Today has been one of those days where there just isn’t much of anything to post. I drove to Little Rock this morning for short little visit to my specialist – I have no problems going on but because of medication that I take I have to be checked out every 3 to 6 months. My daughter was working today so I couldn’t visit with her so I went around to a few shops after the doctor visit was over – which went so fast this time and even the lab was not backed up and got in and out so fast it was amazing.
I just wasn’t in a shopping mood – most likely because as I mentioned I want to control my spending so I can let loose in mid April when I go to the quilt show 
I stopped in Hobby Lobby for a little bit to see if the bigger store had different items than our smaller store does here – it does found lots of things that were nice but I didn’t really need and no place to put them if I had bought them! From there I went to McAlister’s Deli for some lunch. I had not been there before and I loved it. I will have to stop there again another time. Wonderful sandwich – pastrami on rye with spicy mustard! Tasted wonderful. From there I went to a store called Garden Ridge. There are not a lot of these around, it is fairly new to Arkansas and the Little Rock store is the only one in the state. They have tons of inexpensive dishes, pots for plants, lawn cushions, some bedding and towels, a little bit of everything. At that store I did buy a new umbrella for the patio table seeing as they had so many to choose from. The one I had doesn’t tilt and I wanted one like that to block the late afternoon sun when it gets to be summer. They had some that tilted and in all kinds of colors and not very expensive – that was the only thing I bought all though there was tons of stuff I would have liked to have gotten – I was good and passed on all of them.
From there was just one more stop before home and that was Sam’s Club (like Costco) -a big warehouse box store. I like to stock up on the big bundles of things that we go through a lot, like popcorn, granola bars, laundry soap, and some food – like big packages of meat to put in the freezer.
And that was my day. I got home by mid afternoon and got started on the laundry and worked on my small quilt some. I am coming along really well on that small quilt. I am almost to the final border and I will get to that maybe tomorrow evening. Oh I did pick up a couple more of the cardboard decorative boxes (cheap) at Hobby Lobby that I use for my scraps but these are for various odds and ends in the sewing room. I cleaned out the two drawers in my cutting table this evening and have those boxes label so I know what various junk is in them and now my two drawers are nice and neat. I have one box left to put some of the scraps in seeing as I haven’t been able to close a couple of the boxes after the last time I rummaged through them. That can wait for tomorrow.
Would you believe we might get snow on Friday! spring where are you!! I thought that if I picked up the umbrella for the patio table maybe it would encourage spring to come along faster don’t know if that will work!
I know a lot of you quilters are also lovers of books. I have to share the name and author of the latest book that I just finished and could barely put down until I finished it. I have been reading it since last night and finished it a moment ago! The author is Nevada Barr and the book is called 13 1/2. If any of you have read her books in the past you know she normally writes a series about a woman park ranger and national parks — this one is so totally different you wouldn’t believe it. It is a novel and not her regular character and regular story line – totally different subject and characters – although murder still plays a large part in this total psychological thriller. I think I figured out the twist about a third of the way into the book. Check her out at this link : Nevada Barr
Another author that I love has a new book coming out in the middle of May - John Sandford newest in the Prey series “Storm Prey“. Sometimes I check books out at the library and some I buy – this is one author that I buy all of his books – I have one shelf devoted to his books I can never put them down until I am finished with them it seems. I can’t wait for the new book to come out. I know some people do not re-read books. I really can’t figure that one out. When I find a book that I really enjoy I tend to go back to it. I have some books on my shelves that I have probably re-read more than 3 or 4 times over the years. I have read the entire Prey series 3 times I think. But then I am the same with movies too and can watch a movie over and over again and enjoy them years later as much as I did the first time.
I am constantly looking for new authors to read as the authors I like can’t keep up with me LOL. I think I read as much as I quilt. And talking of quilting I made a start on the Devil’s Puzzle quilt last night before I picked up the book! Good thing or I wouldn’t have gotten any quilting done last night.
Of course I am now done with the 3 books that I checked out of the library early in the week – I did a lot of reading this week – and now I have nothing for the rest of the weekend until I can go to the library again on Monday - I guess I will have to let my fingers go walking through the books on the shelves and see what it will be for the rest of the week – but I think I will go get some quilting done first
Nothing like a fresh bouquet of flowers to make it feel like spring even though it is nowhere near! Still chilly, still snow on the ground (granted not much), a little windy — no daffodils open even though there are buds. So to bring a touch of spring into my house some fresh flowers on the table in a spring like jug.
