laundrocat

'nuff said

plop plop fizz fizz

i dunno if it was the corned beef and veggies or the beer bread or the bread pudding ... maybe it was because i didn't wash it all down with irish coffee or red wine ... or i may have angered the saints by insisting that they share the day ... whatever ... my insides are really, really angry with me today and it feels like there is a little man sitting on my head and pounding away at my skull with a sledge hammer ... anywho ... this is what i worked on last night for the Friday Night Sew-In...half full or half empty?

this is the first of twenty-four or so embroideries that i will need to stitch for what i want to do with the paper-pieced BOM sampler blocks...i'm a little teapot - short and stout
the quilt shop is not selling the fabric that is used in the blocks because then they wouldn't have enough for the BOM kits ... i gotta say if i was a quilt shop owner and i went to the trouble of making kits and demonstrating techniques and opening the doors early for an extremely low fee that didn't even cover the cost of the fabric in order to get people into my shop so they would spend money i would make sure that i had supplies on hand for my customers to buy in order to finish their blocks into a quilt of some kind ... the same thing happened with the Saturday Sampler 2 blocks - they stopped carrying the coordinating Lakehouse fabrics two months into the club ... i dunno ... maybe the other quilters are there just for the camaraderie and tips on technique and not for a finished quilt ... anywho ... i ordered the white on white looping daisy Maywood fabric on-line from The Tattered Rabbit and received very good service, by the way ... the design is traced from Aunt Martha's Hot Iron Transfers ... which i now have beau coup of cuz i couldn't decide what i wanted to stitch and there didn't seem to be 24 of any one thing ... most are related designs in groups of 7 or 9 or 12 ... so i'm gonna combine teapots and teacups and maybe reverse some of the designs in order to have enough alternate blocks ... whaddya think?

Auntia is doing a really cool sumpin sumpin with her paper-pieced blocks ... she'll be posting for the Friday Night Sew-In later today
and now i'm gonna go be miserable somewhere else

open mouth ... insert foot

last saturday was the Saturday Sampler 3 meeting at TQS ... i had to go alone on accounta Auntia's allergies kept her down and out for the count ... believe it or not i actually got myself out the door on time and into the shop with five minutes to spare ... there were plenty of seats to choose from and i plopped myself down in the front row on the end toward the door just in case i needed to make a quick getaway ... Peggy Money Penny always saves seats in the back row for her friends and she shouts to them as they walk in the door
i saved you a seat!
which is a nice thing to do i guess but it doesn't leave much of the back row for anybody else ... that's where the chairs with cushions are - which means that the rest of us have to warm up metal chairs with our bottoms ... anywho ... i had settled into my chair and the seat was finally warmed up when More Than A Gardener came in five minutes late with her little grandson ... she stood in front of me and said that she wanted to sit close to the door in case the little guy became rowdy during our meeting ... i was busy trying to make myself non-threatening cuz i don't think there's a much scarier sight than a bunch of women wielding rotary cutters early on a saturday morning - especially if you're just a little guy with More Than A Gardener for a grandmother and admiring the purple binder that the quilter sitting next to me had for her notes ... i think that More Than A Gardner must have gone on for a bit about needing to sit by the door ... but it didn't occur to me that she actually wanted me to move from what she must have perceived as prime real estate till she got exasperated and huffed over to the other side of the room ... in the meantime ... Peggy Money Penny shouted
where's your other half?
and it took me a minute to understand that she was talking to me about Auntia ... so i explained that Auntia was under the weather
you're always together!
well ... she is my daughter and we do live in the same house and we do both quilt
do you know how lucky you are?!?
ummmm ... yes ... i do
then we started talking about mothers and daughters and quilters and non-quilters and we discovered that both of our mothers think that quilting is odd ... and we talked about what would happen to our stashes and our UFOs and WIPs and PhDs when we're gone ... i said that Auntia always asks me
do i get this when you die?
and Peggy Money Penny said that her children already know what to do with her quilts - they go with her to the grave ... it was the longest conversation that i've had with Peggy Money Penny in the past two years ... her friends started to show up ... she turned her back to me and shouted
i saved you a seat!
and then the meeting started ... Sheri did her demonstration for this month's block ... More Than A Gardener let the little guy wander around and he came this close to smacking his head against the light box and other sharp objects five gazillion times and she said that his parents are in Florida for a week and he is running her ragged ... one of the other quilters had five of her grandchildren visiting for the month and entertained us with stories about red and green crayons on the counter and one of the kids telling his mother that Granny made a dog bed for him to sleep in - which was actually a human bed with 101 Dalmation sheets - and how much she loves having her little visitors and how glad she will be when the month is over ... and More
Than A Gardener said that she raised three boys and blah blah blah ...... and then it was time for show and tell ... Peggy Money Penny showed her quilt top from the first Saturday Sampler ... it was lovely ... autumn-colored batiks and an interesting setting that complemented the twelve blocks ... i said that it would be perfect in my living room
this is for my mother and you can't have it!
ha ha ha! do i get it when she dies?
keeping our earlier conversation in mind - it was kinda funny ... but Peggy Money Penny's friends hadn't been around for our earlier discussion and they gasped ... audibly
ummm ... gulp ... er ... ummmm ... sorry ... my bad
sometimes i wish i had the ability to highlight/delete the stupid things that come out of my mouth ... if Auntia had been there she would have been nudging me to shut up ... and then she would have sighed and said something like
mom!!! i can't take you anywhere!
or
hey!!! that's MY line!!!
sigh...

