trimming trees

second (and final, officially - but prolly not around here) FNSI for december ... i FINALLY got around to piecing the trees for Over the River...

oh autumn treeee ... oh autumn treeee

how are thy leaves so solferino

 and now i need to take a moment to thank the on-line thesaurus for another word for the color purple (even though the leaves and branches are more puce than a moderate purplish red - the word puce is not nearly as poetic or fun to say as solferino, right?!?)...

the trees will finish at 3 inches by 9 inches and they are gonna be the bookends for the OTR embroideries... 

it was NICE to not have to work on the teetering tower anymore ... it did occur to me that my grandkids prolly don't look at this blog - and i could post pictures of the actual quilts before the solstice ...... but not today ...... today i am going to watch this little person...

Gumdrop's wish for christmas

dance dance dance!!!

finito

what i didn't do for the first FNSI this month...

over with ... done ... finished

because the very last stitch of the very last binding was taken on thursday evening ... late ... very late ... too late to want to get up on time the next day... 

but they are finished and ready to go live somewhere else... 

woo hootie hoo!!!

so ... friday night was open ... i could work on any thing in the Great Pile of Stuff and not feel guilty about neglecting the quilts for my precious grandbabies bless their little hearts ... HPV not the virus or OTR or the Ghastlies or the Shepherd's Bush stockings or the Northern Lights blocks or the Hot Flashes blocks or Snow Days or Calendula Patterdrip's Cottage or the peppermint blocks or the snow angels or the scrapbook pages for Michael Myson that i have to have finished by august or i'll flunk motherhood or the double wedding ring quilt or or or or or or or...

i dunno ... just thinking about the stuff i have started ... and the stuff i want to start ... and the stuff i don't even remember ... well ... it made me tired ... so i took some ibuprofen and went to bed...

and today has been filled up with Auntia's 25th birthday bless her heart ... she is waiting to use the computer so she can post about her own FNSI which was much more productive than mine lemmetellya so i'm gonna go cut another piece of birthday cake and drink a cuppa sumpin sumpin

HAPPY BIRTHDAY 

MELISSA!!!

teetering tower of what was i thinking?!?

or...

what i did for FNSI...

tell me again whose bright idea this was?!? 

for the past few days i've been sewing the quarter of a gazillion stars into borders for six quilt tops ... last night i spread them out for measuring and found myself wondering when the floor moved so far away?!? ... then i ripped flannel, and sewed the backs together ... i WAS gonna cut the bindings and sew those together, but i'd had enough of flying flannel for one night so i watched Grimm instead of doing anything productive ... i guess i oughta get the batting together for that tower of doom, huh? i have enough for the three smallest tops, but the others will require twin-sized batts... 

hmmm ... batting and thread doesn't go on sale till Black Friday...

that's a legitimate excuse for ignoring them for a few days, innit?!?

cut, mark, pin, sew, press ... repeat

this is what i worked on for the Friday Night Sew-In...

pinwheels, pins, bits, pieces

i was hoping for larger piles of spinning wheels and smaller piles of flat tires ... sigh ... Sven the Viking ground his teeth when i hit a pin full-on ... he was so aggravated that he made all the lights in the house dim ... that pin won't be holding anymore seams that need sewing, lemmetellya...

under construction

last night was the FNSI for september ... i put on my tool belt and put up some fencing...

that oughta keep 'em out

then i planted a bush by the side of the house...

it looked bigger at the nursery

pruned a few trees ... and shut the barn door...

gonna hafta fix that latch

which seems kinda silly since the barn isn't even built yet...

say what?!?

last night was FNSI...

i embroidered...

the left side of the top embroidery for Over the River and Through the Woods

i can't believe that i signed up for more trees - you'd think i'd have learned my lesson with HPV not the virus...

i am changing the pattern a bit is anyone in shock?!? 

i didn't want it to be a winter scene, so i traced it with lines that are not drifted with snow...

we don't need no stinking snow drifts

and i replaced the horse-drawn sleigh with a truck from Snow Days another Crab-apple Hill pattern...

 does this fender make my butt look big?!?

