any surprise that I woke up Friday morning with the beginnings of a cold?  😷
I've been drowning my poor body with lemon/ginger tea.  Onion soup.  Comb honey on toast.  On Sunday I slept until 10:15 am.  I know that humour is good for what ails you, so I spent last night watching and laughing through Bridget Jones' Baby. Today I was up at 3:00 am with a headache.  I will probably need a nap by 11 am.  However, SO FAR this has not progressed beyond the froggy/sore throat/slightly feverish stage.  I have another pot luck scheduled this week and a guild dinner next week.  I do not want to be sick!  I work in the basement.  Alone.  Generally feeling like a solitary cave-dweller.   I N.E.E.D. my social events.  Let's all send a rallying cry out to the Universe:  "Keep Helen Healthy!!!".  Thankyou. 💖

Circle Love, and Winterruption Recap

Mmm.  This is a wonderful, scrappy quilt.  The orange peel wedges were all hand appliqued.

I like the quilting design of the overlaid circles.

OMG.  I love the colours.

This quilt was crying out for a 'modern' quilting design.

WINTERRUPTION
The Beach Girls arrived Thursday,  noon-ish.  We headed over to Debbie's for lunch, then back here where the final straggler had arrived in our absence.  Thursday evening was cocktails, supper, and lots of catching up.  We haven't seen each other since our week in Tobermory last October.  My birthday will be this weekend so there was CAKE and PRESENTS.
Friday was shopping and lunch at IKEA, then big-box shopping at COSTCO.  After supper we watched ROOM which is a very disturbing story about an abducted teenage girl.
Saturday was stitch day.  I gave the girls a demo on how to attach binding using the longarm, then we headed out for supper to the Cornerstone restaurant.  They helped me check a year's worth of lottery tickets before they started expiring (which DH likes to buy but not check) ...sadly, we are still not rich.  The evening movie was The Intern.  A much more pleasant night time flic.
Sunday morning was sort through all the leftover food and repack the coolers for the various trips homeward.  Everyone was loaded up and gone by 10:30.  Poor Sadie didn't know whether to walk around looking for them, or just go to bed (having worn herself out mooching for scritches over the last few days).  She opted for bed. 

FOLLOWUP NOTES ABOUT THE WEEKEND

• I try to do a signature cocktail for our retreats.  This one was Maiden's Prayer using the Calgary boutique Gin.  Mostly a big hit!!
•  It seems that all of our pre-retreat talk about yoga was just that:  talk.  Although we did wear our yoga pants, we never managed to crack open a mat.  
•  Two hours later the discoveries of 'forgotten' stuff started.  There are two books still here, and a glass bowl with lid.  This always makes me laugh... we STARTED this weekend with items being returned from the Tobermory week.  I guess we will never learn.

Scrappy Split 9-Patch Quilt & Entertainment

As you know, I love scrappy quilts.  I could seriously keep this one.  It might be my favorite out of everything I've quilted this month.

Did you know I also love yellow?  If you've been to my house you'd have noticed that my living room is yellow.

In keeping with the sunny theme, I quilted this with butterflies, using thread in a mustard colour.

Several people have asked how the quilt sale went last week.  Well, it went.  I sold some quilts and DH sold one of his cute little Christmas trees.  I came out ahead, but not enough to make it worthwhile.  It was too much money, too much effort, and too stressful.  It's now on my list of "don't do again".  I am glad I made the attempt though, otherwise I would always wonder if I should have.

ENTERTAINMENT
Movies:  If you haven't seen The Martian yet with Matt Damon, you really should.  It's a great movie.
Books:  The Girl Who Saved The King Of Sweden.  A crazy, preposterous caper.  Very (!) entertaining.

A Christmas Story (the movie) and Annoying (!) People

Apparently, this is a movie that I have somehow never seen.
S.I.D. the borders, sashing, blocks.

My customer watched it so many times with her sister that she cannot STAND the movie.
X-hatch the upper and lower green leg lamp fabric.

But her sister LOVES the movie.
Christmas ornaments down the red sashing.  Outline and fill the leg-lamp panel, add lines to the lampshade, and curve-x-hatch the fishnet stockings.  Stitch along all those crazy circles in the background.

So this year, the sister will have a quilt to snuggle under while she watches the movie.
Outline quilt the words.  Background quilted with eyeball-ey style filler.  Stitch along the plaids in the narrow yellow border.

That is true, sisterly love.
Outline the pictures, straight lines in the 'word' blocks.  More eyeball-ey fill in the green background.

This should be a big hit on Christmas morning.
A special order border - lampshades - for the upper and lower red border.

I can hear you asking (or is it the voices in my head?) "What has her all riled up this week???"  Well.  We bought a new tv yesterday, to replace our 20-year-old Panasonic 32" GAOO.  That tv still worked great, but DH wanted some new technology.  As most men do.  There was no point trying to sell the old tv, but I am always keen to put stuff out at the road for free.  Since that tv is so friggin' heavy, DH and 1-800-LUKE got it onto a pallet, and DH got the tractor with forks (like forklift things) and forked that baby out to the road.  I added the sign "works fine" and took the clicker out.  Why do I always get the hard jobs???  So, not an hour later there is an old guy and his girl who stop and load this tv into their car.  Only they can't really lift it.  So they drop it.  And smash it to smithereens.  And leave that unholy mess in our  driveway.  Really?  Must people be such assholes?
Sigh.  The new tv is great, though.  And spending several hours with the best. nephew. ever. was a bonus.

A bunch of Pantos and a quiet Christmas

This is all pre-Christmas work.  I still have one on the frame that I hope (!) to finish today.

Beautiful oriental prints framed with black leading.

Yum. This looks very Japanese to me - Japanese quiltmakers like to make you look to find the piecing.