anywho ... i finished the paper-pieced BOMs and the SS3 BOM yesterday...i had to turn the picture over cuz the SS3 block was upside down
the blue and white blocks are Gentleman's Fancy and North Wind ... and now i'm gonna go get some corned beef and veggies and a piece of beer bread ... maybe if i keep my mouth filled with food i won't say anything stupid

the feasts of saints joseph and patrick

today is st. joseph's special day and i am gonna celebrate by baking some bread pudding ... i guess that chunks of bread are close enough to bread crumbs, right? and i should probably find something red to wear ... i'm gonna just say no to the fava beans, though

st. patrick's day is Auntia's favorite holiday and she has been celebrating for the past week...my two wee lassies
i wore my who's your paddy? shirt ... and Auntia started out with the green hoodie ... she changed her outfit at least three times on wednesday ... she has too many green-shamrock-kiss-me-i'm-irish-blarney-stone outfits to wear in just one day ... she even shared two of her hats with NoJo and Gumdrop... LuLu has about had it with those sproingy shamrocks
they wore them to school ... hats aren't allowed in the building except on holidays - there were lottsa santa hats around christmas - and my grandkids were the only ones with st. paddy's day hats ... Auntia has a green piggy bank that she's saving pennies in for her trip to ireland someday ... you'd think the woman was more potatoes than pasta, wouldn't you? well ... it just isn't so ... and LuLu likes to give it kisses...that does not resemble the blarney stone in the slightest
i didn't make it to the grocery store last weekend and there was no corned beef in the freezer ... there was a can of beer left in the back of the fridge from the six pack that Michael Myson bought for beer bread last year ... but i didn't get the beer bread made, either ... i did manage to defrost the package of green-tinted snoballs that i found in the freezer ... and Auntia baked some very special brownies (no - not that kind) from a recipe that she found on the land o'lakes website ... we drank irish coffee heavy on the irish and ate the brownies for dinner ... i heard Auntia mumbling something about what kinda feast was it gonna be without corned beef and beer bread and i thought the kinda feast that doesn't make the house reek ... anywho ... yesterday i went out and bought corned beef and cabbage and potatoes and green powdered sugar donuts ... the corned beef is finally on the stove - making its presence known by the nasty smell of boiling meat and foamy scum ... i like corned beef, but i think someone else should do the cooking for me - and soon after i've boiled the h-e-double-hockey-sticks out of it i will put it in the crock pot and slather a glaze all over it ... then i will stir up a loaf of beer bread and bake it next to the bread pudding ... i think that saints should play nicely together

tonight is the Friday Night Sew-In ... my jammies are already calling to me

what's in a name?

the nominees for the new name for Mr. Husker's Homestead were...

Home on the Range
John Doe on a John Deere
Duane's World
Homeward Bound
Pay Dirt
Wally's World
Rocky Mountain Way
Rocky Mountain High
Across the Universe
House of the Rising Sun
Guess He'd Rather Be In Colorado
Farmer in the Dell

and the winner was ... none of the above

after hours and hours of deliberation and giving up on ever finding an appropriate name that wouldn't offend any one of the very few people who might even care ... i called my mother ... and did not talk to her about the quilt at all ... she thinks naming quilts is about as important as making them ... which would be not too ... she talked about what a bum deal life is in general and how messed up her world is in particular and i listened to her in a half-hearted kinda way ... and when we hung up i remember thinking that she is living in a very different world than mine ... cuz my world is pretty doggone wonderful ... warts and all ... and i went on with my evening ...... and then i realized i was humming my very most favorite Louis Armstrong song...