the truck was too small and was facing the wrong way, so i traced it ... and reversed it ... and then Auntia enlarged it for me

 instead of black floss, i'm using DMC #154 very dark grape for most of the stitching ... and a little bit of Wildflowers #077 royal jewels for what should have been fields of snow, but is gonna be strewn leaves instead i was gonna write leaf fall, but Auntia says it's strewn leaves... 

and the background fabric is not what i originally chose last year ... i didn't buy enough background fabric for the embroidery and the paper-pieced leaves ... so i ordered what i thought was the same fabric, but was actually a bit more gold and more than a bit darker ... which meant that i still didn't have enough of either fabric for the embroidery and the paper-pieced leaves ... so i used both fabrics randomly shudder for the paper-pieced leaves... 

i dunno ... i think it will work ... maybe in a year or ten i will have a thanksgiving quilt...

Thanksgiving, man! Not a good day to be my pants.

Kevin James  

the falling leeeeeeeaves

drift by the windooooooow

the autumn leeeeeaves ... of red and gooooold

i looked up the lyrics - i always thought it was my window, not the window ... which means i've been messing up the lyrics to yet another song all these years .... yeah ... we won't even talk about desperado

i have been drafting leaves for the awesome quilt that i finally get to start working on cuz i couldn't find a paper-pieced aspen leaf and cuz i didn't want to pay six dollars each for a maple leaf or an oak leaf pattern ... i always tell myself that i have more time than money ... well, i guess i am willing to work for 29 cents an hour cuz that's how long it took to save twelve dollars...my oak leaf
i messed up one of the blades of the oak leaf and had to reverse sew and redraft it - but i think i have it fixed ... i have a pattern for an apple leaf table runner that i was gonna use cuz i have apple trees in my yard and it wouldn't be cheating too much ... but i really wanted to make aspen leaves cuz they are the only gold i've found in colorado ... so i changed the apple leaf block from a triangle to a square, and then messed around with rounding it out...do you recognize the maple leaf's fabric, Thelma?
maple, oak, aspen and acorn ... nothing is ever easy
and i even managed to put petioles that's stems for those of us who are botanically challenged on each of the leaves ... last night's Friday Night Sew-In was all used up by the time i tested out the oak leaf and acorn ... i dunno if i will ever again try to draft a paper-pieced design ... and i have an even greater respect for those who make it look easy cuz it ain't, lemmetellya...

herd of birds

last night was the Friday Night Sew-In and it was for the birds...

no blue skies around here the past few days ... maybe i should have waited for the leaves to dry a bit
i've been piecing flying geese for the past couple of weeks ... after some slicing and dicing and a bit of heat those became these...gaggle of geese ... herd of birds
i am not too keen on the idea of trimming a gazillion little birdies, lemmetellya

i worked on HPV not the virus a bit, too...no paper-piecing patterns for tombstones?!? seriously?!?
i couldn't find any patterns for tombstones, so the Little Red Hen had to do it herself...a bit morbid, innit?!?
i had never tried to draft a paper-piecing pattern before ... they'll do, i guess

maybe today i will get the grass mowed and some of those weeds pulled ... yeah, like that's gonna happen when i have a gazillion wings to clip

that's all?!?

this is what i ended up with...blue baby afghan for Whatisit if he is a boy and bindings for the last three pink & orange BOM quilts

after starting with this...four rounds left on the little blue afghan and a pile of binding fabric
i use the pink sticky arrow to show me what round i am supposed to be working on ... it moved off of the last page of instructions ... back through the first page ... and onto the middle of the second page...flashback
i wasn't sold on making a big yarn doily and calling it an afghan, but flashback
will be my fourth one after it is finished ... so i guess i like the idea more than i thought i would

and that's what i did with my friday night ... yep ... that's all!

preemptive multitasking

it isn't just for computers anymore

it was friday night and i crocheted...preemptive crochet - for babies yet to come
and prewashed the fabric that may become the rest of HPV not the virus...from preemptive shopping on Black Friday at the FQS whilst halloween fabric was 50% off ... and preemptive color-catching
and we made a quick trip to The Quilt Store for Camelot fabrics the new Jason Yenter line and the book ... but they didn't know if they were gonna carry the line or not ... so we did some preemptive on-line shopping...
oops - no pictures of on-line shopping, but there was a bit of it going on, lemmetellya

dinner was spaghetti and garlic toast ... dessert was marshmallows ... times flies whether you're having fun or not!!!