Ooh, very cute, girly, baby quilt.  I love those hot colours.

Nice quiet, soft-toned baby quilt.

Modern Irish Chain.

Scrappy baby quilt, quilted with hugs & kisses.

The family was all out of town at Christmas so DH and I sat around in our jammies for many (!) hours and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, fortified with lots of chocolate.  I tried to burn off a few calories by vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning some of the windows.  I think at some point we finally dragged our arses outside and went for a walk with Sadie.

The Universe decided that I needed just One.  More.  Gift.  The super-controversial movie The Interview mysteriously (ahem) showed up on our 'tv box', so we watched that Christmas night.  It was stupid - but funny/stupid.  As you may have figured out already, I have a pretty low threshold of humour.  DH is much more discerning (translation:  grumpy) and did not find the movie entertaining at all.  If I was the leader of a country, I would not be particularly happy to be presented in such an unflattering light, but that is just part of the job when you are a 'famous' person.  After all, we all DO have some control over how we are perceived.  Anyhoo - I don't know if I would pay full price to see this at the show, but it was fun nevertheless.

Appliqued Hearts & Technology Overload

Such a pretty, girly quilt.

Appliqued hearts mixed with embroidered butterflies & dragonflies.

The outer border is quilted with a feather & flower pattern.  The green border is butterflies.  The inner pink border is a filled diamond.  Inside the body of the quilt is a heart pantograph.

Real purdy on the back, too.

I have been spending countless hours updating all of our internet settings, getting rid of our old @shaw.ca email and resetting everything to our @gmail.com addresses.  Good Lord.  Between all my google stuff, including the blogs, and our online shopping stuff, and the internet banking, and the forums, and Yahoo, and, and, and, and...  I still have 8 or 9 accounts to update, so I could be sitting here for another couple of hours.  While I'm at it I should probably put some new head shot photos in, too.  You know, a lovely one that highlights my wrinkles and grey hair so nicely.  ha ha ha.

Why was I doing this, you ask?  We have switched our internet provider over from Rogers and gone to Detour Wireless.  Anyone living in the area will understand why.  Mountain Cable was a little company that had the BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE, EVER!!  But damned if it wasn't bought out by Shaw, who's customer service stank.  Then that little pipsqueak of a Shaw area was bought by Rogers.  Rogers f*cked everything up so badly that many customers have run for the hills, including us.  Because I am getting tired of changing my email address from one service provider to another (yes, I also now have ANOTHER email address from detourwireless) I thought I'd just stick with gmail. 

While all this has been going on, my darling nephew 1-800-luke has also been updating our entertainment computer connected to the tv, because it crashed last week.  I've been going through withdrawal without my tv shows, for a whole week.  Waa, waa, waa.  DH and I actually went to the movies.  We saw Gone Girl, which was an excellent movie.

All this upheaval has happened co-incidental with Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  I've been purchasing and downloading new patterns for the IQ, as well as searching for a new tablet (since ours is getting a bit, um, cranky).  Geez Louise.  I just want to go chill out with crayons for a while.

One Custom, One Pantograph

This was an interesting quilt to work on.  The maker added trapunto batting behind the ladies in the alternate blocks.

I stitched around the ladies, really close to the design lines, and they pouffed up beautifully.

I love working on bright quilts on nasty, grey, winter days.

The pantograph is a perfect match for the appliqued flowers, and the variegated thread works really well with the quilt design.

Yesterday DH and I had a date with 1-800-LUKE and his wife for an afternoon matinee and then dinner.  We went to see Saving Mr. Banks, with Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson.  Good movie - I give it a 2 kleenex rating.  I was born in 1956, so Mary Poppins came out when I was 8 years old.  I grew up on Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.  And I can spell it, too.  (ha ha)  I was tsk tsk-ing through the whole flic over the author's nasty behaviour with the Disney writers.  Spoiler alert:  they all live happily ever after in the end.

Afterwards, at dinner, DH made some joke about being a sensitive man.  Then I said that Nick Lowe has a song called Sensitive Man.  I was in love with Nick in my 20's when he released Pure Pop For Now People, and I guess I'm still in love with him today.  I just discovered that he was married to Johnny Cash's daughter.  Huh.

Stack 'n Whack

This was the scene out the front window last Sunday.  Wow.

OK, here's the S'nW.  Too cute - bug fabric.

I added butterflies to stay with the insect theme.

A nice pinwheel design went in the pieced blocks. 

The cast on my arm is making stitch-in-the-ditch and all other ruler work very difficult.  whine, whine, whine  The quilt I'm working on right now is pretty small and has LOTS of s.i.d., so I can't work too long.  I would have put it off, but it is a birthday present for this gal's sister, and since the birthday is one day before (or after?) mine (which is on Feb. 27th, if you want to send me something, ha ha ha) I feel like I really need to get it done. 

So, last night DH and I watched yet ANOTHER movie.  The Paperboy with Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman, John Cusack, and Zac Efron.  Interesting movie.  Includes sex and violence and impossible to understand dialogue.  I turned on the closed captioning half way through because I was missing most of the story.  Yes, it was worth the $5 rental fee, but honestly - turn on the cc at the beginning. 

So far, since I've broken my wrist, we have watched Life of Pi, Skyfall, Silver Linings Playbook, Perks of Being a Wallflower, Taken 2, To Rome With Love, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Hope Springs, The Bourne Legacy, The Words, and Looper.  And I've watched season 1 of Downton Abbey.  I have a permanent divot in the couch.  And I miss cooking.  Really.  :-) 

I'm making progress though.  I cut my own meat at the guild dinner Wednesday night, and I did a piss-poor job of vacuuming yesterday.  Today?  Who knows what mischief I can come up with.  Maybe I'll clean the tub.