What????

I am a Pisces.  I've always BEEN a Pisces.  But in today's newspaper it seems I have moved to an Aquarius.  Huh.  I guess I need to bone up on some different personality traits.

Traditional
Pisces Traits
Imaginative and sensitive
Compassionate and kind
Selfless and unworldly
Intuitive and sympathetic
Escapist and idealistic
Secretive and vague
Weak-willed and easily led

Traditional
Aquarian Traits

Friendly and humanitarian
Honest and loyal
Original and inventive
Independent and intellectual
Intractable and contrary
Perverse and unpredictable
Unemotional and detached

One UFO down and another started & Mom news

New UFO (well, actually now it's a TFUQ). This is the quilt I'll be teaching at Morning Out starting at the end of February. I saw this on Judy Laquidara's site and got her permission to write a pattern. I love the pinwheel blocks that look like ribbons around the outside.

This is a completed UFO. Yaaay. I did this after Christmas and now it's waiting for a home. The top was made by one of my customers - I gave her a grocery bag of my scraps and a few weeks later she brought me back two tops. It isn't particularly pretty but it has some really cute prints in it. Gives it quite a bit of charm.

And, on the MOM front: Mom finally has a bed at a long term care facility. In spite of the snow (!) we'll be moving her on Thursday. The new place is really nice, where she'll have a private room with her own bathroom and two choices of entree at mealtime. Even the front lobby is large and inviting with a big aquarium and lots of reading material. We have the moving plan figured out to (hopefully) cause the least amount of distress. I can't risk TELLING Mom she's moving because she will decide she is just fine where she is and she's not going anywhere! !. So I will bribe her (ok, lie to her) and tell her we're going out for lunch.  If you are silently tsk tsk-ing me, just wait until YOUR Mom is 90, then come talk to me.  My sister is meeting us at the new place and she will take over getting Mom settled and have lunch with her in the new dining room. While she is doing that, DH and I will go back to the old 'home' and collect her personal items & her chair & table and relocate them to her new place. At some point in there sis & I will be signing all the paperwork, which includes (seriously!) an authorization for the beauty parlour.  When I get home after that I will most likely fall into a pail of Vanilla Martinis (equal parts vodka and Navan liqueur {which you should only buy at the Duty Free because it is kind of expensive}).  I don't know who is going to do this for me when I'm old.  Kinda scary.

Something a little non-quilty

It's not ALWAYS about quilting around here.  Sometimes one of the neighbours comes over with a bunch of felt letters in a ziplock bag.  I figured that in my condition (see previous post) I would probably spell something wrong.  But no, everything looks ok.

DH is suffering from the plague.  Usually sick men, I mean they're usually sick, or all sick, or... I mean when they are UNWELL they are normally a big pain in the arse.  DH has been so sick he's either in bed or the bathroom.  Not much trouble at all.  I'm making the second pot of turkey soup tonight.  Thank goodness for Christmas leftovers.  I spent Boxing Day tearing apart the leftover turkey, making stock and four turkey pies for the freezer.  Handy, huh?  Yesterday I whipped up a batch of buttermilk & cheddar scones, which are mostly gone.  Tonight we will have to have brownies with our soup.  :-)

no template tutuorial & big sobby mess

When I need a shape I don't have, I make one out of paper.

Pin it on and stitch around it.

Here, I've filled in with Ribbon Candy.

Curlycue feathers around the outside.  Pretty.

The big sobby mess is me.  I'm a Pisces, so I'm emotional at the best of times.  

I have been trying to get my head around the most awful thing.  There was a murder last week - brutal, multiple stab wounds, sexual assault.  The victim was my high school physics teacher.  She was ... 73?  

I was in school for 14 years, if you include kindergarten.  I only remember 3 teachers.  (I apologize now, to all my friends and relatives who are teachers.  I know how hard you try.) Mr. Sabourin, the french teacher.  Mmm - school girl crush.  Mr. Dalgleish, my teacher for the 2 years I was in the enrichment program.  He used to do fun things with us, trying to keep our interest and challenge our thinking.  And Mrs. Gleave, rest her soul.

I have thought of that woman so many times over the last near 40 years it is silly.  I'm pretty sure everyone who knows me has heard me say:

     "I had a physics teacher in high school who always used to say 'a short pencil is better than a long memory' ".  She was SUCH a character.  Didn't think twice about embarrassing her students (me included).  But funny, too.  She used to check if we had comic books hidden behind our textbook if she actually caught us READING our textbook.  The only day she ever missed class was to stay home for the vet when her horse was sick.

My friend lost her husband to cancer a few days ago, much too young.  I feel so, so, sad for them.  Then the shock of the murder - it was just all too much.  I'm not sleeping well, I'm distracted, and still can't think about Mrs. Gleave without imagining the horror of her last hour on earth.  Then squashing out a few more tears.  I don't understand who would do that?  Why?  I just don't understand.  It is so senseless, and so ... permanent.  A life gone forever.

Your new year's video laugh

UFO Challenge & my New Year's Post

Check the UFO page (see above) for my January project.
While I was LOOKING for my January project I also found some more, um, treasures.  Seven more black & cream blocks (I thought I only had 5) which is changing my plan for that little UFO project.  And several extra blocks from our bed quilt (which has been on the bed since 2003).  I'm not sure what I will do with those, so I reburied them in the scary place where they came from.  Bad Helen, bad.

Today it's very warm (11 c.) and pouring rain.  But we have friends coming for dinner, so that will bring some sunshine, figuratively speaking.  The house is clean, I washed the car yesterday (hence the rain), and removed all the window screens and cleaned the windows.  That is a great way to start the new year.

Rabbi Bernard Baskin is a wonderful Hamiltonian who has an occasional article in the local paper.  Part of his latest column says the following:

"May you recognize the difference between what you will need and what you will want, and may what you want not spoil the delight of what you have."

That is definitely going up on my wall to keep me grounded this year.  Happy New Year to you.

Another Lantern Quilt

This is another Lantern Quilt made in the Morning Out class last winter.

I used so many tools on this quilt it was getting ridiculous.

• straight edge
• large circle template
• large oval template
• weird assorted curves template
• 1 1/2" straight line stencil
• chalk pounce pad
• tailors chalk
• tape measure
• and of course, the dreaded stitch ripper

I used a variegated thread in the lantern blocks and the borders.

The back is sooo pretty.

The last few days I've been trapped in the office working on the next quilt for Morning Out.  I took an afternoon/evening off and went out with a couple of my Red Hat gals to see The King's Speech.  Excellent movie!  The theatre was so quiet at some points I didn't dare stick my hand in the licorice bag.  Today I'm revising my UFO lists (OMG, that I even have more than one list.  sheesh.) so I can register with Judy Laquidara for a monthly UFO completion challenge.  I don't know if I can complete one per month, but I'll give it the old college try.