My spring flowers
Now I will get off of the computer and spend the rest of the evening working on quilts and watching the Olympics -
I was going to try to get done with my Star Crazy blocks today but I just didn’t get them all finished. I will finish tomorrow for sure. I have all of the half square triangles finished after a mild panic attack when I thought “oh no I made them the wrong size“!! that kind of panic attack. I started to divide the blocks up looking to see what I had and looking to see if I had enough to make the stars and it was like “huh” ok I have the ones for the stars so what’s up with the extras. Then I looked at all the directions again, all the papers – and I realized all was ok, I needed to make 2 inch hst’s to be finished at 1 1/2 inches. I just looked at the sizes wrong or something and thought they were too small for some reason. So all is well that ends well – it just gave me a mild head ache and I decided to quit for the evening!! I will post a photo tomorrow of the February blocks after I get the two star blocks done. Everything is cut out and ready to go.
I am making this quilt a scrappy quilt — what else with all these scraps of mine. Here is a look at my scraps:
This is what is in one box. Lot's of pieces some really small some reasonable size. Some of them are very, very long strips folded up that came off the ends of quilts when I was getting ready to put binding on so they are very long. Some are the size of maybe 6 x 8 inches and some are about 1 1/2 inch square! Use able considering the star crazy quilt has Irish Chain blocks in them too and they call for 1 1/2 inch squares!!! When I packed all my scraps in the boxes I pressed them all and trimmed the edges on some to make squares or rectangles. I tried to get them in some kind of order. Before the boxes I had them all over flowing two baskets and I couldn't seem to find anything and had no idea what I had. Now I can open a box and lift things out and kind of see what I have better than I did before. (kind of LOL )
I am not sure how all those pieces got in one box when I tried to repack it I couldn’t get it all to fit and had to take them out and try again and the lid is still not sitting on it tight!! All of these boxes are full:
Seven boxes counting the one that was on the table when I took this photo. One day I need to reorganize the boxes as there is room for a label on the front of the box. I want to divide by color and label the boxes so I will know what is in each box. I need to get more boxes too so these won't be crammed so tight and of course because I am always getting more scraps. Of course then I will need to find more space to stack them which will mean rearranging the shelves again.
These boxes are a good size for storage on the shelves and decorative too. The boxes are 11 x 8 inches and are 4 1/2 inches deep. I find them at Hobby Lobby over towards the scrap book section but not quite with those things. I think these boxes were meant to keep photos in them.
Ok I haven’t made any snowmen even though we have enough snow to do so. It would have made a good one a couple days ago but now it is starting to get kind of crunchy. On my way home though I snapped this photo from the car – I was only a mile or so from the house but I had several cars coming up behind me and no safe place to pull out because of the snow so this one isn’t as great as it could be. This photo of snowmen though will show you that we had plenty of snow available to make them! I wish I had thought quicker to zoom in.
so unique - so tall and skinny, I don't think any children live at this house - maybe visiting grandchildren? or maybe the older couple that live there got out and had some fun?
We still have plenty of snow, it has been cold and although it melted off of the roads it is still on the trees and grass. Luckily we did not have to even think of shoveling out our driveway. It is not all that long of a drive and we kind of just crunch it down with the vehicles and wait for it to melt. I do shovel off a little path in the middle of the day though off of the decking so it won’t get slippery. I say “I” because Mike is working long hours right now and we are only talking of a little bit of snow and a small area.
This afternoon I hope to start cutting out pieces for the Star Crazy February blocks. I have everything printed out and ready to go. Late start though as I had an eye doctor appointment earlier and then the fitness center so just got home a short while ago. Did you all know that as you age it is not uncommon for your distance vision to improve but of course your close up vision gets worse! I have been wearing glasses for almost 40 years and this is the first time he has ever seen any improvement in my distance vision and said that occasionally happens as we age. Of course he needs to make the bifocal part stronger – can’t have it perfect! I will pick up new glasses in about 10 days. A little bit of a new style but not drastic. Maybe I will be able to see my applique stitches better!
Oh well I am getting ready to go through fabric for the star crazy blocks I hope to have photos tomorrow.
I managed to get a lot of applique done yesterday while I was home from the snowy day and then this evening finished up one of the four borders. It is coming along nicely. Of course I didn’t work on any other projects other than 45 minutes of quilting on the Christmas Quilt last night. Today was a boring day, nothing happening here I cleaned house, cleaned the snow off of the car (that took awhile as soon as I would clean part of it of snow a wind would come up and blow snow off of the trees and back on the car!). I went to the fitness center and the grocery store. I came back home and worked on the applique.