What A Wonderful World

i have to agree with Annemiek ... inside my head it will always be Mr. Husker's Homestead

and ... so ... that's the new name

i used the leftover fabric from the University of Nebraska flag to make a cover for it...Doogal was quite impressed with that U of N fabric
and lined it with cows...the copyright on the cow butt kisses fabric is 1993 ... i knew i would find a good use for it someday
when i wrote the final entry in my quilt journal, i looked back over six pages of notes that spanned more than a year and found this...sounded like a plan
i dunno ... Auntia says that i was obsessed with it - but in a good way ...... there were very few moments when working on this quilt was not a joy ... seriously ... i loved making this quilt ...... but i had some real concerns about whether or not my brother-in-law was gonna like it

busted

sometimes i make Auntia crazy ... i don't usually intend to make her crazy - it just happens ... i obsessed over the real name for Mr. Husker's Homestead for days and days and days ... it made her crazy ... she came up with ideas and made suggestions and listened to me go on and on about naming her uncle's quilt ... ad nauseum ... i finally threw up my hands and told her that it would just have to wait till i found the right name and we wouldn't be able to take it to him the next day and that was all there was to it blah blah blah ... and she made her escape ... but i didn't stop there ... oh no no no ... i sat down and googled song titles and lyrics for two hours ... and then i baked cookies and did the dishes and called Little Nonnie to tell her that we would be stopping by the next morning ... and that was when i had an epiphany about the name ... i decided during rasslin' and wrote the name and made the quilt cover and hung it all up to take pictures and didn't like my pictures so i had Auntia take pictures and i loaded them onto the computer and decided that maybe i should wait till saturday morning's sunlight was streaming through the window and i was wound up from the wind down and then i didn't want to go to bed even though i knew we had to get up early for our BOM sampler meeting ... and on and on and on

saturday morning came and i dragged my sorry self out of bed and waited for Auntia to make a pot of coffee ... while she got ready for our paper-pieced BOM meeting i fiddle-farted around taking more pictures of the quilt none of which were usable and drank more coffee than i'm supposed to and ate a couple of cookies ... it was when i realized that i had less than an hour to be ready to walk out the door that i finally started to move ... it doesn't really take me very long to get ready to go anywhere ... i try to look presentable by being clean ... and leaving the hot rollers in my hair long enough for them to cool down ... and not having too many holes in or stains on my jeans and sweatshirts/t shirts ... and on very rare occasions putting a bit of mascara on my very skimpy eyelashes ... so i did all of that and came down stairs to see my very lovely daughter in another of her cute outfits - black leggings and a red top with a black sweater ... her hair was shiny and bouncy and her makeup was perfect ... she had taken our BOM notebooks out to the car and helped me take down the quilt and fold it up and made sure the Schlotsky's coupons were ready ... she put on her fashionable white suede and faux fur boots with four inch heels ... and i said

we're gonna be walkin' a lot

i know ... are you ready to go?
those are gonna make your feet hurt
they're very comfortable ... you know we're supposed to be walking out the door right now
did you eat anything?
no - i'm not hungry ... we're late ... we need to leave
i'm almost ready
sigh ... i'll meet you in the car

and then she left me to my own devices ... which meant that i stopped to pack a few cookies and pour a big cuppa coffee and checked to make sure i had the camera and tied my shoes and then took them off so i could find my purse and put my shoes back on and made sure i had the stuff for my sister and packed a few cookies for Nicci ... and then Auntia was back inside asking me

what is taking you so long? do you need any help?
you could grab those cookies and help me with this box
we are sooooo late

so i finally got my sorry self out to the car and we started the 40 minute drive to longmont with me knowing full well that if we didn't get there in 30 minutes that we wouldn't get to sit together and then who would loan me a piece of paper and a pencil since i'd forgotten mine again ... so i sped up a little bit and knocked a couple of minutes off the drive without Auntia being any the wiser and munched a couple of cookies ... i offered to share the cookies with Auntia but she still wasn't hungry ... we reached our destination safely and found seats in the back row ... she loaned me a pencil and a piece of paper and i started to behave ... i took copious notes and i didn't mumble very much and i asked intelligent questions and didn't shush the two chatty cathies sitting next to us even though i thought they shoulda shut up so the rest of us could hear and even Thelma would have been proud of my exceptionally good behavior ... when the meeting was over we walked through the shop and tried to find the Maywood white on white loopy daisy floral that is being used in the blue paper-pieced quilt and Auntia found a pattern for miniature quilts that she wanted and a Love Is In the Air panel that was on sale ... we were standing in line and waiting for our fabric to be cut when i noticed that Auntia was looking a little green around the gills