last but not least

i placed the last stitches in the last HPV not the virus stitchery today...Toil & Trouble Employment Agency

as i was taking the picture, i realized that i hadn't posted this one...Potting Shed ... for potting pumpkins, not pot
it was stitched before the end of last year - but was misplaced in the Great Pile of Stuff till a week ago...

i thought that i didn't really care when or even if i finished the HPV not the virus embroideries ... i was stitching cuz i like the pattern and cuz i like to hear the needle and thread go pahwoosh and cuz it is fun ... but when i took the last stitch i was really, really happy ... joyous, even ... and i realized that it is more than just funpahwooshingness ... i finished stitching it ... and it may actually be a full-grown quilt someday ... pretty doggone cool, huh?!?

tomorrow is this month's FNSI ... and i won't be embroidering HPV not the virus - ha ha ha!!!

press 1 for English

press 2 for German ... notdyrftig
press 3 for Dutch ... mager*
press 4 for Italian ... per meagre
press 5 for French ... maigre
press 6 for Spanish ... magro**

one

mea·ger (mē′gər)

adjective

1. thin; lean; emaciated
2. of poor quality or small amount; not full or rich; inadequate***

Origin: ME megre <>megre (Fr maigre) <>macer, lean, thin <>makro- <>māk-, long and thin > Gr makros, long, OE mæger, meager

Brit., etc. sp. meagre mea′·gre

and that*** about sums up what i accomplished for last night's FNSI...
small amount ... inadequate
a little bit of embroidery on HPV (not the virus) and two corners of hand stitching down the back of the binding of LuLu's quilt...

sigh ... i'd blame it on Molly's comment on my last post (hi Molly!!! please don't stop coming here - i promise to be bad!!!) ... but in real life, i actually am a lazy sluggard who kicks back a bit too frequently ... bwah ha ha ha!!!

*Annemiek
**Traveling Man

half-baked fruitcake

last night was the second FNSI for december ... unlike Auntia, i didn't get an early start ... i know, i know, i know that it was the one week anniversary of her 24th birthday, but jeez-louise enough already ... anywho ... i worked on the last of the embroidered teapots for the PPSS BOM quilt...

we're three little teapots - short and stout
that's 24 of them and i am done ... and the next time i get a brilliant idea that involves paper-piecing and embroidery, would somebody please smack me upside the head?!?

last year i fell in love with Figgy Pudding by Basic Grey for Moda ... but i waited for it to go on sale at my lqs and missed out on all but the peppermint/brown/ice blue ... so when i found out that this year Basic Grey was gonna have Fruitcake, i ordered a layer cake and two charm packs, sight unseen ... i really should have waited ... fruitcake is okay, but it ain't figgy pudding ... anywho ... i had the precuts and bought a bit of yardage so i could make christmas packages with the layer cake and a smaller version with the charm packs ... except i didn't really like making the christmas package blocks and i was sure that making twice as many of the same block with 5 inch squares instead of 10 inch squares was not gonna be something i'd ever make myself do ... so i decided to try out the Lil Twister that Auntia bought for me with some of her shop hop winnings on the charm packs ... i sewed 81 of the charms together into a big square with a three inch border all around and then started whacking away with a rotary cutter and the Lil Twister ... we don't have a design wall, so i cut and sewed one row at a time and ended up with this...it looks wavy cuz i was too tired to straighten it out on the floor
which is kinda cool considering that the pinwheels didn't require cutting any triangles or matching any points even if i am not all that crazy about most of the fabric ... i like these little guys...think they're getting dizzy?
they look like little snowmen marshmallows swirling around in a cup of hot chocolate ... anywho ... i worked on the twisted fruitcake last night after i finished embroidering the teapots ... i was ready to put on the outer border of my one and only figgy pudding fabric...bleck!!!
oh. no. that is not gonna work ... so the little flimsy is folded up and put away till i finish with the layer cake blocks - maybe there will be a bit of border fabric left for twisted fruitcake

the oven timer just went off and now i am gonna go eat a big piece of chicken pot pie cuz that's how i roll

what would YOU do?

well ... Mr. Modem seems to have had a change of heart ... and i'm gonna post a picture or two