It was an average day in my life! Nothing new to report – it was just one of those days. No photos today. We did not get any more accumulation of snow yesterday and ended with close to 6 inches. I will try to remember to take my camera with me tomorrow and maybe get some snow shots before it melts – which will be this weekend I guess. The next couple nights are to be very cold but by the weekend back to the mid-40’s and melting begins once again.
It was nice to have so many people drop by this week and participate in my give away. So many have contacted me during the week with e mails and it is very interesting to hear about what everyone is working on and to find out where you are all from. The only problem with a give away though is that not everyone leaves an e mail address for contacting you back. When you leave a comment if you want an answer you need to have your settings right. So far I have not heard back from Rebbecca Potts Baker one of the winners from my give away. Rebbecca I have no way to get in touch with you as you didn’t leave a e mail address. Hopefully you will come back to check who the winners of the give away are and claim your prize. Contact me at k@pddoc.com If I don’t hear from Rebbecca in five days or so I will go through the random number selector and pick someone else.
I took a day off from working on my patches and circles yesterday and got back to it today. Making progress but anything to do with me and sewing machines moves slowly because I keep taking so many breaks here is what I have so far:
this is 25 blocks across right now and nine rows finished. I have another 3 rows in the process of as you can see. The total body of the quilt will be 25 rows by 25 and then some kind of border around that. I plan to get a little more work done on it this weekend and hopefully get the main part of this quilt done next week and then start on a border.
Here is the progress on the Little Brown Bird block that I started working on the other day. It will have some flower blossoms scattered on it over the wreath and a little embroidery. Right now the brown background shows through the light side a bit but I don't think this will be noticeable when I get the flowers on it too. Once it is quilted for sure I think it will be fine. This is a 9 1/2 inch block.
I’m not sure what we are doing this weekend. Sounds like we might have more rain tomorrow – I hope it waits until evening and the day will be pleasant. I need to start looking for a new microwave oven. Ours technically is not really all that old but it has not been working well recently and last night burned a hole through the bag of popcorn on the same setting it is always set at!! That shouldn’t have happened. Also some other things have not been cooking at the normal amount of time and I have been having to constantly adjust the time. I looked briefly at some a month or so ago but held off. I think this weekend we will find a new one. I don’t need anything fancy – we only use the microwave for reheating leftovers and making popcorn, defrosting frozen items and things like that. This is only the second microwave we have had! The first one lasted forever it seems, much longer than this second one did.
What with having the design wall in the living room and the sewing machine down the hall in the sewing room I have gotten a process down for working yesterday and today. I find that my little sand paper board that I use for my Dear Jane pieces works well for this too.
I bring my 12 inch square in the living room and put 9 blocks on it to sew together to make a 9 1/2 block. This helps me keep them in order.
after I sew the blocks together I immediately take it over to the cutting table where I cut and press. Here is the block pressed. Then I remove the pressing mat and my cutting mat is underneath.
square it up with my 9 1/2 inch ruler. Immediately take it back to the design wall and press it in place and start over again.
this is what I have gotten done with so far yesterday and today.
close up of the blocks - this will indeed be a colorful scrappy quilt.
Now we all know that I’m not happy unless I am working on several things at once. I have to have some hand work handy and I am taking a couple days (weeks?) off of my second Dear Jane “Insanity Revisited” and I was itching to get started on the applique quilts I intend on starting this year. So last night I bit the bullet and got a Little Brown Bird block prepped and got started while I was watching TV and finished with the patches for the evening – I don’t like to use the sewing machine while the TV is on – I can’t concentrate that way.
here is the first Little Brown Bird block that I am working on. This first part is reverse applique. Maybe you can see the design traced on? It is in light gray chalk. Scattered over the wreath will be three or four flowers. I'm not sure what colors I will have them, they all have some embroider on them I believe. I got started on this one last night.
It has been very nice outside since Sunday or maybe it was a couple days before that even? We took a walk on Sunday and the turtles were out it — was so nice. Today was even nicer! 68 degrees of course we are supposed to maybe have storms tonight and tomorrow in the 50’s – oh well, nice while it lasted.
Turtles on the log
I'm not sure what these berries are that were growing on the side of the trails, but they are pretty. These two outside photos were taken at the nature trail near by.