are you okay?
no
are you gonna be okay?
yes ... i think i'm just hungry
oh now you're hungry!
i haven't eaten anything all morning ... you were supposed to remind me about the toaster streudel
what toaster streudel?
the Boston Creme Pie toaster streudel!
rut roh ... i offered you a cookie
i know ... i wasn't hungry then
so ... are you gonna be okay?
let's just go ... we can get this stuff next week
why don't you go out to the car and eat a cookie while i stay here and get this cut?
no ... thanks ... that's okay
seriously - you don't look so good ... go on out to the car and eat a cookie - i'll be out in a few minutes

so she left ... and i was alone ... in a quilt shop ... unsupervised ... but i stayed in line and had her panels cut and had our stash cards loaded and i was paying for our stuff when Dawn asked me where Auntia was

she went out to the car
oh! is she not feeling well?
yeah ... she's just hungry ... she'll be fine after she eats a cookie or two ... i kept trying to get her to eat something before we came in but she wasn't hungry ... blah blah blah ... and i told her that those boots...

i heard someone walk up behind me ... in boots ... but did i shut up? oh no no no

... were gonna make her feet hurt ... but she has to sacrifice function for fashion and...

and here i brought you a cookie!!!

gulp ... what the?!? i thought you were gonna wait in the car!!!

then the peanut gallery behind the counter piped in with

we want to see your boots!
yeah - let's see your boots!

those boots aren't made for walkin'

them are sittin' boots
so my daughter ... all five feet nuthin' of her ... climbed up on a counter-height chair and modeled her boots ... to the applause and dismay of all ... i could not believe my eyes ... she is incredibly afraid of heights ... she doesn't even like to be on the bottom of a step stool ... but there she was - four feet off the floor - doing a great imitation of America's Next Top Model ... and i can only think that it was because sometimes i make Auntia crazy ... bless her heart

quilty content

i used up most of the evening typing a post about last saturday morning ... but i don't get to publish it till Auntia has her version of the story posted ...... so here is a picture of the SS3 BOM block for next saturday's meeting...meow
and i was supposed to get started on the gazllion blocks that will make up the sashings and borders ... meh ... still not feelin' the love

what did i just say?

i must say those words a dozen times every day ... and no one ever gives me the right answer no surprise there ... not even when i say them to myself ... sheesh

anywho ... i took a break from working on HPV not the virus by starting another Crab-apple Hill design called Snowflake Angel ... i couldn't find an aqua polka dot fabric or a red polka dot fabric or a white on white snowflake fabric ... out came the ME charm pack still in its little paper wrapper for The Caroler ... white on white snowflake fabric ... and blue on blue snowflake fabric ... and red on red snowflake fabric ... so i went to Desperate Quilters and found the white snowflakes ... and the blue snowflakes ... but no red snowflakes ... so out came the ME charm pack for Attitude Girls also still in its little paper wrapper ... how 'bout the red plaid? that will do ... so i ordered all of the fabrics and made a list of the floss colors for the next time DMC went on sale at JAF ... the fabric arrived ... but the floss didn't go on sale ... so i cut the fat quarter and traced out the design and waited ... and waited ... and waited ... and just when i was about to pay full price shudder for the floss - lo and behold - it went on sale plus 10% off my entire purchase ... woo hoo! but when i looked at the floss it became clear that there was no way #3753 and #3811 and #3817 were gonna go with ME The Caroler blue on blue snowflakes ... so i put them in the basket just in case and picked out three other skeins that were the right blues and took my treasures home ... i put all of the different flosses in floss keepers and labeled them and stole a package of embroidery needles from the HPV stuff and a pair of embroidery scissors from the HPV stuff and the hoop from the HPV stuff and put my stitching goodies together in a Debbie Mum snowman tin that was 60% off just before christmas...i love it when a plan comes together
i made myself wait till Morgana's Apothecary was stitched before i let me start on the snowflake angel ... i'm just sayin' ... there i was not paying much attention and stitching away when i realized that i didn't like my brown snowflake angel...brown snow? i don't think so
so i picked out the stitches and tried again with blue...brown was better than yellow would have been ... but blue is better than brown ... i'm just sayin'
i like it a lot better ...... in the meantime ...... i finished hand stitching the binding on Mr. Husker's Homestead and stitched a naming square on the back ... upside down ... on the wrong end ... sheesh ... so that has been taken apart and restitched, too ... now i need to come up with a good name for it since no one calls my brother-in-law Mr. Husker to his face because Husker is his brother's wife's pot-bellied pig's name ... the quilt is my representation of his universe according to me ... the other 60th birthday quilts have song names ... the only song name i could find with universe in the title is Across the Universe ... but Doogal is not a fan of the Beatles ... Mrs. Moth suggested Duane's World ... which is pretty doggone funny ... but Doogal is not a fan of Mike Myers or Dana Carvey ... it's a dilemma