Auntia said that she wanted a white chocolate raspberry cake for her birthday ... i tried to tell her that raspberries are outta season and if she really wanted a white chocolate (seriously?!? white chocolate?!? why bother?!?) raspberry cake, she should have been born in summer ... anywho ... i had to go to the store to buy the raspberries and cake mix and frosting and white chocolate chips... and that's not counting the eggs and oil and flour and oven time
after a gazillion trips up and down the same aisles looking for things i don't normally buy like white chocolate i realized that it was getting really, really late ... it was dark ... and cold ... and i knew that when i made it back home i still had to bake the lasagna and make a salad before i could start in on the cake ... and there was the FNSI list to consider...
i took a quick walk around the bakery and found this...white chocolate (check) raspberry (check) ... gasp ... already ready
i felt like John Quinones ... what would YOU do? trim a quilt or bake a cake ... trim a quilt or bake a cake ... so i kept the cake ingredients in the cart ... and added the already-made but incredibly expensive cake, too ... then i went home and told the birthday girl who was busy ignoring the sinks full of dirty dishes that i'd decided to splurge and give her a fancy bakery cake instead of a homely, homemade one ...... seriously, what would you do?
trim the quilt and eat the cake!!!

thor ... thumb

our Internet connection has been in the toilet for the past week and i haven't been able to blog or read blogs or surf or spend any money online wah wah wah ... our local DSL provider says that a new modem will be the answer to our connection problems can you tell that i am not convinced?!? and it will arrive on monday give or take a week or two... posting tomorrow for FNSI is iffy cuz i have to beg and plead with our link to puh-lease let me finish my online work ... so i am going to schedule this to post tomorrow morning, even though i am writing it today and some of it hasn't happened yet...

december 10th is Auntia's 24th birthday ... by this time 24 years ago, i knew i had given birth to a screamer ... to celebrate, Auntia slept in ... and then we went to renew her learner's permit ... i know ... i know ... believe me, i know that she is eight years overdue for upgrading from learner's permit to license ... anywho ... per the sign on the door the first office that we went to has been closed since august due to budget cuts ... i was suspicious when we called the listed number to find out what their hours are and it went to a disconnect recording - even though it is still listed on the Colorado DMV general information number ... i guess budget cuts have affected being able to update recordings, too ... anywho, armed with the address for one of the five offices that are still in existence to serve a metro area with almost 3 million people, we went searching for 500 malley drive in Northglenn ... who knew that there wasn't enough money in the budget for Northglenn to put block numbers on street signs ... i considered going home to Yahoo map the address but then i remembered that the Internet connection is iffy ... so we drove around Northglenn for a while and finally spotted a sign in a rundown-beat-up-seen-better-days strip mall that said "driver licence" ... i guess it's the best that our budget-deficit state can manage even though licensing and fees have done nothing but go up and up and up ... i sat down and waited while Auntia stood in line to get a number ... sat down and waited for an hour ... number was called ... stood in line for another 20 minutes ... information was exchanged ... sat down ... name was called ... money was exchanged ... stood in line for another 20 minutes ... picture was taken ... stood around some more ... name was called ... learner's permit was handed over ... i can't think of a more exciting and fun way to spend a birthday than listening to over a hundred peoples' life stories about why they need their licenses reinstated/renewed/issued ... there are privacy laws for the line at the pharmacy cuz we wouldn't want some dude to be embarrassed when he's picking up his erectile dysfunction pills - but if your driver's license/state id/learner's permit has seen better days, the whole world gets to hear all of the sordid details ... okay, nuff said about that

by the time we were finished it was past lunchtime and i asked Auntia where she wanted to go for lunch...
Taco Bell
groan
Taco Bell is okay for fast food when i don't have anything else to do but hang around the loo for the next day or two, but a birthday lunch oughta be ... well ... more ... like sitting down and having my food brought to me ... and the dirty dishes taken away ... a refreshing after-dinner mint would be appreciated ... but it was not my birthday ... so i sat through the drive-through line at Taco Bell and bought her the Chicken Enchilada Grilled Stuft Burrito Combo ... then i took her home and she opened her presents which are almost all quilt-related and she watched John Cena's guest appearance on one of the stoopid talk shows that have replaced soap operas for daytime television ... the rest of this is gonna be what i HOPE happens, since it hasn't happened yet...