Been busy, busy here. I tend to feel like I am starting to go in circles and that I am a half square triangle! Don’t you just hate those things sometimes! the hst’s I mean. I am working on the Star Crazy quilt trying to not get left behind in the dust and keep up with the monthly obligation of the monthly assignment. But ran into a problem. The instructions right off the bat tell you to make sure that you have your printer settings at full size no scaling. I checked– it was right – no scaling, full size. Well something is off because I started to make my hst’s and then decided to put one star together just to see what it looked like and the hst’s were too small! Not by a lot but enough to make a difference if you know what I mean. After a lot of measuring to see what the problem was I found that the print out for the paper piecing of triangles is 1/16th of an inch off – too small.
After some playing around with it I think I have it figured out – not the printer – my patterns – I am having to make all of my seams less than 1/4 inch if I want to use the patterns and not have to cut a bunch of strips ect., to do it the other method. So by the end of the day I managed to have some of my half square triangles finished and I needed a break so quit for the rest of the evening.
my scrappy color choices for the beginning of this part of the quilt and a pile of triangles that I will get the paper off of this evening, press and then square up because now they need squaring up because I have made the seams less they are not all the same size - but they will be size they are supposed to be!!
I have been continuing to work on my other quilt that has 4 patches and appliqued circles. It is coming along nicely!
My box of 328 four patches. I only needed (I think) 317 but I went ahead and made some extra - just in case needed to swap out because of colors next to each other that you don't want next to each other
You can see that the Moda Sampler box is starting to look empty compared to the full box I started with. The two zip lock bags contain a total of 220 appliqued circles, about a hundred left to do. They are actually going rather quickly (until today that is when I devoted almost a whole day to Star Crazy)
I did take a little time off today to clean house and to meet two old friends for lunch. I used to be on a bowling team – Mike and I together – we quit bowling about 4 years ago and I’m afraid I have just about lost touch with some old friends. Time flies doesn’t it, you don’t mean to neglect friends but if you don’t have a lot in common other than one activity you tend to do so it seems. We had a good visit over Chinese Food and then I got back home to work on these hst’s!
I love the recipe for the bread that I made last night. It baked up really well.
Makes two nice size loaves
slices up well and was not too dense but looks like just the right moisture - I sometimes have trouble with wheat breads being too dry.
Honey-Oatmeal Wheat Bread
2 cups warm water (100 to 110 degrees)
3 tablespoons molasses (I used Blackstrap)
1 envelope active dry yearst
3 cups flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup regular oats
1 cup granola
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 cup honey
3 tablespoons olive oil
combine the first 3 ingredients and let sit for 5 minutes. Beat the yeast mixture with 1 cup of flour, honey, and oil at medium speed until well blended. Gradually add the whole wheat flour, oats and granola until a soft dough forms. Turn the dough out onto the floured board and knead in the rest of the flour. If too dry put a couple tablespoons of water onto the dough and keep kneading it until it is smooth and elastic. Cover the dough and put in a warm area to rise until double for about an hour or two. Punch the dough down and divide in half and form into loaves. Place in two greased bread pans and let rise again for about 45 minutes to an hour or until doubled in bulk. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. (I found this recipe in a Southern Living Magazine last year)
I finished my sweater yesterday. As I had mentioned I don’t like the way it turned out. The sleeves are way too long, and my arms are thin so the sleeves are way too bulky. It kind of bunches up under the arms so is not comfortable. I didn’t like how the neckline turned out so I crocheted a neck on it but it was too wide and gaped open so I braided some yarns and strung it through it so it could be pulled tighter I doubt I will wear it but it was a good learning experiment! It is just too big and bulky in the arms to be comfortable and like I say the sleeves are too long and not tight enough to push the sleeves up and keep them up!
I cut my face out of this photo because I had a really weird look on my face you can see how long the sleeves are - it doesn't look bad for a first attempt in my opinion - and I would wear it and maybe I will from time to time, but the sleeves just aren't comfortable. I made it out of cheap yarn because it was an experiment so I didn't waste any money. I think I will stick with scarfs, wrist warmers(fingerless gloves) and maybe try a cotton sleeveless sweater for summer instead! The sleeves really screwed it up for me.
On the weather topic - I took this photo first thing this morning - a big 6 degrees outside and next to the door it was only 62 in the house - the heat pump is working steady and I have the oven on the automatic cleaning cycle as it needed to be cleaned and it helps heat the house for awhile today too. I find winter is the best time to clean the oven! It is up to 9 degrees now but will stay very cold today and again tonight and tomorrow - I think it should get back into the 30's on Sunday.