earlier this week i finished quilting the "eff" quilt , took it off the frame, and Thor has been loaded with Auntia's christmas present ... i am gonna try to get some of it quilted if Auntia can get her Thumb to agree to go near enough to thread some bobbins ... and i'm gonna help Auntia trim the "eff" quilt ... i am also gonna work on one of the embroidered teapots ... and maybe i'll make a bit of progress on the twisted fruitcake ... i have to bake and frost a cake, too ... and sing happy birthday to her

twofer

there are gonna be two Friday Night Sew-Ins this month

the first one is next friday
december 10, 2010
and the crowd goes wild cuz that is
my baby girl's 24th birthday

and the second one is the next friday
december 17, 2010
and the crowd goes wild again cuz that is
the one week anniversary of my baby girl's 24th birthday

mmm hmmm...
december is all about Auntia

tgifnsi

yesterday was the Friday Night Sew-In ... last month i ran afoul of the underside of the quilting frame and called it an early night ... so this time around i stayed well away from the frame and did some hand embroidery...is anyone else getting sick of looking at these teapots?!?
the teapot's outline was already stitched and my goal was to finish the butterflies ... but they looked like they needed a place to land - so i stitched until it was finished ... i'm supposed to stitch two teapots each month in order to keep up with the PPSS BOM blocks but i was a slacker last month and didn't finish any ... so ... now october's are stitched and even if i don't embroider november's teapots, i won't be behind till december 1 - bwah ha ha and november's are ready to go...
then i sewed a bit on the flying geese for Auntia's christmas present...32 of these little puppies
and they are ready to trim ... it's okay if i post about it since she already knows and has accepted the fact that it will not be a full-grown quilt by december 25 and, in fact, chose the fabric line ... so ... no surprises for you, baby girl!
i have been putting it off for months because i'd kinda had enough of wolves but luckily for Auntia the fabric just happened to be among the stuff stacked up against my bedroom wall that has to be cleared out so my bedroom can morph from a stash closet back into a place to actually sleep so i can make room to paint next spring and hang the new shade that has been in the closet for six years now and whatever else needs to happen...

guess i oughta start another list...

would you like some cheese with that?

a real man is his woman's best friend

he will never stand her up
and he will never let her down

he will reassure her when she feels insecure
and he will comfort her after a bad day

he will inspire her to do things she never thought she could do
and to live without fear or regret

he will enable her to express her deepest emotions
and give in to her deepest desires

he will make sure she always feels as though she is the most beautiful woman in the room

he will enable her to be confident...

sexy...

seductive...

and invincible...

no

wait...

i'm thinking of wine...

that's what wine does...


never mind


tonight is the Friday Night Sew-In ... time to hunker down and stitch

twisted sister

last night was the Friday Night Sew-In ... let's hear a woo hootie hoo!!!

i actually managed to get the rest of the teapots traced so no more whining about that and ready to embroider ... then i scooped some dinner outta the crockpot and scarfed it down ... and looked around for something else to do that did not involve embroidery ...... a couple of weeks ago i loaded this onto our little quilting frame ... but i ran outta threaded bobbins after the first few inches of quilting any excuse is acceptable ... Auntia loaded more bobbins ... i'd forgotten what the quilting plan was ... so it's been sitting there waiting for me to remember ... which i did ... so i started quilting a few of these...is that supposed to be a rose?!?
and then i decided to get fancy and quilt a few little buds in the middle of some squares ... uhm ... errr ... not the look i was going for ... so i started to unquilt the gazillion stitches from the top side of the frame - but i couldn't quite get all of them - so i crawled under the frame ... and twisted the wrong way ... and that was the end of stitching for me last night cuz my back was growling at me like this...get that thing off my head or i'll ... i'll ... i'll throw my slipper at you!!!
except more loudly...

slacker

what i did for Friday Night Sew-In...when did these stop being fun?!?

i added a very small amount of embroidery to my ongoing HPV* and to the teapots for my PPSS BOM quilt ... i didn't do much done on any of them ... but i did watch the last disc of Stargate Universe 1.5 again ... Auntia was a lot more productive than i was ... i think it's cuz she has much younger hands ... my own hands are tired ... very, very tired

*edit - HPV is Hocuspocusville, not the virus!!!